If there’s something strange in your neighborhood

Who you gonna call?

Blogwatchers!

If there’s something weird… and it don’t look good

Who you gonna call?

Blogwatchers!

Ted Barlow: Down with rent control! (and here); and two Bushonomics-bashing snippets, including some good points about what kind of businessmen Bush and Cheney were.

E-Pression: Homilies must change or die!!! I sympathize deeply. I’ll add to Zorak’s list of Homilies She’d Like to Hear: anything adding relevant historical context and depth to the Scripture readings (I heard a terrific homily on the widow’s mite that, among many other things, pointed out how public–and therefore humiliating–her gift was); the Church as the Bride of Christ; the home as church; what did Vatican II actually do/say?

Brink Lindsey: Gnosticism and the science of complexity. Very interesting post, esp. the science part. But I must admit to a very strong bias against Elaine Pagels’s accounts of religion. Maybe I shouldn’t comment on this, since I’ve never actually read her, but one of the reasons I’ve never read her is that the excerpts I’ve seen from her tend to contain misleading and tendentious stuff. People tend to come away from Pagels with, in my opinion, erroneous undestandings of what Christian orthodoxy actually is and implies. EDITED TO ADD that the paragraphs that follow should be considered as general comments, not criticisms of Pagels (whom, like I said, I haven’t read–for all I know, she does make/acknowledge/incorporate the points I make below) and certainly not criticisms of Lindsey, who is just throwing out scattered, quick, and preliminary (but intriguing–go read!) thoughts on these matters.

For a not-that-bad-but-slightly-“off” example, take this quote, cited by Lindsey: “Orthodox Jews and Christians insist that a chasm separates humanity from Its creator: God is wholly other. But some of the gnostics who wrote these gospels contradict this: self-knowledge is knowledge of God; the self and the divine are identical.” Um. Not all of this is mutually exclusive. If man is the image of God, then self-knowledge does aid in knowledge of God, though you might want to distinguish between that analogical knowledge of God and direct knowledge of God. I also note that talk of a “chasm” between God and man, while metaphysically accurate (and implicit in the erotic metaphors of bridal mysticism–more on this in a moment), can when presented without context obscure basic Jewish teachings like the action of God in history, and, obviously, Christian teachings like the Incarnation and the Eucharist. I don’t know if Pagels provides that context.

The claim that mysticism became “peripheral” to orthodox religion after the suppression of Gnosticism is also a bit odd. Teresa of Avila is no peripheral figure in Christianity; neither are the multitudes of mystic saints, all the way down to Padre Pio in our own time. “Bridal mysticism” is a vibrant tradition, at least within Catholicism, dating back to (I think) St. Bernard of Clairvaux. Within Judaism, Hasidism is also deeply mystical, although I don’t know enough about it to say much more than that. And as for non-Catholic Christians, I know less about that, but lots of Protestant denominations have strong mystical (and in some cases Gnostic) streaks.

Also, I don’t think that the distinction between choosing life and choosing death, or good and evil, is “beyond” reason. There are some actions of the soul that are necessarily prior to reason, actions that can surprise and redirect reason–for example, noticing; admiration; love; and awe. Before one can even realize what reason is and that we should use it, and before reason can have premises on which to work or goals toward which to drive (even if those premises and goals are subject to change, there still need to be some), we must notice some startling feature in the world and come to some relationship with it, whether love or horror or something else. But reason can help sort through the cacophony of conflicting “inner voices” that drive us fitfully from action to action, from attachment to attachment. Reliance on inner promptings of the Secret Gnostic Spark of Truth, “beyond” reason, is an invitation to deeply wrong actions, as I think introspection shows. Oh, I’m not sure I’m expressing this well; here’s something I wrote earlier that discusses it a bit better, and adds in some other criticisms of the “self as divine/enlightenment through self-knowledge” approach.

Anyway, Pagels aside, here are four thoughts: 1) Lindsey might want to put Love in the Western World on his reading list if he hasn’t read it already–it’s a fascinating account of the way a particular breed of Gnostic heresy permeated Western culture, and it also gives a nuanced discussion of Carmelite mysticism (i.e. Teresa’s deal) and the bridal/eros metaphors in Christian mysticism. And it’s really, really cool, in general. And it seems like the sort of book he reads and enjoys.

2) You can find a bunch of excerpts from various non-canonical (Gnostic and not) gospels, with discussion from a Catholic (and fair) perspective, by going here and checking out the “Selected Posts” list on the right.

3) I’m looking forward to Lindsey’s next post, which he suggests will concern the interrelationship of contemporary science and mysticism. There are different possible spurs for scientific and technological pursuits; I’d identify some as broadly Gnostic (concerned with spirit conquering and escaping matter) and others broadly “Catholic”/incarnational/embodied (sorry, can’t think of a perfect term–basically, imbued with a belief in the harmony of spirit and matter). Not sure if what Lindsey says next will speak to that distinction, but am interested no matter where he chooses to take this.

4) A Jesus who speaks of sin and repentance is, frankly, more interesting and insightful than one who speaks of illusion and enlightenment.

Unqualified Offerings: Idiotic Eurogov decision; paradoxes of capitalism.

There’s a magazine solely devoted to satirizing the EU! I don’t really know enough about the EU to say if this is good, or even funny, but you might check it out. Link via Dodgeblog.

And if you’re not checking in at The Daily Summit (news from the Johannesburg confab)… is there a reason?