I'm curious if you have any thoughts on how the 90s version of the "theology of the now" relates to the older and more explicitly theological version of it. Here, just as a random example (because this showed up in my fb feed today), is Gerhard Tersteegen (1697-1769):
Think and care in no wise about what is to come. Love and suffer in the present moment, thinking more about God and His strength than of yourself and your weakness. If increase of suffering comes, increase of grace will come also.
Do not think ahead and do not look back! Both bring unrest and are harmful to you in your present condition. The present moment must be your dwelling-place. There only can we find God and His will.
Interesting, thanks for sharing this! Tersteegen was a pietist, and pietism certainly had a strong influence on modern interpretations about the nature and shape of spirituality. So I would read this as a text that feeds into a more modern way of thinking about the now. How about you?
From (I guess) a slightly different age cohort (I was born in 1973), I don't think I was aware of the particularly 90s inflection of "the now" that you're picking up on. I would have thought of the popularity of "the now" around the 90s chiefly as part of the appropriation/popularization of a certain kind of "Eastern wisdom" which I guess starts to enter the mainstream in America in the 50s and 60s. So it was interesting to me to run into the Tersteegen quote: another reminder that a lot of what people were finding in the "East" was actually present in Christianity. (Leaving open the questions of whether they could only find what they actually already had, and to what extent what they thought they were finding was present where they thought they were finding it...)
I'm curious if you have any thoughts on how the 90s version of the "theology of the now" relates to the older and more explicitly theological version of it. Here, just as a random example (because this showed up in my fb feed today), is Gerhard Tersteegen (1697-1769):
Think and care in no wise about what is to come. Love and suffer in the present moment, thinking more about God and His strength than of yourself and your weakness. If increase of suffering comes, increase of grace will come also.
Do not think ahead and do not look back! Both bring unrest and are harmful to you in your present condition. The present moment must be your dwelling-place. There only can we find God and His will.
Interesting, thanks for sharing this! Tersteegen was a pietist, and pietism certainly had a strong influence on modern interpretations about the nature and shape of spirituality. So I would read this as a text that feeds into a more modern way of thinking about the now. How about you?
From (I guess) a slightly different age cohort (I was born in 1973), I don't think I was aware of the particularly 90s inflection of "the now" that you're picking up on. I would have thought of the popularity of "the now" around the 90s chiefly as part of the appropriation/popularization of a certain kind of "Eastern wisdom" which I guess starts to enter the mainstream in America in the 50s and 60s. So it was interesting to me to run into the Tersteegen quote: another reminder that a lot of what people were finding in the "East" was actually present in Christianity. (Leaving open the questions of whether they could only find what they actually already had, and to what extent what they thought they were finding was present where they thought they were finding it...)