From: Elizaphanian (Elizaphanian@members.v21.co.uk)
Date: Tue Nov 05 2002 - 11:40:23 GMT
Hi Steve,
I'd like to take issue with your comment that 'it works for Christianity as
well', ie that Christianity is compatible with the MoQ (I agree with much
else of what you say, I just want to take issue with this element).
I wouldn't have been able to articulate this post very clearly before I
started on my 'Sophocles not Socrates' campaign. That has crystallised much
which I found dubious in the MoQ as commonly presented, but which I had
never previously given enough attention to. I don't believe that it is an
accident that I have the objections that I do: they stem from an attachment
to a Christian scale of values, which contradict the MoQ scale of values, as
I shall try to explain.
And now a WARNING to anyone else 'listening in' on this thread. I'm going to
indulge myself and freely use traditional Christian language, which I'm
guessing Steve will have some familiarity with. If you find such language
uncomfortable - or even incoherent - you'd best stop reading now. My
criticisms of the MoQ in the Sophocles thread stand independently of my own
religious commitments.
So: I would say that the Christian scale of values is in conflict with the
MoQ scale of values. Why? Principally that it presents the intellect as the
highest good, and therefore, if the MoQ is compatible with Christianity,
then Jesus is seen primarily as a teacher of intellectual truths which
dynamically transform the understandings of those who accept them, and
thereby they attain salvation; revelation is the communication of saving
information. If you understand correctly, then you will be saved.
This was quite a common belief in the societies in which the early church
took shape. This understanding had a particular name: gnosticism. You were
saved by your 'gnosis', your understanding of the hidden truths. These
truths were obscured by the world of the flesh; the key to gnostic salvation
was therefore repudiation of the earthly and fleshly, and embracing the
intellectual. (Hence gnostic dualism). The gnostic gospels can be
distinguished from the canonical gospels precisely because they abstract out
Jesus' teachings from an account of his earthly life. After all, if it is
the teachings that matter, of what relevance is the life?
Christian fundamentalism is a modern variation of ancient gnosticism. There
are certain fundamental truths (propositions) which you must accept in order
to be saved. If your intellect is not ordered around those truths then you
are damned. It is the intellectual assent which is given primacy.
Gnosticism descends from middle period Platonism, in which the sufferings
occasioned by existing in the world can be transcended through the
cultivation of the intellect, and then intellectual contemplation of the
eternal truths. The emotions are an obstacle to this right understanding.
The standard account of the MoQ contains a residual Platonism of this sort
in that it makes intellectual truth the highest known Quality.
Gnosticism was rejected by the early church for very good reasons, largely
that it rendered Jesus' life incoherent and denied the reality of the
Incarnation. Or rather, those 'very good reasons' are very good from the
viewpoint of mainstream Christian thinking, which centres on the claim that
Jesus was fully divine and fully human.
The language which the Church found to articulate this was the 'Logos'
language. This is normally translated as 'Word' but of course, the meaning
is much richer than this. It could be translated as 'purpose' without much
diminution of sense. So John's gospel can be read as 'In the beginning was
the purpose; the purpose was with God, the purpose was God; nothing was made
without purpose' etc. [BTW I agree that you can substitute God for Quality,
so the Johannine prologue can be rephrased as 'In the beginning was the
purpose; the purpose had Quality and the purpose was Quality; nothing was
made without Quality and all things were made through Quality'. That was in
the back of my mind when I wrote my 'standard account' post last week.]
Logos can also be understood through comparison with the 'Sophia' figure
from the wisdom literature, who played at God's feet at the creation of the
world. Jesus is the incarnation of that purpose or that wisdom, and it is
important that this incarnation has _human_ form. So Jesus is the embodiment
of wisdom. And this embodiment cannot be abstracted from his life: his
teachings cannot be understood apart from his actual human existence, in all
its biological and social vicissitudes. Crucially, the crucifixion is a real
death. (The gnostic understandings, if they address the crucifixion at all,
downplay its significance hugely. After all, how can contemplation of human
suffering help to articulate intellectual truth?) Indeed, the whole language
of embodiment (ie Incarnation) is incoherent from the gnostic perspective.
The flesh cannot attain salvation. Which rules out the resurrection of the
body, of course...
So is the MoQ wholly incompatible with Christianity? I don't believe so, and
in fact I think my 'eudaimonic' MoQ is really a way that I have found to
render the two compatible (although I didn't start the 'campaign' with that
conclusion in mind. It rather took me by surprise.)
I wrote to Davor about my understandings of mysticism, and I shall recap
that a little here, hopefully rendering it a little more clearly, and using
the language of the MoQ, suitably amended. But on the question of mysticism,
the emphasis on 'noetic quality' is also suspiciously redolent of gnostic
perspectives.
As I understand it, Jesus was the embodiment of Quality; more particularly,
he embodies the quality which transcends level 3, in both static and dynamic
aspects. Level 3 I understand as the realm of the Law; level 4 is the realm
of Grace. The resurrection can be understood as the realisation by the
disciples that although Jesus was condemned by society and crucified (Level
3 values) he embodied a higher quality, and was therefore vindicated by God
(Level 4 values). The community which 'static latched' itself as a result of
this understanding was the Church, or, more precisely, the Body of Christ.
The 'church' was a social level institution, which has in many times and in
many places simply offered a reshaping of level 3 values. The true Body of
Christ is formed of all those who have been 'born again' into the fourth
level. That fourth level is exemplified in the life of Jesus - a realm of
forgiveness of sins (ie not absolutising the third level), compassion and
solidarity with the weak and oppressed, and - crucially - human flourishing.
As Jesus put it 'I have come that you might have life and have it in all its
fullness'. Jesus shows us how to live at the fourth level - he is the way,
the truth, and the life. If we just focus on the 'truth' - the intellectual
understandings of his teachings - then we miss out on what I believe is most
crucial and most central in Christian faith, which is (as I have discussed
with Wim in another thread) about progressively realising the Kingdom of God
in this world, not in the Platonic realm of forms.
This has ended up being a more 'bitty' post than I originally intended, but
I hope it's still clear. I'd be happy to discuss it all further. I'm really
just starting down the road of combining the two - perhaps that'll be my
next campaign!
Sam
www.elizaphanian.v-2-1.net/home.html
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