Elaine Pagel on Orthodoxy

Given the obsessive centrality of the topic in our age, I was not surprised to find that Pagel's The Gnostic Gospels viewed the religious schisms in 2nd century Christianity through the lens of politics.  We look at everything through that lens these days.  Nor was I surprised by her obvious fascination with the revolt of Gnosticism's spiritual anarchists against authority and hierarchy as personified by the bishops of the "Orthodox Christianity."  It is one of the favored tropes of our time.  What did catch me by surprise was her remarkably balanced assessment at the end.

She admits that her book might lead a "casual reader" to assume "that I advocate going back to Gnosticism" and even "that I 'side with it' against Orthodox Christianity."  Though she is sympathetic to or fascinated with many of Gnosticism's concerns and stances, she does not necessarily view it as a particularly viable competitor to the "ecclesiastical church."

"I believe we owe the survival of Christian tradition to the organizational and theological structure that the emerging church developed.  Anyone as powerfully attracted to Christianity as I am will regard this as a major achievement."

She goes on to contrast the strengths of Orthodoxy with some of Gnosticism's characteristics -

1) "Orthodox Christians were concerned - far more than Gnostics - with their relationships with other people."  They were grounded "in communities, in the family, and in social life."

2) Orthodox Christians saw the natural order and the body as inherently good.  "Earth's plains, deserts, seas, mountains, stars and trees from an appropriate home for humanity....they tended to trust and affirm sexuality (at least in marriage), procreation and human development."  Gnostics distrusted the body and the created world, often not even being sure they were the creation of the God they worshipped.

3) Orthodox Christianity was accompanied by a load of "vitally important ethical responsibilities."  "The believer heard church leaders constantly warning against incurring sin in the most practical affairs of life.: cheating in business, lying to a spouse, tyrannizing children or slaves, ignoring the poor."  Gnostic morality centered less on social justice and more on avoiding personal defilement by avoiding sexuality or economic pursuits.

4) While the Gnostics were spiritual elitists who saw salvation reserved for only people like themselves - "one out of a thousand, two out of ten thousand" - Orthodox Christians believed in a salvation that was universally available to all who chose to accept it.  "Origen...declared that God would not have offered a way of salvation accessible only to an intellectual or spiritual elite.  What the church teaches...must be simple, unanimous, accessible to all."

As a Latter Day Saint I have no dog in this fight.  Both Orthodox Christianity and Gnosticism seem to carry traits we would recognize as belonging to primitive Christianity.  Orthodox Christianity preserved an emphasis on the role of priesthood authority and organization in maintaining doctrinal purity and the functioning of the local brotherhood (and sisterhood) of Christian support and fellowship.  Their emphasis on scripture and the atonement was crucial in the preservation of a core of Christian truth.  Gnosticism's teachings on the role of the feminine side of divinity, and an emphasis on the commonalities between the spark of divinity inside each one of us with the divinity of Jesus Christ arouse echoes of recognition from our perspective.   Gnostic insistence of the importance of sacred (and shielded) rites of initiation suggest a memory of a divine endowment such as that provided in Mormon temples today.

The path towards Shambhala

"In this book we are going to discuss the ground of enlightened society and the path towards it, rather than presenting some utopian fantasy of what an enlightened society might be.  If we want to help the world, we have to make a personal journey- we can't simply theorize or speculate about our destination.  So it is up to each of us individually to find the meaning of enlightened society and how it can be realized."

Chogyam Trungpa
Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior

Shambala - echoes of Zion

"Other legends say that the kingdom of Shambhala disappeared from the earth many centuries ago.  At a certain point, the entire society had become enlightened, and the kingdom vanished into another celestial realm."

"....among many Tibetan Buddhist teachers, there has long been a tradition that regards the kingdom of Shambhala, not as an external place, but as the ground or root of wakefulness and sanity that exists as a potential within every human being.  From that point of view, it is not important to determine whether the kingdom of Shambhala is fact or fiction.  Instead, we should appreciate and emulate the ideal of an enlightened society that it represents."

Chogyam Trungpa
Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior

Kierkegaard and the primacy of Subjectivity

"But Kierkegaard's belief in the superiority of subjective truth (to objective truth) caused him to doubt Hume's view concerning the primacy of fact.  Kierkegaard rightly sees that even so called facts can be determined by our attitude.  To a considerable extent, our values determine our "facts."  Faced with the same reality, the Christian and the pleasure-seeker may see different "facts." (As for example, if both were introduced to a bordello or a religious retreat.)  In this way, each individual is to a certain extent the creator of his own world.  And he creates his world because of the values he holds....

Kierkegaard also anticipates twentieth-century phenomenology, which sees all forms of consciousness as "intentional"-in other words, consciousness is always purposive.  We see the world the way we do because of what we intend to do to it.  Likewise Wittgenstein's remark: "The world of the happy man is different from the world of the unhappy one," whose apparent banality takes on a more profound tenor when one realizes that he is speaking here of the exercise of the will.  As Kierkegaard realized, the individual sees the world that he wills to see, and this depends upon the values he has previously chosen, the ones he lives by, the ones that make him what he is.  Kierkegaard thus argues that the values that make the individual what he is, also makes the world what it is."

Paul Strathern
Kierkegaard in 90 Minutes

The Human Condition

"Despite contemporary opinions to the contrary, there is such a thing as fundamental progress.  We know more and more about the world, in almost every field (except perhaps philosophy).  But on the level of individual existence-in the way Kierkegaard spoke of it-we remain the same.  Where subjective being is concerned, there appears to be no such thing as progress.  We all suffer (or enjoy) the same situation: the human condition.  And have done so since time immemorial."

Paul Strathern
Kierkegaard in 90 Minutes

Alchemical Transformations

"When fear is transmuted into confidence, the suffering of others no longer freaks us out.  We no longer have to distance ourselves by blaming the victim.  When passion is transmuted into devotion, we don't have to identify with others in order to care about them.  Instead of imagining what they are feeling we can perceive it directly.  When territoriality is transmuted into integrity, we don't have to borrow our strength from the weak.  We respect the autonomy of the those we are trying to help.  As a result of these transmutations, the will centers learn to take instruction from the heart."

On Becoming an Alchemist
Catherine MacCoun
-------------------

Latin Proverbs

Cura angit animum.
Worry strangles the mind.

Non vivere bonum est, sed bene vivere.
It's not living that is good, but living well.

Bene legere saecula vincere.
To read well is to conquer the ages.

Parallel Reading 2

Peter Hitchens' introduction strikes me as more self-conscious and more self-aware than his brother's.  Christopher gets carried away in swells and rhapsodies of words, often making claims that no logical argument could ever verify.  Peter is more circumspect, aware of the limitations of words and reasons.  For himself, he says that his belief (after long years of atheism) is the result of being convinced "by experience and reason."  But he does not believe that that kind of conviction is transferable by argument alone.  The causes of belief and unbelief lie deeper than reason: "I do think they have reasons for their belief, as I have reasons for mine, which are the real foundations of this argument" ( I hear echoes here of Pascal's "the heart has its reasons, which reason knows not of").  He stresses his experience of the emotional foundations of his brother's attitude, the deep and perhaps, unexamined, springs of his brother's need to attack belief.  He expresses some frustration at Christopher's inability to even see, much less acknowledge, some of the rational holes in his position.  "He is astonishingly unable to grasp that these assumptions are problems for his argument."  If there is to be hope for change it lies at levels deeper than the reasons he deploys in the service of his mounting anger.  "I believe that passions as strong as his are more likely to be countered by the force of poetry, which can ambush the human heart at any time." 

As both books are not scholarly texts, but popular works written by apologists, it is perhaps appropriate to close this first pair of parallel readings with an admission by Peter (which could have been said just as aptly by Christopher had he had the self-awareness necessary to see it).

"My book, like all such books, is aimed mainly at myself.  All polemical authors seek to persuade themselves above all."