|
|
 |
|
Home | Booknotes
| Darwiniana | |
|
|
 |
From Darwiniana: Karen Armstrong on Axial Age |
|
February 2, 2006 |
| |
|
|
| |
http://www.wie.org
What is Enlightenment? magazine, issue 31, has an article on Karen Armstrong
and the supposed ˜Second Axial Age". Text is listed below, after my
commentary.
The use of the term ˜Axial Age" has suffered confusion, and has
degenerated in some accounts into a conception of an age that produced the
great religions. But that is not what the Axial Age was. Armstrong's
thinking here needs my eonic effect model!
Armstrong notes in the article that she plans to write a book on the
Second Axial Age. Based on the material here, and the earlier material in
Armstrong's books, I would strongly caution against that. It will be a lousy
book indeed, although it might well sell in the current postmodern New Age
crowd. Armstrong is in over her head on this Axial notion of hers, and even
a cursory glance at my eonic model shows the traps involved. The whole
question of the Axial Age enters into my work in a marginal fashion, as a
descriptive, not theoretical term. From there I completely recast the
foundations of the idea. Any attempt to speculate about Big History using
the Axial concept is going to be pure nonsense unless you are very careful
to indulge at most in empirical periodization, my approach. I doubt if Ms.
Armstrong will listen, but if you plan to go over Niagara Falls, I can't
stop you.
Further, her thinking seems to have shifted slightly on this, first
was the idea of some kind of postmodern resurgence of religion as the Second
Axial Age, then suddenly there was a shift, she speaks of this Second Axial
Age starting in the sixteenth and seventeenth century. I was left wondering
if she had seen my website! Jaspers himself seems unclear on this, and never
quite proposed a second Axial Age.
<!--more-->
I am not quite sure of the development of Armstrong's thinking here.
Whatever the case, you can't have it both ways. The sixteenth and
seventeenth century show the passing beyond the so-called Axial religions
and the onset of the secular age in the wake of the sole large-scale
religious transformation of the modern transition, that of the Protestant
Reformation, one of the generators of the early modern, but soon
transcending itself in the Enlightenment. We think of the early modern as
the onset of our contemporary scientific, secular societies, with their
economic emphasis. This leaves a second Axial Age stranded. But the core
idea has merit. We must simply remember that the term 'Axial' is a
descriptive of something in antiquity. If we propose it as one in a series,
we may need a new and more general terminology.
We can see the problem. The rise of the modern is the only candidate
for some kind of 'second Axial Age', but this isn't the onset or generation
of a new religion. The problem is that the idea of a Second Axial Age
becomes incoherent. This New Age version of a Second Axial Age is changing
the road signs. What happened? What went wrong here? The problem is that the
idea of the first Axial Age is itself incoherent, and has suffered a
confusion of meaning. It works fine as a descriptive, not as an analytic
term. Meanwhile mainstream historians are getting restive here, and are not
likely to consider the idea relevant at all, and that's a pity, because,
understood rightly the Axial Age is a real phenomenon, one of spectacular
scope, and what is more the best and most convincing evidence of evolution
in action. There is the problem with the Axial Age concept. It has become a
way to contextualize the emergence of the great religions. But that is not
what the phenomenon was, in toto.
The problem in part begins with Karl Jaspers who invented the term
'Axial', but gave it a somewhat contradictory definition. His insights were
brilliant, but he couldn't quite define what it was that he grappling with.
Further, he calls the onset of Christianity the axis of history, but somehow
brings this 'axis' concept to bear also on the earlier period, 800-200 BCE.
The confusion of terms forces us to ask the question, what is the
relation of the great religions to this Axial interval? If Christianity, and
Islam initiate outside the Axial Age, what are we talking about? Even
Judaism as we know it has this problem. We should look at proto-Judaism as
it is contextualized in the interval we call Axial. Then we see the point.
With remarkable timing we see a state religion turn into a source of latent
materials able to flow outwards into an environment, there, by another
process, to become the raw material for religions to come. We could not
allow ourselves to be confused by the retroactive teleological myths
constructed around this process.
Furthermore, it seems as if monotheism is born in the Axial period,
at least this much seems right. In fact, that's wrong too. Monotheism was
already in existence prior to the Axial Age. So now we are confused. We need
the eonic model I have created to easily solve this seeming paradox. But the
gist can be more easily seen in the Indian case. There we see that while the
traditions of yoga, for instance, are almost primordial in their antiquity,
they become amplified in the Axial Age. Renewed, restarted. One
manifestation of this is Buddhism, which is really a streamlined version of
what was already there before. But for the first time the stream of Indian
spiritual consciousness coalesces into a world religion that begins to
exteriorize. Now we have the clue to Occidental monotheism. Monotheism
predates the Axial Age, in several inchoate versions, more or less, but
coalesces into a concentrated exteriorizing form that isn't at first even a
religion at all, but the state history of a minor Middle Eastern kingdom
with a state religion. That period is the only one in the Axial interval. Is
not the Old Testament a strange book? Actually, it is transparently
beautiful in its record of ad hoc incidents that simply record the Axial
interval, and annex a lot of earlier material from before the Axial
interval. Sorry, but Abraham, if he existed, and Moses, if he existed,
aren't in the Axial interval.
Thus we see nothing of Judaism, Christianity, or Islam until later.
But we do see the gestation of these, keeping in mind that there is no
simple teleology between the source point, and the results. Note the
ambiguity of dates surrounding Zoroaster. He may or may not be part of the
Axial Age. It seems probable he predates it. But we can see the gestation of
monotheism very clearly in this other case, as an Indo-European mythology
starts to monotheize. But it is in the Axial period that the latent
indications of all this, Indo-European, Semitic, begin to formalize and
generate a new disposition toward religion.
I am sorry, but this changes the picture completely. The religions
that came later have no intrinsic Axial anything about them, save that they
do proceed as direct descendants from the emergent material appearing in the
complex history of Israel, with suspicious strains of Zoroastrianism more
than probably mixed in during the Exile. At first this makes no sense. The
problem is the way we see it, as later history has defined it. Jump to
another Axial instance. In every case, the broad outlines of the process are
clear. Suddenly an isomorphic process is transparently visible in the case
of India. Much of Buddhism is really recycled yoga. Buddhism is actually
quite late. An slightly earlier period, core Axial, shows a virtually seed
bed of spiritual movements, philosophies, and sages. What is more the
resemblance to Greece, in essence, is remarkable, and synchronous.
Now let us note that the same can be said of China, but that the
result remains closer to philosophy than to religion. Then we note the
resemblance of China to Greece, and finally we have the whole set of clues.
The Axial Age tokens something far more general and abstract than religion.
The question of religion is secondary to a process that is far broader in
its effect. How broad? If we look at Axial Greece we see, among other
things, the first scientific revolution among the Ionians. So our Axial Age
is the source of science too! The same could be said of democracy, as it
appears in the brief climax to the Greek Archaic period, which is really the
most remarkable case of the whole spectrum of Axial phenomena. You see, the
terms 'sacred' and 'secular' are merely our own lenses for something that is
unified yet strangely abstract, on its own terms.
The problem, then, is to equate the Axial Age with some spiritual
transcendentalism. That approach misses the point. We need finer grained
tools to understand this stupendous moment.
We should start over. What is it that grips us as we detect the Axial
phenomenon? Synchronous emergentism. We see a host parallel independent
cultural innovations and breakthroughs across Eurasia in a very compressed
timeframe. We see the effect in China, in India, in the Middle East, in
Greece and marginally in Rome. That indicates that these may be the tips of
the iceberg, since we can see that the phenomenon is evenly distributed
across Eurasia. This is what intrigues us, this enigma of a global something
that seems to multitask over a whole continent. We have been so inured to
spiritual mythologies that are no longer believed that once we strip the
data of these metaphysical trappings, we find to our surprise something more
remarkable than what we had before.
What is the meaning of this sudden tiding wave of emergence? As we
reflect on it we begin to sense that it is not actually unique. It is true
that this period represents a great advance. But it could hardly be unique.
Then we get a suspicion about the answer. The effect is one of something in
a series. And we stand back to examine world history, and suddenly we see
it. If we backtrack 2400 years we come to the birth of civilization, and
forwards we come to the rise of the modern. Now we have it, it is a
phenomenon in a series. The problem is that the character of each period is
different, at least at first. After careful study we do find the common
denominator, but it is not a question of religious formations.
What is the common denominator? There are many approaches to that
question, but just to suggest one simple idea, think of fertilizer in a
garden. We tend to see the flowers, not the general process of growth. We
wonder why the roses shows spurts of growth, why the daisies are large in
size. But once we know that the explanation is fertilizer, the separate
independent developments of the plants in tandem ceases to be a puzzle.
There is a great deal more to be said here. But the basic issue is to
consider that positing a second Axial Age tends to break the original
concept. We must find a more general formulation. It is not actually hard to
see how the modern world in its secularism could be the real 'second Axial
Age'. In fact, as noted, the Axial phase of the ancient Greeks was the first
birth of secularism, almost, and this was in the Axial interval! Except
that, this still isn't quite right, because Axial Greece was also a
religious flowering. How so? Look closely, and you will see that the Greek
polis was in part of religious phenomenon, a last great flowering of
polytheism. Such a statement could lead to misunderstanding, unless one
examines carefully the nature of the phenomena in question. The Greek case
is complex and changes its character very quickly, and in the process gives
birth to many of the elements that will then resurface in the modern age.
So our Axial Age is really a massively complex phenomenon that
crosses all category boundaries. Once we see the Greek instance in context,
we will realize that the birth of the modern world is really a rebirth of
many of the Axial Age processes that died out in the middle ages, after the
Axial Age. The great religions survived, but democracy did not, science did
not. There rebirth in the next phase of our series shows the restoration of
lost evolutionary processes.
So much for a postmodern reaction to modernity as a spiritual New
Age.
These issues, although not the Axial question, were quite clear to
figures such as Kant and Hegel, who saw that modernity was a new foundation,
but that Reason and religion required a new creative formulation. Whatever
we think of their actual resolutions of these seeming contradictions, the
general tenor of their thinking can help us to understand both the limits
and future potential of the Enlightenment.
Too much New Age thinking is simply orphaned historical confusion
trying spastically to create a future religion, without seeing the paradox
that involves, and the unlikelihood that history will repeat itself. We have
moved on to a new world, and the restoration of antiquity in the name of a
new Axial Age is not likely to happen.
All this barely scratches the surface of a complex question. But the
idea that a second Axial Age can spawn a new period of spiritual religion is
misleading, and likely to produce contradictory results.
________________________________________
Armstrong interview from Enlightenment magazine
Shortly following the terrorist attacks in Britain last July, I sat
with world-renowned theologian Karen Armstrong in her historic London home.
As we spoke about the spiritual challenges of our time and why it behooves
us to learn from religious history, police sirens blared in the background,
a reminder of the violent and unstable conditions we face as a human species
at the outset of the third millennium. Driven from a young age by a thirst
for the spiritual life, Armstrong entered a convent at seventeen and left
seven years later, disillusioned by the traditional structures and mores
that, despite her passion for the divine, simply could not bring her
spiritual yearning to fruition. In the nearly four decades since then, she
has turned that passion into a prolific investigation into the essence and
evolution of the great traditions. Her best- selling book, A History of God,
now published in more than thirty languages, is a compelling retrospective
of religious history. In it, she provocatively and exhaustively illustrates
how humans have had to redefine the sacred at critical historical junctures
in order to meet new spiritual needs created by changing cultural conditions
and large-scale crises.
As we spoke together in an atmosphere permeated by disquiet and
uncertainty, Armstrong pointed me back to the dawn of the great religious
traditions and simultaneously brought my attention to the present-a time
when once again, she believes, we will need to redefine the notion of the
sacred so it can become relevant and enter our lives anew.
WHAT IS ENLIGHTENMENT: In your book A History of God, you take us
through the emergence of the world's religious traditions, which occurred
during what is known as the Axial Age-a period you feel is particularly
relevant to our own time. To begin with, why is this historic era called the
Axial Age? KAREN ARMSTRONG: The period 800-200 BCE has been termed the Axial
Age because it proved pivotal to humanity.
Society had grown much more aggressive. Iron had been discovered, and
this was the beginning of the Iron Age. Better weapons had been invented,
and while those weapons look puny compared to what we're dealing with now,
it was still a shock. The first Axial Age also occurred at a time when
individualism was just beginning. As a result of urbanization and a new
market economy, people were no longer living on lonely hilltops but in a
thriving, aggressive, commercial economy. Power was shifting from king and
priest, palace and temple to the marketplace. Inequality and exploitation
became more apparent as the pace of change accelerated in the cities and
people began to realize that their own behavior could affect the fate of
future generations.
So the Axial Age marks the beginning of humanity as we now know it.
During this period, men and women became conscious of their existence, their
own nature, and their limitations in an unprecedented way. In the Axial Age
countries, a few men sensed fresh possibilities and broke away from the old
traditions. People who participated in this great transformation were
convinced that they were on the brink of a new era and that nothing would
ever be the same. They sought change in the deepest reaches of their beings,
looked for greater inwardness in their spiritual lives, and tried to become
one with a transcendent reality. After this pivotal era, it was felt that
only by reaching beyond their limits could human beings become most fully
themselves.
WIE: Can you further describe the ways in which this 'great
transformation manifested?
ARMSTRONG: Most significantly, it is the time when all the great
world religions came into being. And in every single case, the
spiritualities that emerged during the Axial Age-Taoism and Confucianism in
China, monotheism in Israel, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism in India, and
Greek rationalism in Europe-began with a recoil from violence, with looking
into the heart to find the sources of violence in the human psyche. The
conviction that the world was awry was fundamental to these spiritualities.
One of the things that is very striking is that all the great sages were
living in a time like our own-a time full of fear, violence, and horror.
Their experience of utter impotence in a cruel world impelled them to seek
the highest goals and an absolute reality in the depths of their beings. For
example, the China of Confucius and Lao-tzu was engaged for centuries in one
war after another. The whole of the very ancient civilization of China was
becoming more aggressive. And you have that understanding very strongly in
Confucius as he looks out on tbe world and laments loudly while, at the same
time, he tries to rebuild it by recrafting the old rituals in a way that
brings forward their compassionate and altruistic potential. That essential
dynamic of compassion is summed up in the Golden Rule, which was first
enunciated by Confucius around 500 BCE: "Do not do unto others as you would
not have them do unto you."
On the Indian subcontinent at this time, there was a major economic
and political turnaround. Suddenly powerful kingdoms and empires were being
created, and they relied on force. People allover India were equating horror
with the new violence in their society and in the marketplace, where
merchants were preying aggressively upon one another. Many of their
philosophies developed a doctrine of nonviolence as a way to counter
violence by refusing any form of it whatsoever.
The fifth century was terrifying in Greece as well. While it was a
time of great artistic creativity, it was also a time of huge violence. The
Greeks were, in many respects, a terrible people, and yet every year in
Athens they would stage the political events of that year in their great
tragedies. These were written as ways of looking at the tragic implications
of what was going on in their midst, of calling everything into question and
really plumbing the human experience of suffering. So violence and suffering
seem to be a sine qua non of a spiritual quantum leap forward.
WIE: Why do you believe it's so important for us to reflect upon the
traditional religions and the age in which they emerged? ARMSTRONG: Today we
are amid a second Axial Age and are undergoing a period of transition
similar to that of the first Axial Age. Its roots lie in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries of the modern era, when the people of Western Europe
began to evolve a different type of society. Since that time, Western
civilization has transformed the world. The economic changes of the last
four hundred years have been accompanied by immense social, political, and
intellectual revolutions, with the development of an entirely different
scientific and rational concept of the nature of truth. But despite the cult
of rationality, modern history has been punctuated by witchhunts and world
wars which have been explosions of unreason.
So, I feel that we are-all of us-at one of those junctions in history
when we are holding ourselves, our past, our future, and our integrity in
the palms of our own hands. This is a moment when, if we allow that
integrity to fallout, we might never recover it in the same way. Once again,
a radical change has become necessary.
WIE: How do you see us responding to our own pivotal moment in
history?
ARMSTRONG: All over the world, people are struggling with these new
conditions and have been forced to reassess their religious traditions,
which were designed for a very different type of society. They are finding
that the old forms of faith no longer work for them; they cannot provide the
enlightenment - and consolation that human beings seem to need. As a result,
men and women are trying to find new ways of being religious. Like the
reformers and prophets of the first Axial Age, they are attempting to build
upon the insights of the past in a way that will take human beings forward
into the new world they have created for themselves.
We have, from the very beginning of our existence as a species,
created works of art and created religions to give us the sense that,
against all the aggressive and spirited evidence to the contrary, life
really does have some ultimate meaning, value, and sacredness. And the
notion of the sacred has a history, since it has always meant something
slightly different to different groups of people at various points in time.
If we look at our three major monotheistic religions, it becomes clear that
there is no objective "God"; each generation has to create the image of God
that works for them. When one conception of God has ceased to have meaning
or relevance, it has been discarded and replaced by a new theology. Had the
notion of God not had this flexibility, it would not have survived.
In that context, atheism takes on a different meaning. Atheism is
often a transitional state: Jews, Christians, and Muslims were all called
atheists by their pagan contemporaries because they had adopted a
revolutionary notion of divinity and transcendence. The people who have been
dubbed atheists over the years have always denied a particular conception of
the divine. But is the God who is rejected by atheists today the God of the
patriarchs, the God of the prophets, the God of the philosophers, the God of
the mystics, or the God of the eighteenth-century deists? All these deities
have been venerated, but they are very different from one another. Perhaps
modem atheism is a similar denial of a God that is no longer adequate
to the problems of our time.
WiE: So, we are again at a point when religion and the notion of
God, or the sacred, may need to be redefined.
ARMSTRONG: Religion is highly pragmatic, despite its
otherworldliness. It should not only transform us, but it should also
transform the world. Religion should make a difference. And as soon as it
ceases to be effective, it will be changed. So we should be working now to
make our religion and our faith effective in this lost, suffering, and
terrifying world. But' first, before we can make a proper difference, we
must transform ourselves. There's a very good verse in the Qur'an where God
says, "Therein God will not change the state of the people unless they
change the state of their own selves." And that what we must do now.
WIE: In what way do you see this occurring?
ARMSTRONG: At this moment in history, I believe that we need a new
spiritual revolution. We need a new faith. Now, you can say, ' "Look, give
us a break. This is hardly the time to start a new spiritual revolution. At
this juncture, we've got war. We've got the prospect of terrorism. The
economy is bad. Let's have a bit of peace and quiet so that we can go up a
mountain, collect ourselves, and then begin this spiritual effort." But
suffering, fear, violence, and despair are the prime conditions for such a
renewal.
I think the sages and prophets of the first Axial Age knew very well
about our destructive potentials. What was happening in their own society
was a tremendous shock to them. They had to look into their own hearts,
discover what gave them pain, and then rigorously refrain from inflicting
this suffering upon other people. In order to counter aggression, they
taught their followers to cultivate the habit of sympathy for all living
things. They discovered that greed and selfishness were the cause of our
personal misery and that egotism imprisoned us in an inferior version of
ourselves and impeded our enlightenment. Our present Axial Age is
characterized by globalization. We live in one world, and we have to learn
to live with difference, at home and abroad. We have to see that we have
very big brains and very puny bodies, and because of our big brains, we've
been able to create a technology that compensates for our small size. But we
don't seem to have the ability to keep our aggression in check.
Unfortunately, as our technological expertise advances, our spiritual wisdom
isn't growing up alongside it. Yet that's what we need now in this world
that, as we're speaking, is falling apart. We've seen the bombs here in
London, on 9/II, in Auschwitz, in Bosnia. We have lost all sense of the
sacredness of human life. And that has to be cultivated.
We can't think "God" without thinking "human" now. We can't think
"human" without thinking "God." Because the sacred is not just something
tacked on to our natural existence. It's no longer something out there. The
sacred must be that to which we all aspire. It must become, in the best
possible sense, deeply natural to us. It should fulfill our being so that we
can all, as the Greek Orthodox said, be like Jesus even in this life, if we
live right, in this certain way.
During the first Axial Age, the great sages worked at this. Everyone
was prepared to be creative and spend as much time on this as people spend
today on discovering a new computer. And that requires discipline. But we've
lost the sense that spirituality is hard work. It is often turned into a
commodity to make us feel good. But it isn't just wandering lonely as a
cloud and hoping you'll see a clump of daffodils to enthuse about, I believe
the Dalai Lama was reduced to tears when an American audience asked him how
they could get instant enlightenment. He hadn't realized things were that
bad. So we have to make a constant effort of imagination, which is the great
religious faculty. As Sartre says, "The imagination is the ability to see
what is not present, what is hidden." We must exercise this faculty fully,
whereby we apprehend, in a new way, the inscrutable and ever-elusive divine.
. Karen Armstrong has written several books on religion and, culture,
including the best-selling A History of God and The Battle for God, as well
as lslam: A Short History and Muhammad: A Biography of the Prophet.. She is
currently working on a new book on the Axial Age. Armstrong teaches at Leo
Baeck College' for the Study of Judaism in London.
___________________________
A Second post on this:
Continuing the question of Karen Armstrong on the Axial Age, <a href="http://darwiniana.com/2005/11/20/karen-armstrong-on-axial-age/">previous
post here</a>, which you can read first.
Googling Karen Armstrong's views on a so-called 'Second Axial Age' I find a
number of seminars on the subject, with this from a conference of the <a
href="http://www.christiannewage.com/JesusSeminar.html">Jesus Seminar</a>.
Who should we find present here but Eugenie Scott! Hey wait a minute! I will
indulge a moment's (paranoid) speculation that we are to be treated to a
version of the "Second Axial Age" that is sanitized on Darwin. You won't get
away with it. If you propose an Axial Age, or a second Axial Age, you have
to declare by what evolutionary dynamic this occurs, and in the process
address the issue of Darwinism. Obviously that will kill the sales of Ms.
Armstrong's projected book, and with Eugenie Scott scurrying in the shadows
I doubt if we will hear a peep on evolution.
I have a bad feeling about all of this....
Wouldn't the establishment like a bad book by Armstrong on the Axial Age,
one well-behaved on Darwin, a book so bad it will discredit the idea for
another generation, and quite possibly deflect attention from my
comprehensive treatment of the subject, which is not well-behaved on
Darwinism.
<blockquote>The theme of the conference was "The Future of the
Judeo-Christian Tradition in the Second Axial Age." The philosopher Karl
Jaspers had coined the phrase "first axial age" to refer to the period from
800 BCE to 200 CE, when virtually every major civilization witnessed the
appearance of key religious figures, prophets and sages. The second axial
age denotes, according to the Seminar, the revolution in Western thinking
from 1600 on produced by the Enlightenment and the rise of modern science,
including the discoveries of Copernicus, Galileo and Darwin. The last one
hundred years are apparently included by the Seminar in this age, even
though other commentators would mark ours as the start of a new historical
period: the "postmodern" era. </blockquote>
Here is the crux of the confusion, and we see that the current New Age
postmodern strategy is at work. Armstrong's plans for a book on the (Second)
Axial Age is now transparent, complete with a 'logos-mythos' version of the
issue of God. Armstrong's pet theme is 'logos=mythos', which must mean 'make
it up as you go along'.
The problem lies with the postulation of 'age periods'. The 'Axial Age'
points to a definite phenomenon, but there is no 'age period' as such called
an 'Axial Age' save as a descriptive category. If you try to generalize and
postulate a 'second Axial Age' you are in trouble, you need a definition of
'age periods'. And there is, for the same reason, no such thing as a
'postmodern' age.
The study of the eonic effect completely resolves all these questions, and
it is to be hoped that Ms. Armstrong in her declared intent to write a book
on this subject get her act together or the result will a hopeless mess.
Clearly she will not deign to read my book, so, armed with the power of
celebrity bestsellerdom, we will be treated to some real crud.
<a href="http://www.history-and-evolution.com/booknotes.htm">World History
and The Eonic Effect</a> completely resolves this question of 'axial
periods', 'age periods', 'new ages', phoney 'new ages', postmodern phoney
'new ages', gurus promoting postmodern phoney 'new ages', plots against
modernity, modern freedom, democracy, and spiritual autonomy by gurus
promoting postmoern phoney 'new ages', ... enough?
I also have a tutorial series on the 'Axial Age' at
<a href="http://www.history-and-evolution.com/axial/index.htm"> Tutorial on
Axial Age</a>
<!--more-->
<blockquote>The Jesus Seminar Takes a Bite of the Big Apple
by Alan Bentz-Letts and Ralph Peters
It took a long time for the Jesus Seminar to make its way to New York City.
As an extreme example of modern secularization and a center of global power,
the Big Apple would seem an inviting location for one of the Seminar's
quarterly meetings. Certainly no effort was spared in securing a truly
stellar lineup of speakers for the March 3-6, 2004 gathering at the sleek
Marriott Marquis Hotel on Times Square. Yet the audience turnout was far
from overwhelming, and frustration was voiced by at least some participants.
The Jesus Seminar was founded in 1985 by Robert Funk as a collaborative
enterprise of a self-selected group of biblical, historical and theological
scholars who sought to evaluate the sayings of and stories about Jesus for
historical authenticity. The publication of The Five Gospels1 and The Acts
of Jesus 2 after twelve years of meetings elicited front cover stories in
national newsmagazines, as well as much controversy. The Seminar has gone on
to other topics (like Paul and the biblical canon), and has also attempted,
from its inception, to bring its findings to the general public and, indeed,
to the ordinary Christian worshipper in the pew. It has established a large
group of interested layfolk, called "associates," who attend the meetings
and provide financial and moral support for the founding organization,
Westar Institute.
The theme of the conference was "The Future of the Judeo-Christian Tradition
in the Second Axial Age."3 The philosopher Karl Jaspers had coined the
phrase "first axial age" to refer to the period from 800 BCE to 200 CE, when
virtually every major civilization witnessed the appearance of key religious
figures, prophets and sages. The second axial age denotes, according to the
Seminar, the revolution in Western thinking from 1600 on produced by the
Enlightenment and the rise of modern science, including the discoveries of
Copernicus, Galileo and Darwin. The last one hundred years are apparently
included by the Seminar in this age, even though other commentators would
mark ours as the start of a new historical period: the "postmodern" era.
Four subthemes of the conference stand out in retrospect. First, how far can
or should the Christian tradition be liberally revised, radically transmuted
or even jettisoned altogether in order to carry the essential and enduring
elements of faith forward into the future? Second, given our contemporary
understanding of the origins of the universe and the ecological crisis, how
must Christianity transform itself to harmonize with the new cosmology and
to become an earth-friendly religion? Third, what are our moral obligations
to church and society in this dawning global age? One of the prominent
speakers, James Carroll, author of Constantine's Sword,4 focused on the
crisis in American Roman Catholicism and the need for a grassroots,
laity-led democratization of that church. Fourth, speakers such as Karen
King5 and Elaine Pagels6 discussed how the Gospel of Mary and the Gnostic
Gospels help us to understand the origins of the Christian movement, as well
as its gender politics, and to interpret, in fresh and interesting ways, the
books which made it into the New Testament canon. The Gospel of John is a
case in point.
In response to the first subtheme, Robert Funk, Marcus Borg and retired
Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong represented a "liberal revisionist"
option, while figures such as Don Cupitt and Lloyd Geering took a more
radical approach. The latter two, heavily influenced by the likes of
existentialism and Nietzsche, argued that the word "God" does not refer to
any objective reality (the nonrealist position), but only to aspects of the
secular, human experience. In response to a question from Cupitt, Marcus
Borg, the author of Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time,7 called for a
"critical realist" position: God does exist, in some sense, as an
independent reality apart from and transcendent of human beings, but the
mystery of God defies any attempts to define and capture it in human
concepts. It was very interesting to see Borg, a key figure in the Jesus
Seminar and an influential critic of traditional Protestant theology, take
the more moderate stance here. The Jesus Seminar does not have one
monolithic viewpoint; instead, diversity and debate thrive among its
representatives.
Anne Primavesi, with her personal roots planted firmly in the
nature-sensitive medieval tradition of Celtic Christianity, was ideally
equipped to articulate the theological meaning and ethical imperatives which
follow from Jim Lovelock's Gaia theory. Gaia originally designated the earth
goddess of ancient Greece. In contemporary scientific terms, Gaia denotes
the self-regulating capacities of the atmosphere, the seas and the land
working in tandem with the plants, animals and microorganisms of our planet.
For example, the sun has increased its heat output directed toward the earth
on the order of 25% over the past few million years, yet the earth has not
heated up in any corresponding way. The ongoing production of clouds, among
many of the mechanisms, reflects the sunlight back into space and keeps the
earth more or less "just right" for the flourishing of life.
Eugenie Scott, as Executive Director of the National Center for Science
Education, has engaged in court battles with creationists all over the
country. She stressed that creationism is really a continuum of positions,
with significant diversity of ideas.
The final sessions of the conference featuring many of the women speakers
were probably the best attended and also the most engaging. Besides Karen
King and Elaine Pagels, Karen Armstrong gave a personal, moving account of
her new autobiographical work, The Spiral Staircase.8 This was a welcome
break from the overly intellectual atmosphere of the rest of the conference.
</blockquote>
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Home | Booknotes
| Darwiniana |
Last Modified
07/27/09
website copyright
2008
Contact
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
