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A hidden Christ

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kirstin
Aug 23 2005
04:36 pm

When someone is driven by love in any way, he or she is driven by Christ. Whoever has love, has the love of God, even if he or she does not confess Christ in words. There is a hidden Christ; he is much too great to be confined by human thought.

-Eberhard Arnold

There are many quotes from others to this effect, as well. I’ve talked both with people who passionately reject this idea and people who just as passionately believe it.

Any thoughts?

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Jasonvb
Aug 24 2005
10:17 am

God is love. Every good thing comes from God. So how could there be any love apart from him? I would guess that those who passionately reject this idea are concerned about actions that are not done out of love being mistaken for those that are.

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kirstin
Aug 24 2005
04:02 pm

I’m sure for some that’s true, but I think the biggest hang up for people I’ve talked to who reject this idea is not “confessing the name of Christ.” Can we be agents of the love of Christ without confessing—and even while openly rejecting—the person of Christ?

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laryn
Aug 25 2005
02:36 pm

here’s another quote to add to the mix:

[b:f0f743e832]Love as knowledge[/b:f0f743e832]

The bible draws out a very different understanding of truth than we are familiar with. For unlike our understanding (by which knowledge means to have an idea which corresponds with reality) the more ancient and Hebraic idea of truth is connected with liberation and transformation.

For instance, when we read that Christ is the truth and that knowing the truth will set us free we begin to perceive an idea that the Judeo-Christian idea of knowledge, far from referring to a proposition that corresponds to reality actually transforms reality. For instance in the Epistle of John we read that love is knowledge, ‘Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God’.

Here John equates knowledge of God with the act of love. Knowledge of God as an epistemological set of propositions is absent, instead he claims that those who love know God, regardless of their religious system, while those who do not love cannot know God, again regardless of their beliefs. To know the truth is to be known and transformed by the truth.

http://blogs.ignite.cd/Pete/index.cfm?m=8&y=2005

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dan
Aug 26 2005
12:50 pm

doesn’t it depend on what you love, who you love, and how you love?