Author: Jerry L Martin

Jerry L Martin, Ph.D., D.H.L. is former Chair, Department of Philosophy, University of Colorado at Boulder and Acting Chairman, National Endowment for the Humanities. He is currently a contributor to the Good Men Project and coordinator of the Theology Without Walls Project at the American Academy of Religion.

Does God Still Speak to Us?

July 18, 2024

 

 

 

Did revelation end a long time ago?

Philosopher Jerry L. Martin explains that God continues to speak to us, with new messages that we need to hear now.

 

Watch my other Videos – HERE or on my YouTube Channel.

 

 

God: An Autobiography, As Told to a Philosopher – is the true story of a philosopher’s conversations with God. Dr. Jerry L. Martin, a lifelong agnostic. Dr. Martin served as head of the National Endowment for the Humanities and the University of Colorado philosophy department, is the founding chairman of the Theology Without Walls group at AAR, and editor of Theology Without Walls: The Transreligious Imperative. Dr. Martin’s work has prepared him to become a serious reporter of God’s narrative, experiences, evolution, and autobiography. In addition to scholarly publications, Dr. Martin has testified before Congress on educational policy. He has appeared on “World News Tonight,” and other television news programs.

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Listen to this on God: An Autobiography, The Podcast– the dramatic adaptation and continuing discussion of the book God: An Autobiography, As Told To A Philosopher by Jerry L. Martin.

He was a lifelong agnostic, but one day he had an occasion to pray. To his vast surprise, God answered- in words. Being a philosopher, he had a lot of questions, and God had a lot to tell him.

You Are Both Other and Same as Me.

July 18, 2024

The living reality of God was already more than I was comfortable with.  As I got into the frame of mind to pray, I would feel as if His Spirit was coming into me, like the infusion of a spiritual presence—as if we were, if not one, at least overlapping.  That made me uneasy.

“Lord, what is the purpose of those experiences in which You seem to fill my soul and body with Your Spirit?”

Those moments are infusions of energy, focused versions of the energy you draw on all the time.

“Am I merging with You at those moments?”

Yes, that is a good (acceptable) way to put it.  When you open yourself sufficiently, I can enter.

“Do You get something out of it as well?”

Yes, I benefit from the in-dwelling of the Spirit in a body.  My nature is essentially spiritual—it both benefits and suffers from not being embodied.  Your spirit is embodied.  By entering your spirit or soul, I enter your body as well.

God is limited by not being embodied?  That seemed strange to me.  “Why do You need that?”

Spirit is diffuse—it is valuable to energize it.  Spirit has no sensory apparatus.  I am enriched by participating in yours.

You are both other and same (as Me).  I need you to be other so that I may encounter another self.  I am a Person and, like other persons, define Myself by responding to other persons, and being responded to (by them).

But I also need union, not distance—just as other persons do.  You and Abigail are both other and same.  You need to be different people—love is a bridge between differences.  You also merge spirits at certain moments, though not totally.  That is also a kind of completion or fulfillment.  Life, including My life, is the dialectic, as you might call it, of same and other, confrontation and union.

 

I am the Innermost Being of Man and of Matter

July 11, 2024

Later I learned that there are some interpretations of quantum mechanics that use the notion of a universal consciousness to explain how an electron in one part of the universe can be in perfect synch with an electron in another part of the universe without any physical interaction between them.  I was not aware of that at the time, but I had just read about dark matter and dark energy, “dark” because they cannot be seen but only inferred from gravitational and other effects.  The mass of these previously unsuspected components are now thought to far exceed the total visible mass in the universe.

Yes, you should look into those.  Think of it—most of what is in the universe is unnoticed.  It is inferred from gross phenomena, but it is inferred as force.  Think of the human body.  It is moved by the mind.  How?  Where is the mind?  The mind is throughout the body.  Its actions are registered, but it is not noticed.  I am not noticed.  But in fact I am seen everywhere, and I am in the innermost being of man and in the innermost being of matter.  Do not have contempt for matter.  It is not the inert stuff of certain old theories.  It is vital and alive and a part of Me.  The interaction of mind and matter is part of Me, and I am the vehicle through which it takes place.

 

“Death and the Hope of Immortality . . .”

July 4, 2024

“The next phase is what I wonder about.  It looks to me as if You communicate some sense of moral order and hierarchy, reverence for life and death, a sense of the meaning of life … I am feeling that this is Your voice, not mine, Lord.”

Yes, it is.  They were understanding Me well enough to understand that life has meaning—a beginning and an end and the sense of a meaningful movement from one to the other, summarized (judged, reckoned) at the end.  Death and the hope of immortality, which isn’t merely the fear of death but the understanding that there is a vertical  dimension to life and (that) its meaning does not stop with death, that there is a larger story the individual is part of, and his (and her) spiritual development is not limited to just one life.

“I Am Enacting the Plan.”

June 27, 2024

“Lord, do I understand this correctly:  You are emerging, self-creating perhaps, out of Nothing?”

This is correct.  It is not quite right to say that I “always” existed.  I did come into being, and before Me, there was only Nothing, and there is a sense in which I was present in the Nothing.  There was no time, in the usual sense, then.  There was no matter, no energy, no events.

As I emerged, I had to figure out Who I Was, and What Was to Happen.  You (human beings) talk about God’s plan, but I am enacting the Plan, a Plan binding on Me and not just made up by Me.  The Plan is the scheme, as I have figured it out, of how things should be.  My role is less (that) of (an) organizer than of (the) goal or telos.

Telos is the Greek word for aim, purpose, or function, as in “teleological.”

I   draw things in the right direction, like flowers to the sun. 

 

“Putting Me first Rather than Last.”

June 12, 2024

I had now accepted the assignment, but God wanted more. He wanted me to “purify” myself.

You need purification. Transformation is a good word. It is obedience, which at its fullest is transformation.

“What does that involve, Lord?”

Putting Me first rather than last. Living every moment, making every decision, in response to My call.

“How do I go about doing that?”

You know this—start every day with prayer and let prayer guide you through the day.

“They Were Naked and Knew No Shame.”

June 6, 2024

God continued telling me about the truth behind the Garden of Eden story.

I had also underestimated the power of love.  First, I created Adam and I could see that he was alone, as I had once been, and this was not good.  He did not see it because he did not know anything different.  But, as he tried to befriend various animals, he would quickly reach the limit of those relationships and be frustrated and unfulfilled.  So I created woman and made her lovely in his eyes.  They were naked and knew no shame.  And their sexuality was intense and profound.

And, frankly, I felt left out.  I had no such consort.  And, while obedient, man loved woman more than Me.  Though understandable in light of the human nature I had given them, it was not right.  And they knew it was not right and began to disobey Me.  They hid their nakedness, which is to say, they hid their creativity and sexuality from Me, detached it from My purpose and used it solely for their own pleasure and intimacy—innocently enough, as children might do, but still wrong.  And so, with regret, I expelled them to a life of hardship.  Detached sexuality, hiding from God, has its own intrinsic price, the loss of the full bounty and blessing of God.

“The Still Point of the Turning World”

May 29, 2024

My second spiritual experience was more arresting and consequential.  I can remember the place and time of day quite precisely, but not the year.  My family was living in Riverside, California.  It was probably my senior year in high school, and it was a balmy evening.  We used to go downtown to one of those old-style elegant movie theatres.  My friends and I were outside, waiting for the rest of the group to arrive.  We were just standing around joking when, suddenly, I was in a world of my own, enveloped by a visual, visceral experience that was total and dramatic.  I had a sense of concentric circles swirling around a center, whirling enough to make one dizzy though I was not at all off balance.  Just as suddenly, the experience was over.

It would have been hard to describe even then, but its meaning was crystal clear to me.  It was about time.  In fact, it was as if Time itself had disclosed its essence to me.  I did not mention it to my friends, who had not noticed my “absence.”  I did not make much of the experience then or subsequently; it was just an odd moment.  But, although I am not much of a reader of poetry, I did respond strongly to T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets, which are a deep meditation on the nature of time, and particularly to the lines:

At the still point of the turning world.  Neither flesh nor fleshless;

Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,

But neither arrest nor movement.  And do not call it fixity,

Where past and future are gathered.  Neither movement from nor towards,

Neither ascent nor decline.  Except for the point, the still point,

There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.

I developed an interest in philosophical questions regarding time and years later published a phenomenological analysis of the experienced “now” that provides a way of understanding Plato’s insight that “time is the moving image of eternity.”

When Do You Fit God In?

May 23, 2024

I have not found it easy to live my life fully in tandem with God.  Every day there are items on my personal radar, and I usually attend to them first, and then fit in God when I have a chance.

One morning Abigail called breakfast and I held off, due to one of God’s seemingly arbitrary commands.  “Is my husband becoming a holy man?” she asked with more exasperation than reverence.  “I already am,” I said, in the sense of having a divine call, “just a very bad one.”