| When
it is
spoken of Christianity as a historic or cultural phenomenon, reference
is
usually made to one or more ostensible manifestations, types or
variants, of the
Christian
faith. I shall distinguish four essential such variants, which I
designate the fundamentalist, the scholarly,
the mystical and the ceremonial. In
addition – or rather before all these – there is what I consider
authentic or biblical Christianity. This I shall designate prophetic
or revelational.
A brief descriptive summary of these variants here follows. By fundamentalist Christianity I refer to a mindset of doctrinal fixity and biblical literalism which is formulaic, non-reflective and devoid of intellectual depth. The fundamentalist mind tends to be an island unto itself, isolated from the wider universe of discourse, as it is from real spiritual insight. While ostensibly biblical in orientation, actual scrutiny indicates that its tenets, although superficially scriptural, appear rather to have arisen in the self-referential context of fundamentalist thought and practice. Being thus non-self-correcting, the mindset tends toward extremism, ranging in type from hysteric emotionalism to a cold and clinical behaviourism. With scholarly Christianity I refer to the mindset epitomised by such theologians and academics as Alister McGrath (who recently rose to the defence of the faith by responding to Hitchens and Dawkins) and the medievalist and popular author C. S. Lewis. It is civil and solicitous, intellectually engaging, profusely apologetic, with a tendency toward interpretive biblical sophism. Christians of this type are typically concerned with a rational formulation of Christianity, one that engages the broader context of humane and scientific culture. By mystic Christianity or Christian mysticism I refer to traditions of contemplative and ascetic practice which are essentially gnostic, mystical or occult, with a biblical gloss. Insofar as mysticism is a methodology rather than a doctrine, its practice is in large measure independent of, or distinct from, cultural context. The emphasis is on interior psychological or spiritual states, with discursive ideation being considered of secondary importance. By ceremonial Christianity I mean to denote such forms of Christian worship as emphasise ritual and symbolism in the context of an overall aesthetic formalism. The elements, of course, are quite familiar, involving gothic cathedrals, robes and crowns, incense, processions and chanted liturgies – or, after another aesthetic, hymns and carols, Christmas trees and baby Jesus in a manger. Respectively, these four might be characterised as ideological, philosophical, psychological and aesthetic in orientation. I shall leave aside as irrelevant the question as to which category is represented by the various visible churches and religious institutions. In practice Christian congregations tend to be composite in nature, the distinguishing characteristics being a matter of emphasis. My essential point is this, that the said four types, separately or collectively, do not constitute authentic or biblical Christianity – that their connection to authentic Christianity is tangential at best. An alternative view is that they comprise the outer courts of Christianity, each reflecting certain of its attributes – form, meaning, affect and ornament – without possessing its essence. Yet a further view is that each of these comprises an interpretive stance, a rationale or reduction of the Christian faith in terms readily appreciated by ordinary human sensibilities. The biblical revelation, however, is not thus apprehended. Its apprehension is the function rather of a higher faculty, one essentially akin to intuition – that of faith. Indeed the question regarding the true nature of faith comprises the heart of this dissertation in that faith is revelation. The authentic – biblical – faith, that is. We are aware that communication can be problematic. Identical words trigger different association in different individuals. Preconceptions which we bring to a subject may entirely occlude its purport. Emotional incitement may distract us from appraising the words before us. We might obsess about incendiary words and phrases to the detriment of an actual reading. This is especially so when confronting so glamorised a subject as religion. Even with goodwill and determination, two minds may be so profoundly at odds on significant issues that an ostensible shared language appears to offer little basis for shared understanding. (An interesting theory, as an aside, is that all successful human communication is predicated on some form of mental telepathy, the accompanying words and gestures serving merely as confirmation or fine tuning of a shared informational gestalt.) On the opposite end of the spectrum is intimacy, the sense of profound shared meaning, often quite without effort and without the need for explanatory words. Not only is there emancipation from the need to explain, but a depth of shared meaning which may actually transcend the bounds of verbal conceptualisation. Our relationship to language in this situation is entirely different. No longer are words the necessary triggers of meaning, but words are assigned significance in a context of meaning already established. Language becomes exploratory and creative. Intimacy also is what characterises a relationship with the divine which is based on spiritual revelation. It denotes sympathy of wavelength, of resonance, of oneness with the inspirational fount of the mind of Christ, and is foundational alike to scriptural understanding as to extra-biblical revelation from the indicated source. In revelational Christianity we are cured by taking the spiritual medicine – not by merely affirming its efficacy or ‘having faith’ in its provenance. But what is the divine prescription? According to a central biblical tenet there is but one way of salvation – I am the way ... as was said of the Christ. Yet though Christ be indeed the way, aside from from essential congruities, what this means experientially will of course be unique for each individual. It is here, in the special circumstances of the individual soul, that we require the intimate communion of devine revelation so that the path might be disclosed in an experientially meaningful manner. Only thus do we proceed from a formulaic formalism to what has been called a path with a heart – the phrase, I believe, is Castaneda’s. Outside of this revelational intimacy a welter of differing interpretations is on offer, enshrined in doctrinal position statements that are the essence of antichrist. Indeed the very notion of biblical interpretation could only arise in the absence of divine revelation. Intimates do not require interpretive schools of thought to decode the words of the beloved. By way of illustration let us consider the married couple for which formal vows constitute the essence of marriage, having no idea whatever about consummation. Or let us consider the more general example of a soul-less marriage, centring on perfunctory adherence to some sagacious Manual Of Marital Relations, devoid of authentic self-expression as of real mutual appreciation. Such, in essence, is the nature of formal Christianity in relation to the divine; it is without cheer and sterile to effect the spiritual birth. Only spiritual intimacy of the kind described provides context for the imparting of such specific and nuanced information as constitutes the revelation of Christ to the individual soul. For it is the individuality of existential circumstances which makes apparent the insufficiency of formulaic prescriptions. A universal formula indeed applies, one universally extolled in evangelical circles, but its apprehension in practice is rarefied and rare. A problem cannot be solved with the mindset that is the cause of the problem. With this general principle, taken from Einstein’s treasure quotable quotes, we negate the efficacy of rational solutions to the human condition, among them that of religions reformed and reinvented. The point is this: If we can invent a religion, if it is a product of our operative mindset, what need have we of that religion in the first place? What power has such religion to emancipate, seeing there is no ingress of any significant new information? This is not to deny that reform has benefited the Western tradition by disposing of earlier religious contrivance, notably that of the Roman papacy. Let us therefore take the axe to ecclesiastic tradition by all means. But with respect to the prophetic legacy this is Frankensteinian mad-scientist hubris. The corrective in such a case might be an unencumbered analytical pragmatism such as the Dynamic Paradoxicalism of Jonathan Zap. As an analytical tool, however, it does not create new information. As the anti-ism ism it is – like Zen, a philosophy without doctrine – better understood as a path of insight. What it tells us is that everything must be evaluated on its own terms. Of itself it cannot produce the answer we seek, but it may help us to discern the problem in the clearest possible light, which is great gain. In occult terminology, it brings us to the edge of the Abyss; it does not take us across. Paramita – crossing to the other shore – is accomplished by recognising that essence of ourselves which resides on the other shore, and thus identifying therewith. This is a function of intuitive insight, of revelation or disclosure (as of the mind of Christ). We need information that emanates from the other shore – from the Cabalistic Neshamah, the intuitive realm – in that the Abyss is vanquished from above. Specifically we are speaking of that which cannot be thought or imagined by the human mind in its unenlightened state – something which cannot be formulated in the context of culturally inherited linguistic space. Elsewhere I remarked that the function of preparatory initiation is to establish context – context for information which would be unrecognisable or meaningless to the unprepared mind. For this information to materialise, there must first be a metamorphosis of the underlying intuitive space, the preconceptual field or matrix wherein arises concrete thought, such as the rational mind can recognise. In other words, there must be a quickening of the matrix for the word to become flesh: the word – specified information which was not previously part of the mental inventory. Such, I suggest, is the new mythos sought of Lampi, Zap and HK: not a mythos rationally contrived, but one disclosed through access to more inclusive realms of information – realms which, according to certain traditions, pertain to inherent, though largely dormant, faculties of the human soul. I am reminded in this context of a DVD by Jonathan Zap, A Logos Beheld. While I have not seen it and thus cannot vouch for its content, the title expresses the idea, namely that of the experiential – if you will, the gnostic – essence of spiritual revelation. |