Re: All things are full of gods

On Thu, 29 Aug 2024 08:52:09 -0700, Paul S Person
<[email protected]> wrote:

>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.

I read it when it first came out in the 1960s. 

It made half-sense to me then. The other half was a book called "The
Primal Vision" by John V. Taylor, which described how Western
Christianity, which had been contextualised into Western modernity by
the 19th century, was brought to Africa, which made little sense to
kost Africans, whose thinking was largely pre-modern. 

Western missionaries therefore thought that Africans had to be
"civilized" before they could be Christianised.

"Civilization" means developing the worldview and thought patterns of
city dwellers, of which Harvey Cox was singing the praises in "The
Secular City". It can be contrasted with "urbanisation" which means
people phyically moving to cities, though they might still retain a
lot of rural patterns of thinking. 

I reread "The Secular City" in 1995, 30 years later, and by then
people were talking about modernity, premodernity and postmodernity,
which provided an easier way of understanding it. And now another 30
years have passed. 


>>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.

While that is possible, it could also have been influenced by the
Roman conception of a genius, a kind of guardian spirit that
accompanied a person throughout life (not entirely different from the
Christian conception of guardian angels). And the idea, common in the
Mediterranean and Middle Eastern societies at the time, of divine
kingship, that political authority was a spiritual power that attached
itself to the human ruler. 

This notion was modernised and congealed in Western modernity in the
notion of the Divine Right of Kings. 

>>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.

It is not altogether unknown, and several books published over the
last few years have dealt with it. Here are some of them, listed in
publication order, from the earliest to the most recent:

Caird, G.B. 1956. Principalities and powers: a study in Pauline
               theology. London: Oxford University Press.

van den Heuvel, Albert H. 1965. These rebellious powers. New     
               York: Friendship.
                   Discusses principalities and powers especially
                   in relation to politics, economics etc

Montgomery, John Warwick. 1974. Myth, allegory and gospel. 
               Minneapolis: Bethany Fellowship.
               ISBN: 0-87123-358-4
                   Contains articles on Tolkien, C.S. Lewis,
                   Charles Williams and G.K. Chesterton as
                   Christian apologists.

Montgomery, John Warwick. 1975. Principalities and powers: a new
               look at the world of the occult. Minnealpolis: 
               Dimension.
               ISBN: 0-87123-460-2

Wink, Walter. 1984. Naming the powers. Philadelphia: Fortress.
               Dewey: 235.3
                   Deals with rulers and authorities, and the
                   theology of power, both political and
                   spiritual.

Wink, Walter. 1986. Unmasking the powers: the invisible forces
               that determine human existence. Philadelphia: 
               Fortress.
               ISBN: 0-8006-1902-1
               Dewey: 235 WINK

Burnett, David. 1988. Unearthly powers: a Christian perspective
               on primal and folk religion. Eastbourne: MARC.
               ISBN: 1-85424-055-2
               Dewey: 291 BURN
                   Ghosts, possession, the evil eye and sorcery
                   touch the lives of many people in their folk
                   religion. Even in our secular culture many
                   people turn first of all to the horoscope in
                   their morning paper. References secular
                   worldview sees humankind as dominant over
                   nature (p. 21) AICs and primal worldview (p.
                   33)

Stewart, Charles. 1991. Demons and the devil: moral imagination
               in modern Greek culture. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
               University Press.
               ISBN: 0-691-02848-6
               Dewey: 306.691 216 094 99
                   The exotika - neraida, imps and demons etc in
                   modern Greece are not mere survivals of
                   pre-Christian Greek religion and culture, but
                   have been profoundly transformed by the
                   Orthodox Christian faith. Some interesting
                   parallels between inculturation in Orthodoxy
                   and the African independent churches,
                   Ethiopian Church etc.

>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.

I think the "something" was the mystery of power and authority, to
which St Paul gave a Christian interpretation, and the Gnostics gave a
Gnostic interpretation. and there were various other interpretations
as well, including those of the human rulers of ancient empires. 

>>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.

You dreadful postmodernist, you!

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

Aye, that is the difference between modernity and modernism. Modernity
is the phenomenon and the world view, whole modernism is the ideology
that promotes it as the best and truest one. Postmodernity is
primarily the questioning, from various points of view, 

>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.

:-)


-- 
Stephen Hayes, Author of The Year of the Dragon
Sample or purchase The Year of the Dragon: 
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/907935
Web site: http://www.khanya.org.za/stevesig.htm
Blog: http://methodius.blogspot.com
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