Bruce G. Charlton's Blog, page 55

Christianity - crushed and tormented by centuries of theology

There are certain (often commonly used) Christian terms that I always have found deeply confusing, un-understandable. One is "redemption".

People have (for centuries) talked confidently about Jesus Christ redeeming mankind, of the world's need for redemption etc. They talk as if "redemption" was a clear and precise technical term, an obious thing; and as if it was axiomatic that redemption (above all) was what Jesus did - the main thing Jesus accomplished. 

So again I read into the subject a bit, looked at the explanations of redemption suggested by various historical theologians, and at some of the various denominations, and considered what they meant by redemption; and yet again I felt as if I was being pressed down and crushed by swarms of crazed and biting insects! 

I wonder how many others have felt like this? On the one hand, it would seem that what Jesus did must have been simple and easy to grasp - given the broad historical facts and context. On the other hand, it seems that almost immediately after Jesus's ascension, all kinds of things were being ascribed to him that were either incomprehensibly abstract and paradoxical - or else wildly at variance with what Jesus said and did.

The idea of redemption itself seems to have arisen as some kind of error, or perhaps for different and almost opposite reasons, or from different agendas... It is as if the idea that "what Jesus did" was to redeem Mankind, and The World, was swiftly accepted as a solid and mandatory assumption, without any agreement about what redeem actually meant or implied, or how it had worked (even in the broadest terms)!   

The sense I make from this is that here, as in so many other ways, Jesus was inserted-into pre-existing philosophical and theological schemes - whether Jewish, Christian or other. 

My conviction is that most of the people who wrote about Jesus in the early years after his ascension, made sense of Jesus in terms of what they already believed before Jesus's ministry - and these were the people who set the agenda for the various churches for centuries to come; until the sheer mass of commentary and contradiction is overwhelming and appalling. 

In this, as so many ways; Christianity painted itself into a corner. Only those who were able to live with a permanent state of imprecision and contradiction were able to participate in the discourse. Anyone who seriously tried to make sense of thing and get at the truth - was excluded. 

 It's hard for me to express (because it apparently invisible to most people!) my horror at the way Jesus Christ and what he did has been enmeshed in vast webs of other stuff. A new Christian may begin with a wonderful sense of simplicity and clarity; but is almost immediately confronted by such menaces wherever he turns. 

And the new Christian will find that such-and-such is regarded as necessary to being-a-Christian - that "being-a-Christian" is something which takes place within these assumptions - that there is asserted to be no real way of being-a-Christian except within such assumptions.  

What's worse is that the simple and obvious truth and reality which led to becoming a Christian, somehow gets reversed, in all sorts of ways. The whole thing gets smothered by an endlessly regressing and crushing external weight of mandatory demands; which cannot be grasped and must just be accepted and obeyed. 

Myself, as an individual, is implicitly (sometimes explicitly) regarded as utterly trivial, insignificant, of no consequence to the vast mechanism of Christianity - except in disobedience! 

...To be a Good Christian is to acknowledge and act as a tiny and inessential cog in a vast machine; and if the cog fails to accept this role, then he will be spat out into the consuming void beyond the machine.

Because life in service to the machine is so utterly miserable and hope-less - the only consolation is that our reward is that we will become so utterly changed as to find it wholly blissful. 

This is nebulous, and un-consoling - because such a transformation is to convert me into somebody (or some-thing) else; so in practice the main incentive is always negative...

"You may find this unsatisfying, but if you dissent then you will be actively tortured forever - so shut-up and get-on-with-it!

(Of course, this kind of threat doesn't happen much nowadays - not for good reasons but because faith is so utterly feeble that almost nobody really believes their church - as was evident in 2020 and by lack of repentance since. But for much of history and in many places; the negative incentives of Christianity were much more strongly asserted than the positive: fear rather than hope was the major drive.)

I am trying to express here something of vital import: which is the false and evil idea that in becoming a Christian one should be subordinating oneself to a vast social structure - one to which the proper attitude is submission (although such fear-full obedience is often praised as "humility").

My counter-assertion is that the freedom, agency, and chosen personal commitment by which somebody becomes a Christian; these are attributes that ought to be carried through into the life of faith. 

We should not just begin in freedom, but stay in freedom...

Stay in a Christian freedom dedicated to a personal quest of love, truth, virtue, beauty and other Christian values.     

A freedom that is rooted in the personal and not the abstract...

Rooted in our relations with the persons of God and Jesus Christ - certainly not defined by our obedience and service to organizations, or bodies of texts and commentaries, nor to traditions of teaching. 

To be a Christian ought not to be intimidated, crushed and suffocated by "the past" - but a joyous (because hope-full) engagement in the present quest of life - and in context of an eternal resurrected future. 

War in this Planet of the Apes

A great performance by Andy Serkis (plus CGI) as Caesar

I've only watched it once, but the recentish movie War for the Planet of the Apes (2017) keeps coming to mind as I contemplate the global situation. 

In particular, the way that the film demonstrates that it can - in practice - be impossible to prevent war over the long-haul; when even just one powerful grouping on one of the sides is really determined to cause a war. 

In the movie, with its secular perspective, this outcome is unalloyed tragedy; but in this mortal life... not necessarily so. 

I believe that this the situation at present - when one powerful grouping on the "Western" side is determined to provoke escalatory wars in many places, simultaneously - and ultimately everywhere. 

It seems very likely that They will succeed in causing world war - from somewhere or another, sooner or later - because that is just the nature of people and things in this mortal world. 

And by "war"; I mean a war that however it began soon develops into an unjust war, a war of evil-aligned against evil-aligned (at best, of greater and lesser evils): 

A war with no possible winners. 

So - if futile global war is in practice and eventually unstoppable - what then? 

What difference can you, or I, or anyone make?

And the answer is that we can make all the difference. 

Since this world is essentially in a state of spiritual war; then it is the attitudes, understanding and motives of individual persons that matter essentially. 

In war as in peace; there is all the difference in the world - which is actually all the difference in creation and eternity - in any war, according to the minds of individuals who participate or contemplate that war. 

When those individuals understand the spiritual reality of that war, and align with God rather than with one or another of the "sides" - that makes a difference. 

When individuals do not despair but repent their own fear, resentment, hopelessness as it (inevitably) arises - that makes a difference.

(For Christians, sin (i.e. evil and death) are inevitable. What matters is repentance. 

(And repentance, properly understood, is a positive inner act of affirmation and allegiance.)  

When individuals look beyond the war, beyond the tragedy of mortal life - to eternal resurrected life in Heaven - that makes all the difference. 

Spiritually to learn-from experience, is what this life's about. 

There are many, many bad things that happen in this mortal life and that cannot be prevented. 

That is inevitable. 

The big question we need to settle for our-selves is - what then?

 

Resentment at creation (more on "thrownness")

At a very deep level, it seems that people (and indeed beings of all kinds) react differently to awareness of "thrownness" - react differently from finding oneself "thrown into" God's creation, and where the only possible positive purpose and meaning is to participate in (or, at least, contemplatively enjoy) this ongoing creation. 

I think that some beings react to this experience of thrownness with an attitude of existential resentment. They respond to this situation by resenting the fact that they are in "somebody else's" project.

In other words, we recognize (usually implicitly, but sometimes explicitly - as with the "I never asked to be born" feeling and complaint) that reality is something other than our-selves.  

The Being also finds that he himself is, to a significant extent, the product of creation - and may resent that also. After all, he "did not ask to be created - which is a more fundamental complaint than birth. 

It seems a fact that each Being was (to a degree) created without his consent; and finds himself in a world created without his consent, and heading towards some goal that he himself had not agreed to... 

The question is how he reacts to this situation - negatively, or positively? Is he delighted and grateful to be and inhabit a creation of meaning purpose - and love? 

Or not? 

Good, or evil.  

Our choice in response to thrownness thereby determines our alignment to one or the other side, in the spiritual war of this world.

 

Be careful what you (and me!) complain of!

The major and over-riding complaint is (or should be) that the leadership class of the Western world and multi-national organizations are evil-affiliated and evil-motivated, and all its major social institutions likewise - including politics, big corporations, mass media, law, military, police, medicine, education, science and the arts. 

But/And they - and the nations they control - are also declining... 

Declining in population, military and economic power, intellectual achievement, effectiveness, wealth, confidence, self-respect... declining in all-round competence.  

It is therefore commonplace and accurate to complain both that The West is evil, and that Nothing Works Anymore. 

However! 

If The West and its nations is indeed evil by nature and intent (which it is); then surely we ought not to complain that it is also weaker (which it is)?

After all - do we really want the Empire of Evil to be more powerful? 

Do we really want Britain (or America) to be Great again? Given what these places actually Are, Do, and Want-to-do? 

We Shouldn't! 

So, let's all of us try to be a bit more coherent about our complaining - and try to avoid bemoaning the fact that we cannot pursue our evil plans with greater effectiveness. 

Note: In practice the decline is effectiveness is a symptom of the underlying evil. So we cannot (from where we are now) have greater effectiveness without first becoming more-Good. However, that is in practice, and I am here referencing spiritual matters. To want Western nations to become more effective without first requiring them to become spiritually honest and Good - is to want an evil thing. 

The doubled-edged quality of sacred symbolism: from means to the sacred, to blocking the sacred

By "sacred symbolism" I intend all the intermediary forms that are between a Man and the divine: so this includes all intended-means towards the desired-end: contact with the sacred. 

"Sacred symbols" include religious symbols (the cross, the crucifix, the ICHTHYS fish) and Icons; ritual and ceremony; prayer and meditation; sacred places such as churches, cathedrals, places of pilgrimage; and "the church" itself. 

None of these are "the thing itself" but are intermediary - intended to function as means to that end.

(For my present purposes; this also applies to the Eucharist/ Divine Liturgy/ Mass/ Holy Communion - since, even when there is believed to be the real presence of Christ as a consequence of the ceremony; the ceremony is understood as intermediary - a means towards that transformative end. )

From our Modern perspective that is rooted in a non-sacred, materialist world-view, we usually tend to regard sacred symbolism in a positive sense: the sense of symbols generating "sacredness" from a context of the mundane. 

Those serious about their religion therefore tend to emphasise, and try to strengthen, the power of symbolism. 

But sacred symbolism is double-edged. 

It is intended to bridge between the mundane and the sacred; but symbolism also (and necessarily) stands between the mundane and the sacred. 

I believe that historically (and in our own development from young childhood) symbolism became a part of religion as a response to the waning, declining, sacredness of life-as-a-whole.

Originally, I think that humans lived in and experienced a sacred world. That seems to be the situation of the nomadic hunter gatherers. Symbolism ("totemism") emerged as a later development. 

Likewise in the transition between young and older childhood - initially all the world is experienced as "spiritual" (or "enchanted" - which includes negatively such), but later much of life retreats to the mundane - and the sacred becomes discrete and increasingly separated.   

Symbolism therefore has both the positive and intended effect of making a bridge to the sacred; and also a negative and inevitable consequence of relatively down-grading the rest-of-life (the "not-specifically-sacred" images, actions, places etc.) to a lower and mundane level.   

Therefore... If or when symbolism loses its power to form a bridge to the sacred; then symbolism in practice will have a negative spiritual consequence. 

By focusing attention and hopes upon intermediaries that actually fail to generate the sacred; symbolism stands-between the individual and the sacred. 

Symbolism will then block our access to the sacred: will block our potential capacity to experience the sacred. 

In other words; the pre-existing systems of symbolism may claim to be the necessary and only means of accessing the sacred; yet in practice they fail to provide access to the sacred - and thus the consequence is for sacred symbolism to prevent access to the sacred. 

Then we need to realize that...

The above is not just a hypothetical; but actually has happened: is our present situation. 

True measures - Temperature

John Michell summarized the case against the metre (and, by extension, other metric and "SI" measurements) as: it doesn't measure anything. 

This is why metres - their decimal divisions and multiplications - are almost useless to think with; whereas many of the Imperial measures are very well suited to inner work: each being a measure of some thing relevant - whether inches, feet, furlongs... or leagues. 

[The league ought to be revived, as being the distance an average person walks in an hour. Of course, you need some artificial device for measuring hours - which have no natural correspondence!] 

For examples: Understanding the height of everyday objects in feet and inches, or weight in stones and pounds... These are far superior to the metric substitutes. 

(Although I don't understand why Americans have abandoned stones - so that peoples' weights are stated given in very large numbers of pounds! This goes absolutely against the common-sense spirit of Imperial measures.)

My favourite instance is the acre as (roughly) defined as how much land could be ploughed in a day - thus an acre in areas with light sandy soil might be several times larger in area than an acre in heavy clay soil; and this difference broadly reflected the agricultural value of the land. 

It strikes me that metric measures have only replaced Imperial to the extent that people have stopped being aware of their environment, and ceased thinking about things for themselves; and instead have handed-over their thinking to machines and computers - devices that just tell us stuff in arbitrary, abstract and incomprehensible terms... and we are intended uncomprehendingly to submit and obey (and, nowadays, people nearly always do...).

The one bad non-SI measure - which has, significantly, spontaneously (by popular lack-of-demand) been abandoned almost everywhere - is Fahrenheit, which (significantly) is not Old English in origin. 

The Fahrenheit doesn't measure anything (in ordinary experience) whereas its more successful rival, the metric (but not SI) measure of Centigrade is rooted in the freezing and boiling of water. 

Yet a Centigrade is - as typical of such abstract decimalizations - the wrong size for everyday usage: been too big, too coarse, a measure; so that in practice half degrees Celsius (or less) must be used. 

The practical men who devised Imperial measures would have subdivided the difference between freezing and boiling into a larger number of degrees (maybe twenty-four?); and probably in accordance with what was most useful for the usual everyday purposes of measuring temperature - which occur in the lower half of the range.  

Note added: By my understanding, however, all mathematics, arithmetic, geometry, number-systems &c are abstractions that remove us from direct (i.e. relational) participation with reality. Just that the Imperial measures are less abstract, more rooted in human experience... It is a matter of degree, not a qualitative distinction. But there will be no Measures in Heaven!

Writing about music : The road not taken

For about a decade from the early 1970s, I was very powerfully engaged with music: both classical music - baroque, classical and opera; and also folk music - mainly English and especially Northumbrian, but also Scots and Irish, and especially "electric folk". 

I was almost constantly listening to, thinking about, learning about, performing, discussing or practising music of some sort or another.  

When I look back on those years, I am struck by the fact that I regarded music almost as a kind of salvation. Firstly for myself, where I though that music might be an answer to problems of purpose and meaning in life. 

And also, when it came to for folk music, that it would be part of a better future for England... 

I strongly felt that folk music could - and if given the chance would - deepen the national spirit, and become part of a re-engagement with the land and with each other.

I was also - and more generally - looking for a more active creative life. I was singing and acting, playing the accordion (but not particularly well) and a few other instruments in folk clubs and the like; and was involved in comedy performances including writing/ plagiarizing material. 

But I wanted something more originative than performance and adaptations; and was always experimenting with "creative writing" such a poems, plays and short-stories. 

As it turned-out, I had no talent for creative writing; but took quite rapidly (when I tried it) to "non-fiction" essayistic and journalistic writing; yet this avenue did not get-going until I was in my late twenties. 

What I now regard as a "road not taken" during those "lost creative years" was writing about music at that time when music was most important to me in the 1973-83 period*. 

Of course, I might not have been able to do it well - or even (more importantly) to my own creative satisfaction; but this can't now be known. 

It might be supposed that my lack of advanced ability at any instrument, my deficiencies in musical training, would have been a fatal deficit. But I didn't think so, and several serious musicians I knew well, regarded me as naturally insightful on the subject. 

But I did not even try; although there were opportunities, if I had asked for them - which I never did. 

Mostly this was not diffidence, but a kind of superstitious sense that if it was meant to happen, then it would happen - but if I tried to make it happen, then it wouldn't. 

This sounds a bit lame - but on the whole this has been the case through my life. Whenever I pushed myself towards some-thing by a conscious exercise of will-power: that invariably turned out to be wrong for me. 

Quite probably; me writing about music would have been, in some way a bad idea - which is why it did not happen. 

   

*[Actually, my very first published article was about music (a review of Rameau transcribed for synthesizers, done for a small specialist magazine) - but this was rather too late, didn't lead to anything else, and I had no chance to learn from it and develop.]

God will not put anyone in an impossible situation

For a Christian, God is The Creator, and also Good; and also Loves each of us at least as much as good parents love their children in the best imaginable family.  

This means that God will never place anyone in an impossible situation, and God will never allow any situation to remain impossible...

As soon as a situation has become impossible, God (because The Creator) will remake it such that there a good way-out from it - a way we are intended to discover and take. 

Experienced reality mirrors this so far as I am aware; but ultimately this assumption is faith-based - rooted in my experienced understanding of the nature of God... 

Part of which is to ensure that individual people will be able (from their own resources, and taking into account their own capacity) to navigate the needful discernment

So that any exception is only apparent, in not-real - and it is up to each person "caught" in what he supposes to be an impossible situation - to recognize this as fact. 

But all the above applies only when the purpose of this mortal life is recognized as being orientated towards eternal resurrected life in Heaven - and therefore when our perspective is not bounded by the contingencies of this temporary mortal life. 

We cannot always (and never wholly) escape from the inevitability of entropy (disease, ageing, death) nor from the activities of evil. So that kind of escape (i.e from "sin") is not (not necessarily) what God intends for us. 

Yet we can always learn from such experiences, and God always intends and hopes that we will do so; learn, that is, lessons that are extremely significant and beneficial to our resurrected life to come - even when the lesson is not (as often it is) beneficial to our remaining mortal life. 

The current hedonism

The raw hedonism of the Western populations is very striking - I mean the way in which people are self-blinded to depth; and explicitly dedicate their lives to having (what is generally accepted to be) fun and doing (what the cool people think is) cool stuff - then telling other people about it (humbly bragging). 

This is not something really new - but has become not just public (via social media, and the 24/7 connectivity to mass media) but the basis of life, for great masses of people of all ages and classes. 

What makes it so stark is that in the 2020s there are no remotely plausible social channels for people to practice virtue while gaining life-satisfaction. 

Half a century ago there were many niches - jobs, social institutions, churches, the arts and crafts - which were generally believed to be Good. And within-which there was (apparently) opportunity to build a viable life.  

This meant that many people could do these things, join these groupings, practice these activities - and feel that they were doing something that was worthwhile in some large albeit vague sense - while still (implicitly, covertly) being hedonic. 

It seems that people don't believe this now - except maybe briefly, in adolescence. 

And even if they do believe that some thing (such as "climate activism" say) is intrinsically worthwhile; they will very soon either be disillusioned; or else must consent to enter the web of lies and self-deceptions that characterises public discourse in our era. 

Such is the consequence of living under totalitarianism - there is allowed no autonomy of social institutions: all is brought under centralized surveillance and control - civil society is co-opted, regulated, emptied of agency, and squeezed towards extinction. 

In secular terms, and in the mainstream of life; the available choice is between honest disillusionment, nihilism, and isolated alienation on the one hand -- or immersion in The Matrix... with an attitude of quasi-compensatory pseudo-rebellion in the form of seeking the hedonic option. 

In other words; the dedication to hedonism is self-perceived as a stance of rebellion and dissent against the totalitarian system.

It isn't rebellion or dissent, of course - and there are, of course, other options...

There are other options... 

But only via developing explicit awareness of having been trapped by one's own metaphysical assumptions; by examining, critiquing, and revising the prevalent assumptions. 

And that development is something which can only happen by the active decision of each individual; by an inner quest that the great mass of Westerners absolutely refuse even to consider embarking upon.   

  

Genius at work: Discovering Artur Schnabel's Beethoven Sonatas

Yesterday - while suffering a migraine - I sought some edifying distraction among Beethoven's Piano Sonatas; and stumbled across the first ever complete recorded version by Artur Schnabel dating from the 78rpm interwar period of the twentieth century. 

I had (of course) come across Schnabel as a venerated name, since he was a major influence on, and favourite of, both Denis Matthews and Glenn Gould - two established favourites. I was vaguely aware that Schnabel was one of those regarded as more than a first-rank performer - also as a genuine musician.

But, for whatever reason, I had never troubled to investigate Schnabel - perhaps because of the primitive recording quality of what he left us. 

Yesterday I started to listen (in that strange, painful, detached way I sometimes do, when suffering migraine); starting with the first Piano Sonata of Beethoven - an old favourite I know well. 

I liked the first Allegro movement well enough; but spent most of the time adjusting-to - and editing-out from frontal consciousness - the "bottled" quality of the soundscape, hissing, crackles, and variable speed (with its distorting effects on tuning) of the 1934 recording. 

But when I reached the second movement - Adagio (at 3:20 in this recording) - I experienced one of those unmistakeable insights, awareness of the greatness of this musician; leaping directly across the ninety intervening years and the poor recording. 

Focusing on the melody in the right hand, I could immediately appreciate an almost miraculous long line of lyricism sustained across the musical phrases... And not just the phrases, but unbroken in its musical meaning throughout the entire movement. 

It was a direct encounter with a supreme musical intelligence; someone who knew, understood and was able to express the underlying structure and nature of this work.    

On another day, in another mood, and with a less focused and sustained concentration from me, I would surely have missed it - and heard instead just some olden-days guy playing what sounds almost like a bar-room piano on a damaged old shellac disc. 

But yesterday afternoon, in that mental state - I caught it... 

A genius at work.