Theosophy

[Pompey Bum]

I don't feel able to join in with this debate, but it makes fascinating reading!

Jump right in, DW. Your view is as important as anyone else's here

But your comment reminds me of a question I had, not about you but Papayahed (if she's lurking about this thread). She posted a message on the anonymous thread that read:

ermmm, what?

I don't know if she was talking about me/us on this thread, but I hope so. It gave me a laugh, so if it was for someone else, Papayahed, I don't want to know about it.

(By the way, is there any way we can get the name of this thread changed to Theology? It hasn't really been about theosophy for some time).

[Jackson Richardson]

Changing the title of "Theology" would be a good idea. YesNo raised so many important issues I didn't know where to start, so I thought I'd wait to see what Pompey said.

It's nice to think others are interested here and it's not a conversation of three.

(Maybe Marx's word "alienation" covers what Christian mean by sin and Buddhists by dukkha. Marx, Freud, the Buddha and Paul all thought there was something wonky about the human condition but defined it and its cure differently. I had no wish to appear to criticize Mrs P's Buddhist beliefs.)

[Pompey Bum]

Pompey and I have opposite reactions – I hear “Orthodoxy” and cheer, he groans.

My rejection of the Christian Orthodoxy as authoritative (which of course doesn't mean that I reject all its doctrines) is based on my low anthropology. Orthodoxy is made by human beings, and we all know what they/we're like. As you say, "there’s something radically wrong with the human condition." Becoming a Christian does not change that all that much--it certainly does not make one worthy of God (at least in my view). The horrific and bloody history of Christian Orthodoxy, with its persecutions, burnings, and tortures, is only what one would expect from people like us. (But take a look at Stalinism to know that secular orthodoxies can be even worse).

For me, the soul must make most of the calls for itself. They will be wrong, too, sometimes, but a personal God requires personal decisions. That's a hard enough task without worrying if you're being loyal to the Church's position as well as God's truth. They are not always the same, which I am convinced is one of the most ignored of Jesus' teachings. I know which I would choose in any case.

(Orthodoxy holds the paradoxes together.)

That is an interesting view. In my opinion, it is God, for Christians, the ultimate paradox, in whom all other paradoxes are subsumed. Orthodoxies only provide human apologetics (not to knock that too hard--it's what we are doing now). What is interesting to me? Though, is that this idea may agree with Yes/No's idea of God as a Berkelean Super-Consciousness, holding the contradictions of individual consciousnesses together into a quantum universe. Any thoughts, Y/N?

So it is nice to say that I mainly agree with his general summary.

Yes, it's nice. If anyone is wondering, I consider Jon a friend and a brother in Christ, and none of our disagreements or debates changes that an iota.

(I do think the contrast between works and faith is misleading – pre-Reformation Christians certainly believed in God’s grace, his free gift, his incarnation being an obvious example.)

Oh sure. There were a number of Church theologians who anticipated Luther, all drawing from Augustine; and Luther himself was an Augustinian monk who originally saw himself as recovering Augustine's theology from the Neo-Pelagianism works theology of the day. There's a good discussion of this (and Augustine's overall importance to the Reformation) in a great book by Oxford professor Diarmaid MacCullough, called The Reformation: A History. (MacCullough also wrote Christianity: The First 3000 years, which is a helpful book to refer to, taken with a grain of salt--unfortunately his ideas aren't always cutting edge anymore).

But yes, it would be misleading to think of the idea of Salvation through God's Grace as beginning with the Reformation; but the Grace-works dichotomy (with some proportional judgment reached on one side or the other) that I spoke of earlier became heightened during that time, and especially after the Council of Trent (between 1545 and 1563) and the subsequent Catholic (and at that point, Y/N, feel free to call them Catholics) Counter-Reformation. The distinction remains, in my opinion, the greatest divide between the Catholic and Protestant to this day.

That may be less apparent to you, Jonathan, since the English Reformation was separate from the German version (Henry VIII burned Jesuits and Lutherans side by side at one of his weddings) and the Church of England includes some Catholic-ish aspects in its theology. All of which gives you your beautiful churches, on which I believe you are an expert. Where I grew up, churches were wooden and painted white, with enormous white steeples. They looked a little cold in the snow, but in the end, you know, it was still home.

Pompey knows more about Buddhism so he can confirm whether the first of the Four Noble Truths of the Buddha can been paraphrased as “Life sucks”.

I know a lot less about Buddhism than Christianity, but I can give you some opinions I have from a (very small) amount of critical study and a large amount of being married to a Buddhist. Ecurb is probably the person to talk to, since I believe he studied comparative religion in some detail. And I think JBI (who I have never met) is an scholar of Asian literature. I am sure that either of them would be more qualified to answer than me, but I will do what I can.

I would not agree that the Four Noble Truths can be summed up as "life sucks"--not even the first Noble Truth, that all sentient life is characterized by suffering. As with the Greek word gnosis, there is apparently quite a lot missed in the English translation of "suffering." The Pali word (from a language I do not read or speak) is dukkha. It can also be translated as anxiety or stress, but at, um, a pretty good school in Massachusetts (let's put it that way), I was taught that dukkha carries with it the sense of having the senses stirred up rather than calm. So hitting your thumb with a hammer would dukkha, but so would being turned on by a pornographic picture. Being thirsty is dukkha, but so is being drunk. Being anxious that you might get fired is dukkha, but so is gloating in your heart over a rival who got fired. In Buddhism, these things are not sin but kinds of suffering.

The Second Noble Truth, that suffering is caused by desire, is also subject to misunderstanding. Desire in this sense should also be understood as craving, addiction, and so on. The cycle of suffering and craving is what Buddhism seeks to break.

The Third Noble Truth, that there is an end to suffering, that dukkha constitutes an existential predicament but not a ontological state; and the Fourth Nobel Truth, that the end of suffering is Nirvana, can not in any way be summed up as you said.

Crudely, for Eastern religions the basic problem is defined in terms of delusion.

That is probably a little too crude because it crosses the line between illusion, which is incorrect sensory perception (ISP? ), and delusion, which is holding a deep-seated belief contrary to reality. The Buddha taught that dukkha was ultimately an illusion, but not a delusion. Suffering is real in that it really hurts. But it is just a trick of the senses (for me, the phenomenon of phantom pain comes to mind). It is nullified--or extinguished, which is what Nirvana means--when one awakes to Enlightenment.

That's about the best I can do for you. How one gets to Enlightenment is another matter, but at this point I must emulate Virgil in Dante's Purgatory and insist that from here, one more worthy than I must lead you.

YesNo raised so many important issues I didn't know where to start, so I thought I'd wait to see what Pompey said.

I will do my best to address them, but for today, I need to take a break from theology. I've really been neglecting The Pants Game.

[Dreamwoven]

I agree, if it is possible for a moderator to change the thread name to Theology, I for one would be more comfortable discussing it. I know nothing about Theosophy other than that Steiner left it. Since I started this thread, perhaps I can just say that I would be happy if its name were changed.

I don't know a lot about theology anyway. I had heard of the Cloud of Unknowing in relation to gnosticism but no more. I've always had an interest in churches - not for religion but architecture and the transition from Norman to Perpendicular styles, quite a revolution. That height, the stained glass. Beautiful! Monasteries and the life of a monastic always drew me as well.

[YesNo]

The horrific and bloody history of Christian Orthodoxy, with its persecutions, burnings, and tortures, is only what one would expect from people like us. (But take a look at Stalinism to know that secular orthodoxies can be even worse).

I agree. The only legitimate argument that atheists have against religious (or spiritual) people is the one that religious views might lead to self-righteous violence. However, the problem with that argument is that atheistic self-righteousness has led to even worse violence.

That is an interesting view. In my opinion, it is God, for Christians, the ultimate paradox, in whom all other paradoxes are subsumed. Orthodoxies only provide human apologetics (not to knock that too hard--it's what we are doing now). What is interesting to me? Though, is that this idea may agree with Yes/No's idea of God as a Berkelean Super-Consciousness, holding the contradictions of individual consciousnesses together into a quantum universe. Any thoughts, Y/N?

I am still reading Amit Goswami's "The Self-Aware Universe", but I find it better than Lanza's interpretation since I think he avoids solipsism. The existence of what looks like individual consciousnesses seems to be the heart of the problem of monistic idealism. It has to avoid solipsism.

But yes, it would be misleading to think of the idea of Salvation through God's Grace as beginning with the Reformation; but the Grace-works dichotomy (with some proportional judgment reached on one side or the other) that I spoke of earlier became heightened during that time, and especially after the Council of Trent (between 1545 and 1563) and the subsequent Catholic (and at that point, Y/N, feel free to call them Catholics) Counter-Reformation. The distinction remains, in my opinion, the greatest divide between the Catholic and Protestant to this day.

What is specific about the Council of Trent that one could mark this as the beginning of Catholicism?

I would not agree that the Four Noble Truths can be summed up as "life sucks"--not even the first Noble Truth, that all sentient life is characterized by suffering. As with the Greek word gnosis, there is apparently quite a lot missed in the English translation of "suffering." The Pali word (from a language I do not read or speak) is dukkha. It can also be translated as anxiety or stress, but at, um, a pretty good school in Massachusetts (let's put it that way), I was taught that dukkha carries with it the sense of having the senses stirred up rather than calm. So hitting your thumb with a hammer would dukkha, but so would being turned on by a pornographic picture. Being thirsty is dukkha, but so is being drunk. Being anxious that you might get fired is dukkha, but so is gloating in your heart over a rival who got fired. In Buddhism, these things are not sin but kinds of suffering.

The Second Noble Truth, that suffering is caused by desire, is also subject to misunderstanding. Desire in this sense should also be understood as craving, addiction, and so on. The cycle of suffering and craving is what Buddhism seeks to break.

The Third Noble Truth, that there is an end to suffering, that dukkha constitutes an existential predicament but not a ontological state; and the Fourth Nobel Truth, that the end of suffering is Nirvana, can not in any way be summed up as you said.

My daughter brought home the complete set of Breaking Bad. We have just finished the second season, but the way you describe these first thee truths fits what I see happening to Walter and Jessie.

That is probably a little too crude because it crosses the line between illusion, which is incorrect sensory perception (ISP? ), and delusion, which is holding a deep-seated belief contrary to reality. The Buddha taught that dukkha was ultimately an illusion, but not a delusion. Suffering is real in that it really hurts. But it is just a trick of the senses (for me, the phenomenon of phantom pain comes to mind). It is nullified--or extinguished, which is what Nirvana means--when one awakes to Enlightenment.

I agree that suffering, as illusion, is different from a delusion, but I don't think they are easy to split apart unless one can find specific beliefs that one has that would support the continued illusion. Then one can focus on those beliefs as a way to change.

[Pompey Bum]

I don't know a lot about theology anyway. I had heard of the Cloud of Unknowing in relation to gnosticism but no more. I've always had an interest in churches - not for religion but architecture and the transition from Norman to Perpendicular styles, quite a revolution. That height, the stained glass. Beautiful! Monasteries and the life of a monastic always drew me as well.

I love old churches, too. Are you from England like Jonathan? One of my regrets is that I've never seen the English country churches or the ruins of the old monasteries (after Henry VIII got through with them). I have been to St. Paul's, though. I felt an odd personal connection to the architecture. It seemed somehow flexible and firm at the same time. When I worked, I used to keep a picture of it behind my desk: the famous picture from the Blitz, taken after the whole cathedral had been engulfed in smoke and flames. The photographer had set up his equipment to get a shot of the broken dome when the smoke fell. Instead, of course, he captured it intact, rising above the hell human beings make for ourselves, like the dome of Heaven itself.

It seems to me that Christians view God as being angry.

I'm sure you could find some Christians who agree with you. And to be fair to them, there are books of the Bible, especially those of the Prophets, where God (speaking through the Prophets) is shockingly angry. Most of those parts were written after the horrific destruction of Samaria and Jerusalem by the Assyrians and the Neo-Babylonians, respectively, sometimes by those who had survived the worst bloodshed imaginable (Iron Age warfare would have made Isis look like Cub Scouts). The idea that God was angry with Israel and that this was the reason for the holocausts they had endured was floated by some Prophets--usually in quite vociferous terms.

This is a theodicy--in my opinion, an unconvincing one. (A theodicy is an apologistic explanation for God--usually an attempt to reconcile the persistence of evil with an omnipotent and just God). The Christian interpretation of the Hebrew story of Eden is another theodicy. It attempts to explain (in my opinion) why life is so hard and why God seems so far away. God's supposed anger in the story seems more Karmic than wrathful to me ("Here's what happened and here's the result"), but the Augustinian view--fifteen centuries later--was that God had cursed humankind, and many Christians still follow it.

But you are going to have trouble claiming that "Christians" (in the sense of all Christians) "view God as being angry." Personally, I see God as perfect and just rather than imperfect and and angry. It is my sense that Jonathan, a Christian with a somewhat different outlook than mine, holds a similar view in this regard (although obviously he can speak for himself). Other Christians will agree with me and others will disagree. But to claim that it an inherent Christian belief that God is angry, and to base further conclusions on that claim, is at heart a straw man argument.

He is one of those deities that one must offer sacrifices to.

Again, some Christians look at it like that and some don't. In a strong Grace theology, sacrifices to God are meaningless (because human beings aren't capable of doing anything to merit salvation); but for many Christians they are important. Jonathan can tell you whether that's because God demands sacrifices or because such Christians wish to worship God in that way--seeking reconciliation rather than complying with an extortions racket.

I'm probably being too glib. There is quite a lot of sacrifice language in parts of the Bible (and sacrifices were regularly made to the God of Israel at the Temple before the Babylonians (and later the Romans) knocked it down. But there was also a countermovement against sacrifice. Much of the Prophetic movement (of which Jesus was an heir) was a reaction against Temple sacrifice, expressed, for example, in Hosea 6:6--"For I desire goodness, not sacrifice; Obedience to God, rather than burnt offerings," but also Amos 5:21-23; Isaiah 11-14; and others).

And most importantly for Christians is an account depicted in each canonical Gospel of Jesus forcibly expelling from the Temple those who exchanged money for Temple sacrifice (not everyone felt like coughing up a sestertius) and those who sold pigeons to be sacrificed. In the synoptic Gospels, this event happens near the end of the story and is a pretext for Jesus' arrest by the Romans (as it likely was in history), but in The Gospel of John it occurs at the very beginning and becomes a kind of preamble for Jesus' entire ministry. (Tragically and horribly the scene has long been interpreted antisemitically in Christian art and tradition--as if it were the "cheap mercantile Jews" Jesus was driving from their own Temple to be replaced by the Christians whose way he was paving. I told you people were sh*ts).

He threw Adam and Eve out of Eden rather than forgiving them.

Well, let me ask you this in all candor: do you believe (as many of the faithful do) that humankind's essentially rotten nature is the result of what is described in Genesis, precisely; or do you suspect (as I do) that the story reflects that state of being--the rottenness of humankind--and that the author uses the language and detail he or she had at hand to explain how it came to be so?

And if you believe the latter (in other words, if you take the story mythopoetically rather than historically), then are you really able to speculate on what was going on in God's mind during the Fall or afterwards--as if he were a character in a novel or something? Even if you take the story as seriously as I do--and I believe that it is the most important part of the Hebrew Scriptures from a Christian perspective--then all we really have is this:

1. Once we were with God--for me, the God of Love and Justice. Never mind that the author of that part of Genesis worked for the (relatively) new Temple cult established by the (relatively) new Davidic Kingdom, and is therefore at odds to show that this all happened in the material world, where kings and clerics do their thing and try to gain power over the more spiritual Prophets. For me, this all about spirit (perhaps even in a Berkelean sense).

2. We became estranged from God by acting independently--for me, independently of Love and Justice. Don't get hung up on the mythos. The authors and redactors were (mostly) doing the best they could.

3. We exist in a nature/universe that is fallen from the God of Love and Justice, and we ourselves are prisoners of that nature. For me, this is materialism. This solves the problem of evil that we were discussing in the other thread.

He almost wiped us out in a flood rather than forgiving us.

I'll grant you Noah is a weird and upsetting story. But again, I would caution you not to get hung up on the mythos (which existed in a polytheistic version at least a thousand years before Genesis was even written). Do you believe the story really happened as described? And if it didn't, then what reality (if any) does it hold for us? That's Esoteric Religion 101, right?

Biblical literalists have to do somersaults to make it mean what they want it to. Noah was a just man, so God had him build the ark. And as he was building it, all the wicked people gathered around and mocked him. But once the rains started, they stopped laughing. And as the ark sailed away, they swam along and begged to be saved. But Noah couldn't help those poor people without opening the hatch and sinking the whole ark. Sometimes it's hard to be a just man.

The only trouble with that story is that it's not in the Bible. God does choose Noah to build the ark because he's just, and he does build it, but that's all. No sinners mock him, no one repents as the rain starts to fall, no one begs to be taken along. All that is an extra-Biblical Christian attempt to prefigure the Apocalyptic tradition of the Rapture in Jewish tradition. It's like the talking snake in Eden being Satan. It's just not in there.

So what does the story mean? Well, here it is. Read it (it's really short), then I'll give you my opinion. Start with The Wickedness of Mankind.

http://www.bartleby.com/108/01/6.html

You see what I mean by weird and upsetting? For me, this is about the corruption. The human spirit has fallen to material nature and incapable of redeeming itself. The trouble is that the redactor of this part of Genesis has these two strange texts that he uses to make his point (you know what a redactor is, right? Someone who integrates older texts--much of the Hebrew a Bible was composed in that way). One of them is the story of the Flood, already ancient when it was put in Genesis, and the other is this utterly bizarre business about heavenly beings mating with any earth women they wanted. That's a pretty weird detail for a monotheistic religion; and references to "giants" and "mighty men" strongly suggest that these strange verses reflect an older, pre-Monotheist mythology.

Orthodox Christians didn't really know what to make of them either. Eventually they got attached to the (mostly) extra-Biblical tradition of the Fall of Satan with the rebel angels. In that interpretation, the fallen angels raped or seduced human women, contaminating human genetics and facilitating its corruption.

Either way, this story (or these two stories) might be taken as somewhat eccentric. But for me, they help provide a fourth thesis to be added to the three above:

1. We were with the God of Love and Justice.

2. We became estranged from God by acting independently of Love and Justice.

3. We exist in a nature/universe that is fallen from the God of Love and Justice, and we ourselves are prisoners of that nature.

And now:

4. The materialism of that nature has rotted us to the very soul.

He needed to send Jesus to die on a cross for our sins rather than just getting over it and forgiving us. Why?

Ah, why indeed? For Christians, God did not send Jesus to die in pain instead of forgiving us. He sent Himself, graciously, to die in pain, here, East of Eden, precisely because he did forgive us; as he had always forgiven us, even after we had abandoned our solidarity with Him.

If God is not angry the word "reconciliation" is inappropriate for the dissatisfied situation we feel we are in.

Reconciliation can be mutual when both parties seek it. My faith is that God seeks it (Grace). Human beings may or may not do what they can, but it is God's Grace that prevails.

What is specific about the Council of Trent that one could mark this as the beginning of Catholicism

Another time for that. I'm beat.

[Jackson Richardson]

Thank you. I'd put the relation of Christianity to the Hebrew Scriptures differently and I don't believe "the materialism of the universe has rotted us to the very soul". (If anything it is the other way round.)

But I was concerned to answer YesNo's opinion that the Christian God is angry and Pompey has done it - "For Christians, God did not send Jesus to die in pain instead of forgiving us. He sent Himself, graciously, to die in pain, here, East of Eden, precisely because he did forgive us; as he had always forgiven us, even after we had abandoned our solidarity with Him."

Back to Paul. Paul didn't write "We can reconcile ourselves to God through Christ" but "God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself". God is taking the loving initiative, as Pompey says.

(I suspect YesNo is thinking of Calvin's wretched idea of penal substiutionary atonement - we deserve punishment, God in justice has to punish someone, Jesus puts himself forward for punishment in our place and we are let off punishment if we have faith in Jesus. It is the centre of much evangelical Christianity and it is highly misleading and Christianity had got on for 1500 years without it.)

[free]

(By the way, is there any way we can get the name of this thread changed to Theology? It hasn't really been about theosophy for some time).

You shouldn't change the title of a thread if your discussion went towards another direction. Start a new thread with the title you want to discuss about.

[YesNo]

1. We were with the God of Love and Justice.

2. We became estranged from God by acting independently of Love and Justice.

3. We exist in a nature/universe that is fallen from the God of Love and Justice, and we ourselves are prisoners of that nature.

And now:

4. The materialism of that nature has rotted us to the very soul.

For (1), I think we are still with the God of Love and Justice. We just forget and need to be reminded.

For (2), we make mistakes which increase our forgetfulness.

For (3), I don't understand how the universe can be fallen.

For (4), I think JonathanB is more correct in saying that we do the rotting, not the universe. However, I don't think anything is rotten and materialism is false.

It looks like there are two different sources of the idea of materialism.

On the one hand, some view matter as having an unconscious, insentient substance. I associate this view with atheism. I see this view of reality being falsified by quantum physics and relativity.

On the other, some religious groups believe that matter, though possibly conscious and created by some deity, is nonetheless "rotten" and is something we need to escape from by our own efforts or to be saved from by someone else. I associate Buddhism with escaping from matter by one's own efforts and Judeo-Christianity with requiring a savior or messiah to do that for us. Buddhism would be the "works" solution and Judeo-Christianity would be the "grace" solution.

Ah, why indeed? For Christians, God did not send Jesus to die in pain instead of forgiving us. He sent Himself, graciously, to die in pain, here, East of Eden, precisely because he did forgive us; as he had always forgiven us, even after we had abandoned our solidarity with Him.

I think having a God who is willing to die for us is a way to show that God is compassionate or empathetic toward us. He is approachable.

This thread is still about theosophy. I don't know what theosophists think about these issues, but I will try to find out. What issues are these?

1) Is the universe good or rotten?
2) Do we need a savior to escape from a rotten universe?
3) Do we need to liberate ourselves from a rotten universe?
4) Do we need to simply remember who we are?