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WHO WAS JESUS?
Some Random Thoughts on Religion
The thoughts expressed below are not prompted by our "Fifty volumes of classical literature", but by a lecture I read on the Coptic Christians of Egypt the other day. It set me thinking about religion generally.
Elsewhere (See Scribbles: Learning about Life) I have written about religion and the ways it can be badly distorted when institutionalised or politicised. Religious sects are often infected by "belligerence, bombast, bigotry, greed and most often of all: intolerance".
Yes, these are generalities, but then, as I said in 'Learning about Life", I am thinking of all religions, in very general terms.
No need to recall the barbaric episodes of most religions, such as torture, mutilation, discrimination and subjugation. These are self-evident. What worries me is the self-proclaimed certainty of certain religions, practising in a very uncertain world, let alone contemplating an after-life which is comprehensively Unknown. Most religions deny the mystery of the hereafter and instead invent a happy ending. The happy ending is often promised only to adherents who have Faith. Without Faith, they say, (faith in their particular religious beliefs) we risk being denied after-life benefits by their palpably narrow-minded God.
Though there are, of course, religious leaders who look with broad understanding at mankind's prejudices, fears and human foibles. Archbishop Tutu is one. And here is quote from the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, whose exceptional intellect defies my generalities. He said the other day (June 2007) while trying to bring togethertogether the world's quarrelling Epsicopalians:
"I believe good religion is good for people because it teaches you to be repentant,
to believe your actions are always fallible. . . Bad religion tries to persuade you that God is invariably and automatically on your side."
So I shall speak now of bad religion: We who have been brought up (and I mean brought up, not educated) in the Christian Faith know all about the sins of the Islamic Faith, such as bigamy, bullying, bigotry and the rest. But it requires some effort to understand the bigotry in our own broad Church.
Who, for instance, was or is Jesus?
The debate about the Son of God has been going on among believers for about 1,900 years. An interesting discourse on it was given recently by Eve Dunnell, entitled "From the Cross to the Crescent", given - not to any religious society - but to the South African Egyptian Society whose interest is specifically in the pharaohs and pyramids. This is because of the role ancient Alexandria played in two of the current major religions.
When the Coptic Church was established in Alexandria about 43A.D. it was competing with dozens of religions, including Pharaonic belief; the mystery religions Pan and Mistrain, and Greek religions such as Stoicism and Epicureanism. When Origen of Alexandria was the most influential Christian writer of his day (about 220AD) he fused Greek philosophy to Christianity, adding riches and inspiration perhaps to the Bible. He was tortured and died as a Christian, but was recognised neither as a saint nor a martyr as were many lesser mortals. . . because some in the Church thought his ideas might be heretical. Among the martyrs of the age was another Alexandrine, St Catherine, (famed through the Catherine-wheel firework) who was beheaded. She never questioned orthodoxy.
Christianity came to power, as it were, when Constantine controlled the whole Roman Empire and in the year 324 proclaimed Christianity to be the State religion. Only about 10% of the population were Christians.
At the very moment of its triumph, the Christian religion was sundered by the first of the great heresies, Arianism, named after Arius, a priest of Alexandria, who taught that God the Son was not co-eternal, co-equal or consubstantial with God the Father. In 325 Constantine summoned all Christian bishops to the Council of Nicaea where, by majority vote, Arianism was condemned as a heresy, and the Nicene Creed was adopted.
But the schism would not go away, and it contributed to the collapse of the Western Roman Empire which could not (or would not) cope with the influx of Germanic tribes who were Arians, and were therefore rejected as heretics. The Papacy increased its power by ensuring Roman rules and accusing the Greek bishops of unorthodoxy. . . leading to the Great Schism of Catholic and Orthodox in 1054.
Back in Alexandria in earlier times, a local saint (St Cyril) encouraged fanatical and ignorant monks to expel the Jews from the city-state, and was morally responsible for the lynching of Hypatia, a distinguished scholar, but a pagan and a woman. When Nestorius, Patriarch of Constantinople taught that God the Son had two natures, divine and human, and that Mary was not the mother of God, but only of Jesus?s human nature, Cyril had Nestorianism declared a heresy.
Then came Monophysitism, which stated that God the Son had one nature only. This was adopted by the Egyptian and other non-Greek churches, and was linked to national differences and political discontent with the rule of the Greek Roman Emperor. Monophysitism was condemned as a heresy by the Council of Chalcedon, and persecution of those who believed in it drove an irreconcilable wedge between Western and Eastern Christians.
Alexandria, a deeply divided city, surrendered to the besieging Arab Muslims on the promise that their religion would be protected. By 647 the whole of Egypt was under Arab rule. As a Muslim country it is the only one of all Christian countries conquered by Muslims, where Christianity has survived as a Church, despite being cut off from the Greek Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches ? who both regarded the Egyptian Coptic Church as heretical.
The irony is that the Copts have thus preserved some of the very earliest Christian customs and ceremonies ? as well as the ancient language of the pharaohs.
It is easy to pick on the Christians for their ?picky-ness?, because they profess their holy beliefs publicly and often, publicly, fall from grace like the rest of us mortals. The point I?m trying to suggest, however, is that the very institutionalisation of a belief leads to its own bigotry.
Is not spirituality enough? Can it not be accepted by any organised religion without getting into arguments over mortal and material articles of faith? Is it not possible to be spiritual as well as agnostic, and be accepted within some Church as such?
The question hardly affects the majority of us, however, because we are neither sufficiently spiritual nor of the true Faith.
Having read translations of the Quran, and learned interpretations of its 'laws' I fully appreciate the benevolence of the Muslim scriptures. However, surely it has to be said that Islamic mosques have kept astonishingly quiet in modern times about the fanatics in their midst. Perhaps the same criticism could have been levelled at the Catholic Church - especially in the days of the Spanish Inquisition. But that doesn't affect the Islamic problem of fanaticism.
It seems to me, from visiting Madrassahs, Mosques and Muslim haunts in Pakistan, Uzbekistan, in the Pashtun/Afghanistan tribal lands and elsewhere, that unquestioning zeal and militancy - violence in fact - is encouraged in very many madrassahs. Some actually preach jihad, suicide, holy martyrdom, which for institutionalised religion would seem unforgivable in this day and age. Spectres of racism and rabid nationalism are evident under the cloak of religious instruction, and efforts to curb them seem puny, especially in Pakistan.
Anyhow, the Muslim terrorism movement has a long history. It was old in the early 19th century when the 'mad mullahs' were objecting (rightly, but wildly and violently) to the insulting behaviour of visitors from the West.
Muslim-Christian tension actually sparked off World War One ( though it was the Serbs and the Bosnians who were behind the assassination of Archduke Frans Ferdinand at Sarajevo) while the Muslims of Croatia and the former Turkish colonies, who had oppressed the Christians for centuries, took the opportunity to pillage, loot and attack Croats and Serbs under the white cloak of patriotism.
The Balkans were in their usual state of turmoil. . . mainly because of religion. And it has been like that in the Middle East for nearly two centuries now.
Perhaps I'll come back to this intractable subject - religion - with some of the views of Einstein, Bertrand Russell, and other thinkers.
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