Commentary on Acts & Simon Magus

http://www.academia.edu/7153515/Commentary_on_Acts_of_the_Apostles_Parts_I._and_II._

Is Platonism an Existentialism?

Edward Moore, S.T.L., PhD

(c) 2014

I.

Plato is very well aware of how much capacity there is in the human soul for inner conflict, for ill health and misery. Reason, the drive or need to reach the truth of the forms and the Idea of the Good, comes into conflict with the bodily appetites, since human nature desires knowledge of the forms but also struggles against this knowledge.

~ T. Z. Lavine

The attempt to define any '-ism' (especially in philosophy) is, at best, misguided; at worst, it is just plain foolish. Since I have been caught up in quite a bit of foolishness lately, I thought: Why not compare two seemingly opposed philosophies, and see if there is a common ground, or perhaps even a fundamental identity (at least on a certain key point)?

The soul in conflict with itself: this theme runs not only through philosophy since Socrates and Plato, but also through Christianity, especially in St. Paul's famous statement in Romans 7:23, where he writes: "I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members." The term Paul uses, translated in the KJV as "warring against," is antistrateimai, which means precisely to enter into combat, or engage in conflict. In this case, the conflict is occurring in Paul's soul, which he metaphorically calls his "members" (melos, emphasizing the often non-intellectual manner of this conflict; when I am emotionally hurt, the pain is literal -- I lose appetite, feel nausea, and extreme physical discomfort in all my limbs. In this section of Romans we have a central theme of existentialism: existence preceding essence. For Paul states that he did not know sin before he was taught the law, and therefore, his existence preceded the essential truth (as he believed) of the law received by Moses from God Himself.

Plato is less obviously existentialist; in fact, I am unaware of anyone ever labelling him such. His belief in eternal Forms that are the essences, so to speak, of all existing things here in the realm of matter, rather precludes any existential motifs in his writings. However, if we look closely as some of the myths in certain dialogues, such as the Phaedrus, we find psychic conflict. The charioteer who cannot control the horse that represents the physical passions or appetites loses control, plunges to earth, and is encased in matter (flesh), and becomes a less-than-divine being. In the better-known allegory of the cave, we find the philosopher, after exiting the cave of ignorance and entering the light of reason, stumbling about like a man drunk, or confused -- blinded by the light of the 'real' world. Surely, in this uncomfortable state, a desire to rejoin his fellows in the cave is a temptation, albeit a fleeting one. Yet unless the philosopher is a saint, some conflict must occur. The true philosopher, of course, will (ideally) embrace reason, no matter how disconcerting or disjointing it may seem at first. But the human person, who desires a concrete love, and a set of morals and ethics that may be witnessed 'at work' in this life, well ...

Plato divided the soul of the human being into three parts: (1) the rational part, (2) the "spirited" or emotional part, and (3) the base part containing the bodily appetites. It is, according to Plato, the role of the rational part to control the other two; but in the myth of the charioteer, we find that this is exceedingly difficult, if not impossible: the soul in conflict with itself is a theme that runs through Platonic ethics and metaphysics, especially among Plato's successors in the Old Academy.

However, even before his nephew Speusippus took over as headmaster after Plato's death, we find in the so-called Unwritten Doctrines of Plato[1] a metaphysical schema that involves conflict at the highest level. The first principle of the universe, called the One, was said to exist eternally alongside an opposed principle called the Indefinite Dyad. It was the role of the One to impose order and limit on this unruly principle which, if left unchecked, would have made the generation of a rational, intelligible cosmos impossible.[2] At this metaphysical level, it is hard to imagine, anthropomorphically, the One trying desperately to explain to the (feminine) Dyad that everything will work out if only she follows his lead. Instead, Plato invoked mathematics, with the union of the One with the Dyad as constitutive of the entire number sequence out of which the noetic cosmos was constructed. These numbers were called by Plato eidetic, or of the realm of ideas. Physical reality, the realm of matter (which we know all too well) was brought into existence through the mediation of a World-Soul, or Demiurge, who somehow translated these numbers into the solid masses out of which our world -- and selves -- is constructed. So far, there is nothing of the existential about all of this mystical philosophico-religiosity. However ...

The second successor of Plato, in the Academy (after his nephew Speusippus), was a fellow named Xenocrates; this creative and anthropomorphizing thinker dubbed the One "Father" and the Dyad "Mother," the latter being nothing less than unruly, pre-existent matter itself. We may think, by mingling traditions and genres, of the "abyss" in Genesis 1:2, over which the spirit of God moved. The One, according to Xenocrates, dealt with this "evil and unruly" Mother (Dyad) by dividing the cosmos into two sections: the realm above the moon, where rational entities dwell (ruled over by the One himself), and the realm below, where is to be found all manner of change and corruption (wherein that scarlet-lipped lady Dyad is allowed to run wild). We have evidence, albeit fragmentary and scanty, that Xenocrates divided humanity into two types: Olympian and Titan. The former are closely connected with the rational, ordering power of the One, the latter with the unpredicatable and otherwise aggravatingly flighty Dyad.[3] We may, I suppose, call this a 'trickle-down effect': the conflict at the level of the highest entities (and Xenocrates seems to have identified the One with Mind) affects all other beings, from the noblest intellects to the most loin-obsessed predators of the sublunar realm. It was, according to Xenocrates, the task of the World-Soul, or Demiurge, to strike a balance, to mediate between these two extremes, and thereby create a human life in which existence is the key to unlocking the mysteries of the cosmos.

II.

Descriptions of concrete behavior must ... be envisaged within the perspective of conflict. ... Conflict is the original meaning of being-for-others.

~ Jean-Paul Sartre

My existence does indeed precede my essence. I find myself alone in this world, desperately seeking something to which to cling for meaning, solace, the indefinable sense of purpose that love brings ... I find myself wanting desperately to believe in the warm embrace of God, but as Sartre put it so well: "The existentialist ... finds it extremely embarrassing that God does not exist, for there disappears with Him all possibility of finding values in an intelligible heaven." Aesthetic splendor, whether of the Roman Catholic Church or of Nature, does not move me nearly as much as the reciprocation of clumsily expressed emotion. ... (I should have typed 'love' -- I just did.)

Lord Byron, in his Stanzas to Augusta, summed up perfectly the manner in which a woman's love lifts a man above his degraded state as a self-serving, self-involved existent, and transforms him into a fully aware, self-giving Person. "Thy soft heart refused to discover / The faults which so many could find" [if only!] ... (and later):

In the Desert a fountain is springing,

In the wide waste there still is a tree,

And a bird in the solitude singing,

Which speaks to my spirit of Thee.

Transformative Love is at the heart of Plato's metaphysics, as it is of Byron's best poetry. Let us recall the Symposium. Diotima instructs Socrates that the lust for a beautiful body is the first step or stage in an ascent to the highest of loves: "the knowledge of Universal Beauty." In there here-and-now, the brute moments of my absurd existence, beauty shows itself intermittently, and tantalizes with the promise of something more. That promise is rarely -- in my case never -- fulfilled. Some enjoy love of spouse, and build a life on that hylic foundation. So much the better for them. But what of the idealist, who also happens to be an existentialist? A walking, seething, frothing, smoke-blowing tangle of contradictions and paradoxes, yet knowing one thing: "Love never fails" (1 Corinthians 13:8).

The greatest problem one faces -- whether one is a Platonic idealist, a Christian, an atheist existentialist, or some stinking stew concocted of leftovers from them all -- is the unpredictability of the other. Yes, we know that Sartre had a character in his play No Exit declare "Hell is other people." That line has been over-quoted, and misunderstood. In the play, three people, a man and two women (one of whom is a lesbian) have been sent to "hell," yet there are no demons or torture racks, only sofas in a brightly lit room. There the three of them will spend eternity together, tormenting each other by the unavoidability of their presence.

Hell is certainly not the persons with whom I seek relations, not the persons with whom I would like to share some essential ingredients of my over-simmered stew of self, and discover new and inspiring ways to engage with the world. Hell is the indifference and self-centeredness (not necessarily selfishness -- two different concepts) of certain persons that draw us to them, only to close and retreat and prosper in their own self-constituted realm -- like the Platonic One. Meanwhile, the unruly Dyad sets things into motion that should never have been ...

III.

So is Platonism an existentialism ... of sorts? If we define Platonism as the philosophical doctrine of intellectual idealism, that all existing things derive from thoughts in the mind of the highest entity, beyond even essence, then there is no connection. However, if we see the conflict at work in Platonism, the beginning of all things in an overdose of power, however benign, that sets in motion human desires ... well, perhaps were are on to something.

If we define existentialism as the philosophy which insists that existence precedes essence, that life is absurd, and the only meaning we are capable of 'finding' is that which we craft for ourselves ... well, perhaps we are seeing ourselves as the Demiurge (our own personal, semi-solipsistic 'World-Soul'), albeit in a state of confusion, flux, disappointment, and sometimes even sheer terror at what this world offers and -- even more terrifying! -- what this world denies us.

Well, we are on to something.

The seventeenth century poet William Cartwright wrote a fine poem entitled No Platonic Love. Anti-idealism, of course, is the self-antidote for frustrated idealism, which is the source of the pathos of Cartwright's poem. He wrote:

Tell me no more of minds embracing minds,

And hearts exchang'd for hearts;

That two unembodied essences may kiss,

And then like Angels, twist and feel one Bliss.

[...]

Come, I will undeceive thee, they that tread

Those vain aerial ways,

Are like young heirs and alchemists misled

To waste their wealth and days,

For searching thus to be for ever rich,

They only find a med'cine for the itch.

Notes:

1. These were, apparently, lectures Plato gave to his inner circle of gifted students. There was also an infamous public lecture he gave, "On the Good," which disappointed the common folk, who were expecting a lecture on how to lead a prosperous life. What they got instead was a lecture on mathematics! (See: http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/4182081?uid=2&uid=4&sid=21104147089153

2. See Edward Moore (2005), "Middle Platonism," in The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: http://www.iep.utm.edu/midplato/

3. Ibid.

Paradox II. (Concerning Gnostics, some Neoplatonists, and the general misery of life)

Edward Moore, S.T.L., PhD (c) 2014

I.

[T]he Valentinian Gnostics] say that some [people] are by nature good, and others by nature evil. The good are those who become capable of receiving the [spiritual] seed; the evil by nature are those who are never able to receive that seed.

. ~ Irenaeus of Lyons

Pessimism versus optimism: that old and cliched debate that pops up during dinner conversations as well as in freshman philosophy classes, even at bus stops and in supermarkets (as I can attest from personal experience). Is suffering the norm? Pleasure a mere accident? Or is this world -- and the persons in it -- inherently good, with 'evil' or badness being a relatively rare aberration? Or is evil an active force, something never to be eradicated -- unless one believes in divine intervention at some indeterminate future date?

Ancient Neoplatonists, like Proclus in the fifth century CE, insisted that all fully existing things (including humans) are essentially good (kalos), and that evil (kakos) is the absence of good (born of ignorance or lack of contemplation), and is not in itself a substance, but a non-entity, a lack of true being.[1] St. Augustine, in his Enchiridion, wasn't very far from Proclus when he declared that "the only cause of evil is the falling away from the unchangeable good of a being made good but changeable, first in the case of an angel, and afterwards in the case of man" (ch. 23). Of course, the main difference between the 'pagan' philosopher and the Christian theologian was the doctrine of "original sin." Augustine continued to explain the presence of evil, stating in chapter 27 that, after the fall of Adam and Eve, the "whole mass of the human race was under condemnation, was lying steeped and wallowing in misery, and was being tossed from one form of evil to another, and, having joined the faction of the fallen angels, was paying the well-merited penalty of that impious rebellion."[2] The position of Proclus did not make much of personal responsibility for the persistence of evil; it was, for him -- as for most Middle and Neo-Platonists -- a metaphysical or ontological condition of the material cosmos, unavoidable but controllable, through the exercise of philosophical virtue: theoria, hesukhazo,etc. Augustine, however, and the mainstream Christian tradition in general, placed the responsibility for purging this world of evil squarely on the shoulders of humanity, who were and are free to accept the grace of God through Christ. It was the loss of goodness on the part of humanity, through the misuse of free will,[3] that brought about evil; and according to Platonizing theologians like Origen and St. Gregory of Nyssa, evil is a temporary condition, to be rectified in the eskhaton, the "end of days."

Later in the Christian Platonic tradition, St. Maximus the Confessor viewed the entire cosmos as having fallen into moral decay, and called upon enlightened persons to act as stewards of the cosmos, engaging with all living things -- animals and plants included -- for the purpose of deifying this fallen world.[4]

[T]he soul is a middle being between God and matter and has powers that can unite it with both, that is, it has a mind that links it with God and senses that link it with matter. (Maximus, Ambiguum 10, 1193D, tr. L. Thunberg)

The cosmic dimensions of Maximus' theology can be traced back to Origen and, to an extent, to St. Gregory of Nyssa, whose crypto-Origenism is expressed in this passage from his treatise On the Soul and the Resurrection: "We shall be like God so far that we shall always contemplate the Beautiful in Him. ... God will thus be 'all in all'; yet the loved one’s form will then be woven, though into a more ethereal texture, of the same elements as before."[5]

Maximus, as I have shown in previous writings, took this theosis doctrine (deification or divinization of the human soul) to a nearly Monophysite extreme. Maximus wrote, in his Chapters on Knowledge (2.88), that in salvation "only God shines forth through the body and soul when their natural features are transcended in overwhelming glory."[6] Such extreme Platonic mysticism, finding a home deep within the confines of the most elaborate and philosophically astute Christian theology ever developed (I refrain from discussing Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite here, only because he is relatively well-known), may seem strange -- even offensive -- to some devout Christians; to others, it may seem like a glorious melding of two noble traditions. Either way, the question remains: Does it make any existential sense?

The Gnostics of the first few centuries of the Christian era were, in my view, more clear-sighted in their judgment of, and attitudes towards, their fellow human beings and their ultimate destiny. Anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear cannot, in good faith, deny that this world is primarily a place of suffering. We are relieved occasionally by snatches of beauty, whether in nature or in art; we are given solace through love which, alas!, often ends in heartbreak; we find comfort in some notion of legacy, be it through offspring or our life's work (be it what it may) ... Yet the absurdity of existence often falls upon me, not like a hammer-blow, but like a soft shroud inviting sleep.

Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate,

That Time will come and take my love away.

This thought is as a death, which cannot choose

But weep to have that which it fears to lose.

~ Shakespeare

II.

 

Hear the cry of the ... mother at the hour of giving birth, see the struggle of the dying at the last moment: and say then whether that which begins and that which ends like this can be designed for pleasure.

~ Kierkegaard

One of my favorite analogies for human life is that given by some anonymous Anglo-Saxon bard, or scop, from the seventh or eighth century CE. That singer of poetry, and obviously no mean philosopher, likened our life to the flight of a sparrow through a mead hall on a dark and blustery night. The bird entered the hall at one window, experienced a brief moment of light and warmth, and then exited by the other window, out again into the wild and windy loneliness.

Blaise Pascal likened our existence to that of prisoners changed in a dungeon. Each day one of the group was taken away, never to return. The prisoners spent the remainder of the day wondering who would be next. And so it went ... The life of humanity.

Speculation about our origins excites the minds of the curious, and has given rise to many branches of science that have deepened life's mysteries, given us fodder for thought, as it were, and caused a humanism to emerge (this going back, of course, to the Renaissance) that is not only analytical and empirical, but also aesthetic, emotional, and constitutive of an authentically moral life. By that I mean a life based not on fear of divine retribution as an impetus to 'goodness' or 'virtue'; rather, a life based on appreciation of the accomplishments of our fellows, and the splendor that 'mere humanity' has brought into this world. Yet the more splendor we produce, the more anxiety we feel over the inevitable end of our species. As I write this, I am listening to Beethoven's Missa solemnis. It is inconceivable, to me, when I hear the Agnus Dei prepare the sonic space for the sublimity of the Dona nobis pacem, that such glory will ever pass from the earth.

Yet all I see around me is moral and intellectual decay -- or worse, indifference. By this I do not mean licentiousness, perversion, promiscuity, greed, etc. ... These vices have been with us since the beginning, and aren't going anywhere any time soon. What I am referring to is the lack of deep insight, the routing of curiosity in favor of the speedy attainment of dubious status. Morality, properly speaking, is the manner in which we engage with the contents of our minds. Are we delving into those roiling depths, trekking into those dark corners where our personality deposits difficult or uncomfortable noemata? If the answer is no, then we cannot claim to be a moral being. If we follow the ancient dictum of the philosophers, "know thyself," then we are on the track of morality. If this impulse to self-knowledge arises in the dark cell of our inwardness, even our loneliness and lack of love, then the value -- I believe! -- is incalculable. For some people, of course, an external compulsion is required: religion, family, a sense of duty to community. Then we have entered the realm of ethics. The paradox is this: It is possible to be an ethical person (aiding one's community, caring for family, friends, being a good spouse, a reliable employee, etc.) and yet be morally bankrupt. I think this is what the Gnostics had in mind when they divided humanity into three types: the "spirituals" (pneumatikoi), the (literally) "soulish" (psukhikoi), and finally the "materials" (hulikoi). The first are those, I believe (when we sufficiently de-mythologize the Gnostics' mytho-poetical style of philosophy), who have understood both the splendor of their minds and the residue of inhumanity that must be scraped away by insight and self-discipline; the second are those who live outwardly, ignoring the base instincts and unworthy appetites that distract one from the intellectual life, yet are still concerned about their reputation, and perhaps even get an inkling of authentic existence through the salvific experience of love; the third group, however, are the ones beyond hope: they react without thinking, insight is foreign to them, and even mocked -- violence, aggressive sex, mind-altering substances, and the acquisition of material wealth is all they live for, and desire no more.

The uncomfortable truth, however, is that we, each of us, contain something of these three types, no matter how intellectual, moral, and ethical we may be. This is why Plato, in the Republic, refers to the human being as a "tripartite beast": the intellectual part of us is the true human being, the passionate part is called a lion, and the part of us that generates the various base appetites he calls a dragon. It is the role of reason, according to Plato, to force a balance between these parts of the soul, and thereby form a well-rounded, moral and ethical person. The Gnostics took the individual "soul in conflict with itself" and transferred it to the mass of humanity, dividing the human world into three distinct types. Who was right?

These reflections make me think of a poem of Yeats, especially the lines: "The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity." This statement applies to all times and to all peoples. Never was there a time, not even fifth-century Athens, when the life of the intellect was given primacy. Art has flourished more vigorously in some ages than others, and even the so-called Dark Ages weren't entirely devoid of the light of learning. But as high as we climb, in what Spengler called our "Faustian spirit," we only end up leaving, as a legacy, monuments "besmear'd by sluttish time." We enter this world in a burst of pain and blood, and leave it (if we are fortunate enough to die 'naturally') a dessicated rind of our self. No amount of self-deprecation, no physicist or evolutionary biologist telling us that we are energy and mass that just happened, one day, to start thinking, no irritating optimist encouraging us to admire a sunrise, can take away the sense that human life begins and ends in meaninglessness and despair. And we would not despair if there was not something, deep inside of us, that knows, with the power not of mind but of emotion, that we are meant for more. Therefore, I disagree with Horace Walpole, who famously said: "The world is a comedy to those that think; a tragedy to those that feel." It is quite the opposite. The tragedy of life is that too few people think, but rather laugh as they prostitute their minds to the paltry grub of this mutilated world.

III.

All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,

And to die is different from what any one supposed,

And luckier.

~ Walt Whitman

It would be an example of ill-breeding, I suppose, to end this little essay of mine on a bitterly pessimistic note. Whitman was a poet with a rare gift: he was able to compose lines that suggested loftiness and a celebration of the human experience, yet a closer look sometimes betrays a severely embattled person, struggling to "wring lilies from the acorn." Beauty surprises, beckons, inspires, and sometimes even saves. Occasionally it scorns and transforms, like the demoness in Keats's Lamia. Whitman sought beauty in himself, and by so doing, took his personal journey, literally, to the front lines of terrible conflict. Perhaps that was his salvation. Speaking of salvation ...

St. Clement of Alexandria, who defined the "Gnostic" as one having insight into him- or herself, and into creation in general, through deep contemplation of God's teachings (not to be confused with the Gnostics of whom I have been writing in the first two sections of this essay), taught an acceptance of the natural order of things as primarily pedagogical. He wrote, in his Stromateis:

[T]hough disease, and accident, and what is most terrible of all, death, come upon the Gnostic, he remains inflexible in soul,—knowing that all such things are a necessity of creation, and that, also by the power of God, they become the medicine of salvation, benefiting by discipline those who are difficult to reform; allotted according to desert, by Providence, which is truly good. (Clement, Stromateis, VI.11 [ANF volume 2])

Clement was, to my knowledge, the first Christian theologian to refer to Plato and other virtuous 'pagans' as "Christians before Christ." Natural revelation, as St. Paul discussed, is the idea that certain people have the law inscribed in their hearts due to some inclination towards peace, beauty, and love, that cannot be accounted for by nature or nurture ...

Such people possess artistic souls, for whom love is the highest attainment in this life, and beauty its greatest expression. The greatest artists are the greatest lovers. And the greatest philosophers are the ones who wonder why that is so.

Notes:

1. See his Treatise on the Subsistence of Evil. [Surviving only in a mediaeval Latin translation which is itself an Arabic translation from the Greek original. -- EM] Translated T. Taylor, in Proclus: Ten Doubts Concerning Providence, and On the Subsistence of Evil (Ares Publishers 1980).

2. Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers (ed. Philip Schaff) [hereafter abbreviated NPNF] series 1, volume 3.

3. As St. Gregory of Nyssa neatly summarizes in his Great Catechism: "Moral beauty was to be the direction in which his [man's] free will was to move; but then he was deceived, to his ruin, by an illusion of that beauty" (from his Summary of Chapters XXI., XXII., XXIII [NPNF, series 2, volume 5]).

4. See Edward Moore (2004), "The Christian Neoplatonism of St. Maximus the Confessor" (in Quodlibet: http://www.quodlibet.net/articles/moore-maximus.shtml).

5. Gregory of Nyssa, On the Soul and the Resurrection, "Argument" [NPNF, series 2, volume 5]. Cp. Origen, De Principiis, III.6.1 ff., in Ante-Nicene Fathers (ed. Schaff) [hereafter ANF] volume 4.

6. Translated Berthold. Cf. Moore (2004), op. cit.

Paradox I.

Edward Moore, S.T.L., PhD (c) 2014

No one is interested in beings who are perfectly happy.

~ Chateaubriand

The smiles that win, the tints that glow,

But tell of days in goodness spent,

A mind at peace with all below,

A heart whose love is innocent!

~ Lord Byron

There is secular art, and there is religious art. In both, the most moving examples are those that depict extremes of suffering, of tragedy, even of death. Edgar All Poe remarked that there is no theme more fitting for poetry than the death of a beautiful woman. The tragic downfall of beauty is, indeed, the stuff of great poetry. Witness Milton's Paradise Lost, with the transformation of defiant, heroic Satan from a fearless (and many say sympathetic) general of a diabolical army into, finally -- a toad and a serpent. And in the works of Shakespeare, the self-destruction of Hamlet (which occurs long before the hit with the poisoned sword) and the cruelty suffered by doddering King Lear, from his own daughters, affects us far more profoundly than the (to me) largely obsolete comedies. In religious art, both literary and visual, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," by Jonathan Edwards, makes for provocative reading, regardless of one's faith or lack thereof. Gruenewald's painting of the Crucifixion, described by J-K Huysmans, in his novel La-Bas, as depicting a "God of the morgue," transfixes the eye of the modern observer in a way that the triumphant Adonis Christs of the late Middle Ages do not. And for a literary example from the relatively recent past, the twenty-first chapter of A Clockwork Orange, by the late Anthony Burgess, which provided a "happy ending" to the unrelieved violence and psychopathy of Alex, made the novel fall flat, and so was omitted from the first published editions, as well as from Kubrick's film.[1] Why the fascination with the unhappy ending, or at least with the imperfectly resolved ending?

(Matthias Gruenewald, The Crucifixion, 1525)

Aristotle, in his Poetics, explained that such works (he was writing specifically of tragedy) serve a cathartic role in our lives, permitting us to purge ourselves of our own violent or anti-social tendencies by watching them played out by others on the stage, in works so powerful it is easy to forget they are fiction. The famous -- or infamous -- sermon by Jonathan Edwards, however, was given in earnest, and caused such an outburst of negative reaction in his congregation that he was, eventually, sent off as a missionary to the Mohicans.[2] Religious art -- and I use that term very loosely, for the majority of religious art is intended to be instructional, certainly not 'art for art's sake' -- is not intended solely to purge us of sinful tendencies by depicting their horrific consequences (as in the works of Hieronymus Bosch, for example) but also to raise up the spiritual part of our intellect to spaces beyond the mundane, and unite us, in imagination, with certain aspects of divine reality that are not readily apparent in nature. Or, sometimes, to remind us that the erotic is never far from our thoughts, even at their most lofty.[3]

(Fra Angelico, 'Noli Me Tangere',1445?)

In Christian history we find many equivocal attitudes towards art, ranging from ancient Iconoclasm (which sprang up once again among the more zealous of the so-called Reformers, and is by no means extinct today) to demands that a Christian art must depict only -- and with literal accuracy -- scenes taken directly from scripture (usually the New Testament). Allegory was sometimes frowned upon, in later times, but never banished entirely. Some of the more enlightened and humanistic Christians of recent times, like the Dominican friar Marie-Alain Couturier (1897-1954), did not even demand that a creator of Christian art be a Christian. He said that "all great art is spiritual since the genius of the artist lies in the depths, the secret inner being from whence faith also springs." An atheist in touch with both self and other (the latter meant in the expansive sense of all that one sees in the world: people, animals, trees and flowers, etc.) is more than capable of having a faith, albeit one that does not require a personal God -- nor even an impersonal, clockmaker God, as in Deism. Rather, the faith of the atheist is in the future, which is, as Keats said of joy, ever bidding us adieu.

This is not to say that the faith of the atheist is merely a faith in an eventual utter dissolution, in which the exhausted human mind may finally rest in oblivion. I believe that the future will someday arrive, as a new 'way of things,' so to speak ... And as Faulkner stated in his Nobel Prize speech, we human beings are not meant simply to endure -- for we all are capable of endurance, as anyone who has been sorely tried by sickness, addiction, loss of freedom, loss of love, knows all too well -- but we are meant to prevail. I am not sure over what, exactly. Perhaps over the limitations of our own intellect, morals, ethics ... the things we possess, partially tapped, that are capable of ushering in (metaphorically) the Kingdom of God, as Christ so often declared in the Gospels (see, for example, Luke 17:21: "behold, the kingdom of God is within you"). Faulkner called upon us not to chatter away pointlessly and heedlessly until the end of time, but to overcome the debilitating fear that makes us less than human -- indeed, the fear that makes us animalistic, the fear or anxiety discussed by Kierkegaard, which is purely subjective (not fear for the human race as a whole): the fear that our life amounts, in the end, to nothing.

Admittedly -- and it pains me to write this -- philosophy has little to offer as antidote to this existential despair. Jean-Paul Sartre had great difficulty founding an atheist existentialist ethic, although he did allude, in a footnote at the end of Part III of Being and Nothingness, to some sort of "radical conversion" that will bring about "deliverance and salvation," but he never discussed it. It is doubtful that he had Kierkegaard's "leap of faith" in mind, for we know he chose Marxist communism instead. Richard Rorty, in Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, described philosophy as "the ongoing conversation of Western Civilization." But to what end? Somehow I am reminded here of Lord Dunsany's haunting vignette Charon, in which the last words of the last man to be rowed across Styx to the land of the dead are simply "I am the last." And then, Dunsany writes: "No one had ever made Charon smile before, no one before had ever made him weep."

Being-toward-death was one of Martin Heidegger's main themes, for he saw death as the most unique, personal potentiality of the human being, something no one else can suffer. The acceptance of death, argued Heidegger, frees us from its terror, relieves us of the anxiety attendant upon thoughts of our demise, and frees us up to become who and what we authentically are. I found this, upon my first reading of Heidegger (so many years ago), to be ridiculous (and still do); the fear of death is a product of our evolution, a guarantor of at least temporary survival in a hostile world. Being-for-others, as Christian existentialists and personalists both secular and religious, would have it, is certainly a more humane and, ultimately, a more dynamic and creative manner of engaging with the world. At the very least, it permits us to love. And we can only truly love that which always, however partially, eludes our grasp.

(Ingres, The Virgin Adoring the Host, 1862)

My heart is like a rainbow shell

That paddles in a halcyon sea;

My heart is gladder than all of these,

Because my love is come to me.

~ Christina Rossetti, A Birthday

Notes:

1. Examples may be multiplied, almost indefinitely. But to mention one more (one of my favorites): Emily Bronte's masterpiece Wuthering Heights -- What are we to make of those two bodies sharing a single soul, Heathcliff and Catherine?

2. While the sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" (preached July 8, 1741) was not directly responsible for his eventual banishment from his congregation, its nightmarish message surely set the tone for discontent. Barely six years later, after cohabitating with a slave-girl named "Venus," Edwards was finally sent off to the Mohicans, by the common consent of his flock.

3. See, for example, Fra Angelico's 'Noli Me Tangere' (1441), or the sublimely beautiful virgin Mary of Ingres. In the literary sphere, one will note the masturbation scene before a statue of the virgin in Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose.

On Atheism, Morals, and Education

Edward Moore (c) 2014

St. Elias Seminary and Graduate School (http://www.steliasseminary.org/)

patristics@gmail.com

In his book Atheism, Morality, and Meaning (New York: Prometheus Books 2002), Michael Martin mentions a study by Gorusch and Aleshire showing that the countries of Western Europe and Scandinavia, where less than 50 percent of the population profess a belief in God, have a significantly lower homicide rate than the United States, where nearly 90 percent of the population profess a belief (p. 29). As Martin states, this should give theists pause. His arguments are in-depth and lucid, but I think the reason for the readiness to declare oneself a believer in this country is due far more to cultural pressure and backwardness than to any authentic, personal conviction. Indeed, religious education -- and ALL education, for that matter -- is, in the United States, of the most appallingly superficial kind.

How many run-of-the-mill American 'Christians,' of any denonimation (or 'non-denomination') are capable of giving an account of the great Trinitarian debates of the early centuries and the impact these debates had on attitudes towards the individual person and his or her autonomy, dignity, and divine eikon and homoiosis (Gen 1:26 LXX)? How many have studied, in any depth, the history, languages, and theological development of their faith? I am not talking about Sunday school or basic catechism, but rather an objective, academic examination of the philosophical basis of the faith, in the manner of St. Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and even Tatian (in his own way), among many others. These early Fathers, by defending the faith, were forced to don the robes of the philosophers, following St. Paul when he visited the Areopagus and quoted from Cleanthes the Stoic, stating "in him we live, and move, and have our being" (Acts 17:28) -- this being a direct quote from that 'pagan' philosopher's Hymn to Zeus. As I have stated before, the world -- and by extension our faith -- is a far more difficult and complex matter than most would admit, or wish it to be. And there is the rub. The myth of a primitive, simple Christianity (fostered by the various 'bible' churches that can be found in nearly every city, town, and hamlet in the country) have done much damage. The early church was divided, riddled with debate, and productive of the various approaches to Christ and His revelation that were later to be labelled 'heresies'.

The Gnostics, for example (of which there were many types; so many, in fact, that the term has become saturated and all but useless) have been described as the rationalists among the early Christians. Philip Schaff wrote of Gnosticism that it was "the Rationalism of the ancient church; it pervaded the intellectual atmosphere, and stimulated the development of catholic theology by opposition" (History of the Christian Church, in e-Sword Reference Library: www.e-sword.net 2013). In my own works on the subject (including a major article written with John D. Turner for The Cambridge History of Philosophy in Late Antiquity) I have demonstrated how the various schools dubbed 'Gnostic' were of two main types: radical re-interpreters of Jewish scripture, and Middle or Neo-Platonists who felt a strong emotional and intellectual connection to emerging Christianity.

I made this brief digression simply to point out the wide variety of areas into which Christians need to delve for a full understanding of their faith. Why, some may ask, do I need to know all these things, when St. Paul preached only Christ crucified? Well, the death of a divinity (which is an ancient motif going back to prehistoric times [cf. Frazer's Golden Bough, which is still largely relevant]), and is not unique, in and of itself, to Christianity. One need only recall the drama of Osiris and Set, and the former's salvation by Isis; and as for crucifixion, the hanging of Odin on the tree of Yggdrasil. There is a very good reason why the Fathers labored so many points concerning Christ's dual nature, and the deeper -- indeed deepest -- meaning of His death. The unity of the Trinity, as exposited by some of our best contemporary theologians (many of them Orthodox), shows that the substance (ousia) of the Trinity is 'communion,' a unity of Love between three unique but united Persons. As the Orthodox theologian John D. Zizioulas has put it, "the substance of God, ‘God’, has no ontological content, no true being, apart from communion ... it is communion which makes beings‘be’; nothing exists without it, not even God" (Being as Communion, Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press 1993). We may view this as a trope for the ethical and moral expectations of thinking human persons (of which there are precious few), theist or atheist (and as Martin has shown in his book, a "nonobjective morality" is possible for an atheist), or as a truly divine mystery, unknowable in the present life.

I have often considered, in a rather Eunomian manner, this unknowability doctrine to be an excuse for intellectual laxity. [Eunomius believed that we are capable of knowing God as well as He knows Himself, according to Socrates, Church History IV.7.] So to return to my original point, regarding the excess of violent crime in our country, compared to Western Europe and Scandinavia, I will state boldly that a lack of intellectual curiosity leads one down a dangerous path of indifference to the accomplishments of humanity, and the greatness of the greatest among us, past and present. As H. L. Mencken once wrote:

If the average man is made in God's image, then a man such as Beethoven or Aristotle is plainly superior to God, and so God may be jealous of him, and eager to see his superiority perish with his bodily frame. All animal breeders know how difficult it is to maintain a fine strain. The universe seems to be in a conspiracy to encourage the endless reproduction of peasants and Socialists, but a subtle and mysterious opposition stands eternally against the reproduction of philosophers. In Defense of Women (1922, 106-107)

Indeed, the prevalence of medications for children with various 'disorders' like ADHD (and many forget that what is called 'hyper-activity' is in fact part of the natural mental growth-process of a child, especially between the crucial ages of two to seven) leads to intellectual dullness, if not outright torpor and dazed stupidity in later life -- something I witness daily in the degenerate city in which I am forced by present circumstance to dwell. Stupidity is the result of a lack of intellectual curiosity; this lack leads to indifference to others, and makes crime 'no biggy.' A teenager who prefers various types of sublimated aggression to the quest for mental growth will not necessarily become a criminal -- but he or she will become (whether Christian, atheist, or other) what H. P. Lovecraft called "a piece of flesh without intellect, a walking abortion." Education, at both the religious and secular levels, is the antidote for this disease of the mind.

Some Thoughts About Nothing

Others take the view expressed by Plato, that giant among the Greeks. He said that God had made all things out of pre-existent and uncreated matter, just as the carpenter makes things only out of wood that already exists. But those who hold this view do not realize that to deny that God is Himself the Cause of matter is to impute limitation to Him, just as it is undoubtedly a limitation on the part of the carpenter that he can make nothing unless he has the wood. How could God be called Maker and Artificer if His ability to make depended on some other cause, namely on matter itself? If He only worked up existing matter and did not Himself bring matter into being, He would be not the Creator but only a craftsman.

~ St. Athanasius, On the Incarnation, I.2

Since the Roman Catholic Church celebrates St. Athanasius today, I find myself musing on the implications of his critique of Plato, and am both fascinated and troubled by the metaphysical problem of creatio ex nihilo versus a "crafting" of our universe (and selves) from some pre-existent "stuff."

In his book A Universe from Nothing (New York: Free Press, 2012), astrophysicist Lawrence M. Krauss explores the implications of particle physics, the fabric of the observable universe, and how this fabric adds up to "nothing." In short, the universe that we observe (according to Krauss) was generated from non-observable "stuff" -- in short, "nothing." I have no intention of entering into an explanation of the deep science of this book; however, as some may recall, Martin Heidegger, in What is Metaphysics?, engaged the perennially troubling question: "Why are there beings (or being) rather than nothing?"

Those who place their feet firmly on the ground of this earth, and take comfort in the solidity of life, often create for themselves a mini-empire of self, and seek for nothing beyond their immediate surroundings (by which I mean family, job, pointless hobbies, etc.). Levinas provided a reminder that we are, in our existence, usurping the space of an other, that we have no ontological right to occupy the space we do. If the universe was created from pre-existing "stuff," then we, by logical extension, are fragments (if you will) of the stuff; it would not be possible, in such a system, for us to occupy any other space than the one in which we find ourselves. There is some comfort in that; but it is the comfort taken by an unthinking being. A true person (hupostasis) engages dynamically with the world to form a ground or foundation of being, which is precisely what hupostasis (or in Latin, subiectum, whence English "subject") means.

Philosophically, the notion of creation from nothing makes our existence shaky, does not permit us to feel ourselves to be necessary beings but rather privileged beings, whose existence demands a response, a stewardship as it were of the world and others. This is the basic tenet of the philosophy of St. Maximus the Confessor, and it is, in my view, a healthy way of engaging with the life-world.

An atheist -- and I have struggled with my own atheistic tendencies recently, despite my philosophical embrace of Christianity -- may take comfort in the notion that our universe (and hence selves) amounts in the long run to "nothing," but such a view makes ethics and morals voluntary, not a necessary component of the authentic person. The idea that we are generated from the mind of an eternally thinking Being or Mind (the ego eimi ho On of Exodus 3:14, in the Septuagint) inspires us (one would hope) with a feeling of obligation to all existing things, not just other people, but animals, plants, our entire eco-system.

Creatio ex nihilo inspires us to view our existence as a gift, not as some random accident in a pathetic universe that amounts to "nothing."