Christianity Before The Sands
By Max Gorman
It is often said these days that we live in a ‘post-Christian culture’ - whatever that means. But if you told the average man in the street that he was not a Christian, the chances are that he would not be particularly pleased. I have tried this myself with a native of these islands who I knew for a fact had never opened a bible, nor set foot inside a church - and only narrowly escaped physical violence!
On the other hand if I had actually called this man (and there are many like him) a Christian, I am fairly sure he would not have been happy with this either. So what is going on? Almost everyone you ask, however, no matter how little they know about Jesus, will tend to say he was an exceptional, a great, man, whose influence upon humanity has been a good one, that the world is ‘better’ for his having been here.
As for the persecution and intolerance that has been perpetrated in his name, the man in the street seems to be aware that all this was contrary to the kind of thing he stood for - compassion, charity, and love - contrary to the kind of man he was, and wanted the rest of us to be. People seem to know this. And despite the overlay of doctrine and dogma which has tended to so obscure and obstruct his image over two thousand years, despite the fog of fatuous and bizarre notions that the church has erected between Jesus and us to becloud our vision - a man comes shining through. We know him better than that. Why is the orthodox Christian church almost deserted - except when the priest is not there? And indeed by many who nevertheless believe in God, and also ‘in’ Jesus in some way?
It is, if you ask them, because the ideas that ar1.,preached there, purporting to be ‘Christianity’ are so curious,contradictory, and absurd, that a person of normal intelligence, tends to find them impossible to accept.
Let us look at a few of them: Firstly there is the doctrine of ‘redemption’ - according to which Jesus was sent by God to save us all from our ‘sins’ by dying at our hands, which, if true, would of course be another, and particularly bad, ‘sin’. The inherent contradiction in that proposition can hardly have escaped anyone. And apart from the vicarious moral responsibility itentails, primitive to put it politely, one has to ask what is the source of this notion of humanity labouring under some vague and ill defined burden of guilt? Certainly Jesus himself doesn’t speak of it. And if someone he met was somewhat less than perfect, somewhat tarnished from the ethical point of view he simply said: ‘Your sins are forgiven you’ - on the spot, there and then. No mention of having to die to save him, etc.
Apparently people are not really so bad after all! Not only Jesus, but John the Baptist before him, (Mark 1.4) and later his twelve disciples, (John 20.2) had the power to forgive sin,hopefully not forgetting that as Jesus tells us ‘if he can forgive, God is a thousand times more forgiving!’
Finally he stresses that each and everyone of us both can and should forgive his fellow human being: ‘Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us’. It is a forgiving universe, within which a doctrine of redemption can have at best a vacuous existence. It is only the image of Christ that has to be redeemed.
Mainly to blame for the negative, sin-laden view of man that has infected the Church for so long was Augustine, who projected his own private guilt-complex upon Christian doctrine five hundred years after Jesus. Despite the efforts of Pelegius to counteract and cure the disease, Augustine’s obsession with ‘original sin’ succeeded in casting its malodorous vapours over the Christian concept of human nature - until only recently when it has been challenged by the doctrine of ‘original blessing’ with its healthy, positive vision of man.
The most excellent Pelagius, alias Morgan of Britain, possessed, of the good sense and peculiar intelligence of a native of this inimitable island, did his supreme best to purge the Church of all this doom and gloom laden nonsense. We’re essentially good, he said. That’s the way God made us. If Adam did something wrong - and it is not clear what - then the sin, or buck, stops with Adam. We’re born pure, and inherit nothing nasty. Children are lovely, so there’s no need for infant baptism. (If one remembers what Jesus said about them we know he would agree.) We all have free will, and are responsible solely for our own actions¹ whether we like it or not. And like Sartre, who said ‘We are condemned to freedom’, Pelagius announced we often don’t.
So no excuses - face your freedom like a man! As for God’s grace, yes it exists, but you have to work for it, you have to deserve it. And you can do a great deal by your own efforts - even without it. Be good, for instance. And here Pelagius rather controversially states: ‘there were perfectly good men before the coming of Jesus’. Finally he
produces the interesting and original idea that the giving of free will to man is God’s grace. God’s inviolable endowment of the human creature with self-determination is to be recognised per se as a great gift of grace. Fraught with risk, to be sure, but this was the only way an authentic being could be realized. Though man had drifted into certain negative habits since the fall, the inherent power and ability of the will (posse), though overlaid with customor obscured by forgetfulness or ignorance, remained as God made it and needed only an act of will (velle) to move us in the right direction².
But this was all too much for the dropping-down-deadedness (as Kilvert would describe it) of Augustine and his party who managed to convince Pope Innocent (only just) that Pelagius was a heretic. His successor Zosimus then decided he wasn’t - but later changed his mind again under renewed pressure from Augustine. It was a near thing. Though the British had done their best.
Not that Pelagius didn’t have a great deal of support for his views. The cultured and aristocratic elite of Rome where he lived and operated from 380 to 410 A.D. loved and respected him,and enjoyed his lectures, and so did many of the clergy. As eloquent as he was ethical, Pelagius rapidly became dangerously popular with both the intellectuals and ordinary people of his time who found his doctrines eminently acceptable. Somehow it all rang true. It restored their faith in human nature. A faith they felt was shared by Jesus of Nazareth.
Then there is the doctrine of the resurrection, which curiously appears to mean as far as the orthodox Christian is concerned,a belief in the physical resurrection of Jesus from the dead, and the investing of an inordinate significance upon this possible fact. For what does it tell us? Whether it occurred or not? If it actually did, then it is hardly surprising that the Master could do for himself what he had already done at least twice for others - namely Lazarus and Jairus’s daughter. And then again one has to ask, so what?
In this connection it is worth noting what Jesus himself is recorded to have commented in one of those ‘lost’ sayings traditionally attributed to him, but which for one reason or another have not found their way into the canonical Gospels: ‘You say that I have been able to raise the dead and that is true. But mark well that I was unable to cure the foolishness of fools.’ As for the argument that his walking about Jerusalem in the flesh after his apparent death is to be understood as sign and proof that there is a life for us after death, meaning some kind of spiritual life, well not only is this a belief common to many religions, cults and philosophies of all cultures from the East to the West, most of them of greater age than Christianity, in other words hardly ‘news’, but a demonstration of the survival of the body is scarcely the most convincing indication of the survival of the soul. In fact it tends to undermine the whole proposition.
And even then, assuming there is survival of the soul after death, surely it is the quality of that survival that matters. The Sufis, in common with certain other mystics, aver there is a further dimension of understanding inherent in the concept ‘resurrection’. They say it can mean an inner arising from an outer ‘death’ to a finer, fuller life, a process of spiritual regeneration that must start here and now - in this life.
It is submitted that it was this process that concerned Jesus. He describes it in these words: ‘Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.’ (John 12.24) He adds that it is only as a result of this process or achievement that one can attain the state or level of being which he describes as ‘life eternal’. His words are strikingly similar to the Sufi admonition: ‘Die before you die’.
William Kingsland understood it as "the resurrection of the ‘Christ’ in us, our higher spiritual self, from burial in our lower nature." While another man of insight, the Reverend Theodore Bell envisaged it as "as glorious a change as the birth of the radiant butterfly from the half-life of the chrysalis".
But whereas for the caterpillar the change is natural, the transformation of man requires effort, intelligence and help. And in fact, as anyone who takes the trouble to read the Bible soon finds out, Jesus actually calls himself ‘the son of man’ - not of God,as the Church tends to think. The term not only accentuates his humanity, but implies something further Perhaps ‘the man that man can give birth to’, man’s next stage, the man who has realized his inner potentiality - who knows?
What is clear however is that Jesus is not only concerned with morality, but about life itself, about the possibility of living more fully, more intensely - whatever he meant by the word which has been translated as ‘abundantly’ at John 10.10 "I am come that they might have life, and have it more abundantly". Elsewhere he describes this as ‘eternal’ life, which appears to refer to intensity rather than extensity, that state of being and consciousness he also calls ‘the kingdom’ of Heaven’. And as we know, the essence of his teaching was about how to enter, to gain access to, that kingdom.
This is the dimension of Jesus’s teaching that is least understood, but most exciting, that is to do not with religion, or morality, but spirituality - the unfolding and flowering of the human spirit, the ascent to its true level of life, the claiming of man’s Birthright.
NOTES
¹ It is hardly necessary to call in the Prophet Ezekiel for support on this point of personal moral responsibility but nevertheless we will: ‘the son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son; the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him’. (Ezekiel 18:20)
² See his De Libero Arbitrio - ‘On Free Will’ in which Pelagius develops the concept of utriusque partis possibilitas - ‘The Possibility of Either Side’. That is: it’s up to you what you decide at the ‘either/or’ or crossroads.
FURTHER READING
The Sufis Idries Shah : Octagon
Definitive study of Sufism as an ancient and ongoing teaching embracing many inner philosophies of the East and West, including original Christianity, within its scope.
Among the Dervishes O.M. Burke : Octagon
On a remarkable journey to the East and Middle East this traveller visits several ancient spiritual communities possessing unusual knowledge. Of special interest is his encounter with a school of Christians near Herat in Afghanistan claiming to have been founded by the master himself - with a different understanding of his teachings.
Lost Bearings in Philosophy Max Gorman : Corona
Monograph identifying, and tracing the course of, a wisdom tradition from the Greek sages, through Alchemy, to its present manifestation. Indicates the continuum between Romanticism and Mysticism.
