The Pilgrim Exiting Civilization on the Tiger

The Korean Christian culture requires some removal from normal Korean society and thought processes that are integral to the traditional culture. It is a culture where shamanism is extremely prevalent and it is easy to see its remnants throughout social practices and attitudes, but even when we are looking at life through a non-religious element we see certain attitudes towards sexuality that can undercut even Western secular concepts about it in a way that outright atheism cannot. Basically, there are so many aspects about traditional Korean thought that are rooted in outlooks based in Eastern religion that it being a Korean Christian means a separation from tradition. 

This morning I woke up and watched a Japanese Christian describing one of the biggest & greatest barriers to entrance into Christianity as the fear that Japanese have of not meeting community expectations and expectations of their ancestors to honor them, and it can also be daunting in general to hear that their ancestors may not be in heaven... it grinds too much against them. This is solved in Korea with many people having realized that replacing certain aspects of the traditions with Christian prayer fills the gap between Christ and the East and still fulfills cultural obligation. Probably the same can occur in Japan, but that threshold just has not been hit. 

Probably all civilizations have had issues like this which separate it from Christ, and this is also why even Jewish religion, with its monotheism, stuck out like a sore thumb to its neighbors. Rejecting the worship of traditional spirits, ancestors, etc., and the many deities that are thought necessary to maintain life and happiness, and eventually even replacing this with the very Christian idea that you can pray but maybe it's only going to bring you persecution, shows such a radical departure from traditional ideas about life. 

In a wonderful post on PoFo, #15,354,109, I was able to get grain inspiration from Annater who points out that civilization itself seems to have a pagan nature to it that is conducive to polytheism. This is in line with a lot of what we see in real life, how civilization propels people to eagerly worship things that are not God, whether that is mammon or lust. Call me crazy, but I affirm the traditional view - these things are presided over by demons, what the pagans call gods. 

Annater talked about how the West has a tradition of creating circumstance where Annater has the capacity to be a pilgrim, "to be in a civilization but not of a civilization." He equates this with... 

"To ride the Tiger and let Nature Flow as Nature does. Even somewhat "Chinese about it."

This is some of his most profound writing, in my opinion, perhaps the opus dei of his amazing posting career. 

I will have to return to the 'Chinese' part at the end of this post. But first, back to ideas about Western civilization...:

What makes the West unique is that their traditions have a history of exiting civilization. We should perhaps refer to the West of having a history that treats the soul as a pilgrim who defies secular and temporal realities. The individual does not feel boxed into certain pagan rites or obligations. I am not saying that pagan civilization did not previously have rebels who defied these norms and expectations, in fact, I think it is the case that pagan civilization frequently becomes decadent and incapable of fulfilling its traditional pagan rites, but the gods are indifferent about this. Why? Because the worship of fortune/money, fertility rites, and ancestor worship are just the worship of greed, lust, and pride, and many other things as the context provides for them in the practice of these rites. The gods do not need to disturb the decadence because the decadence feeds their hunger and serves their purpose as demons. 

Because we are based on the rejection of pagan civilization, modern Western civilization is liberal as it is liberating individuals of previous obligations and boiling religion down to a far more intimate, personal experience. Moreover, Western civilization is highly self-critical, and it encourages also the criticism of that which is around it as a means of separating oneself from the fallen world.  

Oddly enough, you could say that the Christian civilization is one that has a spirit of self-appraisal and critique baked into it, and so secular institutions which attempt to circumvent these things are doomed by the increasing literacy and naturally rebellious pilgrim spirit of Western civilization. 

Of course, it takes centuries to build up the necessary momentum to achieve the real blossoming of this we first see, the Renaissance, but real eyes would actually look to the monasteries of the dark ages and medieval world, and to also look at the way that Christianity always created a tension within government that emphasized legality and limitation of tyranny for the explicit sake of all people that is the deep roots of this liberalizing and progressive force. 

You could say that human rights are in the DNA of Christianity. After all, it abolished the slavery of the Roman world outright. Serfdom and other difficult economic relations that subsequently appear in the West would keep people arguing against my point, but remember that slavery was essentially reinvented in the West by Protestants when they went to the new world, and they promply abolished it again a couple centuries later.

You can also credit Christianity with making the West hyper-creative, even outright countercultural and revolutionary. For in Christianity, the worldly culture is not a definitive commentary on truth, the truth is something that transcends the world, and so disposal of conventional cultural understandings, of common "truths" and even common "sense" and traditions is seen as not just as excusable, but even praiseworthy.

The Christian is actually here to radically re-envision himself and the world so as to make room for Christ and to embrace his worldly neighbor, creating a completely new space in each generation in an attempt to perfect himself and be a light to others.  

In short, Western civilization was able to redefine what makes a civilization due to the influence of Christianity... It was able to create a whole new concept of governance and social ontology that is highly transient and contractual and noninvasive because Christ blew up the mythos surrounding power and redefined interpersonal relations, removing traditional emphasis on blood ties that was overly clannish and localized. 

Now, in regards to how this is Chinese... 

There is a distinct tieback into Eastern philosophy in riding the tiger. The East is obsessed with the world as an often arbitrary, domineering nature that eats us up but it has within it something that is also pleasing and defining. It erases particularity of the individual by emphasizing the interconnectivity (interpenetration) of the whole, and in this it actually can begin to subvert secular power and redefine relationships. 

Thus in a sense there are some notes from Taoism that are uniquely affirming to a Christian outlook on this... 

Modern Western Christians tend to not see this easily, but the Eastern Orthodox can in the sense that they emphasize the incarnation of God in earth and His Death on the cross as a final blood sacrifice that permeates the world, redefines our relationship with God, and allows for salvation. 

They also understand the concept of being a floating minority in a cruel world - the Eastern Christians have tragic relations with the world and emphasize historical saints that suffered and were martyred, and they see in them the highest glory. This affirms a sort of arbitrary, naked natural power that is lurking in the wilderness to eat us all... 

We refer to the world sometimes as the Desert, so even some of the monasteries on Mt. Athos where there is no desert can refer to the nature around them as a desert due to the symbolic meaning. Desert denotes wilderness, and that wilderness denotes the natural world and raw state of power that is out there swallowing everything. 

Western Christianity overemphasizes the individual, and the East emphasizes the whole of Creation, I feel, and thus tends to encourage self-erasure of the individual through emphasis of Creation as a means of producing humility and peace with the arbitrary, predatory state of nature... 

And who is then trying to create PARADISE, UTOPIA in such a world? 

It comes off as profoundly Chinese in terms of its spiritual dimensions because it emphasizes unity with the creation and ignores the Catholic and Protestant urge to conquer creation and build. 

Christians are not here to conquer anything but themselves, and they are no there to build anything but the church. 

Thus, it has its strong parallel with the spirituality of a Chinese peasant who is riding the tiger of unpredictability and upheaval, uncaring or even oblivious to the society that rages around him because he neuters it but calling it what it is: never-ending chaos that isn't even really my business. 

(This strain of thought is, of course, most clearly Taoist, but the assumption of a chaotic, uncontrollable reality is absolutely also a Confucian concept.)

Without the Esoteric, the West Reaches a Dead End

Western countries and religion feel dead and trite, at worse, and contentious and personal, at best. People on both the left and right try to recast their societies in new ways, seeking to find meaning in a story that nobody can really follow anymore. We are seeing people even expand the scope of their political and social theories, blowing them up to the point where they now take the place of religion itself. 

But still, it's in religion -- religion which convincingly makes contact with the mystical -- that we will find what can actually be the driving force for something that is not just adequate for the lives of individuals, the society, and a generation, but which can be the basis of multiple civilizations and countless humans over millennia. 

Cue Dugin & Dzhemal.

In the aftermath of the dissolution of the USSR, Iran was one of Russia’s few remaining partners in the Middle East, and both Dzhemal and Dugin provide spiritual legitimacy for this strategic partnership. For Dugin, Orthodox Christianity is close to Shia Islam since both managed to preserve their esoteric nature, while Western Churches and Sunni Islam degenerated and became “purely social” religions (Dugin 1995, sections 3 and 4).

 Between Salafism & Eurasianism: Geidar Dzhemal and the Global islamic Revolution in Russia

Aleksandr Dugin

They are talking about religion as a fundamental organ for the anatomy of civilization. Other religions have become purely social, but these two are in touch with the spiritual world above. 

When I first read this, I tried to understand this as Orthodox (and Shi'a, but I can't actually comment on Shi'a well) having just a fundamentally different philosophical & sociopolitical approach because they are still esoteric, and not "social." But it was falling short in my head. I think the conclusion is more radical... Bear with me.

The Orthodox have an impenetrable and inscrutable monastic tradition that lends itself to mysticism & is very esoteric. It cannot be digested by anything secular, and stands above conventional politics, and even the scandals of the Church. 

It's vital that this is inaccessible (unlike the Vatican). If you ain't on Athos, you ain't nothin. Nobody cares what any joinalist says about this. What matters is what Br. Nektarios said after his trip to the Holy Mountain. It could be a strange prophecy of a war between Turkey & Russia, or just a talk about how everyone should hang a cross on their door. It is also thought that there are endless mysteries happening on the Mountain that we will never have access to, and these are completely real. 

St. Poprhyrios wrote that, during evening prayers, there are spiritual earthquakes happening all over Mt. Athos; you can feel it. The whole mountain opens up. You can find beliefs about the mysterious nature and spiritual power that extend to other monastic communities in Orthodoxy, and pay attention to other great events, like the Holy Fire in the Holy Sepulchre. 

Because of this, there is a link between the laypeople struggling in the modern world and the Divine, and this comes purely from the ascetics, and is unfiltered by media or modernity. Mysticism is strong, and legends grow around it.  The ultimate reality about God is accessible, and the mundane is being constantly overshadowed by this. 

I would insist that this is also happening in Catholicism and in Protestantism, but that these are the exceptions to the religious body, and not the rule. More importantly, it's spotty. Unlike Orthodoxy, the whole (or close to the whole) of the Church is not animated by this relationship, and it only exists on the fringes and actually can be embarrassing to the more mainstream. What Protestants do you know that are proud of speaking in tongues and handling snakes? What Catholics do you know that talk extensively about spiritual warfare with the demonic and the meaning of Marian apparitions? 

The meaning seems to likely be that Orthodoxy (and presumbaly Shi'a Islam) maintain the spiritual élan vital, which ultimately can give us a political & civilization force that is above any contemporary Western (or Sunni) model. 

Because the Orthodox community has access to the mystical and truly believes in a spiritual world that is strong, it's capable of a different kind of civilization. Its structure is not limited to secular power and culture, its not defined solely by history, literature, and a political state. It is able to be united through the chalice across time & space; it is bound together by God. Its ultimate authority are found in the mystical and the esoteric, a force that is greater than the Bishops of the church and their stuffy letters, and is surely far greater than the concept of the political state or some cultural icon of a writer or painter. 

Orthodoxy has within it access to the divine. Even if you do not accept that, like presumably Dzhemal himself does not, you can acknowledge that what is happening within Orthodox communities is greater than what can happen in the countries whose religions have been downgraded to mere social statuses: it is esoteric, mystical, uncontrollable, lived in addition to learned. 

Because it occupies a higher and greater space, it is capable of taking up a greater place in the life of the people and the nation. Orthodoxy is not just able to be some common social reference point, it is capable of being the truth and foundation of a civilization. 

While moderns try to find meaning, and try to blow up these narratives about discrimination, policing, and ethnic diversity into a common faith to unite the people, there exists that which can actually do it, but due to the pride of people, who wish to only look to themselves as the criterion for everything, it is out of their reach. Because they view humans as the ultimate measure and ultimate end, they are damned to their humanism, and trapped by their narrative. 

But above and beyond them exists a universe to which they are blind, and this is ultimately why their ways of thinking and their systems will not last into the future. They can only build that which is limited to this time. 

Without the esoteric, an organ in the anatomy of civilization is missing. 

On the Son Not Knowing (Mt. 24:36)

On Reddit, a user had asked about the proper interpretation of Matthew 24:26, stating that Christ actually that "Christ didn't understand the Trinity." While the question itself is a bit absurd, I was inspired to look into the matter myself and came up with a response that has been modified for consumption on the blog...

Naturally, there will be a Protestant interpretation, and I will use the interpretation of Charles J.  Ellicott, a Bishop in the Church of England. interpretation of this is that Christ had put on self-imposed limits to His Divinity while on Earth:

Neither the Son.—The addition to St. Matthew’s report is every way remarkable. It indicates the self-imposed limitation of the divine attributes which had belonged to our Lord as the eternal Son, and the acquiescence in a power and knowledge which, like that of the human nature which He assumed, were derived and therefore finite. Such a limitation is implied by St. Paul, when he says that our Lord “being in the form of God . . . made Himself of no reputation” (or better, emptied Himself), “and took upon Him the form of a servant.” (See Note on Philippians 2:6-7.) It is clear that we cannot consistently take the word “knoweth” as having a different meaning in this clause from that which it bears in the others; and we must therefore reject all interpretations which explain away the force of the words as meaning only that the Son did not declare His knowledge of the time of the far-off event.

Note that this is actually Ellicott's interpretation of the passage of Mark 13:32, which corresponds directly to the Matthew 24:36 passage.

Charles J. Ellicott

I was a bit surprised to see him cutting off the possibility that this was something that he actually knew. It was like he wanted to truly break away from the older interpretations, which he would have been aware of, and it was a vital part to the Anglican understanding of the Trinity at this time to speak of Christ as self-limiting on Earth. 

Admittedly, this is, to some degree, more elegant because it simplifies the problem more, and this may even be the sort of argument which has more direct appeal with non-Christians and atheists. It's also something that you can argue easily without becoming tripped up or having to stretch the argument out to someone who is already unconvinced of the Trinity. I might even find myself tempted to use this argument if I felt it was more appropriate, but, ultimately, you have to actually go with the right argument that backs up our strong interpretation of Christianity that does not seek to diminish the power of Christ. 

... And whenever I want to see what a proper theologian has to say about this, someone who can really set the standard for Church theology, St. John Chrysostom is my first stop. He did not disappoint as he wrote quite at length on it, and his interpretation would be more classical and what you would find from the Orthodox and likely from many Catholics... It also affirms a stronger and more robust understanding of the Trinity. 

St. John Chrysostom

It's all also written in a very classic style that can be a bit abstruse and flowery. It's a hard style to read but it is also one of my favorite styles because in what it lacks in clarity it makes up for in one-liners buried in paragraphs and its extensive treatment of the topic, but I understand why the modern mind ended up moving away from the style: we want information clear, concise, and immediately presented to us. 

Allow me to summarize his arguments as best as I can. 

I. Christ was very immediately closing the line of inquiry and making it a grave matter, very distant from those who spoke to, by saying God alone knows it -- remember the particular reverence for God which Jews have -- doing ablutions when they were even going to write his name in the Torah. To talk about God the Father, in this context, is indeed an "awful" thing:

Therefore He refers it to His Father, both to make the thing awful, and to exclude that of which He had spoken from their inquiry. 

The mere mentioning of the Father should be enough for religious Jews to be stopped in their tracks, and that this is something that is said prior to the Crucifixion and resurrection.

IIa. Christ then proceeds to tell them a sign for when the end times are coming, clearly showing that He does actually have knowledge of it. It is merely that what is given to us is extremely limited.

... that the silence is not a mark of ignorance on His part, see, together with what we have mentioned, how He sets forth another sign also.

He is referring to how Christ in passages 37- 41 literally gives us some important ideas about these end times that were inquired about. 

Moreover, before St. John Chrysostom says these signs, He has even given us this passage to show that Christ and the Holy Spirit certainly are not ignorant of it:

And the Father He knoweth clearly, even as clearly as He knoweth the Son; and of the day is He ignorant? Moreover, "the Spirit indeed searcheth even the deep things of God," [2819] and doth not He know so much as the time of the judgment? But how He ought to judge He knoweth, and of the secrets of each He hath a full perception; and what is far more common than that, of this could He be ignorant? And how, if "all things were made by Him, and without Him was not even one thing made," [2820] was He ignorant of the day? For He who made the worlds, [2821] it is quite plain that He made the times also; and if the times, even that day. How then is He ignorant of that which He made?

IIb. He mentions that Christ also further closes off this line telling them that it is their duty to watch for it, as a thief may come in the night. This was his means for encouraging all Christians to look for the end times and the day of Judgment in order to always be working in preparation for it, for their own demise as well even, so that "they may always be ready;" " His meaning is like this: if the common sort of men knew when they were to die, they would surely strive earnestly at that hour. "

Christ tells them to keep watch in passages 42-44.

IIc. "After this, He openly calls Himself Lord, having nowhere spoken so distinctly. "

He is referring to verse 42 in which Christ says "“Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come." Previously, He is simply referring to Himself as the Son. 

III. St. John Chrysostom also argues that His claims to ignorance of the final days were not even meant to be interpreted this way, but rather are rhetorical statements, which is really the heart of the argument. The Golden Mouthed gives us these beautiful words: 

Wherefore He first saith this, "Who then is the faithful and wise servant, whom his Lord shall set over [2832] His household to give them their meat in their [2833] due season? Blessed is that servant, whom his Lord when He cometh shall find so doing. Verily I say unto you, that He shall make him ruler over all His goods." [2834]

Tell me, is this too the language of one who is in ignorance? For if because He said, "neither doth the Son know," thou sayest He is ignorant of it; as He saith, "who then?" what wilt thou say? Wilt thou say He is ignorant of this too? Away with the thought. For not even one of them that are frantic would say this. And yet in the former case one might assign a cause; but here not even this. And what when He said, "Peter, lovest thou me?" [2835] asking it, knew He not so much as this? nor when He said, "Where have ye laid him?" [2836]

And the Father too will be found to be saying such things. For He Himself likewise saith, "Adam, where art thou?" [2837] and, "The cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is waxed great before me. I will go down therefore, and see whether their doings be according to their cry which cometh unto me, and if not, I will know." [2838] And elsewhere He saith, "Whether they will hear, whether they will understand." [2839] And in the gospel too, "It may be they will reverence my Son:" [2840] all which are expressions of ignorance. But not in ignorance did He say these things, but as compassing objects such as became Him: in the case of Adam, that He might drive him to make an excuse for his sin: in that of the Sodomites, that He might teach us never to be positive, till we are present at the very deeds; in that of the prophet, that the prediction might not appear in the judgment of the foolish a kind of compulsion to disobedience; and in the parable in the gospel, that He might show that they ought to have done this, and to have reverenced the Son: but here, as well that they may not be curious, nor over busy again, as that He might indicate that this was a rare and precious thing. And see of what great ignorance this saying is indicative, if at least He know not even him that is set over. For He blesses him indeed, "For blessed," saith He, "is that servant;" but He saith not who this is. "For who is he," He saith, "whom His Lord shall set over?" and, "Blessed is he whom He shall find so doing."

So, the singular passage raises this question of whether or not the Son knows, but it was only a rhetorical device to (I) deter future inquiry, (II) in other passages immediately following it He proceeds to call Himself Lord and speak clearly of the signs, and (III) these rhetorical devices are used elsewhere in the Bible which show that Christ referring to the Son as not knowing is also a sort of device. 

And please remember that I am no theologian at all but only attempt to field questions here and there that may not be being addressed.