Christianity, Paganism, Platonism
Sep. 6th, 2023 09:26 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
readoldthingsAs many here know, I was raised in the Catholic Church, in a family that was rather traditional and a church that was nauseatingly modern. When I was a child I was extremely devout. I loved God, and never doubted his power or his presence. I loved the sacraments and the sacrament of Confession above all others. I remember leaving my first Confession feeling as though I were surrounded by a nimbus of golden light. I believed in and loved the saints and the Holy Virgin especially.
But I was not only a Catholic. From a very early age, as early as I can remember, I felt and experienced the presence of life and power in nature and natural forces, especially in the Sun, the Ocean and a gigantic old pine tree in the woods behind our house. Eventually some new neighbors bought up the woods and cut down the tree. This was one of the early traumas of my young life and the thing that lead me to become an eco-radical and member of Earth First! many years later. This is a decision I now largely regret and a group I now entirely disavow, but that's a story for another time.
The point is only that from early on I had a sort of bi-religious orientation. I was a worshiper at once of Son of God and the Sun of Heaven, the Star of the Sea and the Sea Itself. Winter in Pennsylvania is cold, and we heated our home with a fire. Making a fire was my favorite chore, and one I did gladly. The act of chopping wood, arranging it just so, lighting a match and seeing and feeling the energy of my labor transformed into heat and light, and then into warmth and comfort and joy for my family, felt as thoroughly sacramental as receiving the Eucharist. I prayed to the spirit in the fire, as I also prayed to the spirits in the trees, and to Jesus, Mary, the saints and angels.
This same orientation has continued throughout my life. Readers here will notice that I regularly write from a pagan and a Christian perspective. If this upsets anyone, they have yet to speak up about it, but I know that in other contexts many people don't like it. But I am the way that I am.
It raises the question, though-- What exactly do I believe in?
The answer is simply "an ecumenical Platonism."
Proclus shows us how the Platonic philosophy can be used to sustain the entire pantheon of the Hellenic gods. In his massive Theology of Plato, he works every last possible god named by Hesiod or Homer or the Chaldaean Oracles into a sequence rooted in his understanding of Plato, and above all (from what I can tell) the Parmenides, Timaeus, and Philebus.
Proclus's Platonic Theology is not the only one possible, nor even the only to be found at the time. The theology of Plotinus, his predecessor by several centuries, is much simpler, and the role of the old gods far less pronounced. Synesius of Cyrene was bishop of Ptolemais when Proclus was born. His own theological vision is of a Christianized Neoplatonism, with the Holy Trinity placed atop a divine hierarchy otherwise very similar to that found in the Oracles or the Hermetic writings.
Following both Proclus and Synesius, a mysterious writer who called himself "Dionysius the Areopagite" wove Procline Neoplatonism and Christian theology together into a synthesis which became the basis of Christian theology in general for a thousand years after. But many centuries before Dionysius, Philo of Alexandria had already applied Platonic philosophical tradition to his native Jewish religion. And after the rise of Muhammad, various schools of Islamic thought adapted Platonic philosophy to their own religious needs.
What all this shows me is that we have in Platonism a unifying philosophy which is prior to specific manifestations of what we call religion. The ultimate end of the soul, Proclus wrote, is to unite itself to the One as a ship returning to its port. Specific "religions," in my view, are ladders of ascent, having the One as their goal. But the One is infintely remote from human beings, and there are countless other names by which It can manifest itself to us. Tao, Awen, Brahma, God. These names are not meaningless. Choosing one name or another to follow changes everything about one's path and one's life. But the Platonic philosophy-- for me-- is the unifying principle which allows me to work with one or another of the ladders of ascent as the occasion demands, and also to understand and respect the journeys of others.
But I was not only a Catholic. From a very early age, as early as I can remember, I felt and experienced the presence of life and power in nature and natural forces, especially in the Sun, the Ocean and a gigantic old pine tree in the woods behind our house. Eventually some new neighbors bought up the woods and cut down the tree. This was one of the early traumas of my young life and the thing that lead me to become an eco-radical and member of Earth First! many years later. This is a decision I now largely regret and a group I now entirely disavow, but that's a story for another time.
The point is only that from early on I had a sort of bi-religious orientation. I was a worshiper at once of Son of God and the Sun of Heaven, the Star of the Sea and the Sea Itself. Winter in Pennsylvania is cold, and we heated our home with a fire. Making a fire was my favorite chore, and one I did gladly. The act of chopping wood, arranging it just so, lighting a match and seeing and feeling the energy of my labor transformed into heat and light, and then into warmth and comfort and joy for my family, felt as thoroughly sacramental as receiving the Eucharist. I prayed to the spirit in the fire, as I also prayed to the spirits in the trees, and to Jesus, Mary, the saints and angels.
This same orientation has continued throughout my life. Readers here will notice that I regularly write from a pagan and a Christian perspective. If this upsets anyone, they have yet to speak up about it, but I know that in other contexts many people don't like it. But I am the way that I am.
It raises the question, though-- What exactly do I believe in?
The answer is simply "an ecumenical Platonism."
Proclus shows us how the Platonic philosophy can be used to sustain the entire pantheon of the Hellenic gods. In his massive Theology of Plato, he works every last possible god named by Hesiod or Homer or the Chaldaean Oracles into a sequence rooted in his understanding of Plato, and above all (from what I can tell) the Parmenides, Timaeus, and Philebus.
Proclus's Platonic Theology is not the only one possible, nor even the only to be found at the time. The theology of Plotinus, his predecessor by several centuries, is much simpler, and the role of the old gods far less pronounced. Synesius of Cyrene was bishop of Ptolemais when Proclus was born. His own theological vision is of a Christianized Neoplatonism, with the Holy Trinity placed atop a divine hierarchy otherwise very similar to that found in the Oracles or the Hermetic writings.
Thee, father of worlds, father of the aeones, artificer of the gods, it is holy to praise.
Thee, O king, the Intellectual Gods sing,
Thee, O blessed God, the Cosmagi, those fulgid eyes, and starry intellects, celebrate,
Round which the illustrious body of hte world dances.
All the race of the blessed sing thy praise,
Those that are about, and those that are in the world,
the cosmic gods and the hypercosmic...
Thee, O king, the Intellectual Gods sing,
Thee, O blessed God, the Cosmagi, those fulgid eyes, and starry intellects, celebrate,
Round which the illustrious body of hte world dances.
All the race of the blessed sing thy praise,
Those that are about, and those that are in the world,
the cosmic gods and the hypercosmic...
Following both Proclus and Synesius, a mysterious writer who called himself "Dionysius the Areopagite" wove Procline Neoplatonism and Christian theology together into a synthesis which became the basis of Christian theology in general for a thousand years after. But many centuries before Dionysius, Philo of Alexandria had already applied Platonic philosophical tradition to his native Jewish religion. And after the rise of Muhammad, various schools of Islamic thought adapted Platonic philosophy to their own religious needs.
What all this shows me is that we have in Platonism a unifying philosophy which is prior to specific manifestations of what we call religion. The ultimate end of the soul, Proclus wrote, is to unite itself to the One as a ship returning to its port. Specific "religions," in my view, are ladders of ascent, having the One as their goal. But the One is infintely remote from human beings, and there are countless other names by which It can manifest itself to us. Tao, Awen, Brahma, God. These names are not meaningless. Choosing one name or another to follow changes everything about one's path and one's life. But the Platonic philosophy-- for me-- is the unifying principle which allows me to work with one or another of the ladders of ascent as the occasion demands, and also to understand and respect the journeys of others.
