Last night I had a not-so unusual dream, given the news: I was on an airliner that was obviously going down for a deadly crash. Sitting in my cramped space, I of course was overcome with anxiety as the plane came within yards of the ground. Then I just huddled, thinking, "it will be over with fast. There will be no pain. Just let it go." Although still bracing for the impact, I became relaxed. There was nothing I could do about it. I let it go.
With that, I had a strong sense of the spirit, of the eternal - that this gig on earth wasn't all there was. It was, in the end, peaceful.
I didn't die, though, and the dream careened on towards the ridiculous - the plane made an emergency landing, and women in high heels jumped from one rooftop of a gas station to another to get enough gas to refuel. The dream fell from the sublime to the idiotic faster than the plane.
But there was a sense of spirit, something I am so familiar with that I take for granted. Reading the introduction to "The Confessions of St. Augustine" yesterday, I learned that this was not the case with the ancient Romans. The Greeks, from Plato, had a well - honed sense of spirit (that later merged with Jewish theology to create Christianity), but the Romans did not; rather, they thought that a god must have corporeal existence. For this reason, Augustine clung at first to the Manichean doctrine, which sought to explain evil in the world by posing the duel forces of creation: that good made the universe, and evil invaded it. Therefore, the things of the world should be avoided, right down to procreation (which creates more material things). To stop evil, we must not give it, in material form, any power over ourselves.
I did not learn all the complexities of this religion, which was, even then, considered an abomination, but the crux of it for Augustine was this: that he could not at first understand that humans could generate evil in a world that was made from a perfectly good God. That is, he could not at first see that it was not God who made evil in this world, but ourselves; and that, as God was spirit, he was not part of the evil that existed in His world. God, then, could be both perfect and all - good even as His world was filled with evil.
In his 32nd year, Augustine realized his 'error' and became one of the greatest Christian apologists of all time. Still, it came to me as a surprise, for primitive peoples often seem to dwell more in the world of spirit than this one. What happened to the Romans that they should so deviate? And if they could do so, could it be that spirit is, as a modern materialist would say, a product of our imagination? And if so, then not only good but also evil could be only an illusion, making of the world (the universe) a set of bio-chemical and natural laws that have no purpose but for the accidental creation of something that means nothing; for without spirit, there is no meaning in the universe. Certainly, science and religion must collide here.
In the late 19th century, Max Weber attacked this problem with something akin to sheer genius, for his approach was, as far as I know, absolutely original. Forget about philosophical truth, he said; instead, look at the matter of "spirit" as a sociological problem. God or the gods and spirits, he said, were made from the sense of community of small, tribal groups from the past. That is, that ultimately, what the primitives came to worship (and we who followed them) was a sense of themselves as a community. It was nothing more or less than group self-love. Modern society ("modern" meaning compartmentalized) broke with this sense of community and for that reason we have come to abandon more and more notions of God, as well as a sense of communal togetherness. Thus we have developed the modern ailment of anomie, a profound sense of alienation. We have lost our god because we have lost a sense of community.
Still, this does not answer the ultimate questions: from where did this spirit of community come from? Is this not the very spirit of the Holy Ghost, the Paraclete, that Christians speak of, this thing of community? Is this not the basis for love? And how is it, then, that something of the imagination could become powerful enough to pull groups, and even whole nations together?
Mass movements are not always from the spirit of what many today consider to be that of God - Jim Jones is a particularly lurid example of that. Of course, modern religions do understand that there is an evil spirit that is active in the world - and assume that this spirit is an aberration of our free will against an all-good God. Here, all the questions about spirit are still not answered (to say the least). Yet, there is little doubt, from sociological evidence, that spirit exists in the world. But couldn't it be Manichean in form, dual spirits of good and evil that are equally powerful?
Or perhaps it is up to us - to form a god among ourselves that reflects an ultimate God of love and unity. Augustine is recognized as one of the great minds of the last 2 thousand years. Perhaps he will have the answer. Or perhaps, as is usual, it will again fall to faith. But goodness we know, and spirit we feel. It is at the very least a beginning for anyone. FK
With that, I had a strong sense of the spirit, of the eternal - that this gig on earth wasn't all there was. It was, in the end, peaceful.
I didn't die, though, and the dream careened on towards the ridiculous - the plane made an emergency landing, and women in high heels jumped from one rooftop of a gas station to another to get enough gas to refuel. The dream fell from the sublime to the idiotic faster than the plane.
But there was a sense of spirit, something I am so familiar with that I take for granted. Reading the introduction to "The Confessions of St. Augustine" yesterday, I learned that this was not the case with the ancient Romans. The Greeks, from Plato, had a well - honed sense of spirit (that later merged with Jewish theology to create Christianity), but the Romans did not; rather, they thought that a god must have corporeal existence. For this reason, Augustine clung at first to the Manichean doctrine, which sought to explain evil in the world by posing the duel forces of creation: that good made the universe, and evil invaded it. Therefore, the things of the world should be avoided, right down to procreation (which creates more material things). To stop evil, we must not give it, in material form, any power over ourselves.
I did not learn all the complexities of this religion, which was, even then, considered an abomination, but the crux of it for Augustine was this: that he could not at first understand that humans could generate evil in a world that was made from a perfectly good God. That is, he could not at first see that it was not God who made evil in this world, but ourselves; and that, as God was spirit, he was not part of the evil that existed in His world. God, then, could be both perfect and all - good even as His world was filled with evil.
In his 32nd year, Augustine realized his 'error' and became one of the greatest Christian apologists of all time. Still, it came to me as a surprise, for primitive peoples often seem to dwell more in the world of spirit than this one. What happened to the Romans that they should so deviate? And if they could do so, could it be that spirit is, as a modern materialist would say, a product of our imagination? And if so, then not only good but also evil could be only an illusion, making of the world (the universe) a set of bio-chemical and natural laws that have no purpose but for the accidental creation of something that means nothing; for without spirit, there is no meaning in the universe. Certainly, science and religion must collide here.
In the late 19th century, Max Weber attacked this problem with something akin to sheer genius, for his approach was, as far as I know, absolutely original. Forget about philosophical truth, he said; instead, look at the matter of "spirit" as a sociological problem. God or the gods and spirits, he said, were made from the sense of community of small, tribal groups from the past. That is, that ultimately, what the primitives came to worship (and we who followed them) was a sense of themselves as a community. It was nothing more or less than group self-love. Modern society ("modern" meaning compartmentalized) broke with this sense of community and for that reason we have come to abandon more and more notions of God, as well as a sense of communal togetherness. Thus we have developed the modern ailment of anomie, a profound sense of alienation. We have lost our god because we have lost a sense of community.
Still, this does not answer the ultimate questions: from where did this spirit of community come from? Is this not the very spirit of the Holy Ghost, the Paraclete, that Christians speak of, this thing of community? Is this not the basis for love? And how is it, then, that something of the imagination could become powerful enough to pull groups, and even whole nations together?
Mass movements are not always from the spirit of what many today consider to be that of God - Jim Jones is a particularly lurid example of that. Of course, modern religions do understand that there is an evil spirit that is active in the world - and assume that this spirit is an aberration of our free will against an all-good God. Here, all the questions about spirit are still not answered (to say the least). Yet, there is little doubt, from sociological evidence, that spirit exists in the world. But couldn't it be Manichean in form, dual spirits of good and evil that are equally powerful?
Or perhaps it is up to us - to form a god among ourselves that reflects an ultimate God of love and unity. Augustine is recognized as one of the great minds of the last 2 thousand years. Perhaps he will have the answer. Or perhaps, as is usual, it will again fall to faith. But goodness we know, and spirit we feel. It is at the very least a beginning for anyone. FK
RSS Feed