Re: All things are full of gods

On Thu, 29 Aug 2024 07:58:46 +0200, Steve Hayes
<[email protected]> wrote:

>I've seen quite a lot of mentions on social media of a book with the
>title "All things are full of gods", so I looked it up on GoodReads,
>and found that no one had written a review of it there yet.
>
><https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/210129380-all-things-are-full-of-gods
>>
>
>Has anyone here read it?
>
>Any comments?
>
>I was quite intrigued by the title, which seems to be rather
>anti-modernity, because modernity maintains that all things are NOT
>full of gods. As one modernist theologian put it, some 60 years ago:
>
>Desacralization modernity.
>         Source: Cox, "The Secular City". 1965:36.
>    "We should oppose the romantic restoration of the sprites of
>  the forest. It may seem pleasant at first to reinstate the
>  leprechauns, but - as Hitler made all too clear - once the
>  Valkyries return, they will seek a bloodthirsty revenge on
>  those who banished them. We should also be wary of any attempt
>  to resacralize politics. Political leaders and movement should
>  never be granted any sacred significance, and all efforts to
>  use public authority to support traditional religious beliefs
>  or the quasi-religious beliefs of ideological secularism must
>  be resisted."
>
>I half agree.

That's more than I can say.

I read that in the early 70s. I thought (perhaps "imagined" would be
more accurate) that I understood it.

I re-read it a few years ago. I didn't understand it at all. I
disposed of it, probably in a metallic book donation bin.

So I can't say whether I agree or not, since the whole thing was
opaque to me.

>The supreme example of granting political leaders sacred significance
>was the ancient Roman religion of emperor worship, and similar cults
>of political leaders continue or are revived in modern times, and are
>to be deprecated.

There is a theory that this was done to provide all residents of the
Roman Empire with /one/ god they could /all/ acknowledge, thus
building a sense of unity. That's the problem with polytheistic
societies that are /very/ tolerant of other people's gods: no unifying
god.

>But when St Paul says our struggle is not against blood and flesh, but
>against the rulers, the authorities, the world powers of this present
>darkness (Eph 6:10-12) I believe he is saying that systemic evil is
>demonic. These demons have been given different names at different
>times.

That is a reasonable interpretation, although, AFAIK, the actual
context of his remarks is unknown -- presumably, there was a
philosophical or religious (and, since Paul was a Jew, probably
Jewish) position that posited rule of the world by, indeed, demons in
effect if not in name.

One of the books in /The Nag Hammadi Library in English/ is titled
"The Hypostasis of the Archons", which the translators translate in
their introduction as "The Reality of the Rulers", so I (at least)
wonder if Paul was into something that eventually produced Gnosticism.

>Back in the days of apartheid, here in South Africa we often just
>spoke of "the System", and in North America they spoke of "the
>military-industrial complex". 
>
>All things are full of gods, but not all gods are good, or
>well-disposed.
>
>Back in the secular sixties Western theologians were concerned to  
>demythologise the Christian faith. But there seems to be a rapidly
>growing field of scholarship that concerns itself mostly with those
>who in that period tried to remythologise it, such as the Inklings --
>J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams et al. Relatively little
>attention is paid nowadays to the demythologisers. 

I once rendered one of these guys speechless by pointing out that,
having demythologized the Christian faith of its ancient imagery, it
would then be necessary to re-mythologize it in modern imagery.

Apparently, he really /believed/ that his high-level sophisticated
intellectualism was free of all imagery but was a plain unvarnished
view of reality.

Well, in all fairness, Moses probably felt the same way when he came
down from the mountain. It is an easy delusion to slip into.
-- 
"Here lies the Tuscan poet Aretino,
Who evil spoke of everyone but God,
Giving as his excuse, 'I never knew him.'"