Life Is Commitment

Life Is Commitment
by J.H. Oldham

Contents:
Introduction
1. Fact and Decision
2. Man with Man
3. God
4. Christ
5. The Church
6. The World

LIFE IS COMMITMENT
by J.H. Oldham

This booklet is described as the author's "penetrating search for the personal truth about God and Christ." The author was deeply influenced by Berdyaev as you will note from reading it. He affirms the supremacy of spirit over matter and the need to live in a way that substantiates that. Of Berdyaev he writes in the first chapter:
Among those who have done most to open my eyes to see that the real world – the world that matters most – is the world of decision, of freedom, of relations with other persons, of spiritual adventure is the Russian philosopher, Nicolas Berdyaev. For him the objectified world, which is the sole concern of the majority of men, was far less real than the world of spirit. Slavery meant for him subjection to the demands of the external world. To be delivered from its bondage and tyranny was his overmastering desire.
And in the second chapter he writes:
You have to choose, Nicolas Berdyaev says, between two ways of viewing the world. You can give priority to the cosmos, that is, the objectified world, and try to interpret history, which is the sphere of the free response of persons to the claims of their fellows, to the challenge of events and circumstances and to God speaking through these events and circumstances, in accordance with what seem to be the laws of the cosmos. Or you can give priority to history and seek to understand the objectified world in relation to it. In other words, you can interpret the person in terms of the cosmos or you can interpret the cosmos in terms of the person. In the former case the person tends to become a thing, like everything else, and in the end meaning and value disappear. In the latter case the way is open for endless creative adventure.

www.chebucto.ns.ca/Philosophy/Sui-Generis/Berdyaev/essays/lic.htm
Last revised: December 17, 2002.