Missing the Big Picture

The spiritual revolution of the Axial Age had occurred against a backcloth of turmoil, migration and conquest. …Karl Jaspers suggested, “The Axial Age can be called an interregnum between two ages of great empire, a pause for liberty, a deep breath bringing the most lucid consciousness.”

The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions, by Karen Armstrong

Armstrong closes her book with a look at the way forward – actually beginning with the close of the Axial Age around the second century BC until today.  She captures what she views as our problems and identifies common characteristics from the Axial period that could be applicable today.  I will focus on her discussion of the Jewish and Christian transitions.

As an aside: It has struck me, however, that we are also in the middle of a period of turmoil, living through the end of one great empire to be followed by…what exactly?  In other words, are we entering a time that might provide soil for a new Axial period – a pause for liberty?  I don’t know, but it’s a thought.

Armstrong looks at the legacy and possibilities of each of the four traditions surveyed in the book.  When it came to the legacy of the Hebrew tradition, she spends the first several pages on the Jewish – not Christian – legacy.  By AD 66, Rome worked to squash a rebellion by Jewish zealots that lasted, eventually, four years.  In AD 70, Vespasian conquered Rome and burned the temple to the ground. 

The most progressive Jews in Palestine were the Pharisees:

·       They believed that the whole of Israel was called to be a holy nation of priests…

·       They could atone for their sins by acts of loving-kindness…

·       Charity was the most important commandment of the law…

Armstrong notes a Rabbi Hillel, who taught that the essence of the Torah was not the letter of the law, but the spirit – which is summed up in the Golden Rule.  It appears he lived during the time of Christ; he doesn’t sound like one of the Pharisees that Jesus ran into.  He offered:

“What is hateful to yourself, do not do to your fellow man.  That is the whole of the Torah and the remainder is but commentary.  Go learn it.”

The Golden Rule, compassion, and loving-kindness were central to this new Judaism.  Hillel viewed the preservation of the religion as more important than national independence, but the Zealots would have none of it – with the consequences as noted above. 

Kindness was the key to the future. …When two or three Jews sat and studied harmoniously together, the divine presence sat in their midst.

Rabbi Akiba was killed by the Romans in AD 132:

[He] taught that the commandment “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself” was the great principle of the Torah.

To show disrespect to any human being created in God’s image was seen as a denial of God himself.  You could not worship God unless you practiced the Golden Rule.

Armstrong would write:

In Rabbinic Judaism, the Jewish Axial Age came of age.

Now, if you’re like me, you are thinking… “wait a minute, you skipped right over the time of Christ, and much of what you are writing is also attributed to Him.”  Further, in the big picture, who has had more impact on delivering these Axial traditions: Christ or a couple of Jewish rabbis?  Well, Armstrong comes to this.  Describing Jesus as a “Galilean faith healer,” she sees Christianity as a first century movement that tried to find a new way to be Jewish.

By “son of God,” nothing more is meant than someone assigned a special task by God, enjoying a privileged relationship with Him.  Many of His sayings were similar to those of the Pharisees.  (It sure didn’t sound like it when He was alive.) 

Conclusion

Armstrong closes with an exhortation to follow the Golden Rule, and that all of these Axial religions and their offspring aimed at this – which is quite true, to my understanding.  She rightly points out that in all these faiths, men have fallen short of these high ideals – also quite true.

But by ignoring the unique position that Jesus holds in Christianity when compared to other “founders” of other religions, she ignores the reason that it is in the West where all men created equal reached its highest potential; she ignores the reason that it is only in the West where self-examination has led to intergenerational guilt to the point of civilizational suicide.

She ignores the reason that it is in the West where the Golden Rule has been most effective.  She ignores why it has lost its prominence – it is because, as Nietzsche’s madman offered: men have forgotten God – that would be the Christian God to which the madman referred.

I would say it is a disappointing conclusion, but it is about what I expected.

The Beginning of the End…

…of the Axial Age…

The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions, by Karen Armstrong

What many might describe as foundational to Western Civilization, Armstrong describes as the beginning of the end of the Axial Age.  The topic is Plato. 

I won’t spend time on Armstrong’s review of Plato’s Forms or his cave; I have done this elsewhere (here, here, and here).  Instead:

Plato shared the conviction of many Axial philosophers that there was a dimension of reality that transcended our normal experience but that was accessible to us and natural to our humanity.

This is where the plot takes a twist: where others believed this insight could not be achieved by logical reasoning, Plato believed that it could.  This was done through the practice of dialectic – a process so rigorous that it could push his disciples into an alternative state of consciousness.

Plato’s path led him to describe the ideal republic; his republic held many characteristics that, according to Armstrong, we would find objectionable: genetic engineering; disposing of defective infants; promising children taken from their parents and raised by specialists; sex for breeding, not for relationships.

Two thoughts come to mind: first, it isn’t clear to me why Armstrong describes that we would find these objectionable today: other than the last point (today we have sex for…sex), each of these “objectionable” practices continues today, albeit in a slightly different form or described in different words. 

Second…how many times must we hear from those who denigrate religion generally – and Christianity specifically – that “we don’t need any of that mumbo jumbo for our ethics; we just have to appeal to our common humanity”?  What common humanity?  As Nietzsche offered (and I paraphrase): why do you believe you can retain your Christian ethics while throwing away your Christian God?  It is nonsense.

Plato’s deity was uninterested in the human race; this made him not meaningful to the lives of ordinary men – by ordinary, those not trained and disciplined in Plato’s dialectic.  Plato tried to remedy this by treating the Olympian gods as lessor deities – these would interact with humans.

Plato moved further from the Axial philosophers by considering that correct belief came first, and ethical behavior came second; it was a metaphysical view, one that would have been foreign to the earlier philosophers.

There were to be three obligatory articles of faith: the gods existed; they cared for human beings (this must be the lessor gods); and a belief in superstitious ritual was a capital crime.  If one would not submit to the true faith?  Execution. 

Which was quite a turn of events.  At the beginning of his journey, Plato was horrified by the execution of Socrates: executed for teaching false religious ideas.  By the end of his journey…well, guess what?  Plato would become the executioner to those who would hold false (in his view) religious ideas.

Ultimately, Plato made his philosophical religion wholly intellectual – something quite outside of the Axial view.  His most brilliant pupil would further this divide.  Aristotle would take Plato’s forms and place these in matter; here again, I have written on this extensively in the past and won’t do so now (here, for example).  Aristotle would use reason to understand metaphysical and ethical subjects:

[Aristotle’s] “good” consisted if thinking clearly and effectively planning, calculating, studying, and working things out.

A man’s moral well-being depended on reason: qualities such as courage and generosity had to be regulated; both a deficit or an excess of such qualities would demonstrate a less-than-moral life.

Aristotle produced a new god, the Unmoved Mover.  Armstrong notes that this was not Yahweh, but I don’t understand why it would be Yahweh – at least not described or understood in the same way.  Yes, I understand that all men are in search of God, but what did Aristotle know of Yahweh?

Aristotle was a pioneer of great genius.  Almost single-handedly he laid the foundations of Western science, logic, and philosophy.  Unfortunately he also made an indelible impression on Western Christianity.

Armstrong points to the leaning by some Europeans on Aristotle’s proofs of the Unmoved Mover.  She notes that this is one of his lessor achievements.  I will offer that for me it is almost an irrelevant achievement.  If this is the reason for her “unfortunately” comment, I don’t see the point or value of her criticism.  But maybe there is something more. 

I am aware that Eastern Orthodox Christians have a problem with the Western Church, and that they will point to the Aristotelian-Thomistic connection.  I guess I don’t understand this well enough.  Then again, it is those with whom we are closest that the fights become more personal.

Conclusion

So, is this the beginning of the end or the end of the beginning?  Plato moved away from a focus on the ethical behavior that was found in the Axial Age across all regions – placing correct belief ahead of ethical behavior. 

We are a couple of centuries away from the logos manifest on earth; as you know, I find in Him Plato’s Form of the Good made manifest…and no one can question His ethical behavior.  It might be the beginning of the end of the Axial Age, but what follows is the most perfect Axial being ever to grace this earth.

Epilogue

Regarding this antagonism between the Eastern and Western traditions of Christianity (to say nothing of the Protestants), I am fine with Lewis’s idea in Mere Christianity.  But I guess it isn’t enough to believe in the power of the death and Resurrection; it isn’t acceptable to leave it at that.  Probably makes me a heathen or a heretic to all.

Concern for All

Well, mostly.

The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions, by Karen Armstrong

God said to Jonah:

Am I not to feel sorry for Nineveh, the great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, to say nothing of all the animals?

Jonah is angry that God did not do the deed – destroy Nineveh, the capital of the Assyrian Empire, the empire that had destroyed Jerusalem. 

In Greece, philosophy was becoming farcical – “abstruse,” as Armstrong puts it.  An arrow in flight is motionless, because at any given moment it occupies a space exactly equal to itself; before Achilles could cover any distance, he had to cover half of it – again…motionless.

Zeno wanted to demonstrate the logical absurdity of common sense…reason was undermining itself.

Anaxagoras identified the source from which everything developed: the nous (mind).  A divine cosmic intelligence, but it wasn’t supernatural – it was made up of matter, like all else.  Nous set everything in motion; after this the atoms were left to their own devices, randomly smashing into each other.

Protagoras offered that “The measure of all things is man….” There is no transcendent authority or Supreme God; man must rely on his own human judgment. Euripides offered: “The nous in each one of us is a god.”  Euripides offered a story – Medea: Colchis was rejected by her husband, Jason.  In revenge, she killed Jason’s new wife, his father, and the sons that she had borne to Jason – she had argued herself into a terrible crime spree:

Reason was becoming a frightening tool.  It could lead people to a spiritual and moral void, and, if skillfully used, it could find cogent reasons for cruel and perverse actions.

Oedipus launched an inquiry into his father’s death and discovered he was the murderer – and without realizing who she was, had married his own mother! 

Through no fault of his own, he had become a monstrous figure, the polluter of his city, hopelessly defiled by actions whose significance he had failed to grasp at the time.  He was guilty and innocent, agent and victim.

Oedipus accepted his punishment even though he didn’t deserve it.  Those witnessing this play were driven to sympathy, feeling compassion for a man who committed crimes that would normally fill them with disgust.  Sympathy brought on a purifying catharsis. 

Now we come to Socrates.  His dialectic was designed to expose false beliefs and elicit truth.  The goal was the struggle, not some artificial end point.  Along with Plato, he discovered the psyche, or soul.  It existed before birth and would survive death. 

Socrates’ teaching was considered blasphemous.  The timing was convenient – Athens was losing wars, losing its navy.  At his trial, Socrates was accused of failing to recognize the gods of the state, of introducing new gods, and of corrupting the youth.  Socrates became a scapegoat.  He refused to escape from prison despite the unjust sentence; he refused exile.  He drank the poison. 

In China, gentlemen’s wars became total war.  Women and children were fair game; the wounded and infirm were shown no mercy.  More and more of the population would be mobilized.  No more fighting face to face – the reflex crossbow made killing possible at a distance of half a mile.

Into the mess stepped Mozi, whose concern was for the peasants.  War ruined harvests, killed civilians, wasted weapons and horses.  How could any of this be good for the kingdom?

Should people have concern for everybody?  Should they reject aggression?  These and other topics were addressed, based on conformance to the practice of the sage kings, if it was supported by common sense, and if it did benefit the human race.  Mozi would back up his arguments with reference to the High God.

Siddhatta Gotama was twenty-nine years old, married, with a newborn child.  He decided to leave home in the quiet of night.  He had a long quest ahead, in search of a form of existence – attainable in this life – that was not contingent, flawed, or transient.  We know him as the Buddha.

To reach this form of existence, he practiced severe extremities: laying on a mattress of spikes, drinking his urine, eating his feces, fasting until his bones stuck out.  He became so weak that he was left for dead on the side of the road.  Even with all this, he could not escape desires for attention, the lust and cravings of this life.

…Gotama aspired to an attitude of total equanimity toward others, feeling neither attraction nor antipathy.

Conclusion

The Hebrew God offered mercy even to enemies.  The Greeks travelled a wide road – from the most abstruse, to self-centered, to vengeful, to unchained reason, to sympathy.  Mozi reintroduced other-considering behavior after two centuries of total war.

The Buddha?  I keep finding the philosophy of India an outlier in this narrative.