There is more to God than God
A few nights ago I read the gnostic text, the Apocryphon of John, a heretical work. It got me thinking about the kind of issues that can effect me deeply and delight and confuse me thoroughly.
These days, contrary to 20th century secular expectations that religion is dying out, discourse about God fills the leaves and screens of our media ever increasingly. Presumably this is in reaction to 9/11, and because the occupancy of the most powerful position in the world is a born again Christian Fundamentalist. It may be for other 'background' reasons too, for example, the decline of faith in Enlightment rationality, and the perceived sense of a need for alternatives to nihilistic despair, but I certainly notice that religion, as well as its shadow- athesitic polemic- is in the headlines far more now than it was ten years ago.
What than can be said about religion?
Unsurprisingly, central to any religious discussion, must be the question of whether God exists. Surely, if he doesn't, not only is all religious activity acutely embarrassing, its also an utter waste of space..and time.
Similarly, if God does exist then embarrassment instead becomes the destiny of our atheists; simple reality joins aesthetic decorum in the argument for them to pull back the reins on their loud, screaming arrogance.
Curiously, however, within this often vigorous debate, the question of what this God actually is that is meant either to exist or not exist is seldom raised. Everyone takes it for granted that we just know what we mean when we talk about 'God'. What is meant is the 'God of Western, Non-oriental religion', the uncreated creator, the unmoved mover, who is all knowing, all powerful, all loving and absolutely everywhere. Beyond such general, philosophical characteristics he is also agreed to be the God at the the heart of Judaism, Islam and Christianity. This God has had various names: Yahweh, the Trinity, and most recently Allah. All have claimed to have had a close relationship with the third son of an idol maker called Abraham, who came from the Biblical city of Ur, possibly not far from modern day Nasiriyah in Iraq, and who was supposed to have walked the earth in about 2000BC.
Atheists say this God does not exist. Well, except as an idea, or perhaps a meme, shared amongst, and passed down by, various distinct groups of people, which has come to shape this thing called religion and religious culture, the existence of which they do not dispute, but the existence of which, at least recently, they would quite like to destroy. Meanwhile, theists of the various schools, Jewish, Christian and Islamic, in so far as they deign to give the time of day at all to the doubting Godless, assert that this very same God does exist and that his actual reality - not merely a dreamt-up idea of him - is what lies behind the establishment and historical unfolding of the religions of the west.
The level of agreement, then, between the two sides is very great. Both sides know what the other is talking about. Nobody questions the terms of the debate very much. One makes one choice and plumps for one's destiny. Leeway and wriggle room is starkly absent, a situation, it seems, approved of by both sides. No namby pamby 'ooh, i just don't know' agnosticism for us! - they broadly declaim. You are either with us, or you are with them -yuk!
What's interesting about the Gnostics, however, is that they offer an interesting third positon between the believers and unbelievers, which at the same time is the opposite of agnosticism, a position I'm sure most believe is the only alternative to belief or unbelief. They agree in part and disagree in part with what both sides say. Gnostics synthesise the debate into something refreshing. With the believers they assert that God exists, they just dont believe he is to be identified with the God of Religion. Instead, shockingly enough (shocking enough for Dawkins?) the God of Religion is actually the devil, or at the very least the 'God of this world', and not to be confused with the true God, who is perfect, pure light, to be related to through intimately intuited mystical knowledge, not fearfully through faith, worship and law. Because of their criticisms of the God of Religion, then, they agree with the atheists in opposing this God on moral grounds, accepting that this God is generally speaking a bad, or at least unnecessary, thing. At the same time, nevertheless, they disagree with the atheists about the lack of any invisible, spiritual reality behind, beyond and within the Universe's material exoskeleton.
Speaking personally, on an emotional gut level, I find Gnosticism extremely sympathetic. I do so becasue I feel it honouring and granting respect to my subjective personal spiritual life and spiritual intuitions in a way I've always found lacking from the orthodox churches. These I've perhaps too paranoically suspected ultimately believe that the important thing is to ensure, once the smiles have relaxed, the songs sung, and the nice tea drunk and put away, that what I believe about faith and morals is all squared off and tied up in the proper, received way, whatever I might feel to the contrary, the integrity of my own subjective inscape be damned.
Intellectually, as well, it seems hugely more impressive, even though its mythopoetic language and metaphysical orientation may attract scorn- albeit less hatred- from reductive materialists and scientists. Most particularly, perhaps, the greatest spur to modern atheism, the problem of evil, is at once solved. This problem asks how it is that God, assuming he is all good and all loving, as well as all powerful, can allow the amount of suffering which exists in the world to exist. Answer: becasue he is not in charge, the lesser God, the demiurge, the fallen God, as he might be termed, the prince of this world, is. Whilst the real God is all-good, and all-loving (crikey he even loves this lesser god, after all), he is not all-powerful, and this is not his world.
So this cleanses the true God of the stain of moral culpability for the aushwitzes and tsunami's of existence. And thankfully it does so without need of mainstream religion's tortuously fragile justifications, which are so often wheeled out begrudgingly to defend its God when he charged with responsibility for the evils in the world (oh, wasn't it simpler when we could just burn these bastards!). Chief of these justifications, of course, is that, despite appearances, and the vigour of common sense, the evils of the world are not the fault of this all-powerful God, but of humanity, or rather its ancestor Adam and his wife Eve, the deserved punishment for their having abused the precious gift of free will and done that most politically hideous of things - disobey God.
No, I'm much happier with the simple idea that God, like Goodness and Love itself, are absent from this planet and this world, even though they can be found, here and there, speading their light in subversively joyful ways.
Anyway, I'm not going to put myself in a box, but I certainly want to look further into this issue.
These days, contrary to 20th century secular expectations that religion is dying out, discourse about God fills the leaves and screens of our media ever increasingly. Presumably this is in reaction to 9/11, and because the occupancy of the most powerful position in the world is a born again Christian Fundamentalist. It may be for other 'background' reasons too, for example, the decline of faith in Enlightment rationality, and the perceived sense of a need for alternatives to nihilistic despair, but I certainly notice that religion, as well as its shadow- athesitic polemic- is in the headlines far more now than it was ten years ago.
What than can be said about religion?
Unsurprisingly, central to any religious discussion, must be the question of whether God exists. Surely, if he doesn't, not only is all religious activity acutely embarrassing, its also an utter waste of space..and time.
Similarly, if God does exist then embarrassment instead becomes the destiny of our atheists; simple reality joins aesthetic decorum in the argument for them to pull back the reins on their loud, screaming arrogance.
Curiously, however, within this often vigorous debate, the question of what this God actually is that is meant either to exist or not exist is seldom raised. Everyone takes it for granted that we just know what we mean when we talk about 'God'. What is meant is the 'God of Western, Non-oriental religion', the uncreated creator, the unmoved mover, who is all knowing, all powerful, all loving and absolutely everywhere. Beyond such general, philosophical characteristics he is also agreed to be the God at the the heart of Judaism, Islam and Christianity. This God has had various names: Yahweh, the Trinity, and most recently Allah. All have claimed to have had a close relationship with the third son of an idol maker called Abraham, who came from the Biblical city of Ur, possibly not far from modern day Nasiriyah in Iraq, and who was supposed to have walked the earth in about 2000BC.
Atheists say this God does not exist. Well, except as an idea, or perhaps a meme, shared amongst, and passed down by, various distinct groups of people, which has come to shape this thing called religion and religious culture, the existence of which they do not dispute, but the existence of which, at least recently, they would quite like to destroy. Meanwhile, theists of the various schools, Jewish, Christian and Islamic, in so far as they deign to give the time of day at all to the doubting Godless, assert that this very same God does exist and that his actual reality - not merely a dreamt-up idea of him - is what lies behind the establishment and historical unfolding of the religions of the west.
The level of agreement, then, between the two sides is very great. Both sides know what the other is talking about. Nobody questions the terms of the debate very much. One makes one choice and plumps for one's destiny. Leeway and wriggle room is starkly absent, a situation, it seems, approved of by both sides. No namby pamby 'ooh, i just don't know' agnosticism for us! - they broadly declaim. You are either with us, or you are with them -yuk!
What's interesting about the Gnostics, however, is that they offer an interesting third positon between the believers and unbelievers, which at the same time is the opposite of agnosticism, a position I'm sure most believe is the only alternative to belief or unbelief. They agree in part and disagree in part with what both sides say. Gnostics synthesise the debate into something refreshing. With the believers they assert that God exists, they just dont believe he is to be identified with the God of Religion. Instead, shockingly enough (shocking enough for Dawkins?) the God of Religion is actually the devil, or at the very least the 'God of this world', and not to be confused with the true God, who is perfect, pure light, to be related to through intimately intuited mystical knowledge, not fearfully through faith, worship and law. Because of their criticisms of the God of Religion, then, they agree with the atheists in opposing this God on moral grounds, accepting that this God is generally speaking a bad, or at least unnecessary, thing. At the same time, nevertheless, they disagree with the atheists about the lack of any invisible, spiritual reality behind, beyond and within the Universe's material exoskeleton.
Speaking personally, on an emotional gut level, I find Gnosticism extremely sympathetic. I do so becasue I feel it honouring and granting respect to my subjective personal spiritual life and spiritual intuitions in a way I've always found lacking from the orthodox churches. These I've perhaps too paranoically suspected ultimately believe that the important thing is to ensure, once the smiles have relaxed, the songs sung, and the nice tea drunk and put away, that what I believe about faith and morals is all squared off and tied up in the proper, received way, whatever I might feel to the contrary, the integrity of my own subjective inscape be damned.
Intellectually, as well, it seems hugely more impressive, even though its mythopoetic language and metaphysical orientation may attract scorn- albeit less hatred- from reductive materialists and scientists. Most particularly, perhaps, the greatest spur to modern atheism, the problem of evil, is at once solved. This problem asks how it is that God, assuming he is all good and all loving, as well as all powerful, can allow the amount of suffering which exists in the world to exist. Answer: becasue he is not in charge, the lesser God, the demiurge, the fallen God, as he might be termed, the prince of this world, is. Whilst the real God is all-good, and all-loving (crikey he even loves this lesser god, after all), he is not all-powerful, and this is not his world.
So this cleanses the true God of the stain of moral culpability for the aushwitzes and tsunami's of existence. And thankfully it does so without need of mainstream religion's tortuously fragile justifications, which are so often wheeled out begrudgingly to defend its God when he charged with responsibility for the evils in the world (oh, wasn't it simpler when we could just burn these bastards!). Chief of these justifications, of course, is that, despite appearances, and the vigour of common sense, the evils of the world are not the fault of this all-powerful God, but of humanity, or rather its ancestor Adam and his wife Eve, the deserved punishment for their having abused the precious gift of free will and done that most politically hideous of things - disobey God.
No, I'm much happier with the simple idea that God, like Goodness and Love itself, are absent from this planet and this world, even though they can be found, here and there, speading their light in subversively joyful ways.
Anyway, I'm not going to put myself in a box, but I certainly want to look further into this issue.
Here's a poem I wrote in 1997. I suppose it could be called Gnostic in its way:
Before the New love, the new heart
Before the new heart, the new eye
Sweet, mystical, deep, wide
Reaching towards all things
River, rock, mountain, stream
The Sun, the Moon, the Planets and Stars
And each particular thing
But especially
These vast empires and mysteries
Walking our streets, working our cities,
Lost, pitilessly dreaming,
Greasing the wheels of the system that
Plunders, in the blackening Suns of
Progress, invention, convention, detention
Of the senses in lies and fear
Towering above, invisible, insane
Inhuman hammer face of the fallen God Triumphant.
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