I apologize for taking so long to reply, Robert. I was away from the internet for two weeks (didn't miss it much).Robert Tulip wrote: I was talking on Sunday to the head of the Tongan breakaway Methodist Church in Australia and his wife, and they explained the pastoral function of Sunday School, with a detailed curriculum covering all the books of the Bible going up to the end of high school, aiming to ensure all children have strong relationships in the community. I find that admirable, except that such devotional fervour brings with it a strong acceptance of the fantasy in the Bible, which conflicts with modern scientific secular rationality. I hope that it is possible for such practices to evolve to include recognition of the symbolic content in their beliefs.
I think we need to view this kind of belief with neutrality, in general, and not make such a bugaboo out of "the supernatural." If you find this cultural group admirable, that should be all that needs to be said about it, right? They wouldn't be able to change their mode of worship to the one you prefer without losing their identity altogether. It's important to realize, I think, that to many believers, symbolic understanding isn't belief at all--and they want above all to believe. Saying that all the supernaturalism and seeming fables in the Bible are symbolic would be to make them optional, and that won't work for this group.
When it's a matter of Buddhist or Hindu supernatural beliefs, we in the Christian milieu (though we may not be Christians) tend to be easy-going. Our disputes are most often with those in closest cultural proximity to us.
What makes you believe that the believers much later labeled Gnostics had a unified belief in the redeeming power of love? It's a nice idea, but it needs an historical basis. An orientation to look within for spiritual experience isn't equivalent to professing, "All you need is love."John Lennon of the Beatles had a great insight into Christian origins, that Christianity started out with the view that ‘reaching the Christ within’ is the starting point for reform of society. However, this teaching of inner wisdom of the heart, as Lennon put it, that ‘love is all you need’, became associated with the movement known as Gnosticism. The church condemned and suppressed such ideas as heresy.
That "true" equals early, first, or original I think is a shaky proposition philosophically. "True" is our evaluation of quality, most often meaning "the best." It doesn't follow that anything, whether belief or knowledge, is best in its earliest form. We don't think the pre-Socratic philosophers were the true, or best, philosophers, or that bartering is the best form of economy, or that animism is the true form of religion. At any rate, as for John Lennon, we wouldn't "imagine" that he he'd claim to have done any scholarly historical work on the origins of Christianity.If John Lennon thought “the only true Christians were the Gnostics”, that supports the argument that he also thought the original Christians were Gnostic, and that orthodoxy was a degraded depraved heresy. That interpretation is of course completely contrary to the prevailing opinion in the history written by the victors.
But with respect, I don't see that a "view" is very satisfying in this case, where what is needed is evidence. Although some of the ideas of Gnosticism may have been floating around before the reputed time of Jesus, and although the Gospels may evidence a concern to squelch some "bad" Gnostic ideas (such as that Jesus only appeared to have a body), many of the Gnostic writings we have make reference to and even quote the Gospels that much later became the scriptural foundation of orthodoxy. Those writings are pretty clearly secondary to the established Gospels. The claim that there earlier must have existed Gnostic writings which contained the germ of the Gospels seems to have no other function or substance than to bolster a thesis.But this also raises a further point, pertinent to your question about Gnostic diversity. It is clear that by the second century AD, Gnosticism was very diverse, as illustrated in the Nag Hammadi texts. However, my view is that there was a largely united secret mystery Platonic Gnostic society who were responsible for writing the original texts which became the orthodox Christian gospels, and that their cosmic theology was far more coherent and enlightened than the diverse texts which have come down to us as representing Gnosticism. It seems the diversity of the four (or more) Gospels, far less than the later Gnostic diversity, would map to the teachings of these earlier Gnostic schools.
Gnostic diversity was so great that, according to historians, some groups cannot even be called Christian. And note that even to use the term "Gnostics" is to imply a probably unhistorical identity or unity between groups who may have recognized no relationship with other "Gnostic" groups.
That's what I was getting at when I said that for love, you can go to what is now called Christianity. Did love come from Gnosticism originally? I'm not sure that's even a meaningful question, given the inchoate state of the pre-Christian religious landscape.The Gospels do have an overarching focus on love, which Plato, a great progenitor of Gnosticism, held as a core idea, for example in the Symposium. So my view is that the greatest commandment in Christianity, love of God and love of neighbour as self, is intrinsically Gnostic in meaning and intent, indicating how we can find Christ and the Kingdom of God within and among us.
I agree with you there. "Do your own thing" isn't likely to appeal to an emperor.This vision was impossible as a basis of political stability in the context of the power of Rome, and was far weaker in military and economic power than orthodoxy, so the alliance of throne and altar was able to suppress it.
What Gnosticism actually was, in the time of the emergence of a powerful bishopric, was the diversity you spoke of. Whatever "original," unified teachings that may have existed were long past and would not need suppressing. But you may say, anyway, that they existed and were suppressed, and that's why we don't have them. I just see this frequent recourse to disappearance by suppression as too convenient.The politician bishops who supported this mass fantasy then were easily able to suppress Gnosticism and force it into hiding, leading to the subsequent distorted picture of what Gnosticism actually was.
What I mean by originalism is the imprimatur often sought in the claim that one's view harks back to the birth of particular ideas, that birth being assumed to represent the true form of the ideas, before corrupting influences. I actually don't dismiss this impulse entirely, as it can be good to conservatively stick to foundational ideas in the face of momentary pressures to change. Our Constitution is a fair example. But of course it's not the fact that the Constitution birthed the nation that makes it sacred, in a sense. It's the fact that it has more or less worked for 230 years. In the case of Gnosticism, and for that matter Christianity, we don't don't have enough knowledge of origins to say we know what the germinal or pure form was.I’m not quite sure what you mean by ‘originalism’.
Just to say again that the "rational, scientific framework" that Gnosticism supposedly provides needs to be established by more than supposition.Robert Tulip wrote:It makes an enormous difference, because it sets Christian faith within a rational scientific framework that prepares the way for a future transformation of human existence on our planet, avoiding the real looming risks of collapse and extinction, leaving what Jesus called the wide easy path to destruction and finding the hard narrow path of survival, peace and abundance.DWill wrote: Why it should be important that gnosticism is the original Christianity is interesting in itself. I can't see why it would make any difference, frankly.
One of my favorite literary titles is "Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue," by Ben Jonson. Your project could be aptly titled, "Myth Reconciled to Science." I understand almost nothing of what you outline above. But, you see, I don't think I really have to because of my feeling that myth can have no validation through science. I may be misinterpreting what you've said, but if it's that human ages occur in accordance with planetary or solar movements or forces, that is not a naturalistic or scientific concept.Beginning with the astronomy of precession, my paper will discuss how that drives long term climate cycles on a 20,000 year pattern, and how that stable natural cycle provides a scientific evolutionary framework to explain the Vedic Yuga myth of the descending and ascending cycle of the Gold and Iron Ages, and how this structure of time resonates with the real big structure of the solar system driven by the orbital patterns of the gas giant planets.
We are used to viewing this myth of the Golden Age solely in terms of descent, as you indicate, but it actually includes an equal ascending cycle, seen in the orbital data from ice and benthic cores.
The physical marker of this orbital climate cycle of precession is the date of perihelion, when earth is closest to the sun. The perihelion now occurs around 5 January and advances by one day every 59 years. This is a purely objective astronomical framework. My observation is that the climate cycle aligns directly to the old Yuga mythological intuition of the ages as cosmic seasons of summer, fall, winter and spring each lasting 5000 years.
My conclusion, integrating science and myth, is that our planet passed the depth of the iron age when the perihelion crossed the December solstice in 1246 AD and is now entering the ascending bronze age, leading over the next ten thousand years to the new golden age when the sun will be closest to earth in June.