Some Historical Perspectives on Our Abrahamic Religions
Muslim terrorists justify flying planes into the World Trade Center killing several thousand people because they think Allah sanctions this action. Israelis think they are entitled to their homeland because supposedly "God" promised it to them. Palestinian Muslim fundamentalists have no fear in detonating their bomb belts, killing themselves and their Jewish targets because Allah will reward them in heaven. In Islam, Judaism, and Christianity women and gays, at least at some point in their histories, have been treated as second class citizens because God or Allah according to their interpretations of their sacred texts allows this discrimination. Those who have murdered abortion clinic doctors consider this a God-approved sacred act. A U.S. Congressman says that our country should be governed with a Biblical worldview, and President Bush(according to a Newsweek article)thinks as President he is on a special mission from God.
All of these examples have several things in common. They are a frightening display of the inherent intolerance, naivete, absolutism, and violence that are endemic to the Abrahamic religions. It has always been so---from the bloody Crusades of the Middle Ages, the Spanish Inquisition, and the ongoing anti-Semitism and racism that continues to this day. The church used its sacred texts to sanction the Crusades, the Inquisition, and anti-Semitism and even to justify racism in this country for the first 200 years of our country's history. We cannot hope for an end to such religious evils until we accept some stark realities about how man's innate psychological, biological, and religious needs intertwine.
To begin with, at some point during man's evolutionary development, his brain evolved to the stage where he acquired something no other animal had---self-awareness or self-consciousness. It was a frightening evolutionary development for humans. The theologian Paul Tillich called it "the shock of nonbeing," and Sigmund Freud referred to it as the "trauma of self-consciousness." Man now had the dreaded capacity to be consciously aware of something no other living organism had the developed brain to contemplate---his own mortality. In order to cope with this overwhelming hysteria caused by his evolved selfhood, he imagined or created a paternalistic otherworldly protector. This coping device was no doubt crude at first. Early man, according to archaeological findings, performed ritualistic acts to appease demons or spiritual powers that he thought were responsible for destructive natural forces that could injure or spell his doom. It took thousands of years for this primitive animism to reach the earliest stages of a more refined but still barbaric tribal god worship practiced by the early Jewish people and yet another 500 to a 1000 years for them to conceive of the more complex paternalistic monotheism that is recognizable to us today.
We must remember that man's struggle to define the nature of his god concept has been an ongoing process from his primitive beginnings to the present. Down through history man has always adapted his definition of a supreme divine being to fit his changing needs and his better understanding of the natural world. As our knowledge base increases; and our better understanding of the natural world continues, increasing secularization will follow. The vestiges of the old tribal religions that are still with us---supernatural, omnipotent otherworldly gods controlling our lives and nature's laws---will continue to wither and become more and more irrelevant. That is the way of time, knowledge, and biological and social evolution. It has already happened in most of the industrialized world. Church attendance in nearly every European country has dwindled to around 4%. In Japan it is 2%. It is mainly in this country, in 3rd world countries, and pockets of fundamentalism around the world where there is still a desperate clinging to a religion that is no longer defensible. The challenge for postmodern societies is to find a spirituality or religious perspective that does not compromise our ethics, morality, or humanity but yet makes sense for an advanced technological world community. It is a step forward we must take.
For Christians and Jews it will be easier to make this step if they have a basic understanding of how Judaism and Christianity began. The Jewish people in the early stages of their history around 980 B.C.E. developed a concept of their god that was heavily influenced by pagan Canaanite Baalistic theology. To them God was a transparent, simplistic human-like tribal deity who frequently intervened in the daily affairs of men. At a later stage the Hebrews felt a need for a more mysterious, distant god. But not until four hundred years later in the sixth century B.C.E. during the Babylonian Captivity did the Jewish people confer the qualities of holiness and purity upon their deity. At some point in time the Jewish concept of their supreme being reached possibly its most advanced abstract state. They thought of their god as being inexpressible as indicated by their reference to him as Yahweh, which means literally "no name."
What is interesting is that several other great religions and philosophical movements reached a similar conclusion. An Islamic scholar was recently quoted as saying that to imagine God is to create him, which we cannot do. Buddhism also says that God is indefinable and can only be experienced in a mystical or metaphysical sense. In the third century C.E. the pagan Neoplatonists led by Plotinus said the same----that God was unknowable and any attempt to describe His nature or character or pretend to know His thoughts, desires, and feelings was blasphemous and arrogant.
Any discussion of Christian theology should take into account how its definition of "God" has also evolved throughout history and is still doing so. In the first century when the Christian movement began, the Middle Eastern world where Christianity had its beginnings was a cauldron of unrest. The suppressive fist of the Romans, the restless longing of the Jewish people for a messiah to free them from the Roman stranglehold, and the numerous pagan Hellenic and Asiatic mystery cults with their baptismal and initiation rites, their observance of virgin births, gods coming to earth in human form, and physical resurrections all helped to influence and shape early Christian thinking. According to most New Testament scholars the incorporation of pagan beliefs and practices into Christianity no doubt occurred. After all, the rites of Adonis, Tammuz, Osiris, and Mithra were popular and widespread, predating Christianity. Christianity was in competition with these religious cults for converts, and it undoubtedly became politically advantageous to adopt many of their pagan rites and beliefs.
Even as late as the third century, there were many widely different variations of Christianity with many sects not accepting the divinity of Jesus. Not until 325 C.E. at the Council of Nicaea did a group of orthodox church bishops, after a protracted debate, vote to give Jesus a divine standing. That did not solve the problem, however, for Arian and Gnostic Christian adherents, who could not accept the bishops' doctrines and beliefs.. The process of changing and adapting our religious beliefs to fit our needs and prejudices, as the bishops did, is clearly shown in present day Africa and Brazil where many Christian churches have incorporated the old tribal deities in their rituals.
The Council of Nicaea gives credence to the saying that religion is mainly just politics made sacred. At that period in Christian history with so many variants of Christianity, a few of the more powerful bishops led by Athanasius decreed that all "scriptural writings"(of which there were many)that were at odds with their prejudices be destroyed. In other words our present-day New Testament is the result of arbitrary, political "cherry picking" to include only those writings that fit the individual beliefs of a relatively small number of church leaders of the time led by Athanasius who had their own agendas. It was a political power grab that left out such beautiful works as the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas, a compilation of the sayings of Jesus in which He says that anyone can achieve the same(Buddhist-like)divine or sacred qualities He has. This and other Christian writings of the time were rejected because they were a threat to the power base of the bishops. Why were Athanasius and the bishops able to hold sway over the other Christian sects and marginalize them? Church history tells us that the Roman Emperor Constantine, more than likely sick of all the squabbling between the different sects, gave his imprimatur to the bishops' creeds. Luckily many of the rejected Christian leaders whose beliefs were not accepted did not listen to the bishops and hid some of their manuscripts, which were found hundreds of years later in the caves at Nag Hammadi.
It is important to realize then that to proclaim the present-day Bible as the direct word of God is inaccurate and does not square with history. What we should say is that today's New Testament is the rendering of the beliefs of a small group of bishops who represented just one set of Christian beliefs of which there were many at the time. They had their own frailties, prejudices, egos, and agendas just like any group of leaders of any organization. Not to understand and accept that fact opens the door to the continued acceptance of such outdated, nonsensical, and often barbaric practices of an ancient people who could not have anticipated the changing mores, values, and psychological underpinnings of a postmodern society that must deal with such complex moral and scientific issues as stem-cell research, terminating a pregnancy to save a mother's life, the moral issue of medically prolonging the life of a terminally ill patient, and similar modern day problems. Using a 2000 year old sacred text to find answers to such dilemmas which the writers of Scripture could never have anticipated is tantamount to using a 15th century medical guide to treat cancer victims.
Another point to consider is that according to Oxford New Testament scholar Jeffrey John and other church historians, gospel writers used a narrative method called Haggadic midrash, which is a recasting, with variations, of Old Testament stories and themes with New Testament characters and events. For example, Jesus' parting of the heavens is simply a reworking of Moses' parting of the Red Sea and was not to be taken literally. Most, if not all, of the New Testament stories have their Old Testament counterparts and are midrashic in nature. The Western mind places great value on whether an event can be empirically verified as fact. First century Middle Eastern Jewish writers simply did not. Their main goal was to continue what they considered a powerful faith story in a way that would best connect with the people of the time. In short most Biblical stories were never intended by their writers to be understood as literally true. Symbolic or mythological truth carried a more powerful message, they felt, than literal truth.
The previous brief outline of some of our Judeo/Christian history should give us pause and perhaps reconsider some of our traditional religious beliefs. According to Bishop John Shelby Spong in his book A New Christianity for a New World a faith that narrows its focus to demanding strict adherence of its members to the blind acceptance of the supernatural births, resurrections, miracles etc. of a first century tribal people who had little understanding of the natural world will not last in a postmodern culture. This does not mean that the Bible is to be thrown into the trash heap. It still serves as an inspiration to many, but solving the world's great social problems requires abandoning the Biblical literalism to which so many adhere. It too often has bred violence, intolerance, racism, anti-semitism, and a host of other evils committed in the name of Christianity and the Bible. The church needs to break away from its stifling dogmatism and instead concentrate on tolerance, understanding, and compassion for all religions and individual beliefs as the Dalai Lama so eloquently implored us to do.
Herb Panko
25 Mill House Lane S.W.
Chatfield, Mn. 55923
507-867-4196
hepchat55923@yahoo.com
