Noah’s Rainbow

Noah’s Rainbow: The Development of Human Intellect and Compassion

The first book of the Bible, Genesis, recounts the mythic stories of some of our earliest human ancestors. The name Genesis literally means “birth,” or “origin,” and it poetically charts how human beings developed knowledge, society and morality over time.

For instance, in Genesis 9—after the cataclysmic flood—God made a covenant with Noah. He said to Noah, “I promise that never again will all things be destroyed by a flood…As a sign of this everlasting covenant which I am making with you and with all living beings, I am putting my bow in the clouds. It will be a sign of my covenant with the world. Whenever I cover the sky with clouds and the rainbow appears, I will remember my promise to you and to all the animals…”

It is a wonderful Biblical myth to explain the first appearance of the rainbow. Furthermore, it describes both God’s compassion for all creation, and our human duty to protect it as an echo of God’s charity.

If the physical universe is now known to be constant, we can be pretty sure that rainbows have always existed. At least, as long as mists of water have refracted sunlight. Why, then, were Noah and his family seemingly the first people to see them? Perhaps, I would argue, they were not the first to physically see them, but rather the first to intellectually notice them.

With the Bible’s gradual introduction of themes and wonders to humanity, it seems we are meant to understand that both natural and divine revelation are painstakingly slow, unfurling processes that require the patient attending of many, many generations. Thus, each revelation is predicated upon the burgeoning intellect of our human species: our readiness for grasping the lesson.

When we read the Old and New Testaments as a Biblical teleology of increasing human awareness and reflection, we could be said to be retracing the our ancestors’ pathways to knowledge, sometimes articulated in mythical terms, and much later in more tangible, historical ones.

At the other end of the Bible, in the Gospels, Christ seems to affirm this suspicion. When Christ teaches about divorce law to the recalcitrant Pharisees, he tells them (insultingly) that some of the the laws handed down to Moses (many generations before) were given to the Israelites because they were stubborn, poor students. Christ said, “Moses gave you permission to divorce your wives because you were so hard to teach.” (Matthew 19:8; Mark 10:5) Christ offers, instead, a new covenant to them, a new relationship with God that relies more on personal spiritual control instead of imposed outward contraints.

In another episode, again inciting the Jewish establishment with his ideological iconoclasm, Christ broke traditional, sacred laws about keeping Kosher. He made the point that “It is not what goes into a person’s mouth that makes him ritually unclean; rather, what comes out of it makes him unclean.” (Matthew 15:11; Mark 7:15) “Anything that goes into a person’s mouth goes into his stomach and then on out of his body. But the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and these are the things that make a person ritually unclean. For from his heart come the evil ideas which lead him to kill, commit adultery, and do other immoral things; to rob, lie, and slander others. These are the things that make a person unclean.” (Matthew 15:17-20; Mark 7:18-23)

Heavy stuff, and apparently not everyone listening was ready for taking such personal responsibility. Perhaps we’re still not.

A few verses earlier, in order to underpin his argument, Christ recalled the prophecy of Isaiah: “These people, says God, honor me with their words, but their heart is really far away from me. It is no use for them to worship me, because they teach manmade rules as though they were my laws.” (Isaiah 29:13)

According to Jesus, God in the First Century is no longer pleased by simple rule obeyance. The increasing intellect and awareness of people demands increased humility and compassion in their words and deeds in order to be faithful. Indeed, Christ says we will be judged by God—not according to our diligence in abiding rules—but in the way in which we treat others.

As the penultimate creed Christ embraces the Golden Rule, the ethic of reciprocity: “Treat others as you would like to be treated.” Together with the Greatest Commandment to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind,” it supercedes all others. Jesus said, “The whole Law of Moses and the teachings of the prophets depend on these two commandments.” (Mark 12:28-34; Matthew 22:34-40; Luke 10:25-28)

If those who are researching “social evolution” are correct, the Golden Rule has always been with and within us. It just may be that its first philosophical introduction, in the “Axial Age” from 800-200BC (which I’ve discussed in “An Updated Answer for Job”), and its central place in Christ’s ministry, were unveiled at the precise moment when we humans were ready to understand its ultimate truth.

Just as we’ve never lost physical sight of Noah’s rainbow, how (in good faith) can humanity still overlook its covenant of stewardship? Or, disregard the universal Golden Rule? The answer may be that—like seeing and noticing—-understanding and accepting are two different things.

In our time, post the Axial Age, we are now making a conscious decision whether or not to inflict malice upon others or the environment. We must remember this in all areas, regardless of our political, religious or cultural traditions.

The choices are ours. And so are their consequences.

Making a Mountain Out of an Anthill

Making a Mountain Out of an Anthill: The Inner Drive for a Social Contract

I have been reading Teilhard de Chardin’s The Phenomenon of Man (NY: Harper and Row, 1975), and gotten as far as his third section, “Thought.” His premise is fascinating, that consciousness underlies all matter. Consciousness is thus omnipresent, and ever-increases with biological complexity. It flows from geosphere to biosphere, then—with the advent of intelligence—the noosphere. On its evolutionary journey it rises from elemental chance to reasoned choice. Père Teilhard attempts to reconcile divinity with evolution, teleologically pointing life towards what he terms the “Omega Point:” a sort of Mobius strip for life whereby all life eventually folds back and returns to its origins in God.

Interestingly, this morning’s NY Times (July 15, 2008) carried a somewhat related story about the Harvard scientist, Edward O. Wilson, who studies ant social behavior and extrapolates lessons for humanity. Wilson is currently writing a treatise on “social evolution,” a controversial argument that connects of social behavior and genetics.

Wilson sees an evolutionary impetus for cooperative, selfless behavior that favors the group over the individual. The Times article states, “In humans, these may include genes that underlie generosity, moral constraints, even religious behavior.” It goes on to say, “Morality and religion, [Wilson] suspects, are traits based on group selection. ‘Groups with men of quality — brave, strong, innovative, smart and altruistic — would tend to prevail, as Darwin said, over those groups that do not have those qualities so well developed,’ Dr. Wilson said.”

Wilson and like-minded colleagues have come under fire from others in the Sciences, such as Richard Dawkins (author of The Selfish Gene [Oxford U. Press, 1976] and The God Delusion [Bantam Books, 2006]). Dawkins and his camp narrowly see genetics, the “survival of the fittest” and natural selection in individual terms, as an organism’s single minded (“take no prisoners”) drive to survive and reproduce at all costs. Wilsonians, on the other hand, believe that natural selection works on many levels, including “multi-level or group-level selection”: in essence, an evolutionary process favoring the survival of the group over the needs of an individual.

For many reasons, I am most tempted to agree with Wilson’s view, not Dawkins’, as I’ve made abundantly clear elsewhere in other articles, such as “Turtles All the Way Down” and “Krishna’s Dictum.”

I’m not yet sure how closely Père Teilhard’s thesis overlaps with Wilson’s, but if Wilson can prove an evolutionary theory of morality, his work would certainly seem to harmonize with Teilhard’s belief that something greater than mechanical evolution is “afoot in the world.”

When I complete The Phenomenon of Man, I will surely have further observations to add. Stay tuned.

Abba and Amen

Abba and Amen

I’ve been reading the book Myths of Religion by Andrew M. Greeley this week. It is a compendium of three of his books written in the Seventies, The Jesus Myth, The Sinai Myth and The Mary Myth.

I’m intrigued by Greeley’s definition of myth, one that diverges from Joseph Campbell’s insofar as Greeley sees myth as important in its content, rather than its structure. For Greeley, therefore, myths are not all basically the same regardless of culture, as Campbell contends. For Greeley myth is “not fairy tale or legend, not make-believe or fiction, but rather a story that points beyond itself and gives meaning, purpose and direction to life.”1 Greeley’s project is to investigate the Christian myth.

In The Jesus Myth Greeley (a Catholic priest, sociologist and author) makes perceptive and challenging assertions about the message of Christ, especially in regard to our increasing knowledge of his historical life. Unlike fundamentalists, Greeley is not threatened by Biblical History scholarship, rather he embraces it as a venue for deepening his faith. His steadfast assurance in his own faith cannot be shaken, and therefore he walks in the world without fear.

For Greeley it is not even particularly important to focus on whether or not Christ himself articulated his role as Messiah, but rather that we understand Christ’s original and difficult message—perhaps best summed up with two words: Abba and Amen.

The “Abba and Amen” concept originates in the writing of the German scholar, Joachim Jeremias.2 For Jeremias, Jesus’ difficult message was twofold. First, we are all God’s own beloved children, on intimate enough terms to address him as “daddy” (Abba). And, secondly, as Christ was God’s earthly incarnation, he preached on his own authority, and was thereby able to seal his words with “Amen.” Understand these, and all else will follow.

Greeley convincingly argues that much of Christianity has unfortunately fallen into the same snare that Christ’s culture of first-century Judaism had. Now, as then, believers are far more comfortable with defining and enforcing laws, litigation and rules/ethics for daily living rather than actually hearing Christ’s revolutionary call to hope, faith and love/charity in all thought and action. (In essence, I Corinthians 13:13; “But now abideth faith, hope, love, these three; and the greatest of these is love.”) By demanding that people live these three, Christ ushers in the Kingdom of Heaven: not as a future state of being, but brought to fruition in the here and now.

Greeley believes that while an ethical (perhaps secular) life is laudable, if it denies any future beyond death, it fails to feed the soul’s universal, intrinsic need for hope in permanence. For Greeley the answer is Christianity. Christian faith proves the individual’s assurance of God’s presence in all facets of space and time. Christian hope is faith’s extension; it means that life is meaningful, joyful and ceaseless—an affirmation of divine omnipotence, symbolized by the Resurrection. Christian love is the earthly witness of God’s love; every act of love/charity is a recollection and extension of the “insanely generous” gift of divine love and forgiveness of transgressions.

The greatest of these is love because it is both God’s greatest gift and his greatest challenge to us. Christians are called to live all three every day and in every place, regardless of life’s whims or our neighbors’ reactions. Christians are to joyfully invite each and every one to the liberating celebration of living boundless love, what Christ termed the “Wedding Banquet.”

Hating the sin, but loving the sinner; finding the beam in our own eye; seeing the divine in the here and now; approaching the Kingdom as little children; these are difficult to follow, but in not following them, we fare even worse.
——
1. Greeley, Myths of Religion (NY: Warner Books, 1989), 1.
2. Jeremias, The Lord’s Prayer, trans. John Reumann, Facet Books Biblical Series—8 (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1964); Jeremias, The Central Message of the New Testament (NY: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1965). Cited in Greeley, 71.

Venus was a Nun

Venus was a Nun: and Other Things Your Mother Never Told You

Though my post‘s title may sound like a Monty Python quip, it derives from a real phenomenon, that of syncretism. Syncretism is the reconciliation of disparate or contradictory beliefs, a term first coined by Plutarch (“Fraternal Love,” Moralia [2.490b], 1st c. AD).  It regularly occurs in visual, literary and philosophical arenas as a means to unite in difference; it is a means to forge powerful compromise in cosmopolitan cultures.

On this subject, back in 1953 W.S. Heckscher published “Aphrodite as a Nun,” an interesting article written in the heyday of the faddish pursuit of tracing the Afterlife of Antiquity down through the Ages.1  Heckscher’s project charts the direct lineage of Cesare Ripa’s emblem of PVDICITIA (Chastity) from its unlikely antique roots in Venus iconography; he begins with the ancient authors Pausanias and Plutarch, continues with the Italian humanist Alciati, et al, and ends with the fertile imagination of Ripa – “the encyclopaedist of emblem makers.” The resultant chaste goddess of love thus epitomizes the cleverly described “strange unity in disparity” that characterized much of the Baroque period in Europe.2

In the headlining example, we can see how two virtually opposing ideas can circuitously be combined into a hybrid symbol.  If Antique ideas could be morphed so completely by the time of their absorption during the Renaissance and Baroque, just imagine how changed some of our ideas of the past have become today, another five centuries later.

Take, for example, the mistaken idea that the three great Monotheistic traditions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) have nothing in common, that they are singular and irreconcilable.  In fact, as Karen Armstrong demonstrates in A History of God: the 4000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam (NY: A. A. Knopf, 1993), each of these religions share parts of their history, scripture, and modes of religious experience.  These Abrahamic religions, as revealed religions, have much to share with each other about how to find divinity within each individual and how to build a community of respect.  That is, if we would take the time to familiarize ourselves with our own storied, received traditions rather than simply reading contemporary, often fundamentalist gloss. In doing so, we might recognize their intersections rather than their divisions.

It will be interesting, following the Olympics and the national election this year, to see how the popular rapport between the Middle East, Far East and West will continue to stir our imagination and perhaps syncretize our cultures over the next few years.  I have great hope it will show us how similar we all are in our humanity, especially as natural and manmade tragedies loom large in the collective consciousness.

For, when faced with great tribulation—as Erasmus of Rotterdam put it—“Concord is a mighty rampart.”

——–

1. W.S. Heckscher, “Aphrodite as a Nun,” Phoenix 7, no. 3 (Autumn 1953), 105-117.

2. Ibid., 105.