Saints, heretics, mysticism and truth
The history of Christian thought is quite varied, especially the early history. Until the First Council of Nicaea in 325 CE, Christian thought was not regulated at all – people with widely disparate views called themselves Christians. Even the earliest Christians – most notably Peter, James and Paul – had quite divergent views of the meaning of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. At first these dissenters were out in the open; but later, when the church became almost synonymous with the government, these people either had to go underground, tread lightly, or (in some cases) find themselves the guest of honor at a roast.
Modern scholarship, especially the archeologic finds at Nag Hammadi (circa 1945) and (to a lesser extent) the Dead Sea Scrolls (circa 1946-1959), has enabled us to access much of the early thought that was considered for many years to be lost for eternity. From this we can see that many “heresies” (Greek for “choices”) were not always the small movements that the Church tried to present them as, but were instead sometimes large movements that dominated entire regions. The systematic destruction of the primary works of these movements, along with the attempted destruction of the beliefs themselves, kept this information unavailable to most people for centuries.
The ideas kept breaking through, though. Some taught in secret, some were able to keep themselves just within the bounds of what the Church would accept, and at least one was denied as a heretic and later declared a saint (Joan of Arc) while another was accepted by the church in his time and later declared a heretic (Erasmus).
Which brings us to the topic of mysticism. A mystic is a person who has direct experiential intercourse with the divine – in Christian terms, with God. There are mystical traditions from pretty much every cultural and religious group throughout human history. In my view, there is nothing contradictory in quoting, for example, the Tao Te Ching in reference to Christianity – truth can be found in many quarters.
Which brings us to the concept of Truth (with a capital T). A prevailing view in many groups (especially academic) is what is variously called post-modernism or social constructivism. A short description of these views would contain the notion that there is no thing as Truth (with a capital T), there are only varied opinions (i.e., "your truth" vs "my truth"). This differs from the notion that there is such a thing as Truth, but that no one has a guaranteed lock on it, which is my position here in this blog. The Truth is "out there" (so to speak), but only a crazy person thinks that he is omniscient.
However, the one and only thing that a person knows for certain is his own experience. Thus, someone might report that “I saw what appeared to be a ghost” as opposed to “I saw a ghost” – the first report is unassailable unless you just think the person is flat out lying. A philosopher named Ludwig Wittgenstein used the idea of a slap to your face – if you felt the pain, you could not deny that it exists.
Which brings us back to mysticism. If you directly experienced God, how could you describe that experience? What human words would work in this case? Clearly, there aren’t any. At this point, the mystic has two options: (1) try to describe it anyway, using the vernacular of the time, (2) shut up about it. Now, those who choose option 2 are by definition not heard from much – and so, we mostly end up only knowing about those that choose option 1. And, human language being limited by time, space, and society, these descriptions are always analogic or metaphoric, and are thus easy to dismiss as nonsense, which is really what it is: non-sense. It is not one’s senses that experience the divine – how could it be?
more soon...