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Here is a brief review of an old, out-of-print book by a scholar of long ago, just one of many, many great, old books I have acquired that do not deserve to be forgotten. I started these reviews because I am sure there are other bibliophiles out there who can enjoy learning from them as much as I have.
I believe that the inexpensive old books I have discovered in used book stores and library sales are, in both the subject matter itself and in how it is presented, superior to what scholars and intellectuals publish today. Old books offer a dirt cheap way to give oneself a great education. I have learned from old books so much important material that, if I read only newer books, I would hardly be aware of, if at all; material that is essential to a good education.
For instance, it was mainly not through my formal education, but through my self-education that I came to see how history is often distorted and misrepresented by people and groups who have certain social/cultural/political agendas, such as Christians responding to the new rise of atheism by claiming that atheism leads to totalitarianism and mass-slaughter as in Soviet Russia. Well, here is one book that thoroughly and comprehensively looks at Russia's path to communism - and it is a history that does not quite corroborate what the Christians like to assert about the matter.
Road to Revolution: A Century of Russian Radicalism, by Avrahm Yarmolinsky; Collier Books, 1971; 349 pp.
The road to Lenin’s communist Russia of 1917 actually began in 1790 when Alexander Radischev’s book, A Journey from Petersburg to Moscow, was published. “While informed with the spirit of Western Enlightenment, the book [A Journey] is deeply rooted in the native soil. Never before had the seamy side of Russian life been so boldly exposed” including “that the gaudy façade of Catherine’s rule conceals a corrupt and cruelly oppressive regime” (13).
Radischev was an official in the Russian government. As a teenager he was sent to Germany to study and he eagerly absorbed the ideas of the Enlightenment‘s thinkers, especially the French philosophes. Radischev, though part of the nobility, was an egalitarian democrat who wanted the serfs emancipated and he saw industrialism as evil. He believed it was for the future generations to make his vision of Russia a reality.
It is not known why the official censor let the book slip by and be published but the consequences of his neglect were tremendous and far-reaching for his country. Radischev was sentenced to Siberia but the ideas of revolution were planted.
The explosive nature of Radischev’s book is evident by seeing the historical setting it was in, which was that of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. In Russia, Catherine II “opened schools, encouraged book publishing, sponsored a periodical press, though only as long as the satire in which it indulged remained innocuous. A peasant uprising at home and the turn events were taking in France helped put an end to her flirtation with liberalism. The regime which started out as enlightened despotism ended as despotism tout court. But she could not wholly undo, what was, in part, the work of her own hands“ (18-19). After the French king was executed Catherine wanted everything French “exterminated.”
Western liberal ideas were penetrating Russia, especially in its army after the war with Napoleon. Yarmolinsky tells how in 1820 that “the French ambassador wrote that he could not think without horror of what would happen to Europe if forty million Russians, still half savage and brutalized by slavery, conceived a desire for freedom and proceeded to shake off their chains. True, the dangerous notion hadn’t yet entered the heads of the lower orders, but it was already inflaming the well-born” (31).
Secret societies began forming, mostly of military officers. These societies were born of disapproval with sundry political and military matters and were the forerunners of the later communist/anarchist terrorist and revolutionary groups.
A group of insurgent army officers who planned to overthrow the czar in December, 1825 (the “Decembrists“) composed a tract called The Orthodox Catechism. The text is vaguely reminiscent of America’s Declaration of Independence but is heavily religious and collectivist. In it all Russia’s misfortunes are attributed to its government so the authors call for the formation of a republic because that is the form of government consistent with divine law. They assert that Jesus Christ must reign on earth as he does in Heaven; and the death of the czar is a sign from God for the Russians to free themselves from their slavery. The establishing of a new government is the army’s responsibility.
At the same time, among the Russian intellectuals two schools of thought about Russia’s direction developed, the Westernists and the Slavophiles.
The Westernists thought that Russia would progress similarly as the Western Europeans had. They strongly favored institutional reform as a means of progress. Vissarion Belinsky was the most prominent of them. He called the Orthodox Church a “toady to despotism” that was “foreign to Christ, who was the first to teach mankind the principles of liberty, equality, and fraternity” (72).
The Slavophiles “were romantic doctrinaires who found in German philosophy sanction for their distrust of the intellect, their religiosity, their traditionalism. They believed that Russia possessed a culture distinct from and superior to that of the West” (69). They were populists in claiming that the Russian peasantry embodied the Orthodox faith and its sense of equality and brotherhood. Slavophiles held the lofty conviction that Russia could achieve no less than her own and the world’s salvation.
Alexander Herzen, who was prominent among the revolutionaries’ thinkers, was in the Westernist camp, envisaged a secular Armageddon in Europe that would bring in a new socialist society consisting of a centralized state, order (instead of freedom), and collectivism.
Nikolay Chernyshevsky was also one of the most important thinkers among the revolutionaries. He advocated enlightened self-interest, which meant identifying one’s happiness with the happiness of all. Man is the plaything of circumstances so his society is morally responsible for what he becomes. He also loathed laissez-faire and wanted to see the people living in phalansteries similar to those dreamt of by Fourier. After the publication in 1863 of Chernyshevsky’s fictional story, What’s to be Done?, about the heroically selfless “new men” of the future communism, his influence on radicals and revolutionaries - including on Lenin and the Bolsheviks in the next century - became tremendous.
Of the many terrorist groups in Road to Revolution, one was especially fanatical: “Half a dozen of the more audacious spirits discussed at length a plan for forming a terrorist band. They called it Hell. Each member of this secrecy-shrouded body was to be a dedicated and doomed man. He had to give up his friends, his family, his personal life, his very name” (137).
Dmitry Karakozov was a youth who was considered for the group and was fascinated by the possibility of daring action and self-immolation. “The cause of the common people was his ruling passion” (138). He tried to assassinate the czar but his pistol shot missed. This episode ended in much delicious irony.
That the czar’s life was saved was taken as proof of divine favor falling on him and the Russian people believed Karakozov was an angry serf-owner seeking revenge. Even a joint resolution in the U.S. Congress congratulating the czar for surviving the assassination attempt condemned his would-be assassin as an “enemy of emancipation.” Karakozov’s comrades were arrested and while in jail he vainly wrote to the czar pleading for his life to be spared. “On 3 September, two days after the verdict had been pronounced, Karakozov was hanged by one of the peasant’s for whom he wished to lay down his life” (141).
Like many of the early groups of Russian terrorists and revolutionaries, the Karakozov episode shows how they were often amateurishly inept to the point of hilarity. Often they were more dangerous to themselves than to their intended targets, and their many attempts to “rouse the masses” to revolt simply fell flat.
Yarmolinsky’s history of Russian radicalism ends in the 1890’s with the emergence of the major Marxist political parties.
Of nearly all the Russian revolutionaries, from the intellectuals down to the terrorists, three characteristics of them are salient.
First is how they saw their revolution in religious terms.
A few brief but very interesting examples from the book are representative of the communist revolutionaries' religious mentalities. In the early 1830’s when they were university students, Alexander Herzen and Nikolay Ogarev were seduced by the ideas of French socialist thinkers Saint-Simon and Fourier (whose socialist ideas were inspired by and meant to replace Christianity). They swore on the Bible “to dedicate their lives to the people and the cause of liberty ‘upon the basis of socialism‘” by forming a secret society (67). There was Vera Figner with her “ideal of the prophets and martyrs of the socialist evangel” (180). Michael Bakunin’s followers held “a dream of freedom and equality on earth which was a substitute for a lost faith in heaven” (184). In the 1870’s were one group of revolutionary propagandists who pored over the New Testament and “dreamed of a new faith that would at once steel the intellectuals with fresh courage and enlist the religious sentiment of the masses on the side of revolution.” They believed “a revolutionary was most effective when he suffered for the cause“(187). Yarmolinsky quotes one terrorist after an assassination: “Let my blood, too, be the seed of Socialism, just as the blood of the early martyrs was the seed of the Christian Church” (257).
Secondly, just like contemporary terrorists they were fanatical nihilists who reveled in death, destruction, and martyrdom. For instance one revolutionary pamphlet stated, “We must devote ourselves wholly to destruction, constant, ceaseless, relentless, until there is nothing left of existing institutions.” And here is another especially evil quote from the terrorists’ literature: “We prize thought only in so far as it can serve the great cause of radical and ubiquitous destruction” (152). Then there is Sergey Nechayev’s infamous, The Catechism of the Revolutionary, which describes the revolutionary as a “doomed man” who has, literally, only one interest: revolution, so he can “destroy this vile order.” Some of this rhetoric, also like statements of terrorists since then, is undoubtedly hyperbolic bravado and propaganda - but it expresses some amount of profoundly held conviction, nonetheless.
Thirdly, they were second-handers, some of them abjectly so. Nechayev was a basket-case of second-handedness.
In order to be seen as a hero by his comrades he faked his imprisonment, faked his escape from his faked imprisonment, and even faked being killed by the police. “His ascetic habits - he lived on bread and milk, and slept on bare boards, at least while staying at the homes of his followers - could not but make an impression. Those he did not fascinate he ruled by fear…He arrogated to himself the right to destroy those who did not see eye to eye with him” (157).
One cell member was disobedient to Nechayev and doubted the existence of a mysterious, secret “Central Committee” Nechayev claimed he attended and would then give them orders from (he was, indeed, its only member). Nechayev and three other cell members murdered him. “For years the cry to kill the people’s enemies had repeatedly been raised by the handful of would-be liberators. The only victim turned out to be one of their own small number who had aroused the leader’s hostility” (159).
Nechayev was eventually arrested and was to be sentenced to Siberia, but his pseudo-heroics only made things worse for himself. During his sentencing he shouted, “Down with the Czar!” and “Long live the free Russian people!” and similar insults to the authorities. “As a result, the Emperor changed the court sentence to solitary incarceration for life in the Fortress of Peter and Paul” (165).
Road to Revolution is a very interesting, informative, and readable book on the Russian revolutionaries before Lenin, from their intellectual theories and religious inspirations to their bloody actions. For anyone wanting to learn about this subject, Yarmolinsky’s book is required reading. More important, considering how often Christians attempt to tie atheism, rationality, and secularism to the totalitarian bloodbath of communism, Yarmolinsky’s book is an effective (although unintended by him) debunking of that assertion. Russian communism and its horrors were, to a very large extent, clearly consequences of irrationalism and secularizing the Christian religion.
Old, Obscure, Great Books: Review No. 1
Showing posts with label book review. Show all posts
Showing posts with label book review. Show all posts
Mar 25, 2009
Mar 11, 2009
"Jesus, Interrupted", Reviewed
Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (And Why We Don’t Know About Them), by Bart D. Ehrman; Harper One; 2009; 292 pp.
In any legitimate field of human study, be it physics of the material world or psychology of the mind’s world, there is something as a subject of study that can be pointed to, so to say, that is independent of the person studying it. Even if a physicist’s, or psychologist’s, or economist’s, or philosopher’s theory or idea is dead wrong there is at least something in reality we all (at least in principle, if not in actual practice) can experience, have access to, observe for ourselves, be aware of perceptually or conceptually, directly or indirectly. If so, we can see how his theory or idea is dead wrong and therefore, correct it. For example, anyone can, in principle, look to economic reality and see how the economics of Karl Marx were dead wrong. The subject matter is there to be seen and understood - or even misunderstood again, but it is there and independent of the mind. It is no profound observation to state that men will always find more to learn about the subject matter of physics, economics, psychology, etc.
There is one subject of a long and tremendous amount of “studying” to which, the above, however, does not apply. That is religion.
Go to the origins of any religion or religious concept and what one will find is the historical and cultural context of the person(s) who originated that particular religious idea. One can certainly see how it satisfied their specific religious, political, or cultural need, question, or concern of that time in that place - but of the actual religious (i.e., supernatural) being, entity, process, etc., one will find utterly and absolutely nothing in reality that the mind can be connected to or be aware of perceptually or conceptually, directly or indirectly. Nothing. One can see that it was an arbitrary assertion pulled out of thin air by the originator of some god, messiah, other-worldly realm, revelation, or whatever because it suited some need. That’s it; find an exception to this in religion’s long history. Instead of finding any subject matter that is external to the mind and in principle accessible by others there is in religion a pathetic and shabby substitute: those others who believe and act as if the religious concept is a proven fact. Their “authority” said so, so it is true. That does not place us any closer in reality to the actual subject matter of any religious idea. It only places us that many minds removed from the mind that religious idea originated in. The subject matter of religion is based solely on someone’s say-so, not anything in reality independent of his say-so.
I learned this based on much studying of religion. At first religion may be seen as having a formidable appearance to penetrate that maybe, at bottom, has something to it somehow. Afterall it has existed for so long with so many adherents and defenders. There is so much of religion all around us with so much built upon it including entire civilizations, and yet eventually I found how arbitrarily man-made it is. Religion, however dominant and far-reaching it may be, ultimately, rests on nothing in reality apart from beliefs in the minds of men. That is the nature of the subject matter of religious beliefs - they are beliefs that are not legitimately derived from reality but are applied to reality.
This taught me a principle that I have come to consider a universal “law,” which is that one will find, the more and more one studies religion, the less and less there is to religion. Perhaps we should call this “The First Law of Religion.”
The eminent biblical scholar, Bart Ehrman, has an interesting and revealing new book, Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (And Why We Don’t Know About Them) - and it substantially backs up the First Law of Religion.
Jesus, Interrupted is about Jesus, the New Testament, and the development of Christianity. What is in the book, Ehrman states, is actually nothing new - to scholars, or those who have attended a seminary, that is. There is, though, plenty in the book that would be new to the man “on the street and in the pew,” like that the Bible actually contains forgeries and most of the New Testament authors are really unknown, and that Jesus saw himself as a Jewish apocalyptic prophet, not as God’s offspring, and plenty more like that - facts that challenge the version of Christianity most people accept. Ehrman’s thesis is that the Bible is a very human book and the Christianity we have inherited is very human-made. Prof. Ehrman, who was an evangelical Christian who turned agnostic, does not, however, intend to attack the Christian faith as such. He does intend to “let the cat out of the bag” as he puts it, about what scholars, theologians, and pastors have known for two or three centuries about the Bible and early Christian history but have kept from the public for whatever reasons. What Ehrman does is show the layman how to look at the Bible from the “historic-critical” approach apart from the usual “devotional” approach and explain what scholars using the historic-critical approach have learned about the Bible.
The way to find the contradictions, discrepancies, and other problems in the Bible is to use “horizontal” reading, which Ehrman distinguishes from “vertical reading.” Vertical reading means to start reading the gospels with Matthew, reading it from beginning to end, then on to the next gospel from beginning to end, and so on. Read that way they pretty much seem alike. “In a horizontal reading you read a story in one of the gospels, and then read the same story as told by another gospel, as if they were written in columns next to each other. And you compare the stories carefully, in detail. Reading the Gospels horizontally reveals all sorts of differences and discrepancies” (21). Horizontal reading clearly shows the discrepancies between the four gospels on the matters of Jesus’ birth, his ministry, what he taught, his death, etc. that a vertical reading might overlook.
In the first third of the book Ehrman goes over the inconsistencies on the more important matters in the four gospels and Paul's writings. From this the overall lesson is that “each author of the bible needs to be allowed to have his own say, since in many instances what one author has to say on a subject is not what another says. Sometimes the differences are a matter of stress and emphasis; sometimes they are discrepancies in different narratives or between different writers’ thoughts; and sometimes these discrepancies are quite large, affecting not only the small details of the text but the very big issues that these authors were addressing” (99).The contradictions are much to an atheist’s delight and even amusement, so I shall not divulge the details here like a “spoiler.” The point is, the material is all pretty shocking and is great intellectual ammo to use against Christians - right out of their own book!
Ehrman draws three conclusions from the horizontal reading of the gospels and Paul’s letters. The first is the belief in biblical inerrancy is simply not true. Secondly, the reader should “let each author speak for himself and not pretend that he is saying the same thing as another”(60). Thirdly, that there are discrepancies means that we “can’t read these books as disinterested historical accounts. None of them is that”(60).
Ehrman moves on to biblical authorship, a subject that will be very surprising to many. “Though it is evidently not the sort of thing pastors normally tell their congregations, for over a century there has been a broad consensus among scholars that many of the books of the New Testament were not written by the people whose names are attached to them. So if that is the case, who did write them?” (102)
Most New Testament books fall into three groups. Misattributed writings is the first group, which includes the four gospels. They were actually written anonymously. Then there are homonymous writings. These have the same name on them as someone famous, but are not written by that famous person. The book of James was written by someone named James, but not James, the brother of Jesus, as the church fathers assumed. Lastly are the pseudepigraphic writings which are forgeries written under someone else’s name, like many of the letters attributed to Paul. They were written by later followers using his name and thus giving his authority to their writings.
After spending a fascinating chapter on who did and did not write the New Testament texts, Ehrman moves on to the center of it all, Jesus. This is even more fascinating and revealing. A careful analysis of what the biblical authors say about Jesus placed in the context of history at that time brings conclusions as convincing as they are startling; and that are quite different from how Christians now view Jesus. Again, this is so good that I do not want to spoil this chapter for any readers so I will only pull this quote from the chapter: “For over a century now… the majority of scholars in Europe and North America have understood Jesus as a Jewish apocalyptic prophet”(156). Based on the evidence they do not believe that Jesus saw himself as the son of God, but merely another prophet. Like Ehrman said, he’s letting the cat out of the bag - and it is one big cat.
The next cat to leap out of the bag is how the New Testament canon was formed. "The problem in the development in the canon of scripture was that each and every one of the competitive groups of Christians - each of them insisting they were right, each trying to win converts - had sacred books that authorized their points of view. And most of these books claimed to be written by apostles. Who was right? The canon that emerged from these debates represented the books favored by the group that ended up winning. It did not happen overnight. In fact, it took centuries”(191).
Ehrman surveys some of the major Christian sects and how they differed and argued with each other, and as the centuries went by the Christianity that finally won out was far removed from the original Christian beliefs. “The group that won out did not represent the teachings of Jesus or of his apostles. For example, none of the apostles claimed that Jesus was ‘fully God and fully man‘… as the fourth-century Nicene Creed maintained”(215).
Ehrman concludes the book by considering the question of how biblical scholarship may impact a believer’s faith. It is an interesting chapter and Ehrman explains the role it played in his loss of faith, which was important but not decisive. He does not see his book with its historic-critical approach as an attack on Christianity - nor he says, do many Christians. Instead, what biblical scholars have learned has given some Christians a better historical understanding of their religion. As impressed as I am with Ehrman’s knowledge and analysis of early Christianity I find that I cannot agree much with him philosophically. That Christians, be they biblical scholars (most are Christian) or their students, can retain their faith anyhow in light of what biblical criticism has revealed only demonstrates what faith really means: holding a belief despite lack of evidence and contrary to reason. Ehrman's book and others like it are, by their nature, regardless of their intent, overwhelming attacks on Christianity simply by virtue of reporting and explaining the facts and realities that Christian beliefs fly in the face of. If I were a Christian, learning what is in books like Jesus, Interrupted would end my faith. For me they would be painfully clear in explaining how man-made religion is.
Examining the Bible and early Christianity like any other area of study as done in Jesus, Interrupted shows us, as Ehrman intends to show us, they are very man-made. We have this holy book that has been of foremost importance in Western civilization, yet the original texts that comprise it are lost, the surviving texts are copies that are from centuries later and are all different; also there is the problem of forgeries and later additions and omissions to the biblical texts; much of the history in it is inaccurate; and beliefs about God, Jesus, heaven and hell, etc., are known to be very man-made. Ehrman does a great job of explaining all that and more. Jesus, Interrupted offers one a thorough look into the origins and history of the most significant Christian beliefs - and the bottom line is there is not much there, just the say-so of the religion’s originators. "The Bible is not a unity, it is a massive plurality. God did not write the Bible, people did“(279).
In any legitimate field of human study, be it physics of the material world or psychology of the mind’s world, there is something as a subject of study that can be pointed to, so to say, that is independent of the person studying it. Even if a physicist’s, or psychologist’s, or economist’s, or philosopher’s theory or idea is dead wrong there is at least something in reality we all (at least in principle, if not in actual practice) can experience, have access to, observe for ourselves, be aware of perceptually or conceptually, directly or indirectly. If so, we can see how his theory or idea is dead wrong and therefore, correct it. For example, anyone can, in principle, look to economic reality and see how the economics of Karl Marx were dead wrong. The subject matter is there to be seen and understood - or even misunderstood again, but it is there and independent of the mind. It is no profound observation to state that men will always find more to learn about the subject matter of physics, economics, psychology, etc.
There is one subject of a long and tremendous amount of “studying” to which, the above, however, does not apply. That is religion.
Go to the origins of any religion or religious concept and what one will find is the historical and cultural context of the person(s) who originated that particular religious idea. One can certainly see how it satisfied their specific religious, political, or cultural need, question, or concern of that time in that place - but of the actual religious (i.e., supernatural) being, entity, process, etc., one will find utterly and absolutely nothing in reality that the mind can be connected to or be aware of perceptually or conceptually, directly or indirectly. Nothing. One can see that it was an arbitrary assertion pulled out of thin air by the originator of some god, messiah, other-worldly realm, revelation, or whatever because it suited some need. That’s it; find an exception to this in religion’s long history. Instead of finding any subject matter that is external to the mind and in principle accessible by others there is in religion a pathetic and shabby substitute: those others who believe and act as if the religious concept is a proven fact. Their “authority” said so, so it is true. That does not place us any closer in reality to the actual subject matter of any religious idea. It only places us that many minds removed from the mind that religious idea originated in. The subject matter of religion is based solely on someone’s say-so, not anything in reality independent of his say-so.
I learned this based on much studying of religion. At first religion may be seen as having a formidable appearance to penetrate that maybe, at bottom, has something to it somehow. Afterall it has existed for so long with so many adherents and defenders. There is so much of religion all around us with so much built upon it including entire civilizations, and yet eventually I found how arbitrarily man-made it is. Religion, however dominant and far-reaching it may be, ultimately, rests on nothing in reality apart from beliefs in the minds of men. That is the nature of the subject matter of religious beliefs - they are beliefs that are not legitimately derived from reality but are applied to reality.
This taught me a principle that I have come to consider a universal “law,” which is that one will find, the more and more one studies religion, the less and less there is to religion. Perhaps we should call this “The First Law of Religion.”
The eminent biblical scholar, Bart Ehrman, has an interesting and revealing new book, Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (And Why We Don’t Know About Them) - and it substantially backs up the First Law of Religion.
Jesus, Interrupted is about Jesus, the New Testament, and the development of Christianity. What is in the book, Ehrman states, is actually nothing new - to scholars, or those who have attended a seminary, that is. There is, though, plenty in the book that would be new to the man “on the street and in the pew,” like that the Bible actually contains forgeries and most of the New Testament authors are really unknown, and that Jesus saw himself as a Jewish apocalyptic prophet, not as God’s offspring, and plenty more like that - facts that challenge the version of Christianity most people accept. Ehrman’s thesis is that the Bible is a very human book and the Christianity we have inherited is very human-made. Prof. Ehrman, who was an evangelical Christian who turned agnostic, does not, however, intend to attack the Christian faith as such. He does intend to “let the cat out of the bag” as he puts it, about what scholars, theologians, and pastors have known for two or three centuries about the Bible and early Christian history but have kept from the public for whatever reasons. What Ehrman does is show the layman how to look at the Bible from the “historic-critical” approach apart from the usual “devotional” approach and explain what scholars using the historic-critical approach have learned about the Bible.
The way to find the contradictions, discrepancies, and other problems in the Bible is to use “horizontal” reading, which Ehrman distinguishes from “vertical reading.” Vertical reading means to start reading the gospels with Matthew, reading it from beginning to end, then on to the next gospel from beginning to end, and so on. Read that way they pretty much seem alike. “In a horizontal reading you read a story in one of the gospels, and then read the same story as told by another gospel, as if they were written in columns next to each other. And you compare the stories carefully, in detail. Reading the Gospels horizontally reveals all sorts of differences and discrepancies” (21). Horizontal reading clearly shows the discrepancies between the four gospels on the matters of Jesus’ birth, his ministry, what he taught, his death, etc. that a vertical reading might overlook.
In the first third of the book Ehrman goes over the inconsistencies on the more important matters in the four gospels and Paul's writings. From this the overall lesson is that “each author of the bible needs to be allowed to have his own say, since in many instances what one author has to say on a subject is not what another says. Sometimes the differences are a matter of stress and emphasis; sometimes they are discrepancies in different narratives or between different writers’ thoughts; and sometimes these discrepancies are quite large, affecting not only the small details of the text but the very big issues that these authors were addressing” (99).The contradictions are much to an atheist’s delight and even amusement, so I shall not divulge the details here like a “spoiler.” The point is, the material is all pretty shocking and is great intellectual ammo to use against Christians - right out of their own book!
Ehrman draws three conclusions from the horizontal reading of the gospels and Paul’s letters. The first is the belief in biblical inerrancy is simply not true. Secondly, the reader should “let each author speak for himself and not pretend that he is saying the same thing as another”(60). Thirdly, that there are discrepancies means that we “can’t read these books as disinterested historical accounts. None of them is that”(60).
Ehrman moves on to biblical authorship, a subject that will be very surprising to many. “Though it is evidently not the sort of thing pastors normally tell their congregations, for over a century there has been a broad consensus among scholars that many of the books of the New Testament were not written by the people whose names are attached to them. So if that is the case, who did write them?” (102)
Most New Testament books fall into three groups. Misattributed writings is the first group, which includes the four gospels. They were actually written anonymously. Then there are homonymous writings. These have the same name on them as someone famous, but are not written by that famous person. The book of James was written by someone named James, but not James, the brother of Jesus, as the church fathers assumed. Lastly are the pseudepigraphic writings which are forgeries written under someone else’s name, like many of the letters attributed to Paul. They were written by later followers using his name and thus giving his authority to their writings.
After spending a fascinating chapter on who did and did not write the New Testament texts, Ehrman moves on to the center of it all, Jesus. This is even more fascinating and revealing. A careful analysis of what the biblical authors say about Jesus placed in the context of history at that time brings conclusions as convincing as they are startling; and that are quite different from how Christians now view Jesus. Again, this is so good that I do not want to spoil this chapter for any readers so I will only pull this quote from the chapter: “For over a century now… the majority of scholars in Europe and North America have understood Jesus as a Jewish apocalyptic prophet”(156). Based on the evidence they do not believe that Jesus saw himself as the son of God, but merely another prophet. Like Ehrman said, he’s letting the cat out of the bag - and it is one big cat.
The next cat to leap out of the bag is how the New Testament canon was formed. "The problem in the development in the canon of scripture was that each and every one of the competitive groups of Christians - each of them insisting they were right, each trying to win converts - had sacred books that authorized their points of view. And most of these books claimed to be written by apostles. Who was right? The canon that emerged from these debates represented the books favored by the group that ended up winning. It did not happen overnight. In fact, it took centuries”(191).
Ehrman surveys some of the major Christian sects and how they differed and argued with each other, and as the centuries went by the Christianity that finally won out was far removed from the original Christian beliefs. “The group that won out did not represent the teachings of Jesus or of his apostles. For example, none of the apostles claimed that Jesus was ‘fully God and fully man‘… as the fourth-century Nicene Creed maintained”(215).
Ehrman concludes the book by considering the question of how biblical scholarship may impact a believer’s faith. It is an interesting chapter and Ehrman explains the role it played in his loss of faith, which was important but not decisive. He does not see his book with its historic-critical approach as an attack on Christianity - nor he says, do many Christians. Instead, what biblical scholars have learned has given some Christians a better historical understanding of their religion. As impressed as I am with Ehrman’s knowledge and analysis of early Christianity I find that I cannot agree much with him philosophically. That Christians, be they biblical scholars (most are Christian) or their students, can retain their faith anyhow in light of what biblical criticism has revealed only demonstrates what faith really means: holding a belief despite lack of evidence and contrary to reason. Ehrman's book and others like it are, by their nature, regardless of their intent, overwhelming attacks on Christianity simply by virtue of reporting and explaining the facts and realities that Christian beliefs fly in the face of. If I were a Christian, learning what is in books like Jesus, Interrupted would end my faith. For me they would be painfully clear in explaining how man-made religion is.
Examining the Bible and early Christianity like any other area of study as done in Jesus, Interrupted shows us, as Ehrman intends to show us, they are very man-made. We have this holy book that has been of foremost importance in Western civilization, yet the original texts that comprise it are lost, the surviving texts are copies that are from centuries later and are all different; also there is the problem of forgeries and later additions and omissions to the biblical texts; much of the history in it is inaccurate; and beliefs about God, Jesus, heaven and hell, etc., are known to be very man-made. Ehrman does a great job of explaining all that and more. Jesus, Interrupted offers one a thorough look into the origins and history of the most significant Christian beliefs - and the bottom line is there is not much there, just the say-so of the religion’s originators. "The Bible is not a unity, it is a massive plurality. God did not write the Bible, people did“(279).
Feb 11, 2009
Christianity Is Not Great, Pt. 2
What's So Great about Christianity? by Dinesh D'Souza; Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.; 2008; 348pp.
Part 1: The Future of Christianity
Ch.1 The Twilight of Atheism: The Global Triumph of Christianity
Dinesh D‘Souza begins his popular apologia by taking a big-picture view of religion and secularism that convinces him it is time to declare that “God has come back to life,” and “Nietzsche is dead“(3).
If true, that is not good for the future if one is secular-minded - the resurrection of God; that is; Nietzsche’s death - that is a benefit to rational secularists. And that should be very much to the dismay of the resurrected God.
Nonetheless, as D’Souza explains in his big-picture view, around the world religion has an active role to play in people’s lives, partly due to the failures of secularism. The “secular thesis” formulated in the early 20th century held that reason, science, progress, and modernization will lead to a more secular West and entire world. Secularization, however, is failing to meet important needs, needs which (supposedly) only religion can fulfill. Secularism is not important to the long-term big picture because its leading of civilization to inevitable progress has been shown to be untrue in many ways, from totalitarian regimes to the inner emptiness felt in people. D’Souza further shows that the future belongs to religion for reasons like religious societies having high birth rates, interest in “traditional religion” is on the rise, religions are spreading to new territory because of globalization, etc.
D’Souza tries to separate the resurgence of religion from the rise in religious militancy. He does this by making a distinction between fundamentalism and militancy. According to some analysts, the growth of religion around the world is largely a growth of religious fundamentalism, but this is an incorrect analysis by D’Souza‘s reading. After pointing out that the term, “fundamentalism,” originally identified certain Protestant groups in America who read the Bible literally, he writes, “[f]undamentalism is a meaningless term outside this context”(4). What is described as an increase in fundamentalism is really an increase in “traditional religion.” He states, “the growth of religious militancy and the growth of religion are very different”(4).
Anyone else notice a glaring omission on D’Souza’s part? He has no explanation why the literal reading of holy texts in other religions is not also “fundamentalism.” That is a perfectly legitimate concept that need not be confined to describing some American Protestants. So, by D’Souza’s definition, Islamic fundamentalists, for instance, do not exist after all…yet they do exist.
D’Souza argues that secularism has been tried and its deficiencies have contributed to a global resurgence of what he calls, “traditional religion,” which he defines as “religion as it has been understood and practiced over the centuries”(5).
This is not a good definition because there is, for the most, part, no monolithic way that religions has been practiced over the centuries. Some religions standstill for centuries; many change fairly often, producing offshoots that may or may not last. Nonetheless, D’Souza believes “traditional religions” - whatever that means - are growing and are going to significantly shape this century.
The convergence of religion and secularism is being best handled by oriental peoples. D’Souza seems to approve of how Asians want “Western” prosperity and technology and to also retain their traditional religions and way of life. Their slogan is “modernization without Westernization”(8).
That may be the goal of many in Asia but it is not that simple.
Prosperity and technology are not products of other-worldly mysticism and tribal tradition. Prosperity and technology are possible to minds that are reality-oriented and rational, meaning, fundamentally secular. In the 19th and early 20th centuries in Europe we find two precedents of this phenomena of countries wanting to have Western-like prosperity and technology without changing their other-worldly and tribal mindsets, deliberately rejecting in philosophical terms reason and the mind’s adherence to reality. Those countries were Germany and Russia, the two countries that supposedly embodied the worst of secularism. Asian countries along with any sympathizers in the West who call for “modernization without Westernization” would do well to learn from the examples of Germany and Russia. But that is a subject to visit later.
“Western” is a type of culture and society, one significant aspect of it is its grounding in reality-oriented, rational thinking. That can and should be a trait of any and all cultures. Prosperity as such is not merely a cultural trait, nor is technology, like some tradition is. Prosperity and technology are the effects of deeper causes. This is a point that seems to be lost on D’Souza as much as it was lost on the Germans and Russians back then - and I do not know if it is lost on any of the Asians now. If Asians want modernization without Westernization, that is fine as long as they understand and are ready to commit themselves to being rational and reality-oriented, regardless of how that conflicts with and undermines their inherited traditions and religions - that is modernization, period. That is what their slogan actually means, whether they realize it or not. Much of what is “traditional” in a society that has not advanced itself toward a rational orientation to the world is darn well going to be lost to modernization. That is a good thing.
The major mistake D’Souza makes is failing to realize the triumph of religion in this century is no more inevitable than secularism’s triumph or decline. Long-term factors and trends cannot be discounted in predicting the future, but there is an equally important variable factor to understand as well: the human mind. Men can choose to think and live either religiously or secularly because men have free will. If men choose to abandon living by their minds, they doom themselves to the living death of religion. If they choose to live by reason they will be secular and progress will be inevitable - as long as the choice to be rational and worldly is committed to. Lack of that commitment to reason has been the problem of Western secularism.
Actually, if D’Souza’s projection of the future is right it makes the case for the importance of another Enlightenment - a new Enlightenment that learns from the first one’s mistakes - before human civilization is again swallowed up by that great obstructer of life and progress: religion; like it was in the world before the Enlightenment. Those who do not learn from history…
Next post: Ch. 2 Survival of the Sacred: Why Religion Is Winning
Christianity Is Not Great, Pt. 1
Part 1: The Future of Christianity
Ch.1 The Twilight of Atheism: The Global Triumph of Christianity
Dinesh D‘Souza begins his popular apologia by taking a big-picture view of religion and secularism that convinces him it is time to declare that “God has come back to life,” and “Nietzsche is dead“(3).
If true, that is not good for the future if one is secular-minded - the resurrection of God; that is; Nietzsche’s death - that is a benefit to rational secularists. And that should be very much to the dismay of the resurrected God.
Nonetheless, as D’Souza explains in his big-picture view, around the world religion has an active role to play in people’s lives, partly due to the failures of secularism. The “secular thesis” formulated in the early 20th century held that reason, science, progress, and modernization will lead to a more secular West and entire world. Secularization, however, is failing to meet important needs, needs which (supposedly) only religion can fulfill. Secularism is not important to the long-term big picture because its leading of civilization to inevitable progress has been shown to be untrue in many ways, from totalitarian regimes to the inner emptiness felt in people. D’Souza further shows that the future belongs to religion for reasons like religious societies having high birth rates, interest in “traditional religion” is on the rise, religions are spreading to new territory because of globalization, etc.
D’Souza tries to separate the resurgence of religion from the rise in religious militancy. He does this by making a distinction between fundamentalism and militancy. According to some analysts, the growth of religion around the world is largely a growth of religious fundamentalism, but this is an incorrect analysis by D’Souza‘s reading. After pointing out that the term, “fundamentalism,” originally identified certain Protestant groups in America who read the Bible literally, he writes, “[f]undamentalism is a meaningless term outside this context”(4). What is described as an increase in fundamentalism is really an increase in “traditional religion.” He states, “the growth of religious militancy and the growth of religion are very different”(4).
Anyone else notice a glaring omission on D’Souza’s part? He has no explanation why the literal reading of holy texts in other religions is not also “fundamentalism.” That is a perfectly legitimate concept that need not be confined to describing some American Protestants. So, by D’Souza’s definition, Islamic fundamentalists, for instance, do not exist after all…yet they do exist.
D’Souza argues that secularism has been tried and its deficiencies have contributed to a global resurgence of what he calls, “traditional religion,” which he defines as “religion as it has been understood and practiced over the centuries”(5).
This is not a good definition because there is, for the most, part, no monolithic way that religions has been practiced over the centuries. Some religions standstill for centuries; many change fairly often, producing offshoots that may or may not last. Nonetheless, D’Souza believes “traditional religions” - whatever that means - are growing and are going to significantly shape this century.
The convergence of religion and secularism is being best handled by oriental peoples. D’Souza seems to approve of how Asians want “Western” prosperity and technology and to also retain their traditional religions and way of life. Their slogan is “modernization without Westernization”(8).
That may be the goal of many in Asia but it is not that simple.
Prosperity and technology are not products of other-worldly mysticism and tribal tradition. Prosperity and technology are possible to minds that are reality-oriented and rational, meaning, fundamentally secular. In the 19th and early 20th centuries in Europe we find two precedents of this phenomena of countries wanting to have Western-like prosperity and technology without changing their other-worldly and tribal mindsets, deliberately rejecting in philosophical terms reason and the mind’s adherence to reality. Those countries were Germany and Russia, the two countries that supposedly embodied the worst of secularism. Asian countries along with any sympathizers in the West who call for “modernization without Westernization” would do well to learn from the examples of Germany and Russia. But that is a subject to visit later.
“Western” is a type of culture and society, one significant aspect of it is its grounding in reality-oriented, rational thinking. That can and should be a trait of any and all cultures. Prosperity as such is not merely a cultural trait, nor is technology, like some tradition is. Prosperity and technology are the effects of deeper causes. This is a point that seems to be lost on D’Souza as much as it was lost on the Germans and Russians back then - and I do not know if it is lost on any of the Asians now. If Asians want modernization without Westernization, that is fine as long as they understand and are ready to commit themselves to being rational and reality-oriented, regardless of how that conflicts with and undermines their inherited traditions and religions - that is modernization, period. That is what their slogan actually means, whether they realize it or not. Much of what is “traditional” in a society that has not advanced itself toward a rational orientation to the world is darn well going to be lost to modernization. That is a good thing.
The major mistake D’Souza makes is failing to realize the triumph of religion in this century is no more inevitable than secularism’s triumph or decline. Long-term factors and trends cannot be discounted in predicting the future, but there is an equally important variable factor to understand as well: the human mind. Men can choose to think and live either religiously or secularly because men have free will. If men choose to abandon living by their minds, they doom themselves to the living death of religion. If they choose to live by reason they will be secular and progress will be inevitable - as long as the choice to be rational and worldly is committed to. Lack of that commitment to reason has been the problem of Western secularism.
Actually, if D’Souza’s projection of the future is right it makes the case for the importance of another Enlightenment - a new Enlightenment that learns from the first one’s mistakes - before human civilization is again swallowed up by that great obstructer of life and progress: religion; like it was in the world before the Enlightenment. Those who do not learn from history…
Next post: Ch. 2 Survival of the Sacred: Why Religion Is Winning
Christianity Is Not Great, Pt. 1
Feb 4, 2009
Christianity Is Not Great, Pt.1
Dinesh D’Souza is one of the most prominent intellectual defenders of religion against the new surge of outspoken atheism D’Souza’s book, What’s So Great about Christianity?, is intended to provide Christians with the knowledge and understanding to effectively answer attacks by atheists on their religion. The book’s scope is fairly broad and includes topics like “intelligent design,” religion and atheism in political theory, and defending faith as reasonable. In these topics D’Souza gives me so much to strongly disagree with that I shall write a series of posts arguing against his book, chapter by chapter.
What's So Great about Christianity? by Dinesh D'Souza; Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.; 2008; 348pp.
Preface: A Challenge to Believers - and Unbelievers
Here, D’Souza’s point is that Christians should understand and be ready to defend their faith. Many Christians are not able to do this, though they should be. “Without realizing it Christians have become postmodernists of a sort: they live by the gospel of the two truths. There is religious truth, reserved for Sundays and days of worship, and there is secular truth, which applies the rest of the time” (xiv).
He next points out that according to the Bible, Christians should not be of the world with its “distorted priorities,” but they have a mission to be fully engaged in it (xiv).
By what standard are the world’s priorities considered distorted? What distorts them? If the world’s nature is what it is, then how are priorities in it “distorted”? If the standard is something in the world, that in turn implies they can be non-distorted; or are they “distorted” according to a standard not of this world? If so, how is that that standard even known?
People can have distorted priorities in this world and they can have non-distorted priorities. People are not infallible and can have mistaken or irrational priorities, or they can have correct, rational priorities. In time the consequences of their priorities will indicate whether they are distorted or not; and if they are, then it is up to the individual to recognize that his priorities are distorted and to figure out what to do about it. Such is life. Is D’Souza conflating these possibilities in an undifferentiated concept of the world having, by its nature, “distorted priorities”?
The “easy” alternative, however, is taken by religionists in their expecting - or inventing - automatic, infallible, authoritative priorities in the forms of scripture, commandments, dogmas, etc., to simply obey and always believe no matter what. The real distorter of anything in the world is belief in the supernatural. Having otherworldly notions and applying them to life distorts it.
D’Souza continues. He sees the atheists as no longer content with being tolerated (when atheists have been tolerated in America, he neglects to mention) but are now intent on “taking over the public square” and evicting Christians from it. They want to make religion disappear altogether (xv). As if Christians do not now or never had wanted to make atheism disappear!
D'Souza writes that most people "sense there is something out there that provides a grounding and an ultimate explanation for their deepest questions, yet that something eludes them. They feel the need for a higher sense of purpose in their lives, but they are unsure where to find it." (xvi).
Yes, Dinesh, most thinking people do need a grounding for their deepest questions and they also need a clearly defined higher purpose for their lives. That is exactly what philosophy is supposed to do. A rational, reality-based philosophy like Objectivism achieves that; an imaginary philosophy like the Christian religion only pretends to achieve that.
D'Souza goes on to say that the atheists have not been adequately rebutted and his book will do that. "Their arguments have gone largely unanswered." From D'Souza they will feel "the horse kick of a vigorous traditional Christianity."
I agree that their arguments have been unanswered. Even considering all the philosophical flaws in the arguments of the "new" atheists they can effectively attack religion, at least up to a point, because religion is, ultimately, void of intellectual substance. I will hold D'Souza to being different and actually delivering a "vigorous horse kick" to my atheism, unlike his fellow Christians. All the credit to him if he does!
After outlining his books agenda, D'Souza then concludes the preface by addressing atheists and their beliefs as he sees them, but it is in a way that I think is over-generalizing: "You have been engaged in the pursuit of happiness for a fairly long time; ever wonder why you haven't found it? How long do you intend to continue this joyless search for joy? Older societies had much less and felt abundant; why do you, in the midst of plenty, continue to feel scarcity pressing down upon you" (xvii)?
Maybe that is true of some atheists on the nihilistic left - I would not doubt that. I am sure it is certainly not true of Objectivists, who are atheists. It is not true of me as an Objectivist. D'Souza is mistaken in lumping all atheists together. "Atheism" is merely a negative concept. People can be atheists for many different reasons and have very different philosophies. One should therefore be cautious about generalizing about those who simply lack a specific belief.
As to the old, religious societies that had less but felt abundance, I reply that because they felt something does not mean they were right or that what they "felt" was real beyond the feeling. Of course, what he is hinting at is "feeling" the Holy Spirit or some such otherworldly being. I do not know, but I will bet that D'Souza - and this goes for many religious believers - cannot even conceive how an atheist can legitimately and genuinely "feel" an "inner abundance" (to use his terms). Here is a very sad consequence of holding a mind-body dichotomy. Such religious pre-conceptions are why that kind of an atheist is unthinkable, even undiscoverable, by their minds. (Then again, maybe not. Some Christians are discovering, after the initial conceptual shock, that one can be an atheist and actually be moral!)
So, in sum, the agenda for What's So Great about Christianity? is to educate and motivate the believers to challenge the atheists.
Christianity Is Not Great, Pt. 2
What's So Great about Christianity? by Dinesh D'Souza; Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.; 2008; 348pp.
Preface: A Challenge to Believers - and Unbelievers
Here, D’Souza’s point is that Christians should understand and be ready to defend their faith. Many Christians are not able to do this, though they should be. “Without realizing it Christians have become postmodernists of a sort: they live by the gospel of the two truths. There is religious truth, reserved for Sundays and days of worship, and there is secular truth, which applies the rest of the time” (xiv).
He next points out that according to the Bible, Christians should not be of the world with its “distorted priorities,” but they have a mission to be fully engaged in it (xiv).
By what standard are the world’s priorities considered distorted? What distorts them? If the world’s nature is what it is, then how are priorities in it “distorted”? If the standard is something in the world, that in turn implies they can be non-distorted; or are they “distorted” according to a standard not of this world? If so, how is that that standard even known?
People can have distorted priorities in this world and they can have non-distorted priorities. People are not infallible and can have mistaken or irrational priorities, or they can have correct, rational priorities. In time the consequences of their priorities will indicate whether they are distorted or not; and if they are, then it is up to the individual to recognize that his priorities are distorted and to figure out what to do about it. Such is life. Is D’Souza conflating these possibilities in an undifferentiated concept of the world having, by its nature, “distorted priorities”?
The “easy” alternative, however, is taken by religionists in their expecting - or inventing - automatic, infallible, authoritative priorities in the forms of scripture, commandments, dogmas, etc., to simply obey and always believe no matter what. The real distorter of anything in the world is belief in the supernatural. Having otherworldly notions and applying them to life distorts it.
D’Souza continues. He sees the atheists as no longer content with being tolerated (when atheists have been tolerated in America, he neglects to mention) but are now intent on “taking over the public square” and evicting Christians from it. They want to make religion disappear altogether (xv). As if Christians do not now or never had wanted to make atheism disappear!
D'Souza writes that most people "sense there is something out there that provides a grounding and an ultimate explanation for their deepest questions, yet that something eludes them. They feel the need for a higher sense of purpose in their lives, but they are unsure where to find it." (xvi).
Yes, Dinesh, most thinking people do need a grounding for their deepest questions and they also need a clearly defined higher purpose for their lives. That is exactly what philosophy is supposed to do. A rational, reality-based philosophy like Objectivism achieves that; an imaginary philosophy like the Christian religion only pretends to achieve that.
D'Souza goes on to say that the atheists have not been adequately rebutted and his book will do that. "Their arguments have gone largely unanswered." From D'Souza they will feel "the horse kick of a vigorous traditional Christianity."
I agree that their arguments have been unanswered. Even considering all the philosophical flaws in the arguments of the "new" atheists they can effectively attack religion, at least up to a point, because religion is, ultimately, void of intellectual substance. I will hold D'Souza to being different and actually delivering a "vigorous horse kick" to my atheism, unlike his fellow Christians. All the credit to him if he does!
After outlining his books agenda, D'Souza then concludes the preface by addressing atheists and their beliefs as he sees them, but it is in a way that I think is over-generalizing: "You have been engaged in the pursuit of happiness for a fairly long time; ever wonder why you haven't found it? How long do you intend to continue this joyless search for joy? Older societies had much less and felt abundant; why do you, in the midst of plenty, continue to feel scarcity pressing down upon you" (xvii)?
Maybe that is true of some atheists on the nihilistic left - I would not doubt that. I am sure it is certainly not true of Objectivists, who are atheists. It is not true of me as an Objectivist. D'Souza is mistaken in lumping all atheists together. "Atheism" is merely a negative concept. People can be atheists for many different reasons and have very different philosophies. One should therefore be cautious about generalizing about those who simply lack a specific belief.
As to the old, religious societies that had less but felt abundance, I reply that because they felt something does not mean they were right or that what they "felt" was real beyond the feeling. Of course, what he is hinting at is "feeling" the Holy Spirit or some such otherworldly being. I do not know, but I will bet that D'Souza - and this goes for many religious believers - cannot even conceive how an atheist can legitimately and genuinely "feel" an "inner abundance" (to use his terms). Here is a very sad consequence of holding a mind-body dichotomy. Such religious pre-conceptions are why that kind of an atheist is unthinkable, even undiscoverable, by their minds. (Then again, maybe not. Some Christians are discovering, after the initial conceptual shock, that one can be an atheist and actually be moral!)
So, in sum, the agenda for What's So Great about Christianity? is to educate and motivate the believers to challenge the atheists.
Christianity Is Not Great, Pt. 2
Jan 5, 2009
Communism Was Not Secularism
Secularism's future will likely consist of a long intellectual and cultural battle until it wins the day at last. One major intellectual battle waiting to be fought is for the real secularists to repair the bad reputation their cause has. We are told how the 20th century was one of secularism that inevitably led to totalitarianism, warfare, gulags, genocide, and pogroms. Much of the bad reputation derives therefrom. Blaming secularism for those horrors is misplacing the blame, though. Anti-secularists fail to see under the surface of allegedly “secular” totalitarianism. Beneath that surface is religion. From this review of "Comrades" by Robert Service:
"But Hitchens makes the excellent point that Stalin was able to, indeed set out to, exploit the massive reservoir of credulity created by centuries of tsarist rule and sullen acquiescence to the Russian Orthodox Church, when he says: "Communist absolutists did not so much negate religion, in societies that they well understood were saturated with faith and superstition, as seek to replace it."
British historian Robert Service, in Comrades: a world history of communism, goes further. For Service, communism is a religion, a "secular credo" complete with millenarian overtones (apocalypse followed by paradise), an emphasis on scriptural exegesis (each communist party "was a synod of hair-splitting political discussion") and a theory of historical inevitability that looks suspiciously like a doctrine of predestination. Marx and Engels, Service suggests, enthusiastically encouraged devotion, with the consequence that they were "treated as prophets whose every word had to be treasured".
They were "infallible progenitors of an omniscient world view" and "remained unconsciously influenced by religious ideas about the perfect future society and the salvation of humanity".
To suggest that communism is religious in character is not an original point but it is a hugely important one, for it gives the lie to the view that communism, for all its attendant evils and failures, was essentially a rational experiment that the human race was bound to make - that it grew out of the Enlightenment, as opposed to fascism and Nazism, both of which were deeply irrational."
Hitchens is correct as far as he goes about the Russians' credulity; credulity that is found in any backwards, predominantly religious country. Under the tsars and Orthodox Church, Moscow was asserted to be the "Third Rome" and "Holy Russia's" destiny was nothing less than redeeming mankind. That was the self-image of a country where most people lived under the harsh, impoverished, quasi-communistic system of serfdom until well into the nineteenth century.
Meanwhile, Western Europe progressed quickly with its Renaissance, scientific revolution, and Enlightenment, none of which substantially penetrated Russia - Russian intellectuals were against Western thought.
Looking back at the big-picture, it is therefore bizarre that Karl Marx believed Russia would be among the last nations to become communist - there must be fully industrialized capitalism before there is communism, he believed. (Later on Russian communists got Marx to make an official doctrinal exception for their country.)
Communism took its deepest roots where religion was especially strong: countries like Russia (as well as other eastern European countries).
Some communist countries, especially Russia, went headlong toward massive-scale modernizing and industrializing; modernizing and industrializing they did not learn first-hand how to create but rather begged, copied, and stole from those who did learn them first-hand. These were countries that were historically dominated by religious and tribal beliefs of mysticism, millenariaism, self-sacrifice, collectivism, conformity, and authoritarianism. They were impoverished, backwards, and stagnant. They did not grow themselves into an intellectual and cultural period of reason and science, such as western Europe's scientific revolution and Enlightenment, which led to rational, scientific, independent-minds; increasing knowledge of man and the world; progress; and liberty. In comparison, and not so incidentally, those countries that originated and/or were most influenced by the secularism of scientific revolution and Enlightenment (e.g., Great Britian, France, Holland, America) were much less vulnerable to the influence and spread of communism.
The Russian people were living for centuries under religious-induced collectivism, mysticism, ignorance, authoritarianism, and millenarian expectations, and suddenly had their religion taken away and replaced with Marxist-Leninist communism. What was not taken away, however, were those ideas and mindsets that were integral to their religion. Only those ideas' contents and contexts were changed from religious to secular. No more was Holy Russia going to redeem mankind and messianically usher in the millennium of a reign of heaven on earth. Instead, the proletariat was the messianic force that would overthrow the existing order and usher in a workers' paradise. And more: with that substitution these people obtained possession of the products of reason and science without being rational and scientific. They kept their collective, messianic mission of transforming the world, a religious, pre-modern mission they can undertake armed with modern weapons produced by modern industry. That backwards people with a strong tradition of religious superstition would go about executing their "mission" by grabbing absolute power and committing wholesale bloodshed should not be surprising. As 20th century communism's history demonstrated, the Marxist methodology of "dialectical materialist" thinking and its alleged ability to create a "scientific" socialism were as delusional and as destructive as relying on religious mystical revelation or theology as a method for creating a society.
How is secularism to blame for the horrors of communism, and religion is not only off the hook, but touted as the antidote?
That is why secular offshoots of religion should be opposed and distinguished from real secularism. Understanding what is good for human life on this earth and what that requires necessarily means using reason as the means to that end; resorting to mysticism as a method of knowing precludes any characterization of that endeavor as "secular." It becomes religious. Likewise does introducing into secularism's inquiry a concept, or ideas that cannot be derived from rationally understanding the world, like the idea of, say, "messianism." It comes from religion. That idea, however, even if given secular content or context remains a religious idea.
Robert Service's analysis of Marxism is dead-on. Marxist communism was the offspring of the Judeo-Christian religious tradition. Communism was not essentially secularism. Communism was essentially secularized religion.
Atheism and secularism were part of Marxist communism as a means of applying to society and government what otherwise were religious ideas. Religious ideas divorced from their supernaturalism cannot be made to work in this world any more than if they retained their supernaturalism. That is the lesson to be learned from the bloody "experiment" of communism.
Secularism will make significant headway when it distinguishes itself from and successfully opposes secularized religious ideas. The religious have used their own secularized offshoots, like communism, to justify denouncing secularism as a failure. We should not be tolerating this.
HT to Daily Atheist for the above review.
"But Hitchens makes the excellent point that Stalin was able to, indeed set out to, exploit the massive reservoir of credulity created by centuries of tsarist rule and sullen acquiescence to the Russian Orthodox Church, when he says: "Communist absolutists did not so much negate religion, in societies that they well understood were saturated with faith and superstition, as seek to replace it."
British historian Robert Service, in Comrades: a world history of communism, goes further. For Service, communism is a religion, a "secular credo" complete with millenarian overtones (apocalypse followed by paradise), an emphasis on scriptural exegesis (each communist party "was a synod of hair-splitting political discussion") and a theory of historical inevitability that looks suspiciously like a doctrine of predestination. Marx and Engels, Service suggests, enthusiastically encouraged devotion, with the consequence that they were "treated as prophets whose every word had to be treasured".
They were "infallible progenitors of an omniscient world view" and "remained unconsciously influenced by religious ideas about the perfect future society and the salvation of humanity".
To suggest that communism is religious in character is not an original point but it is a hugely important one, for it gives the lie to the view that communism, for all its attendant evils and failures, was essentially a rational experiment that the human race was bound to make - that it grew out of the Enlightenment, as opposed to fascism and Nazism, both of which were deeply irrational."
Hitchens is correct as far as he goes about the Russians' credulity; credulity that is found in any backwards, predominantly religious country. Under the tsars and Orthodox Church, Moscow was asserted to be the "Third Rome" and "Holy Russia's" destiny was nothing less than redeeming mankind. That was the self-image of a country where most people lived under the harsh, impoverished, quasi-communistic system of serfdom until well into the nineteenth century.
Meanwhile, Western Europe progressed quickly with its Renaissance, scientific revolution, and Enlightenment, none of which substantially penetrated Russia - Russian intellectuals were against Western thought.
Looking back at the big-picture, it is therefore bizarre that Karl Marx believed Russia would be among the last nations to become communist - there must be fully industrialized capitalism before there is communism, he believed. (Later on Russian communists got Marx to make an official doctrinal exception for their country.)
Communism took its deepest roots where religion was especially strong: countries like Russia (as well as other eastern European countries).
Some communist countries, especially Russia, went headlong toward massive-scale modernizing and industrializing; modernizing and industrializing they did not learn first-hand how to create but rather begged, copied, and stole from those who did learn them first-hand. These were countries that were historically dominated by religious and tribal beliefs of mysticism, millenariaism, self-sacrifice, collectivism, conformity, and authoritarianism. They were impoverished, backwards, and stagnant. They did not grow themselves into an intellectual and cultural period of reason and science, such as western Europe's scientific revolution and Enlightenment, which led to rational, scientific, independent-minds; increasing knowledge of man and the world; progress; and liberty. In comparison, and not so incidentally, those countries that originated and/or were most influenced by the secularism of scientific revolution and Enlightenment (e.g., Great Britian, France, Holland, America) were much less vulnerable to the influence and spread of communism.
The Russian people were living for centuries under religious-induced collectivism, mysticism, ignorance, authoritarianism, and millenarian expectations, and suddenly had their religion taken away and replaced with Marxist-Leninist communism. What was not taken away, however, were those ideas and mindsets that were integral to their religion. Only those ideas' contents and contexts were changed from religious to secular. No more was Holy Russia going to redeem mankind and messianically usher in the millennium of a reign of heaven on earth. Instead, the proletariat was the messianic force that would overthrow the existing order and usher in a workers' paradise. And more: with that substitution these people obtained possession of the products of reason and science without being rational and scientific. They kept their collective, messianic mission of transforming the world, a religious, pre-modern mission they can undertake armed with modern weapons produced by modern industry. That backwards people with a strong tradition of religious superstition would go about executing their "mission" by grabbing absolute power and committing wholesale bloodshed should not be surprising. As 20th century communism's history demonstrated, the Marxist methodology of "dialectical materialist" thinking and its alleged ability to create a "scientific" socialism were as delusional and as destructive as relying on religious mystical revelation or theology as a method for creating a society.
How is secularism to blame for the horrors of communism, and religion is not only off the hook, but touted as the antidote?
That is why secular offshoots of religion should be opposed and distinguished from real secularism. Understanding what is good for human life on this earth and what that requires necessarily means using reason as the means to that end; resorting to mysticism as a method of knowing precludes any characterization of that endeavor as "secular." It becomes religious. Likewise does introducing into secularism's inquiry a concept, or ideas that cannot be derived from rationally understanding the world, like the idea of, say, "messianism." It comes from religion. That idea, however, even if given secular content or context remains a religious idea.
Robert Service's analysis of Marxism is dead-on. Marxist communism was the offspring of the Judeo-Christian religious tradition. Communism was not essentially secularism. Communism was essentially secularized religion.
Atheism and secularism were part of Marxist communism as a means of applying to society and government what otherwise were religious ideas. Religious ideas divorced from their supernaturalism cannot be made to work in this world any more than if they retained their supernaturalism. That is the lesson to be learned from the bloody "experiment" of communism.
Secularism will make significant headway when it distinguishes itself from and successfully opposes secularized religious ideas. The religious have used their own secularized offshoots, like communism, to justify denouncing secularism as a failure. We should not be tolerating this.
HT to Daily Atheist for the above review.
Old, Obscure, Great Books - Review No.1
If anyone wants a good education, I say a significant portion of that would come from old books. I have accumulated quite a wonderful - and large - collection of them. I have learned so much from the scholars of decades ago; learning that would be almost impossible were I to read books solely by today's scholars, who tend to be concerned with trivia and are not all that scholarly (though there are some exceptions). As one way to help save those wonderful old books from a much undeserved oblivion, I am, starting with this post, selecting a few for brief reviews. I am sure there are, besides me, plenty of others out there who would find them to be of value.
Shortly after returning to college to major in philosophy my intellectual curiosity grew quickly - and in many directions. What I was learning in college just was not enough for me. I had all sorts of questions about things, especially how ideas influenced Western history from its literature to its politics. I quickly saw that I had my own studying to do outside of college and that my work was cut out for me. As a student, I was quickly disabused of the notion that my professors would be of some help in guiding me toward the matters I was interested in that went beyond classroom material. Disappointed, also, with the books I found in the latest Ivy League book catalogs and with what was in the book stores, I came to the conclusion that old books might be what I need.
I shortly found that to be the correct conclusion.
Learning how to find good, old books was a bit difficult at first, as was identifying exactly what I was interested in. I was going in blind to new territory and found my way as I went and learned to use these old scholars as my guides until I could find my way through all this new, strange, complex, and wonderful "intellectual territory" on my own. I was enthused that with the right old books I could give myself an excellent education - and it would be dirt cheap!
Anyhow, here is my first semi-random round-up of such gems. As far as I know, these books are long out of print - unfortunately; but there are copies out there to be found.
Nationalism: Its Meaning & History (revised ed.), by Hans Kohn; Anvil, 1965; 191 pp.
This is a great little overview of nationalism from its 18th century origins to its 20th century manifestations. The first half of the book is Kohn's very concise and, at the same time, thorough, history of modern nationalism the world over. The second half of the book consists of short, primary source excerpts on nationalism from the writings of Machiavelli, Hegel, Mazzini, Napoleon, Dostoevsky, Renan, Nehru, Wagner, Mussolini, and others.
Kohn explains how the Enlightenment's nationalism that was of a benevolent, cultural nature was changed through a succession of historical events and the rise of new ideas, in to the collectivistic and militaristic nationalism of the last century - which still lingers in some ways. One of the most significant factors in this transformation was the French Revolution. The climate of ideas in revolutionary France led to a religious-like worship of the nation. "In all the communities in France an altar of the fatherland was erected with the inscription: 'The citizen is born, lives, and dies for the fatherland.' Before it the population assembled with patriotic songs, took an oath to uphold national unity and to obey and to protect the supreme law giver, the sovereign people" (p.25).
Especially significant in fostering the new conception of the nation was education: "The French Revolution established the first comprehensive system of national education to raise virtuous and patriotic citizens. Education was for the first time regarded as a duty and chief interest of the nation...[to] realize the unity of the fatherland and the union of its citizens" (p.26).
When nationalism spread from the West to the third-world it was easily adapted despite the vast cultural differences between the two. Kohn shows why this is so without, for whatever reason, explicitly naming it: third-world cultures were predominantly religious, therefore a religion of the nation was easily accepted. This, as Kohn does point out, was then used to assert independence from the West.
Dictatorship: Its History & Theory, by Alfred Cobban; Charles Scribner's Sons, 1939; 352 pp.
It is with the 16th century political philosophy of Jean Bodin that Cobban begins his history of dictatorship that culminates in - well, the year he wrote this book says it.
Bodin gave a secular justification for the state, one aspect of which was deriving sovereignty from the will of society instead of the will of God. This was a preliminary step toward ending the notion of the divine right of kings which had long been the basis of governments. Cobban takes the reader through the history of philosophical and political developments that incrementally led to modern totalitarianism: the 18th century's "Enlightened despots"; the political philosophy of Hobbes, Spinoza, Rousseau, Sieyes; the French Revolution's terrorism and "dictatorship of liberty." This period climaxes in Napoleon. With his ascendancy "arose, in the modern world, the idea that one man might himself represent the will of the people, and be invested with all the authority of the most despotic ruler in the name of democracy. The idea of sovereignty, freed from all restraints, and transferred to the people, had at last given birth to the first modern dictatorship" (p.86).
After Napoleon the stage is largely set for Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini and their lesser copies. In the paving of the way for them Cobban traces the development of nationalism and the impact of thinkers like Fichte, Hegel, and Marx. The idea of natural law, important in Enlightenment political philosophy of liberalism, is ended, Cobban argues, by the German Romanticists. The circle is closed, so to say, when Lenin's power-grab in Russia is modeled on the French Revolution.
In his summary of dictatorship, Cobban observes: "This is a return to government by faith: nationalism is the new religion, and the dictator is Pope and Emperor rolled into one"(p.283). And "there is a real spiritual principle in modern dictatorship, which makes it more than a mere technique of government. The new totalitarian dictatorship is powerful not because it rules men's bodies, but because it controls their minds. Its essential aim is, as we have suggested above, the identification of Church and State" (p.284).
The book also has an appendix on Greek, Roman, and medieval Italian dictatorships.
Encyclopedia of Religion, edited by Vergilius Ferm; Littlefield, Adams, & Co., 1959; 844pp.
It is very simple to review this book: it has big pages with small print, so there are lots of entries! Just about any religious figure or concept is included. It is a great reference book on religion.
The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages (revised & expanded ed.), by Norman Cohn; Oxford University Press, 1970; 412 pp.
Bluntly, the reader of this book is in for a wild trip! The subject matter - medieval end-of-the-world movements - is as creepy as it is comical, but Norman Cohn is very much the serious scholar who actually broke open a new area of study with this book's first edition.
Cohn's focus is on what he termed "revolutionary millenarianism" and "mystical anarchism" in western Europe between the 11th and 16th centuries, and in the ending of the book he briefly draws parallels between them and the 20th century's revolutionary communist movements. Of these Christian revolutionaries and anarchists, Cohn examines their histories, their doctrines and the ideas that originated them, the problems they caused for religious authorities, and their influence on theologians.
Cohn sets the larger context of medieval messianic cults in its distant origins: ancient Jewish and Christian apocalyptic writings and how they influenced the Church Founders. Apocalyptic writings merged in the Christian mind with the ancient pagan notions of a long-lost state of nature, and the yearning to return to it, resulting in the vision of an end of the world and a new millennium. In history this idea has had formidable power.
Between the early Christian centuries and the 11th century there were who knows how many messiahs, and Cohn gives some examples of them before they became more prolific in the centuries his book concentrates on.
After not many tales of messiahs one can see a familiar pattern which is universally applicable: a self-proclaimed messiah gathers a following, even if it remains small, claims to have supernatural powers and witnesses claim likewise. Next he promises them some version of a new, heavenly world and they come to heads with the authorities who kill the messiah and many of his followers. Bewildered survivors nonetheless believe their messiah will return in the future to triumph in bringing in the millennium. "So it came about that multitudes of people acted out with fierce energy a shared phantasy, which, though delusional, yet brought them such intense emotional relief that they could live only through it, and were perfectly willing both to kill and to die for it. This phenomenon was to recur many times, in various parts of western and central Europe, between the twelfth and sixteenth centuries" (p.88). Every generation of medieval Christians experienced this; sometimes it was on a small-scale, sometimes it was on a large scale.
There were also the "mystical anarchists," the "amoral supermen" of the Free Spirit and similar sects (Cohn compares them to Nietzsche's notion of the "superman") who claimed to be one with God, who is good and divine, and therefore, they were above all morality. They were already saved so they could do anything they pleased - and they did, as Cohn chronicles for us.
Another religious angle some medievals took on the world's imminent end was premised on self-punishment. They believed that if they beat their bodies to bloody pulps, the punishment in the afterlife would not be as severe. This culminated in mass - and public - self-flagellating processions that would usher in the Second Coming.
Cohn concludes, "The old religious idiom has been replaced by a secular one, and this tends to obscure what otherwise would be obvious. For it is the simple truth that, stripped of their original supernatural sanction, revolutionary millenarianism and mystical anarchism are with us still" (p.286).
The Pursuit of the Millennium is an in-depth look at those who took Christianity seriously and to its logical conclusion - over and over and over again, despite the horrific results of so doing. It is a history demonstrating how faith, if strongly held, is immune to reality.
Old, Obscure, Great Books: Review No.2
Shortly after returning to college to major in philosophy my intellectual curiosity grew quickly - and in many directions. What I was learning in college just was not enough for me. I had all sorts of questions about things, especially how ideas influenced Western history from its literature to its politics. I quickly saw that I had my own studying to do outside of college and that my work was cut out for me. As a student, I was quickly disabused of the notion that my professors would be of some help in guiding me toward the matters I was interested in that went beyond classroom material. Disappointed, also, with the books I found in the latest Ivy League book catalogs and with what was in the book stores, I came to the conclusion that old books might be what I need.
I shortly found that to be the correct conclusion.
Learning how to find good, old books was a bit difficult at first, as was identifying exactly what I was interested in. I was going in blind to new territory and found my way as I went and learned to use these old scholars as my guides until I could find my way through all this new, strange, complex, and wonderful "intellectual territory" on my own. I was enthused that with the right old books I could give myself an excellent education - and it would be dirt cheap!
Anyhow, here is my first semi-random round-up of such gems. As far as I know, these books are long out of print - unfortunately; but there are copies out there to be found.
Nationalism: Its Meaning & History (revised ed.), by Hans Kohn; Anvil, 1965; 191 pp.
This is a great little overview of nationalism from its 18th century origins to its 20th century manifestations. The first half of the book is Kohn's very concise and, at the same time, thorough, history of modern nationalism the world over. The second half of the book consists of short, primary source excerpts on nationalism from the writings of Machiavelli, Hegel, Mazzini, Napoleon, Dostoevsky, Renan, Nehru, Wagner, Mussolini, and others.
Kohn explains how the Enlightenment's nationalism that was of a benevolent, cultural nature was changed through a succession of historical events and the rise of new ideas, in to the collectivistic and militaristic nationalism of the last century - which still lingers in some ways. One of the most significant factors in this transformation was the French Revolution. The climate of ideas in revolutionary France led to a religious-like worship of the nation. "In all the communities in France an altar of the fatherland was erected with the inscription: 'The citizen is born, lives, and dies for the fatherland.' Before it the population assembled with patriotic songs, took an oath to uphold national unity and to obey and to protect the supreme law giver, the sovereign people" (p.25).
Especially significant in fostering the new conception of the nation was education: "The French Revolution established the first comprehensive system of national education to raise virtuous and patriotic citizens. Education was for the first time regarded as a duty and chief interest of the nation...[to] realize the unity of the fatherland and the union of its citizens" (p.26).
When nationalism spread from the West to the third-world it was easily adapted despite the vast cultural differences between the two. Kohn shows why this is so without, for whatever reason, explicitly naming it: third-world cultures were predominantly religious, therefore a religion of the nation was easily accepted. This, as Kohn does point out, was then used to assert independence from the West.
Dictatorship: Its History & Theory, by Alfred Cobban; Charles Scribner's Sons, 1939; 352 pp.
It is with the 16th century political philosophy of Jean Bodin that Cobban begins his history of dictatorship that culminates in - well, the year he wrote this book says it.
Bodin gave a secular justification for the state, one aspect of which was deriving sovereignty from the will of society instead of the will of God. This was a preliminary step toward ending the notion of the divine right of kings which had long been the basis of governments. Cobban takes the reader through the history of philosophical and political developments that incrementally led to modern totalitarianism: the 18th century's "Enlightened despots"; the political philosophy of Hobbes, Spinoza, Rousseau, Sieyes; the French Revolution's terrorism and "dictatorship of liberty." This period climaxes in Napoleon. With his ascendancy "arose, in the modern world, the idea that one man might himself represent the will of the people, and be invested with all the authority of the most despotic ruler in the name of democracy. The idea of sovereignty, freed from all restraints, and transferred to the people, had at last given birth to the first modern dictatorship" (p.86).
After Napoleon the stage is largely set for Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini and their lesser copies. In the paving of the way for them Cobban traces the development of nationalism and the impact of thinkers like Fichte, Hegel, and Marx. The idea of natural law, important in Enlightenment political philosophy of liberalism, is ended, Cobban argues, by the German Romanticists. The circle is closed, so to say, when Lenin's power-grab in Russia is modeled on the French Revolution.
In his summary of dictatorship, Cobban observes: "This is a return to government by faith: nationalism is the new religion, and the dictator is Pope and Emperor rolled into one"(p.283). And "there is a real spiritual principle in modern dictatorship, which makes it more than a mere technique of government. The new totalitarian dictatorship is powerful not because it rules men's bodies, but because it controls their minds. Its essential aim is, as we have suggested above, the identification of Church and State" (p.284).
The book also has an appendix on Greek, Roman, and medieval Italian dictatorships.
Encyclopedia of Religion, edited by Vergilius Ferm; Littlefield, Adams, & Co., 1959; 844pp.
It is very simple to review this book: it has big pages with small print, so there are lots of entries! Just about any religious figure or concept is included. It is a great reference book on religion.
The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages (revised & expanded ed.), by Norman Cohn; Oxford University Press, 1970; 412 pp.
Bluntly, the reader of this book is in for a wild trip! The subject matter - medieval end-of-the-world movements - is as creepy as it is comical, but Norman Cohn is very much the serious scholar who actually broke open a new area of study with this book's first edition.
Cohn's focus is on what he termed "revolutionary millenarianism" and "mystical anarchism" in western Europe between the 11th and 16th centuries, and in the ending of the book he briefly draws parallels between them and the 20th century's revolutionary communist movements. Of these Christian revolutionaries and anarchists, Cohn examines their histories, their doctrines and the ideas that originated them, the problems they caused for religious authorities, and their influence on theologians.
Cohn sets the larger context of medieval messianic cults in its distant origins: ancient Jewish and Christian apocalyptic writings and how they influenced the Church Founders. Apocalyptic writings merged in the Christian mind with the ancient pagan notions of a long-lost state of nature, and the yearning to return to it, resulting in the vision of an end of the world and a new millennium. In history this idea has had formidable power.
Between the early Christian centuries and the 11th century there were who knows how many messiahs, and Cohn gives some examples of them before they became more prolific in the centuries his book concentrates on.
After not many tales of messiahs one can see a familiar pattern which is universally applicable: a self-proclaimed messiah gathers a following, even if it remains small, claims to have supernatural powers and witnesses claim likewise. Next he promises them some version of a new, heavenly world and they come to heads with the authorities who kill the messiah and many of his followers. Bewildered survivors nonetheless believe their messiah will return in the future to triumph in bringing in the millennium. "So it came about that multitudes of people acted out with fierce energy a shared phantasy, which, though delusional, yet brought them such intense emotional relief that they could live only through it, and were perfectly willing both to kill and to die for it. This phenomenon was to recur many times, in various parts of western and central Europe, between the twelfth and sixteenth centuries" (p.88). Every generation of medieval Christians experienced this; sometimes it was on a small-scale, sometimes it was on a large scale.
There were also the "mystical anarchists," the "amoral supermen" of the Free Spirit and similar sects (Cohn compares them to Nietzsche's notion of the "superman") who claimed to be one with God, who is good and divine, and therefore, they were above all morality. They were already saved so they could do anything they pleased - and they did, as Cohn chronicles for us.
Another religious angle some medievals took on the world's imminent end was premised on self-punishment. They believed that if they beat their bodies to bloody pulps, the punishment in the afterlife would not be as severe. This culminated in mass - and public - self-flagellating processions that would usher in the Second Coming.
Cohn concludes, "The old religious idiom has been replaced by a secular one, and this tends to obscure what otherwise would be obvious. For it is the simple truth that, stripped of their original supernatural sanction, revolutionary millenarianism and mystical anarchism are with us still" (p.286).
The Pursuit of the Millennium is an in-depth look at those who took Christianity seriously and to its logical conclusion - over and over and over again, despite the horrific results of so doing. It is a history demonstrating how faith, if strongly held, is immune to reality.
Old, Obscure, Great Books: Review No.2
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