Our Gnostic Assault on Ourselves
ROCK ISLAND, IL Last week in “Gnosticism and the Accumulation of Scheiss” I suggested (to the cheers of those who agreed and—odd how this works—the jeers of those who didn’t) that a gnostic impulse pretty much governs our education and our economy. I also took some shots at that nutty eschatology coming from the Me-God-And-My-Bible folks, who, near as I can tell, live in contempt not only of creation but also of history.
I suggested, further, that an inveterate contempt for the flesh and the material creation will lead inevitably to the neglect of both. Toward the end I said that this contempt leads, perhaps paradoxically, to the accumulation of material goods, or what I like to call “shit,” and that such accumulation is in fact largely responsible for the despoiling of the world and the life of the flesh in it.
I said we must
confront the ugly truth of our having followed technology “outside the sphere of human definition, meaning, and responsibility.” In doing so we will be obliged to admit that when we park riding lawnmowers in our garages, we will need treadmills (invariably aimed at TVs) in our basements; that when we take elevators at the department store, we will need stair-climbers at our “health” clubs; that when we long for the realm of pure mind, we will need to pull down our barns and build greater ones for the things we accumulate.
The peril of confronting an ugly truth such as this is that doing so brings us uncomfortably to the heart of the contradictions I mentioned at the start. Having removed the body from its necessary work, we have discovered that the work, being necessary, has to be done by something. And that something has been the machine. . . . Having dreamed for the realm of pure mind, we have awoken in the realm of pure machine, “materialistic” as charged.
And then I ended by promising to “pick up on the distinction between pilgrimage through and flight from the world” with the intention of suggesting “that the technological revolution and its consequent ecological havoc present certain problems for orthodox Christianity.”
Herewith, then, the promised sequel, which will seem a bit more circumspect—mainly because it’s a bit more circumspect. But for the sake of argument I will go ahead and assume a God, a visible Church through which God speaks, and our necessary participation in Her sacramental life. Those readers not willing to grant these assumptions may wish to stop reading right now and go shoot some pool or drop acid. I would not disparage either alternative and have taken a great deal of pleasure from at least one of them.
At the end of my previous essay I had in mind a few passages from Philip Lee’s book, Against the Protestant Gnostics. Commenting on 1 St. John 1:8 and 2:3-4, Lee writes:
The commandments with which the author is preoccupied are, of course, the commandments of love. “If anyone says, “I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen.” Absolutely no escape from this tangible world of sensory perception is allowed. Salvation from the world by any other route than through the world will be called a fraud.
I had paraphrased what Lee calls the contrast between “Gnostic escape from the world and Christian pilgrimage through the world,” which is a ponderable line that has been on my mind for a few years now—and for many reasons. For example, it is an interesting gloss on the metaphor of the journey St. Augustine stamped on Western consciousness: life is a pilgrimage, the point of which is transformation. One of the best examples of this that I know of is Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory, in which as the novel opens the ‘Whiskey Priest’ is about to escape his pursuers in an atheist state where priests must either marry or suffer execution. But Greene’s drunken despairing priest, on the brink of escape, is summoned to the bed of a woman said to be dying, to whom he dutifully if reluctantly goes. It is here that our hero embarks upon a pilgrimage that leads by suffering to martyrdom and sainthood, neither of which would have been possible had he escaped rather than submitted to the “Christian pilgrimage through the world.”
But the distinction between pilgrimage and escape also puts me to thinking about a line in Fr. William Lynch’s essay, “Theology and the Imagination,” which proposed a “total and actual, positive and ‘athletic’ penetration of the finite” as the “model and enduring act of the healthy imagination.”
A failure of interest in the infinite is certainly not our problem [Lynch writes], but rather the fact that we attack it directly, immediately, and violently, refusing the mediation of the finite, or putting it only to brief, magical uses to contact the infinite, or rebelling against the finite, resenting it, skipping through it with violence at some isolated salient.
This particular essay had a profound effect on Flannery O’Connor, whose stories and letters are everywhere instinct with its ideas and even with its very terminology. O’Connor was fond of saying that the finite world contains the infinite and that especially in fiction we achieve the infinite only by penetration of the finite. For her this was a way of saying that there are going to be some consequences if we consent to speak of “spirit” without any mention of matter, that distortions are inevitable in this life if grace is separated from nature. Lynch’s line—“refusing the mediation of the finite”—is useful in considering what this means for the experience of grace.
If we are baptized in water, not in contempt of it nor by shutting our eyes tightly and thinking really hard about it, then clearly we are saying that grace comes by means of nature, that the infinite comes to us through the finite. Likewise, if our participation in God comes by means of consuming bread and wine and not merely by thinking about them–if participation comes by eating the elements rather than by “rebelling against” or “skipping through” or “resenting” them, as Lynch reminds us, if it comes about in thanksgiving for, rather than in contempt of, what earth has given and human hands have made–then (again) we are saying something about the relationship between nature and grace.
Too often we think of the “spiritual” in us as pertaining only to what we amorphously regard as psychological, as if the incarnate condition were not our state of plenitude and fullness. That the Church should have condemned gnosticism as heretical means that She understands our participation in the life of God to be a matter first and foremost of the body. (It is also one reason that She communes us whether we be babies or simpletons or both, as is certainly the case with some of us.) Indeed, there can be no participation in the divine life apart from a full penetration of the finite. The sacraments are not intellectual mysteries only, though they are certainly susceptible of intellectual scrutiny. They are physical mysteries that affirm not just the goodness but the necessity of creation, which itself is the means—though not the source—of grace. If I cut myself off from the means of grace—that is, from creation—do I not to an extent cut myself off from grace itself? And to what extent exactly?
It may be that the “miracle” of the Eucharist is a reminder of the normal state of things that we are at considerable pains, and in spite of ourselves, to recover.
But the question I wish to raise here, and I consider it an open one, is this: assuming–and notwithstanding–the abiding validity and efficacy of the institutional sacraments, what ‘spiritual’ consequences redound on us for consenting to an increasingly gnostic existence, wherein the life of the mind (or spirit) is given undue value, wherein our longing to live in the realm of pure mind or pure spirit is sanctioned by our education, economy, and technological determinism, and wherein the destruction of nature—the very means of grace—is the consequence of almost all that we do?
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[...] 13, 2009 Over at Front Porch Republic, Jason Peters has a great further post on the implications of our cultural gnosticism for the future. You’ll have to read the whole thing, but in brief, his argument is that the loss of [...]
Dr. Peters, much appreciated, profound, an example of why I drop by.
Perhaps you might more deeply explore the finite/material world and its relationship to existenial being..I was impressed with your discussion on the sacrements-in-the-world and would like you to expand that discussion.
Your argument corresponds with Voegelin’s project to restore order, in part, by re-examining the Classical Greeks and re-incorporating the idea of the tension of existence within the metaxy, the in-between.
You’re examining the immanent pole of the metaxy in a refreshingly new way, from a new perspective, and this deserves an indepth accounting…surely a book?
Your discussion is most interesting because what is mostly discussed, when it is discussed at all, is the formidable task of reestablishing contact with ‘nonexistent reality’-the transcendent pole of the metaxy-and making that reality available to people in general, people outside academia.
Dr. Peters,
Thank you for a very thoughtful piece on our current culture. I think you have done a very good job of linking the current aversion to material creation (Nature), with our obsession with technology. However, the question you ask is a simple one. The spiritual consequence of gnosticism, is turning away from God’s love by rejecting creation and ultimately failing in our vocation as stewards. I believe that Dante had a special place in Hell reserved for such believers.
What I find more difficult is the fact that man is gifted with talent beyond mere husbandry. The internet too is a “work of human hands”. It is not technology, anymore than material creation, that is evil. It is what we choose to do with it. Action, and intent are what defines good from evil. Using technology to remove ourselves from creation as you have argued is indeed sinful. But are there not also valid uses for machines, and technology that open us to God’s grace and do His work on earth?
Old Order Mennonites, baby. Mennonites.
Jason, I didn’t take your advice and quit reading, as I don’t agree with your assumptions. Taking your assumptions at face value, I have a few observations.
We are physical beings. Comfort and security are important to us. Work, and particularly physical labor, is not only not comfortable, but often dangerous to our long term well being. Our bodies do require work, and if you are honest, you know that for most of us some physical labor is required. Even now, in this most materialistic of times (at least in the sense of how much of a population can forgo most physical labor) few of us choose to escape labor altogether.
Destruction of our world. Feeding people is important, and feeding everybody is hard to do. The green revolution of the 60’s and 70’s fed more people than anyone could have imagined. Yet the very techniques that allow us to feed the masses, and the laboring masses at that, cause harm to the physical world. What do we do? Not feed them? Restrict populations? Or work to provide in ways that don’t harm the world and the people in it?
Spiritual consequences. There you’ve got me. I know what consequences are, and I think I understand what spiritual means, but the spiritual consequences of advanced gnosticism, that I don’t get.
Before our technological revolution, most people lived relatively short and often brutal lives. Now most people live longer and less brutal lives. This is a direct consequence of gnosticism, at least as I understand your use of the term. What would you have different?
Jake
A hundred years ago, when the Industrial Crusade of this country was already well underway, certain thinkers and writers emerged who saw the consequences and elucidated them with prescience and no small measure of the public embraced the ideas…including many of the titans of industry themselves. Oddly enough, a kind of atomization ensued that obliterated the messages and then this kind of notion that man was somehow apart from nature deeply ingrained itself in the populace and the tom-foolery persisted, aided by the prevailing short attention span of a busy-work nation. Symbols and conventional wisdom replaced reality and then the advertisers kicked in………….
Anther of the trusty Mt. Aire vintage tourist trap plaques explains it nicely. I think it’s an old Pennsylvania Dutch truism: “The hurrier I go, the behinder I get”
Jake,
Relegating labor to an unfortunate obligation to be eliminated or reduced if possible would seem to run counter to the physiology of the species. An organism with the cognitive abilities we have, the legs to enable them and the hands to realize it all…that then decides there is something better in life than productive labor would seem to create conditions where the only thing left would be onanism.
If this be the case, no wonder we’re such narcissists. Telos as Supine Pornography.
Yikes, I think you may have inadvertently hit upon the leitmotif.
“Now most people live longer and less brutal lives.”
Unless, of course, your brain gets sucked out by a vacuum extractor prior to your birth.
Dr. Peters,
Thank you for your second installment.
“Too often we think of the ’spiritual’ in us as pertaining only to what we amorphously regard as psychological, as if the incarnate condition were not our state of plenitude and fullness.”–J. Peters.
Often we ignore that “the flesh” is more than just our physical beings…it includes our human emotions and thoughts. The eternal “infinite” dimension of ourselves is wrapped within the perishable “finite” body required to live and thrive on this planet.
Well said, JD Salyer! I agree!
“Humans don’t beget “tissue.” They reproduce human beings!”~~EP
The pure-mind advocates, the Platonists, are about to run into
a couple of big roadblocks, both discovered fairly recently
by pure science.
1. It appears that our brains have a built-in facility for
religion, a section designed for talking to the gods. It’s
obvious that our “ordinary” speech facility is useful for
survival, and helps us to learn from other humans. By
analogy, the “spiritual” speech facility must be good for
survival, and must help us to learn from a different
source. If this source doesn’t exist, why do we have
a mechanism to deal with it?
2. Our brains definitely have specific facilities for
arithmetic and proportions, which may even include separate
neurons for each number and fraction up to some limit.
The Platonists can no longer maintain that mathematics
was a “god-like” set of concepts, out there waiting for
us to discover it by random accident. Instead, we were designed
to do math, designed to handle measurements and numerals,
designed to build things in a systematic way.
This phenomenon is greater in breadth and depth than suggested here. We may not reach for ideals at a truly platonic level, but we have delegated many of the endeavors that profoundly engage all of our human faculties to professionals we deem closer to perfection than the vast majority of humans can hope to be.
We have delegated our sexuality to professionals on both sides of the pornographer’s lens. We have determined that our sexuality is a diversion to be pursued as and with whom our whim elects. We eschew the hard work of relating physically in real relationships of commitment and authentic intimacy.
Related to, but not coextensive with, our treatment of sexuality is the predominant strain of romantic love pedaled in our culture. In film and song, we find exalted a love seemingly not made for this earth. The love relationships ostensibly pursued by those who populate our movie and recording studios appear to be a round trip rocket blasts undertaken with little regard for those left behind or those on whom one’s rocket might crash upon re-entry. The ineffable emotion to which we have sloppily pinned to term love seems, in many regards, the occasion or portal for attempting to escape the physical realm.
We have delegated music and art and drama and storytelling (including in the context of worship) to another set of professionals, preferring to observe and to listen rather than participate.
We have delegated much of our striving for physical achievement to professional athletes.
These tendencies should not come as a surprise in the wider world. Within the church, among those called to be salt and light, it reflects quite poorly on our grasp of the reality of that scandal we know as the incarnation. That a member of the Godhead took on flesh, died, rose again for us, and eternally, in the flesh, intercedes for and reigns over His people doesn’t seem to impress us overly much.
Sorry, peddled not pedaled.
I was reminded of another aspect of our gnosticism by this piece in Reason on the virtually non-existent practice of home burial: http://www.reason.com/blog/show/133480.html. We have gone from a society in which the majority of people witnessed the deterioration and death of a loved one within the walls of the family home to a society that banishes the elderly to senior living facilities and, in the name of combating death and pain w/ little regard to the patient’s age or condition, marks the passage of those on death’s door with a medical spending spree within the confines of a hospital. Death, too, is now a process delegated to the pros,
Armchairpunter,
Having attended and shoveled at several Jewish funerals, one of the fine things of a Jewish funeral is that the act of covering the coffin is assumed by the family and other so motivated attendees. As a big dumb goyim at the first one attended, I recoiled in distaste but after doing it the first time, it quickly became a solemn honor and obligation to bury one’s own dead. There is an awful finality to hearing the earth fall on the top of the coffin….your bones ache but it makes one reflect on both life and death, family, past and future.
We really are surrounded by violence and death in this country but are removed from it as well. The removal seems to allow us to make it abstract and therefore meaningless.
We really are surrounded by violence and death in this country but are removed from it as well. The removal seems to allow us to make it abstract and therefore meaningless.
… and simultaneously make them all the more brutal, i.e., all the more removed from a human level.
On a related note, we recently viewed the HBO movie: “Taking Chance”. It is (a true story) about the care of “the remains” of a marine killed in action in Iraq. Just that. Simple, but made all the more profound because of it. One of the more anti-gnostic movies I’ve ever seen.
[...] Gnosticism and the Accumulation of Scheiss Our Gnostic Assault on Ourselves [...]
Are you aware of the work of Norman O. Brown, especially the chapter in his book “Life against Death” entitled “Filthy Lucre”? This work is a somewhat over the top neo-Freudian analysis, but has many insights that would help round out your valid argument about the relationship between gnosticism (which to some degree is foundational to the protestant/modernist cultural perspective) and the accumulation of “scheiss”. Another interesting work in that vein is Ernst Becker’s ” The Denial of Death”.
[...] they serve as symbolic means to elevate the spirit beyond the world. As Jason Peters has eloquently observed, this one-sided elevation into the transcendent, neglecting the unity of finite and infinite that [...]
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