Birth Pangs of Western Science

I have struggled to find any rational path from Scholasticism, which reigned in the Church prior to the Reformation, through it, and well into the Renaissance, to empiricism and science. Some aspects of Christianity’s Scholastic roots remain yet today: that established by Augustine at the beginning of the sanitized and politically alligned church by which he attempted to support Christian doctrine with Aristotelian philosophy.
Upon further reflection, it appears to me that the path from Scholasticism to the world that we understand through science, was that of superstition. Will Durant had addressed that in The Story of Civilization, Volume VII, The Age Of Reason, Chapter 22, Science In The Age Of Galileo at page 575. I had not understood its relevance, its truth, or its power until this writing:

Religions are born and may die, but superstition is immortal. Only the fortunate can take life without mythology. Most of us suffer in body and soul, and Nature’s subtlest anodyne is a dose of the supernatural.

Growth is a process. Even what appear to be sudden “bursts of revelation” must be connected to the past, else they risk mere fantasy. I have previously mentioned the book, Philosophy In the Flesh by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson. We live in a physical world; disembodied notions have no relevance. We and the matter that constitutes us are matter aware of itself, as Teilhard described it. There is no hard division between spirit and matter. There is more to life than what we see, but not contrary to what we see.

Again, at page 575, Durant notes the ambiguity which marked the beginning of Western science: “Even Kepler and Newton mingled their science with mythology: Kepler believed in witchcraft, and Newton wrote less on science than on the Apocalypse.” Even in so revolutionary a scientist as Newton, we see conflict between science and religion. That was nothing new. Superstition has been the rule, not the exception. Moreover, these scientific discoveries hardly broke new ground concerning the understanding of the world that we live in. Long before Western science, the Greeks and their philosophy had anticipated a number of scientific premises, such as a solar center world. Additionally, Islamic civilization had explored the night skies and had made a number of scientific observations long before these great scientific figure’s of Western civilization.

At about the time of the Reformation, Islamic civilization had peaked and was about to decline. In Spain, Ferdinand and Isabella had made Columbus’ discovery of the New World possible. As a practical matter, that was bound to happen sometime or another as Western society and civilization developed economically and politically. Perhaps of greatest impact upon Western civilization is Ferdinand and Isabelle’s expulsion of Muslims from Spain, better known to the West as “the unification of Spain.” Actually it was even broader than that: through their Spanish Inquisition, they attempted to eradicate all non-Christians from their unified kingdom. If one visits Spain today, he or she will still note the Islamic influence there as expressed in its Moorish elements.

Will Durant notes at page 691 that in the fourth century, the Muslim historian, Ibn-Khaldin, realized the philosophical importance of history. He wrote,

History has for its true object to make us understand the social state of man, i.e., his civilization; to reveal to us the phenomena that naturally accompany primitive life, and then the refinement of manners … the diverse superiorities that peoples acquire, and which beget empires and dynasties; the diverse occupations, professions, sciences, and the arts; and lastly all the changes that the nature of things can effect in the nature of society.

Indeed, there is much to learn from a larger view of history than just that of Western civilization. I have previously noted the remarkable rise and fall of Islamic civilization during the Dark Ages. I have also noted that during the Crusades, the Muslims were often much more honorable and true to their promises than were Christians. I am a Christian. I want to say that I do not understand the long history of Christianity intolerance of other religions, but I suspect some of it has to do with Augustine, his Aristotelian grounding of Christian theology, its adoption by both Catholicism and Protestantism, and what seems to be that it is somehow related to a literalistic view of the scriptures, to its inclination to elevate spirit over matter, and to the high publicity of Christian fundamentalism. Of course, fundamentalism, in the manner in which Jimmy Carter used it, is a curse of our times extending to each of the Abrahamic religions. The contemporary view of conservative fundamentalist and literalistic Christianity is that the creation story in the Bible is literally, scientifically, and historically true. Whether expressly or implicitly, they set up a conflict between science and religion that, as I view it, does not exist. How does one answer their argument that spirit and faith are above and in conflict with the physical world and human life, and that God is above and superior to the “corrupt” nature of matter, of mankind, and of reasoning and “man’s wisdom.” The horrors of such a schizophrenic view of nature, of the physical world vs. the spiritual world, are, to my mind, perhaps best exemplified by the Christian witch hunts when torture was viewed as an acceptable way to save “the only significant part of the human:” the soul. It has been said that when supposed witches and heretics were burned at the stake, church officials and the obscene onlookers rejoiced that the victim’s soul was saved for heaven if that victim screamed repentance before death.

The Reformation was a time of preparation for rebirth, or of Renaissance, for Western civilization. But politically it remained unstable and Islamic military might remained dominant. Will Durant notes at page 695,

It is hard for us, pigeonholed in Christendom, to realize that from the eighth to the 13th century Islam as culturally, politically, and militarily superior to Europe. Even in its decline in the 16th century it prevailed from Delhi and beyond to Casablanca from Adrianople to Aden, from Tunis to Timbuktu.

But the reality, indeed the enigma, of human existence is that virtue and evil can reside in the same person. It is no different with civilizations. From a Christian standpoint, my mother notes that the “heroes” of the Bible were flawed people as is each of us. Using King David as an example, she notes that God was able to work through him with his virtues as well as his calamitous faults. That is encouraging to her: “Then God can use an ordinary person, even a flawed person, such as I am.”

Will Durant puts into perspective the conflict between Christianity and Islam, at page 703,

Suleiman was doubtless the greatest and noblest of the Ottoman sultans, and equaled any ruler of his time in ability, wisdom, and character; but we shall find him, now and then, guilty of cruelty, jealousy, and revenge. Let us, however, as an experiment in perspective, try to view dispassionately his conflict with Christendom.

The military debate between Christianity and Islam was already 900 years old. That began when Muslim Arabs snatched Syria from the Byzantine Empire (634). It proceeded through the year-by-year conquest of that empire by the Saracens, and the conquest of Spain by the Moors. Christendom retaliated in the Crusades up, in which both sides covered with religious phrases and ardor their economic aims and political crimes. Islam retaliated by taking Constantinople and the Balkans. Spain expelled the Moors. Pope and after pope called for fresh crusades against the Turks . . .

As every political authority seeks to protect and expand its arena, so did Suleiman. He had his eye on Hungary and was poised to take it when he received a letter from Francis I, who was then held captive by Charles V, requesting that he take Hungary. Pope Clement VII urged Christian rulers to defend Hungary, but Luther encouraged Protestant rulers to stay out of the fray because to do otherwise would be to violate “the will of God.” Having successfully taken Hungary, Suleiman then turned his forces upon Italy. It appeared that the fate of Europe “hung in the balance.” However, somewhat as occurred with Hitler in the Soviet Union, winter intervened and the Sultan’s lines of communication were disrupted. This time, both Luther and the Catholic Church understood the seriousness of the threat, and Suleiman suffered his first defeat. Although they saved Italy and staved off further advances of Suleiman, Europe was not without its losses. Ultimately, the Turkish army, under the command of the sultan, ruled the Mediterranean; and the Christians, accepting the losses of Rhodes, the Aegean, and Hungary agreed to terms of peace which implicitly accepted the Ottomans as the superior power.
Suleiman survived the European campaigns to return to rule Turkish Islam. Will Durant notes that in the Ottoman Empire, the Mufti or sheik ul-Islam were the” theologians – lawyers” who directed everyday life of the Islamic Turks. Although sultans came and went, the Mufti were a stabilizing force in that society. However, being committed to the law of the past, they were very conservative, and not progressive in either the arts or the sciences. However, they were very tolerant of Christians and Jews, who enjoyed not only religious freedom, but even self-government, provided that no Muslim was involved. There was greater order, less criminal conduct, and greater civility to be found in the Ottoman Empire than in Europe. Then, as today in the Muslim world, men reigned and women served. Concerning this enigmatic man, Will Durant concludes at page 719:

Suleiman fought too many wars, killed half his progeny, had a creative vizier slain without warning or trial; he had the faults that go with unchecked power. But beyond question he was the greatest and ablest ruler of his age.

Of the Jews during this period, Will Durant notes at page 741,

It was not to be expected that the age of the Second Dispersion should produce any high culture among the Jews; their energy was consumed in the brute task of survival. Education, in which they had excelled, was disrupted by the mobility and insecurity of life; and while Christian Europe moved with exhilaration into the Renaissance, the Jews of Christendom moved into the ghetto and the Cabala law.

In European Christendom, Galileo confirmed the Copernican proclamation that the sun, not the earth, was the center of our world. That conflicted with the Aristotelian notion of geocentrism, which was adopted by the church. Galileo developed his telescope and observed the planets and their motion. Upon publication of his findings, he was tried and convicted of heresy by theologians of the Roman Inquisition, as “contrary to the scriptures.” [How far have we come in the continuing “conservative” Christian view of conflict between science and religion, evolution and creationism, and dualism of spirit and matter?] Galileo was sentenced to imprisonment, which was commuted to house arrest for the remainder of his life. Popular legend has it that following his conviction and sentence Galileo maintained “and yet it moves.” Beyond that, he accepted his fate.

Protestation, Reformation, and Humanism

Toward the end of the 15th Century, the ancient classics were re-discovered; they and new thinking were made available to all with the education sufficient to utilize it; the merchant class was rising, expanding the population of those who were able to benefit from political and material power; through the printing press literature and the power of ideas was more readily available to all; commerce was expanding throughout the Mediterranean and Europe and throughout the region, as far as India; a wider segment of society found and shared the benefits of this new learning and wealth available. Some of the results of that growth were more effective communication, more profuse distribution of wealth, and greater broadcast and receipt of ideas.

There had long been divergent streams of religious ideas, practices, and zeal apart from the church, as has been discussed, but none of it threatened the primacy of the western church within its sphere. In the 15th century, dissatisfaction with the church increased, its privileges among its own were increasingly resented, and protest against its growing wealth at the expense of its congregations and of the lower class became more visible, more effective and more broadly cast. Will Durant states in his Story of Civilization, Volume V, The Renaissance, at page 569, “Enlightenment is of minorities, and emancipation is individual; minds are not freed en masse.” The former rules of social and moral order were changing. Durant notes at page 571: “The church might have sustained the supernatural sanctions provided by the Hebraic Scriptures and the Christian tradition, if her personnel had lived lives of decency and devotion.” Nonetheless, to resist the church yet had its costs. Durrant writes, “In 1478 Galleotto Marcio was condemned to death for writing that any man who lived a good life would go to heaven whatever his religion might be; but Pope Sixtus IV saved him.”

The floodgates of protest were burst open when Luther posted his 95 theses in 1517 on the door of the all Saints Church in Wittenberg, Germany. Once the vessel was split, the part that fell away fractured into many pieces, which would continue to fracture to the present day. I have found a graphic and timeline at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestant_Reformation quite helpful.

Within what remained of the Catholic Church, it cleansed itself by Counter Reformation. Although there are some distinguishing practices, it appears to me that there is yet more similarity between Catholicism and Protestantism than is suggested by the proponents and adherents of either. It is remarkable how such minute differences create so many fissures.

In my posting concerning the consolidation of authority within the Roman Catholic Church, I noted that Augustine not only influenced Catholic theological thinking as redirected by the Council of Nicaea, to Aristotelian scholasticism, but many of his notions were later adopted by Protestants. Certainly, among my more fundamentalist friends and family, I note Christian language and concepts that are taken directly from the Confessions. Doing some more research at this writing, I note that I am not the first to see the great influence that Augustine has had upon Protestantism. I note at http://www.ukapologetics.net/augustinestudy.htm, an article entitled, “How Augustine Became the Father of Not Only Roman Catholicism but also…… Evangelicalism! That post refers to the “Roman Catholic website, New Advent, in which was posted the article, 'Teaching of St Augustine of Hippo.'” Of the mutual reliance of Protestants and Catholics upon Augustine, it cites the following:

Luther and Calvin were content to treat Augustine with a little less irreverence than they did the other Fathers, but their descendants do him full justice, although recognizing him as the Father of Roman Catholicism."

There is no doubt that Augustine, Bishop of Hippo (354-430AD) became the major theological 'heavyweight' whose writings largely influenced and fashioned not only Roman Catholicism, but also Protestantism, and – through that route – modern evangelicalism.

Because I do not see great substantive theological differences among Roman Catholicism, Greek orthodoxy and the various Protestant denominations. I will refer the reader to Adam Hamilton’s Christianity’s Family Tree, published by Abington Press. I believe he more than adequately articulates the fundamental differences among them in a respectful manner. He has also published other books that might be of interest to the reader, particularly, Christianity and World Religions. I find his purposes to be quite consonant with my own purposes in this blog site, and articulate. In his Introduction to Christianity’s Family Tree, he states,

. . . The aim of this book is not to critique the various churches and traditions we will study. Neither is it to compare and contrast them. Instead my aim is to help you learn from your brothers and sisters of other denominations so that your faith might be enriched and that we might be more authentic and effective disciples of Jesus Christ.

Moreover, fine theological differences do not particularly interest me. Philosophy in the Flesh in, by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson addresses my view of such distinctions. I gather from their book that unless our ideas can relate to us and our world in concrete ways, ie., A “in the flesh,” they lack any significance to the life in the flesh which we must live. I see theology to be simply philosophy applied to religious, or metaphysical, notions. I believe that Jesus addressed that when he was asked by his disciples to judge others who are doing good works but not in his name: good fruits and good works mark the life within the Kingdom of God, not logical constructs based upon disembodied premises.

More significant to me are the beliefs that help us to relate to the world in which we live and to produce good fruit. Eric Fromm notes in his book, Fear of Freedom, which I had purchased in the 60s under the title, Escape from Freedom , that a mentally healthy life requires a balance of individuation and relatedness, freedom and a sense of social responsibility, dependency and independency.

There is only one possible, productive solution for the relationship of individualized man with the world: his active solidarity with all men and his spontaneous activity, love and work, which unite him again with the world, not by primary ties, but as a free and independent individual.

European and American history since the end of the Middle Ages is the history of
the full emergence of the individual.

I am again reminded of Eric Fromm’s definition of religion: that which gives us a sense of orientation and an object of devotion. A healthy religion will help the individual and its society to orient itself in a way that dynamically balances individual and social freedom with individual and social responsibility. I see the humanism of Eric Fromm as consistent with “you will know them by their fruits.”

Eric Fromm discusses the origins of contemporary religious orientation and devotion:

[It begins in] the cultural scene in Europe during the late Middle Ages and the beginning of the modern era. In this period the economic basis of Western society underwent radical changes which were accompanied by an equally radical change in the personality structure of man. A new concept of freedom developed then, which found its most significant ideological expression in new religious doctrines, those of the Reformation, Any understanding of freedom in modern society must start with that period in which the foundations of modern culture were laid, for this formative stage of modern man permits us, more clearly than any later epoch, to recognize the ambiguous meaning of freedom which was to operate throughout modern culture: on the one hand the growing independence of man from external authorities, on the other hand his growing isolation and the resulting feeling of individual insignificance and powerlessness. Our understanding of the new elements in the personality structure of man is enhanced by the study of their origins, because by analysing the essential features of capitalism and individualism at their very roots one is able to contrast them with an economic system and a type of personality which was fundamentally different from ours. . . .

Of the Reformation and its significance for the contemporary individual and society, Eric Fromm writes:

The Reformation is one root of the idea of human freedom and autonomy as it is represented in modern democracy. However, while this aspect is always stressed, especially in non-Catholic countries, its other aspect–its emphasis on the wickedness of human nature, the insignificance and powerlessness of the individual, and the necessity for the individual to subordinate himself to a power outside himself–is neglected. This idea of the unworthiness of the individual, his fundamental inability to rely on himself and his need to submit, is also the main theme of Hitler’s ideology, which, however, lacks the emphasis on freedom and moral principles which was inherent in Protestantism.

I see much of religion, from its earliest times, as a response to the wonder of spirit in matter, and their relationship. Is man fundamentally corrupt because of the “sin of Adam,” or is he reflective of “the image of God?” To what degree is present life derived from, or influenced by, prior life? What is God: more than what you see and experience, or above it? What is the significance of life; what is the significance of death; what is left after death? Or, as Joseph Campbell described the function of myth, does it show us how to live?

The Medieval Labyrinth: Its Pagan Roots, Its Spiritual Uses, And Its Unfortunate Associations

Labyrinth Saint Quentin Basilica:

Before we leave the Medieval Period, let’s explore a Christian practice which was first introduced to the Christian church in the medieval period, and has again become common in contemporary Christian practice: the labyrinth. As so many times happens to me, and I suspect it is not limited to me but is experience, also, by others, at crucial points in my life, including the posts of this to blog, something happens that just “fits” my circumstances of that time. In fact, I know that such relevant, opportune moments are commonly experienced by those with perceptive minds and eyes of faith. While studying at the University of Nebraska law school, in one of the final classes that I had with Professor Snowden, Legal Ethics, he sent us off with some wisdom. As one can imagine a long, white-haired, bearded and wise professors or wizards in the Harry Potter movies, Professor John Snowden mystically intoned, “If you ever have a problem, read a good book, and there you will find your answer.”

The labyrinth originates in Greek mythology, in which we are told that it was built to hold the Minotaur, which was half man and half bull. Forms of the labyrinth were also common to the Egyptians, to the Romans and throughout ancient civilization. Although the design of the labyrinth, which can vary, appears to take the traveler close to the centre and then back to the edge, in and out, and finally to the center, a labyrinth is not a maze. One does not become lost in a labyrinth. One trusts that the path will lead from the point of entry to the center although it may appear to wander aimlessly. Once in the center, one trusts the path to the exit, sometimes seeming to approach the edge, and yet returning toward the middle, and about. It may appear to be a complicated path, and it is by design, and yet if one trusts the path through all of its winding and seeming meandering, it will take that person to where “one is going.” Whatever its historical or Christian use, one of its effects was, and still is, spiritual. The person who walks it must yields his or her will and perceptions “to the path.”

While the gift of the labyrinth does not justify the horrors of its contemporaries, it was a beautiful introduction into Western Christian practice at about that same time as the Inquisition and the Crusades. It appeared in several Gothic cathedrals of that time, including Chartres and Reims. Some were crude, with stones laid upon the ground to provide a pathway, and some were highly refined, as those in the Gothic, ornate cathedrals. It is said that the labyrinths were laid out on their central floors of the Gothic cathedrals that were built throughout Europe, were symbolic of a pilgrim’s travel to the Holy City of Jerusalem. It is now also popularly believed that those Christians who could not undertake a Crusade to Jerusalem might, as a substitute, walk the labyrinth of those various cathedrals. Whatever its history, Christianity has rediscovered the spiritual benefits of that ancient practice.

For pictures of medieval labyrinths and their settings, I have obtained the following photos from the google search:

https://www.google.com/search?q=Photos+of+medieval+labyrinths&hl=en&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=050qUf_tH475qAGYh4DwCQ&sqi=2&ved=0CDAQsAQ&biw=1600&bih=731

http://www.labyrinthos.net/photo_library.html

See, also, https://www.google.com/#hl=en&sugexp=les%3B&gs_rn=4&gs_ri=psy-ab&tok=PAD5p_HfPyCvt73NwAQzXA&cp=29&gs_id=1&xhr=t&q=Photos+of+medieval+labyrinths&es_nrs=true&pf=p&output=search&sclient=psy-ab&oq=Photos+of+medieval+labyrinths&gs_l=&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.r_qf.&bvm=bv.42768644,d.cGE&fp=edc2cdd6c0fe230d&biw=984&bih=463

For a concise history of the labyrinth at the Cathedral of Chartre, France, see http://www.bc.edu/content/bc/alumni/association/labyrinth/history.html

For an excellent a resource in one location concerning the church history of the use of the labyrinth, see
http://www.labyrinthos.net/ . As an introduction to the labyrinth and of resource for more casual exploration, I will rely upon that site for background, designed, use, photos, and graphics.

For spiritual uses and benefits of the labyrinth, see
https://www.google.com/#hl=en&sclient=psy-ab&q=labyrinth+medieval+spiritual&oq=labyrinth+medieval+spiritual&gs_l=hp.3..33i21.4288.30030.0.32861.28.24.0.4.4.0.950.4996.0j19j2j5-2j1.24.0.les%3B..0.0…1c.1.4.psy-ab.IOBu9fHY3_4&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.r_qf.&bvm=bv.42768644,d.aWc&fp=edc2cdd6c0fe230d&biw=984&bih=463
http://www.sacredwalk.com/
http://labyrinthsociety.org/
http://www.labyrinth.org.uk/historypage1.html
http://steadfastlutherans.org/?p=21292
http://www.bc.edu/content/bc/alumni/association/labyrinth/history.html
http://medievalcastles.stormthecastle.com/essays/medieval-castles-mazes-and-labyrinths.htm
http://www.labyrinthos.net/chartresfaq.html

For other a treasury of links concerning labyrinths, see

http://www.labyrinthos.net/links.html
For a very scholarly list of resources for labyrinth studies, see, http://labyrinth.georgetown.edu/display.cfm.

See, also, my prior post during my discussion of architecture, https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/2012/01/23/medieval-music-and-scholasticism/.

The Church, Judaism and Islam in the Middle Ages

In Volume IV of Will Durant’s The Story of Civilization he introduces Chapter 3, “The Progress of Christianity” at page 44, he observes:

The foster mother of the new civilization was the church. As the old order faded away in corruption, cowardice, and neglect, a unique army of churchmen rose to defend with energy and skill a regenerated stability and decency of life. The historic function of Christianity was to reestablish the moral basis of character and society by providing supernatural sanctions and support for the uncongenial commands of social order; . . .

Augustine and His Influence upon Both Catholic Theology, and Later, Protestant Theology

Next to Constantine, St. Augustine had the greatest influence on the church, and not just the Catholic Church, but even the subsequent Protestant churches. His best-known work is his Confessions, in which, for my tastes, at times he seems to make himself more base to make God all the greater; and at other times, he seems almost to be brag of his brazen rejection of his mother’s prayers for him. In that work, he acknowledges that he prayed for chastity, “but not yet.” He was well schooled in Greek philosophy and was a disciple of Manichaean dualism until it was outlawed by the Roman Emperor, as the Empire, through Constantine, adapted Christianity to its political purposes. Indeed, I find that his rejection of Manichaeism is on grounds that bear strong resemblance to his finely retooled Christian theology.

Augustine found Greek philosophy to be much more consonant with Christian theology, perhaps influenced by Paul’s announcement to the Athenians that he was revealing to them the Christ, who the pagans represented as the “unknown god.” Drawing upon his philosophical background, which, it would appear, was not a threat to Roman authority and therefore Roman authority was not a threat to it, he provided an Aristotelian justification of church doctrine, as refined by himself. He adopted the doctrine of original sin first introduced by Paul. He argued that Adam’s sin had left man corrupted merely by being children of Adam; that only through the redeeming sacrifice of Jesus, God’s only Son, could mankind be redeemed; that only by the free grace of God could the stain Adam’s sin be erased and salvation gained; and that only by intercession of the prayers of the Virgin Mother.

His was a dogmatic complexity which would stain Christian theology for all time, rooted in a doctrine of original sin in all offspring of “Adam.” For all his youthful excesses, in his more mature, converted state, sexuality was part of the fallen, sinful state of man. He wrote a treatise On Free Will in which he argued that although God for saw the choices that man would freely make, nonetheless, man was free to make the choices.

Following the political collapse of Rome, many asked how that could have occurred. Some blamed paganism, others blamed Christendom. Many Christians were shaken in their faith by Rome’s fall. Augustine made his own attempt to make sense of that chaotic aftermath in City of God. He struggled with the work for 13 years. Will Durant makes the following observations and assessments at page 72:

He published it in piecemeal installments; the middle of it forgot the beginning and did not foresee the end; inevitably it’s 1200 pages became a confused concatenation of essays on everything from the First Sin to the Last Judgment; and only the depth of its thought, and the splendor of its style, lifted it out of its chaos to the highest rank in the literature of Christian philosophy.

Over the next two centuries, Rome would see the final dissolution of the Roman Empire, and the Catholic Church would take up its political remnants to combine with its ecclesiastical power. Europe descended into its Dark Ages

The Rise of Byzantine Culture and of the Greek Orthodox Church.

As the Roman church consolidated its ecclesiastical and political power in the West, there also arose theological and political differences between the church at Rome and that at Constantinople. In 867 the Byzantine Emperor called a church council which denounced the Roman Catholic Church and excommunicated its Pope. In 897, Pope Stephen the VI “got even” by having the corpse of Pope Formosus exhumed, adorned in purple robes and tried, convicted, and the corpse mutilated.

With the decline of the Roman Empire, Roman Church political power increased. Byzantium also struggled with invasions from the East and the West. Finally, at the beginning of the 11th century, the Greek Empire consolidated its control of Byzantium, and through its stability, Byzantine commerce again dominated the Mediterranean. Constantinople thrived. Byzantium enjoyed a renaissance. Although the Byzantine church prohibited sculpture and art, generally, Christian Orthodox iconoclastic representations were allowed and thrived. Its icons were viewed as an aid to worship. Politically, Constantinople provided a buffer between Europe and Islam and thrived until it was plundered by the Crusaders in 2004.

The 11th century found the Roman church in spiritual disarray. The church sold its services for a price, it sold purported relics, it’s clergy was caught between marriage and concubinage,, and the Papal States became militarily engaged for its own political as well as religious purposes. In that century, the Schism between East and West churches was formalized. Although the Church did not encourage it, nonetheless, the populace adored the Virgin Mary. Her maternal image softened some of the harsh realities of life and teachings of the Roman Church.

Toward the end of the Middle Ages, the roots of various nationalities throughout the European region were developing. The German emperors claimed that their political power was divinely granted. The fine line between Church and Empire had become blurred, and rather than direct political and military action, the Church ruled indirectly, meeting conflict with excommunication, and obtaining favor by the blessing of the Holy Roman Empire.

In Europe, feudalism yielded to chivalry and the Crusades; fiefdoms and manors yielded to villages and then to city states. In preparation for a cultural renaissance, Europe was realizing an economic revolution in which merchants gained more power, and commerce permitted cultural enrichment by contact with other societies.

In his The Story of Civilization, Volume IV, The Age of Faith, Will Durant begins Chapter XX VI I, the Roman Catholic Church,

In many aspects religion is the most interesting of man’s ways, for it is his ultimate commentary on life and his only defense against death. . . . Men hoped vaguely for heaven, but vividly feared hell.

In both Islam and Christianity, a sign of the times was the theological notion that there are the elect, selected by God before birth, but then there was the majority that would go to hell. Even St. Augustine was of the opinion that an unbaptized infant was destined to hell.

Of this time, Will Durant observes, “The power of Christianity lay in its offering to the people faith rather than knowledge, art rather than science, beauty rather than truth.” In the latter part of the Middle Ages Christian theologians were influenced by Jewish and Islamic philosophy and theology, particularly that of Moses Maimonides.

See The Nicene Creed at http://www.onbeing.org/program/need-creeds/feature/nicene-creed/1294 and The Need for Creeds at http://www.onbeing.org/program/need-creeds/211

The Christian Mystic, Eckhart von Hochheim (c. 1260 – c. 1327)

Meister Eckhart was a Christian Mystic theologian of the Dominican order. He was a Neoplatonist scholar who studied humanism, which became during the Renaissance a strong influence on the arts. The Dominicans are known for their sound scholastic orientation. He saw the truth of the Bible, not as literally read, but as metaphorically significant. In that dynamic sense, he emphasized the balance between the mysteries of the tri-unity and its manifestations. Like with his predecessor, Moses Maimonides (1135 – 1204), he addressed the inability of language to describe anything positive about the divine.

The author of The European Graduate School post entitled Meister Eckhart – Biography, which may be found at http://www.egs.edu/library/meister-eckhart/biography/, articulates Eckhardt’s contribution to Christian mysticism:

Eckhart taught that man’s great need is that his soul be united with God, and that finding salvation requires that one attains the teaching of religion in and through his own understanding. In accord with this orientation, Eckhart spoke little, and quite possibly, thought little, of church ceremonies.

The Deity, he claimed, was the highest object of thought precisely because no finite predicates, or predicates derived by finite beings, are applicable to the Deity. This claim, however, is not a simple negation or emptiness. It is not the Deity that is negation, but finite beings as such which are emptiness and negation. The Deity is the negation of finite beings, and as such, the negation of the negation, that is, it is the absolute fullness of being. There is an apparent contradiction in Eckhart’s proclamations that God is the absolute being and the denial that He is a being. The contradiction, however, is reconciled in so far as he claimed that while the essential elements of finite beings are in God, they are so only in an exalted degree and thus in a manner that cannot be apprehended by man.

Eckhart also refers to the absolute, unqualified being, as unnatured nature, which manifests itself in the Trinity. The Trinity, therefore, is the self-revelation of the Deity. Eckhart draws a distinction between God and Deity, along the lines of actuality and potentiality. Although such language is not explicitly used by Eckhart, and moreover, he explicitly claimed that God excludes all potentiality, this division nonetheless follows from his conception of God as actus purus.

This self-manifestation of God in the Trinity is followed by His manifestation in His creatures. Although everything true and real in them is of God’s eternal being, God’s eternal being is not manifested in them in Its fullness. In so far as all finite beings are negations, then if God were to withdraw, they would disappear much like a shadow projected onto a wall would, if the wall itself was removed.

The unqualified Deity, Trinity and Creation, Eckhart claimed, were three immediate moments, which followed one another conceptually, but not temporally. Eckhart posited a hierarchy of being, in so much as he claimed that while something of God was even in irrational beings, His divinity resided only in the soul. That is, the soul was the place of God in man, and hence in the soul God is subjective, while in the rest of creation He is merely objective. In the soul, he claimed, was the divine spark. This spark exists eternally in God, but through grace enters into the temporal realm, that is, into the soul.

Perfection, however, was not the result of some primary original unity, but of a return. Man must turn to God in order for the divine spark in him to be truly realized – it is not enough to be His creation, one must also become His son. Christ was not born as the son, but became him, for no reason other than he made a place for God in his soul.

Sin, for Eckhart was not the cause of the incarnation. Sin, instead, is the turning away from God. In turning in the direction of finite being and pleasure one refuses God his place in the finite soul, and as such sins. Redemption, accordingly, is when a finite being makes room in his soul for the work and word of God. To sin or to become the son, forms the polarity of man, with respect to God. When God enters the finite soul he births the son; this is the fulfillment of the soul’s destiny – the soul’s destiny, we can say for Eckhart, is its anatomy.

Of Eckhart, the site, http://www.historyofpainters.com/mysticism.htm, in a post entitled, Medieval Christian Mysticism, the author states:

One of the most influential mystics of the Middle Ages, Meister Eckhart, wrote “God is infinite in his simplicity and simple in his infinity. Therefore he is everywhere and is everywhere complete. He is everywhere on account of his infinity, and is everywhere complete on account of his simplicity. Only God flows into all things, their very essences. Nothing else flows into something else. God is in the innermost part of each and every thing, only in its innermost part.

Few of Meister Eckhart’s theological works were published until the 20th century. He is perhaps best known for his sermons, which have long been in publication. Concerning those sermons, Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meister_Eckhart quotes him concerning his intentions for his preaching:

When I preach, I usually speak of detachment and say that a man should be empty of self and all things; and secondly, that he should be reconstructed in the simple good that God is; and thirdly, that he should consider the great aristocracy which God has set up in the soul, such that by means of it man may wonderfully attain to God; and fourthly, of the purity of the divine nature,

Later in life, Meister Eckhart was charged by the Roman Catholic Church of being a heretic. He fell victim of the Inquisition, which was heavily influenced by leaders of the Franciscan order. He is said to have logically defended himself well, but he died before verdict in his trial was rendered.

To this day the Church maintains its censure of his work and ideas, although many over time have attempted to remove that censure and to recognize him and his work. Nonetheless, Meister Eckhart has had a great influence upon contemporary theologians, particularly, Matthew Fox, the psychiatrist and writer, Eric Fromm, and the former Secretary General of the United Nations, Dag Hammarskjöld. Some contemporary scholars see parallels between Meister Eckhart and Buddhism.

The Rise of Islamic Civilization and the Roots of Mysticism

In 570, Mohammed was born into a poor family among the nomadic tribes in the Arab Peninsula. Will Durant notes the significance of that birth:

No one in those years would have dreamed that within a century these nomads would conquer half of Byzantine Asia, all Persia and Egypt, most of North Africa, and be on their way to Spain. The explosion of the Arabian Peninsula into the conquest and conversion of half the Mediterranean world is the most extraordinary phenomenon in medieval history.

Mohammed established the third of the Abrahamic religions, Islam. Some of his ideas are of Jewish origin, and some of Christian origin. He generally accepted both Jewish and Christian scriptures as given by God to humankind, to which he added the Koran.  That he wrote, was dictated to him by Gabriel during his visions. Islam shares some basic theological notions with Judaism and Christianity: one God, faith, repentance, the Last Judgment, prophecy, notions of heaven and hell, and notions of reward in an afterlife for faithful living.

During his lifetime, Mohammed sought to put an end to intertribal fighting among the Arabic tribes. However, he made no provision for his successor upon his death. Therefore, at his death, the intertribal conflict which he had managed during his life, erupted again, with increasing fervor, inflamed by Islamic ardor.

In his Story of Civilization, Volume IV, “the Age of Faith,” 11, at page 206, Will Durant observes this Islamic flowering:

Civilization is a union of soil and soul – the resources of the earth transformed by the desire and discipline of man. Behind the façade and under the burden, ports and palaces, temples and schools, letters and luxuries and arts, stands the basic man … All these were busy in Islam.

Islamic civilization arose in spectacularly short time during Europe’s Dark Ages. Then, as Europe emerged from the Middle Ages into the Renaissance, that civilization disintegrated about as fast as it arose.

At the end of the Middle Ages, as Christianity embarked upon its many Crusades, in the dealings between Christian and Muslim leaders, Muslims proved to be more honest and reliable than the various Christian groups embarking upon them.

Islamic civilization reached its zenith between 632 and 1058. Mohammed admired and encouraged the pursuit of knowledge. In its conquest of the Mediterranean, Islam came in contact with Greek culture, which inspired the Muslims to art and science. Education became an important role of the state. Arabic numbers were developed, and with them, logic, astronomy, and mathematics. As the Muslims expanded their territory, they learn from those that they conquered. As with the Christian monasteries, most mosques had libraries of that time.

Will Durant notes at page 237,

Nowhere else in those eighth, nineth, tenth, and eleventh centuries of our era was there so great a passion for books, unless it was in the China of Ming Huang. Islam reached then the summit of its cultural life. . . . The old cultures of the conquered were eagerly absorbed by the quick-witted Arabs; and the conquerors showed such tolerance that of the poets, scientists, and philosophers who now made Arabic the most learned and literary tongue in the world only a small minority were of Arab blood.

In 830, Islam established in Baghdad a “House of Wisdom” for scientific inquiry, an observatory, and a library. By the mid-ninth century, the Muslims had translated most of the classic Greek scientific texts and the works of Plato and Aristotle. During that time Muslim scholars attempted to reconcile the Koran to Greek philosophy. Algebra, quadratic equations, their analysis and solutions, geometry and trigonometry were developed during this period; astronomical tables were compiled; astronomical … calculations were determined with remarkable accuracy, and for the benefit of trade, maps of the lands within the scope of that civilization were developed. Muslims developed, long before Galileo, the notion that all things are attracted towards the center of the earth, that astronomical phenomena could be explained, as could the basics of genetics. Although Muslim religion prohibits the dissection of the human body, pharmaceuticals and therapy prospered. Arabic drugs were an important commodity in trade with Italy. They achieved an effective treatment of smallpox and measles, and some drugs were effective as an anesthetic inhalant. Many hospitals were established, medical care was provided for prisoners, and the insane were treated humanely. Their science explored the various models for the creation of mountains: either they resulted from the upheaval of the Earth’s crust or the eroding action of water. The scientist, Saracens, kept careful records of his observations of chemical experiments, establishing the roots of metallurgy and chemistry. Botanists develop skills of grafting, and in the ninth century Othman Amr-al-Jahiz developed a theory of evolution that began with basic matter, developed into the forms of plant life, through animal life, culminating in mankind.

One aspect of Islamic religion which was shared with both Judaism and Christianity was the age of the mystics. Will Durant notes that Islam was introduced to philosophy through its school of Muʿtazilah, meaning “seceders”. They denied the eternity of the Koran, but asserted that it arose through the dictation to Mohammed in time. They attempted to accord the Koran and the Hadith with the principles of logic and reason as the inherited them from the Greeks. They held that when the Hadith or Koran contradicted the teachings of reason, such passages must be interpreted allegorically.

Anticipating Maimonides, they held that mortal man cannot know the nature and extent of God; it could only recognize the spiritual power identified with God, as revealed in the world. That movement produced Al-Kindi, the first philosopher of conquest in Islam. He was a student of Neoplatonism and was a prolific writer on a great variety of mathematical, scientific and philosophical matters in Islam.

Will Durant, at page 251, notes the conflict that such philosophy created between the social and religious order and such logical demands:

In a society where government, law, and morality are bound up with a religious creed, any attack upon that creed is viewed as menacing the foundations of social order itself. . . . In this crisis three factors made orthodoxy victorious: a conservative caliph, the rise of the Turkish guard, and the natural loyalty of the people to their inherited beliefs.

The Shia sect of Islam was associated with Muʿtazilah and this new Islamic mysticism. With the Orthodox Islamic reaction, the Shia sect was marginalized, and their shrine was destroyed. They were to have great influence, however, upon Jewish and later Christian mysticism.

Dispersion and Contribution of the Jews

Dispersion of the Jews

As Christianity was made a state religion by Constantine, as the Roman Empire fell to the barbarians, and as Western civilization descended into the Dark Ages, we have noted the rise of Islam and Islamic civilization. We now trace the path of Judaism into the Middle Ages.

In Will Durant’s The Story of Civilization, Volume III, Caesar and Christ, Chapter 25, “Rome and Judea,” at page 542 he observes concerning the Jews:

No people in history has fought so tenaciously for liberty as the Jews, nor any people against such odds. From Judas Maccabee a to Simeon Bar Cocheba, and even into our own time, the struggle of the Jews to regain their freedom has often decimated them, but has never broken their spirit or their hope.

Generally contemporaneous with the rise of Christianianity, Jewish control of Israel, under the Roman Empire’s supervision, became threatened. In A.D. 6, Augustus established Judea as a Roman province. Under provincial rule, in order to retain some semblance of control over their circumstances, they had agreed Roman authorities during the rules of Augustus and Tiberius that they would be permitted to continue their sacrifices in the Temple at Jerusalem provided that they also do it in the name of the Emperor. However, when Caligula became Emperor, he pushed the Jews over the edge by requiring that an image of himself be placed in the Temple and that sacrifices be made to his image. The Jews revolted. Not only did the Emperor tax the Jews, but he even raided the temple treasury. The Jews again revolted. This time Romans laid siege to Jerusalem and demanded that the 600,000 rebels gathered there surrendered. The siege lasted for five months. Titus offered lenient terms to the rebels, but they refused. The Jews fought to the last man, woman, and child. Many bodies were thrown over the walls, corpses lined the streets. The Romans showed no mercy to the Jews, slaughtered the Jews they could find, and set the wood structure of the Temple on fire, totally destroying it.

The Sanhedrin, the high priesthood of the Jews, was abolished. From that time to the present the Jews were without a Temple. According to Jewish law and custom, sacrifices could be made only at the Temple. Although the Jews were permitted to visit Jerusalem on holy days, the temple was destroyed. Therefore after 60 A.D. Judaism went without sacrifice. During the diaspora, the synagogue became the place of worship. Rabbis, rather than priests, led them in worship and in their religious life. Again, the Jews were dispersed throughout Empire revolted; and again, Gentiles slaughtered Jews, and Jews also slaughtered Gentiles. An historian of that day reported that 220,000 men were killed in Cyrene and 240,000 were killed in Cyprus. In 130, Emperor Hadrian ordered that a shrine to Jupiter be raised at the sidt of the Temple. They again revolted and again they were defeated. The Jews were even more heavily taxed and they were permitted in Jerusalem only one day a year, and then solely for the purpose of weeping at the wall before the ruins of their Temple.

Will Durant concludes that chapter,

No other people has ever known so long an exile, or so hard a fate. Shut out from their Holy City, the Jews were compelled to surrender first to paganism, then to Christianity.… Judaism hid in fear and obscurity while its offspring, Christianity, went out to conquer the world.

In dispersion, the Jews supplemented their Scriptures with the Talmud which is a collection of teachings or commentary upon the law. Study of the Torah occupied the energies of the Jewish male in the place of the dream of rebuilding the Temple. For the Jew, salvation was in the community, not individually bestowed. The Scriptures and the commentary were each believed to be literally the word of God. Having no Temple on which to focus their religious fervor, the Jews focused their attention and energies on the Sabbath. Rules of Sabbath observance abounded and were observed in the greatest of detail. At Maine’s true today. For example, not long ago we bought a new oven which has a “Sabbath mode” which may be set for the Sabbath to start automatically on the Sabbath so that Jews who operate that appliance do not violate Sabbath law.

The Medieval Jews (565 – 1300)

The Jews were scattered throughout the Christian and Muslim worlds during the Medieval Period. The Islamic civilizations had a great impact upon Jewish culture and learning. The first great Jewish philosopher, Saadia, was born in Egypt in 892. At the time, the Muslims scholars attempted to accord the Koran with faith, reason and history. Saadia attempted to do the same with Jewish Scriptures. He held that at times their holy Scriptures contradicted reason, and in those cases, the Scripture t was not to be taken literally. He had a great influence upon the Jewish mystic, Moses Maimonides.

The Jews generally thrived in the 10th through 12th Centuries and in Muslim Spain until the Muslim Almohads, orthodox Muslims from northern Africa, conquered the Spanish Muslims In the 11th century, and demanded that both Christians and Jews convert to Islam. The Jews were heavily taxed, but, nonetheless, they prospered. They tended to become moneylenders and financial advisors, amassing their fortunes in wealth, which was easily movable if they were suddenly expelled.

In 1095, Pope Urban II called Christians to the First Crusade. The Leader of that Crusade, Godfrey of Bouillon, declared his intent to “avenge the blood of Jesus” on the Jews, intending to kill all Jews. Jews in northern Europe were required to convert to Christianity, and many chose suicide instead. To his credit, Bishop Hermann found Christian homes to shelter many of the Jews. Pilgrims nonetheless hunted them down and killed many of them. Many Jews died in northern Europe. The Pilgrims then began their march upon Jerusalem. At that time, the Muslims had control of Jerusalem. In 1099, when the Crusaders attacked Jerusalem, many Jews joined the Muslims in defense of the city. Jerusalem fell to the Christians, and the victors herded the Jews into a synagogue, where they burned the them alive. In the Second Crusade, 1147, Crusaders again attacked the Jews in northern Europe. Archbishop Henry of Mainz tried to hide Jews in his own home, but a mob of Crusaders attacked his home and killed the Jews in his presence. In 1243 the Crusaders slaughtered all of the Jews of Belitz, near present-day Berlin. Such atrocities occurred in each of the Crusades. Some Christians, however, did attempt to protect the Jews, including several of the English kings.

Abraham Ben Meier ibn Ezra was born in Toledo Spain in 1093. He was well known as a poet and traveled widely throughout Egypt, Iraq, Iran, Italy, France and England. He was known for his commentaries on the books of the Old Testament. He held that the books were authoritative and divinely inspired, but when they conflicted with reason, he advised that those passages should be interpreted as metaphors for a deeper truth. Spanish Jews of the 12th century tended to view scriptural passages that defied reason as poetical expressions of truth.

Will Durant, The Age of Faith, at page 394 concludes, “For that one death on the cross how many crucifixions!”

The Rise of Jewish Philosophy

Will Durant writes of Jewish philosophy in the Medieval Period at page 405:

… A civilization passing from poverty to wealth tends to develop a struggle between reason and faith, a “warfare of science with theology.”… Among the three faiths that divided white civilization in the Middle Ages, this was least true of Islam, which had most wealth, truer of Christendom, which had less, truest of Judaism, which had least. And Jewish philosophy ventured from faith chiefly in the prosperous jewelry of Muslim Spain.
Medieval Jewish philosophy had two sources: Hebrew religion and Muslim thought.…What religion taught as divinely revealed dogma, philosophy would treat as rationally demonstrated truth. And most Jewish thinkers from Saadia to Maimonides made this attempt in a Muslim milieu, derived their knowledge of Greek philosophy from Arab translations and Muslim commentaries, and wrote in Arabic for Muslims as well as Jews. . . .
Gabirol was a Jewish poet and philosopher of the 11th century. He wrote a book of Proverbs, Choice of Pearls, one of which states, ”How shall one take vengeance on enemy? By increasing one’s good qualities.” He was influenced by both Muslim and Christian theology and philosophy. Under that influence within that environment, he was a Neoplatonist, but he stressed the will of both God and man. He taught that we must assume the existence of God, but we cannot know the attributes of God. His philosophy was resisted by more orthodox Jews and thinkers.

Moses Maimonides (1135 – 1204) live and wrote in Islamic – controlled Spain; his Arabic name was Abū ʿImrān Mūsā bin Maimūn bin ʿUbaidallāh al-Qurṭubī . He was greatly influenced by Gabirol. He eschewed anthropomorphic perceptions of the notion of God. In doing so, he developed the “doctrine of negative attributes:” we can say that God exists, but we say nothing positive about God, as such statements would tend to limit the loving God. We can only say what God is not.

Of man, Maimonides says, “the soul that remains after death is not the soul that lives in a man when he is born.” The soul that exists with the body, he calls “potential intellect.” He allows for some existence thereafter, which he calls the “active intellect.” In the 20th century, Catholic theologian and paleontologist, Teilhard de Chardin would likely have agreed with Maimonides’ notion of the “potential intellect.” Teilhard acknowledge the evolution of man and man’s continuing evolution, describing the mind and select as “matter aware of itself.” Maimonides had a great impact not only upon Jewish philosophy, but on thinkers of Islam and Christians of that day, also.

One of his major theological works is Guide for the Perplexed. Some Jews were inspired by it, some believed it was heretical. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Guide_for_the_Perplexed for an excellent summary of that work. He intended it to speak to people who did not have scientific knowledge yet to understand his concepts.

Early Christian Growth, Disagreements, and Heresies

By the second century the church had given up hopes of Christ’s imminent return. Nevertheless, for some time they continued to live exemplary lives. By that time, the day of worship was moved from the Jewish Sabbath to the first day of the week, Sunday. At that time, there were only three Christian sacrament: baptism, communion, and holy orders. The Roman Christians began to bury their dead in catacombs in which the corpses were stacked in crypts along the sides. By the end of the second century, the form of the Christian mass was established. By then, Christian art included the image of the Dove, representing the release of the soul upon death, the Phoenix, arising from the ashen remains of the body following death, the palm branch of celebration, the olive branch of peace, and the fish which represented the Greek words, “Jesus Christ, son of God, Savior.” Christian music arose from Greek pagan music, but, on the whole, it maintained the high moral values of the church.

Greek Christians, drawing upon the Greek habit of disputation, became rife with heresies. The signs of the final times had to be reinterpreted as the years passed. Gnosticism predated Christianity, but as Christianity adopted other mystery religions, it also adapted the self knowledge of Gnosticism to its own purposes. The first notable heretic, Marcion, in the mid – second century took inspiration from the Gnostics. He taught that the mercurial Yahweh could not be the father of Christ. He challenged the notion that a good God would not have condemned and kind because of Adam’s disobedience. He taught a purely spiritual resurrection and a strict asceticism. He chose Luke’s gospel and the Letters of Paul to constitute his New Testament. The established church authorities rejected his ideas as heretical and excommunicated him.

In the mid-second century, Montanus, condemned the increasing worldliness of the church and the increasing power of the bishops. He sought the return to a simple Christian faith, and recognition of the religious service of both priests and the laity. He taught the imminent establishment of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth in the New Jerusalem in which all things would be shared and nothing hoarded. His was a spirit-filled ministry. Today we might call it Pentecostal that at that time it bore some resemblance to the rights of Dionysus. Montanism was banned by the church as a heresy. It bore some similarity to Gnosticism in that it elevated the spiritual life over the physical life. However, whereas Gnosticism sought to gain triumph over this life through knowledge, Montanism sought triumph through ecstasy. In about 190 A.D., when Christians were being persecuted by Roman authorities in Asia minor, many Montanus offered themselves for martyrdom.

One of the early Church fathers, Origenes Adamantius (Origin), lived in the early part of the third century. His father was put to death for his Christian faith. In Origin, one finds a curious mixture of literal interpretation of the Bible (in which he took Matthew 19:12 literally and had himself emasculated) and metaphor (in which he challenged the , as nonsensical literal interpretation of days of creation and the notion of the tree of life, which would necessarily imply immortality). Because he was emasculated, his Bishop, Demetrius of Alexandria, refused to ordain him as a priest. Demetrius and was ordained by the bishops of Palestine. He moved to Caesarea where he wrote his defense of Christianity, Contra Celsum. In it, he knowledge that there were inprobable difficulties in Christian doctrine, but he asserted that paganism had even greater difficulties. Moreover, the Christian faith offered a nobler way of life. By the time that Origin was 65 years of age, the Christian persecution by the Roman Emperor, Desius, laid Origin out on a rack in an iron collar, weighted by heavy chain for many days. He survived that with the untimely death of Desius, but lived only a few more years. Will Durant writes at page 615, “With him Christianity ceased to be only a comforting faith; it became a full fledged philosophy, buttressed with Scripture but proudly resting on reason.”

Through the second century many gospels, letters of the apostles, and apocalyptic literature were circulated. There developed different lines of authority in the West, at Rome, and in the East at Byzantium. As one might expect, with different authorities, different writings concerning Jesus, the apostles and the early church would also differ. The book of Revelation was rejected by the Eastern church, but found authoritative by the Western church. The book of Hebrews and the letters of James were rejected by the Western church, but accepted by the Eastern church. When The Eastern and Western churches determine the authoritative books of their own New Testament. Various synods and church conferences were convened for those purposes. Even when the West had determined the books that it considered authoritative, certain of the popes flip-flopped on some letters attributed to Paul, which ought to have called into question the notion of Papal infallibility. Not only was there a conflict between Eastern and Western Christian churches, but each had their own rogue congregations to bring under its control. Throughout the second century, the Roman church grew both in wealth and an ecumenical power. Will Durant says of that at page 618:

As Judeism had given Christianity ethics, and Greece had given it theology, so now Rome gave it organization; all of these, with a dozen absorbed and revival faiths, entered into the Christian synthesis. It was not merely that the church took over some religious customs and forms, common in pre-Christian Rome – the stole and other vestments of pagan priests, the use of incense and holy water in purifications, the burning of candles and an everlasting light before the altar, the worship of the saints, the architecture of the basilica, the law of Rome as a basis for canon law, the title of Pontifex Maximus for the Supreme Pontiff, and, in the fourth century, the Latin language as the noble and enduring vehicle of Catholic ritual.

Gospel Stories of Jesus

The first Christians would have seen little purpose in writing concerning the life of Jesus and his sayings, believing in his imminent return. The first writing concerning Jesus and the church was that of Paul to the churches that he established or helped to establish. Of those, the consensus of scholars of textual criticism, i.e., the study of texts to determine whether the language is consistent with the common language of the time and its uses, most, but not all, of the letters that purport to be from Paul most are considered to be authentic letters of Paul. Hebrews is one letter that makes no such claim, but is anonymous. None of the Gospels were written contemporaneously with the life of Jesus, but rather, after the writing of the letters of Paul.

Although the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John generally narrate the life of the man, Jesus, from some time during his life, through his crucifixion, his resurrection, and his ascension, among them, there are both similarities and differences.  Scholars believe that among the synoptic Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the Gospel of Mark was written first and became the basic framework of the others.

Each of the synoptic Gospels recounts from a similar perspective a story of the life, crucifixion, and resurrection of Jesus. According to the synoptic Gospels, it was only after his crucifixion and after various of his followers reported the experience of his resurrection, that his followers became convinced that he was more than a mere man, but the “Son of God.”

Each of the synoptic Gospels tells us that Jesus went into the wilderness for 40 days, during which, or after which, he was tempted by Satan. A good Jew of that time could hardly miss its analogical reference to the Old Testament story of the Exodus of the Israeli slaves from Egypt, after which they wandered for 40 years in the desert, during which time they were being prepared to live as the children of God in the “promised land.” Jesus was tested in various ways to prepare him for his life of teaching, caring, and healing.

The Gospel of Mark

The Gospel according to Mark begins in the Revised Standard Version:

1 The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the son of God.
2 As it is written in Isaiah the prophet, “Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, who shall prepare the way;
3 the voice of one crying in the wilderness: prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight -.”

With that introduction, the gospel tells of John the Baptist preaching in the wilderness, calling his Jewish followers to repentance, baptizing, and preaching that someone mightier than he was coming. The gospel introduces Jesus with the story of his baptism by John and of his temptation in the wilderness for 40 days. Numbers were meaningful for the Jews. They bore specific meaning. Today that would be called numerology.

Mark shares with the other synoptic Gospels similar stories of the crucifixion. With Mark, Jesus’ last words were, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” If one looks at the actual words, only, one could not miss the sense of despair that any human would have experienced in the same circumstance. Some Christians perceive the statement to be a recitation in his final moments of physical life of Psalm 22. That Psalm begins with the same words of despair of Psalm 22. Despite that despair, the Psalm concludes in triumphal proclamation that God is in charge and governs the nations; that in the end, the nations will “declare his righteousness.” Mark notes that as Jesus breathed his last, “the curtain of the temple was torn into top to bottom”, and when the centurion heard Jesus’ cry he said, “surely this man was the son of God!”

Mark tells us that following the Sabbath the two Mary’s were going to the tomb to anoint Jesus’ body with spices. In Mark’s account, they saw that the stone had already been rolled away. They entered and saw a “young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side, and they were alarmed.” The young man told them, “He is risen!” He then told them to tell the disciples to go to Galilee, where he would meet them, “just as he told you.”

The Gospel of Matthew

Matthew begins with an account of the genealogy of Jesus, as it is traced through Joseph, and not through Mary. It’s story of the Nativity is relatively brief. Unlike Mark, it describes Mary’s immaculate conception of Jesus, of Joseph’s intention to divorce her for being unfaithful, and of his assurance in a dream that she had not been unfaithful, but had become pregnant “of the Holy Ghost” (Spirit). Matthew also tells us of the coming of the wise men and of Mary and Joseph’s flight to Egypt with the child.

In Matthew one sees a story of Jesus as a fulfillment of Jewish prophecy. It highlights Jesus command to love one’s neighbor, as himself, not to judge, that “you will know them by their fruits,” and that when the “Son of Man” returns, he will separate the sheep from the goats and reward those who did acts of kindness to others, as though they had done it for the Son of Man, and punish those who did not respond in love to the needs of those around them, as though they also had ignored the Son of Man.

Matthew’s account of Jesus’ crucifixion and the agony leading to it and through it, is extensive. And it is gory. Through the centuries, it has been used by radical Christianity to justify their hatred and persecution of the Jews. Mel Gibson’s movie, The Passion of Christ, is based upon that account.  At least one commentator objected to the movie’s magnification and seeming delight in the injustice and cruelty of the crucifixion as being “pornographic.” Consistent with that blaming, the account mentions the sign placed on the cross, above Jesus as he was crucified, reading, “this is Jesus the King of the Jews.” In his account, both of the robbers “reviled” Jesus. It simply states that “Jesus cried again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit. At that moment, the curtain of the temple was torn from the top to the bottom, a feat that no man could have accomplished; that the earth shook and the tombs were opened. Matthew reports that the soldiers, were in awe and concluded, “truly this was the son of God!” Matthew’s account includes Jesus prophecy’ and Peter’s denial of Jesus.

Matthew also has a short account of the resurrection of Jesus, including the “Great Commission” without an account of his ascension.

Matthew’s account of the resurrection of Jesus is, like Mark, brief. Like Mark, Matthew relates the story thaty the two Mary’s “went to look at the tomb.” There was a great earthquake, as an “angel of the Lord” descended, rolled back the stone which covered the mouth of the two and sat upon it. The angel reassured them that Jesus had risen from the dead. As they were returning, Jesus suddenly appeared to them, greeted them, and told them to tell the disciples to meet him at Galilee. Matthew’s account closes with Jesus meeting his disciples at Galilee and giving them “the Great Commission.”

The Gospel According to Luke

Luke begins his Gospel by acknowledging that several biographies of Jesus were already in circulation. He undertakes to review those accounts for accuracy and to make report in his gospel.

In Luke we read the prophecies of both John and Jesus, of the Annunciation, and Mary’s song, known in liturgy as the Magnificat. Luke gives us the story of Jesus’ Nativity that is perhaps most familiar to Christians, beginning with “In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be enrolled.” In it, we find the shepherds “keeping watch over their flock by night.” They went to the stable, where they would find “a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.”

Luke also has a genealogy of Jesus, but it differs greatly from that of Matthew. Again, he traces Jesus’ ancestory from Adam through Joseph to Jesus.

Whereas Matthew is pervaded with the message that Jesus is the fulfillment of prophecy, Luke presents Jesus as a great physician, focusing on Jesus’ healing.

Luke’s account of the crucifixion is more succinct than that of Matthew. Luke gives the account that is frequently used in the celebration of the Eucharist, or the Lord’s Supper. Jesus predicts Peter’s denial and he agonizes in the garden on the Mount of Olives, where he “sweat drops of blood.” Luke also tells us of Jesus’ betrayal by Judas, and of his arrest. Peter denies him three times and Jesus is tried before Pilate, who “washes his hands of the matter.” Jesus is led away to his crucifixion, carrying his own cross. Two criminals were crucified with him at “the place called the skull.” Above him was the sign, “this is the King of the Jews.” One of the crucified criminals jeered, “save yourself and us!” The second rebuked the first, stating that they were justly punished but that Jesus had done no wrong. Jesus responded to the latter, “I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise.” As Jesus dies on the cross, Luke tells us that he called in a loud voice, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.”  ‘Surely this was a righteous man.”

In Luke’s resurrection story, he says that as “the women” took spices to prepare the body, they found the stone rolled away and to men gleaming “like lightning” standing before them. They announced to the women that he was not there, but was risen. “Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee:’ The Son Of Man must be looked delivered into the hands of sinful men, be crucified and on the third day be raised again.’” Only after the men told the women did the women remember. The two Mary’s and others told the disciples.

On that same day a strange man joined “two of them” who were walking from Jerusalem Emmaus. They talked about the crucifixion and the stranger asked them, “Did not to Christ have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?” After all that visiting as they walked, they arrived at their home when the day was almost over. They invited Jesus to stay with them. It was only when they were sitting at the table to have some bread, that the stranger broke the bread, gave thanks and suddenly disappeared from their site, that they concluded that they had been talking and “breaking bread” with Jesus. Luke then tells us that Jesus appeared to the disciples as they met in a room with locked doors. “He said to them,’ This is what I told you while I was still with you: everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets and the Psalms.’” Thereafter, Luke closes very briefly with the ascension of Jesus into heaven.

Luke claims to be the author of Acts of the Apostles.

The Gospel of John

Rather than starting with the story of the man Jesus, John begins with a faith statement concerning his meaning and nature. As I read that gospel, I see many Gnostic elements. In its extreme form, Gnosticism would treat the historical Jesus as spirit, essentially impervious to human pain and death. Gnosticism was later determined by the church to be heretical. John doesn’t go that far, but, rather than beginning with the birth of Jesus, he introduces his book in the following manner:

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. 4 In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. 5 And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.
6 There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. 7 This man came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all through him might believe. 8 He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light. 9 That was the true Light which gives light to every man coming into the world.
10 He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him. 11 He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him. 12 But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name: 13 who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.
14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.
15 John bore witness of Him and cried out, saying, “This was He of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me is preferred before me, for He was before me.’”
16 And of His fullness we have all received, and grace for grace. 17 For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18 No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him.
19 Now this is the testimony of John, when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, “Who are you?”
20 He confessed, and did not deny, but confessed, “I am not the Christ.”
21 And they asked him, “What then? Are you Elijah?”
He said, “I am not.”
“Are you the Prophet?”
And he answered, “No.”
22 Then they said to him, “Who are you, that we may give an answer to those who sent us? What do you say about yourself?”
23 He said: “I am
‘The voice of one crying in the wilderness:
“Make straight the way of the LORD.”

Jesus Through the Ages

Hebrews 13:8 states, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.” On the other hand, Prof. Jeroslav Pelikan, in his book, Jesus through the Centuries: His Place in the History of Culture, notes that each age has seen Jesus in terms of the experiences of that age. We cannot help but see and perceive a person or event of the past through the bias of our own “lenses.” For the early Jewish Christians, Jesus was a rabbi; to Constantine, Jesus was a powerful King; the Renaissance saw him as the cosmic Christ; in the age of reason, he was the teacher of common sense. It is no wonder that the Gospels share some similarities, but also are distinctive – something more than literal and accurate history. The question then becomes, as Jesus framed it, “Who do you say that I am?”

Prelude: Christianity’s Greek Inheritance

Christianity very quickly spread from the disciples and its Judaic roots to the Gentile world around the Mediterranean Sea. Although it was subject to Roman rule, the root of that civilization remained Greek. It was through that background that Paul appealed to the Athenians and their “unknown god.” It was the Greek notion of logos (meaning “word”) to which John appeals in the first verse of his Gospel: “In the beginning was the word.” How Platonic!

The following is my understanding of Greek philosophy in a nutshell. The height of that philosophy was expressed in Plato and Aristotle. As the church later developed, it rationalized its beliefs through the language and tools of Greek philosophy. In Christianity that was the root of scholasticism: supporting church doctrine with Greek logic. While Augustine castigated Manichaeism, he found the Greek philosophers acceptable – not just acceptable, but anticipating Christian dogma. In the spirit of Paul revealing to the Athenians that their “unknown God” was revealed in Jesus, Augustine implicitly posits that Christianity was the fulfillment of Greek philosophy. As I have noted,  Christians attributed to Jesus a number of names that had previously been attributed to Caesar.  Likewise, the reader may recognize a number of Christian doctrinal terms that were common to Greek philosophy. The following is my chronological summary of Greek philosophy:

The Milesians examine the nature of the world, spirit and matter:

Ionia produced Homer who poetically described the activity of the gods in the lives of humankind, propelled by a capricious fate. Hesiod in the eighth century B.C. still saw Zeus in control, but not capriciously as did Homer; rather, for the good of mankind. This first inquiry of the Greeks into the nature of being in the world took a mythological-religious form.

In the seventh century B.C., Milesians began to ask “What is this world really like?” One of the first issues in that inquiry was, “How can we explain the process of change in the world?” Thales (624 546 BC) noted that although matter appeared like many different things, there is nonetheless a basic similarity among them: water. While water addressed substantive similarities of some matter, it did not explain the power that drove action and change involving matter. Thales explained that with the notion that “all things are full of gods”. He reasoned that since a magnet can move iron, it must have a soul, a manifestation of the presence of the gods. Thales’ great contribution to philosophy was to shift the basis of thought from inherited mythology to scientific inquiry.

Anaximander, a younger contemporary of Thales, born about 610 B.C., believed that water was only one specific substance among many. The primary substance could not be finite, as matter in its specific forms was finite. For him, the source was an infinite and indeterminate fund of matter called the Boundless. From this all matter in the world derived, and to the Boundless all matter would return at the end through atonement (“at onement”).

Anaximenes (585 528 B.C.) combined Thales’ notion of a primary, concrete substance with Anaximander’s concept of the Boundless. For Anaximenes that primary substance was air. It is both boundless and in eternal motion, but it also has concreteness which one can feel as in the wind. For Anaximenes, all substance derived from air through “rarefaction” and “condensation”. This completed the Milesian view of the world.

Pythagoras’ and the Eleatic Philosophers’ examination of mind, choice and reason:

Whereas the Milesian philosophers were men of action and therefore practical, on Samos, a nearby and larger island, Pythagoreans developed its contemplative, detached side of philosophy. Emphasizing the theoretical, they developed a mathematical tradition of science. Pythagorean philosophy spread from Samos throughout the Greek world. Its effects were profound. It was through such theoretical, mathematical methods that Einstein developed his theory of relativity. The mathematical development suggested and predicted effects to Einstein, such as the bending of light about large objects like the sun. It also suggested the effect of motion upon time. It was not until many years later that these theories were empirically demonstrated.

Pythagoras, whose active philosophic life was in 525 500 B.C., extended the distinction between the changeable actual and the permanent, pervasive real. For him the idea of the actual had more permanence than the actual to which it referred: things actually consisted of numbers. Pythagoras’ interest in mathematics was infused with religion. He elevated intellect over feeling, in reaction to the emotional religious excesses of the Dionysian rites. The chief god of the Pythagoreans was the rational god Apollo. It is this association of religion with reason, which marks Western religions and distinguishes them from the Eastern mystical religions.

The Pythagoreans found in scientific and mathematical thought a mode of life that, more than any other model, was “pure.” Through mathematical thought one could be liberated from thinking about particular things to thinking, instead, on the permanent and ordered world of numbers.

To the Milesian concept of primary matter, Pythagoras contributed the idea of ideal form. Here was the root of Greek idealism, that belief in perfect forms of which the worldly appearances are but imperfect imitations. Pythagoras believed that the basic unit was the single point, that all motion can be analyzed in terms of points, and that all ideal shapes can be realized by connecting those points.

In medicine the Pythagoreans looked upon the body as they would a musical instrument. For them, bodily health was the attunement of the body in a harmony of opposites such as hot and cold, wet and dry, and a balance of specific elements, which we would now call biochemicals. The Pythagorean view centered on the dynamic relationship of balanced forces.

Anaximander dealt indirectly with the issue of change and the power behind it with his notion of the “indeterminate boundless.” It was not until Heraclitus’ in about 504 501 B.C. that the concept of change was directly addressed. For Heraclitus “all things are in flux” through fire. His thought contributed to twentieth century philosophies of change and becoming. In brief, he believed fire was the basic reality, the primary substance, and the principle of change itself. Fire is simultaneously a deficiency and a surplus: it must constantly be fed and it constantly gives off something in the form of heat, light, smoke and ashes. An important aspect of his philosophy, only much later empirically demonstrated, was that in this process of change, nothing is lost: all that changes is form.

To fire Heraclitus added the concept of reason as the universal law. Change in the world is directed from above by God’s universal reason. The most real thing of all is the soul, and through the soul mankind participates in God’s universal reason, or universal law. For Heraclitus, apparent conflicts were not in need of atonement by return to the Boundless, but rather, apparent conflict concealed the possibility of rational agreement through attunement of opposite tensions, “like that of the bow and lyre.” Indeed, in his theory, insofar as fire represented the power of emotion and universal reason the power of intellect, he provided the basis for a balanced view of human personality.

Parmenides, born early in the fifth century B.C. in Elea in Southern Italy (hence Eleatic), said that if there is a single substance behind all things, there can be no change at all: change is an illusion. Whatever exists “must be absolutely, or not at all.” He also held a peculiar notion which remained with the world through the time of Descarte: “You will not find thinking without being to which it refers.” Plato derived many of his ideas from Parmenides. They met when Parmenides visited Socrates in Athens.

The Eleatic philosophers, Pythagorean in heritage, emphasized the logical relationship of ideas, and they distinguished between appearance and reality. Whereas modern scientists test appearances, and are slow to come to a conclusion until a hypothesis has been tested against empirical data, the Eleatic philosophers began with a stated observation, considered that the thought could not exist except that it had a corresponding object. They then clarified and expanded the idea by logically connecting arguments. Noting the inexactitude, indeed the paradoxes, of sensation and observation, they held that to get to the truth, thought is more reliable than sensation.

Zeno (b. 489) expressed the unreliability of sense by the example of a single millet seed which falls to the ground apparently without a sound, and yet half a bushel of seeds falling makes a distinct sound. He concluded there must also be a sound when one falls. Rather than looking for means of measuring and determining the extent of the minute phenomena his reasoning said existed, Zeno concluded that sense is deceiving, and it cannot be trusted. Even motion, Zeno held, was an illusion, or at least a relative concept. Thought was the only reliable means of knowing the world. And through logical analysis Zeno demonstrated the paradoxes contained in the Pythagorean view of the world as divisible and many. His ideas also influenced twentieth century philosophy.

Empedocles (490 to 430 B.C.) was a synthesizer, and he wrote his philosophy in the form of poetry. Being is not One but many, he said, and it is the many which are changeless and eternal. He held that there are four elements: water, air, fire and earth. The forces behind change, which drive it, are Love and Strife, Harmony and Discord.

In Anaxagoras (500 428 B.C.) we find the first distinct and formalized Greek Dualist: mind separated from matter. The harmonized structure and operation of the world can be explained only by a being with knowledge and power, a being above the world, directing the world. Matter eternally existed in mass, which was then “separated” through the power of the mind (Nous) in a rotary motion causing a vortex.

Reacting to Anaxagoras’ dualism were the atomists, Lucippus and Democritus. They were materialists. They determined that the nature of things consists of an infinite number of particles or units called atoms, indestructible and therefore eternal, each fully contained and containing no spaces: completely hard and indivisible. Nature consists of space (a receptacle) and atoms.

Although there is great similarity between the Pythagorean notion of infinite points and the atomists’ concept of atom, the two were worlds apart. Whereas the Pythagoreans saw the idea of number as exemplary of the spiritual world within, above and beyond the physical, for the atomists there was no place in their world view for purpose or design; there was no need for a creator or a designer. To them matter simply is, and what is “ought to be.”

Democritus extended materialism to view thought, not as separated from the material, but as a product of the motion of atoms. He also examined ethics, which stretched the limits of materialism. He urged moderation in all things, the goal being cheerfulness. But there is not much to examine in ethics if one is committed to a materialistic view in which reality is mechanically determined. The logical conclusion of such a view is that one’s actions cannot be within one’s control, and under such a view “ought” can have no real meaning.

The Sophists and Man’s Relationship to the World: Positive Law:

From the issue of “What is the world?” philosophy proceeded to ask “How Does It Run?” The Next Step Was to Ask, “How Do I Relate to it?” We can see the seeds of this inquiry in Democretus’ examination of ethics. The Sophists took it further. They began with the issues of “What is man?,” “What is man’s relation to the world?” and “What can man know about it?”

The philosophers who inquired into the nature of the world could not come to a consensus on its nature. The Sophists, whose name means “intellectuals,” were confronted with many contradictory theories, and they came to suspect any statement about truth. When they turned their study to that of various cultures, they were struck with the differences. They became skeptical about the possibility of obtaining any absolute truth upon which one can act with assurance. Recognizing the diversity in human society, they turned their attention to the practical.

The Sophists were the first formal educators. They performed a valuable service of teaching men to present their ideas clearly and to effectively accomplish a desired goal. Rhetoric was their primary skill: the ability to convince others of one’s own ideas to one’s own advantage. Being practical men, they charged a fee for their teaching services. Further, they sought out the rich as their students.

Because of their bent toward skepticism and practical advantage, they soon became ridiculed for leading young men from respected families to a skeptical view of the world which was destructive of traditional values and guided by self-advantage. Socrates, himself, was one of their students, but his poverty soon prevented further study with them.

With the Sophists we first have a formal answer to the question of our place in the world. It was stated by Protagoras: “Man is the measure of all things, of the things that are, that they are, and of the things that are not, that they are not.” With such a view, there is no need for gods. Indeed, Protagoras discouraged any discussion of theology:

About the gods, I am not able to know whether they exist or do not exist, nor what they are like in form; for the factors preventing knowledge are many: the obscurity of the subject, and the shortness of human life.

As to human law, Protagoras taught that it was not based upon nature, but upon mere convention, which will vary with the culture. Mortimer J. Adler described Protagoras’ position in his book, Six Great Ideas, p. 202:

Fire burns alike in Greece and in Persia, they said, but the laws of Greece differ from laws of Persia because they are wholly matters of convention, with no natural basis. Hence what is just and unjust, or right and wrong, is one thing in Greece, and quite another in Persia.

Protagoras maintained, nonetheless, that although laws are a matter of convention, they should be obeyed by everybody because they are the best that can be had within that convention. Other communities may have different laws. That does not mean they are better, but only that they are different. Even Protagoras’ view of religion was more agnostic than atheistic: one cannot have any certain knowledge about the gods, but that should not prevent one from worshiping the gods. In fact, it is good that young men should honor tradition, albeit merely convention, because that contributes to stability in society.

For Protagoras, knowledge is relative to persons and their circumstances. Likewise moral judgments are relative. The real question is what practical use can one make of knowledge.
Gorgias took Protagoras’ skepticism to its logical extreme, and concluded that:

1. nothing exists,
2. if anything exists, it cannot be comprehended, and
3. even if it were comprehensible, it cannot be communicated.

With such a position, philosophical inquiry must cease. Gorgias turned to rhetoric. If nothing exists, but if one can nonetheless act within the world, one may as well act in one’s self-interest. Having rejected the possibility of knowing truth, it was but a short step to reject ethics altogether: the notion that private ends justify the means. The only real issue in such a scheme of things is the power to carry out the plan. The inevitable conclusion of this view is moral nihilism.

Although the Sophists were severely criticized by many Greek philosophers that followed, they had a vital role in the development of philosophical thought. They developed notions of grammar, logic, and dialectic. And they contributed to the educational level of the Greeks. As Will Durant noted in The Story of Civilization, II The Life of Greece, p. 364, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle would not have been possible without them.

Socrates and Plato:

Socrates criticized the extreme skepticism of Sophistry. Whereas the Sophists said the truth cannot be known, Socrates sought out Truth. Samuel Enoch Stumpf describes Socrates’ approach to truth in his book Philosophy: History and Problems, at page 36:
As he pursued his mission, Socrates devised a method for arriving at truth, linking knowing and doing to each other in such a way as to argue that to know the good is to do the good, that “knowledge is virtue.”

Socrates’ method was dialectic. It implicitly recognized the dynamic nature of knowledge which required a dialogue among several people in the examination of an idea. Through dialogue, through the contributions and questions of the various parties to it, Socrates was confident that each party would clarify those ideas, and that a clear statement would result. The truth could be coaxed out of progressive corrections of an idea and its statements. “The unexamined life is not worth living,” he concluded. For him, knowledge sought the permanent elements remaining after the facts had changed or vanished.

In Socrates we also find an early example of civil disobedience. Although Socrates denied the charges brought against him of introducing new religious practices in the place of the state religion and of corrupting the youth, he was found guilty. He could have chosen voluntary exile, but he chose instead to accept the consequences. That is the core of civil disobedience, and it finds its roots in Natural Law: there is a natural order, a natural goodness, in the world which exceeds the limits of our own selves and interests, and to which a contribution may be made in self-sacrifice. By remaining, he became an example for that society, an inspiration for the continued life and improvement of that society.

Socrates’ student, Plato, is perhaps the most famous and inspirational of all philosophers the world has known. Plato also argued against the skepticism of the Sophists by teaching that there are two worlds, the dark world of the cave and the bright world of light. Knowledge which is based upon the real is secure. In his allegory the cave is where men live from childhood, chained. They can only see and can only know what is suggested to them by the play of shadows cast upon the cave’s wall from persons walking before the fire. They never see the persons or the objects they carry. Nor are they aware that the shadows are mere shadows and not the objects themselves. All they know are the shadows, and they consider the shadows to be real.

But if a prisoner were to be freed, he would see the real. And were he to return thereafter to the dark cave, he could never see the shadows as before. His fellow prisoners would consider his sight to have been ruined. Plato suggests most of mankind dwells in the cave. It is the function of education to lead us out of the cave and into the world of light. But the educated person must not remain in the world of light. Rather, upon their conversion by education from appearance to reality, the educated must return to the cave and participate in the life and labors of the prisoners.

Whereas the Sophists were lead by the flux of life to skepticism, Plato sought out the unchangeable real before the shadows of appearance. This led him to the doctrine of Forms or Ideas. For him the Ideal is the Form or Idea of the object which is above the world, changeless and eternal, of which the objects of this world are poor imitations or copies. Moreover, visible things change, whereas Ideas such as Good and Beauty are timeless. Ideas therefore have more being than things. Knowledge is not concerned with mere appearances, but with the realm of being that truly is. What really is the essential nature of things, from which we can judge good or beauty in the world of appearances? In such a view, the “is” of the Ideal ought to be imitated in this world.

For Plato, concerned with the ideal above the world, it was natural to posit the notion of creation in which the Demiurge or God used the Forms to fashion particular things. Thus existence emerged from the “mind of God.” Related to this, Plato developed the concept of the soul which is eternal, and in which resides both the rational and irrational parts, good and evil, the possibility of forgetfulness and disorder. It is the function of morality to help recover man’s lost sense of inner harmony when the appetites of, and stimuli to, the body have overcome reason. To restore the soul to harmony requires knowledge and virtue. Knowledge is the view of the real. Virtue is knowledge of the true consequences of all acts, so that it fulfills in each part of the soul that which is the nature of each part to do.

“Paul’s Unconventional Wisdom” by Marcus Borg

In Living the Questions, a video series concerning the Christian life, Marcus Borg and Dominic Crossan discuss at one point the significance of certain titles attributed to Jesus, which, to the early Christians, would have significant meaning in a Roman governed world.
The essence of that discussion may be found at http://www.beliefnet.com/Faiths/Christianity/2004/03/Pauls-Unconventional-Wisdom.aspx?p=1

 

Links to my site:

Introduction https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/introduction/

Graphic Arts https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/i-graphic-arts/

Architecture https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/ii-church-architecture-and-its-incorporation-of-art/

Music https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/iii-music/

Theology https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/iv-theology/

Home Page https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/

Christianity: A New Faith Arises in a Historical Context

Of the early church, Will Durant states in his third volume, Story of Civilization, Chapter 27, “The Apostles,”

Christianity arose out of Jewish apocalyptic – esoteric revelations of the coming Kingdom; it derived its impetus from the personality and vision of Christ; it gained strength from the belief in his resurrection, and the promise of eternal life; it received doctrinal form in the theology of Paul; it grew by the absorption of pagan faith and ritual; it became a triumphant Church by inheriting the organizing patterns and genius of Rome.

The apostles and the first Christians expected Jesus’ imminent return. Matthew 16:27 – 28 (New International Version) quotes Jesus to say,

27 For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what they have done.
28 “Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.”

In 1 Peter 4: 7 Peter admonishes, “The end of all things is near. Therefore be alert and of sober mind so that you may pray.” In 1 John 2:18, the followers of Jesus are warned, “Dear children, this is the last hour; and as you have heard that the antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come. This is how we know it is the last hour.”

Alfred North Whitehead, in his book, Adventures in Ideas, tells us that because Jesus followers believed that he would return in all his glory while some of that generation who heard his promise yet lived, they were able to give lavishly, holding back nothing for the morrow since they would have no need of it in the time to come. That expectation waned with the passing years, and Robert Wright, in his book, The Evolution of God, writes, “By the time Luke was written, more than a decade after Paul’s death, that expectation was no longer operative.”

Luke 17:20 – 21 (King James Version) has Jesus telling the religious leaders,

And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, The kingdom of God cometh not with observation:

Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.

The earliest Christians were Jews and that faith first oriented and informed early Christianity. The apostles and the first Christians worshiped in the synagogue. Of that early practice, Will Durant writes at Volume 3, Chapter 27, The Apostles, page 579: “In Christ and Peter Christianity was Jewish; in Paul it became half Greek; in Catholicism it became half Roman. In Protestantism the Judaic element and emphasis were restored.”

With the conversion of Saul (in Greek the equivalent of Paul), Christianity broke out of Judaism and into the Gentile world which was immersed in paganism. There remained some tension for some time between the apostles and Paul, Jewish and Gentile converts. One of the principal questions to arise, particularly as Gentiles became converted by Paul to Christianity, was to what degree Christianity was Judaic, and subject to its laws – particularly, circumcision and dietary restrictions. Paul and his fellow missionary, Barnabas, went to Jerusalem to discuss that matter with the apostles. By that time, Peter had a vision by which he understood that God did not make a distinction between Christian Jews and Christian Gentiles. In Acts 15 gives account of Peter’s revelation in that matter:

7 After much discussion, Peter got up and addressed them: “Brothers, you know that some time ago God made a choice among you that the Gentiles might hear from my lips the message of the gospel and believe. 8 God, who knows the heart, showed that he accepted them by giving the Holy Spirit to them, just as he did to us. 9 He did not discriminate between us and them, for he purified their hearts by faith. 10 Now then, why do you try to test God by putting on the necks of Gentiles a yoke that neither we nor our ancestors have been able to bear? 11 No! We believe it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved, just as they are.”

Perhaps influenced by Paul’s promise of financial aid from Antioch for the impoverished Jewish community in Jerusalem, the apostles and Paul came to an agreement that pagan converts not be required to observe the Jewish rites, but simply to abstain from eating the meat of animals that had been sacrificed and to live a moral life, evidenced by good fruits.
Will Durant notes at page 579 that, “The mystery religions prepared the Greeks for Paul, and Paul for the Greeks.”

Acts 17 :22-33 describes the manner in which Paul reached out to the Gentiles, including pagans in a world heavily influenced by Greek civilization:

22 Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: “People of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. 23 For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. So you are ignorant of the very thing you worship—and this is what I am going to proclaim to you.
24 “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. 25 And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. 26 From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. 27 God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. 28 ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’[b] As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’[c]
29 “Therefore since we are God’s offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by human design and skill. 30 In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. 31 For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.”
32 When they heard about the resurrection of the dead, some of them sneered, but others said, “We want to hear you again on this subject.” 33 At that, Paul left the Council. 34 Some of the people became followers of Paul and believed. Among them was Dionysius, a member of the Areopagus, also a woman named Damaris, and a number of others.

The Athenians were little impressed, but the passage demonstrates Paul’s manner of linking this new religion with that Greek inheritance. Paul left for Corinth and there reached out to many Jews through its commerce. He was a tent maker and spoke each Sabbath at the synagogue, giving him significant contacts with his Jewish heritage. His education extended beyond Judaism to Hellenic civilization and Roman governance. While in Corinth, Paul also gained a number of Gentile converts to Christianity. It was while he was in Corinth that the Jewish leaders charged him with the crime of attempting to induce people to worship God contrary to Jewish laws. The civil authorities refused to become involved in the dispute since it was religious, not civil, in nature.

Paul made three missionary trips to the Gentiles who lived about the Eastern Mediterranean rim. There was some risk in converting Gentiles to Christianity, including that the their backgrounds would unduly influence their Christian practice. He addresses that in 1 and 2 Corinthians. The agreement reached in Jerusalem did not last long. In time “the party of the circumcision” demanded of the Galatians that they live by the Jewish law. In response, Paul wrote to the Galatians, making a clean break with Judaism.

In an attempt to resolve some of the conflict that Paul had with the Jerusalem Christians, he returned to Jerusalem. He did so against the advice of fellow evangelists and missionaries. Upon his return, the church leaders boasted many Jewish converts to Christianity, but accused Paul Paul of preaching against the law of Moses. They prescribed Jewish purification rituals as an overt sign that Paul respected his Jewish heritage and its laws. He followed their advice. When he had completed the seven day purification ritual, some Jews saw him in the temple and again accused him of teaching against the Jewish people and their law.  They also complained that he defiled the Temple by bringing Gentiles into it. Word of the charges spread throughout Jerusalem. The offended Jews dragged him out of the Temple and were about to kill him. Paul was saved by the appearance of some Roman soldiers and their commander. He resolve the immediate threat by taking Paul into custody. But, Paul asked to speak to the crowd before he was taken into custody. The commander granted the request. Acts 22 reports Paul’s speech in which he recounted to the angry mob how he had come to be called by Jesus to bring the gospel to the Gentiles:

“I am a Jew, born in Tarsus of Cilicia, but brought up in this city. I studied under Gamaliel and was thoroughly trained in the law of our ancestors. I was just as zealous for God as any of you are today. 4 I persecuted the followers of this Way to their death, arresting both men and women and throwing them into prison, 5 as the high priest and all the Council can themselves testify. I even obtained letters from them to their associates in Damascus, and went there to bring these people as prisoners to Jerusalem to be punished.
6 “About noon as I came near Damascus, suddenly a bright light from heaven flashed around me. 7 I fell to the ground and heard a voice say to me, ‘Saul! Saul! Why do you persecute me?’
8 “‘Who are you, Lord?’ I asked.
“ ‘I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom you are persecuting,’ he replied. 9 My companions saw the light, but they did not understand the voice of him who was speaking to me.
10 “‘What shall I do, Lord?’ I asked.
“ ‘Get up,’ the Lord said, ‘and go into Damascus. There you will be told all that you have been assigned to do.’ 11 My companions led me by the hand into Damascus, because the brilliance of the light had blinded me.
12 “A man named Ananias came to see me. He was a devout observer of the law and highly respected by all the Jews living there. 13 He stood beside me and said, ‘Brother Saul, receive your sight!’ And at that very moment I was able to see him.
14 “Then he said: ‘The God of our ancestors has chosen you to know his will and to see the Righteous One and to hear words from his mouth. 15 You will be his witness to all people of what you have seen and heard. 16 And now what are you waiting for? Get up, be baptized and wash your sins away, calling on his name.’
17 “When I returned to Jerusalem and was praying at the temple, I fell into a trance 18 and saw the Lord speaking to me. ‘Quick!’ he said. ‘Leave Jerusalem immediately, because the people here will not accept your testimony about me.’
19 “‘Lord,’ I replied, ‘these people know that I went from one synagogue to another to imprison and beat those who believe in you. 20 And when the blood of your martyr[a] Stephen was shed, I stood there giving my approval and guarding the clothes of those who were killing him.’
21 “Then the Lord said to me, ‘Go; I will send you far away to the Gentiles.’ ”

The crowd was not mollified by the speech, but rather, enraged. The commander took Paul to the barracks and ordered that he be flogged. At that time, Paul declared himself to be a Roman citizen, which, upon declaration, gave him certain legal rights; and the commander withdrew his order to flog Paul. The next day, in order to sort out the reason for the Jewish backlash against Paul, the commander took him to the Sanhedrin, the Jewish governing body. Again, the commander had to reclaim custody of Paul to save him from the anger of the Jewish  mob. The Roman soldiers removed him to the barracks for his own protection. From there, 270 soldiers immediately removed Paul to Caesarea. There, the governor, Felix, agreed to hear the complaint of the Jews against Paul. Shortly, the priest, Ananias, appeared at the trial and accused Paul of being a troublemaker, whereas he praised the governor for keeping the peace for the Jewish people. Paul was called to speak in his own defense, in which he stated in Acts 24:

14. . . I admit that I worship the God of our ancestors as a follower of the Way, which they call a sect. I believe everything that is in accordance with the Law and that is written in the Prophets, 15 and I have the same hope in God as these men themselves have, that there will be a resurrection of both the righteous and the wicked. 16 So I strive always to keep my conscience clear before God and man.
17 “After an absence of several years, I came to Jerusalem to bring my people gifts for the poor and to present offerings. 18 I was ceremonially clean when they found me in the temple courts doing this. There was no crowd with me, nor was I involved in any disturbance. 19 But there are some Jews from the province of Asia, who ought to be here before you and bring charges if they have anything against me. 20 Or these who are here should state what crime they found in me when I stood before the Sanhedrin— 21 unless it was this one thing I shouted as I stood in their presence: ‘It is concerning the resurrection of the dead that I am on trial before you today.’”

We are told that Felix withheld judgment concerning the charges for two years, during which time Paul remained in custody. Felix had hoped that Paul would bribe him. After two years, Felix was replaced by Porcius Festus, who scheduled a new hearing on Jewish charges against Paul. Jewish leaders leveled a number of charges against Paul; and Felix, hoping to rid himself of the matter, asked Paul if he would be willing to go to Jerusalem to be tried by the Jews. At that time, Paul answered that he was before Caesar’s court, that he was innocent, and if the Jews wished to proceed, he appealed to Caesar. Once he made that appeal, Felix lost discretion in the matter, and Paul was taken to Rome for trial before Caesar. There, he was under house arrest, awaiting trial; and there, he was free to receive visitors and to write to various of the churches that he had helped establish.

There were a number of factors making this new Christianity, as presented by Paul, appealing to the Gentiles. For example, there were a number of mystery faiths that had arisen in the Hellenistic world, among which the notion of a resurrected Savior was often an element.

Similarities of Early Christianity to  Hellenistic Mystery Religions

Many of the former pagan practices of Gentile Christian converts crept into and influenced early Christian dogma and practice.  For example, the cult of Dionysus shared in a feast, the meat of which was considered to be the body of Dionysus and the wine his blood. There are also two stories of resurrection, also predating Jesus. The psychologist, Carl Jung noted that the resurrection was a theme common to many world religions and that it was also associated with the god of wine and ecstatic drunkenness. That feature shared by many religions was sufficient that he consider this to be a part of the subconscious of human nature.

Christians also shared a communal meal, which apparently was sufficiently pagan in its observance that the apostle Paul warned against excess and drunkenness. From that time, Christianity has either used a cup of wine or grape juice and some form of a small piece of bread to represent the blood and body of Christ. The congregational participants most commonly either sip a small amount of wine or juice and eat a small portion of bread or wafer, or the bread or wafer is dipped into the wine or grape juice after the minister or priest has recounted the story of the Lord’s supper and ends the account with Jesus’ words the night before he was crucified, “Do this in remembrance of me.” In the Greek cult of Dionysus, Dionysus died and rose again. The church fathers, Will Durant tells us in Story of Civilization, that church authorities dealt with the similarity between the rites of Dionysus Christian practice by accusing Satan of creating the story of Dionysus to deceive those who would “follow Jesus.”

Titles Attributed to Jesus Which Were Predated by Attribution to Caesar Augustus and Other Caesars

The New Testament scholar and co-chair of the Jesus Seminar, Dominick Crossan, in the video series, Living the Questions, notes that many of the titles that the early Christians attributed to Jesus were first used to describe Caesar Augustus before Jesus’ birth. Those titles included “Divine,” “Son of God,” “God,” “God from God,” “Lord,” “Redeemer,” “Liberator,” and “Savior of the World,” and even the notion of the virgin birth.  Dominick suggests that the early Christians used those terms previously attributed to Augustus Caesar as a means to prop up the authority of Jesus and to deny the authority of Augustus Caesar. Moreover, while adopting the same titles, the Christians attempted to distinguish the authority Christ and the Kingdom of God from Roman political authority: Jesus’ nonviolence against Rome’s violent repression.

In addition to the above – noted pagan and Roman political sources of Christian ideas, Paul became the source of many theological notions that are nowhere to be found in Jesus’ own teaching. For example, the notion of original sin and that every person born inherits the guilt of Adam is  not to be found in any account of Jesus’ teaching, but only in Paul; moreover, the notion of atonement by Jesus’ death is not individual but that of all. It appears to me that, as in the Athenian proclamation concerning the identity of the “unknown God,” Paul was attempting to demonstrate to the Gentiles that Jesus fulfilled their hopes and assuaged their fears. Paul also introduces the notions of divine election, i.e., that before a child is born, God has determined whether that new soul will be saved or not; who will receive his grace and who his damnation.
For a discussion of more similarities of Christianity with prior pagan beliefs and practices, see http://freetruth.50webs.org/B1c.htm.

 

 

Links to my site:

Introduction https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/introduction/

Graphic Arts https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/i-graphic-arts/

Architecture https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/ii-church-architecture-and-its-incorporation-of-art/

Music https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/iii-music/

Theology https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/iv-theology/

Home Page https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/

 

Christianity in a World of Both Spirit and Matter

My next series of posts will explore the development of Christianity and various theological orientation within and about it, arising from Judaism, from which it spread throughoutthe Greco-Roman world . We will discuss how it changed with the change of its environment through the years, as it was influenced by Judaism and Islam and by changing political and social circumstances.

All religions arise in a a physical environment in which the adherent either embraces or rejects the value of human life and of our world. I choose to embrace life and to celebrate it as holy in the sense that Teilhard de Chardin described as a “Mass on the World.”

Teilhard de Chardin and his “Mass on the World” are succinctly and effectively described by Philip on his site, titled A-MUSED – SURPRISED DAILY BY THE MAGICAL AND THE AWESOME IN THE EXTRAORDINARY, which may be found at http://www.philipchircop.com/post/25804019423/mass-on-the-world-pierre-teilhard-de-chardin:

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881 – 1955) was a French Jesuit theologian and scientist renowned for his pioneering field work in paleontology. His visionary writings on the reconciliation of faith and evolutionary theory aroused suspicions of the Vatican and he was forbidden to publish on religious matters during his lifetime. After his death – on April 10, 1955, which happened to be Easter Sunday that year – the publication of his many books marked him as one of the most influential Catholic thinkers of this century – a mystic whose holistic vision speaks with growing reverence of contemporary spirituality.

The Church removed him from the mainstream of Catholic activity to a remote place in China. There are he pursued his interests and skills in paleontology and discovered Peking Man.  Once, while in China, without bread and wine for Mass, he expressed his deep love for the Eucharist in a Mass on the World. It begins with us:

Since once again, Lord – though this time not in the forests of the Aisne but in the steppes of Asia – I have neither bread, nor wine, nor altar, I will raise myself beyond that these symbols, up to the pure majesty of the real itself; I, your priest, will make the whole earth my altar and on it will offer you all the labors and sufferings of the world.

See Hymn of the Universe by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, which may be accessed at http://www.religion-online.org/showbook.asp?title=1621. The chapters of that book are intriguing:

The Mass on the World

Christ in the World of Matter
The Spiritual Power of Matter
Penses – a collection of short meditations

I very much appreciate de Chardin because he rejects a separation of spirit from matter for a more positive, dynamic relationship of the two: he sees mankind as being created in the image of God and ever evolving toward what he calls “Omega Point.” Omega point is the result of the achievement of maximum consciousness. Consciousness is a function of highly organized and complex matter, permitting matter to become aware of itself. Omega point is transcendent union with God.

I reject a dualism which tends to be a hallmark of all fundamentalism, whatever the faith. As an associate pastor at my church, upon her graduation from seminary, summarized what she had learned their: “What ever you can think God is, God is more.”

In the next series of posts I will be exploring the history of the church and of its main streams of theological interpretations of its shared experiences of Jesus, God and the Holy Spirit. And I will explore its development in response to an ever-changing world. It is not my intent to persuade the reader to any particular view, but to explore its various responses to its social, scientific and philosophical circumstances over time.

I am sensitive to all persons who are socially excluded or abandoned. I see religious exclusivity as narrow and self-centered. I would agree with Tolstoy: Christianity is an ethic of life. The apostle James said as much: faith without works is dead. The Gospels report that Jesus said, “Inasmuch as you have done it to the least of these, you have done it unto me.” That is not salvation by “right belief,” but by right living. Right living, the way in which we “live a life of eternal significance,” as my father once described it, is utterly independent of religion or creed. It is an activity motivated and rendered in love.  Indeed, although Paul is cited to reject good works for faith (“saved by faith, not by works), if one reads the whole of the letters attributed to him, one will find statements that affirm that even faith is not as great as love.  1 Corinthians 13 (“the Love Chapter”).

I stated in the beginning of this blog that I am an inclusive Christian. In the public television series of the interviews by Bill Moyers of Joseph Campbell, entitled The Power of Myth, Joseph Campbell describes the power of myth:

It is a story that tells us how to live. Christians have no difficulty understanding that Jesus’ parables were not factual statements, but they were stories to show us how to live. Fewer Christians, however, see other parts of the Bible also as myth, not as a factual statement, but guidance in how to live.

I have heard a number of Christians express concern over a person that claims to be an atheist. In the last 20 years, I have come to believe, and I tell them, “Don’t worry about it. Jesus tells us that by their fruits you will know them. Good fruits don’t fall from a bad tree.”

I hope by this blog, and specifically in this section of it, to encourage those who may not fit notions of “right belief” and those who feel marginalized or rejected. The Good News is that “the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.” All are invited to share in it through acts of love, care, and respect. No one is excluded.

Links to my site:

Introduction https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/introduction/

Graphic Arts https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/i-graphic-arts/

Architecture https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/ii-church-architecture-and-its-incorporation-of-art/

Music https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/iii-music/

Theology https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/iv-theology/

Home Page https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/

American Protestant Hymnody – Charles Wesley

Many American musical traditions and hymns were inherited from the British Isles, from the Lutherans and their chorales. John Wesley founded the Methodist church and established it in the United States. His brother, Charles contributed greatly to that effort in his composition of many hymns. In the latter part of the 19th century and early part of the 20th, many hymns took tunes from popular music of that time, such as the love songs. Some examples are “Oh How I Love Jesus” and “in the garden.”

I intend to return to this particular post and expanded, with recorded examples. I also welcome any contributions to the subject.

Shaped Note/Sacred Harp Singing

I am aware that there is what I would call a folk tradition of religious music with a unique style of singing, called Shaped Note – Sacred Harp Singing. Historically, both whites and blacks have sung in that tradition and maintain it yet today.

This is another area in which I am not familiar with the practices and I would welcome any contributions from those that are familiar with it.

 

Links to my site:

Introduction https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/introduction/

Graphic Arts https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/i-graphic-arts/

Architecture https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/ii-church-architecture-and-its-incorporation-of-art/

Music https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/iii-music/

Theology https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/iv-theology/

Home Page https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/

 

Currents of Black Religious Music – an Invitation

In my post of February 3, 2013,The Development and Influence of Black Song and Spirituals, I gave a wide range of examples of the history black music in the United States, and some contemporary themes. I note that the examples that I have gathered of contemporary black music is particularly of a charismatic, Pentecostal nature. I do not know if there are other streams of religious music that can be tapped.

Anyone who is familiar with contemporary black music is invited to contact me and offer content for a broader discussion of it.

 

Links to my site:

Introduction https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/introduction/

Graphic Arts https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/i-graphic-arts/

Architecture https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/ii-church-architecture-and-its-incorporation-of-art/

Music https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/iii-music/

Theology https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/iv-theology/

Home Page https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/

 

2012 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

19,000 people fit into the new Barclays Center to see Jay-Z perform. This blog was viewed about 81,000 times in 2012. If it were a concert at the Barclays Center, it would take about 4 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

So Much More Than Music!

Until I had begun this part of my blog, The Bible through Artists’ Eyes, I had thought that the major contribution of blacks to American culture was music. In my research, I discovered the immense range and depth of the contribution of black people to the United States, indeed, to the world.

I highly recommend the following site:
Afro-American Contributions to American Culture
http://books.google.com/books?id=Addkat_IdkYC&pg=PA461&lpg=PA461&dq=traditions+of+American+sacred+or+church+music&source=bl&ots=wWmgj9XAUC&sig=cIaUf_ipWsQwDlhIDHSmxHO9sOY&hl=en&sa=X&ei=oL0TUbqvG-GfyQGx2YC4Ag&ved=0CDMQ6AEwATgK#v=onepage&q=traditions%20of%20American%20sacred%20or%20church%20music&f=false

It is generally common knowledge that George Washington Carver “invented” peanut butter as a protein source and encouraged the cultivation of peanuts as an alternative to cotton. He was so much more than that. Born at about the time of the Civil War, at a time that education was a limited opportunity for blacks, and then separate from privileged white universities in black universities, he obtained an education and became a scientist, botanist, inventor and educator. There is so much more to the story of the gifts of blacks, generally to American culture and achievement. I will attempt to summarize the content of the above site, in hopes that it might encourage readers to explore that and similar sites.

I was not aware that certain areas of Africa were known for specific skills, such as raising cattle, dairy production, cultivation of rice, architecture, and so much more than either cuisine or music. We generally are aware of the stories of Uncle Remus, which have their source in Africa: Brer Rabbit and Brer Fox and Chicken Little originated there.

Many of the black slaves were skilled in animal husbandry, including artificial insemination, agriculture, including the introduction to the United States of rice and its cultivation, the peanut, okra, black-eyed peas, kidney and lima beans, and herbal medicine.

American culture considers cowboys to be uniquely American, but the very term, “cowboy,” finds its origin in reference to blacks who were “cow boys.” It is particularly ironic to me that, living in the Midwest of the United States, a term of derision (cow “boy”) would be adopted proudly for what has become perceived as a white activity or sport. After the Civil War, as the West continued to be developed, whites distinguished themselves from black cowboys by describing themselves as “cattlemen.” The word, “doggies,” is African in origin.

The banjo was an African instrument which, blacks could proud of, until, in 1840, it became part of the “Blackface acts” of minstrel shows. Certain words that are common to contemporary American culture are actually of African origin: OK (okay), bogus, boogie-woogie, bug (insect), guy, hippie, and phony.

Long before black women risked their lives and health for me, black women had been not only caregivers to white children, but prior to the Civil War 90% of the white births were attended by black midwives. African folk medicine discovered and used an inoculation for smallpox long before Western medicine developed it. The above site notes of that inoculation practice:

. . . Africans knew that smallpox inoculation was done by simply taking some of the pus from the scalp and inoculating those who were not exposed. Smallpox was the most feared epidemic in Colonial America.

With the Native American population, African doctors introduced white culture to holistic medicine. Many of the highly skilled professions generally associated with a moneyed class, such as architecture and engineering, were practiced by slaves in the colonies. Again, I quote from the above site:

Enslaved artisans played a major role in the economic and physical development of the American South. Enslaved Africans were responsible for the design and construction of both the Plantation house and the slave quarters. . . .
The slave quarters at Keswick, near Midlothian, Virginia, were constructed around 1750 and made with the African tradition of hand-made burnt clay bricks by plantation slaves. . . .

For an excellent article on the influence of a larger range of black music upon American culture see http://www.chatham.edu/pti/curriculum/units/2007/Powell.pdf

I have already noted my great debt to black women, and I have alluded to the debt of American culture to black people who were originally introduced into this country as slaves. The debt is indeed much deeper than I had recently acknowledged. Thank you, my friends.

 

Links to my site:

Introduction https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/introduction/

Graphic Arts https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/i-graphic-arts/

Architecture https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/ii-church-architecture-and-its-incorporation-of-art/

Music https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/iii-music/

Theology https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/iv-theology/

Home Page https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/

 

The Contribution and Influence of Black Song and Dance

Until now, I have focused on the formal Western arts, which, quite frankly, is that of “elite, white Europeans.” However, in the United States blacks have contributed musical forms that were influenced by those arts, but which they reshaped and transformed through their experiences and expressive responses both as slaves and as “a free people” in the United States. We often see its melismatic and rhythmic influence in various renditions of the national anthem of the United States over the last 20 to 30 years. But, its influence is far more pervasive and profound than that. In this post we will consider early black music through its unique expressions of spirituals, work songs, shouts and otherwise indigenous music arising in black culture in the United States. In a subsequent post I will address their contributions of jazz and its stylistic expression in religious music.

Black slaves, captured from throughout Africa and sold in the Colonies in the New World, would have brought with them their own individual cultural heritages from Africa, being captured from different tribes, the traditions of which would have been mixed with those of other tribes. American society, being predominantly Christian, acculturated the slaves to that belief system, its practices and its culture. However, living apart from white society and under great oppression, both physically and emotionally pained, brutalized, separated, and isolated, it was natural that they would adapt their experience of their white “masters’” religion to their own experiences. The melodies and rhythms of their spirituals and gospel songs arising from the cultural milieu of their “owners,” their inheritances through practice and oral tradition, and their shared experiences of slavery, all contribed to their own unique culture and music. As their cultural environment on the plantations changed, as did their experiences of freedom as well as segregation, so, too, did their culture, music, dance, and graphic arts.

Music, being a “universal language” and requiring no materials other than a voice or a stick to pound out a rhythm on any sonorous object that might be found, even one’s hands, was most available of any of the arts to the black slaves. Moreover, not only did they live in their own communal settings, but they worked together with other slaves throughout the day. Likely, as individuals find humming natural, joyful or consoling, moaning or delighting, this time together both in their labors and in their limited areas and times of respite, it would be natural not only that individuals might find comfort from their own struggles and pain, through music, but that others, who either shared in those feelings or were sympathetic to them, might join them. Music was spontaneous, both individually and communally.

See http://www.authentichistory.com/1600-1859/3-spirituals/index.html for the following description of early black music and its development:

Frederick Douglass, a former slave wrote, “I did not, when a slave, fully understand the deep meaning of those rude and apparently incoherent songs. I was, myself, within the circle, so that I could then neither hear nor see as those without might see and hear. They breathed the prayer and complaint of souls overflowing with the bitterest anguish. They depressed my spirits and filled my heart with ineffable sadness…The remark in the olden time was not unfrequently made, that slaves were the most contented and happy laborers in the world, and their dancing and singing were referred to in proof of this alleged fact; but it was a great mistake to suppose them happy because they sometimes made those joyful noises. The songs of the slaves represented their sorrows, rather than their joys. Like tears, they were a relief to aching hearts.”

In song, lyrics about the Exodus were a metaphor for freedom from slavery.
Songs like “Steal Away (to Jesus)”, or “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” raised unexpectedly in a dusty field, or sung softly in the dark of night, signaled that the coast was clear and the time to escape had come. The River Jordan became the Ohio River, or the Mississippi, or another body of water that had to be crossed on the journey to freedom. “Wade in the Water” contained explicit instructions to fugitive slaves on how to avoid capture and the route to take to successfully make their way to freedom. Leaving dry land and taking to the water was a common strategy to throw pursuing bloodhounds off one’s trail. “The Gospel Train”, and “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” all contained veiled references to the Underground Railroad, and “Follow the Drinking Gourd” contained a coded map to the Underground Railroad. The title itself was an Africanized reference to the Big Dipper, which pointed the way to the North Star and freedom.

The above – referenced site also has available recordings of performances of black music from 1926 to the 70s.

See http://www.negrospirituals.com/ for resources that one can click on to explore songs, history, singers, composers, and over 200 traditional spirituals, including books and recordings.

Some slaves were permitted to attend the churches of their “masters.” My father served the First Hopkinton Seventh Day Baptist Church in Ashaway, Rhode Island for eighteen years from 1959. Our first year there marked the celebration of its 250th anniversary. Although American society generally considers the history of the slaves to be that of the South, nonetheless, early in that history of trading in human flesh the North also took advantage of it. The sanctuary of our church had a horseshoe shaped balcony with two rows of straight back benches, to which, as I understood it, the slaves were confined. It would not have been unusual for slaves to accompany their masters, although strict segregation would likely have been observed.

There were several religious “awakenings” in American history when religious fervor swept the country or areas of the country. The Negro slaves likewise had their own awakening in the early part of the 19th Century. It may have been in addition to their peripheral experience of dominant white culture’s religion, or it might have been their own spontaneous gatherings as influenced by that religion. Many, perhaps most, not being literate, and having little or no opportunity for education, would not have been able to read lyrics or music notation. As in their daily work and domestic life their songs were spontaneous. Those that survived would have been passed on by oral tradition. Particularly in their own religious experience, shared with other slaves with similar experiences and aspirations, they often found solace and hope in the biblical stories of the Exodus of the Jews from slavery in Egypt. This theme recurs throughout history and is expressed in many different theological ways, just as it existed among the black slaves: thereafter it would reappear in Liberation Theology, which was prevalent in Third World countries throughout the latter part of the 20th century, and Minjung Theology of Korea during the Japanese occupation of that country.

And so, drawing upon the tradition that had developed among the slaves of “work songs,” or “chain gang songs” they spontaneously sang the biblical passages that consoled and encouraged them, developed and improvised upon those, and passed them on.
http://www.negrospirituals.com/ beautifully and articulately describes the origins and development of that music:

But some “drivers” also allowed slaves to sing “quiet” songs, if they were not apparently against slaveholders. Such songs could be sung either by only one soloist or by several slaves. They were used for expressing personal feeling and for cheering one another. So, even at work, slaves could sing “secret messages”. This was the case of negro spirituals, which were sung at church, in meetings, at work and at home.
The meaning of these songs was most often covert. Therefore, only Christian slaves understood them, and even when ordinary words were used, they reflected personal relationship between the slave singer and God.

The codes of the first negro spirituals are often related with an escape to a free country. For example, a “home” is a safe place where everyone can live free. So, a “home” can mean Heaven, but it covertly means a sweet and free country, a haven for slaves.
The ways used by fugitives running to a free country were riding a “chariot” or a “train”.
The negro spirituals “The Gospel Train” and “Swing low, sweet chariot” which directly refer to the Underground Railroad, an informal organization who helped many slaves to flee.
The words of “The Gospel train” are “She is coming… Get onboard… There’s room for many more”. This is a direct call to go way, by riding a “train” which stops at “stations”.
Then, “Swing low, sweet chariot” refers to Ripley, a “station” of the Underground Railroad, where fugitive slaves were welcome. This town is atop a hill, by Ohio River, which is not easy to cross. So, to reach this place, fugitives had to wait for help coming from the hill. The words of this spirituals say,“I looked over Jordan and what did I see/ Coming for to carry me home/ A band of angels coming after me.”

Here is an example of a negro spiritual and its covert meaning:

THERE IS A BALM IN GILEAD
This is a well-known negro spiritual, which has an interesting meaning.
The “balm in Gilead” is quoted in the Old Testament, but the lyrics of this spiritual refer to the New Testament (Jesus, Holy Spirit, Peter, and Paul). This difference is interesting to comment. In the Old Testament, the balm of Gilead cannot heal sinners. In the New Testament, Jesus heals everyone who comes to Him.

So, in the book of Jeremiah, several verses speak about Gilead. In chapter 22, v. 6 and 13: The Lord says (about the palace of the king of Judea) “Though you are like Gilead to me, like the summit of Lebanon, I will surely make you like a desert, like towns inhabited… Woe to him who builds his palace by unrighteousness, making his countrymen work for nothing, not paying them for their labour.”

In the same book of Jeremiah, chapter 46, v. 2 and 11, “This is the message (of the Lord) against the army of Pharaoh Neco … Go up to Gilead and get balm, O Virgin Daughter of Egypt, but you multiply remedies in vain; here is no healing for you”.

In the New Testament, the four Gospels say that Jesus healed many people whatever their conditions: he can heal the poor. A Christian who feels the Spirit must share its faith and “preach”, like Peter and Paul.

Some question whether these spirituals had any significance beyond relieving the misery of the slaves and providing some limited solace and hope. I don’t know of the authenticity of such claims, but I do know that the spirituals were a musical response to the great oppression and misery of the Negro slaves.

Upon emancipation, the Negro experience in church became more expressive and responsive to their life experiences which, at that time, would have included the oppression of segregation, of tenant farming, social exclusion, grossly limited educational and occupational opportunities, and cultural isolation. On the other hand, the cultural isolation also, while not justifying it, nonetheless, with freedom from slavery, permitted blacks to develop their own cultural identity, most frequently in their churches. Also, with release from the bond of slavery, they could attend funerals of their own, both to mourn the loss and to celebrate the memory and life of their loved ones. Out of that experience grew the roots of jazz. As I understand it, following the church funeral, a band would accompany the coffin to the cemetery, wailing their loss; however, upon the return from the cemetery the same band played joyously to celebrate that life and its meaning to those who survived.

The immediately prior website has extensive information and auditory examples on the growth of black music arising out of slavery and responding to new conditions, both oppressive and liberating. I will hereafter post some sites giving auditory, and to the extent possible, visual, examples of black music. I may attempt to punctuate thatontent, but I cannot improve upon the substantive and detailed descriptions found there.

For an excellent survey and a rich representation of recordings from early discographic history from the early and mid-Twentieth Century, see http://www.authentichistory.com/1600-1859/3-spirituals/index.html:

“Amazing Grace”, performed by Elder Walter Avenues and the Little River Primitive Baptist Church c.1960
“Been In The Storm So Long”, performed by the Fisk Jubilee Singers
1956
“Couldn’t Hear Nobody Pray”, performed by the Tuskegee Institute Choir
1975
“Deep Down in My Heart”, performed by W. M. Givens in Darien, Georgia
March 19, 1926
“Didn’t My Lord Deliver Daniel?”, performed by the Howard Roberts Chorale/Alvin Ailey 1978
“Go Down, Moses”, performed by Paul Robeson
1965
“Lay Down Body”, performed by Mrs. Bertha Smith (lead) and The Moving Star Hall Singers of John’s Island, South Caronlina 1960
“Little David, Play Your Harp”, performed by Brother Claude Ely and the Cumberland Four 1953
“My Good Lord Done Been Here”, performed by Aunt Florida Hampton
May 29, 1939
“Pharaoh’s Army Got Drowned”, performed by unknown artist
unknown
“Roll the Old Chariot Along”, performed by unknown artist
1920s
“Soon I Will Be Done”, performed by Mahalia Jackson as “Trouble of the World” 1963
“Steal Away to Jesus”, performed by Bernice Johnson Reagon
1965
“Swing Low, Sweet Chariot”, performed by Isadore Oglesby
unknown
“Take My Hand, Precious Lord”, performed by Clara Ward

See Alan Lomax Series on recording songs reflective of the history of black songs
Boyd Rivers & Ruth May Rivers: Fire In My Bones (1978).

I will present a general survey below, and later we will explore in greater depth black music and dance. Each is remarkable in its own way, including humor about a very difficult history.

At this site you will find other links:
Afroamerican Prison song

Lightning- Long John (Old song by a chain gang) audio

Poor Boy – Lomax Prison Recording

Go Down Old Hannah.Texas Prison Camp

Contemporary Black Religious Music
FCBC 2010 Black History Month 04 – Peace Be Still

BLACK HISTORY PRAISE DANCE 2010

“We Shall Overcome” – Black History – Martin Luther King Jr – Gospel Music

“We Shall Overcome” Praise Dance

Soul R&B Black Gospel Music: Hosanna

“Wade in the Water”
From a 2011 annual praise dance concert and worship experience produced by the Alvin Ailey Dance Troupe. Choreographed by Artistic Director, Errin Berry and Guest Choreographer, Amansu Eason

I KNOW I BEEN CHANGED PRAISE DANCE

“Ain’t got no shoes” Praise Dance

This is remarkable, not only for the music, but the concept, choreography, dance, commentary and its hope. From a theological standpoint, I also see in it depth of forgiveness and redemption. I do not see forgiveness as saying “that’s okay,” because slavery was not okay. But I see forgiveness as refusing to be bound by the hurts of the past, permitting one to live in the present with the hope for the future. I am very grateful for this performance and its message of hope for me.

For more contemporary black religious music, see:
Harlem Gospel Singers – Go Down Moses:

“When I Rose This Morning” – Mississippi Mass Choir

For other religious music performed by the Mississippi mass choir, see

Black Americans’ Great Gifts to Me, Personally, to American Culture, and to World Culture

I don’t like labels, particularly as they describe or categorize people. When I was a child in the 1950s and early 60s, black people were known in white society as Negroes. In the 1960s, with the Civil Rights Movement and development of federal laws requiring inclusion of black people and other minorities into the mainstream of society, the label “Negro” yielded to an English word meaning the same thing: “Black.” About the time of the movie, Roots, the description, “Afro-American,” came into vogue. Whatever the labels that may be applied, there arose in the United States, from a culture of slavery, through the Emancipation Proclamation, through the 13th and 14th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, through segregation, and through affirmative-action a unique history and culture of black people. These next series of posts will acknowledge and celebrate those contributions of blacks in America to religious music.

Speaking of affirmative-action, it has had mixed reviews in American society from the time that the courts developed its concepts and ordered its application throughout society. Over those years to the very present, many conservative commentators have accused that it forces whites to play on a field heavily tilted toward minorities, more specifically, I suspect, blacks. But criticism of civil rights and affirmative action is not limited to whites. James Meredith, after great opposition in the courts and then from the governor of Mississippi, broke the “color barrier” as the first black person to attend the University of Mississippi, at great risk and costs to himself. He went on to obtain his advanced law degree at Columbia University. He was interviewed by National Public Radio in the early 1990s. To my surprise, he stated that he opposed affirmative action and civil rights as perpetuating the position of black people as second-class citizens. He said all he wanted was a level playing field.

Frankly, I was the beneficiary of affirmative-action in 1977 when vocal cord surgery ended my career as a singer and as a teacher. Following surgery and resultant disability from teaching and singing, I was surprised to discover that I had a disability insurance policy with Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance. It was an automatic benefit of employment with the Omaha Public Schools, which, to my knowledge, I did not request, and certainly I was not then aware that I had it.

That spring I received a telephone call from the administration of Omaha Public Schools, telling me of the policy, and requesting that I contact them to schedule career counseling, as a benefit of that policy. Through that process, it was suggested that I might consider one of three options that were indicated as good fits for me: occupational therapy, physical therapy, and the law. The first two, occupational therapy and physical therapy, would require that I go back to undergraduate school and get certain prerequisites for admission to graduate school in that area, and even then, I was not assured of admittance. The third suggested option was law school. To my knowledge, there is no history of lawyers in my family. But, with my bachelors degree in music education and vocal performance it would be sufficient, without other prerequisites, for admittance to a law school, and Northwestern would pay the tuition for that training, at least for the policy term of two years. Without prior application, I walked into and took the LSAT’s and applied to the University of Nebraska Law School. I was accepted on the day of orientation of that year’s law school class. My career counselor, provided by Northwestern, told me that I was accepted at that late date because I was categorized as a “disabled person” because of my vocal cord surgery and disability from teaching and singing; taking nothing from the law school and its benefits to me, admitting me as a disabled person entitled it to affirmative-action funding.

Frankly, my score on the LSAT’s barely met the schools requirements for admission. My career counselor told me that those tests were an indication of how well the student would likely do in law school. I went to law school without expectations, and without any concerns about paying tuition or earning an income. Nonetheless, I graduated With Distinction as the Best Oral Advocate of my senior class and I, with my partner, won the law school’s Moot Court and Client Counseling competitions, and we went on to national competitions in each of those areas. I never expected that success. I simply had been brought up to believe that if I do good work, something good will come of it. From college days to the present, I have simply assumed that I have to work hard, perhaps harder than others.  Only recently did I discover that I had from childhood compensated for damage done by the polio virus and paralysis to my cognitive functioning.

Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company paid my tuition in full for law school plus benefits of 60% of my former salary, tax free, during the first two years of law school, including summer schools. Without my request, it extended those same benefits an additional semester to see me through to graduation. Not only am I the beneficiary of affirmative-action, but I am also the beneficiary of Northwestern’s generosity, and of many more opportunities and gifts that I never anticipated, let alone deserved. As a lawyer, I have represented insurance companies and claims against them, and I have never found one that would extend benefits beyond that which was set out clearly in the policy. I am grateful for Northwestern’s support and generosity. This blog is one of the ways that I have chosen to “pay back” a little of the debts that I owe so many.

I have truly been blessed, including in ways that I am sure I can neither recognize nor articulate.

But I have a more primal connection with blacks which I did not internalize until this last year of my 64 years. I have preverbal, subconscious memories as an infant of the devotion of many black women who became mothers to me in my six months at Charity Hospital, New Orleans, Louisiana during the polio epidemic of 1949. When approximately a decade ago I was uncovering some of the emotional scars from that experience, I asked my mother of her and Dad’s experiences of that time. She noted the special significance that black women had for me during my hospitalization. These women were especially courageous in that there was no inoculation against polio at that time to protect those who came in contact with its victims. For that same reason, there was great danger that they would bring the virus home to infect their own family. They selflessly demonstrated great love, patience and commitment to eighteen crying babies on that hospital ward. That service required exceptional courage, devotion, loving, praying, and hoping for the sake of a patient that she would not likely know or maintain contact with in the future; and yet they did it for me.

Here is my mother’s reply to my request:

Robert, I will tell you more about our feelings when you went to the hospital. You were never as visibly sick as Annita had been but you walked to me with arms up and I sat down and rocked you a while then stood you down on the floor only to have you limp in both legs. I had a Dr. appt. with my OB Dr. that day so took you along and she sent me to the ER where they sent me to the “Charity” Hospital ER. Charity had the only Polio Hosp. in the entire state. It was just that no charges and absolutely NO information once you were in. Only Nursing Aids visible no nurses even and they would not tell you a Doctor’s name. Guess you had many doctors and medical students, maybe mostly med students hence no charges at all. It was a heavy price on child and also parent. Polio was such a mystery and caused such panic that people did not want to even speak the name to ask how you were doing or to say they were sorry. Dad and I were both in camp (Southwestern Association Camp) in New Orleans. We could not visit you for two weeks then only Wednes. eve. for 2 hours and Sunday afternoon for two hours. We could call any time we were concerned. I called once and did not believe one thing they told me I was sure they were pat answers they told each parent. I ended up crying in Dad’s arms and we both knew we could not go on this way and it was not helping you any so we must honestly trust God to be where you were and to put it on the heart of someone there to love you and fill your immediate needs. During this time we learned to pray without ceasing and commune with God all our waking moments. Annita insisted on putting your plate on the table every single meal all those 6 months and we prayed for you every meal. I have wondered if you have felt a special closeness to colored people that you might not understand for most of the Aids we ever saw were black and really they were our best source of information all those months as to how you were doing really.

I am convinced that God did use many loving mothers during those months to love and comfort you when we were not there. You survived the infectious diarrhea that took many of your room mates. There at one time were 18 of you babies under one year in the same room in baby beds. We survived as our trust and confidence in God’s presence and involvement in not only our lives but your life deepened and our love, compassion and concern about others in trauma situations grew also. These experiences have impacted all our ministry through the years since and continue to do so. Yes, this was a humbling helpless experience but the worst for us was leaving you there and knowing you did not understand why and might forget us and think we had abandoned you.

I was in my early 50s when I asked for and received that email. It was yet another 10 years before I was able to confront and begin to resolve the pain of that experience. During that time, I became more aware of my natural attraction to, and feeling of familial relationship with, black people. Only in the last six months have I been able to read aloud and internalize my mother’s description of those powerful, subconscious memories without breaking down emotionally. Those subconscious memories have not only influenced my thinking and living for over sixty years, but even, at points, have controlled my life.

And so, this endeavor, I hope, will not only convey my gratitude to those women who courageously and lovingly cared for me as an infant at the risk of themselves and their families, but, also, my great appreciation for black people’s contributions to society and the arts.

One last comment, an apology: I recognize that peoples of Central America, of South America, and of Canada in North America are sensitive to the United States referring to itself as “America,” as though it were exclusive of them. I use “American” simply because it has been a natural description by my country, the United States, of itself throughout my lifetime. But I do NOT intend that it be exclusive of any other peoples or countries in the Americas, North, Central, or South. I welcome any comments on sensitivity or offense, and any suggestions on ways that I might better handle that matter.

The Development and Influence of Black Song and Spirituals

Until now, I have focused on the formal, Western arts, which, quite frankly, is that of “elite, white Europeans.” However, in the United States there developed a musical form that was influenced by those arts, but reshape and transformed by black people, both as slaves and as “a free people” in the United States. We often see its melismatic and rhythmic influence in various renditions of the national anthem of the United States over the last 20 to 30 years. But, its influence is far more pervasive and profound than that. In this post we will consider early black music through its unique expressions of spirituals, work songs, shouts and otherwise indigenous music arising in black culture in the United States. In a subsequent post I will address the rise of jazz and its stylistic expression in religious music.

Black slaves, captured throughout Africa and traded with the the Colonies in the New World would have brought with them their own individual cultural heritage from Africa. Because they were from different tribes, the culture that arose from such an amalgamation of cultural influence was unique. The melodies and rhythms of their spirituals, songs, chants, shouts and dances would have been influenced by both white culture and their individual African inheritances to be expressed in forms of their own unique music. As their cultural environment on the plantations changed, so, too, did their culture. Music, being a “universal language” and requiring no other materials other than a voice or a stick to pound out a rhythm on any sonorous object that might be found, even one’s hands, was most available of any of the arts to the black slaves. Moreover, not only did they live in their own communal setting, but they worked together throughout the day. Likely, as individuals find humming natural, joyful or consoling, moaning or delighting, this time together both in their severe work and in their limited areas and times of respite, it would be natural not only that individuals might find comfort from their own struggles and pain, but that others, who either shared those feelings, or were sympathetic to them, might join them in that expression. It was spontaneous both individually and communally.

See http://www.authentichistory.com/1600-1859/3-spirituals/index.html for the following description of early black music and its development:

Frederick Douglass, a former slave wrote, “I did not, when a slave, fully understand the deep meaning of those rude and apparently incoherent songs. I was, myself, within the circle, so that I could then neither hear nor see as those without might see and hear. They breathed the prayer and complaint of souls overflowing with the bitterest anguish. They depressed my spirits and filled my heart with ineffable sadness…The remark in the olden time was not unfrequently made, that slaves were the most contented and happy laborers in the world, and their dancing and singing were referred to in proof of this alleged fact; but it was a great mistake to suppose them happy because they sometimes made those joyful noises. The songs of the slaves represented their sorrows, rather than their joys. Like tears, they were a relief to aching hearts.”

Songs like “Steal Away (to Jesus)”, or “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” raised unexpectedly in a dusty field, or sung softly in the dark of night, signaled that the coast was clear and the time to escape had come. The River Jordan became the Ohio River, or the Mississippi, or another body of water that had to be crossed on the journey to freedom. “Wade in the Water” contained explicit instructions to fugitive slaves on how to avoid capture and the route to take to successfully make their way to freedom. Leaving dry land and taking to the water was a common strategy to throw pursuing bloodhounds off one’s trail. “The Gospel Train”, and “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” all contained veiled references to the Underground Railroad, and “Follow the Drinking Gourd” contained a coded map to the Underground Railroad. The title itself was an Africanized reference to the Big Dipper, which pointed the way to the North Star and freedom.

The above – referenced site also has performances of black music from the beginnings of recording technology, 1926 to the 70s.

See http://www.negrospirituals.com/ for resources that one can click on to explore songs, history, singers, composers, and over 200 traditional spirituals, including books and recordings.

When black natives of Africa were first captured and introduced to America through the slave trade, they were captured from different tribes with different religious and social traditions. American society, being predominantly Christian, acculturated the slaves to that belief system, its practices and its culture. However, living apart from white society and under great oppression, both physically and emotionally pained, brutalized, separated, and isolated, it was natural that they would adapt their experience of their white “masters’” religion to their own experiences of isolation, manipulation, abuse and pain, as well as their joys, longings and hopes for the future.

Some slaves were permitted to attend the churches of their masters. My father served the First Hopkinton Seventh Day Baptist Church in Ashaway, Rhode Island for eighteen years from 1959. Our first year there marked the celebration of its 250th anniversary. Although American society generally considers the history of the slaves to be that of the South, nonetheless, early in that history of trading in human flesh, the North also took advantage of it. The sanctuary of our church had a horseshoe shaped balcony with two rows of straight back benches, to which, as I understood it, the slaves were confined. It would not have been unusual for slaves to accompany their masters, although strict segregation would have been observed. That segregation would survive 100 years from the time of the Proclamation Emancipation and the following constitutional amendment prohibiting all slavery in the United States.

It would only have been natural that an isolated and repressed community would share common aspirations, hopes, religious appellations and celebrations. There were several religious “awakenings” in American history when religious fervor swept the country or areas of the country. The Negro slaves likewise had their own awakening in the early part of the 19th century. It may have been in addition to their peripheral experience of dominant white culture’s religion, or it might have been their own spontaneous gatherings as influenced by that religion. Many, perhaps most, not being literate, and having little or no opportunity for education, would not have been able to read lyrics or music notation. As in their daily work and domestic life, such as it existed, their songs were spontaneous. Those songs that survived would have been passed on by oral tradition. Particularly in their own religious experience, shared with other slaves with similar experiences of slavery and aspirations, they often found solace and hope in the biblical stories of the Exodus of the Jews from slavery in Egypt. This theme recurs throughout history and is expressed in many different theological ways, just as it existed among the black slaves: thereafter it would reappear in Liberation Theology, which was prevalent in Third World countries throughout the latter part of the 20th century, and Minjung Theology of Korea during the Japanese occupation of that country. The slaves shared with the Jews their experiences and stories of profound pain and the energizing hope of liberation.

And so, drawing upon the tradition that had developed among the slaves of “work songs,” or “chain gang songs” they spontaneously sang the biblical passages that consoled and encourage them, developed and improvised upon them, and passed them on.

http://www.negrospirituals.com/ beautifully and articulately describes the origins and development of that music:

Some “drivers” also allowed slaves to sing “quiet” songs, if they were not apparently against slaveholders. Such songs could be sung either by only one soloist or by several slaves. They were used for expressing personal feeling and for cheering one another. So, even at work, slaves could sing “secret messages”. This was the case of negro spirituals, which were sung at church, in meetings, at work and at home.

The meaning of these songs was most often covert. Therefore, only Christian slaves understood them, and even when ordinary words were used, they reflected personal relationship between the slave singer and God.

The codes of the first negro spirituals are often related with an escape to a free country. For example, a “home” is a safe place where everyone can live free. So, a “home” can mean Heaven, but it covertly means a sweet and free country, a haven for slaves.
The ways used by fugitives running to a free country were riding a “chariot” or a “train”.
The negro spirituals “The Gospel Train” and “Swing low, sweet chariot” which directly refer to the Underground Railroad, an informal organization who helped many slaves to flee.

The words of “The Gospel train” are “She is coming… Get onboard… There’s room for many more”. This is a direct call to go way, by riding a “train” which stops at “stations”.
Then, “Swing low, sweet chariot” refers to Ripley, a “station” of the Underground Railroad, where fugitive slaves were welcome. This town is atop a hill, by Ohio River, which is not easy to cross. So, to reach this place, fugitives had to wait for help coming from the hill. The words of this spirituals say,“I looked over Jordan and what did I see/ Coming for to carry me home/ A band of angels coming after me.”
Here is an example of a negro spiritual and its covert meaning:

THERE IS A BALM IN GILEAD

This is a well-known negro spiritual, which has an interesting meaning.
The “balm in Gilead” is quoted in the Old Testament, but the lyrics of this spiritual refer to the New Testament (Jesus, Holy Spirit, Peter, and Paul). This difference is interesting to comment. In the Old Testament, the balm of Gilead cannot heal sinners. In the New Testament, Jesus heals everyone who comes to Him.
So, in the book of Jeremiah, several verses speak about Gilead. In chap
ter 22, v. 6 and 13: The Lord says (about the palace of the king of Judea) “Though you are like Gilead to me, like the summit of Lebanon, I will surely make you like a desert, like towns inhabited… Woe to him who builds his palace by unrighteousness, making his countrymen work for nothing, not paying them for their labour”.

In the same book of Jeremiah, chapter 46, v. 2 and 11, “This is the message (of the Lord) against the army of Pharaoh Neco … Go up to Gilead and get balm, O Virgin Daughter of Egypt, but you multiply remedies in vain; here is no healing for you”.
In the New Testament, the four Gospels say that Jesus healed many people whatever their conditions: he can heal the poor. A Christian who feels the Spirit must share its faith and “preach”, like Peter and Paul.

Some question whether these spirituals had any significance beyond relieving the misery of the slaves and providing solace and hope. I don’t know of the authenticity of such, but I do know that the spirituals were a musical response to the great oppression and misery of the Negro slaves. Marcus Borg, in Living the Questions, quotes an Indian storyteller who began his stories with, “Now, I don’t know if it actually happen this way, but I know it is true.” I know that these stories told in the spirituals are true, and I have every reason to believe that they are authentic history, as well.

Upon emancipation, the Negro experience in church became more expressive and responsive to their life experiences which, at that time, would have included the oppression of segregation, of tenant farming, social exclusion, grossly limited educational and occupational opportunities, and cultural isolation. On the other hand, the cultural isolation also, while not justifying it, nonetheless, with freedom from slavery, permitted blacks to develop their own cultural identity, most frequently in their churches. Also, with release from the bond of slavery, they are also permitted to attend funerals of their own, and both to mourn the loss and to celebrate the memory and life of their loved ones. Out of that experience grew the roots of jazz. As I understand it, following the church funeral, a band would accompany the coffin to the cemetery, wailing their loss; however, upon the return from the cemetery the same band played joyously to celebrate that life and its meaning to those who survived.

The immediately prior website has extensive information and auditory examples on the growth of black music arising out of slavery and responding to new conditions, both oppressive and liberating. I will hereafter post some sites giving auditory, and to the extent possible, visual, examples of black music. My feeble verbal descriptions will merely foreshadow what is much more articulate and knowledgeably presented in the preceding two sites. I may attempt to punctuate that, but I cannot improve upon the substantive and detailed descriptions found there..

Before exploring those examples, I will acknowledge some tangential connection that I have with American black people and their music. First, I was a music major in college. I did not grow up in a jazz culture, but my studies surveyed that culture, and over the years I have developed great appreciation for jazz, the people who produce and perform it, their struggles, and their contributions to society. Second, I have a preverbal memory of the devotion of many black women who became mothers to me in my six months at Charity Hospital, New Orleans Louisiana on a ward of eighteen infant polio patients, during the polio epidemic of 1949. When I was discovering some of the emotional scars from that experience, I asked my mother of her and Dad’s experiences of that time. She noted the special significance that black women had for me during my hospitalization. They were especially courageous in that polio had no vaccine to protect those who came in contact with its victims. To deal with 18 crying babies on a hospital ward and, in doing so, risking your own health and even that of your family to a dreaded disease that paralyzed and even killed its victims, required exceptional courage, devotion, loving, praying, and hoping for the sake of a patient that she would not likely know or maintain contact in the future. Here is my mother’s reply:

Robert, I will tell you more about our feelings when you went to the hospital. You were never as visibly sick as Annita had been but you walked to me with arms up and I sat down and rocked you a while then stood you down on the floor only to have you limp in both legs. I had a Dr. appt. with my OB Dr. that day so took you along and she sent me to the ER where they sent me to the “Charity” Hospital ER. Charity had the only Polio Hosp. in the entire state. It was just that no charges and absolutely NO information once you were in. Only Nursing Aids visible no nurses even and they would not tell you a Doctor’s name. Guess you had many doctors and medical students, maybe mostly med students hence no charges at all. It was a heavy price on child and also parent. Polio was such a mystery and caused such panic that people did not want to even speak the name to ask how you were doing or to say they were sorry. Dad and I were both in camp (Southwestern Association Camp) in New Orleans. We could not visit you for two weeks then only Wednes. eve. for 2 hours and Sunday afternoon for two hours. We could call any time we were concerned. I called once and did not believe one thing they told me I was sure they were pat answers they told each parent. I ended up crying in Dad’s arms and we both knew we could not go on this way and it was not helping you any so we must honestly trust God to be where you were and to put it on the heart of someone there to love you and fill your immediate needs. During this time we learned to pray without ceasing and commune with God all our waking moments. Annita insisted on putting your plate on the table every single meal all those 6 months and we prayed for you every meal. I have wondered if you have felt a special closeness to colored people that you might not understand for most of the Aids we ever saw were black and really they were our best source of information all those months as to how you were doing really. I am convinced that God did use many loving mothers during those months to love and comfort you when we were not there. You survived the infectious diarrhea that took many of your room mates. There at one time were 18 of you babies under one year in the same room in baby beds. We survived as our trust and confidence in God’s presence and involvement in not only our lives but your life deepened and our love, compassion and concern about others in trauma situations grew also. These experiences have impacted all our ministry through the years since and continue to do so. Yes, this was a humbling helpless experience but the worst for us was leaving you there and knowing you did not understand why and might forget us and think we had abandoned you.

I was about 50 years of age when I asked for and received this letter. It was yet another 10 years before I was able to confront and begin to resolve the pain of that experience. During that time, I became more aware of my natural attraction and feeling of familial relationship with black people. Having been able to experience within the last six months the emotional trauma of that preverbal but powerful event by reading aloud my mother’s description of that time in her email, later more fully described in her Memories. Only then was I aware of the power of that preverbal memory and how it subconsciously has powerfully influenced, and even, at points, controlled, my life.

For an excellent survey and a rich representation of recordings from early discographic history from the early and mid-Twentieth Century, see http://www.authentichistory.com/1600-1859/3-spirituals/index.html

“Amazing Grace”, performed by Elder Walter Avenues and the Little River Primitive Baptist Church c.1960
“Been In The Storm So Long”, performed by the Fisk Jubilee Singers
1956
“Couldn’t Hear Nobody Pray”, performed by the Tuskegee Institute Choir
1975
“Deep Down in My Heart”, performed by W. M. Givens in Darien, Georgia
March 19, 1926
“Didn’t My Lord Deliver Daniel?”, performed by the Howard Roberts Chorale/Alvin Ailey 1978
“Go Down, Moses”, performed by Paul Robeson
1965
“Lay Down Body”, performed by Mrs. Bertha Smith (lead) and The Moving Star Hall Singers of John’s Island, South Caronlina 1960
“Little David, Play Your Harp”, performed by Brother Claude Ely and the Cumberland Four 1953
“My Good Lord Done Been Here”, performed by Aunt Florida Hampton
May 29, 1939
“Pharaoh’s Army Got Drowned”, performed by unknown artist
unknown
“Roll the Old Chariot Along”, performed by unknown artist
1920s
“Soon I Will Be Done”, performed by Mahalia Jackson as “Trouble of the World” 1963
“Steal Away to Jesus”, performed by Bernice Johnson Reagon
1965
“Swing Low, Sweet Chariot”, performed by Isadore Oglesby
unknown
“Take My Hand, Precious Lord”, performed by Clara Ward

Alan Lomax Series on recording songs reflective of the history of black songs
Boyd Rivers & Ruth May Rivers: Fire In My Bones (1978)

At this site you will find other links that, at the time of my writing, were not available for playing.
“We Shall Overcome” – Black History – Martin Luther King Jr – Gospel Music

AfroAmerican Prison song

Lightning- Long John (Old song by a chain gang) audio

Poor Boy – Lomax Prison Recording

Go Down Old Hannah.Texas Prison Camp

Contemporary Black Religious Music
FCBC 2010 Black History Month 04 – Peace Be Still

BLACK HISTORY PRAISE DANCE 2010

“We Shall Overcome” Praise Dance

Soul R&B Black Gospel Music: Hosanna

“Wade in the Water”
From a 2011 annual praise dance concert and worship experience. Choreographed by Artistic Director, Errin Berry and Guest Choreographer, Amansu Eason

I KNOW I BEEN CHANGED PRAISE DANCE

“Ain’t got no shoes” Praise Dance

For more contemporary black religious music, see:
Harlem Gospel Singers – Go Down Moses:

“When I Rose This Morning” – Mississippi Mass Choir

For other religious music performed by the Mississippi mass choir, see

See, also,

 

Links to my site:

Introduction https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/introduction/

Graphic Arts https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/i-graphic-arts/

Architecture https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/ii-church-architecture-and-its-incorporation-of-art/

Music https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/iii-music/

Theology https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/iv-theology/

Home Page https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/