In the East, a distinction is drawn between the “way of the baby monkey” and the “way of the kitten,” the first way describing that of the ascetics in pursuit of Enlightenment, Knowledge and Wisdom, the second that of Devotion. The metaphorical implications are that there is more effort on the part of the baby monkey, which must actively cling tightly to its parent in getting transported around, while, as we are all aware, the kitten is passively transported by the nape of its neck in its mother’s teeth. I offer another distinction, which is the “way of the baby goose,” implying an imprinted following of the parent or an imitation of Action. Finally, we might consider the “way of the baby martin,” which is familiar to any who’ve observed the parents knocking a fledgling off of the Martin House that it might thereby learn to fly, the implication here describing the Way of the Cross via formative, reformative and transformative suffering. If these are different path-ways, perhaps roughly corresponding to creed, cult, code and community in our great traditions, where do they ultimately lead? I will argue, below, that they are all ordered toward a unitive Life in the Spirit and are animated via Lonergan’s conversions (intellectual, affective, moral, social and religious) by the very same Spirit.

Ingham and Mechthild’s

Fr. Richard Rohr OFM describes much of Buddhism as gifting one with “practices” and not “conclusions.” In this consideration, I’d like to open up the gift of this succinct insight and offer one interpretation of what this might mean for Christianity.

The Advaita Vedanta and Bhakti schools of Hinduism, and the Mahayana school of Buddhism, are now the major (larger) schools of these great living traditions and all have prominent devotional elements. While the dualist and modified nondualist Vedantic schools are primarily associated with Bhakti thought, even the Advaitic school can be associated with devotional elements through its founder, Shankara. Even in Zen Buddhism (Mahayanan), both Chinese (Chan) and Korean (Soen) schools integrate devotional elements.

What about the "reform" movement of the Japanese (Soto) school, which, by many accounts, does not so readily accommodate devotional elements? Some say this movement was rooted in the late 19th-early 20th Century Japanese nationalist tendencies, which both sought to differentiate itself from other schools in Asia and to support the country's militaristic approach. Others say the reform was a response to Zen's commercialization in Japan. Whatever the case may be, for manifold and varied historical reasons, the Japanese school lineages predominate in North America. To the extent that Japanese Zen lacks a governing body and a per se orthodoxy, unlike other Asian schools, it naturally lends itself to what would otherwise be considered heterodox adaptations, such as the emergent Christian Zen lineage.

My purpose in providing this background is to dispel any facile misconception that Eastern spiritual practices writ large, even when otherwise associated with various nondualities, necessarily lack a robust relationality or are otherwise incompatible with devotional elements. This is also to suggest that Americans, who have been primarily exposed to the Soto school, may especially fall prey to caricaturizing what are in fact the largest and most predominant living traditions of the East based on what for them has otherwise been a very narrow exposure to a "reform" element that turns out to otherwise be somewhat aberrant. I say this to affirm that, in my view, relationality is essential in all aspects of the life of the radically social animal known as Homo sapiens. I would argue that it is considered essential by most people in most all sects and denominations of the great traditions. It therefore seems likely that there is no, so to speak, “essential” Enlightenment experience for most people, neither East nor West, which is to suggest that most people, who undertake the ascetic disciplines and nondiscursive and/or apophatic meditative practices that can lead to experiences of absolute unitary being, cosmic awareness or even various energy arousals and awakenings, are already both formatively prepared and kataphatically situated in a devotional environs that is, more or less, conducive to an orderly unfolding of the psychic energies often associated with spiritual emergence such that they will not otherwise fall prey to what can be some very unsettling spiritual emergencies.

This has profound implications for our inter-religious dialogue, especially as it pertains to our mutually enriching exchanges of spiritual technologies (ascetic and meditative practices), which might be a lot more adaptable (abstracted from doctrinal elements) between Eastern and Western traditions than one might first suspect, especially if only familiar with Japanese Zen as is the case with most Americans . Normatively speaking, this is to suggest that our emergent Christian Zen lineages need not feel compelled to turn away from devotional practices and may indeed want to more actively engage the many other schools of Hinduism and Buddhism precisely in search of their devotional modalities. Another problem in the West is the fact that there is an emergent pop-Advaitan and/or neo-Advaitan lineage that facilely engages Shankara's illuminative teachings while ignoring the founder's devotional practices. This can only exacerbate the misconceptions, hence misapplications, that arise from the already narrow and misguided view of the Eastern traditions. Thankfully, many Western and Christian Zen lineages do offer caveats regarding any such over-conceptualizations of Zen. At the same time, as Robert Sharf points out: "… there is a world of difference between issuing such warnings in a monastic environment where ritual and doctrinal study are de rigueur, and issuing such warnings to laypersons with little or no competence in such areas. In short, the Sanbokyodan has taken the antinomian and iconoclastic rhetoric of Zen literally, doing away with much of the disciplined ceremonial, liturgical, and intellectual culture of the monastery in favor of the single-minded emphasis on zazen and a simplified form of koan study." Sanbokyodan: Zen and the Way of the New Religions p. 427-428

Whatever the divergent ontological views of our many traditions, for the most part, in the East, there is a subtle distinction that is drawn between ultimate or absolute reality and phenomenal or practical reality, such that it is lost on many Westerners that various words/cognates, in fact, retain their conventional or pragmatic usefulness in a movement that, first, suspends our naive affirmations, then, subjects them to philosophical scrutiny and, finally, returns them back to their conventional understanding with deeper insights and with maybe a hygienic hermeneutic of suspicion. This insight and hermeneutic does not cast suspicion with the skeptics on all matters unseen but instead invites us to go beyond (not without) our senses and reason to penetrate reality more depthfully. In Christianity, Richard of St. Victor thus informs the Franciscan tradition thru Bonaventure about the occulus carnis (eye of the senses), the occulus rationis (eye of reason), and the occulus fidei (eye of faith). This "eye of faith" is what Rohr refers to as the "third eye" and, consistent with Merton, it integrally takes us beyond our senses and reason but not without them. This conceptually maps fairly well, but not completely, over such as Jewish and Tibetan concepts of Third Eye seeing.

Rohr often refers to knowledge through connaturality, which, per Maritain is knowledge through union or inclination, connaturality or congeniality, where the intellect is at play not alone, but together with affective inclinations and the dispositions of the will, and is guided and directed by them. It is not rational knowledge, knowledge through the conceptual, logical and discursive exercise of Reason. But it is really and genuinely knowledge, though obscure and perhaps incapable of giving account of itself, or of being translated into words.

Rohr writes: “Contemplation is also saying how you see is what you will see, and we must clean our own lens of seeing. I call it knowing by "connaturality" (Aquinas), or knowing by affinity or kinship, it is the participative knowing by which the Indwelling Spirit in us knows God, Love, Truth, and Eternity. LIKE KNOWS LIKE, and that is very important to know. There definitely is a communion between the seer and the seen, the knower and the known Hatred cannot nor will not know God, fear cannot nor will not recognize love. Because this deep contemplative wisdom has not been taught in recent Catholic centuries, and hardly at all among Protestants, it is a great big lack and absence in our God given ability to know spiritual things spiritually, as Paul would say (1 Cor.2:13).”

Clearly, then, Rohr advocates nonduality and not nondualism. The latter is a metaphysical proposition; the former is an epistemic method. In philosophy, we have recognized that methods can be successfully extricated from systems. In our East-West dialogue, we have recognized that some practices can be successfully extricated from their doctrinal contexts. Nonduality is a practice, a method, that can be successfully extricated from nondualism (as system or doctrine). In fact, it has a philosophical meaning vis a vis the false dichotomy fallacy that is quite independent of any Eastern traditions. That's the meaning employed by Rohr.

Here’s a quote on the same theme from Pseudo-Dionysius: “Do thou, in the intent practice of mystic contemplation, leave behind the senses and the operations of the intellect, and all things that the senses or the intellect can perceive, and all things which are not and things which are, and strain upwards in unknowing as far as may be towards the union with Him who is above all being and knowledge. For by unceasing and absolute withdrawal from thyself and all things in purity, abandoning all and set free from all, thou wilt be borne up to the ray of the Divine Darkness that surpasses all being.”

Christianity is recovering its mystical core via a neoplatonic-influenced dionysian logic. The classical emphasis has been on the dialectic between the apophatic and kataphatic, the former referring literally to what God is not, the latter an affirmation of what God is like, analogically. This has reduced all God-talk to metaphor and leaves a question begging as to how there can be any causal efficacy between Creator and creatures with such a causal disjunction as is necessarily implied by such a weak analogy.

The classical logic looks like this:

1) God is | x | is true analogically and kataphatically.

2) God is | not x | is true literally and apophatically.

Dionysian logic breaks out of this dualistic dyad, going beyond it but not without it:

3) God is neither | x | nor | not x | is true unitively.

This triadic perspective resolves the tension between the classical neoplatonic henosis, which refers to the dance between intersubjectivity and identity with ultimate reality, and dinonysian theosis, which refers to the growth in intimacy with ultimate reality, by affirming both an intraobjective identity between creature and Creator, in a panentheistic divine matrix of interrelated causes and effects, as well as an intersubjective intimacy between creature and Creator, the creature thus being quasi-autonomous. (auto = self)

The practical upshot, then, which might be quite the essence (pun intended), of such a nondual perspective is that all may be well and that all are radically interrelated and this is true whether one is indeed an absolute monist, qualified monist, panentheist or classical theist. The theoretical rub would be ontological but all traditions, in fidelity to right speech, had better remain in search of a metaphysic at this stage on humankind's journey?

For Rohr, I'd say the nondual refers mostly to an epistemic process, such as in Zen's dethroning of the conceptualizing ego in order to otherwise relate to some seeming contradictions, instead, as paradoxes, which might perdure as mystery, resolve dialectically, or even dissolve from a stepping out of an inadequate framework of logic or any other dispositions (or lack thereof) known to this paradox or another. This maps well with the broad conceptions of nonduality such as at Nonduality Salon and Wikipedia. Predominantly, though, Rohr affirms nondual thinking in an over against fashion as related to either-or thinking, i.e. false dichotomies, and as related to a failure to self-critique one's own systems and logical frameworks, as a failure, too, to affirm the rays of truth in other perspectives and traditions. It is a failure to move beyond the Law thru the Prophets to the Wisdom tradition, not to do away with them but to properly fulfill them.

We can draw a distinction between Rohr's philosophical treatment or method of nonduality or nondual consciousness and the practice of contemplative prayer forms. The former is at the service of the latter, to be sure, but it is also at the service of all other value-realizations, as one should expect from a whole brain approach. Here we come full circle back to our consideration of the devotional elements that can be fruitfully employed in conjunction with any nondual approach, whether conceived from an epistemic and/or ontological stance. Rohr thus goes beyond any Mertonesque Zen-like formulations when he says that contemplation is a long, loving look at what really is. He writes: “Contemplation means returning to this deep source. Each one of us tries to find the spiritual exercise that helps us come to this source. If reading the Bible helps you, then read the Bible. If the Eucharist helps, then celebrate the Eucharist. If praying the rosary helps, pray the rosary. If sitting in silence helps, just sit there and keep silence. But we must find a way to get to the place where everything is. We have to take this long, loving look at reality, where we don't judge and we simply receive. Of course, emptiness in and of itself isn't enough. The point of emptiness is to get ourselves out of the way so that Christ can fill us up. As soon as we're empty, there's a place for Christ, because only then are we in any sense ready to recognize and accept Christ as the totally other, who is not me.” (Simplicity revised from 1991, Crossroad Publishing 2003)

In a nutshell, the general thrust of this whole brain approach is that, in order to have a relationship with your spouse in marriage, as was intended in creation, one has to approach one's spouse with more than words, logic, science, math, analytical skills and pragmatic considerations. One has to go beyond (NOT WITHOUT) these ways of knowing (Aquinas-like approach) to a knowledge that comes from love (Bonaventure's approach). One must enter a relational realm, in addition to the logical, empirical and practical realm. One must move beyond the language of math, philosophy, business & commerce, engineering and so on to learn the language of relationship, the grammar of assent, loyalty, fidelity, trust, faith, hope, love. We tend to eventually "get this" in marriage, or it dissolves (and half of all marriages do). There is reason to suspect, then, that "getting this" in our relationship with God is similarly problematical for most people.

In the story of Malunkyaputta, who queried the Buddha on the fundamental nature of reality by asking whether the cosmos was eternal or not, infinite or not, whether the body and soul are the same, whether the Buddha lived on after death, and so on, the Buddha responded that Malunkyaputta was like the man who, when shot with an arrow, would not let another pull it out without first telling him who shot the arrow, how the arrow was made and so on. Thus the Buddha turns our attention to the elimination of suffering, a practical concern, and away from the speculative metaphysical concerns.

This story of Malunkyaputta might thus help us to reframe some of our concerns, both regarding Buddhism, in particular, and metaphysics, in general. For example, perhaps we have wondered whether, here or there, the Buddha was ever 1) "doing" metaphysics or 2) anti-metaphysical or 3) metaphysically-neutral. In fact, we might have wondered if the soteriological aspects of any of the great traditions were necessarily intertwined with any specific ontological commitments. In some sense, now, we certainly want to say that all of the great traditions are committed to both metaphysical and moral realisms. However, at the same time, we might like to think that, out of fidelity to the truth, none of our traditions would ever have us telling untellable stories, saying more than we know or proving too much.

One interpretation of Malunkyaputta's story, then, might suggest that it is not that the Buddha eschewed metaphysics or was even ontologically neutral; rather, it may be that the Buddha just positively eschewed category errors. This would imply that the Buddha would neither countenance the categorical verve of yesteryear's scholastics nor the ontological vigor of our modern fundamentalists (neither the Enlightenment fundamentalists of the scientistic cabal nor the radical religious fundamentalists, whether of Islam, Christianity, Zen or any other tradition). Thus we might come to recognize that our deontologies should be as modest as our ontologies are tentative, that we should be as epistemically determinate as we can but as indeterminate as we must, that we should be as ontologically specific as we can but as vague as we must and that our semantics should reflect the dynamical nature of both reality and our apprehension of same, which advances inexorably but fallibly. The Buddha seemed to at least inchoately anticipate this fallibilism and, in some ways, to explicitly preach and practice it.

To the Buddha's point, then, regarding the no-self --- humankind, as a community of earnest inquiry, has no better grasp now than we did then of the ultimate nature of the cosmos or the soul. The Mahayanan Buddhists, and many in other traditions and schools, apparently have no problem dealing with the self in conventional, hence practical terms, whether in the temporal or celestial sphere, and have a lively devotional practice, affirming a robust inter-relationality vis a vis their pantheon of goddesses and gods, whom they worship, and all sentient beings, whom they offer karuna. They would thus seem to have no more trouble, practically speaking, in relating to "self" or "other" as a phenomenal experience than Westerners would have. Where they would have trouble is when, theoretically speaking, it comes to defining self using ontological categories, whether substantialist or process, essentialist or nominalist, in ways that would pretend to exhaustively comprehend primal reality. This, one might observe, is the type of trouble more Westerners should have. I am otherwise inclined, then, having some exposures to certain phenomenal experiences myself, not to interpret the no-self experience, ontologically, and instead associate the experience with what Jim Arraj calls the loss of the affective ego.

As Arraj writes and I agree: “It would probably by wrong, as well, to imagine that Zen Buddhism, or even the advaitan Vedanta is making any kind of ontological nondualist claims. Rather, they are trying to take into account a nondual experience, and sometimes their post-experience reflections can leave the impression that they are creating a nondual ontology. But they are not interested in philosophy in the Western sense, but rather, leading people to the experience, itself. The real question, which we will pursue later, is whether enlightenment is nondual in itself, or is presented in a nondual way because of the very means by which the enlightenment experience is attained. There should be no rush to judgment on the part of Christians as if they need to express Christianity in some nondual ontological fashion. This is not precisely what Zen Buddhists, and advaitan Hindus are doing.” Christianity in the Crucible of East-West Dialogue

It would be considered comical, if it were not otherwise so distressing, the way Advaitan accounts of absolute reality are manipulated in cyberforums and some popular literature, drawing the most absurd conclusions as they are misapplied to the practical considerations of our phenomenal experience, when conventional usage would otherwise indeed be the prescribed approach even for orthodox nonduality.

Arguably, even Shankara's philosophy need not be interpreted as an absolute monism, especially once taking into consideration its account of causation in phenomenal reality, which at least resembles Aristotle's vis a vis its teleological dimension, even if otherwise approaching Plato's idealist conceptions. The Advaitan ontology addresses causes and effects in sufficiently vague references and its epistemology is most notably triadic, wherein the pramana (sources of knowledge, Sanskrit) each form one part of a triputi (trio), which include the subject and object mediated by the cause or means of knowledge. There are thus inchoate traces of the ontological vagueness, epistemic indeterminacy and semantical versatility that have made their way through the West vis a vis such as the Dionysian logic of the Neoplatonists, Meister Eckhart's apophatic predications, Scotus' formal distinction, Peirce's triadic semeiotic and some postmodern criticisms. One might properly wonder if Hindu's Rita successfully refers to, even if it does not robustly describe, such regularities as Peircean Thirdness, deontological accounts of right and wrong, liturgical celebrations of ritual or other analogs, maybe even modalities, of the eternal Logos and Spirit at the mystical core of all of our traditions? Thus we might think of Hindu’s Dharma and Rita, Taoism’s Tao, Buddhism’s Dhamma, Judaism’s Torah and Christianity’s Pneuma & Logos.

Toshihiko Izutsu poetically describes certain regularities that, in my view, demonstrate a tacit dimensionality that, like the Spirit, is ineluctably unobstrusive but utterly efficacious: "Listen! Do you not hear the trailing sound of the wind as it comes blowing from afar? The trees in the mountain forests begin to rustle, stir, and sway, and then all the hollows and holes of huge trees measuring a hundred arms’ lengths around begin to give forth different sounds. There are holes like noses, like mouths, like ears; some are (square) like crosspieces upon pillars; some are (round) as cups, some are like mortars. Some are like deep ponds; some are like shallow basins… However, once the raging gale has passed on, all these hollows and holes are empty and soundless. You see only the boughs swaying silently, and the tender twigs gentle moving." Sufism and Taoism, p. 368-369

Father Rohr spent five weeks, during Lent 2008, in a hermitage, in solitude. He spent this time reflecting and writing a new book, The Third Eye. On Easter Monday, he made a presentation of an outline of these thoughts. Fr. Rohr defines his conception of the Third Eye as derived from two 11th Century monks, Hugh and Richard of the Monastery of St. Victor in Paris. The flowering of this thinking in his Franciscan tradition, he tells us, took place in the 12th and 13th centuries. Although the metaphor is similar to the same concept of Hindu and Buddhist traditions, it is apparently independent of those in that there was no contact between those and this Christian conceptualization, which is talking about the eyes of 1) sense, 2) reason and 3) faith. Basically, Fr. Rohr is amplifying his teaching on contemplative living, which, in my view, continues to be heavily informed by his love of Thomas Merton. He makes frequent references to Merton, False Self and True Self and compares and contrasts them in many different ways, using many different adjectives and metaphors.

Fr. Rohr likes the word “realization” and sees it as being richer than the word “experience” for he describes the robust encounter of God as a “total body blow,” where not only head and heart are engaged but the body, too. Unfortunately, he says, we “localize knowing” and too often try to access God only in the top 3 inches of the body and only on the left side at that. This dualistic, binary or dyadic thinking, which we employ in math, science and engineering, or when we are driving a car, is of course good and necessary. It is the mind that “divides the field” into classes and categories and then applies labels through compare and contrast exercises. It is the egoic mind that is looking for control and order, but, unfortunately, also superiority. It can lead to both intellectual and spiritual laziness, however, to an egoic operating system (Cynthia Bourgeault), which views all through a lens of “How does it affect me?”

The contemplative mind goes beyond the tasks of the dualistic mind to deal with concepts like love, mercy, compassion and forgiveness. It doesn’t need to “divide the field” for such tasks. The contemplative mind is practicing heaven in that it sees the Divine image as being “equally distributed” and present in all others. We see that presence, honor it and know it. The contemplative mind starts each moment with “yes.” It is vulnerable before the moment, opening “heart space.” It is present to people and does not put them in a box. So, in our primary level encounter with others, we do not prejudge. At the secondary and tertiary level, a “no” may be absolutely necessary. Once you know you can say “yes,” then it is important to be able to say “no,” when appropriate. Rohr makes clear, in his words, that we “include previous categories” and “retain what we learn in early stages.” Our goal, in his words, is to master both dualistic and nondualistic thinking. This matches my interpretation of the different perspectives engaged in the East, both the absolute and phenomenal.

We must go beyond (not without) that part of our tradition that was informed mostly by Greek logic in order to be more open to paradox and mystery. Rohr described some of the early apophatic and nondual elements of the Christian tradition, especially in the first three centuries with the Desert Mothers and Fathers, especially in the Orthodox and eastern Christian churches, and describing John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila as the last supernovae. The apophatic and unknowing tradition has not been constant. For

400 years after these Carmelites there has been no real tradition. He credits Merton with almost single-handedly retrieving authentic contemplative teaching that has not been taught for almost 500 years. This type of mysticism, he, like Merton says, is available to all but it takes a type of humility to “let go of our control tower.”

We and others are living tabernacles, even given the contrary evidence. That God dwells in us is the foundation of human dignity. Fr. Rohr discusses the Gift of Tongues in this contemplative vein and notes that when it died out, prayer-based beads emerged. He went on to discuss prayer beads in other traditions. Fr. Rohr notes that the East and West differ in that more emphasis is placed on discipline, practice and asceticism in the East, while, in the West, we emphasize surrender and trust. Bith East and West have elements of all of these approaches, of course. Our Christian path is more one of letting go and yielding of self. He believes that most of us, a very high percentage, have enjoyed unitive moments, but that there was no one there to say “that’s it.” He thinks that it would be useful to retrieve our contemplative tradition because we apparently need some degree of discipline or practice to keep seeing and trusting our unitive moments, our union, our communion. The Spirit will thus teach us all things and re-mind you that you are in union with God, that you are select; you are chosen; you are beloved. We need to learn how to live in communion, now, for that is what we’ll enjoy in heaven.

Fr. Rohr then describes practices that open up this contemplative mind: silence, stillness, solitude, patience about needing to know everything, poetry, art, body movement, music, humility and redemptive listening. He describes how we need to stand back and compassionately and calmly observe reality, without initial regard for how it affects us, but to see persons and events nakedly, seeing our drama almost as if it wasn’t

us. If we cannot thus detach, then we are over-identified. Whenever we’re defensive, it is usually our false self. What characterizes an addict is typically all or nothing thinking. We do not hate the False Self. We must simply see it. It is not our “bad” self, just not our “true” self. We need to better learn to hold together opposites and contradictions. A modern retrieval of our ancient practices of contemplative seeing can foster this type of non-judging awareness. Rohr says that a master of nondual thinking needs to also be a master of dualistic thinking. The Catholic tradition has great wisdom in retaining icon and art and symbols and music. The primary teachers of this approach to God and others and all of reality are great love and great suffering. Our primary paths have been suffering and prayer. When head and heart and body are all connected, that is prayer. This, says Fr. Rohr, is not esoteric teaching. Everybody has the Holy Spirit!

What appears to be the new theme emerging from Fr. Rohr’s latest thought is that of supplementing and complementing our traditional approach to belief-based religion with more practice-based religion. In particular, he sees great wisdom in retrieving those practices which have been lost or deemphasized that we can better cultivate a contemplative outlook. In prayer, we are like “tuning forks” that come in to God’s

presence and seek to abide inside of a resonance with God. We need to set aside whatever blocks our reception, especially a lack of love or lack of forgiveness. And we need to embrace the gifts of the East, which, as Rohr properly recognizes, are “practices” and not “conclusions.” I see the Buddha smiling.

May namaste, then, become more than a greeting but a way of life, as we look always and everywhere and in everyone for the pneumatological realities we profess herein. May our inter-religious stance be more irenic as we acknowledge the Spirit in one another with true reverence, in authentic solidarity and utmost compassion. A most fundamental aspect of the unqualified affirmation of human dignity would seem to be our nurturance of the attitude that all other humans come bearing an irreplaceable gift for us, that we are to maintain a stance of receptivity toward them, open to receive what it is they offer us through, with and in the Spirit. Whether the Magi were occidental or oriental, Jesus was receptive. When John offered baptism, Jesus was receptive. When Mary anointed his feet, Jesus was receptive. When invited to dine with tax collectors and prostitutes, Jesus was receptive. A critical gaze not first turned on oneself and one’s ways of looking at reality will have very little efficacy when it is otherwise habitually and arrogantly turned first on others. All of this is to observe that, beyond whatever it is that we offer to the world as our unique gift, rather than always approaching our sisters and brothers as fix-it-upper projects in need of our counsel and ministry, sometimes the Spirit may be inviting us to listen, observe and learn from them in a posture of authentic humility and from a stance of genuine affirmation of their infinite value and unique giftedness. While our encounters of the Spirit may be manifold and varied from one phenomenal experience to the next, especially when situated in one major tradition versus another, we may be saying more than we know if we attempt to describe such experiences with more ontological specificity than can be reasonably claimed metaphysically or theologically, suggesting, for example, that such experiences necessarily differ in either origin or degree even if they otherwise differ, as might be expected, in other cognitive, affective, moral, social or religious aspects.

More than semantics is at stake, here. We are not merely saying the same thing using different words when we draw such distinctions as between nature and grace, natural and supernatural, acquired and infused, existential and theological, immanent and transcendent; such explicit denotations also have strong connotative implications that might betray attitudes of epistemic hubris, pneumatological exclusivity or religious hegemony, which are clearly unwarranted once we understand that our faith outlooks are effectively evaluative. I say this because, in my view, our belief systems are otherwise, at best, normatively justified existentially after essentially attaining, minimally, an epistemic parity with other hermeneutics vis a vis our best evidential, rational and presuppositional approaches. While there are rubrics for discernment of where the Spirit is active and where humans are cooperative, they do not lend themselves to facile and cursory a priori assessments, neither by an academic theology with its rationalistic categorizing nor by a popular fideistic piety with its supernaturalistic religiosity, predispositions that tend to divide and not unite, to arrogate and not serve, with their vain comparisons and spiritual pretensions.

.