Correct Thought
“Now I would remind you, brothers and sisters, of the good
news that I proclaimed to you, which you in turn received, in which also you
stand, through which also you are being saved, if you hold firmly to the
message that I proclaimed to you-unless you have come to believe in vain.”
I remember my first philosophy professor telling me that
Paul had “ruined” Christianity with his dogmatic stances and his divine
Christ-centered (rather than Earthly Jesus-centered) rhetoric. As a fan of Paul
myself, I could not help but disagree, but the professor made an important
point: the influence Paul had on all future Christianity. The above quoted
line, coming from Paul in Corinthians 1, embodies a certain tone and value in
early Christian thought: not only is the fact of the news important, but
hearing the news and having correct beliefs about it is also essential.
Paul’s letters could be, cynically, summarized as, “Paul
needs to correct all the dummies he used to teach.” Consistently, throughout
his work, he found himself in a position where he needed to write to Christian
churches and say, “No, you’re thinking about resurrection wrong!” “Hey, we need
to make sure we’re on the same page on Gentile conversion!” “Renew your minds!”
(Romans: 12). People had incorrect beliefs, and Paul needed to correct them.
It is possible that this was not Paul’s intention. He is
thought of as a practical man, it is possible that he was more focused on the
results of people’s actions, actions informed by incorrect beliefs, rather than
on the beliefs themselves. However, the interpretation that correct belief is
important seems to ring through from early Christian thought and into the
modern era.
While the Gnostics and the now-considered Orthodox disagreed
on much, this theme of correct belief was agreed upon by both groups. The
Gnostics, coming from the Greek word which means “knowledge” maintained
there was a secret set of teachings which came from Christ and ended up with
them, exclusively. In the Gospel of Thomas, which is not strictly a Gnostic
text but which was almost certainly revered by them (Thomas was found alongside
more obviously Gnostics texts at Nag Hammadi) says:
“These are the secret sayings which the living Jesus spoke
and which Didymos Judas Thomas wrote down. And he said, ‘Whoever finds the
interpretation of these sayings will not experience death.’"
It is not just that one has to read Jesus’s words, nor is it
that one has to believe in him, but one has to find the interpretation
of the sayings. There is a correct belief here, buried in the symbolism and
parables and obfuscations, and if you can put together the puzzle you can have
some form of eternal life (which, to the Gnostics, likely meant transcending
one’s body and achieving a spiritual awakening).
Irenaeus wrote an entire book about Christians, such as the
Gnostics, who he disagreed with. He tears into their beliefs step-by-step and
goes as far as saying,
“It is not necessary to seek the truth among others which it
is easy to obtain from the Church; since the apostles, like a rich man
[depositing his money] in a bank, lodged in her hands most copiously all things
pertaining to the truth… For [Irenaeus’s church] is the entrance to life; all
others are thieves and robbers. On this account are we bound to avoid them.”
Not only should one not believe the Gnostics and other
heretics, but one should avoid them. The Church, though the truth, gives out
life and the Gnostics, who are robbers, will take away your spiritual life.
I cannot help but imagine Paul being upset at this
infighting. The man fought hard for a unified belief system, and therefore a
unified body, but it did not take long for schisms to grow after his passing. Both
sides claimed him, and after building up a Gnostic-schema for myself via our
studies this semester I can totally see how they’d read him in support of
Gnostic thought. History chose the now-Orthodox tradition to be the default
position, Irenaeus won the battle. However, the war continues: in Philip K.
Dick’s novel VALIS he explains that once the Nag Hammadi “library” was discovered
in 1945 a brand new spiritual revolution began, and with it, a new fight about
what makes for a correct belief.
Space-Time
Another core theme of early Christian thought was in
argument with the Greek tradition. The Greek concept for God: Logos, Monad,
etc., was one which was understood via logical principles. Via a concrete
understanding and the correct meditation practices, one could experience God.
The early Christians, on the other hand, believed that God could be experienced
both spiritually and historically. It was their stance that God’s plan
was one which unfolded throughout time and that Christ’s life, death, and
rebirth was both the culmination of previous history and the catalyst for all
future history.
Paul, once again, set the tone in his first epistle to the
Corinthians:
“What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And as
for what you sow, you do not sow the body that is to be, but a bare seed,
perhaps of wheat or of some other grain. But God gives it a body as he has
chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body…What is sown is perishable, what
is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is
sown in weakness, it is raised in power. It is sown a physical body, it is
raised a spiritual body. If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual
body. Thus it is written, ‘The first man, Adam, became a living being’; the last
Adam became a life-giving spirit. But it is not the spiritual that is first,
but the physical, and then the spiritual.”
Paul makes two points about progression throughout time,
here. The first is that our bodies are in a growth stage; our current bodies
and future, spiritual, bodies (this spiritual/physical dichotomy is, by the
way, an instance where I can now read the New Testament through a Gnostic lens
when I could not have when only exposed to the Orthodox tradition) are as
comparable as a seed and the wheat it grows into. We, as beings, are still
growing.
The second is the point he makes about the broader human
history. He casts the first man as Adam, who gave us all our bodies via his
life. Jesus, the last Adam, grants us a spirit via his death. God’s plan has
unfolded, and none of us are the same anymore.
This perspective on the Patriarchs of the Old Testament gets
expanded on by Justin Martyr in his Dialogue with Trypho. Justin tells the
story of his conversion, when he met an old Christian man whose arguments and
testimony were so persuasive that Justin’s life was forever changed. The old
man says:
“‘A long time ago,’ he replied, ‘long before the time of
those so-called philosophers, there lived blessed men who were just and loved
by God, men who spoke through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and predicted
events that would take place in the future, which events are now taking place.
We call these men the prophets. They alone knew the truth and communicated it
to men, whom they neither deferred to nor feared. With no desire for personal
glory, they reiterated only what they heard and saw when inspired by a holy
spirit.’”
Via the old man, who may have been real or may have been a
mouth piece, Justin venerates the ancient Israelite prophets as men of wisdom.
These people were real physical people with actual lives and a
connection with God via the Holy Spirit. Justine later says that all this
goodness was meant to lead to something even greater in the future:
“Now indeed, for I have read, Trypho, that there should be a
definitive law and a covenant more binding than all others, which now must be
respected by all those who aspire to the heritage of God. The law promulgated
at Horeb is already obsolete, and was intended for you Jews only, whereas the
law of which I speak is simply for all men. Now a later law in opposition to an
older law abrogates the older; so, too, does a later covenant void an earlier
one. An everlasting and final law, Christ himself, and a trustworthy covenant
has been given to us, after which there shall be no law, or commandment, or
precept.”
The old prophets were great, but now is the time for a new
page in history, says Justin. God was, through Christ, creating an even better
world. This sort of active involvement and dynamism, while not meaning that God
Himself changes, stands opposed to the Greek conceptualization of a totally
static God. History is God’s story, said the early Christians, and the best way
to participate in the narrative is to take on the good news, with the previously
discussed correct beliefs, and to enter into this new and everlasting covenant.
Seeing God
A central similarity between the Greek tradition of God and
the forming tradition of God remained similar, the desire to experience a
felt-connection with God. Justin, back when he was a Platonic philosopher
during in his debate with the old man, believed at the time that Platonic
transcendent thought was the most effective way to viscerally experience The
One. The old man’s arguments convinced him, however, that some of his ideas
about how transcendence worked were flawed, and so he transitioned to Christianity.
Paul is, of course, central here was well, and does a good
job of expressing how the Christian conceptualization was different from the
Greek style of God experiencing. Paul did not simply meditate and connect to
some vague feeling of higher-being. Christ showed up and knocked the dude on
his ass. Paul was blind for days. Connecting to God was not a steppingstone
of slowly going beyond oneself: it was often big, dramatic, and it would change
you forever. This was the key to early Christian ideas on experiencing God:
just like God’s story is a concrete series of events through history, the act
of experience God was something real, not ideal.
The stories of the martyrs emphasize this point. Think of
the Martyrdom of Polycarp, as Polycarp stood strong against the Romans:
“But as Polycarp was entering the arena, a voice from heaven
came to him, saying, ‘Be strong, Polycarp, and play the man…’ [Polycarp is
sentenced to death, and then prays] and when he had concluded the Amen and
finished his prayer, the men attending to the fire lighted it. And when the
flame flashed forth, we saw a miracle, we to whom it was given to see. And we
are preserved in order to relate to the rest what happened. For the fire made
the shape of a vaulted chamber, like a ship's sail filled by the wind, and made
a wall around the body of the martyr. And he was in the midst, not as burning
flesh, but as bread baking or as gold and silver refined in a furnace. And we
perceived such a sweet aroma as the breath of incense or some other precious
spice.”
Or the Passion of Perpetua, when Perpetua dreams of meeting
God:
“And I saw an enormous garden and a white-haired man sitting
in the middle of it dressed in shepherd’s clothes, a big man, milking
sheep. And standing around were many
thousands dressed in white. And he
raised his head, looked at me, and said: ‘You are welcome here, child.’ And he
called me, and from the cheese that he had milked he gave me as it were a
mouthful. And I received it in my cupped hands and ate it. And all those
standing around said: ‘Amen.’”
In both stories the individuals involved did not experience
God in a rational or meditative state, but rather with an actual voice and a
physical miracle or a vision based in symbolic importance rather than some sort
of logical arraignment of truth. These two martyrs share in the tradition of
Paul, in the tradition of those in the book of Acts who spoke in tongues, and
those who witnessed Jesus himself performing miracles while the Son of Man
performed miracles in Palestine.
It should be noted that some Christians did not deviate as
far from the Greek tradition. Saint Augustine, for one, based his desire to
experience God in strong philosophy:
“Yet unless we love him even now, we shall never see him.
But who can love what he does not know? Something can be known and not loved;
what I am asking is whether something can be loved which is unknown, because if
it cannot then no one loves God before he knows him. And what does knowing God
mean but beholding him and firmly grasping him with the mind? For he is not a
body to be examined with the eyes in your head.”
In The Trinity Augustine says that knowing God and
experiencing God are synonymous. Augustine, then, follows the Greek tradition
by going back to knowing and focusing on a rational form of God-experience.
However, Augustine too is differentiated from Platonists and the like: there is
a step before knowing and it is belief and love:
“But then to behold and grasp God as he can be beheld and
grasped is only permitted to the pure in heart-blessed are the pure in heart,
because they shall see God (Mt 5:8); so before we are capable of doing this we
must first love by faith, or it will be impossible for our hearts to be
purified and become fit and worthy to see him.”
Augustine starts with faith and love, faith justified in his
trust in the Christian tradition as it stood and trust in the positive
experience he already had with Christianity, and moves towards understanding
based in that love. This echoes, but is not the same, as the Platonist striving
towards the Good, who already “knows” the Good via logical axioms.
Gregory of Nyssa described the experience of God in a more
contemplative manner than the other early Christians I have cited, and in a
manner in which I believes honors Augustine’s goal of knowing/beholding:
“As you came near the spring you would marvel, seeing that
the water was endless, as it constantly gushed up and poured forth. Yet you
could never say that you had seen all the water. Howe could you see what was
still hidden in the bosom of the earth? Hence no matter how long you might stay
at the spring, you would always be beginning to see the water… It is the same
with one who fixes his gaze on the infinite beauty of God. It is constantly
being discovered anew, and it is always seen as something new and strange in
comparison with what the mind has already understood. And as God continues to
reveal himself, man continues to wonder; and he never exhausts his desire to
see more, since what his is waiting for is always more magnificent, more
divine, than all that he has already seen.”
Is there a balance point here? Is there a spirit to early
Christian thought which can capture both the visceral experiences of Paul and
Perpetua with the heady meditations of Augustine and Gregory? Did the
Christians have something which the Platonists didn’t? Well, I am running out
of time to finish this essay, but I suspect that it has something to do with
love. To the Classical Greeks, one might love God like one loves an idea.
Raw agape, appreciation for transcendence or for the symphony of the universe.
To the early Christians, however, one loved God like one loves a person, embodied
through Jesus. God was there, showing his love for the early Christians,
whether it was in the dramatic fire or the calm spring. Early Christians
entered into a relationship with God, and used one of the most personal words
for Him, “Father.”
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