Steve and Arlo, I think it is helpful to analyze religion as an attempt to "staticize" revelation.
> [Steve] > Note that this quote is not a condemnation of ALL religion--only religion > as it > is commonly practiced. > > [Arlo] > I disagree, but maybe this is just terminology again. What he's saying (as > I > see it) is that religion IS (as you point out in your other post) > worshiping > the symbol rather than the symbolism. That's what MAKES it "religion" as > opposed to symbolic metaphor. > I think Arlo has got it exactly right. "Worshipping the symbol" is the religious impulse. The old testament of the Bible is interesting to read in light of this insight, for the struggle against idolatry is a constant drumbeat. Even while Moses was on the mount, getting the tablets inscribed by God's finger, the people below were "crafting" an image - the golden calf - to represent and objectify and contain within limits the limitless being of Godhood. In the story, Moses is warned by God to go on down and check out the doin's of the people, and when he sees them, he smashes the tablet. J. Ellul describes this story as the inevitable results of man's interaction with revelation. That man always tries to objectify and contain mystery in something controllable and in the inevitable conflict that results, something has to give or break. Moses wasn't struck down for daring to smash up what God's own finger had just carved, his was the prophetic act - the always enduring statement of what man does when given a concrete image of the poetic word. But does anybody pay attention to these lessons? Heck no. They go around with crucifixes around their necks, virtually boasting, "hey look at me, I've got God on stick" and then shoving it in your face as if their encapsulation of mystery was a factual achievement. grrrr. It gets me all riled up, I tell you. I completely sympathize with anti-religionists. They remind me of the smug estheticians who think they've got Quality defined, but all they've got is the putrescence of something they killed long ago. [Steve] > If Campbell had found no value in "other people's religion" he wasted his > career, don't you think? > > [Arlo] > Not at all. I think he found it shortsighted and ultimately defeating to > concretize myth, that the tendency towards "exoteric" readings of myth > moved > man AWAY from understanding and towards power and social structures. > > Amen. Preach it brother Arlo, preach it. > And here's where the terminology comes into play for me. The more you move > away > from "exoteric" and into "esoteric", the less and less what you are doing > could > be considered "religion". > > Think of it this way, if Campbell was saying "hey, we have this enormous > library here, and if we play around in it and read and think and ponder and > wonder, we may get closer to understanding the human condition", but then > there > are all these people who take ONE book, say Gulliver's Travels, and call it > The > One True Book, and say there is no meaning in any of the others... do you > think > Campbell would find value in that? Sure, there is still value in Gulliver, > but > the "religion" that would form around this one book is nothing Campbell > would > say is "good". > Khaled's example of the Koran getting translated word for word for some 1600 years is an example of over-attachment to the static encapsulation of revelation. You get some pretty rigid social systems when you do that. I think the most vital teaching of the Bible was realized in the Protestant Reformation when Luther pointed away from the pomp and circumstance of the Church, the pope-on-a-rope, God-on-a-stick style of religion, and pointed at the individual human heart, open to and receptive of the dynamic Spirit and it was this formulation of DQ as the center of thought which led to the enlightenment, the Renaisance, the scientific/industrial revolution. Which then ran into some problems of its own, for that urge of man to statically control mystery hasn't been quashed yet, and transferring the values to valuelessness just drops us into a different kind of angsty hell that Mark describes in his post. piously yours, Pope John Carl Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
