Sunday 5 August 2012

Co-inherence as the focus of Christian life

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Over past months I have been thinking much on the idea of co-inherence - which I got from Charles Williams, e.g.

http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/centrality-of-co-inherence-to-salvation.html

There is a tendency (often derived from an admirable desire for accuracy) for this idea to become over complex and incomprehensible - when our society is at such a low spiritual level (including myself) that only ideas of clarity and simplicity can be understood and acted-upon.

Therefore I venture to suggest that one great value of a greater emphasis on co-inherence would be in relation to primary description of what each individual Christian is trying to do in their spiritual life.

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Too often, the Christian life is seen in terms of being a selfish matter of seeking after one's own eternal happiness - and to the modern mind this contrasts unfavourably with the (supposed) Leftist project of altruism: 'making' a world with less suffering.

But to understand that Christianity entails co-inherence, opens-up the possibility of changing the one-line-description of Christain aspirations into something more like:

"Working for the salvation of that which we love".

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Naturally, any one line description is necessarily a gross over-simplification - but I feel that a focus on the Christian as working

(by their life of repetance, worship, prayer etc)

on the project of saving the eternal souls of the people they love -

that is to say to work for those whom they love -

(but perhaps also to work for the eternal preservation of the essence of things they love such as the values or society, animals and plants and places) -

might perhaps provide a better starting point for the modern Christian setting-out on the path, than the more common preliminary over-simplified caricature of each Christian ('selfishly') working on their own individual salvation.

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