Never There In the First Place

 

If you give it some thought, Christmas is a holiday which invites skepticism regarding Christianity.  It may in that sense almost be called "Anti-Christian."   This isn't merely because it's become almost entirely about making and spending money, about marketing, about sanctimony and relentless religious posturing.  Rather, it's because there's nothing about it that has anything to do with a historical Jesus, and everything about it is either manufactured or based in pagan myth and tradition.  It's a great Christian holiday which isn't in the least bit Christian in nature or origin, but Christians have chosen it and describe it as Christian, and insist that it be treated as peculiarly Christian. 

The Christian story of Christmas, to the extent that it purports to be accurate, clearly isn't accurate.  The trappings of Christmas--the tree, the Yule Log, the exchange of gifts, mistletoe, etc.--don't have their origins in Christianity.  Why, then, do Christians insist on it, and make it their greatest holy day?

We begin with what should be known by all, but perhaps is not.  That is, that there is no evidence, no report, and indeed nothing, indicating or even suggesting Jesus was born on what we now call December 25th.  The Roman Church began celebrating it as the day of the birth of Christ in 336 C.E., more than 300 years after the event is said to have taken place.   There is considerable evidence, however, that it was the date on which the birth of pagan gods such as Sol Invictus and Mithras was celebrated, and was within the season during which the great pagan celebration of Saturnalia took place, which involved gift-giving and parties, and featured roleplay in which slaves and servants become masters and their masters slaves and servants.

As might be expected of a day celebrating the birth of sun gods such as the Roman ones I referred to, it occurs very near to the winter solstice.  The winter solstice was celebrated by pagans of all kinds long before Jesus is said to have been born, as the time at which the sun ceases "dying" and is in effect "born" and the days slowly become longer and brighter.

Then there is the story of Christmas described in the Gospels.  According to that of Luke, Jesus was born during the reign of Augustus, in Bethlehem, because of the requirements of a census taken while Quirinius (Publius Sulpicius Quirinius) was governor of the Roman Province of Syria, which included Palestine.  The census supposedly required all to travel to the town of their birth, to be counted.  According to the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus was born during the reign of Herod the Great.

The early Christians seemingly kept poor records, but the Romans were great record-keepers.  The census of Quirinius was taken several years after the death of Herod.  No Roman census required everyone to travel to their ancestral home--a requirement which would likely have caused chaos in travel and administration, and would have been a dramatically large burden to all concerned.  Why, then, does Christianity claim that Jesus of Nazareth was born in Bethlehem?  Because it was the City of David, and Jesus through his father Joseph was claimed to be a descendent of David and the messiah was supposed to be born there.  

Then there is the manger problem.  The nativity scene or setting we're familiar with involves a stable, a manger, various animals and shepherds.  Early Christians maintained Jesus was born in a cave, though.  That would seem to be the case according to the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, where the place at which Jesus was born is depicted by the star in the photograph at the head of this post, and is referred to as a "grotto."  That place along with other locations and objects important to Christianity was discovered by Helena, the very busy and industrious mother of the Emperor Constantine, who roamed the Holy Land in search of such things, and is considered a saint according to the Catholic Church.

We have heard, and still hear, many urge that we should "keep Christ in Christmas."  But it can fairly be maintained that he was never there in the first place, and isn't there much now.  Instead, he's been inserted, in a rather shameless, brazen fashion, into an ancient time of celebration made significant for reasons having nothing to do with him or Christianity.

It's harmless enough, of course, to create a holiday and designate it as a time for special celebration of a particular person or event.  This is done with some frequency, in fact.  If that is what Christians have done in creating Christmas, who could complain?  But a religion such as Christianity cannot be doubted, and that is especially the case where holy books are concerned. 

If we give it some more thought, perhaps in fact Christmas isn't Anti-Christian, but peculiarly Christian in the sense that it is contrived, a pretence, much like being a Christian is, today, and likely has been forever, sadly.  If to be Christian is to follow the teachings of Jesus, Christians are mostly frauds.

We should by all means celebrate the Christmas season.  It's great fun, and always has been, since long before Christ and Christianity.  The winter solstice has always been significant as well.  But one with think the pious and self-righteous should have some decency, and restrain themselves from insisting we stop treating the Christmas season as being solely something which it clearly is not. 

Sancta Mater Ecclesia

Holy Mother Church, or Sancta Mater Ecclesia in Latin.  The One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, just as it's said, also in Latin, in the interesting picture above.  Or, according to the inscription at the Basilica of St. John Lateran in Rome, built at the order of the Emperor Constantine and dedicated in 324 C.E. by Pope Sylvester I, omnium urbis et orbis ecclesiarum mater et caput, the mother and head of all the churches in the city and the world.

Old Mother Church, in truth.  Quite old, really, as age is measured in human history.  As I've posted before, I have a sentimental fondness for it as it was at one time, during my youth.  It gave a certain joy to my youth, as we as altar boys said its God did as we went to God's altar, or if not joy a kind of distinction. 

It's curious how we refer to institutions, particularly those we look back upon in fondness, as "mother."  We call our old schools Alma Mater.  I suppose we can call Mother Church the same, as it can be said to have nourished us Catholics for a time.  But nourished us in what exactly?

It must be admitted that one thing Mother Church encouraged, probably throughout its long history, is reason, or more particularly reasoning, as it was developed before the Church came to exist.  That may seem an odd thing to say, given that the beliefs of Catholicism, taken literally, seem unreasonable.  That's likely why they often are not taken literally, particularly by those believers who reason or employ reason in its defense.

Regardless, though, I think it fair to say that the Church has always honored reason and reasoning.  The Church Fathers employed reasoning in condemning the pagans.  Tertullian, a lawyer, knew reasoning in the form of rhetoric at least.  That was a lawyer's tool, particularly in those times.  The Church Fathers, like Augustine, knew their philosophy (pagan, of course) well, and were educated in the manner in which ancient pagans were educated and had been for centuries.  The great pagan philosophers didn't take pagan religion literally, either.  Why should Christian philosophers?

So, I think the early Church soon abandoned the position seemingly taken by Paul, rejecting the "wisdom of the wise."  Instead, it accepted it; assimilated it, in fact, and made it serve the purposes of the Church.

I think its also fair to say that the Church has always honored culture, education, history.  It kept the wisdom of the ancients alive, through the work of its monks, even if they functioned as mere scriveners, patiently copying the great works of the past.  As a result it fostered great thinkers even during what are called the Dark Ages; Abelard, Duns Scotus, Aquinas, Bonaventure, William of Ockham; it's an impressive list.  It borrowed from the heathen as needed in order to do so, and so rediscovered Aristotle via learned Moslems.  Aristotle so impressed churchmen he was called "The Philosopher."  Thomas Aquinas famously modified Aristotelian thought so as to make it the foundation of Catholic philosophy--known as Thomism.  It still has its adherents today.

For these services Mother Church deserves honor.  I wonder, though, if in inculcating its sons and daughters with a love or reasoning, culture, history and education Old Mother Church gave her children the learning needed to lead them to think her cupboard of reason was, ultimately, bare, as that of Old Mother Hubbard was bare of nourishment.

Learning can be dangerous to a religion, especially when learning involves fostering the capacity to reason, to think logically, to ask questions.  Eventually, those questions address the fundamental premises of Catholicism and Christianity, e.g. the divinity of Jesus, Original Sin, Heaven and Hell, the Trinity, the redeeming character of the sacraments, transubstantiation.  What could be their justification?  How can they be justified, in modern times?  How could Jesus be both God and man?  What sense does the seemingly endless list of sins, so specific to human beings, and a belief in a God-man, make given the vastness of the universe and given that our world is such a tiny, tiny part of it?

To someone trained to reason, recourse to revelation and faith is unpersuasive.  It's a kind of resignation.

Mother Church certainly has managed to survive for centuries, so perhaps it hasn't arranged its own destruction after all.  Perhaps it hasn't undermined the fundamental beliefs which make it distinctive.  But it seems to me that it does, necessarily.  And so a choice must be made, to be Catholic by disregarding reason or accepting that fundamental beliefs or premises are not to be "taken literally."  But that, it seems to me, is to accept a Catholicism, a Christianity, which has lost all which makes it distinctive.

Vidal's Messiah

I've read a good deal of Gore Vidal's work, but only recently read his Messiah, though it was published in the 1950s and so has been available for reading for quite some time.  There are other works of his I haven't read.  I haven't read Myra Breckenridge, for example, or The City and the Pillar.  Perhaps I will some day.

I'm an admirer of Vidal the author, but not necessarily of Vidal the person or TV personality.  His personality doesn't intrude on the books I've read; that is to say, his personality as it appeared on TV talk shows of the past.  It can be a mistake, I think, for good writers to appear on such shows, as they're asked to participate in order to provoke and do so gladly, which I think diminishes them.

This particular novel describes the origin and "progress" of a religious movement based on the insight of a curiously charismatic former mortician's assistant that death is not just something we shouldn't fear, but something we should want.  The protagonist of the book is given some similarities to Vidal himself, as when he first begins his portrayal of the "messiah" in question and the way in which the movement developed, we find that at the time he met the man, he was involved in researching the Emperor Julian for purposes of writing about him.  Vidal of course wrote a novel about the emperor entitled, unsurprisingly, Julian, which was published ten years after Messiah.

For reasons not entirely clear, the message that death is desirable is enchanting to all who hear it; or, at least, all who hear it while seeing the one who speaks it, called John Cave in the novel.  People find it liberating as it extinguishes the fear of death.  Vidal or the Vidal figure, called Eugene Luther, is one of Cave's first converts though he is as might be expected a reluctant one.  Luther is aware of the fact that the claim that death isn't to be feared is not a new one, even in the form expressed by Cave, who thinks it to be an endless sleep, without any form of personal immortality.  It is in fact ancient, and one can see it in the works of Lucretius and the Stoics and Epicureans before him.  But wanting to die seems an odd premise for a religion.

Early in the book, it's hypothesized by Luther and others that Cave's remarkable appeal is the result of some kind of hypnosis.  Cave himself is portrayed as a simple and unassuming man, interested only in his rather narrow message, however; he doesn't seem at all intent on mesmerizing people or taking advantage of them in a sinister manner or indeed in any manner.

Cave and his message are taken up, though, by a publicist who milks the machinery of the media to its utmost in popularizing them both and broadcasting the message far and wide.   That machinery was formidable even in the 1950s.  Rich donors and converts appear, a corporation is formed.  Luther himself is retained to prepare a kind of introduction to Cave and his message, referencing and expounding on the philosophical basis for the message.  A kind of religious business is established.  The message spreads with great speed, throughout the world.  There is opposition from established religions, eventually there is violence against Cavism and the Cavites and ultimately violence by the them as they become well established and become the establishment, wielding political power to stamp out opposition.

The book is written as the recollections of Luther, who became a leader of a kind of heretical sect which thought the message death was not to be feared should be used to enhance life, not make death seem desirable and went into voluntary exile.  His writings which once formed the basis for the religion have been expunged.  The message is rewritten by those who didn't know the founder; the religion has become something different, something powerful, intolerant, oppressive, intent of saving and thereby dominating the world.

In researching the Emperor Julian, Vidal became quite knowledgeable about his attempt to restore paganism and eliminate the favors and status granted Christianity since the reign of Constantine.  He became aware of the manner in which Christianity became an institution over time and assimilated the Roman Empire, knew its holy books were written decades after Jesus lived, knew that other books regarding Jesus were proscribed, heresies were quashed, an orthodoxy established. 

I tend to think this satire by Vidal was primarily intended to reflect his views on what happened to Christianity, on the triumph of the Church rather than the message of Jesus which clearly appealed in a dramatic manner to many, but was over time changed, ignored, extinguished as deemed necessary by Christians when and after they accepted the "gift of Constantine" and gained the world while losing their souls.  There are too many parallels between the rise of Cavism and that of Christianity for me to think otherwise.  Another thoughtful book of Vidal the author, so much more admirable than Vidal the personality.

The Magic Christians

Some of us remember the film The Magic Christian, a very silly bit of anti-capitalist, anti-greed satire (using that term broadly) which starred Peter Sellers, Ringo Starr, and a host of others in cameo appearances, including some of the members of what was to be Monty Python.  The title was the name of an ocean liner on which the protagonists eventually sailed.  I saw it while in high school,  and it appealed to the adolescent in me.

I don't mean to comment on the film here, but use the title to draw attention to those who in the third to fifth centuries CE (somewhat broadly speaking, again) managed to make of Christianity something which was magical, or which I think may be called magical.  "Magical" I mean to refer to something based on a mysterious, extraordinary supernatural power associated with certain equally mysterious rites.

Of course I'm aware of the fact that even the Gospels ascribe miracles to Jesus, and these may count as magic--though not, I think, magic of the remarkable kind to come.  There were several men and beings which the ancients felt were capable of working wonders; even early Christians felt the pagan gods to be demons with supernatural powers.  Also, it's clear that even shorn of the Gospels' occasional, very cursory, references to Jesus being the Son of God and worker of wonders, the belief in the existence of a supernatural, creator god--that of the Jews, in any case--is presumed and manifest in them.  So, Jesus' early followers, if in fact they wrote the gospels, which doesn't seem likely, may be called "magic Christians" to a certain  extent.

But there was nothing unusual in this given the times and the culture.  For example, John the Baptist reputedly did much the same things as Jesus, and though honored in Christianity is not God or his Son.  Something very unusual occurred in the case of early Christianity as it became the Christianity we know of now and throughout subsequent history (at least the Christianity recognized by most of the established churches).  What happened distinguishes Jesus from the run-of-the-mill saviors and magicians who roamed the Roman Empire in those times, and required magic of an unusual sort.

What took place was, I think, necessary in order to maintain that Jesus was God; the only God, in fact.  Not merely God after he was crucified, or before he took human form, but God even while he was human and was killed.  The nature of Jesus was of course a subject of fierce and even violent disputes in the history of early Christianity and even into the Middle Ages and beyond.  Some found it impossible to accept that God, the Supreme Being, could suffer and die on a cross.  So, they thought Jesus must have been human or something less than wholly divine while on Earth, at least.  And so we see controversy of the kind which involved whether Jesus as Son was of the same or similar substance as God the Father.

These and other disputes resulted in the heresies we hear so much of in Christianity.  There was of course the famous dispute between the followers of Arius and Anathasius.   But there was also Nestorianism, which was the belief that Jesus had two natures, one divine and one human;  Monophsyitism, which held that Jesus' divine nature wholly overwhelmed his human nature; Monothelism, which taught that Jesus had two natures, one divine and one human, but only one "will."  This is not even to get into the controversies which came about once the Holy Spirit was in the mix as God as well, and Trinitarianism arose.  A heresy which followed was called Monarchiansm, which held that God the Father predominated over the Son and the Holy Spirit in the Trinity.  As they say, the list of Christian heresies goes on and on, though certainly not all of them involved the true nature of Jesus.

The controversies were deemed so significant that emperors of the Christianized Roman Empire felt it necessary to become involved in an effort to resolve disputes through the use of Councils over which they presided or at least sponsored.  They probably first rose to a governmental concern because the disputes were physical in nature in some cases.  People were killed or injured; property destroyed.  But some emperors were concerned about doctrine as well.  Indeed, emperors favoring a particular kind of Christianity persecuted other Christians in the same manner as pagan emperors are claimed to have persecuted Christians before them, and the Christians persecuted by other Christians believed themselves to be martyrs.

Constantine is generally considered to have been a great unifier of Christian doctrine, but Justinian, a peculiarly dubious emperor, was even more avid in his efforts.  Councils condemned certain views, accepted others.  Excommunications were made and then rescinded.  This went on for centuries.  The Council of Nicea was probably less important in the history of Christianity than that of Chalcedon, held by the Emperor Marcian.

These Christological disputes had the result that the Latin Western Church became disassociated from the Greek Eastern Church and had other significant ramifications.

What is remarkable is that these great controversies have nothing at all to do with the preaching of Jesus; with what he said was right or wrong, what he said one should or should not do.  They are wholly amoral.  Christianity became a matter of definition, and the truth and goodness in Christianity came to be determined by what a person thought Jesus' nature to be and the manner in which he was to be worshiped.  All resulted because it was deemed that Jesus was or should be construed to be the one God.

These disputes, and efforts at their resolution as they appear in written records of the time, resemble philosophical and legal disputes, in that their focus is on abstract concepts and their application as rules to circumstances.  Their legal nature may be understood as resulting from the fact that Christianity became in every significant sense a government as well as a religion.  Their philosophical nature may be the result of the desire early Christians had to give Christianity a basis which would be recognized as similar to if not sanctioned by the philosophy of the time, which was essentially pagan and, I believe, still is pagan.  If Jesus is God, and there is only one God, what then? 

Because of the fact the disputes were similar to legal and philosophical disputes, the arguments raised by one side or the other are not clearly false or absurd.  There is a basis for them in the sense that relevant scripture may be referred to in their support or recognized authorities appealed to by disputants.

But ultimately the resolution of these disputes, to the extent they were resolved, entailed the imposition of certain mysteries, certain inexplicable doctrines.  In other words, Magic, but Magic of the highest kind.  The view that God is one substance but three persons is magical.  The view that Jesus is consubstantial with the Father is magical.  There is simply no other explanation for these beliefs.

It's interesting to consider what would have happened if Jesus was not considered God or divine in some manner, or perhaps a lesser God.  I suspect Christianity would be much less complex and far less dependent on mystery.  But Christians in charge were probably leery of making him a lesser God, as this would smack of polytheism.  And what would the death of one man matter?  Jesus' death and sacrifice would be insufficient to salvation if he was not at all times God.

We tend to forget what a mess Christianity was during its development.  Dispute is considered inconsistent with what is said to be clearly set forth by God.  Perhaps Christianity's search for a rational basis was unwise, and there is none clearly present.  It's no wonder some Christians came to believe that God could not be known except through revelation.  This conclusion may be less the result of mysticism as the realization that applying reason in the case of Jesus/God inevitably results in machinations of a particularly tortured kind.