Hello. I’m new as a poster, but I’ve lurked around a bit.
Just today I was responding to several posts within a thread begun by a non-Christian in a forum which I visit daily. This forum is dedicated to ideas and questions regarding the work of Ken Wilber who is a philosopher specializing in Integral Philosophy. It’s all very interesting to see what is going on there, and multitudes of good questions are being asked and ideas pondered. As I was responding to a question about the Purpose of Life, I stumbled upon something that I never really saw before.
I credit Jolene and MichaelD for inspiring me. Michael was using the Bible passage of Genesis 1:26 to express dissatisfaction with the value of “dominion” which he understood to be Christian and posited instead his value for humans to produce meaning. I applauded his intuition about the bad news of “dominion” and offered some help in seeing it from a larger view. I’ll edit my post a bit so as to fill in gaps and eliminate unnecessary context, but this is what I came up with:
Okay, here’s my 2 cents.
Lots of folks get stuck on that “dominion” word. It’s a bugger. I’m pretty sure that it’s about God who is outside of duality, saying that He is placing humanity within a duality, and that humans will have power with which to manipulate things within this duality. Manipulate being a neutral word from the perspective of God who is non-dual. This is totally reasonable. If One is going to create Beings, why not give them something to do and power with which to do it?
But not only power to manipulate, because the original language suggests power to destroy or annihilate. I think He is saying that we have what it takes to win, should a battle occur. And whadda ya know, a battle shows up, in the form of one of those creepy things mentioned in Gen. 1:26! God is making the pieces, placing them in position on the board, and empowering His guys with enough juice to win over the other guy’s pieces (The other guy is not a Creator, so he cannot create his own pieces, he will have to “inhabit” the pieces which God created in order to move around on the board and manipulate things within the duality). And since that story includes an other guy, and he is pretty cunning, we can see that God’s anticipation was accurate - according to the narrative.
It’s important to interpret the narrative within the Tradition the narrative was created in and for. You may only have been exposed to the shallower Traditions. On behalf of the entire Church, I apologize. Your instinct to fix the problem is totally right on. The Frankl-like will to meaning is really beautiful!
I think you’re onto something with [Jolene’s] question containing the answer. From our point of view within the duality, it’s all starting to look kinda stupid. Before knowing that non-duality exists, the finish line seems to be “winning”. But once you realize that duality is only one side of a more complex reality, “winning” starts to feel really pointless and it’s reasonable to resent our being stuck here.
I think one of the things humanity has learned through becoming aware of non-duality is that, while “winning” requires no quality of character or integrity, naked existence is pointless without it. The struggle to become “Good” was never necessary within duality - and yet, even before our other eye [referencing the “3rd eye” idea for folk of eastern style spirituality] was opened, we still sensed the tension of Good vs. Evil. Even in cultures that don’t share our Creation Myth, Integrity emerged as an issue and a goal.
Ponder this…
If God had never Created the Duality and peopled it with us, winning would never have been important. In His space of existence, Evil emerged (inevitable when an Other decides to assert a will in the form of being “anti-“), yet the non-dual space could not furnish it with an “End”. It could only provide “Being” for all that “existed”. If you flip to the last page in the Novel [The end of the Book of Revelation], what we see is the end of Evil and the Redemption of all who engaged in the Duality and maintained the desire for Good throughout all of time. Assume for a moment that the definition for “Evil” is something we can all agree on - I know that’s asking alot, we’ve really screwed people over on this one, but just for a minute…
As humans we have both limitation and the ability to perceive the infinite. We can both engage in the battle and comprehend the importance of Goodness.
Now read the third chapter of Genesis, the first chapter of John’s Gospel and the last two chapters of Revelation.
Believe it or not, I wrote the entire thing out up until the end of that last big paragraph without thinking about Genesis 3:1-7. When it dawned on me that our Narrative itself includes the ideas of “eyes being opened” and “nakedness” and the idea of “being like God” or “wisdom” in relation to “knowing” or “being able to perceive” “Good and Evil” from a position outside of it, or a pov of “non-duality” - I stopped breathing for a moment. What have I stumbled upon!?
I have recently been informed that the extremely ancient Christian Tradition of “Hesychasm” includes the awareness of Non-duality and that God dwells in this kind of state. I credit Sky for that wonderful tid-bit. Love the Orthodox. They have preserved treasures for us.
How many wonderful questions does this raise!?
Why does “death” become necessary when we perceive non-duality?
What really would have happened if we had “won” the battle and hadn’t taken the fruit?
Does this shed any more light on the “curses”?
How is this different than most of the interpretations that we’re used to on the Fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil?
Can this idea be disproven or is it merely disagreed with?
Is this similar to other interpretations of our Narrative within the Christian Tradition?
Is it merely a syncretism, or can this be considered Purely Christian?
Your thoughts please.
hesychasm
I think with regard to the simeon of studion model of hesychasm as opposed to the later more mystical expressions you may have something. However hesychasm has always been linked with pantheism and in that sense my perception is that it would be seen as syncretism.
Are you sure
Are you sure it’s simeon of studion - or did you mean metropolitan simeon of syria? (As interpreted in the light of pseudo-Anthony of Antioch, of course).
More input please!
This entire thing doesn’t rest on hesychasm. I’ve been informed that hesychasm is more panentheistic, not pantheistic. There are other Christian sources of non-dual experiences and impressions about God that confirm the idea. The non-duality of God doesn’t reveal itself to the rational mind very well, so it is best witnessed within experience. The pure witnessing spiritual disciplines are the place to find raw material on it, not the systematic theologies. I used hesychasm because it is so freakin’ old, it’s concise and because the mystics that came later and within different denominational expressions confirmed it. Similar ideas do not equal syncretism only. There are subtle differences between syncretism and confirmation. It’s good to get that straight - that’s what emergers are doing, and I’m grateful. That’s why I came here.
I would like to get more input on the implications of all this. It begs alot of questions.
Filling in some blanks...
I’m pretty sure that this idea is consistent within the Christian Narrative, so I’m just going to proceed on to use it to fill in some blanks in other parts of the Narrative. Starting with Job. I posted this last night in response to a woman who is a non-believer. She asked about the story of Job because of the obvious questions it raises and this explanation passed the muster.
After I wrote this, I went back and read the end of the story where God suggests that they "take this outside". I was amazed to find several points growing more distinct as a result of this idea. My pov is outside of everything you can and even can’t see. I not only exist outside of everything you know, but I Created everything you know.
Job’s reply: "Okay, I’ll shut up now."
"Not good enough!" God says, and continues…
You are at the mercy of everything I have Created.Job’s reply: "Okay! Your purpose will prevail. I can’t tell what’s real and what’s not from my pov. I’ve heard about You, but now I See You. I am ashamed of my limited predjudices."
"Now, then! As for Job’s friends:" God says, and continues…
You are idiots! Job has been right. You have been wrong. Ask Job to intercede for you so I don’t squash you.The bit that interests me is when God vindicates Job in front of his friends. Job was right! They were wrong! Right about what? Job was sorely provoked and said some things that his piety had previously prevented him from even considering. His friends too had that same sense of piety that probably held him back from blurting such acusations. But that piety was wrong. Job’s questions were true and honest. The piety was a barrier between suffering and God, preventing us from contaminating Him with our faulty theology. God chose to reward the man who chose to forgo the dishonesty and instead get real. The same honesty that Jesus Himself would arive at at His last moments before death. "What the *$@! is going on here?!"
Satan had mistakenly thought (as often do we) that if we suffer badly enough, we can ask questions that will knock God off the throne or cause us to lose our place in line for Blessing, or worse - Heaven! We must keep a pious and respectful attitude at all times because our salvation depends upon it. Yes, our salvation depends upon our attitude. How many "bible-believing", saved-by-grace evangelicals would deny that they believe this with words, yet act as if they truly do? God’s assesment of Job’s character was this prior to the test,
I wonder if this was a trick question. "Fear" was the one thing Satan didn’t have. Not being part of the Dualistic Creation, he feared no annihilation. He considered himself superior to Job because fear caused by the duality provided a point of leverage with which anyone could easily tip a human being over. But there was no leverage point to unballance Satan. No advantage.
But because he Opposed God, he created a sort of Duality of his own, and there was only one way to get under him. Us. His faith in his own greatness and superiority was his weakness, and God provoked him into letting us tip him over. Satan stripped Job bare of every reason to live, and thus every reason to fear. Then God showed Satan how fear doesn’t merely weaken us, but strengthens the bond between God and humans, stripping away the false piety that gets in the way of raw exposure and vulnerability - then we have the advantage over Satan, even while we dare to question God!
Demons experience fear. We saw that when Jesus exposed them. I don’t think I can imagine what that must be like for a being who originally had no "termination code". Everything that has a begining, has an end.
What sort of duality exactly?
Whitewave, I’m not sure I understand exactly what you mean by ‘duality’. What particular duality do you have in mind when you say that God has placed man in a duality - we don’t have access to the original discussion so it’s a bit out of context? There are some very interesting, but also to be honest rather difficult, thoughts in your post. I’m not much of a philosopher and I’m struggling to know how to respond to your reading of the Genesis narratives.
Perhaps as a place to start (after you’ve explained the duality) what is the basis for your statement that the language of Gen.1:26 ‘suggests power to destroy or annihilate’? I had always read this as a natural continuation of the creation: God makes all the stuff of the earth and then makes humankind in his image to pick up from where he leaves off, to act as a sort of sub-contractor. In order to subdue and rule over the whole earth they have to be fiuitful and multiply.
It also seems unlikely that the serpent was originally understood as a satanic force. It is one of the beasts of the field created by God - there is no suggestion of an evil power indwelling or making use of it, it is simply more cunning than the other creatures. In our minds the story has become heavily theologized, but it reads like a simple folk tale explaining why snakes crawl on their bellies. I suppose what I’m getting at here is that I think we need to be careful not to over-interpret these very old stories. They are very powerful and clearly seminal - but they may also be a lot simpler than we realize. Which is not to dispute your point about duality - I’m sure the stories deal with fundamental moral structures. The question for me is, How do we tie the biblical narrative and the philosophical narrative together?
By the way, thanks for being patient.
Holding my breath too long!
Color coming back into my face… much better. Thanks. Yeah, this is what I need. Keep bringing it back at me so I can straighten it all out. I’m more or less feeling my way through this right now, so I’m not checking all my facts as I go.
First off:
DUALITY
This idea is hard to grasp unless you know something about some of the Eastern ideas of the non-physical realm or heaven or the other side or whatever. Not only Eastern religions, but here and there, throughout the world and throughout time the idea of the dwelling of the gods being a place where the power struggles and cares of this life have no more meaning or power is more or less consistent. Once you realize just how much of our ideas about struggle are absent there, the dualities become more clear.
Life & Death Good & Evil Light & Dark Male & Female Strong & Weak Happy & Sad Having & Not Having Healthy & Sick Young & Old Material & Spiritual Wealthy & Poor etc.I know that there are plenty of other religious ideas about the dwelling place of the gods being very full of dualities and power struggles (Greek and Roman), and I think these are very common in the more ancient religions. I think this is largely due to the projection of human struggle onto the gods. I think humans prefer this idea in our less mature moments, because it can offer some form of leverage.
When our God expresses into this realm He speaks in dualities. That is as it should be. That is consistent with the entire unfolding story of God and Humans. I think, however, that there is also along side of this a progressivly unfolding hint about His less dualistic dwelling place, starting with Job.
Job’s story returns us to the starting place of incomprehensibility. We are shown our own reflection in God’s mirror of being completely without comprehension of God’s ideas of justice or Goodness, and from this starting place of complete darkness (not the starting place of false piety), our existence is disrobed until we stand naked again before God in a deep and terrifying acknowledgment of Risk.
One of the themes I see in the Narrative of Scripture is the constant covering over of this nakedness so as to try and control our situation and reduce risk. God is constantly interrupting that broadcast to bring us on-the-spot news that we can’t control squat. Even as He gives us the Law and the Rituals, He has to remind us that those things are not to be used to control Him, it only intercedes for us. His will is still His own. But we easily forget. As we still do even now. “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven…”
The New Testament gives us a fuller revalation of this with the Work of Jesus bridging some kind of gap between us and a state of Righteousness that is Beyond the Law. Sharing in God’s character somehow so that we can operate outside of that system which used to determine our status both within and without of our time-bound realm. Lots of juice there.
SUBDUE
I was going on memory when I wrote that, which is not one of my strengths. But when I re-checked it this morning in my Strong’s, I found this:
Your benign projection onto the english word is the same as mine was until my best friend brought that to my attention years ago, then it became a puzzle for me. God introduced violence before the Fall. Straight up.
You could almost get away with translating it “fight and win”. This is how Nietzsche was right, even though he didn’t fully understand it himself.
How is it unlikely that the serpent was seen as a satanic force? Are you saying that a really smart lizard tempted Eve in the garden and she took the fruit and then gave it to her husband who was with her and together they caused the downfall of the entire human race?! In all my years of listening to sermons and teachings, I’ve never heard that even mentioned as a possibility. What possible motive…?!
If you’re saying this story was crafted as a folk tale to explain to little children why snakes don’t have legs… well, I just don’t know what to say. What denominational Tradition teaches that? I’ve never heard of such an idea. Why not drop it into some collection of similar stories that explain hippos and the blue sky and the black dot in the middle of everyone’s eyes?
This story is in the context of explaining the origins of HUMANS in relation to the rest of Creation and how we got to be so screwed up. How can the first chapters of Gen. be read any other way?
I do understand the difficulty in taking these stories so seriously. I am a recovering Evangelical. I am powerless over the first verse. But that is also why I feel as free as I do to experiment with it all. I know that this was probably handed down and heavily stylized in an oral tradition over who knows how many generations. But I also believe that God left a reliable Witness to His acts within history so that from the Bible we can get a good enough working definition to proceed. Whatever really happened, it was enough like what the Narrative states that we can act on what we read. That’s what I believe about the whole Bible. Text has problems that I fully acknowledge. Ive worked out my own way of being able to loosely hold it, but hold it none-the-less.
As to your final question, I think I’ll need some clarification:
Which philosophical narrative? Are you referring to the idea of duality and non-duality being a philosophical narrative? I don’t think that’s an accurate tag. But I’ll proceed as if that’s what you mean - correct me if I’m wrong.
There are many narratives and/or spiritual disciplines that speak of a non-dualistic realm. I have to be careful here, because once you start talking about talking about this, you get off track. Abraham Heschel (Jewish philosopher/scholar) said this:
Once you start throwing words at something like this, it starts to get pretty convoluted. Less is often more. But Abraham still threw a bunch at it anyway because he is driving the effort to articulate. Somebody’s got to do it, and as Katagiri Roshi says, “You have to say something.” Hold it loosely.
The Biblical narrative offers us glimpses. Polaroids. “Look, quick! Something inexplicable in your world!” A bush that burns but will not be consumed! A voice coming out of no where! A sea of water that simply gets out of our way! Food falling out of the sky! The enemy army killing themselves and each other instead of us! And other such non-sensical things. All these things and more challenge some kind of duality and reveal some sort of powerful freedom from them. A freedom that we do not possess.
I, for one, am sick of hearing people explain away the miraculous in the Biblical Narrative and welcome more light on what it all means without doing damage to the integrity of the Narrative. I like meaning. I do. But I don’t think we have to retreat to meaning as a way to get away from the existence of the impossible. I think living with both is a more realistic way to understand being humans in a world Created by God.
For instance, Jesus walking on water. Impossible! Yeah! And what does it mean? I think it means that He is able to remain stable on something that normally causes instability. I think He invites Peter to do the same. This is about the Law (Law being concerned with duality - lots more juice around that!). Jesus is Lord of the Law, not the other way around. Is it a story created by humans to explain Jesus’ authority over the Law? No. It was an event that happened in history. An event that God created to explain Jesus’ authority over the Law.
Thanks for getting to this. I’m holding my breath again waiting for you to come back with more. ;-)
~Whitewave ____________________________________________________
~Paul
Subjugation, serpents and satan
Whitewave, I haven’t got time to address all your points straight off. I’ll try and come back to it.
The word kabash is used mostly in the OT to describe the subduing or subjugation of a land, generally through warfare, so that it may be peaceably ruled, or of a people who then become slaves. It is likely then that it is used in Gen.1:28 as a metaphor to signify the process of bringing an untamed creation under control in order to rule over it and exploit it. So you’re right, there are certainly negative overtones but to say that God ‘introduced violence’ before the fall is probably overstating it. I would have thought it’s only talking about the ‘force’ required in order effectively to subdue the natural world.
All I’m saying is that the story itself does not identify the serpent as satan. It is only a beast of the field that is cursed because it deceived Eve. I know this sounds too literalistic, but I see nothing in the story to suggest that the serpent was originally understood as the mouthpiece of a satanic being (we’ve been over this one before and people tend to disagree with me). Are we saying that satan was originally created as a ‘really smart lizard’ and then became a snake? Nor do I see any intrinsic (or for that matter extrinsic) reason to interpret the statement in 3:15 about the seed of the woman bruising the head of the serpent’s offspring as a messianic prophecy. It’s interesting that in the OT the serpent is often a means of God’s judgment on his people (eg. Num.21:6; Amos 9:3). That may well provide a more relevant explanation of the threat that the serpent posed to the woman’s seed than the traditional view that the serpent is satan.
No, the story was crafted to explain how it came about that humanity is in a ‘fallen’ state. One element in that story reads very much like an aetiological folk story - a story that explains the origin of something. It seems to me that this perspective brings us closer to understanding how the story works than the interpretation that makes the serpent a symbolic representation of a supernatural force. This is not about trying to defend some denominational tradition. It’s simply question of trying to read the text for what it is. If we think that the story is saying more than it appears to be saying, we need to give some sort of justification for that.
Text vs. The Text
Since the theory of text is an important snag for you, you need to accept the difficulty of your own text. You instinctively demand justification from others, but you must also justify yourself to others. Otherwise is there any reason for you to do so?
Instinct is a reason. Our instincts are complex, organic things - shaped by Narrative and the collective sub-c. and all sorts of personal agendas that may be very important and valid. The kinds of things that Jung would explain better than me. But they are not the absense of “reason”. They are part of our reason. Dismissing them is not the way to determine their acuracy. Going deeper will help, but we may never arrive at certainty.
Do you have a string dedicated to the telling of the story as you see it? Or one that elaborates more on your view of how we should understand text as emerger/pomos? Those would be inneresting reading, to be sure.
For now, your drive to experiment with text and story is competing with my drive to experiment with the text and the story. I don’t think we can get through to the end of my thought about the text and incorporate your thought about text at the same time.
For the purposes of arriving at an idea first so that it can then be examined, I’m going to proceed as if the Traditions that I have heard of concerning the interpretation of “the serpent” being some sort of channel to the Satanic are true.
I am also going to assume that the text that I have in my Bible is good enough to act upon. Competing ideas about myth would make it impossible for me to proceed at all.
______________________________________________________
Then why use that word? There are other words that have less intense meaning.
[WARNING! Generalization concerning gender ahead! Proceed with caution!] I’m not claiming that this is for certain, or making any other implications, but the fact that you are male and I am female might also be coming into play here. Have you ever played and/or enjoyed sports? I was a budding sprinter until I felt the sting of the competative agendas of others. Then I gave it up. I hate that kind of thing. While there are always exceptions to the rule, it seems men tend to assume that competition and dominating force are part of shaping outcomes. I do not. I see a very definite seperation between those two things and I prefer to avoid that kind of conflict.
One of the reasons this study is so important to me is because I am not good at dealing with many dualities in the way they present themselves to me, and I seek help in determining how to respond to them when it becomes necessary to use dominating force. I know that I am not alone, and while it is partly due to being female, it is also more than that.
There is a large demographic that prefers to find solutions to conflict that don’t rely only on dominating force. We have at times been forced to use it, and when people are forced to do something, they are often not as discerning in their method as they might be if they had been given a choice, and their efforts are often weak and random. I talk daily with people who are passivists in the old skool tradition, and some believe that that method still has major clout in the upcoming global conflicts. !! We need to find better solutions to duality if we’re going to move forward and not be crushed. I would like to see The Church lead the way this time, and not keep getting dragged behind or be left with the job of picking up the pieces.
My statement that God introduced violence before the Fall (and the surrounding ones about Duality) stands as it is. It is a reactionary or corrective move on my part, no doubt, but I have to make it none-the-less for the sake of myself and others like me. We need to figure out what God wants us to do about conflict PDQ, and the Church has not been clear enough up to this point to help us get out of the way of the oncoming train. Emerging Theology is the place to do that.
I would like to read your views about text and whatever other interesting views you might have about serpents and other assumptions that we instinctively make in strings dedicated to that. Truly.
~Whitewave ____________________________________________________
~Paul