Eyre Lines

I’ve been reading Dale Allison’s “Constructing Jesus” and am struck by the force of his arguments in favour of Jesus as apocalyptic prophet.

Note that I say “struck by the force of his argument” and not “convinced that his argument is entirely correct”, because I see him as over-extending in an attempt to press home this main point. I suppose I have some past expertise in this business of “making an argument” from some 25 years as a lawyer; if this has taught me nothing else, it is that we shouldn’t ever just listen to one counsel arguing for a position, we should also listen to at least one opposing position and then weigh the arguments against each other.

My forte in court was to take the opposition’s case and show how it was almost entirely correct, and yet you should take a view which favoured my client. This was far more effective, I found, than setting up an entirely opposite account of facts and inviting a choice between the two. With the way in which the legal system actually operates, this was far too much like tossing a coin; my way allowed you to accept most of what the opposition said but just to interpret it a little differently, rather than forcing black and white decisions.

This is a technique I think I should commend to Dr. Allison. He starts really well, setting up the idea that you cannot say, for instance, that because Jesus plainly made statements typical of a social reformer, he could not therefore have been an apocalyptic prophet; because he talked a lot about living well in the present reality he could not therefore have expected divine intervention to instantiate the Kingdom of God in apocalyptic fashion. This is clearly right, and has founded criticisms I’ve made in the past of a set of commentators who have seen in Jesus, for instance, a social revolutionary (John Dominic Crossan) or a “spirit person”, in other words a mystic (Marcus Borg) to the exclusion or near exclusion of any other identity. There is a strong suspicion that they see in Jesus what they feel they are in themselves, and in the case of Dr. Borg, he is self-admittedly someone who has had his faith shaped by mystical experience.

Unfortunately, Allison then goes further and moves repeatedly towards the suggestion that “apocalyptic prophet” is the basic identity (adding into it self-designations which go beyond just “apocalyptic prophet”) and that really neither the social revolutionary nor the mystic are really the case; inasmuch as they are there, they are less important than “apocalyptic prophet”, and if anything flow from that base designation.

I think this is a mistake. I think that it is a mistake primarily because I do exactly what I criticise above, and read Jesus as primarily a “spirit person”. This is because I am a “spirit person” myself, and cannot see how, if one has had overwhelming mystical experience, that cannot be basic to whatever you then are. I can do thought experiments and consider the position were I basically an apocalyptic prophet or were I a social revolutionary, and none of the others flow naturally from that self-understanding. However, in the case of a “spirit person”, social revolutionary does flow naturally from the experience, and at least occasional prophetic vision flows as well, at least if the mystical experience is developed and felt reasonably consistently.

In terms of “social revolutionary”, I cannot see how this would not flow automatically from the dissolution of the felt boundary between the self and others. I can see how the depth of compassion engendered could be internalised and not acted upon (as it seems to me is often the case in Buddhism, and is a major reason why I have not pursued Buddhism more than I did in my dim and distant 20s), but I cannot see how the impulse not only to assist others as best you can but also to try to promote the dissolution or reform of systems which operate against the mass of people, particularly the poor, disadvantaged and marginalised would not be there.

Prophecy is perhaps a more difficult area. One thing granted by the constant practice of the mystical consciousness is, in my experience, an improved ability to discern trends and causes (sometimes without realising the fullness of the structure, intuitively). I do not on the whole see prophecy as “foretelling the future”, in the way in which it tends to be portrayed by, for instance, the evangelists looking for predictions of Christ, but in the more modern sense of speaking to the situation as it is and exposing it and its likely outcomes. The Hebrew scriptures have many examples of prophetic words which do not in fact come to pass when people change their ways, none more clear, I think, than the story of Jonah. Jonah is sent to predict destruction to Nineveh, and eventually does – but Nineveh changes its ways and escapes calamity (the book has also several other lessons which may need to be taken to heart by prospective prophets among others).

I’ve felt this in operation; I’ve only actually ever expressed any such prediction in small local matters, as I don’t think a wider scale prophecy would be likely to be heard in this day and age without a full scientific and rationalist work-up, and to date have never felt any compulsion to try to buck this trend. Jesus, however, lived in a different age, one in which prophets might perhaps be heard.

Now, one of the reasons I think liberal scholars are somewhat reluctant to label Jesus as an apocalyptic prophet is that at the least since Schweitzer (building on Reimarus) proposed this label to the exclusion of others, the end of the investigation says that he was a failed apocalyptic prophet, as the predicted apocalypse did not happen – and they take too high a view of Jesus to want that to be the conclusion.

However, thinking about that, and about a recent article I read about predictions made by Science Fiction writers whose predictions had to some extent materialised (the link to which I’ve sadly lost) and about Karl Marx and some of his followers (notably Slavoj Zizek) predicting trends in society, I’m struck by a number of factors.

Firstly, none of these presumably mundane and non-divinely inspired prophets has ever managed to be anything like accurate about timing. Mostly, they predict things far too soon. I sympathise – as a newly coined BSc in Physics some 40 years ago I was predicting commercial fusion within ten years. I gather it’s still being predicted within ten years. As an example, Marx predicted that industrialised society would not tend to level out income and capital, but would intensify the gap between richest and poorest. Pace those who still think that “trickle down” economics actually works, I think we are now seeing exactly that. Marx thought it would take place at least 60 years ago; 20 years ago I would not have agreed that it was actually the case, but we’ve now had more opportunity to study less regulated capitalist systems, and I’d now agree with him – and I think we are likely to see some of his other predictions within at the least my childrens’ lifetimes.

Secondly, they are far more accurate about trends than about specifics.Marx thought that first England and then Russia would be the cradle of his predictions bearing fruit; at the moment it seems most likely to be the USA, but I could put in a long shot of China considering the speed at which China is currently moving. (No, I wouldn’t ask the almighty for a predictive word on the topic; that’s all my own fault!).

I should point out that I don’t think God is omniscient in the conventional understanding of knowing everything which will happen, though I accept that God may be omniscient in knowing all the possibilities of any situation on which God focuses and their probabilities. I therefore don’t think that predicting the future accurately is possible even for God. However, God may (possibly through very bright or very inspired people) be able to predict events a lot better than the average man in the street could; at the least, one might expect God to know all of the factors which were at work, which we rarely can.

Within these parameters, what Jesus is said to have predicted begins to take a more sensible shape, particularly if one bears in mind that in part (and in the mid-term) he expected Judaism generally to adopt his path – and Judaism didn’t do that. I also bear in mind that just as a localised flood appeared a worldwide catastrophe to a small tribe in Mesapotamia, so the destruction of the Temple and the dispersion of the remaining Palestinian Jews qualifies as an apocalyptic disaster. 70CE (the first Jewish revolt) was the end of the world as Second Temple Judaism knew it, and if that wasn’t enough, 135 CE (the second) pretty much completed the job. By the end of 135, there was no Temple, there were no Jews still resident in Judaea and they were banned from returning. The heart had been ripped out of Judaism and the people scattered (again), and the religion could no longer function as it had been doing.

Now, I haven’t yet done the heavy lifting of going through Jesus’ reported statements which could be thought of as apocalyptic one by one and applying these ways of thinking (as Dale Allison has been doing with a more conventional outlook on apocalyptic prediction), but using Allison’s concept of a certain “fuzziness” in social memory as well, I feel reasonably confident that Jesus could reasonably have predicted utter disaster for Judaism and been right; they were “living in the end times”. I also have in mind that if the whole of Judaism had turned to following the non-violence of Jesus over the course of the 20-30 years after his death, there would have been no revolts and very probably no destruction of the Temple or scattering of the Jews. I’m seeing there a salvation which didn’t come to pass because the message wasn’t taken up, just as Jonah saw an apocalypse which didn’t happen because the message was heeded. It was, of course, a collective salvation rather than an individual one, the salvation of a nation, but I think the Hebrew Scriptures tend more to the collective than the individual salvation in any event.

I rather think that much the same result could be obtained by reassessing Paul’s statements, and possibly even those in Revelation.

In fact, though, I think that many of the sayings used to demonstrate that Jesus expected an imminent apocalyptic advent of the Kingdom of God can be better interpreted, via thinking of him as a mystic, as indicating that he viewed the Kingdom as being a present and growing reality, accessible already by some and in the future by many more. Yes, I agree with Allison that saying he was not an apocalyptic prophet is foolish, but I still consider that “mystic” grounds more of his basic nature. And, let’s face it, if we take him as being a person in whom God indwelt constantly in some way, whether the only example of God incarnate or as something slightly less unique than that, that is inevitably going to be the most dominant feature of his thinking, and the mystic (who feels oneness with God) is going to be the type of ordinary human being most similar.

As this has largely been a review of Allison’s book, I should conclude by saying that it’s wonderfully well researched and argued, and in the later chapters I think he makes an excellent case (in passing, as this isn’t his main thrust) for establishing Paul as a source for much of the bones of the passion narrative alongside the gospels; I was also intrigued by his bringing into play of the Didache as an additional early source, as well as Thomas.

As keeps happening with me, a couple of things have come together to give me an idea which I’d like to pursue. Firstly, I’ve recently finished reading E.P. Sanders’ “Paul and Palestinian Judaism” after too long a time (interrupted, I admit, by reading about a dozen other books), and secondly I’ve been listening to some podcasts at “Partially Examined Life”, which involves a set of former philosophy grad students talking about philosophy, including a set on Taoism and Buddhism (clearly looking at them as philosophy rather than religion).

Sanders was the first major writer of the “New Perspective on Paul” trend of Pauline interpretation. He devotes the majority of the book to demolishing completely the suggestion that Second Temple Judaism (the Judaism of New Testament times) was a religion of works-based righteousness; it is clear from his exhaustive reading of all the contemporary Jewish sources that almost no-one within Judaism thought that way. In fact, Judaism was at the time a religion of what Sanders calls “covenantal nomism” in which Jews are righteous by virtue of the covenant with Abraham (which Paul rightly pointed out was a gratuitous promise prior to Abraham undertaking any requirements, i.e. by grace). The Jews of the time, Sanders argues, obeyed the Law in order to stay faithfully within that covenant, if looked at on an individual basis.

I am not myself convinced that Sanders has the whole “feeling” of Second Temple Judaism wrapped up in that concept; I also see faithfulness to the Law as being the practical aspect of faith in God, which could be summed up as “if you love me, you will obey my commandments” (ascribed to Jesus in John 14:15), and as being a part of faithfulness to the group, striving for the day when the group as a whole could be called righteous. Judaism prior to that period had been, to my eyes, far more a communal than an individual religion, where what mattered was that the nation survive and prosper rather than adherence to an individualistic formula for salvation; it was the nation rather than the individual whose salvation was looked for. However, the point of what it was not is well established.

This, of course, gives a problem in the conventional reading of Paul, particularly Romans and Galatians, and particularly since Luther and Calvin reinterpreted Paul (and to some extent Jesus) in the 16th century. I learned in Sunday School (and I’m sure many others did as well) that Judaism operated on the basis of following the Law and thus pursuing salvation by works. Sanders shows that that is an entirely untenable viewpoint; it then becomes necessary to reinterpret Paul (largely in Romans and Galatians) to find what his attitude to “the Law” and salvation actually was. Sanders starts to do this, but I think the culmination of this effort is contained in Douglas Campbell’s “The Deliverance of God”.

What immediately interests me (further discussion of this “New Perspective on Paul” will have to wait, insofar as I haven’t written about it already) is that Sanders argues very persuasively that Paul was working back from his knowledge of salvation in Christ to what the problem was that this solved, rather than working out a systematic theology.

I think this is an important understanding which Sanders doesn’t really explore enough, merely noting it on his way to his rereading.

I add to that the conclusion that Paul was a mystic. F.C. Happold, in “Mysticism, a study and anthology” identified Paul and John as being mystics, and as Happold was so influential on me, in showing me that what I had become was a mystic (and not “slightly unhinged”), I accepted that, though with a note of caution as neither was really writing in a way which resonated well with my own experience – and I’ll come back to that.

It’s probably worth noting that in the light of recent work on the Fourth Gospel, I think “one of the multiple authors of the Fourth Gospel” rather than “John” would be a better way of wording that. John Shelby Spong has recently written about the Fourth Gospel from this standpoint in “The Fourth Gospel: Tales of a Jewish Mystic”, which I liked, although I don’t think it completely investigated the identification.

Paul and John were not the only Christian mystics with whom I initially failed to connect particularly well – St. Teresa de Avila, St. Bernard and St. John of the Cross are other examples. However, I connected really well with both the anonymous author of the Theologia Germanica and with Meister Eckhart. To my embarrassment, it took me a long time (decades) before a penny dropped in my thinking – what Paul, John, Teresa et al were doing was writing about what was actually at its root cognate experience, except that they were taking as an experience thought of as being of Christ what I was taking as an experience thought of as being of God and they were thus importing a set of Christ-related concepts. They were Christ-mystics (Happold had labelled them that, but I hadn’t been able to work through the concept structures), and I was (at least originally) a God-mystic, as were the author of the Theologia Germanica and Eckhart. So, I thought, was the Jesus of the Oxyrhyncus sayings, parts of the Gospel of Thomas. I’ve since found readings of many other sayings of Jesus from the canonical gospels (notably the “Kingdom” sayings) can be interpreted in the same way, as the statements of a God-mystic.

I pause here to note that some of my readers may be concerned about me identifying Jesus as a God-mystic, thinking that this is inappropriate as a description of God incarnate. However, assuming Jesus also to have been wholly man (as the creeds insist), what other way of identification of how Jesus-as-man would think and speak to which we could relate would be possible? (I am forced to a panentheist position by my own experience, and therefore see God as incarnate in the whole material universe; Jesus-as-God is thus not a difficult idea for me, but may be for others).

Returning to Paul, what we find is a participatory eschatology and soteriology which can be summed up in a few passages. “My old self has been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. So I live in this earthly body by trusting in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” (Gal 2:20 NLT); “For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” (Eph. 2:10 NIV) and “So, my dear brothers and sisters, this is the point: You died to the power of the law when you died with Christ. And now you are united with the one who was raised from the dead. As a result, we can produce a harvest of good deeds for God.“ (Rom. 7:4 NLT). Paul has had a Christ-mystical experience which has changed everything for him; he considers his past adherence to the Law as worthless in the light of his new understanding through an experienced unity with God-in-Christ: “Yes, everything else is worthless when compared with the infinite value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have discarded everything else, counting it all as garbage, so that I could gain Christ“ (Phil. 3:8 NLT).

I’m not surprised. Peak mystical experiences can do that, producing a paradigm change which changes everything about ones previous life and values, particularly if they are “out of the blue” rather than something worked for over a long period. I know this, having had one; a few others testify to something like the same thing. However, I have to ask myself whether the perspective on ones past life is in fact correct; yes, things are completely different from this side of the paradigm change, but were things before it actually “worthless”, as Paul puts it? I suspect not. Yes, they are incomparably better from this side of the line, but unless you have a means of moving someone through that paradigm change, telling them how much better things are from here and how worthless things are for them where they are is not only not useful, it’s potentially abusive. Someone who, for instance, is reasonably content in their relationship with God through a non-mystical religious praxis is likely merely to be convinced that that praxis is of no value without actually arriving at the changed viewpoint, the changed relationship with God, the changed experience of God necessary for this new way of looking at things. There needs to be a cataclysmic change first.

I spent many years after my initial experience looking first for ways in which I could repeat it, and then for ways in which someone else could have the same experience. I frankly didn’t see any way in which religious practice was worthwhile unless it did generate the same kind of paradigm change as I’d experienced, so was desperate to find how to induce it. I failed to find anything which was remotely reliable, though there does seem to be some evidence that many years of prayer, mediation and “acting as if” may be capable of producing at least a cognate state. I’ve come to suspect that Paul was in this position, and was proposing an “act as if” strategy.

It seems to me that this may well have worked for a significant number, no doubt initially carried along by Paul’s charisma and force of delivery, but I also suspect it was assisted by a form of ecstatic religion as a phenomenon. I say “suspect” because it appears that this is something I’m immune to, perhaps on the basis that if you’ve travelled from (say) Leeds to London on the A1, you can’t then immediately travel from Leeds to London on the East Coast (Railway) Main Line – you’d have to find your way back to Leeds first. If you should slip back, you’ll be slipping back along part of the A1, and can’t readily return via part of the East Coast Main Line without a cross-country trip (and, of course, finding a station…).

My experience indicates to me as well that there are significant numbers of people (very possibly a large majority) who are also unlikely to get caught up in ecstatic religion and do not have one of what I’ve come to think of as very rare initial “out of the blue” peak mystical experiences. I ask myself whether, for them, who may well be on another route (perhaps Ermine Street, the old Roman Road via Lincoln) altogether, it is sensible singing the virtues of either the A1 or the train.

I’ve therefore moved beyond saying “you need a peak mystical experience” to just saying “this is the way that I know”. I wonder whether Paul moved in the same way. Reading his epistles, I’m inclined to think not; they read to me as if he is imposing his route as being the only one available, and in this I think he may have been making a mistake. Sanders sees Second Temple Judaism as having not been deficient in the way Paul has historically been taken to have been, but Paul is still saying that being in Christ is a better, an immeasurably superior, way. Nothing I have seen about current day Judaism or in Sanders or other’s works on Second Temple Judaism convinces me that Judaism is not entirely capable, when practised assiduously, of making the journey to the same destination as Paul reached – just by another route.

This, I think, applies just as much (perhaps more) to the Fourth Gospel, which I also identify, as did Happold, as being at least in part the product of a Christ-mystic. I have in mind particularly statements attributed by the writer to Jesus such as John 14:6 “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me”. (NIV). If, as I suspect, the author meant to say that only by being a Christ-mystic could one have any personal knowledge of God, while I can understand how this would have seemed right, I think it was a mistake. The inspiration (or at least one view of it) behind John 14:2 “In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.” (NIV) seems to me far more correct. 

John Cobb, in “Christ in a Pluralistic Age”, spends some time trying to assess whether Buddhism’s insights are compatible with those of Christianity. Buddhism is a religion with a considerable stress on mysticism, though not, of course, Christ-mysticism, and I would identify Gautama as a mystic, very probably a God-mystic, using the terminology I used earlier. Cobb comes to the conclusion that each tradition has something which the other lacks in it’s conceptions, and that something like a synthesis is actually possible. Put in a nutshell, you might say that Buddhism is too denying of real existence while Christianity is too accepting of it, according to Cobb. Gautama stresses personal experience, and the freeing of the individual from dependence on the other when seen as “other”, and this is indeed a facet of the mystical experience. However, in my own experience it is not the whole. Jesus, in my current conception, stresses finding the other as not actually “other” (including, for example, women, tax collectors, the hated oppressor, the hated heretic, the ritually unclean, the diseased, the morally dubious and even the gentile). It is a more engaged form of working out of the mystical experience, whereas Buddhism tends to stress non-engagement except in the case of the boddhisatva who leaves behind the non-engagement which he has in his grasp in order to help others. Buddhism, in other words, lets go the world in order to be able to reengage with it, the way of Jesus engages as fully as possible with it and, it seems to me, becomes able to let go of it in the process.

I am distinctly seeing a picture here of spiritual leaders who know a path because they have trodden it themselves, and then propose it as “the way”; in Paul’s and “John’s” cases, they say it is the only way; I fancy that Jesus and Gautama both said it was a practical way, but not necessarily that it was the only one. Yes, I am seeing myself in this, in the years during which I couldn’t understand any route other than the peak ecstatic mystical experience. Maybe I’m projecting myself onto these past leaders; then again, maybe that enables me to see something in them which might not otherwise be apparent. It’s obvious to me that Paul and John would think that everyone should have an experience like theirs, and that nothing less would do.

And then you have the Taoist tradition. In that, there is a huge stress on attachment to a single spiritual master, and (which, I think, transfers into Zen Buddhism) that master divines the way in which an individual can come to a paradigm change and displays that to them, often in a non-verbal way. Granted, for the most part the system bears far more resemblance to Buddhism than to non-monastic Western traditions (and in the case of Zen, is a form of Buddhism). It seems to me, however, that this understanding that each student may have a different way of reaching a paradigm change (enlightenment, a mystical experience, faith, conversion, or whatever term you may wish to use) is a very valuable one. Even then, the focus is on a sudden, dramatic change in consciousness, and my observation over the years is that actually most believers don’t have a sudden dramatic change, they inch gradually towards a new consciousness and then find that actually they’ve had it for some time, without being able to pinpoint their Damascus Road or their Bo tree.

But the sudden dramatic change in consciousness is definitely worth pursuing!

For my Alpha group, here’s a debate between Zeba Crook (a non-Christian New Testament scholar) and Richard Carrier (possibly the only reasonably weighty scholar who argues complete mythicism). For our purposes, as none of us think the mythicist position is correct, the relevant portion is from about 11 minutes to about 31 minutes, which is Zeba Crook talking (No, it isn’t necessary to watch the whole hour and three quarters).

Zeba give a good overview of the position that the early Christians progressively mythicised an historical figure with a few excellent examples.

I’ve been reading a bit about Heidegger recently. The reason (bearing in mind my aversion to philosophers) is that some ideas I’m coming across in radical theology seem rooted in a line of philosophy going back Caputo-Derrida-Heidegger-Husserl-Hegel and I wanted to trace some of the history of these so as to understand them better (or, arguably, at all). This post, however, is not about that. There may be a post sometime in the future when I’ve decided if I actually do understand this line of philosophy, but this is not that; it may never happen.

One thing which always seems to come up when Heidegger is talked about is that the man was a Nazi, a paid up member of the party who did not resign when a number of other German philosophers and theologians did, and that inevitably leads to musing about whether Heidegger’s ideas should be questioned in a more general sense, despite him being recognised among philosophers as a great albeit nearly incomprehensible philosopher who has been influential on many subsequent great philosophers. (I pause here to wonder if the terms “great philosopher” and “nearly incomprehensible philosopher” are actually just the same thing). Does the guy’s antisemitism and support of a totally reprehensible regime mean that his ideas outside the realm of politics and sociology should be either dismissed or treated with huge caution?

I’m inclined to think that the answer has to be “no”. Maybe a little caution, but not much more than I apply when reading any thinker.

There’s another parallel in the Mennonite theologian John Howard Yoder, who is now known to have serially abused women; despite this, his theology is very influential, including and perhaps especially his specialist area, which was ethics – which brings to mind the old saw “do as I say, not as I do”, as his actual personal ethics would seem to have been very questionable.

This rather recalls to me the situation in another area which I found myself talking about a few days ago, the Donatist heresy. Briefly, as persecution of the early Christians slackened and ceased, there were significant numbers who had recanted rather than refuse to compromise their beliefs (which tended to lead to hardship if not martyrdom) and who then returned to the Christian fold when times were better. Some of them became priests, and the Donatists held that those who had denied Christ were not able to administer a valid sacrament. The church held against them. Their ability to act as priest was not compromised by their “treason against Christ” as the Donatists would have put it, in much the same way as Heidegger’s ability to think philosophically was not compromised by his odious political leanings.

So to contemplating various of my brothers and sisters in Christ who are unwilling to be taught by or receive the sacraments from women, or those in same sex relationships. I’m wondering in what ways you can distinguish those two cases from that of Heidegger, Yoder or of bishop Caecilian of Carthage, whose appointment really brought the Donatist tendency to the fore as significant numbers formed a breakaway church, and whether those distinctions ought to make any difference.

Yes, there are obvious distinctions. Heidegger and Caecilian went through a phase, while Yoder was apparently combining writing about ethics while acting unethically at the same time; arguendo the incapacity of women or homoamourous individuals is innate rather than a chosen behaviour. Alternatively in the case of the homoamorous the behaviour may be continuing. I could, I suppose, in the case of women quote the Gospel of Thomas (Saying 114, Layton translation) “Simon Peter said to them, “Mary should leave us, for females are not worthy of life.” Jesus said, “See, I am going to attract her to make her male so that she too might become a living spirit that resembles you males. For every female (element) that makes itself male will enter the kingdom of heaven.” Perhaps we should consider this as a sop to 1st century male chauvinism, which could not contemplate that “female” was not automatically linked with “incapacity”, and finding a way round that, with the underlying message that for all sensible purposes Mary could and should be regarded as entirely equal with males? Then again, perhaps more popularly, I could reference Gal. 3:28.

My question is, do these distinctions actually matter to the main point; are all the things that people think, say or do tainted by some past action or character trait which we may find reprehensible? Or should we just accept that people are complicated and imperfect, and judge them purely on their ability to do the task in hand and not on something unconnected? Even, in Yoder’s case, something actually connected but which does not appear to have adversely affected his power of thought on the subject.

My strong suspicion is that we are here looking at the kind of purity issue which Richard Beck talks of in “Unclean”. If I’m right on that, it involves a non-rational tendency of human psychology which is very difficult to shake off – but one which Jesus, in ministering to lepers, outcasts (publicans and sinners), members of the hated occupying forces (a Centurion) and even members of an even more hated competing religion from the same root (Samaritans) sought by example to show us we should not base our actions on.

There’s a very good post at Kelsos (otherwise adversus apologetica) which I’ve just read.

The writer is not a fan of apologetics (and neither am I), but in this case interestingly accepts that miracles can and do happen, analyses the crucifixion and resurrection account with that assumption, and still comes to the conclusion that it can’t have happened as described. Miracles, of course, are unlikely in the extreme; we do not have any really reliably documented miracle to persuade us otherwise, pace the Catholic saint-making apparatus, nor indeed any conclusive evidence of any supernatural occurrence. I include here the medical “miracles” which are so popular in apologetic anecdote; none of them really bears scrutiny in a field in which spontaneous cures for many ailments do actually happen without any suggestion of supernatural intervention.

A major feature of the article is that the account in Matt. 27:51-54 (link NIV from Bible Gateway) would have attracted comment from Roman sources which we actually still have (unkind people have referred to this as “Matthew’s zombie apocalypse”, which is funny enough for me to repeat despite the possible offence).

Another mainstay of the argument is that there is actually far better and more believable evidence for witchcraft in Salem in the late 17th century. There, there is a plethora of sworn statements in court as to the activities of the alleged witches, and no evidence against other than the presupposition that supernatural events do not happen. Very few people these days would, however, accept that the “Salem witches” were actually that, and possessed of supernatural powers, including (I think) the vast majority of Christians.

I hadn’t considered Salem in that way before, and it makes sense as a far more recent (and far better documented) example. My own major stumbling block has always been the miracle claims of other religions. I do try very hard not to allow my presumption against supernatural causes to drift to a dogmatic “there are no miracles and never have been” stance. However, using very much the technique of Matthew Fergusson in that blog, if I suspend disbelief in miracle claims in the New Testament I also have to suspend disbelief in miracle claims in, for instance, the Iliad and Oddysey, in the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita, even in the Epic of Gilgamesh. I have to consider that it’s likely that Nero was raised from the dead, and probably Elvis as well. I also need to take account of miraculous births of, say, Alexander the Great and many other legendary and even historical figures.

So, with a small but niggling regret, I have to interpret the Bible as if all or almost all of the accounts of miracles and supernatural events are literary decoration rather than hard fact. This doesn’t usually give me a problem, except when talking with fellow Christians who take a different view – and mostly, the fact or non-fact of miracles in the Bible isn’t actually significant to the metaphor or allegory in the passage, and I can move past historicity and concentrate on what the story really tells us, which is in the metaphor, the allegory, the parable.

But there are two problems. Firstly, I quite commonly find myself talking with people who report healing “miracles”. I think of these very much as does Aric Clark in a “Two Friars and a Fool” post. I don’t think they’re actually miracles. But I don’t really want to come out and say that; I’m happy for them that healing has occurred, and I don’t want to shake trust in God. Granted, I think trust in God should be leavened with a reading of Job and Ecclesiastes; while God can be trusted, he can’t necessarily be trusted to do what you want or expect, or what is most comfortable or comforting for you.

The other aspect is in considering the impact of Christ in the world. I find it extremely difficult to think of his birth, life, teaching, death and resurrection (the last of which I interpret largely non-supernaturally) as being a case of God doing something which changes the world radically (for instance, making it possible, perhaps for the first time, for all people to be resurrected after death). I have no problem in thinking of it as changing the thinking of mankind radically, which I think it provably has and continues to do.

But there are those who say that if Christ didn’t actually die in order that I might be saved from something (whereas had he not existed, I wouldn’t have had this possibility), then he died for nothing. Now I don’t remotely believe that to be the case, but it seems that for them, they can see no possible reasoning beyond the PSA which they have been indoctrinated in. If they were to accept any merit at all in my thinking, it seems, they would lose all faith.

I don’t want that to happen. I want them to continue to follow Jesus as their lord, to love God and to love their fellow men as themselves. And if the only way in which they can continue to do that is to believe in miracles and PSA (repugnant as I find PSA), I will walk gently away. I may even apologise – not for saying what I think is true, but for saying it to them at what was the wrong time.

If, for some reason, they find they are having difficulty with the concepts in the future, I can offer other ways of thinking. But I don’t want to offer solutions where there’s no perception of a problem. That, it seems to me, is too much like trying to evangelise by first convincing someone – who was previously comfortable in their alternative belief (whatever it was) or lack of one – that they’re a vicious sinner destined for Hell.

Where I do think miracles occur (although it’s maybe a stretch to call them miracles) is within human consciousnesses. I see many cases of cures of addiction and lives transformed in and (less frequently) outside twelve step. And twelve step requires a “God of your understanding” in order to work. It doesn’t matter (experience has proven) what that understanding actually is. Sometimes it’s a conventional protestant PSA one (which is particularly attractive to addicts, who need no convincing that they’re hopeless sinners), often it involves believing in miracles.

So, my more conventional friends, you don’t have to think the way I do about Christianity in order to be my brothers and sisters in faith. But if you’re having problems with conventional readings (or are merely interested in how someone else thinks), I’m here. And may your God go with you, as Dave Allen used to say.

In “The Idolatry of God” and in some of his other work, the philosopher-theologian Peter Rollins makes use of Jacques Lacan’s concept of the “mirror stage” in child development to indicate that at a very early stage of our development (between 6 and 18 months) we first become aware of a distinction between ourselves and the “other”, that this represents the inception of the sense of self. In two recent posts,  “The Fall and Rise of Original Sin” and “Falling further”, I developed a reading of Genesis 2 & 3 which saw Original Sin as being in substance the self-centredness and self-seeking which stems inevitably from the development of this sense of self, which agrees well with Rollins conception. Quoting from the Alcoholics Anonymous book “Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions”, “The chief activator of our defects has been self-centered fear—primarily fear that we would lose something we already possessed or would fail to get something we demanded.” What AA describes as “character defects” I think we can reasonably call “original sin”.

I’m currently reading Richard Beck’s latest book, “The Slavery of Death”, which I picked up after writing the previous posts. Beck, interestingly, starts with a reading of Genesis 2 & 3 from the perspective of the Orthodox Church which sees death as originating in this story (which I don’t) but then equates the fear of death with original sin, and as the effective power of the devil; he goes on to develop this concept. He quotes the Orthodox theologian John Romanides’ “Ancestral Sin” in saying “Any perceived threat automatically triggers fear and uneasiness. Fear doers not allow a man to be perfected in love… Being under the sway of death and not having real and correct faith in God, man is anxious over everything and is ruled by selfish bodily and psychological motives and, thus, he is unable to love unselfishly and freely. He loves and has faith according to what he percieves to be to his own advantage… Thus, he is deprived of his original destiny and is off the mark spiritually. In biblical language, these failures and deviations are called sins. The fountain of man’s personal sin is the power of death that is in the hands of the devil and in man’s own willing submission to him.”

I note, however, that death is the ultimate threat to the self, so with the reservation that I think the sense of self and fear for loss of any part of what is regarded as “the self” is more fundamental even than the fear of death (and gives rise to it) I can follow on with Becks other arguments. I’m certainly with him in not considering that it is necessary to posit a personal embodiment of sin and evil in order to call this self-centred sin diabolical, something of the devil; personally I do not find the concept of an anthropomorphic personification of evil to be useful, but others may do so.

Beck goes on to discuss the conception of evil in the world developed by William Stringfellow and Walter Wink (inter alia) as being the Powers and Authorities; all groupings, ideologies and systems in the world are identifiable as the physical expressions (at the least) of what can be regarded as spiritual powers, and pursues the concept that inasmuch as we give our allegiance to such human structures, whether these be employers, political parties or ideologies, football clubs, governments or even churches we are giving our allegiance to effectively diabolical powers which are, in effect, giving ourselves over to the power of death (as all such structures will end, i.e. die, and also their demands are inimical to us living our own lives for ourselves and our loved ones, and so these allegiances become a partial death.

At this point I need to recap on one of the fundamental aspects of the mystical experience through which I inevitably see existence, that of the disintegration of the boundary between self and other, between self and God. This has a number of results – firstly, I am unable to see others as in any real sense separate from me, and thus the mechanism which Rollins posits of the fundamental drive being to exert control of the other ceases to have real effect, insofar as I remain in contact with the mystical experience. That which is me, the self, can and does expand to include all those around me, or all people of my town, my area or my country, or all of humanity, or all living things, or all that exists inclusive of such part of that-which-is-God which is not immanent in all of those more restricted categories.

Seeing this from the point of view put forward by Rollins/Lacan, this viewpoint relieves me of the need to seek some external object which will give satisfaction, which will make whole the lack seen in the self when considered in relationship with the Other; there is, in truth, no “Other” (or, formulated differently, there is no “self” to put in opposition to the Other. Rollins points out that the loss, the lack felt in the inception of the sense of self, is illusory in that before the inception of the sense of self, there was no self to have anything taken away from; from my point of view the lack is illusory because the boundary itself is ultimately illusory.

Seen from the point of view of Beck’s writing, I am similarly relieved of the fear of death (and this should not be taken to indicate that I am not extremely scared of most of the ways of becoming dead, as I am not a great fan of physical pain, nor to indicate that all of my subconscious mechanisms share this view – this is “SR” speaking here with unconditional assent from “GF” but lesser support from “EC”, and none from mechanisms such as the “reptile mind”). Nor is it something I can claim as an achievement – the initial experience was either given or thrust on me out of the blue, though I have expended energy on repeating and building on it.

Beck does caution in these words:- “In summary, timor mortis is a fact of life and a regular feature of the Christian experience. The fear of death is always with us, moment by moment and day by day, and its absence would signal an indifference that could be, by turns, pathological, triumphalistic, or a spurning of the gift of life. The fearlessness we should seek is not an emotional blankness in the face of death. Such a blankness would be unable to make a distinction between life and death, and thus would be an act of ingratitude to God for the gift and goodness of life. Rather, the fearlessness we are speaking of involves an overcoming rather than a numbness, a refusal to let death be a motive force in our decision making and identity formation.” Having gone through a period of several years of severe clinical depression, I can testify to what it is like for this to turn to a pathological indifference; a year ago, I really had no way of making a judgment between life and death from any of my own resources, and am here now largely because I considered that I owed it to people who cared for me. It is not like that now, but it is also not a conscious overcoming. It is not triumphalistic (what do I find to triumph in in that this particular part of the All does not fear death?) and since the depression lifted, I am all too ready to give thanks for the gift of life.

One of the ways in which this lack of fear can make sense to me is touched on by Beck; in his formulation (which owes much to Ernest Becker) our fear of death is alleviated by making some contribution to the power or authority of our choice, as that contribution is seen as persisting for the life of that power or authority which we (wrongly) think of as immortal; Beck talks of the “hero system” in which achievements within some human system are valued and extolled, and give a sense of self-worth which placates death anxiety. Granted, Becker (and thus Beck) see this as a way of alleviating anxiety about death while I see it as alleviating anxiety about the wider context of diminishment of the sense of self, in particular linked to the desire to control the “other”.

For me, I view this more as a limited way of moving towards the mystical erasure of the boundary between self and other; inasmuch as we identify with some organisation, it becomes to an extent a part of the self, and that part may well survive the death or the individual. Of course, it may not survive the individual, and hence we suffer a major loss of identity in, for instance, the closure of our employer’s business (or our losing our job with it), the end of a marriage, the fall of a state (or radical change in it) or the disgrace of an ideology, for instance in the fall of communism as seen as a viable way of structuring society. It seems to me that people (in the main unconsciously) actually do perform this transfer of self-identity ; I am enabled by the mystical consciousness (again, insofar as I remain in close touch with it) to move my concept of self to such structures temporarily, but only fleetingly, as more extensive identifications (or less extensive ones) are always available.

One of Beck’s major themes is our reaction to the “other”, and he elsewhere builds on (for instance) Rene Girard’s concepts of mimetic violence and scapegoating and on the concepts of holiness and purity (in “Unclean: Meditations on Purity, Hospitality and Mortality”). In “The Slavery of Death”, he devotes some time to outlining how the neurotic desire to protect the system in which we trust to alleviate our fear of death (in his formulation) or in which we invest a major part of our sense of self (in mine) leads to rivalry, exclusion and conformity and even violence. This has echoes in some of Rollins’ work as well, where he looks to destabilise excessive reliance on our favoured structures; “Insurrection” and “The Fidelity of Betrayal” are along those lines, as are his “transformance art” occasions.

Beck goes on to talk about various techniques for improving what he calls an “eccentric” sense of self, “eccentric” in that it is not focused within the individual, drawing substantially from St. Thérèse de Lisieux. In the main, I see these as “act as if” methods. Modern psychology is confident from much experimentation that “act as if” works, and that as you act so will you eventually come to believe. As an aside, I feel that this rather punctures the Apostle Paul’s strictures against works righteousness; certainly feeling smug about works is a negative thing, but actually acting in the way you would wish to have flow from your inner convictions does clearly operate to produce those inner convictions. On this I’m with James; faith without works is dead.

Finally, Beck goes on to talk about what he describes as “the slavery of God”, in which a conception of God becomes part of a death-avoiding concept of self-valuation, and is then protected at all costs. Beck rightly identifies this as a form of idolatry. So, of course, does Rollins in “The Idolatry of God”, seeing the idolatrous “God” as being the “big other” which can fill the void resulting from our sense of primal loss. Both writers suggest ways in which this can be avoided, Beck’s being less dramatic and contraversial, and probably therefore more practical. I commend both books, and frankly suggest that if you’ve read either “The Slavery of Death” or “The Idolatry of God, you should go on to read the other as well.

I would also go on to strongly recommend the development of a mystical consciousness, which tends to resolve both problems, except for one thing – my own experience is of being given this, and I’m uncertain to what extent the various practices which various mystics over the ages have recommended can function to create a mystical consciousness where none existed previously. Beck’s practical suggestions and Rollins’ radical ones may, however, go some way towards this – and so do meditation and contemplation.

Enough of writing about it, I need to go and act!

The church I attend most regularly at the moment is quite keen on personal testimonies. I rather like that.

However, quite a few of these relate to giving while trusting in God to provide for our needs, i.e. giving when we don’t actually have enough to safeguard our own future. Again, in principle I have no problem with that, aside the fact that I see a significant chance of throwing people onto charity where they might not have needed that, and I tend to see charity as better directed to those who have no hope of providing for themselves from their own means than those who have themselves given wastefully, given the state of the world as it actually is.

The issue I do have, however, is that consistently these stories end with the giver receiving out of the blue sufficient for their needs. Again, I am delighted that they have been provided for. I might like to hear more testimony from people who haven’t “got it together”, as in twelve step, which I think is a template which people should want to qualify for. Granted there are now twelve step programs catering for so many things that it takes a really well-adjusted person to avoid qualifying for at least one of them! I might like to see something like twelve-step openness tried in a church setting, however.

However, there is another problem, in that the impression is given (and sometimes underlined by preaching what seems to me close to a “prosperity gospel” that those who give profligately will inevitably receive sufficient for their needs. If you give a lot, the message is, you can be confident that you will be provided for. There is some scriptural support for this concept, too.

Much as I might wish this to be the case in reality, it isn’t in line with my experience, either following my own actions or those of others. Nor, to my mind, should it be a hard and fast rule; that message removes the possibility of truly sacrificial giving, as giving is then done in the expectation of return. At that point it becomes not a gift but a transaction.

It is argued, of course, that faith demands that we should trust the divine promise that we will be taken care of and should not think to store up things in anticipation of times of dearth. Matt. 6:25-34 is one example, though there are others. Faith also, arguably, demands that we should do as Jesus advises the rich young man in (inter alia) Matt. 19:16-22, and sell all that we have and give it to the poor, but I do see very few people actually doing this within Christianity. I certainly haven’t done it myself, and part of my thinking chalks this up as one of the ways in which I am a bad Christian, or not-quite-yet a Christian. Granted, six years ago I was worth a negative amount, but I hadn’t got there by giving things away except in a very inventive interpretation.

Another part of my thinking reports that the evidence of history is that the very early Church actually did practice these principles, and this very probably resulted in the need for Paul to go round taking a subscription for the support of the Jerusalem Church. A reasonable guess from general economic principles suggests that they were doing this, taking their possessions, selling them and giving away the proceeds (or, to some extent, holding them in common), and that they had run out of people prepared to do this in support of their community and had fallen on hard times. A few people or a small community can get away with this in a world which doesn’t operate that way, a large group can’t.

I see this principle operating as well in one conception of the crucifixion, that which is principally drawn from the Fourth Gospel. In the synoptics, Jesus is seen as agonising over his future in the Garden of Gethsemane (“let this cup pass from me”) and as experiencing complete abandonment on the cross (“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me”). In the Fourth Gospel, however, it is all seen as being part of the divine plan, and Jesus is completely aware of this and approaches his impending death with complete equanimity. Then, of course, on the third day he rises and a little later ascends in glory. What we have is a very temporary death, not a full blown extinction of the self.

To my mind, the Fourth Gospel somewhat torpedoes the concept that the cross can function as a valid sacrifice to the extent which is clearly desired by many atonement theories. In the synoptics, at least Jesus is seen as agonised by the prospect, and although there are hints that a resurrection is anticipated, this agony indicates to me that Jesus sees this as a hope rather than as a certainty. This is removed in the Fourth Gospel; there, Jesus knows throughout that his death will be very temporary and suffers no agonies of mind or spirit (as opposed to agonies of body).

I would contrast the situation in W.B. Yeats’ verse drama “The Countess Cathleen”, in which the Countess sells her soul to the Devil in order to save her tenants from starvation and to redeem their souls from him, having previously been sold by them. As this act is altruistic, the Countess is redeemed anyhow on her death. While the actual result there is also that she is not lost, she thinks she will be. Not so Jesus for the authors of the Fourth Gospel; he has no doubt of his resurrection and ascent. Of course, Yeats is there referencing a ransom theory of atonement in which Jesus ransoms humanity from the Devil, but cannot be held by him (this was one of the two early theories of atonement). I liken this to God buying humanity back with a dud cheque (three days to clear…) but will probably get flak for this. It is, incidentally, partly because it looks like God using a dud cheque that I don’t resonate with that theory.

This, however, doesn’t seem to me to work as well for the satisfaction theory (God is owed a debt in consequence of humanity’s sin, only a sacrifice of the magnitude of Jesus’ death will suffice, God accepts that as payment) because it’s not a lasting death. Granted, it can be argued that the death of God the Son, even if temporary, is of incalculable value, but that still doesn’t seem to me adequate. It works even less well for the penal substitution theory (God exacts the death penalty for sin on one life of incalculable value instead of myriad low value lives) if it’s temporary, but I suppose could be regarded as a real death and then a restoration.

I still think that a real sacrifice needs to entail a real loss, not just a temporary one.

So I return to sacrificial giving. Of course, I don’t in theory consider this a bad thing (“in theory” because I’m not very good at actually doing it), and there are two preeminent reasons for this. Firstly, it clears the decks for single minded trust in God and love of humanity, removing the obstructions of clinging to existing possessions and trying to get more. It represents, perhaps, a self-chosen equivalent of the twelve step “rock bottom”, from which there is no way but up and no valid action but trust in others. My own “rock bottom” involved loss of rather more than just economic self-sufficiency, but giving away all you have is likely to make those around you doubt your sanity and will probably damage your social standing as well, so there are other “benefits”.

The other is that it affirms that the Kingdom of God is already here. I may be somewhat unusual among liberal theologians in that I take Jesus’ pronouncement that the Kingdom was already present among his followers (Luke 17:21 is one of several relevant texts) as being accurate. I don’t think he was talking about some apocalypse to come, I think he was talking of an apocalypse within some of those who followed him, a personal transformation, a metanoia. I see the analogies of the Kingdom with the mustard seed (Matt. 13:31) and with leaven (Matt. 13:33) as indicating that this new way of living, which involved love of neighbour as yourself, and sometimes to the exclusion of yourself in sacrificial giving, even to following his path to the cross, had already started inasmuch as it was practiced (I also see the Kingdom statements as indicating another new form of consciousness, that of the mystical entering into the Kingdom; the two seem to me to go hand in hand).

Of course, as I indicated earlier in this post, significant numbers of the early church seem to have practiced this and to have ended up in a parlous economic position, needing to be “bailed out” by Paul’s collections. I don’t know whether, had the movement continued to grow apace and fill the earth with this practice, whether that could have been sustained economically; it hasn’t been tried in any sizeable society, and in smaller ones has consistently got into difficulty. In practice, I’ve regarded this as “counsel of excellence” and tried to balance it with the need to stay able to meet my obligations to my family and to society (and in the past my employees), and worked on the basis that I would keep only enough for myself and the rest could be given away; that has chiefly been my time as I was in a position to use my time to work for justice and equity for individuals and for the community.

And I still wonder whether my not taking the extra step was due to pragmatism or to fear.

I’ve had some push back to my last post, “The fall and rise of Original Sin”, and want to engage with that. My friend is offended because he sees me as saying that God is a liar. I’m sad that what I’ve written has had that effect – unlike Peter Rollins (who I’ve read a bit of over the last 24 hours and to whom I’ll be coming back) I don’t aim to offend (and certainly not to the extent, as he has said, of offending myself as well!).

Giving offence is, then, not what I intended to do. At the most, I might be saying that on one interpretation of Genesis 2&3, the author of Genesis (I do not, of course, consider that biblical authors are transmitting God’s dictation in what they write!) is saying that God is a liar, on the basis that he states in Gen. 2:17 that God says  “but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die”, but that the actual punishment (if indeed it should be regarded as punishment) is expulsion from the Garden, a life of toil rather than of plenty and painful childbirth for Eve and her descendants. Indeed, if we take the genealogies in Genesis 4&5 on face value, Adam survives for a lifespan of 930 years, which does not look like instant death (and as I indicated, the Hebrew of Gen. 2:17 has a connotation of an immediate consequence and is sometimes translated as “in that day you will die”).

It is not uncommonly argued that death was in fact a part of the punishment, in which case interpreters are forced to argue that “in that day” refers not to a day but to something like an age; this is also one way of interpreting the seven days of creation earlier in Genesis to avoid an insistence on a literal seven day creation, so tends to be an easy step to take at that point. However, as I also remarked, the fact that in Gen. 3:22 ‘The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live for ever.’ means that it is really not legitimate to claim that actually Adam and Eve were immortal from the start, and only became mortal as a result of God’s punishment.

Another argument I hear about this is that this is analogous to God’s command to Abraham to sacrifice Isaac which is subsequently overturned; God is being merciful. This is, I think, a better argument than “well, God lied”, but still means that the serpent was being truthful in predicting that death would not actually be the consequence. There is, however, no wording indicating a change of mind, so this seems a stretch.

I did, of course, give another potential interpretation as an aside – that God was not so much lying as indulging in parental hyperbole (exaggeration). In fact, I think that within the logic of the story, this is probably what the author had in mind; I doubt he intended to portray God as mendacious, but suspect he thought that parental hyperbole was not “lying” but merely use of colourful language.

This seems to me to illustrate a profound difference between the way I approach biblical texts and the way my friend does; I try to read the texts as naturally as possible, and if they seem to be portraying something I take exception to, I note that but do not expend much effort on trying to explain it away. This is, of course, very different from approaching them with a developed conception of theology which then does not permit the author to have been saying something which may, on first reading, seem bizarre, or offensive, or contrary to the character of God as I understand that to be.

Interestingly, one strand of Jewish thought (though a minority opinion) holds that when God pronounces the whole of creation, after the creation of man on the sixth day to be “very good” (after merely pronouncing the results of the first to fifth days as “good”), given that man is seen to be sinful, this must mean that “very good” in fact means pretty much the exact opposite. This is, to my mind, an example of the imposition of a developed conception on the text, here holding that because creation including humanity is obviously not “very good” and yet God is apparently saying that it is, he must mean something other than the natural meaning of the words. Judaism does not see the Fall in the same way as Christianity, nor does it have a concept of original sin, as otherwise the Fall can be taken as terminating the state of “very good”, perhaps.

Where I do import ideas from scriptures which are outside a passage (or at least the individual book involved or the set of books written by the same author), it is generally limited to ideas which appear in previous scripture. Thus, when interpreting New Testament writers, I assume that they are working on the basis of the developed theology of Judaism as it was at the time. With Genesis 1-3, however, there is no prior Jewish scripture, so I do not find myself able to assume that the ideas of any form of Judaism are imported, and certainly not the idea that God is incapable of saying something which is not seen to be exactly as things turn out to be. I do, of course, take into account Mesapotamian creation myths in assessing Genesis 1-2, and note the similarities and differences, though these do not really impact on this discussion.

So, what I do not feel able to do is to decide that God cannot be seen to say anything which is other than exactly factually correct and thus decide that in fact, somehow, death “in that day” was one of the results of eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge, and “in that day” needs to be reinterpreted accordingly; I just follow the evidence of the text.

Of course, it may be that the text says something offensive, something contrary to my view of who (or what) God is. Many parts of the books of Samuel, Kings and Chronicles fall into that category, and I cite as an example 1 Sam. 15:2-3 .

The link is to a discussion, which includes the following comment:- “Why would God have the Israelites exterminate an entire group of people, women and children included?
This is honestly a very difficult issue. We do not fully understand why God would command such a thing, but at the same time we trust God that He is just – and recognize that we are incapable of fully understanding a sovereign, infinite, and eternal God. As we look at difficult issues such as this one, we have to remember that God’s ways are higher than our ways and His thoughts are higher than our thoughts.” This is an example of retrojecting our assumptions about God into a text, or in this case a set of texts. The base assumption is that the God who commands mercy not sacrifice and that we should love our neighbour as ourself in later scripture cannot be seen to be ordering genocide.

Of course, this assumes a few things itself. It assumes, for instance, that the authors of these books have correctly understood an inspiration, that they have not embroidered that inspiration with their own preconceptions, that that inspiration is from God, and that the character of God is unchanging.

I’ve been looking at a friend’s analysis of the Fall, and considering how different his conclusions (which are the conventional ones) are from my own.

The story is contained in Genesis 2-3. The relevant parts are (it seems to me), taking these from Bible Gateway NIV:-

2 ⁸ Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. ⁹ The Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground – trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. …..
¹⁵ The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. ¹⁶ And the Lord God commanded the man, ‘You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; ¹⁷ but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.’

3 Now the snake was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, ‘Did God really say, “You must not eat from any tree in the garden”?’ ² The woman said to the snake, ‘We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, ³ but God did say, “You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.”’ ⁴ ‘You will not certainly die,’ the snake said to the woman. ⁵ ‘For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.’ ⁶ When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. ⁷ Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realised that they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves. ⁸ Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. ⁹ But the Lord God called to the man, ‘Where are you?’ ¹⁰ He answered, ‘I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.’ ¹¹ And he said, ‘Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree from which I commanded you not to eat?’ ¹² The man said, ‘The woman you put here with me – she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.’ ¹³ Then the Lord God said to the woman, ‘What is this you have done?’ The woman said, ‘The snake deceived me, and I ate.’ ¹⁴ So the Lord God said to the snake, ‘Because you have done this,‘Cursed are you above all livestock and all wild animals! You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life. ¹⁵ And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.’ ¹⁶ To the woman he said, ‘I will make your pains in childbearing very severe; with painful labour you will give birth to children.
Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.’ ¹⁷ To Adam he said, ‘Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, “You must not eat from it,” ‘Cursed is the ground because of you;through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life. ¹⁸ It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. ¹⁹ By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are  and to dust you will return.’ ²⁰ Adam named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother of all the living. ²¹ The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. ²² And the Lord God said, ‘The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live for ever.’ ²³ So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. ²⁴ After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.

Now I look at this passage as a lawyer, and the first thing I note is that by implication, until Adam and Eve have eaten the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, they must not have knowledge of good and evil. Two things follow; firstly they cannot be thought of as understanding that to act contrary to God’s command is evil, as they have no knowledge of good and evil; secondly, they fall into the category of people who in systems based on English Common Law do not have criminal responsibility. This encompasses children, the severely mentally challenged and the severely mentally ill, and in English law none of these can be held responsible for their actions.

I think the category of “children” works best here. Clearly, both are represented as “new creations”, and the story moves directly from their creation in Gen. 2:5 and 22 to the “Fall”.

So, I ask myself, how, when our rather imperfect legal systems recognise that it is unconscionable to bring the weight of the criminal law to bear on children who are under the age of criminal responsibility, can God be considered to be acting reasonably in exacting a stringent penalty (even if this is not, in fact, death) for a transgression? Even more so, how can it be considered just for this to be imposed not only on those responsible but also on countless generations of their descendants, who have not (at this point) contravened any directive? I note, for instance, that the same God says through his prophet Ezekiel (Ezekiel 18) that the sins of the fathers are not held against the sons or future generations, and it is clearly the case that a transgression by a parent whether before or after conception is not inherited by the offspring; genetics is not, after all, Lamarckian but Darwinian.

Even more, having lived with dogs for many years, taking them as not really having adequate knowledge of good and evil, I am extremely conscious of the fact that if you forbid them something, given enough time they will eventually do it. Actually, it seems to me that the same goes for children, and very frequently adults. The only way to prevent a behaviour which is not desired is to associate it with bad results via appropriate punishment on many occasions, or to avoid the behaviour completely. A God with even reasonable foresight (far less than the omniscience which is traditionally ascribed, though this seems problematic given that God apparently cannot find them in the garden) would have known that sooner or later Adam and Eve were going to eat the fruit – and the obvious course would have been not to have the trees of the knowledge of good and evil and of eternal life in the garden (and so within reach) in the first place.

Thus, at the least, if I were to take the traditional understanding of the passage (at least Augustine’s understanding), I would want to argue entrapment as well as lack of criminal responsibility. As Omar Khayyam put it “Oh, Thou, who didst with pitfall and with gin beset the road I was to wander in, Thou wilt not with predestin’d evil round enmesh me, and impute my fall to Sin?” And I would expect a just and merciful God not to impose a draconian penalty, and certainly not expulsion from their rather cushy life in the garden or painful childbirth for billions of women, rather to use moderate punishment as a teaching opportunity.

There clearly has to be a meaning to this other than the standard “they disobeyed and therefore they and all of mankind must be punished forever”, and I’ll come back to that a little later. Judaism, interestingly, never developed a concept of original sin, and doesn’t regard the Fall in the same way as has been the case in Western Christianity since Augustine.

Let’s now look at what God says and what the serpent (who probably should not be identified with Satan; certainly Judaism does not make that identification) says.

God is placed as saying:- ¹⁷ but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.’

But, of course, in fact they do not die (and it is a fair translation of the original to put “in the day when you eat it you will certainly die”); they are instead banished from a life of ease and condemned to hard labour (pun intended). God is not telling the strict truth here, according to the writer.

The serpent says:- ⁴ ‘You will not certainly die,’ the snake said to the woman. ⁵ ‘For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.’

And, in fact, the snake is telling the truth. This is confirmed by God:- ²² And the Lord God said, ‘The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live for ever.’ As an aside, this rather negates the traditional statement that death came into the world at this point; death was already implicit unless the fruit of the tree of life were eaten, which it was not.

The poor snake comes out of this really badly; a severe penalty for telling the truth (“giving the game away”, you might say), assuming for a moment that this is a serpentine equivalent of the Darwin fish (the one with legs) and his legs are stripped from him – and also, it would seem, the power of speech.

I clearly know that God’s dictum can be regarded as parental overstatement in order to keep the children safe “If you keep doing that, I’ll rip your arm off and beat you to death with the soggy end”. I’m well aware of arguments that a command overrides any consideration of knowledge of good and evil (and I reject those; laws are, after all, commands, and the principle of lack of criminal responsibility should hold). I don’t hold that no punishment of children is justifiable either – understanding of good and evil is, to a significant extent, imparted by parental punishment. But this is a draconian punishment and not one which is calculated to teach. In fact, it’s the way it is, according to the text, because God fears Adam and Eve becoming immortal as well, and not for any reason of education.

So I look for some other explanation, and find it in something which actually IS inheritable. At some point in the evolution of humanity, there will have been a beginning of self-consciousness, the “sense of self”. I actually think you can see the start of such a consciousness in some primates, and possibly in other species, but not developed to the extent that it is in adult humans (though I could be surprised by, for instance, dolphins…). In the absence of such a sense of self, there is no embarrassment about nakedness, for instance (I think it extremely telling that this is mentioned); there is also, and crucially, no possibility of self-assessment, of any true sense of guilt or shame due to ones past actions.

Is this truly describable as a “fall”? Not really. Prior to development of self consciousness, instincts rule, and instincts are generally amoral; nature unmodified by something like human consciousness has a tendency to be “red in tooth and claw”, though there are identifiable mechanisms which produce some cooperative and even apparently altruistic behaviour in some species. Self-awareness can, indeed, be regarded as a “step up”, allowing for a sense of morality. What Paul says of “the Law” in Romans 5:12-20 and 7:7-20 – “sin is not counted where there is no law” (Rom. 5:13b being the crux of this argument) – is particularly true where there is no ability to reflect on ones deeds with a self-critical stance.

However, the sense of self also allows for self-centredness, selfishness and self-seeking fear, all of which are less than admirable. Arguably, inasmuch as one is self-centred, one is unable to be God-centred, one is unable to love either God or ones fellow human beings and so cannot abide by the Great Commandments, and this is reasonably equated with sin.  Certainly this gives rise to feelings of guilt and shame. In this sense, therefore, sin did enter into humanity with the advent of self-consciousness, colourfully portrayed in Genesis as resulting from eating a fruit but in fact the result of evolution, and it was inheritable, as the genes which produced this mental change will have been heritable.

At the end of this meditation, therefore, we have a form of original sin, due to not so much a fall as a change in humanity, with good and bad aspects. And, of course, definitely not the cause of death entering into the world, nor something meriting punishment in and of itself.

It is, of course, true to say that the basis of penal substitutionary atonement is removed by this reading of Genesis. I don’t consider that a significant loss to theology, though!

Frank Herbert wrote, in “Dune”, “Fear is the mind killer”, and went on to put forward the view of his sisterhood of manipulators, the Bene Gesserit, that if you were unable to control your fear, you were animal rather than human. The hero, Paul Atreides, undergoes a test in which it appears to him that his hand is being burned away (it isn’t) and he passes the test by not withdrawing his hand to save it. This marks him as being “human”. Or (if you know the story) more scared of his mother than he is of becoming one-handed…

I think I rank as sub-human at the moment, as my anxiety disorder has been re-triggered recently by someone talking about (and wanting me to remember and give evidence about) a part of my past which I would wish were, in Twelve Step terminology, something I did not regret and did not wish to shut the door on. I had thought I had reached that point, but it seems not.

“Sub-human” is, however, perfectly OK in the parlance of modern psychologists, who like to talk about the “reptilian brain” which deals with the most basic urges, the “fight, flight or freeze” responses to perceived threats. I’m dealing with reptilian brain here, then, and not even with the cuddly furry animal “paleaomammalian complex” which deals with food, sex and family, which the Bene Gesserit would probably still think was subhuman. It would seem that I’ve adapted rather badly in the past to a series of traumatic experiences, and the result was post traumatic stress disorder; most of the symptoms associated with that seem now to have diminished to the merely slightly annoying with the passage of time and a lot of hard work, but an elevated level of anxiety seems recalcitrant.

Depression was part of the package as well, but I’ve previously written about how that unaccountably vanished overnight between 25th and 26th May last year, and it hasn’t returned. Would that the anxiety had done likewise!

Until this trigger, I’ve got by by dint of regarding my condition as being analogous to having an adrenaline allergy; I seem to overreact to anything even very slightly startling, as if it were many times more scary than it actually should be. Unfortunately, this includes things which I know 20 or so years ago I would have regarded as “exciting” or “energising”. I take care to limit exposure to anything “exciting”, therefore, and always have an exit strategy should something unforeseen get the adrenaline running. I’ve also trained the system to default to “freeze” rather than a random selection out of fight, flight or freeze, which tends to result in less embarrassment, although it also has meant that when something was thrown at me I sat there and let it bounce off rather than ducking or flinching – and yes, I am very cautious when crossing the road.

The trouble is, the mere mention of a particular individual from my past and his actions seems to have thrown me into a more or less 24/7 freeze this last week, and I don’t like it. Needless to say, he, his actions and my responses figured large in my Steps 4-7 (list of defects, sharing them, offering them to God to remove or not as he thought fit) and in my Steps 8 and 9 (list of persons I had harmed, including myself, and amends to them). Mind you, on reflection, I have not made any amends to him (if indeed any are warranted), as any contact with him by me would inevitably harm others, and I’m not sure how I can make amends to myself for allowing him the ability to mess up my life and those of my loved ones, save for avoiding any possibility of the same thing happening again.

As I’m talking about reptilian brain, I’m reminded of the story of the scorpion and the frog; the scorpion (who can’t swim) asks the frog to carry him over a river. The frog initially declines, as he says “But you’re a scorpion, you’ll sting me to death”. The scorpion responds that if he does, then he will drown as the frog will be unable to carry him, and seeing the logic, the frog agrees. Halfway across the stream, the scorpion stings the frog. As he is dying and dropping the scorpion into the water to drown, the frog says “But why? Now you’ll drown!”. The scorpion replies “I’m a scorpion, it’s my nature”. And, in conscience, I knew this man was a scorpion, and I thought he wouldn’t sting me. Just as the frog followed the logical path and determined that the scorpion would rationally not sting him, so I determined that this person wouldn’t (on this point) deceive me if he were rational. Of course, he wasn’t that rational.

Harking back to my “About” page, this is an issue on which Emotional Chris (EC) and Scientific Rationalist Chris (SR) are at odds. EC had a gut feeling that something was not quite right at the time (as indeed he felt about anything which involved this individual), but SR couldn’t see what was wrong and eventually caved in to pressure. So, of course, EC blames SR for messing up. Again, I was dealing with this guy from the start because he had a hard luck story which engaged EC’s sympathy but left SR shaking his head, so SR blames EC for that, and then again for having a “sod it” moment at the point of making the final “yes/no” decision and not waiting for mature reflection, or rather even more mature reflection, as SR had already done quite a lot of reflecting.

It can be reasonably said that EC and SR both have inflated ideas of the other’s capacities. SR was not allowed to make mistakes (in conscience, I was actually “not allowed to make mistakes”, as anything less than perfection was professional negligence) and EC was not allowed to have impulses and act on them, at least not unless they proved to be beneficial. Putting the two together, it was certainly unacceptable for both reason and instinct to fail – and both SR and EC agree on that. They shouldn’t; in large part the events happened that way because EC and SR already didn’t trust each other.

There has, to be fair, been an advance in the course of the last year; in 2004-2013, frankly, SR and EC each wanted to kill the other, but that has waned as I’ve worked through the situation again and again, and they work reasonably well together now and there’s a fair amount of trust. Do they really forgive each other, though? I could answer “yes” most of the time, but when I’m forced to try hard to recall details of an event from this earlier period, I fear the answer is “no”.

One temptation would be to do a fresh step 4/5 concentrating on scorpion guy, and probably a fresh 8/9. I’m not sure my reptilian brain will let me, though – a lot of the last fortnight has been spent with the “freeze” reaction engaged. At least it isn’t “fight” or “flight”…