The Evangelical Universalist Forum

Gnosticism and anti pity

This is a response to Gnostics Bishop regarding remarks about Jesus and divorce - which were off topic.

Gnostic Bishop the so called no ‘divorce policy’ has a perfectly compassionate context in protecting the rights of vulnerable women. Och you don’t know anything about the Jesus’s divorce sayings old chap. I don’t wish to hector your folly with vituperation - but you sure bristle with offence here on this here Forum. And everyone is begin far more tolerant to you than you are to them.

Your offensiveness was reasonably funny at first; I’m a teacher and have an affection for the naughty ones in the class - boys will be boys - but then gets tiresome. So you are a gnostic? Well some Gnostics believed in no marriage and no sex and no eating of eggs or drinking of milk because the created world is evil. I’m sure that’s not your preferred doctrine :smiley:. And then there were the libertines who sought liberation by doing everything that society held as taboo - now there are some unloving social taboos worth breaking, but taboos against pitiless treatment of our neighbours are based on deeper intuitions than what is polite or kosher.

So who are these great liberators of humanity that you follow - these true Gnostics for today. Nietzche? Marquis de Sade? Aleister Crowley? Julius Evlova? or perhaps Bhagwan Sri Rajneesh with a bit of Wilhelm Reich thrown in for good measure and maybe a soupcon of Ayan Rand? Beware the quasi fascist anti pity tradition!!! If you really like reading, if you are really serious about thinking through these issues, I could give you a book list with Rene Girard, Martha Nussbaum, Philipa Foot and Giles Fraser and even indicate the relevant chapters if you wish. But I’m not sure you are a serious person at the moment, or even an honest fool my dear Episcopus Vagrantes (Latin terms for wandering bishop, someone who still has charisma of having been ordained to high office but is no longer in holy orders and generally abuses their charisma :wink:. You’ve got a good mind on you - use it productively.

In Christ our Hen

Dick

Actually a book that encompasses the best critique of Gnostic anti-pity tradition that I know and incorporates the insights of Girard and Martha Nussbaum and many others is

‘Redeeming Nietzsche ; On the Piety of Unbelief’ by Giles Fraser

(Giles is an FB friend of mine – and I don’t know him from Adam :smiley:)

The first fight back against Nietzschean anti pity that influenced contemporary so called Gnostic occultist, went undetected by more orthodox philosophical advocates of Nietzsche (surprisingly Camus in The Rebel an otherwise fine and compassionate book )and drove Jim Morrison of the Doors insane, and set Michel Foucault on a dangerous road that lead him to be an enthusiastic supporter of the Iranian Ayatollah revolution in the name of gay rights etc was an essay by the moral philosopher Phillppa Foot and can be found in her book ‘Natural Goodness’

Immoralism pp 95-117

And finally it is hard to pin down what people mean when they say the word Gnostic and I would not want to use it as a term of abuse for people who call themselves ‘Gnostics’ because they may mean something rather different to what I mean (but Gnostic Bishop has betrayed some hallmarks of anti pity thinking in the aristocratic haughty mode). A book that gives a balanced and very interesting introduction to what is mean by Gnosticism is Walter Wink’s monograph –

Cracking the Gnostic Code ; The Powers in Gnosticism

Happy reading Gnostic Bishop – ad I’ll stop joshing you now. Thanks for your tolerance of the old fool.

Anti pity shuns intimacy and care, shuns commitment and forgiveness; in the end it shuns embodied existence and therefore is anti incarnation. Thus in several Gnostic Docetic Gospels we do not have the pitiless of the crowd laughing at the foot of the cross as an example to turn us away from our hardness of heart. Instead the Spirit of Christ laughs above the cross - for it is the ignorant that think they are killing him – in reality he is all powerful disembodied sprit and has been all along. And he couldn’t; care less.

‘Do what thou wilt and let this be the whole of the law. Love is the law; love under will’. This was the motto of the anti pity twentieth century Gnostic and deeply trivial man Aleister Crowley. Actually he stole it from the Christian Humanist Francois Rabelais along with the name of Thelma – for this is the motto of the Abbey of Thelema in Rabelais’ Gargantua (loved by C.S. Lewis amongst many others). Rabelais was alluding to Augustine’s ‘Love God and do as you will’. His Abbey of Thelema was model of Christian Humanist education which always had confidence that a person could be educated so that their true being could unfold for the common good– without glossing over the mucky bits in human nature. So a person educated in the Christine virtues in doing their own true will would live for the good of others. But for Crowley, the self styled Great Beast – raised a Christian fundamentalist and desperate to invent a new religion without having processed his own rebellion – ‘Do what thou wilt’ came to mean that the highest law was to follow your own will and the will of the strong should prevail over the weak ( he saw the First World War as a Nietzchean apocalypse, cleansing the world of the weak – while bunking off to America to do comical broadcasts for the Kaiser).

When he founded his Abbey of Thelema in Sicily – he attracted minor celebrities and discontents to his community and they engaged in sexual rites, breaking of taboos to enhance personal power, drug enhanced trance states etc. The place was filthy and people suffered from dysentery and many other illness while these magical workings were practised. One man died, others became dypsomaniacs and drug addicts, a few later committed suicide, and some – borderline sociopaths to whom he was capriciously kind – were sold on his teachings. The Abbey was dissolved because of the death of one of his pupils and the scandal that ensued – and even Mussolini in the end wanted him out of Italy where the Abbey was situated although Crowley was a fascist sympathiser. The woman who had borne his child was penniless and destitute. He told her that he would have respect for her if she became a prostitute and earned her own passage home – and then he swaned off and left everyone to fend for themselves. Not a pretty tale :imp: .

Hmmm…I think this is some pretty important information, Dick. Not something I’m familiar with and as there has been a resurgence in interest in Ayn Rand in America recently, it is very pertinent just now. :slight_smile:
Thanks!

Steve

Hi Steve :slight_smile:

Eric Reitan, who will be known to many - or at least some - on this site, did an excellent post on Ayn Rand when Rand became topical in American politics for a bit during the last presidential election when it turned out that Mitt Romney’s Vice Presidential choice was (and still is?) an Ayn Rand fan. Rand has a big following – especially in geekdom and silicon city, and in extreme libertarian circles. Her influence – for indeed she was a ‘she’ - is rarely a good things IMHO.

You can find Eric’s original post here–

thepietythatliesbetween.blogspot … Ayn%20Rand

But here is the post copied and pasted for y’all because people rarely open links in threads I would think (and this is an excellent article for any concerned about this topic)

Why I’m not a Randian

And just to show that my lyrical ire is not only stirred by Johannes Piperius’ misappropriation of Saint Lewis – here’s a little songs I polished off that is sung by the female followers of Aleister Crowley at his Abbey of Thelema (as a retort to his misappropriation of dear old Rabelais and sung to the raucous tune of ‘Knees Up Mother Brown’). At Thelema the only person who was allowed to refer to themselves as ‘I; was – of course – Crowley. Everyone else had to cut their arm each time they said ‘I’). Quite so!

Give me crazy wisdom
Be my rascally sage
Teach me all I need to know
Deconstruct my e – ‘I’ –go
Be my guest and batten on this Buddhalicious Babe
‘I ‘go, ‘me’ goes, nullify the ego
Be my rascally sage!

Give me crazy wisdom
Shape my feeble will –
Tutor me in light self harm
I says ‘I’ and cuts me arm
Lace all my comestibles with psychedelic pills
‘I ‘go, ‘me’ goes, nullify the ego
Give a gal a thrill!

Give me crazy wisdom
Ravish my taboos
Spice up my reality
With some non-duality
And if I catch you snacking on this morsel as you’ll do? -
Lost my ego, here’s my credo:
‘As you wilt you’ll do’

Oh my what a rotten con
What a rotten con, what a rotten con.
Oh my what a rotten con
What rotten singers too!!

We’re the Buddhalicious Babes
The Buddhalicious Babes
Lost our egos, that’s how we go:
‘Be my rascally sage!’ - Oi!!

And here’s another one which comments on Crowley’s insistence that the first syllable of his name be said as in ‘Crow’ to rhyme with’ Holy’ when teh first syllable of his oringinal name actauuyl rhymed with Cow. This one is snug to the lively tune of ‘The Galloping Major’.

Hecate pecatey, chipperty chop
His name was Aleister Crowley (as in ‘Crow’)
What could it matter? - a tittle? a jot? -
That it’s meant for rhyming with ‘Holy’

Then some berk declares,
‘I’d thought to call him Crowley’ - (as in ‘Cow’)
Hell’s bell, give us a yell –
Do what you will but not foully

Then some berk declares,
‘I’d thought to call him Crowley’ -
Hell’s bell, give us a yell –
Do what you will but not foully

Hecate pecatey, chopperty chipperty
(One, two, three) Oi!!!

A serious note to end on – a quotation from Martha Nussbaum

Hi Dick, :smiley:

Thanks for the bit from Eric Reitan on Ayn Rand. Really good stuff there! As I mentioned, she’s had a bit of a resurgence here in the States, and recognizing these problems with her philosophy (and basically the lack of Love) is important.

Steve :smiley: I think when we get down to basics about what Gnosticism could mean today - we are against it :confused:

I actually have a Gnostic Bible. Can’t remember what it says though. I’m pretty sure it teaches an eternal hell.

Hmmm - I wonder what gnostic writings are included, Certainly the mainstream Gnostic writings teach that most of humanity are an inferior race to be burnt up as chaff (so I count myself in as chaff!!!). That’s not to say that there is no profit it reading these writings - of you are objective and scholarly about them. For example some early writings which are borderline between Gnosticism and non Gnosticism might even contain some genuine early traditions about Jesus. I reckon for example that tow ro three of the Logia in the Sayings Gospel of Thomas - which are not remotely Gnostic - might possibly go back to Jesus. But no more than tow or three - the majority of the sayings do have a Gnostic twist to them.

One I remember that Geoff has quoted elsewhere is -

The kingdom of heaven comes not by observation (that is no by looking for it and predicting it’s coming). Look for it in the sky and the birds will get there before you. Look for it in the sea and the fish will swim there before you. No the kingdom is already spread out over the earth but men do not perceive it’.

This is not remotely Gnostic and contains Jesus style Rabbinical wit. And it also is congruent with a key element/paradox in his proclamation of the Kingdom - that is to come but at the same time already here with his coming.

I’m also open to the idea that as the Church became more organised and hierarchical some of the earlier Christian freedoms were lost and some of these are preserved in some Gnostic writings (but in a garbled and distorted form). For example there is new Testament evidence that women had a higher status in the Church at first and that this gradually was eroded as the Hellenistic Church accommodated itself to Roman patriarchal mores. And we have many traditions about Sophia and Mary Madeline the Gnostic Gospels - but these traditions are distorted as the feminine becomes a fallen and inferior principle in humanity according to the Gnostic teachers themselves. I certainly think that Elaine Pagels - who is a good scholar and has written some good stuff on the Early Church and Augustine - has severely over egged the positive legacy of the Gnostics. As a total package Gnosticism leads to the anti pity tradition as often as not (if people are genuinely trying to be Gnostics and not just New Age Romantics who want a seemingly fluffier religion). And as for the Da Vinci Code - its; light entertainment and good for a laugh :laughing:

I think we have seen the last of Gnostic Bishop. If he comes back, I hope he can be civil. This forum is VERY tolerant (perhaps more accurately, accepting) of those who have wild and far out beliefs (my interpretation of those beliefs). We have so much evidence of this, this it would be difficult for him to say he was treated unfairly. Anyhow, just wanted to chime in, since I hadn’t seem him in a while.

He’s been posting a little bit on Kate’s (now hijacked) “heaven” thread, and I was tempted to tag him in here, but it’s not as if he doesn’t know about this thread. Dick put a link to it in a reply to him over on Kate’s thread. I guess he doesn’t want to talk about historical gnosticism and etc.

Dick i’m sure you could do something with
e - i, e - i -go
…george macdonald had a farm, or something

:laughing: I shall work on it for next April Fool’s Day James :laughing: :laughing: