Christianity, Paganism, Platonism

[readoldthings]

As 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. 

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...

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. 

Comments

[prayergardens]

Excellent post - I look forward to reading more.

[readoldthings]

Thank you!

[boccaderlupo]

The latter point—of (Neo)Platonism as a kind of unifying model that lies at the intersection of various cults—seems to fit in with Edward Butler's "polycentric polytheism" concept. I agree, however, with making a distinction between the implications of any given individual cult (and perhaps especially its mythos, which is theophany) and the philosophy/ideology that strings them together. (In terms of such consequences for example, as a not-very-good Catholic myself, I suspect that non-Christians or anti-Christians do not fully understand the implications of what a life or culture that is entirely divested of the Logos and his charity will truly look like...)

From my part of the woods, it's difficult to fully extricate the Christian and the "pagan" currents in Catholicism, but perhaps especially in the Italic traditions. There are the subtle things, like the Madonna Sacromonte (in Salerno) having appeared on a mountain that was sacred to Hera/Juno, or certain similar approaches in sacred art/icons. But then there's the more overt stuff, like the celebration of the Muzzuni in Sicily, in which Dionysius and Demeter are celebrated alongside St. John the Baptist (hint: name the Hellenic "saint" who was also beheaded...) My own ancestral traditions, although avowedly RC if you were to ask, follows Campanella and the like and is a sometimes unwieldy hash of Hellenic and Christian currents.

Axé and all blessings to you and yours

[readoldthings]

The latter point—of (Neo)Platonism as a kind of unifying model that lies at the intersection of various cults—seems to fit in with Edward Butler's "polycentric polytheism" concept.

Sort of. The difference-- if I'm understanding Butler rightly-- is that I'm very much *not* a believer in "polycentrism." I think that there is one center, with many spokes.

From my part of the woods, it's difficult to fully extricate the Christian and the "pagan" currents in Catholicism, but perhaps especially in the Italic traditions.

Yes, that's right. My family was ethnically mixed-- Italian, Irish, German. My Irish/German grandmother was more or less in charge of our religious education, and she totally bought (and buys) into the Vatican II reforms-- as do her co-ethnics in Ireland and Baden-Wurtenberg, as I understand it. The hints of Italianate Catholicism that I mostly got from my grandfather are the parts I really cherish.

I suspect that non-Christians or anti-Christians do not fully understand the implications of what a life or culture that is entirely divested of the Logos and his charity will truly look like..

This is where I'm not certain.

To be sure, I totally understand what you're getting at, and it's not wrong. There are people who don't understand the reforms that Christianity brought to the world, or don't believe in them. The best way to educate them is to share the story of the conversion of the Norwegians. (I think it was Norwegians.) It seems that, after King Olaf converted, many among his noblemen wanted to remain pagan. He replied that they were welcome to do so, but that he'd heard from the gods that the human sacrifices would need to be increased, and they would not be satisfied with slaves and war captives anymore. Once you're faced with the possibility of being hung on a tree and spitted in imitation of Odin, a religion which prohibits human sacrifice starts looking very tempting!

On the other hand, have you ever read Plato's Laws? He was writing around 400 B.C., and the system of morality he proposes is, at minimum, in advance of the Old Testament. Beyond that, it ancitipates a great many of the developments of Catholic moral teaching. That includes things that I had once thought originated with Aquinas-- the definition of Love as "to will the good of another," which is the official Catholic teaching, comes from the Laws.

And weirdly, there is actually some evidence that the Old Testament was actually compiled very late, by a group of Jewish Platonists at Alexandria. This theory has been forward by a guy named Russell Gmirkin, and when you listen to him talk, his biases are obvious-- think of the typical college professor's attitude twoard Christianity and "religion" and you wont' be far off. That said, some of his evidence is compelling; you can read a review of his book "Plato and the Creation of the Hebrew Bible" here: https://bibleinterp.arizona.edu/articles/review-russell-e-gmirkin-plato-and-creation-hebrew-bible

If Gmirkin is correct-- which I regard as unlikely, but possible-- it's possible that Christianity too was not just influenced by the Neoplatonists, but a deliberate creation of the same. Among many other things, Jesus's myth would have allowed the Neoplatonists to continue to make use of the serious magical power of the Mystery schools, while purging the popular mythology of the moral messiness that comes with Hesiod and Homer.

So I suppose I'm a bit ambivalent on this point. Again, I understand what people like Jonathan Pageau who raise the point you are here are saying, but I'm not convinced that the Logos only comes in Christian form.

I should add, I suppose, that my view is that Gmirkin has compiled very interesting evidence but that his own blindness prevents him from drawing the obvious conclusions from them. If he's right, then that just means that it's to Plato and his followers that we owe the enormous reforms usually laid at the feet of Christianity.

[boccaderlupo]

I will definitely read that bit. Very interesting. Margaret Barker has advanced the alternate view, that Pythagorean thought, which is upstream of Platonism, was heavily influenced by Jewish mysticism, for whatever that is worth. If nothing else, as you note with the mention of Philo, there is a certain degree of camaraderie among the views. IMO, the Logos is continually seeking expression, and perhaps takes different forms in the different ages and aeons until the restoration of all things ("For the Word of God and God wills always and in all things to accomplish the mystery of his embodiment," St. Maximus, Ambiguum 7)—or else the singular, inherent longing of all persons for the expression of the Logos is manifested in their diverse lives in different ways.

RE: Butler, agree. I have to respect his compelling scholarship, but in a certain sense, as I've said elsewhere, it tends to (perhaps inadvertantly) deprecate The One to either a variable or almost to 0, mathematically speaking...which simply feels wrong. I tend to regard The One, again speaking mathematically, as 1, unity, which thus figures into every other number, seeming almost to be a variable but never losing its function as the source of Unity and Being.

An addendum to the above: It's probably worth saying that there's a strong argument to be made that Pythagorean/Platonic philosophy can in itself be used as an initiatic process unto itself...

Axé

[readoldthings]

I'm familiar with Barker but it's been a long time since I looked into her work; I'll have to come back to it. The idea that Pythagoras and Plato had studied with the Hebrews is actually a very ancient one. Philo believed that Plato had been influenced by Moses, and Origen shared the belief that Pythagoras had been instructed by the Jews. At one point it appears to have been the common opinion-- Eusebius wrote somewhere, "What is Plato, but Moses writing in Attic Greek?"

RE: Butler, agree. I have to respect his compelling scholarship, but in a certain sense, as I've said elsewhere, it tends to (perhaps inadvertantly) deprecate The One to either a variable or almost to 0, mathematically speaking...which simply feels wrong. I tend to regard The One, again speaking mathematically, as 1, unity, which thus figures into every other number, seeming almost to be a variable but never losing its function as the source of Unity and Being.

That's well said-- this is exactly the issue I have with his work. I honestly don't see how he derives "polycentrism" from either Plotinus or Proclus. He often shares Plotinus's injunction not to "collapse the divine into one," but he ignores the fact that in the very same sentence Plotinus says that the gods are nto the same sorts of beings as the Three Primary Hypostases, it's just that they aren't undeserving of honor because of that. It looks to me far more like the Catholic concept of dulia owed the angels and saints and latria owed to God (in three hypostases, no less) alone. Proclus, meanwhile, is exquisitely clear about the hierarchical arrangement of the Gods into triads and enneads, which themselves all follow from the One, which he is happy to call the First God.