The Soul of Christianity: Restoring the Great Tradition (Plus) - Huston Smith
"The Soul of Christianity: Restoring the Great Tradition (Plus)" of Huston Smith
How to judge this book ?
- The first half (from "Preface" up to "Part One - The Christian worldview") is a great read, with plenty of material to quote from;
- but from Part Two - The Christian Story" onwards, the book becomes plainly boring... because it wants so much to emphasize the Love-aspect, while any reader knows that the Christian realities, throughout history, remain a mixed bag of Love and Terror.
- only from "The mind of the church" chapter onwards, which provides a definition of the foundational points in Christian theology, it becomes interesting again.
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Quotes:
p xxi
Peter Berger:
"If anything characterizes modernity,
it is the loss of the sense of transcendence - of a reality that exceeds and compasses our everyday affairs."
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We are seeing the culmination of a two-century transformation of
- liberal theology into ethical philosophy, and
- piety into morality.
Morality has become the foundation of liberal Christianity, rather than the reverse, and as a result the authority of religion has waned along with the mystery of the sacred. This capitulation to secularism is disastrous because, as Saul Bellow said, "it is hard to see how modern man can survive on what he now gets from his conscious life - now that there is a kind of veto against impermissible thoughts, the most impermissible being the notion that
man might have
a spiritual life he is not conscious of
which reaches out for transcendence."
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xxii
Plotinus saw clearly that "he who beholds beauty becomes beautiful", but beauty has ceased to be a presiding word among artists. It has been largely replaced with impact through various channels.
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p.xxiv
Individualism:
Modernity induces us to believe that there is no right higher than the right to choose what one beliefs, wants, needs or must possess. This gives us "the culture of narcissism" that Christopher Lasch described in his book by that title. We believe that our wills are
- sovereign because unpremised,
- free because spontaneous and
- the highest endowment we have.
The poet Rilke points out the consequence: "Let's be honest about it: we don't have a theater today any more than we have a God ; for (both) these community is needed."
So steeped are we in rampant individualism that it may be difficult for us to realize that it is not universal.
Many times when I have been in India and have been helped, the helper's response to my thanks has been not "You're welcome" but "It is my dharma, my duty." The concept of dharma
- attaches beauty to truth and
- renders the response "It is the duty God has imposed on me" - a far cry from what the helper might have been INCLINED to do.
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p.3
Augustine added: "God is a circle
- whose center is everywhere and
- whose circumference is nowhere."
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p.16
There is a new mood in Christendom:
a more conscious, general recognition that
though for Christians God is defined by Jesus,
he is not confined to Jesus.
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p.18
Reinhold Niebuhr explained that myth is "truer than history", because it refers to Transcendence, which cannot be accurately described in human language. It has to be circled and approached obliquely...
Joseph Campbell gave his generation a slogan to live by: "Follow your bliss". Writing this book has led me to conclude that "follow your aspiration or inspiration" is better. The words "inspire" and "inspiration" point us upward and are themselves inspiring. The word "spirit" derives from "breath". To breathe is to inhale spirit - Christians turn this into the Holy Spirit - and to aspire is to ride spirit to higher realms.
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TV-serial of Joseph Campbell & Bill Moyers: "the Power of Myth"
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p.80
Raak fragment
...over het (misplaatste) SCHULD/SCHAAMTE-gevoel (over eigen falen) waar, volgens Huston Smith, het christendom je van verlost (?!) - en jij denkt dan: "echt? en wat dan te denken van 'mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa' ?! -
...uit T. S. Eliot's "Little Gidding":
"Let me disclose the gifts reserved for age
To set a crown upon your lifetime's effort.
...
And last, the rending pain of re-enactment
Of all that you have done, and been; the shame
Of things ill done and done to others' harm
Which once you took for exercise of virtue."
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...vreemd vertaald als:
"Laat mij de gaven van de oude dag
onthullen die uw levenswerk bekronen.
...
Tot slot het schrijnende berouw om alles
wat u hier deed en was,
te laat beschaamd om uw beweegredenen en het besef van wat
u misdeed tot scha van anderen En
als een vorm van deugdzaamheid beschouwde"
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...door Paul Claes:
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p.104
p.104
"A Single Unified Science" by Phillip Sherrard, in which he defines the "fall (of man)":
"The fall may best be understood
- not as a moral deviation or as a descent into a carnal state, but
- as a drama of knowledge,
- as a dislocation and degradation of our consciousness,
- a lapse of our perceptive and cognitive powers—a lapse which cuts us off from the presence and awareness of other superior worlds and imprisons us in the fatality of our solitary existence in this world.
- to forget the symbolic function of every form and
- to see in things not their dual, symbiotic reality, but simply their non-spiritual dimension, their psycho-physical or material appearance.
Seen in this perspective, our crime, like that of Adam, is equivalent to losing this sense of symbols; for to lose the sense of symbols is to be put in the presence of our own darkness, of our own ignorance. This is the exile from Paradise, the condition of our fallen humanity; and it is the consequence of our ambition
- to establish our presence exclusively in this terrestrial world and
- to assert that our presence in this world, and exclusively in this world, accords with our real nature as human beings.
- not only of thinking that the world which we perceive with our ego-consciousness is the natural world, but also
- of thinking that our fallen, sub-human state is the natural human state, the state that accords with our nature as human beings.
This dislocation of our consciousness which defines the fall is perhaps most clearly evident in the divorce we make between
- the spiritual and the material,
- the esoteric and the exoteric,
- the uncreated and the created,
- to regard it as something quite other than the material realm and
- to deny that the Divine is inalienably present in natural forms or can be known except through a direct perception which bypasses the natural world— as though the existence of this world were, spiritually speaking, negative and of no consequence where our salvation is concerned.
This other-worldly type of esotericism only too often degenerates into a kind of spiritual debauchery, in the sense that it has its counterpart in the idea that it is possible
- to cultivate the inner spiritual life, and to engage in meditation, invocation, and other ritual practices, whether consecrated or counterfeit,
- while our outward life, professional or private, is lived in obedience to mental and physical standards and habits that not only have nothing spiritual about them but are completely out of harmony with the essential rhythms of being: Divine, human, and natural.
first,
that
- the way in which we represent to ourselves the physical universe, as well as
- our own place in it,
and second,
that insofar as is humanly possible, we conform every aspect of our life—mental, emotional, and physical—to this harmony, disengaging therefore from all activity and practice which patently clash with it.
If we offend against the essential rhythms of being, then our aspirations to tap the wellspring of our spiritual life are condemned to fruitlessness, or in some cases may even lead to a state of psychic disequilibrium that can, in truth, be described as demonic.
The divorce between the spiritual and the material means that material forms are regarded as
- totally non-spiritual, and thus
- either as illusion
- or as only to be known through identifying their reality with their purely material aspects.
- not only to denying the spiritual reality of our own created existence,
- but also, through depriving natural things of their theophanic function, to treating a Divine revelation as a dead and soulless body. And in this case it is not only of a kind of suicide that we are speaking; we are also speaking of a kind of murder.
It is just as dangerous to think we can
- attain a knowledge of God
- while ignoring, or even denying, His presence in existing things and in their corresponding symbolic rituals
- attain a knowledge of existing things
- while ignoring, or even denying, the Divine presence that informs them and gives them their reality.
- a knowledge of the outward appearance of things—of what we call phenomena—
- without a knowledge of their inner reality;
- a knowledge of this inner reality
- which does not include a knowledge of the outer appearance.
- cannot be understood simply from its letter, from its outward literal sense; it
- can be understood only when interpreted by the spiritual science of its inner meaning.
There is an unbreakable union between
- the esoteric and the exoteric,
- the feminine and the masculine, between
- the inner reality of a thing and its external appearance.
...as found in "Not of this World: A Treasury of Christian Mysticism" -http://www.worldwisdom.com/public/viewpdf/default.aspx?article-title=A_Single_Unified_Science_by_Philip_Sherrard.pdf
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p.118
p.118
It was a relief to read the following no-nonsense paragraph, regarding "The Resurrection of the Body":
'Jesus’ resurrected body
was not his corpse resuscitated
nor is
the resurrected body that the Apostles’ Creed affirms.
- Aha !?
Surprising to read that,
because other authors, like Mr. N.T. Wright, dare to put it blundly: "the bodily resurrection of Jesus is actually the most plausible explanation of the actual events":
AUTHOR
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N._T._Wright BOOK
YT
Summary
Review
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St. Paul stated this clearly when he pointed out that “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God,” and Jesus anticipated him. When the Sadducees, who did not believe in resurrection, tried to trick him by saying that if resurrection were true, remarried widows would find themselves with multiple husbands in heaven, Jesus informed them that in heaven there is neither marriage nor betrothal, for the resurrected are, like angels, without gender.
What the doctrine of the resurrection of the body affirms is that what survives death
- is not a disembodied soul that is withdrawn from the body like a piston from its syringe.
- It resembles Aristotle’s anima (soul),
which
- is the agent that activates and organizes a body, whether that body is vegetable, animal, or rational, and
- adds to these the resurrected body for the anima/soul to work with.
Eternal life is not simply a prolongation of this life, which ... many would not regard as an attractive prospect. It is
- life of a higher order than life on earth;
- a life that can be obtained only through death and resurrection and
- that, though we can and must begin to enter upon it now, can be consummated only in eternity. '
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EASTERN ORTHODOXY
p.147
A nineteenth-century classic of Russian spirituality, The Way of a Pilgrim
...over het Jezusgebed
Summary of the classic:
The pilgrim got on to this “string” through noticing, during the scripture reading in a church liturgy, three puzzling words: those in which St. Paul admonishes the Thessalonians to “pray without ceasing.” How is it possible to pray without ceasing? he wondered.
...
He comes on a starets (a man of advanced spirituality) who knows. Reaching for his copy of the Philokalia, the starets says, “No, it’s not more sublime and holy than the Bible. But it contains clear explanations of what the Bible holds in secret. And it tells you what you are searching for, how to pray without ceasing.”
The starets opens the book and reads aloud:
“Sit down alone and in silence. Lower your head, shut your eyes, breathe out gently, and imagine yourself looking into your own heart. Carry your mind—that is, your thoughts—from your head to your heart. As you breathe out, say ‘Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on me.’
“Say it moving your lips slowly, or simply say it in your mind,” the starets adds. “Try to put all other thoughts aside. Be calm, be patient, and repeat the prayer very frequently.”
The pilgrim is overjoyed with his find. The starets dismisses him with his blessing and tells him that he must return if he encounters difficulties. The pilgrim finds a garden in a nearby village and sets to work, but in three weeks he returns to the starets reporting boredom. The starets receives him, and perceiving that the pilgrim is serious he settles down to work with him in earnest. He gives him a rosary and tells him to repeat the prayer
- three thousand times the first day,
- six thousand times for the next two days,
- then twelve thousand times, and
- then without limit.
What happens this time? The first two days are difficult. After that, the prayer “becomes so easy and likable that as soon as I stopped, I felt a sort of need to go on saying it. I grew so used to my prayer that when I stopped for a single moment I felt as though something were missing, as though I had lost something. The very moment I started the prayer again, it went on easily and joyously.”
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p.150
J. D. Salinger is best known as the author of Catcher in the Rye, which became a minor classic in its time for unmasking the phoniness in modern life. In its sequel, Franny and Zooey (which first appeared in two consecutive issues of The New Yorker magazine), he uses the Jesus Prayer to point the way out of that phoniness.
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PROTESTANTISM
p.154
Luther’s statement:
“everyone must do his own believing
as he will have to do his own dying.”
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p.156
p.156
The other controlling perspective in Protestantism has come to be called the “Protestant Principle.” Stated philosophically, it warns against absolutizing the relative. Stated theologically, it warns against idolatry.
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p.159
To insist that God cannot be equated with anything in this tangible, visible world leaves people at sea in God’s ocean. God doubtless surrounds us; but to gain access to human awareness, divinity needs to be condensed and focused.
This is where, for Protestants, the Bible figures. ...The Bible is, for Protestants, ultimate... in the sense that when human beings read this record of God’s grace with true openness and longing for God, God stands at the supreme intersection between the Divine and the human. There, more than anywhere else in the world of time and space, people have the prospect of catching, not with their minds alone but with their whole beings, the truth about God and the relation in which God stands to their lives. No derivative interpretation by councils, peoples, or theologians can replace or equal this. The word of God must speak to each individual soul directly. It is this that accounts for the Protestant emphasis on the Bible as the living word of God.
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p.164
{My realization of} modernity’s mistake (with its disastrous consequences for the human spirit) came into clear focus. I had been dealing with that mistake for decades, but only then could I condense it into a single sentence. Its mistake, I saw, was its inability to distinguish absence-of-evidence from evidence-of-absence. Alternatively stated, I saw that it failed to see that the fact that science cannot get its hands on supernatural things such as God is no proof that they don’t exist.
Next came the realization that there is a worldview that all religions share, a “universal grammar of religion” that parallels Noam Chomsky’s discovery of the universal depth grammar that sets the rules for all human languages...
- The technical language of science, which is mathematics.
- The technical language of religion is symbolism, with storytelling one of its most important varieties.
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