Post a Comment On: Bruce Charlton's Notions

[Image]
One element in what Christ did for us and taught us relates to making the unconscious conscious; the implicit explicit - to move from custom to knowledge...

Sin is knowledge - by which I mean that the recognition of sin is a kind of knowledge - it entails making-explicit.

The Ancient Hebrew Law was a semi-conscious knowledge - half way to the aware and articulated knowledge that Jesus brought us. To sin was to deviate from The Law - but the Law was custom, given on Authority... and there was little or no understanding of sin. A man did not know why he had sinned - in what respect his sin was sinful...

Jesus brought repentance - and repentance entails knowledge; and Jesus made-possible this knowledge (he was the cognitive Christ). We must know sin before it can be repented - and since repentance is revealed to be necessary, this means we need to know sin... Personal knowing becomes vital to living, to become more like God.

This is linked to the desirability of theosis, or divinisation - it is about the promise that we are children of God with an elevated destiny - thus, God is wholly-conscious of what he knows: nothing is 'implicit' for God. He both knows, and knows he knows.

The incarnation, death and resurrection of Christ included that Men should henceforth begin to know in the same manner that God knows - from Jesus onward, cumulatively, Man became able and also needed to become conscious of his knowledge; what was unexamined custom should become consciously known and chosen. 

Thus Christ heralded a Cognitive Revolution, amongst many other things...