"On the other side of the gorge, “atheists,” unless they are unusually committed to a clockwork universe, tend to themselves be Covert Theists. They are generally seekers—open to occult explanations of things—but far from willing to settle for the “boring” and “repressed” view of practically any Western Traditional Christianity. They are naturally drawn to the more esoteric and exotic Eastern religions, which promise to satisfy this search beyond the merely material without the cringe and rigid moralizing of their parents’ Church, or the ontological horror of being an Ordinary Religious Boomer."
I feel this captured me a little too well for comfort. And allow me to compliment you on your incisiveness and clarity with regard to spiritual matters within modernity.
My question is, where to go from here? I try to understand the human spiritual endeavor (the work of the seeker, or even rather the Great Work) in its broadest and deepest reality but cannot help but see Christianity as too much a homogenizing project of shrinking the collective ability to interpret spiritual experience in its true manifold wildness. Christianity, of course, has evolved into an unassailable wall of dense and profound literature with a deep imbrication within basic moral and symbolic meaning in modern western culture; I appreciate it tensely and from a distance, for its spiritual depth which is vital in so many great works of art and literature. If one's criterion for assessing a religion's spiritual value is the sheer weight of its cultural influence, Christianity seems most unchallenged.
But I cannot incline myself to accept that, at the end of the day, Christianity can be an answer to this issue of disenchantment/re-enchantment for the primary reason that it asserts itself (with all its historical particularities, and its fundamental incorporation of history, historical figures) through its followers at the exclusion of all other spiritual methods as the one true religion of the one true God (ditto for Islam; they are the two great proselytizing faiths). I completely agree that intermediate divinities are no spiritual end like the all-encompassing, ineffable oneness of God (or Brahman, for that matter, which seems to me a more direct signifier for universal consciousness, or that most fundamental of stuff that exists). But I cannot imagine a world that has been through the 20th century and onwards and can still seriously regard just one faith as having a monopoly on spiritual truth, at least, from my perspective. More simply, I cannot imagine taking seriously any religion laying exclusive claim to the correct interpretation of God.
At any rate, thank you. I have enjoyed reading your work for some time and find it inspiring, so I wanted to express some of my interior tensions with the subject matter.
I don’t have good answers for you, except you could try going to daily mass and praying the rosary every day for a month and see what you come up with.
I hope that’s not too glib, but I don’t think language can fully get beyond its own hall of mirrors. I only started going myself because someone I respected said, “Just go and sit down and shut up. You don’t know anything.” And I did, hated it, and 3 years later I was a devout Catholic.
Hi Thomas, I found your comment refreshingly Honest, thanks for that. I come from a Protestant evangelical faith tradition. I too felt the inclusion and challenge of this article. I read the other 2 replies for your inquiry of where to start and I would like to add a little bit from my own experience if that’s okay. I would also suggest seeking community. That certainly can start In a regular attendance at Mass, and praying is a metaphysical mystery that I have witnessed influencing physical reality more times than I can rationally explain. Yet for me a firm grounding in the faith of my youth came in the form of real, intentional, relationships with others struggling through real life questions. Philosophical, intellectual, and metaphysical knowledge is important, but I have yet to find a true substitute for the growth and depth of character experienced in the community of Jesus Christ. I wish you well in your seeking and again appreciate your vulnerably honest questions.
Thomas, your honesty is so refreshing. JT gave good advice. It reminds me of Pascal’s advice in Pensees. It can be summed up as “just do it.” Or, “touch Christian grass.” Sometimes our thoughts abstract us too much.
Your concerns about the ultimate truth claims of the great monotheistic religions is understandable. But in the end, I see it as a necessarily scandalous claim. It means there are very real embodied truth claims. Christianity, and Catholicism in particular, is not gnostic. It’s enfleshed. And flesh is definitive. It’s crazy and hard. But what good things aren’t?
I think you would enjoy the writings of the second Vatican council. Particularly the document Nostra Atatae. It’s the current expression of the Christian church’s relationship with world religions and its rather affirming, holding the tension between the truth of Christ’s Church and the goodness of man’s innate religiosity.
Your column was in my mail in-box. I read it. I thought on it..,
Bishop Barron's daily reflection was next in the mailbox and I think it supplements your writings:
When Jesus crucified and risen is not proclaimed, a beige and unthreatening Catholicism emerges, a thought system that is, at best, an echo of the environing culture.
I don't identify as a Christian but I found this piece very illuminating and I tend to agree with you. I guess I fall into the "spiritual but not religious" camp and generally take the view that all or most of the major religions are pointing to the same higher truths in different ways. Maybe I'm missing the point with such a wishy washy stance but that's how it is for now.
Core to my own experience of re-enchantment has been a deep engagement with astrology, particularly as formulated by Richard Tarnas. I think this has more or less annihilated any residual materialism in me, at least in my conscious attitude towards life. The existence of astrological correlations is as close to a fact in my mind as gravity or a round Earth.
I find it hard to relate to any tradition, secular or religious, that dismisses or doesn't engage with this fact in a meaningful way. This is a piece that seems to be missing from the wider conversation about religion, materialism, idealism, etc. Moreover, astrology seems to shed light on the experience of mysticism or religiosity, in a way that could help bridge the gap between scientific and religious accounts.
I know that astrology was part of Jung's worldview, although not often discussed in this context. I certainly intend to delve deeper into the other thinkers you mentioned here and try to integrate their ideas.
Same! Astrology is the single body of thought that ACTUALLY re-wired me— not just “gave me things to think about.” I went from a rigid fixation on linear time to aligning with cycles and natural rhythms the sky provides.
Anyone who did any psychedelic ever has experienced non-linear time but integrating that into every day life is not easy. Astrology, if you use it— not predictively necessarily— but to understand ourselves as multi-dimensional, made up of a combination of elements, part of the cosmic order and permeable to everything, including the movement of heavenly bodies— it changes how you see AND experience the world.
It really does re-wire us back into the natural order we were severed from. It’s a sweet return that feels as right as rain. Astrology has given me that.
Wouldn't it be nice and easy if astrology was the answer and we didn't have to give up our wish for intellectual reasoning, or need to hold onto something physical to prove to ourselves why things are the way they are. I speak for myself of course. But am always sad that astrologers in general have become the new 'scientists' who believe so highly of the little understanding we have. After all, technically speaking, astrology is still another 'spiritual materialism', as Chogyam Trungpa would say.
There are a lot. Recently I read "On Being and Essence" by Thomas Aquinas (nice and short), and "On the Incarnation" by Athanasius (also mercifully short). The Suma by Aquinas is also a staple, but massive.
While I love the wrestling and the reading list (I’m intrigued by some of the unfamiliar authors you put before us), I also hate it for its cumbersome layers that can get in the way of our re-education process. At some point (preferably early in the process) we have to find a way to settle in ourselves—a moment of clarity, an “Occam’s razor”—or we will despair. I suggest that the best reference for re-enchantment—to remedy our relationship between the material and the immaterial—is the Embodied Son of God who reframes it all as “very good.” I think this Hypostatic Union provides the peace (“peace I give to you; my peace I leave with you”) we desperately crave—the kind we receive when we “sit down and shut up” recognizing, like Job, that we have uttered things too great for us; that we know nothing apart from the One who made everything. But it also supplies that foundation for knowing anything and trusting our experience on some level. Instead of starting from a place of doubting everything, as Descartes would have us do, we begin by believing in One Thing (the Good God-Man) which makes all the rest possible.
Have I oversimplified here? Probably. I’m thankful for the challenge your writing brings to shake off the dust of my thinking and grapple deeply with ideas. What a fascinating lot we are, human beings! And what a joy it is to be able to “think His thoughts after Him.” So much divine provision for our human process.
Next up: Mystics? I suspect that the immaterial experiences in the material of modern Christians are infrequently published, and therefore less exposed to analysis. They happen, but the material world clouds the memory. Occupying the world beyond the mist is periodic and unpredictable. Living in wonder for any length of time seems like undeserved Grace, a sort of mercy. A gift, like tongues of fire. There is a season….
After a surf session in which my brain re-entered my body, I am thinking that “immaterial” is not the best descriptor. More-than-material seems better. We need to find our triune God through his Creation within the world we have made outside His garden walls. Acknowledgment to David Abram for the tripartite phrasing if not the theology.
Great stuff as always. Making my home in the Reformed/Presbyterian stream, I think you’re spot-on about the fear of losing orthodoxy as a factor. Creeds and confessions do the good work of keeping us from just making shit up based on whatever feels good at the moment, but as you articulate well here, they have a potential shadow side of building a wall against real life too.
This really resonated with me. My personal project for the last few years has been that of collecting, reading, and sharing resources to promote the "massive counter-education" you describe.
Our respective lists of authors naturally diverge, but overlap sufficiently that I see yours pointing in much the same direction as mine (McGilchrist in particular gets mentioned frequently in our post-Liturgy coffee hour sessions.)
The only one in your list I don't recognize is Neumann. (The usual search gets mired down in John von Neumann, whom I don't recognize as providing historical support for belief in Christ.) I sure would appreciate some concrete references to look up.
This is right on target and will definitely give yiu a follow.
I do want to drop a suggestion that I find useful. Try enchanting your vocabulary. part of the disenchantment you're pointing to is due to utilizing the enlightenment philosophical scientific language summons that type of thinking. Instead speek to experience mythicaly.
It took me an embarrassing length of time to connect faith as a daily virtue, not only as the means of salvation. Even our understanding of what we’re saying is Good or Evil, is poverty stricken.
"On the other side of the gorge, “atheists,” unless they are unusually committed to a clockwork universe, tend to themselves be Covert Theists. They are generally seekers—open to occult explanations of things—but far from willing to settle for the “boring” and “repressed” view of practically any Western Traditional Christianity. They are naturally drawn to the more esoteric and exotic Eastern religions, which promise to satisfy this search beyond the merely material without the cringe and rigid moralizing of their parents’ Church, or the ontological horror of being an Ordinary Religious Boomer."
I feel this captured me a little too well for comfort. And allow me to compliment you on your incisiveness and clarity with regard to spiritual matters within modernity.
My question is, where to go from here? I try to understand the human spiritual endeavor (the work of the seeker, or even rather the Great Work) in its broadest and deepest reality but cannot help but see Christianity as too much a homogenizing project of shrinking the collective ability to interpret spiritual experience in its true manifold wildness. Christianity, of course, has evolved into an unassailable wall of dense and profound literature with a deep imbrication within basic moral and symbolic meaning in modern western culture; I appreciate it tensely and from a distance, for its spiritual depth which is vital in so many great works of art and literature. If one's criterion for assessing a religion's spiritual value is the sheer weight of its cultural influence, Christianity seems most unchallenged.
But I cannot incline myself to accept that, at the end of the day, Christianity can be an answer to this issue of disenchantment/re-enchantment for the primary reason that it asserts itself (with all its historical particularities, and its fundamental incorporation of history, historical figures) through its followers at the exclusion of all other spiritual methods as the one true religion of the one true God (ditto for Islam; they are the two great proselytizing faiths). I completely agree that intermediate divinities are no spiritual end like the all-encompassing, ineffable oneness of God (or Brahman, for that matter, which seems to me a more direct signifier for universal consciousness, or that most fundamental of stuff that exists). But I cannot imagine a world that has been through the 20th century and onwards and can still seriously regard just one faith as having a monopoly on spiritual truth, at least, from my perspective. More simply, I cannot imagine taking seriously any religion laying exclusive claim to the correct interpretation of God.
At any rate, thank you. I have enjoyed reading your work for some time and find it inspiring, so I wanted to express some of my interior tensions with the subject matter.
I don’t have good answers for you, except you could try going to daily mass and praying the rosary every day for a month and see what you come up with.
I hope that’s not too glib, but I don’t think language can fully get beyond its own hall of mirrors. I only started going myself because someone I respected said, “Just go and sit down and shut up. You don’t know anything.” And I did, hated it, and 3 years later I was a devout Catholic.
Hi Thomas, I found your comment refreshingly Honest, thanks for that. I come from a Protestant evangelical faith tradition. I too felt the inclusion and challenge of this article. I read the other 2 replies for your inquiry of where to start and I would like to add a little bit from my own experience if that’s okay. I would also suggest seeking community. That certainly can start In a regular attendance at Mass, and praying is a metaphysical mystery that I have witnessed influencing physical reality more times than I can rationally explain. Yet for me a firm grounding in the faith of my youth came in the form of real, intentional, relationships with others struggling through real life questions. Philosophical, intellectual, and metaphysical knowledge is important, but I have yet to find a true substitute for the growth and depth of character experienced in the community of Jesus Christ. I wish you well in your seeking and again appreciate your vulnerably honest questions.
Thomas, your honesty is so refreshing. JT gave good advice. It reminds me of Pascal’s advice in Pensees. It can be summed up as “just do it.” Or, “touch Christian grass.” Sometimes our thoughts abstract us too much.
Your concerns about the ultimate truth claims of the great monotheistic religions is understandable. But in the end, I see it as a necessarily scandalous claim. It means there are very real embodied truth claims. Christianity, and Catholicism in particular, is not gnostic. It’s enfleshed. And flesh is definitive. It’s crazy and hard. But what good things aren’t?
I think you would enjoy the writings of the second Vatican council. Particularly the document Nostra Atatae. It’s the current expression of the Christian church’s relationship with world religions and its rather affirming, holding the tension between the truth of Christ’s Church and the goodness of man’s innate religiosity.
Your column was in my mail in-box. I read it. I thought on it..,
Bishop Barron's daily reflection was next in the mailbox and I think it supplements your writings:
When Jesus crucified and risen is not proclaimed, a beige and unthreatening Catholicism emerges, a thought system that is, at best, an echo of the environing culture.
Extremely high praise with that comparison, Donna. Thanks for reading.
One of the themes I gleaned from your column was, essentially, we only accept religions that are within our comfort zone or value system.
Jesus Christ challenged that notion while he walked on earth and he challenges it now.
He did not come to make people comfortable with their earthly belief systems.
I don't identify as a Christian but I found this piece very illuminating and I tend to agree with you. I guess I fall into the "spiritual but not religious" camp and generally take the view that all or most of the major religions are pointing to the same higher truths in different ways. Maybe I'm missing the point with such a wishy washy stance but that's how it is for now.
Core to my own experience of re-enchantment has been a deep engagement with astrology, particularly as formulated by Richard Tarnas. I think this has more or less annihilated any residual materialism in me, at least in my conscious attitude towards life. The existence of astrological correlations is as close to a fact in my mind as gravity or a round Earth.
I find it hard to relate to any tradition, secular or religious, that dismisses or doesn't engage with this fact in a meaningful way. This is a piece that seems to be missing from the wider conversation about religion, materialism, idealism, etc. Moreover, astrology seems to shed light on the experience of mysticism or religiosity, in a way that could help bridge the gap between scientific and religious accounts.
I know that astrology was part of Jung's worldview, although not often discussed in this context. I certainly intend to delve deeper into the other thinkers you mentioned here and try to integrate their ideas.
Thanks for another great piece.
Same! Astrology is the single body of thought that ACTUALLY re-wired me— not just “gave me things to think about.” I went from a rigid fixation on linear time to aligning with cycles and natural rhythms the sky provides.
Anyone who did any psychedelic ever has experienced non-linear time but integrating that into every day life is not easy. Astrology, if you use it— not predictively necessarily— but to understand ourselves as multi-dimensional, made up of a combination of elements, part of the cosmic order and permeable to everything, including the movement of heavenly bodies— it changes how you see AND experience the world.
It really does re-wire us back into the natural order we were severed from. It’s a sweet return that feels as right as rain. Astrology has given me that.
Wouldn't it be nice and easy if astrology was the answer and we didn't have to give up our wish for intellectual reasoning, or need to hold onto something physical to prove to ourselves why things are the way they are. I speak for myself of course. But am always sad that astrologers in general have become the new 'scientists' who believe so highly of the little understanding we have. After all, technically speaking, astrology is still another 'spiritual materialism', as Chogyam Trungpa would say.
What books and Church Fathers do you recommend as further reading on this topic?
There are a lot. Recently I read "On Being and Essence" by Thomas Aquinas (nice and short), and "On the Incarnation" by Athanasius (also mercifully short). The Suma by Aquinas is also a staple, but massive.
Specifically, do you recommend any particular Girard? Already got the rest of those
I 2nd this in asking where to start with Girard
I 3rd this
"I See Satan Fall Like Lightning" has stuck with me massively. His collected talks are also good.
Well if this wasn’t exactly what I needed to read. Those last two paragraphs are essential reading. Thank you!
While I love the wrestling and the reading list (I’m intrigued by some of the unfamiliar authors you put before us), I also hate it for its cumbersome layers that can get in the way of our re-education process. At some point (preferably early in the process) we have to find a way to settle in ourselves—a moment of clarity, an “Occam’s razor”—or we will despair. I suggest that the best reference for re-enchantment—to remedy our relationship between the material and the immaterial—is the Embodied Son of God who reframes it all as “very good.” I think this Hypostatic Union provides the peace (“peace I give to you; my peace I leave with you”) we desperately crave—the kind we receive when we “sit down and shut up” recognizing, like Job, that we have uttered things too great for us; that we know nothing apart from the One who made everything. But it also supplies that foundation for knowing anything and trusting our experience on some level. Instead of starting from a place of doubting everything, as Descartes would have us do, we begin by believing in One Thing (the Good God-Man) which makes all the rest possible.
Have I oversimplified here? Probably. I’m thankful for the challenge your writing brings to shake off the dust of my thinking and grapple deeply with ideas. What a fascinating lot we are, human beings! And what a joy it is to be able to “think His thoughts after Him.” So much divine provision for our human process.
Next up: Mystics? I suspect that the immaterial experiences in the material of modern Christians are infrequently published, and therefore less exposed to analysis. They happen, but the material world clouds the memory. Occupying the world beyond the mist is periodic and unpredictable. Living in wonder for any length of time seems like undeserved Grace, a sort of mercy. A gift, like tongues of fire. There is a season….
After a surf session in which my brain re-entered my body, I am thinking that “immaterial” is not the best descriptor. More-than-material seems better. We need to find our triune God through his Creation within the world we have made outside His garden walls. Acknowledgment to David Abram for the tripartite phrasing if not the theology.
“More than material” is a perfect translation of the philosophical and theological concept of Metaphysical!
Theory confirmed by the Confirmer of my friends!
Interesting metaphor; “atrophied callosum” stifling the communications between hemispheres.
Fabulous, I completely relate to this. Thank you.
A most enlightening, edifying, and entertaining essay. Thank you. Happy Easter—and continued success on the platform.
Great stuff as always. Making my home in the Reformed/Presbyterian stream, I think you’re spot-on about the fear of losing orthodoxy as a factor. Creeds and confessions do the good work of keeping us from just making shit up based on whatever feels good at the moment, but as you articulate well here, they have a potential shadow side of building a wall against real life too.
This really resonated with me. My personal project for the last few years has been that of collecting, reading, and sharing resources to promote the "massive counter-education" you describe.
Our respective lists of authors naturally diverge, but overlap sufficiently that I see yours pointing in much the same direction as mine (McGilchrist in particular gets mentioned frequently in our post-Liturgy coffee hour sessions.)
The only one in your list I don't recognize is Neumann. (The usual search gets mired down in John von Neumann, whom I don't recognize as providing historical support for belief in Christ.) I sure would appreciate some concrete references to look up.
Meanwhile, thanks for all the good stuff.
Thanks so much, Guy. Love to hear that. This Neumann ——https://www.amazon.com/Origins-History-Consciousness-Mythos-Princeton/dp/0691163596
Wow, that was quick. Thanks.
I've just placed an interlibrary loan request for the book.
Hello Enchantment buddy.
This is right on target and will definitely give yiu a follow.
I do want to drop a suggestion that I find useful. Try enchanting your vocabulary. part of the disenchantment you're pointing to is due to utilizing the enlightenment philosophical scientific language summons that type of thinking. Instead speek to experience mythicaly.
It took me an embarrassing length of time to connect faith as a daily virtue, not only as the means of salvation. Even our understanding of what we’re saying is Good or Evil, is poverty stricken.
Beautiful. As always. Thankyou. Maybe one day soon I can give you a Buddhist and astrological account for a necessary belief in Christ.
hysteria
too close to home?