Myself and the others

Let's try this one on for size: The more I become myself, the more I become like others, although the reverse is not necessarily the case.

Freedom and Grace

Freedom and grace seem to me to be two of the most difficult things for human beings to live with.

Spiritually Homeless

Picking up in the middle of a recent conversation on my front porch, with a lady from down the street:
Her: ....Oh, and just what is your association with Grace College/Seminary?
Me: In 2000 I graduated from the college with an accounting and business degree and last May I graduated from the Seminary with a Master's degree in theology.
Her: Oh, really. Where do you go to church?
Me: I don't
Her: Really????
[suspicious look, eyebrow raised]
Me: Uhm. Well. I'm exploring what faith looks like outside of institutional Christianity.
Her: Do you think that's biblical.
Me: Hhhmmmm.....yes, I do, actually.
Her: Are you looking for a home church?
Me: No.
Her: I see. You know, I have a good author to recommend to you....he really helps get at hidden sins that hold us back in life....

Oh, and in the above dialog, you can fill in an awkward pause after just about each of my responses.

Ever since I terminated my church attendance a year or two ago, I have felt a certain internal pressure to "belong" to something that, while perhaps not a "church" in the traditional sense, is at least something of the church variety. That way, I can avoid the awkward kinds of dialogs listed above and be able to have something substantial to reply to family and friends: I may not be doing the institutional thing, but I've got something else that's just as good!

In this post, however, I hereby officially resign any concern with having to replace traditional church with something that is sort-of-churchy. This is probably of no major surprise to those of you who follow this blog and have read my posts. (See, most recently, Merging and Submerging and Pay-as-you-go Church.)

My thought here is that perhaps "the church" is best looked at as a way of life rather than a membership to a particular group, an inclusive embrace of the world rather than an exclusive commitment to a particular organization/institution or even a specific group.

I want to ask the question: What happens if I have no "core" membership into an exclusive group?

I wanted to write this post to discuss the pros and cons of simply leaving traditional church and not replacing it with anything. In order to do so, I thought, "Hhhmmmm....Jon, you do a few of the things that Christians and churches do. So, perhaps you should list these things for your blogging audience." Good suggestion, I thought. And then as I compiled my list, an intriguing thought came to my mind: I'm not entirely sure that I have time for church, because I'm busy enough doing things that churches usually do. I'm sure that sounds a bit condescending, thought I don't mean it to be.

Here is my list:

a) I have a small group of friends with whom I am very relationally close. For most of us, our faith is an important aspect of our lives, in one way or another. However, we do not meet for a traditional "service." We have no organized, regular meetings scheduled. Most are one-on-one or small group get togethers that we initiate in order to be involved with each other's lives.
b) I meet once a week with a friend for theological discussion. (Currently we are discussing Romans.)
c) I am considering attending liturgical services (only once in a while!) with my friend Tamie when she moves to Indiana.
d) I discuss spiritual issues with my friends, neighbors, and family in many different, informal settings.
e) I blog.....and as we have discussed, blogs are a form of communal gathering, albeit of the virtual variety. (And, yes, I know, I have been a very bad blogger this year, in 2009!)
f) I meet once every two weeks with some Pastor friends.....we are all kind of missionaries to each other: I am trying to help them see the errors of their institutional ways and they are trying to bring me back into the fold of the Christian sheep.
g) Many of the folks listed above know me very well and provide a sense of caring for my soul, and visa-versa

So, what are the ramifications of just dropping, altogether, the idea of "belonging" to any particular fellowship/church/church group?

A few potential positive outcomes:

First, it would seem to more closely resemble the spirit of the early Acts church, where people of faith just kind of got together at each other's houses to eat and talk about what was happnen' with the whole Jesus thing. There's no indication that the same groups met at each gathering (like the contemporary "small group" ministries or "house churches") or that they had to start a particular ministry for this purpose.

Second, and a follow up to the first: allowing fellowship to be spontaneous seems to relieve the pressure to maintain an organization. This means that organizations/institutions cease when the S/spirit ceases.

The third positive feature that I can see is that if we scrap the church thing altogether, it seems as though hierarchy is kept at a minimum. With institutions/organizations comes hierarchy. That makes the power dynamic more of a factor than it should be. Power is always at work, of course, but within institutions/organizations the power plays are normative, regulative, and from my experience they suck the freedom and life out of a person.

How about objections to my eclectic approach?

First, and most damning I think, is that this approach seems to facilitate fragmentation. It is difficult in America to have a whole self. Our self gets divided between a lot of different areas, making it quite easy to hide ourselves or to just allow ourselves to become neglected. There is work self, home self, hang-with-the-friends self, go-to-church self, online self, and sometimes several different versions of the self within each of the above. When one combines this with our fast-paced American lifestyle, the result is a psycho-spiritual multiple personality disorder and a lack of any sense of wholeness.

I don't know that belonging to one, core church group really solves this problem, though, quite honestly. This fragmentation is complex and related to the system within which we operate. It is one of the major human challenges we face as Americans. However, while a church probably won't fix this and often makes the matter worse, the fact is that it is difficult to live holistically on one's own. Community can help.

The other objection that comes to my mind is quite difficult to articulate. It comes from the sense and general feeling that we should have some sort of religious core group. Without it, we just get the feeling (many of us) that we lack a center or a foundation. This feeling is difficult to describe or define. It starts, perhaps, with those of us that are used to attending services every week and having a religious place and space that is our own. We belong to a group, and the presence of such a group provides a psychological stability to our lives. It becomes an identity thing. Leaving the church opens a void.

But what if we embraced the void? What if we gave up our foundationalist instinct to find a center and just let be?

I think that if we could do so, then we would be forced to live faith without being able to fall back on an institution/organization/membership for security. We could then allow sacred spaces to open up naturally and organically as the spirit moves.

Most importantly, without a center or foundation, the us-versus-them exclusivistic attitude becomes more difficult to maintain. "Having a home church" means that one is "in," right? And those who don't are out. What if we were all out? What if we were all in? What if that didn't matter so much, anymore?

NOT having a church makes one live faith each moment for the moment, it does not allow for a psychological religious stabilizer.

According to some, the American institutional church and its related educational establishments may be on the verge of complete collapse in the upcoming decades. No one can tell for certain, of course. But statistics are pointing in this direction, and many people of faith are just finding that the churches lack depth and soul. I don't say this to create another us-versus-them dynamic; I don't say this because I think all churches suck. I think churches do great things and have done great things. Seriously. I mean that. However, I am just finding spiritual homelessness to be the way that I roll these days, and I'm wondering if that doesn't have a lot of advantages. And I am wondering if there are others who do the same.....and I am wondering if there are others who should do the same.

Churches and Christian institutions tend to settle, and when they settle they tend to become complacent. Doesn't have to be that way, but that's just an observation that seems to hold in many cases. It seems that churches and Christian institutions established themselves in the 20th century as a place to settle and protect the faith. The spiritually homeless may find themselves a bit unsettled, but perhaps this only makes it all the more necessary for us to make faith real at all moments.

Don't get me wrong, I still believe in working toward communities of freedom, as I have previously said: As human beings, we cannot flourish without each other, without being in community, but we cannot grow in community unless that same community sets us free. (Fellowship and the Freedom of the Self) It is a paradoxical situation. But perhaps the spiritual drifters like myself can be more open to allowing sacred spaces of freedom to open up where they may be least expected. Isn't this what Jesus did, at least to some degree?? What does it mean that "this world is not our home"? Often, church and religion seem to be investing much of their time, money, and energy into making a home for themselves. Is this the calling? Is this the Gospel that transforms?

So, in this post, I am declaring myself to be spiritually homeless, and I think that there is alot of potential for this to be a good thing. Furthermore, I am hereby giving up my sense--that nagging whisper that's kind of always in the back of my mind--that I need to be "doing something" in an established group.

Freedom to imitate

"When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other."

Eric Hoffer
The Passionate State Of Mind, and Other Aphorisms

This quote fits nicely into our recent discussion on mimetic desire.

Faces in the Crowd

The Theos Project gives a ten gun salute to this 19th century thinker, poet, and song writer.

Currently accepting speculations as to the identity of this brilliant intellectual.

What Does It All Mean?

Talk about deconstructing a digital demographic.....

Karen Armstrong in conversation

So, if religion is not about believing things, what is it about? What I’ve found is that, across the board, religion is about behaving differently. Instead of deciding whether or not you believe in God, first you do something, you behave in a committed way, and then you begin to understand the truths of religion. And religious doctrines are meant to be summons to action: you only understand them when you put them into practice. Karen Armstrong on SOF

Theology is poetry

I suggest we discuss the above conversation. Karen Armstrong is a prolific author and articulate speaker on comparative religion. She describes herself as "a freelance monotheist," and believes that "all the great traditions are saying the same thing in much the same way, despite their surface differences." She centers religion on compassion and ethics: "I say that religion isn’t about believing things. It's about what you do. It’s ethical alchemy. It’s about behaving in a way that changes you, that gives you intimations of holiness and sacredness.” [see wiki article]

What did I like, you ask?

I like Armstrong's comments about the fact that the Bible can't answer your questions. I think Armstrong rightly puts her finger on the fact that many fundamentalists and atheists have both erred in expecting the Bible to be a book of answers. Hence, either the Bible has life's answers (fundamentalist) or it doesn't (atheists). Of course, that's painting with rather broad strokes. (Not all atheists are reacting against fundamentalism, for example.)

Armstrong suggests that the Bible is "like weights in a gym" that we "struggle with." I like that. It reminds me when the book of Hebrews speaks of the "mature" approach to "the Word." The mature "by constant use have learned to distinguish good and evil." The idea in Hebrews (chapter four, is it?) seems to be of training, not by learning rules of behavior or true propositions that one applies to life; rather, I think the idea is that interaction with "the Word" (which probably should not be restricted to the written text) should result in a certain transformative effect that carries over into the lived life.

Armstrong talked about how the Bible can be (for many) an answer book that "with the click of a mouse the answers come up."

Also......what did I like....let me see here....

Okay, I really really appreciated her thoughts that the religious should develop a "counter narrative" to that of the "extremists." I like the positive movement. Armstrong talks about "an exegetical effort." In other words, engage the text.....deeply.....rigorously. I like it. Armstrong doesn't want to shy away from the text. For example, she suggests that there is "far more violence in the Bible than in the Koran," but that this is not something that a Christian should hide from.

On the negative side.....

I am always a bit cautious of those who suggest that all religions are generally the same, with only surface differences. I do appreciate and sympathize with the perspective. Extremists throughout history have exaggerated differences and exploited many. However, there are differences in religions, and the degree to which a religion differs depends largely on what one calls the "core," "essence," or "fundamentals" of the religion. And what one calls the essence of a religion is largely a matter of interpretation. In other words, religions like Isalm or Christianity have harsh words for non-believers or infidels, and as such it is easy to see how one could locate the essence of the religion in an us-versus-them frame of mind. I personally think that this is a mistake, but it is a matter of emphasis, isn't it? A matter of interpretation that has to do not just with the text or the tradition, but also with the interpreter's own vision for the world.

Closer to God

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7cQkg1ZAZs


You're the only tie that binds my heart
Away from you I'm falling apart
We need to be closer than we are

Sanctus Real
Closer
Fight the Tide

I'm not alright, I'm broken inside
Broken inside
And all I go through, it leads me to you
Leads me to you
Closer to you
Closer to you
Closer to you

I'm not alright I'm broken inside
Broken inside
I'm broken inside, Broken inside
And all I go through leads me to you
Leads me to you

I'm not alright, I'm not alright
I'm not alright ... that's why I need you.
Sanctus Real
I'm not alright
The Face of Love


One of the lessons taught me during my time in Christian evangelical circles was that one needed to pursue God, to be "close to God." Being close to God meant peace; being close to God meant that you were okay; the presence of God was to be pursued, the absence of God, eschewed.

But....does God really want to be close to us? I ask a serious question here.

Should we exist in a relentless pursuit of God's presence in our lives? Again, though many Christians take this to be an unquestionable axiom, I am raising the question, and I am doing so not simply for sake of argument.

I have previously posted on Peter Rollins, a/theology, and other explorations of negative theology. The idea is basically that I question the assumption (held almost without question in most evangelical circles) that the presence of God should be privileged over his absence....I oppose this assumption, at least, as some sweeping, categorical formula....what if God truly desires to be absent from us for a while? Would that be okay? What if there is nothing broken or wrong with us when God is absent? What if, in fact, such absence were a positive aspect of spiritual formation?

In a very real way, we can never escape the presence of God because he always surrounds us. God is really unknowable, truly transcendent, and yet She/He surrounds us at all times: "'For in him we live and move and have our being.'"

It may very well be that the presence of God heals and repairs....and it may very well be that the absence of God breaks and damages us....but I don't think these things hold absolutely. There is surely something wrong with faith when it obsesses about the presence of God. Exploring the absence of God is a means of knowing God that cannot be understood if God is present. When those we love are absent, our love grows in a unique way, love grows in the absence, and in the absence we learn more about ourselves and our relation to those we love; we learn more about the love itself; we desire the presence of the absent one; we cultivate an isolated and present-less desire.

Absence can be necessary also from the perspective of distance in order to understand our doubts and fears of God. When dealing with his people at Mt. Sinai, God appeared as a God of distance--to be feared and respected. While I'm not sure I understand the logic of such a move, I raise the issue because God himself seems to create distance from those he loves. Similarly, I think there are times when we need distance from God simply to attempt to reckon with inner doubt and faithlessness.

In short, I think that cultivating the absence of God seems to be invaluable in knowing God: we know God in presence and we know God in absence. Theologies and spiritual teachings that perpetuate God's presence as the supreme experience of spirituality feels very unhealthy to me, at this point in my life.

Thoughts?

When my love was away,
Full three days were not sped,
I caught my fancy astray
Thinking if she were dead,

And I alone, alone:
It seem'd in my misery
In all the world was none
Ever so lone as I.

I wept; but it did not shame
Nor comfort my heart: away
I rode as I might, and came
To my love at close of day.

The sight of her still'd my fears,
My fairest-hearted love:
And yet in her eyes were tears:
Which when I question'd of,

'O now thou art come,' she cried,
''Tis fled: but I thought to-day
I never could here abide,
If thou wert longer away.'
Absence by Robert Bridges

Gnostic

In this post, I will give a review of a bit of my research into Gnosticism. This is a very long post (which readers of my blog are quite accustomed to!), so in order to keep in intelligible, I will work from the simple to the complex. I will begin by describing Gnosticism in a summary fashion and then work out the details in the rest of the post.

I want to clarify that the "Gnosticism" I am working out is of the sort that developed and was practiced in the early centuries B.C.E. This would include the varieties of Gnosticism that influenced (and were influenced by) the early church.

Gnosticism in a nutshell

The first thing I note is that "gnosticism" is not a very diverse category and not easily defined. So, while we list "common" characteristics of gnosticism, there will be many exceptions based on which particular group one is referring. This is true of any description of a religious or philosophical movement, but it is particularly the case for Gnosticism.

Much of the theological speculation of religions throughout the ages are centered on figuring out how to account for the brokenness of the world. Well, the answer for the ancient Gnostics was to simply say that the whole damned thing was helplessly evil, by its very nature. Gnostics developed a very radical dualism between the entire material world and the spiritual realm, and they relegated all of the material world as "evil." Often this meant developing two or more deities to account for the creation of the perfect, spiritual realm and the fallen, material world. "The world is the product of a divine tragedy, a disharmony in the realm of God, a baleful destiny in which man is entangled and from which he must be set free." (Rudolph, Gnosis, 66)

The only hope is to access the "divine spark" that is within. Connecting with the internal divinity was the process of redemption whereby one could connect with the Unknown God. This process was "gnosis," an esoteric form of knowledge that connected one with their true, spiritual self and with the Unknown God.

Hence, in Gnosticism one typically finds the most radical of dualisms: the entirety of the world and all experiences are evil. One does not (as in orthodox and mystical versions of Christianity) purify one's self from personal/individual sin via a process of connecting with God. The state of affairs is more hopeless. One must completely transcend the world and one day hope that the divine human soul will completely leave the world and transcend into the purity of the spiritual realm. The material world and the material body is a prison of the soul. This is a dualism more revolutionary than ancient Platonism or Christianity, both of whom preserved dualistic notions as central to their belief systems and practices.

Redemption and salvation is only found in death. In death, the divine soul is free to completely leave behind the evil of the material world and the material body and to ascend to the sphere of purity.

A parasitic movement

The Gnostic faith was a parasitic movement. Gnostic movements could easily spring up within any number of religious contexts, Christian or Jewish, or even within certain philosophical frameworks. But one of the things that characterized the Gnostic was that they discovered new, secret, unique, or deeper meanings within the texts and traditions of the already established movements of which they were a part. Says Perkins,

There is no simple account of the origins of Gnosticism. Traditions of esoteric and pseudo-scientific interpretation had been developing in different quarters throughout the Hellenistic period. The original interpretations may even have been more sophisticated than the versions we find embedded in mythological stories. By the time we find them in Gnostic writers, we are not dealing with direct readings of the Bible but established Gnostic traditions which are being reworked and reinterpreted . The Gnostics never take the further step achieved by both Judaism and Christianity—that of canonizing certain written embodiments of their tradition as Sacred Scripture.1

Hence, for these Gnostic traditions, “There was no gnostic ‘church’ or normative theology, no gnostic rule of faith nor any dogma of exclusive importance.”2 Also, “There was no gnostic canon of scripture, unless it was the ‘holy scriptures’ of other religions, like the Bible or Homer, which were employed and interpreted for the purpose of authorizing the gnostics’ own teachings.”3 Individuals of a Gnostic frame of mind were content merely to borrow the texts from an existing religious establishment and impress upon them deeper meaning/significance—a meaning that may have been lost somewhere along the way:

A further peculiarity of the gnostic tradition…lies in the fact that it frequently draws its material from the most varied existing traditions, attaches itself to it, and at the same time sets it in a new frame by which this material takes on a new character and a completely new significance. Gnosticism strictly speaking has no tradition of its own but only a borrowed one. Its mythology is a tradition consciously created from alien material, which it has appropriated to match its own basic conception. Considered in its own light, however, it is for Gnosticism a further confirmation of its truth, which it often traces back to a primal revelation, i.e. derives from primitive times; the knowledge of it was only temporarily extinguished or concealed.4

Gnosticism, then, is a “borrowed” tradition. Tradition is unimportant. What is important is only “gnosis” or “knowledge,” not a tradition or a text.

Gnostic characteristics in greater detail

In his classic text, Gnosis, Kurt Rudolph outlines seven principle areas that characterize the distinctives of the Gnostic movements: Gnosis, divine spark (upward, downward movement), Dualism, Cosmogony/Cosmology, Soteriology, Eschatology, Community/Cult.5 It is critical to stress and to reiterate the fact that the term “Gnostic” is a general label applied to a diverse number of individuals and communities who shared similar commonalities. This was not a monolithic movement and the following generalizations are subject, in many cases, to counterexample. As such, some scholars would even suggest that the term “Gnostic” should be done away with completely.6 Yet with these qualifications in mind it will still be helpful to use the term “Gnostic” and examine some of the general characteristics.

“Gnosticism” is a word often used to describe the phenomena and various movements of the second century.7 The use of “Gnosticism” can thus be distinguished from “gnosis,” which derives from the Greek meaning knowledge or understanding: “It is a knowledge given by revelation, which has been made available only to the elect who are capable of receiving it, and therefore has an esoteric character.”8 Gnosis is the first of Rudolph’s categories that we will analyze along with brief comment on the Gnostic conception of the divine.

Perkins describes gnosis as follows: “For the Gnostic, both God’s essence and his existence are unknown. Only gnosis overcomes the situation…These Gnostics reject the stable vision of God which the philosophic mind claims to attain.”9

Gnosis connects with the divine, and this conception of divinity is transcendent in a way that was very radical for the religious milieu of ancient religion. Perkins comments:

To a degree unparalleled by their pagan or Christian counterparts, Gnostic thinkers emphasized the radical transcendence and unknowability of the highest God. Such radical transcendence is founded on a discontinuity between God and the cosmos in which human beings find themselves....10 For the Gnostic, then, contact with the divine is mediated through the primordial revelation or through the rituals of the cult and not through its association with particular, contemporary teachers, seers or holy men.11

Perkins describes this transcendence as “radical” and unparalleled. Rudolph describes this perspective as “revolutionary.” For their contemporary counterparts, access to gods or the deity could be a relatively easy thing. But for the Gnostic, there was a gap and an enormous gulf that needed to be crossed. This, of course, is the role of gnosis. Rudolph comments further:

The gnostic conception of God is dictated by a contrast to all previously existing conceptions and so has a thoroughly revolutionary character. Certainly the terminology is indebted to contemporary philosophy…but the underlying world-denying tone cannot be mistaken. The counterpart to this highest being who can be described only in negative terms, the “unknown God”, is the revelation of his secret through intermediate beings of the elect, who are thereby enabled to attain to the “knowledge” of the (hitherto) unknown one. The gnostic idea of God is therefore not only the product of a dualism hostile to the world, but it is at the same time also a consequence of the esoteric conception of knowledge: “Gnosis” mediates the secret and leads men out of their ignorance concerning the true God.12

This leads naturally into two other aspects that pervade much of gnostic thought: that of the divine spark and a radical dualism. Within humankind is a divine spark that must be awakened or recovered. There is an upward/downward movement or structure here: the divine element and the fallen and perilous situation of man.

The world is the product of a divine tragedy, a disharmony in the realm of God, a baleful destiny in which man is entangled and from which he must be set free....13 Anthropology also is in Gnosis completely dominated by dualism. Here too a sharp line of distinction separates the bodily and psychic from the spiritual part of man. The latter is indeed even reduced to the “unworldly self”, the original divine constituent or “spark” in man which can be activated only through “knowledge” (gnosis), which is the pledge of redemption.14

There is a distinction, then, between the body and spiritual components of the human self. In some Gnostic conceptions there is a created dualism between the divine and the material. In other instances there is a gradual, downward movement from the divine to the darker, physical world of ignorance.15

But were not Platonic and other philosophical and religious systems of the day dualistic? How were the various Gnostic concepts of dualism different from Platonism. Rudolph is instructive in exploring this question. His comment here distinguishes the Gnostic dualism with Iranian Zoroastrian dualism, Platonic dualism, and Indian dualism by the “anti-cosmic” character of Gnostic dualism:

The gnostic dualism is distinguished from these above all in the one essential point, that it is “anti-cosmic”; that is, its conception includes an unequivocally negative evaluation of the visible world together with its creator; it ranks as a kingdom of evil and of darkness. The identification of “evil” and “matter”, which is not to be found in Iranian and Zoroastrian thought, occurs in Gnosis as a fundamental conception. In Greek thought also--apart from certain Orphic teachings, which however are of uncertain date--there is no such anticosmic development of the dualism of spirit and body. The Greek conception is unmistakably “procosmic”, and no less a person than Plotinus (3rd century A.D.), the leading figure of the late or Neoplatonism, defended this position over against the gnostic depreciation of the cosmos.16

Hence there is a moral element that is attached to the Gnostic dualism to be contrasted with philosophical dualistic notions on the contemporary scene. This is what Rudolph calls the anti-cosmic nature of the Gnostic dualism.

Although this dualism has a definite moral quality an important qualification must be made. Rudolph notes, “It should however be made clear that the dualism of these systems is to be seen first of all in a distinction between God and the Creator or between God and the world, not in that between God and the devil.”17 So, although there may be a moral dualism, good vs. evil, God vs. Devil, etc., for the Gnostic the dualism is first and foremost an ontological distinction between the divine/spiritual and material/physical world. Humanity is material, but within him/her resides the divine spark, which must be awakened.

The above dualism pervades Gnostic thought. We take note of it again as we continue on to Rudolph’s next categories: that of cosmogony/cosmology and anthropogony/anthropology:

The heart of the matter is that man is subordinated to the earthly sphere and hence to its powers only in part, namely in his physical existence; in another part, admittedly only a small one, he belongs to the supramundane spiritual realm. This part of man, often described as the “true” or “inner man”, “spirit” (pneuma), “soul” or “reason” (nous) is, over against the body which encloses him, in the same situation as the whole man over against the cosmos.18

Again, the radical dualism between the spiritual and the material is at work as the Gnostic develops conceptions of the cosmos and of the human being:

The verdict with regard to the earthly and visible world includes on the anthropological level a negative judgment upon the whole of bodily and psychic existence. This earthly material existence, like the world itself, is a product of the Demiurge and correspondingly is a sphere hostile to God, dominated by evil powers which are evident and active in the passions and desires. The psychic part of man is therefore represented as a product of evil powers (above all the planets) and through this man is not only the object but also the subject of the activity of such powers…Valentinus writes in one of his letters that the human heart is the abode of evil spirits who prevent its becoming pure, and instead treat it disgracefully through “unseemly desires”; it is comparable to an inn, which is full of filth and dissolute men.19

The “demiurge” is the fallen or foolish god who created the world contrary to the wishes of the Unknown or Highest God. The catastrophe that is now the physical world was counter-acted by the implanting of the divine spark by the Highest/Unknown God. In some cases Gnostic interpreters find the demiurge at work in the Genesis creation accounts. As Rudolph notes, the material world is a prison:

This view of the relation of man to the world and his imprisonment therein is however only one side. The other side is that which corresponds on the macrocosmic level to the kingdom of the “unknown God”: it is the deep and hidden relation to this higher world. Gnosis described this transcendent level in many images and expressions….In the Greek and Coptic texts the dominant concept is “spirit” (pneuma), in the relevant Hermetica “understanding” (nous), and the oriental or Semitic “soul”…Probably the most appropriate is the expression “spark” (Greek spinthēr), which occurs here and there. “Seed of light” is also found for it. In order to make use of a uniform expression scholars have become accustomed to speak of the “self” or “I”.20

The key to the cosmic dilemma in which mankind follows, then, comes back to gnosis and the divine spark: “The whole gnostic doctrine of redemption centers upon the restoration to its origin of this divine spark of light, which through fatal events has ‘fallen’ into the world, a restoration mythologically represented as an ‘ascent of the soul’.”21

Interestingly, then, the goal of this restoration results in what we might describe as a god-man, which is a somewhat unique conception in the history of religions, and again goes to the originality and revolutionary nature of Gnostic thought:

Behind this idea of the divine “Man”, who dwells both above and in the world, there is an entirely new conception of anthropology…it is not only that the (first) man, i.e. the unknown God, exists before him - the earthly man also, who is his product, is superior to him by reason of his supramundane divine relationship and substance. H. Jonas aptly says “this exaltation of “man” into a supramundane God who – if not the first – is at any rate earlier and more exalted than the Demiurge, is one of the most important aspect of gnostic mythology in the general history of religions…it indicates a new metaphysical status of man in the order of existence…” Behind this is expressed the whole revolutionary spirit of Gnosis in its rejection of the traditional values and ideas of faith…22

This brings us into a specific examination of redemption and soteriology. Rudolph comments from the Book of Thomas:

Gnosis is a religion of redemption…The word “gnosis” itself, as we have seen, has a predominantly soteriological value and in itself already clearly expresses the understanding of redemption. It is the act of self-recognition which introduces the “deliverance” from the situation encountered and guarantees man salvation…In the Book of Thomas (the Contender) Christ says at the very beginning to his “twin brother” Judas Thomas: “Examine yourself and know who you are and how you were and how you shall be…You have already come to knowledge, and you will be called “the one who knows himself”, for he who has not known himself has known nothing. But he who has known himself has already come to knowledge concerning the depth of the All.”23

Simply put, gnosis is redemption. Ignorance is darkness. The light of gnosis initiates one into redemption. However, this redemption, as one might suspect is not fully realized until death:

The process, introduced by “gnosis”, of bringing back the particles of light from darkness into the realm of light can naturally only be realised at death, when the “spirit” or “soul” (as descriptions of the divine particle of light) are separated from the body. Then begins the real liberation to which the gnosis aspires. “But when all the chosen ones lay aside the animal existence (i.e. the body) then will the light withdraw to its true beginning”, it is said the Book of Thomas the Contender....24 The gnostic is already redeemed, although the completion of the redemption is still outstanding. The laying aside of ignorance guarantees his freedom.25

The redemption from the body, then, is critical for the Gnostic, and is contrasted with the Christian idea of redemption from sin and guilt:

The gnostic redemption is a deliverance from the world and the body, not as in Christianity from sin and guilt, mainly in so far as the earthly and corporeal world as such represents the sin into which the divine soul had innocently fallen; through its involvement with the cosmic powers, however, it has become guilty, and it can be freed from this guilt only through insight and at the same time repentance.26

Continuing on this comparison with the Christian notion of redemption it is fascinating to investigate the Gnostic conception of the Christ figure and the role of the Redeemer. Rudolph finds the Gnostic teaching of Christ “remarkable”:

In order to bring the two aspects--the historical and the mythological--under a common denominator, the gnostic theologians brought about a division of the Christian redeemer into two completely separate beings, namely the earthly and transitory Jesus of Nazareth and the heavenly and eternal Christ, and thereby created one of the most remarkable pieces of gnostic teaching. In this way it was possible to appoint the Christian redeemer for several tasks in the gnostic systems.27

I note again the dualism at work within Gnostic thought. If a drastic dichotomy is drawn between the material and spiritual realm, then it follows the doctrine of Christ would split into two separate beings, or that the Christ would only “appear” to be a physical man. This is what we commonly refer to as the heresy of Docetism among Gnostic Christians:

What is meant is the idea widespread among the Christian gnostics that Christ appeared only “in semblance” (docēsei) as a man or in the flesh, and correspondingly neither suffered nor was really crucified. This conception is for Gnosis a necessary inference from its anti-cosmic dualism, according to which a clear devaluation attaches to what is earthly and bodily, and it therefore cannot enter into any serious mingling with what is spiritual and other-worldly.28

Concluding Observations

Ancient Gnosticism was a collection of loosely related beliefs that centered on a radical dualism between the material and immaterial worlds. For the Gnostic, all things material are evil and a part of the fallen world. Each soul contains (or is) a "divine spark" that allows one to connect with the Unknown God. Ultimately, true salvation only occurs when one transcends the evil of the material world and leaves the body behind.

Ancient Gnostic cosmology represents one of many approaches to interpreting the world in its brokenness, to comprehending a reality that seems so incomplete. It is one of many explanations that seek something "more real" or "more perfect" in a world beyond. Platonism and Christianity sought to connect the less perfect, fallen, or less real world with that of the eternal realm. That is, the material world could have degrees of goodness, realness, and perfection, depending on how closely the material world correlated to the immaterial world.

In Christianity, for example, one might try to connect the soul with God in order to become more pure. Or, one might seek to align the bodily actions with God's design or intention for it. Also, one might attempt to align one's morality with the moral law of God.

Though the overlap between Platonism and Christianity is well beyond the scope of this post, I think there are still good questions to consider: to what degree is it beneficial to incorporate dualism into one's theology? What kind of dualisms are healthy, true, world-affirming, and productive? What dualisms seem to be counter-productive, phobic, or escapist? Also, if one believes that God inhabits all of reality ('For in him we live and move and have our being.' As some of your own poets have said, 'We are his offspring.' Acts 17), then we have reason to question whether dualisms of any kind are appropriate. Finally, in good poststructuralist style, one could question whether any dichotomy or dualism can ultimately hold.

Footnotes

1 Perkins, The Gnostic Dialogue: The Early Church and the Crisis of Gnosticism (New York: Paulist Press, 1980), 18-19.
2 Kurt Rudolph, Gnosis, Translation edited by Robert McLachlan Wilson (San Francisco: Harper & Row Publishers, 1983), 53.
3 Ibid, 53.
4 Ibid, 54-55.
5 Rudolph, Gnosis, 1983.
6 See M.A. Williams, Rethinking “Gnosticism” (Princeton University Press, 1996)
7 Nicholas Perrin, “Gnosticism”, in Dictionary for Theological Interpretation of the Bible (ed. Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Grand Rapids: Baker Academics, 2005), 256.
8 Rudolph, Gnosis, 55.
9 Perkins, Gnostic Dialogue, 168.
10 Ibid, 167.
11 Ibid, 11.
12 Rudolph, Gnosis, 65. (emphasis added)
13 Ibid, 66.
14 Ibid, 66.
15 The later view is the view of the majority of the texts, including the Nag Hammadi texts. See Rudolph, Gnosis, 65.
16 Rudolph, Gnosis, 60. (emphasis added)
17 Ibid, 66.
18 Ibid, 70.
19 Ibid, 88.
20 Ibid, 88.
21 Ibid, 91.
22 Ibid, 93.
23 Ibid, 113.
24 Ibid, 115.
25 Ibid, 115.
26 Ibid, 116-17.
27 Ibid, 151.
28 Ibid, 157.

Does God set his people free?

3 Then Moses climbed the mountain to appear before God. The Lord called to him from the mountain and said, “Give these instructions to the family of Jacob; announce it to the descendants of Israel: 4 ‘You have seen what I did to the Egyptians. You know how I carried you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. 5 Now if you will obey me and keep my covenant, you will be my own special treasure from among all the peoples on earth; for all the earth belongs to me. 6 And you will be my kingdom of priests, my holy nation.’ This is the message you must give to the people of Israel.”
Exodus 19 (New Living Transl.)

18 When the people heard the thunder and the loud blast of the ram’s horn, and when they saw the flashes of lightning and the smoke billowing from the mountain, they stood at a distance, trembling with fear. 19 And they said to Moses, “You speak to us, and we will listen. But don’t let God speak directly to us, or we will die!” 20 “Don’t be afraid,” Moses answered them, “for God has come in this way to test you, and so that your fear of him will keep you from sinning!” 21 As the people stood in the distance, Moses approached the dark cloud where God was.
Exodus 20 (NLT)

The children of Israel were set free from captivity and set free to law...or, perhaps more specifically, the nation was set free to enter into a covenant with God: love God by keeping his laws, and in return God will bless the nation and it will prosper.

1 These are the commands, decrees and laws the LORD your God directed me to teach you to observe in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess, 2 so that you, your children and their children after them may fear the LORD your God as long as you live by keeping all his decrees and commands that I give you, and so that you may enjoy long life. 3 Hear, O Israel, and be careful to obey so that it may go well with you and that you may increase greatly in a land flowing with milk and honey, just as the LORD, the God of your fathers, promised you.

4 Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. 5 Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. 6 These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. 7 Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. 8 Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. 9 Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.
Deuteronomy 6 (NLT)

In our practical, day-to-day dealings, freedom is very very often a directed freedom. In fact, that seems to be the primary sense in which we typically use the word. Relationships of all levels usually have spoken/unspoken boundaries and limitations: don't "cheat" on your spouse, act with courtesy and consideration, take heed of his/her personal feelings, respect his/her preferences for this or that, etc. There is a give-and-take dynamic; it's a lot like a business transaction with its own economy. And we have myriad ways in which we construct these relational covenants.

The idea, I think, in constructing these covenants is that boundaries and laws allow us to function in closer proximity to one another. This is certainly the sense of God's covenant with the children of Israel: a bond of mutual benefit. In other word, the law gives life, joy, and prosperity:

Joyful are people of integrity,
who follow the instructions of the Lord.
Joyful are those who obey his laws
and search for him with all their hearts.
They do not compromise with evil,
and they walk only in his paths.
You have charged us
to keep your commandments carefully.
Oh, that my actions would consistently
reflect your decrees!
Then I will not be ashamed
when I compare my life with your commands.
As I learn your righteous regulations,
I will thank you by living as I should!
I will obey your decrees.
Please don’t give up on me!
Psalm 119 (NLT)

Okay, fair enough. For some, that should more or less be the end of the matter....however, the whole death and resurrection of Jesus Christ thing seems to screw it up a bit.

In 2 Corinthians chapter 3, Paul makes a comment, almost in passing, about being a minister of a new covenant: a covenant not of "the letter" (grammatos) but of the Spirit, for the letter "kills" (apoktennei) but the Spirit gives life.

The Spirit is a new way. In Galatians 5, Paul fires from point blank range: if you live by the Spirit you are no longer under law.

In Romans 7, Paul suggests to his readers that they died to the law "through the body of Christ." By dying to a life lived by the way of the law, a new way is made: living by the Spirit. (v. 6)

Also in Romans 7, Paul claims that the law is "holy" and "good." And then here is the kicker: I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death.

Did God screw up in the original law-giving, law-abiding covenant?

It's an interesting question, but suggesting that God didn't quite get it right may be an oversimplification. After all, law reflects the order of things, the structure of the way most of us usually order our lives. Pragmatically speaking, law can work, law does work.

When I talk to people--usually of the religious variety--about living without moral codes, principles, or standards, their first reaction is that such an approach to life would mean "just doing whatever."....such is an oversimplification. There is a third way, a "new way" of the Spirit. It's just that such a way is undefinable, by definition.

The question of this post is: Does God set his people free?

For most Christians--and religiously-minded people--it is still a matter of being set free from something and to something. In many cases, it is a matter of being set free to live up to an even higher standard than anyone else. (This is often the way people interpret the Sermon on the Mount.)

I prefer freedom of the more radical stripe: drop the laws, principles, and regulations entirely--go with the Spirit all the way. Purge the mind and soul of a way of life that evaluates all of our actions as good or bad.

There seems to be another dimension of life that one can only reach by transcending the life of law and principles. But it only seems possible to ascend to this dimension by letting go of our law-oriented inclinations, our instinct to evaluate our actions based on whether they are "good," "bad," or "neutral."

Does God set his people free?

I think that the answer to the question depends on what type of freedom we yearn for.

Not a Christian Church

So, a few months back, I scribbled down some ideas for the ragtag small group to which I belong....I was wondering what I might come up with if I jotted down some of the values that I think are important for our group. My original thought was to discuss it with our group and see if they wanted some points around which to rally---something to define us.

I scrapped the idea shortly after I jotted down my thoughts, not wanting to seem like we had any kind of creed or dogma. However, I scanned my handwritten thoughts (only two short pages) and saved it as a .pdf document, if you would like to take a peak. (Please pardon the poor handwriting!)

The three values I find important are:
Community/love/fellowship
Changing the world
Providing an environment of radical freedom

I call the whole thing "Not a Christian Church."

http://erdman31.googlepages.com/NotaChrChurch.pdf

Merging and Submerging

The only Christian died on a cross
- Nietzsche

Has the "Emerging Church" died? Such was the topic of a recent (and rather provocative) article on the Christianity Today website. This rather short and simple article coincides with a good deal of what I have been thinking through over the last year or so....ever since I walked away from institutional/organized religion.

The gist of the article R.I.P Emerging Church:

“The emerging church will disappear.” That is what my informant told me as we shared drinks at our clandestine watering hole. I felt like Luca Brasi being handed a dead fish wrapped in newspaper. The hit had been ordered…the emerging church’s fate had been sealed. In my informant’s mind, the death of the emerging church was a settled matter. I double-checked my surroundings for listening ears before whispering, “How can you be so sure?” The informant (who worked for a publisher) leaned forward and said their marketing plans included dropping the “Emerging Church” brand within two years.

That was two years ago.

Now comes word from recognized leaders and voices within the emerging church movement that the term has become so polluted that it is being dropped.
(Cf. McKnight article)

If you want my take on the issue, I favor a merging and submerging church: that those with a faith centered on Jesus would merge with culture and submerge beneath the turbulent waters of dogma, institution, and commercialized, market-driven religiosity.

My struggle is that I see all of Christianity as a fad, commercialized, consumer- and market-driven. To say "I am a Christian" is not to say that one identifies with Christ, but that one identifies with some form of a hyper-commercialized movement.

This explains, in part, the fact that the church has such a difficult time retaining those who are passionate about changing the world, have a heart for joining believers in open/authentic community, and have intelligent minds that desire to challenge status quo thinking. These are three key types of people that seem to be lacking in most church institutions. Most institutions tend to prefer organizing around static beliefs/practices rather than letting dynamic people loose to affect genuine change.

I can't help but sense an urgent need to purge and purify; a need to go underground; a need for silence, reflection, and growth.

In my opinion, the American church is neither hot nor cold. It is bland and boring. A few months back my boss told me that the water heater had not been working for quite sometime....but no one had noticed. Why? Because the water heater doesn't do a good job heating water, and so we don't ever expect the water to be hot. Such is the state of Christians.

Thought: Once the water is no longer hot, there is little difference between water that is merely warm and water that is cool.

When Nietzsche suggested that God is dead, wasn't he really just suggesting that God is not needed? If God doesn't actually exist, would that make a difference for the Christian religion? If we found out that there was never really a water heater to begin with, would the water temperature change?

Is it in the best interest of Jesus to let Christianity die? To put the movement out of its misery? I tend to think that the answer is, “yes.”

What would faith look like if it were just a gathering of people? Sharing life together? A non-Movement movement?

For most Christian leaders, a non-Movement movement would be too ambiguous…..the author of the above emergent church article says as much at the end of the article when he snidely remarks, “As the emerging church rides off into the sunset, where does that leave things? Well, news has been leaking about a new network being formed by Dan Kimball, Erwin McManus, and Scot McKnight among others…..They appear to have learned from the emerging church’s mistake—define purpose and doctrine early so your identity doesn’t get hijacked.”

But is it even possible to think faith without religion? To think spirituality without an Institution to regulate it? To think about Christ w/o Christianity?

Where is “faith” going these days?

The so-called "Reformers" did little to change the structure of institutional Christianity; they merely substituted different doctrines and introduced more legalistic standards to measure faith so as not to allow the church to devolve into the types of corruptions and abuses that Luther was so appalled to see when he journeyed to Rome as a naive young monk.

Interesting note: a friend recently informed me that Luther seriously considered the idea of organizing the new reformed churches as house churches. His one drawback was there were not enough people who could read, and hence there may be many house churches without someone to read the Bible…..hhhhmmmm…..but is such a drawback still an issue in 21st century America?

It is interesting that the emerging church appears to be going the way of the dinosaur. It was essentially a Movement that masqueraded as a non-movement. Hence, one kind of always felt as though a diagnosis of "multiple personalities disorder" was in order. I don’t mean to be too critical, but they did consciously decide to take this Movement public via mass distribution channels.

So......what now?

Eh hem….well, my thoughts….

I suggest: merge with culture and lose the holier-than-thou mentality; submerge from religion, dogma, and institution. Free people as individuals within community to pursue a pure and liberating faith.

Perhaps, this merging/submerging move would mean the death of commercialized Christianity and the use of "Christian" as an adjective: no more "Christian books," or "Christian music," or "Christian tee shirts," or "Christian worldviews," "Christian churches," or even "Christians.”

But to merge and submerge, as I am suggesting, would be the end of "Christianity" and "Church" as an institution and as an institutional powerhouse. Of course, such is still a radical suggestion....it means that the gathering of the faithful is organized around things like freedom, openness, love, acceptance, grace, and self-discovery......most Christians will prefer some sort of modified hybrid: an institution that merely shifts its values a bit. Add a bit more love, lose a bit of the moxy.....add some room to disagree on dogma, lose a bit of the need to control......sure, modifications can be made to ensure the survival of the mediocre institution, but in this era, I think such a suggestion is naive: the American church is overrun with the complacent, and a shift of values merely means that we will be complacent about a new set of "priorities." But perhaps this is an issue I am wrong about. Perhaps institutions with new values would, in fact, provide a new and fresh vision around which something powerful and dynamic could be formed….hhhhmmmm…..I’m doubtful, though……I think we need something more radical and extreme, something less man-made, synthetic, or artificial. Something that indicates a real connection to an external power surge. It seems difficult for me to see how things like love, freedom, grace, and power can be captured by religion. Religion and institution tend to kill these things…..but regardless, it seems quite clear that churches simply will not survive with any vibrancy unless something changes. And faith itself seems to me to be on the brink.

My suggestion of merging and submerging would seem to require the greater amount of courage, boldness, and failure: small groups striking it out on their own; trial and error, victories and failures, highs and lows. People of faith (and even non-faith) who are no longer connected by the obligation of a large-scale religious affiliation but by a more intangible and undefinable connectedness.