Was it an accident, a coincidence or the sinister tricks of the long absent lord that saw the pond reading Michael Jensen's latest work for the Sydney Anglican website, at the same time as author Thomas Keneally was advising the BBC that the Catholic church attracted neurotics to work for it by peddling guilt and original sin?
Keneally confessed - oh the joy of confessions and indulgences and forgiveness for the perpetually guilty - that original sin remained the last tenet of the church that lingered in him, proving what a powerful racket it is.
But he was being a tad hard on the Catholics, because other churches know the same racket. Which brings us back to Michael Jensen and his very last par in 21: The Human Mutiny:
Since the fall, the human will has become twisted against itself. It is not just the outer world of our actions that has been affected but the inner world of our desires and longings.
The fall? No, we're not talking Camus here, we're talking the fall of man, beloved of fundamentalists, which if it's to be believed, requires a literalist interpretation of Genesis, since the only real way for the entirety of humanity to acquire guilt and original sin - as opposed to say crossed wiring, glitches in the DNA, and chemical imbalances - is to get kicked out of the Garden of Eden, because the wilful, wicked Eve (so naughty) was beguiled by the serpent and munched on the apple.
This routine, as the wiki points out, was also known to the pagan Babylonians, who c. 23-22 century BCE possessed a seal featuring male, female, fruit and serpent.
Like other great myths - Batman, Superman, Santa Claus - it's hard to kill off a goer with a great narrative that suits the masculine view of the world (but what fun it is to take a look at the walls of Babylon in the Pergamon in Berlin. Hang on, next thing, after looking at the gate of Ishtar, you might do an Elaine May and call your movie Ishtar).
(Below: Ishtar gate for your pleasure and distraction. Got any other middle eastern site you'd like to plunder?)
Anyhoo, what a tragedy gnosticism lost out. As the wiki reminds us, in that yarn, Adam and Eve thank the snake for bringing them knowledge (and movies and plasma TVs), freeing them from the Demiurge's control, and the petty, short-sighted Demiurge kicks them out, seeing that humans might be a threat (was this the first SWOT analysis?)
You won't read about any of this in Jensen, who spends most of his piece celebrating the thoughts of Paul.
That particularly unhappy and tortured individual - who thought marriage was a sensible option only when put up against hellfire and damnation - seems to suit evangelicals, given how he told women
to shut up and submit, and rabbited on endlessly about ungodliness and damnation, views that now require a little finessing.
The Jews and the Greeks cop a pounding, along with everyone else, as Jensen notes with glee:
The surprise Paul has in store is not his condemnation of the Gentile mass, but that knowledge of God’s law (nomos) has not had a positive effect on Israel. It is an honour and an advantage to be a Jew (3:1f), but in terms of his judgement on sin God shows no favourites. There is no room for proud boasting on the basis of national superiority (3:27). Thus Paul introduces his catena of condemnation (3:9-20): ‘…we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under the power of sin. The universality of the human rebellion against God does not allow for (ethnic) exceptions.
Now you might think this a tad Halloween - evil everywhere, saturating the landscape - but Jensen sees this as jolly spiffing, if a tad bleak:
Furthermore, the powerless of human beings to self-improve is emphatically stated as the ground for Paul’s vindication of God’s righteousness in 3:21-31.
Yep, forget those fitness and weight loss classes, and being kind to cats and sending money off to charity, there's no way you're going to self-improve.
Why not just fling yourself under a Sydney bus and head off to meet your maker? Oh wait, the way they drive Sydney rail buses (for City Bus, and occasional Train), there's one coming right at you, and you won't have to apologise to the maker for topping yourself ...
Anyhoo, it's all exceptionally tedious, and right down the party line. Even the graphic artist didn't know what to make of it:
Ye ancient vessel in murky fog? In future when writing in praise of Paul, can the pond recommend the tried and true?
Since we're all guilty and sinners, oh repent ye wicked, it seems only fair to note that Jensen himself has been judged a heretical sinner on the very strange Sydney Anglicans Heretics site.
The question here - as posed in "What is Truth?" - is how much Jensen actually believes in the reality of Genesis, and an actual fall, and the historical reality of Adam and Eve, which led to much fancy footwork and tap dancing at the tail of Jensen's Christ and Creation.
You can read the entire thread there - give the Sydney Anglicans those hits they desperately need - but let's just note a couple of the moves:
Symbolic vs literal. Mythical vs historical. There might be more than two options on the table...
Nicely danced. How clever of the long absent lord to invent circumlocution, evasion, ambivalence, prevarication and equivocation:
Adam may be poetically described, but actually historical. One suggestion, by Reformed evangelical scholar Henri Blocher, is that the name 'Adam' could be a way of representing the whole race at the time of the fall. Myth is not the opposite of historical. Myth is a literary genre which may describe actual historical events.
The discussion threatened to hive off into a discussion of a young earth, creationism and evolution, which is where it naturally must go if you want to make Jensen clarify his evasive gobbledegook.
If there are more than two options on the table, why not take the Gnostics (or at least the bits that suit, in the Anglican way)?
As for the evasion that myth is a literary genre that may describe actual historical events, does that mean Genesis is describing real historical events?
It's actually a simple yes/no proposition. Evolution and Adam and Eve a myth, and in a storm any myth will do (like god using thunder as a way of speaking to humans, matching Zeus).
In his heart, Jensen sounds like he knows it for what it is - a myth - but it's handy to Paul, and Paul is essential to Jensen and to the Sydney Anglicans, their whole repressive theology is based around Pauline doctrines, and so we get routine party line blather, with fancy trim - like the name "Adam" being a way of representing the whole human race at the time of the fall.
And what time was that, and what whole human race was it, and does it come through in the sampling of the DNA of the ancients? Are we talking Africa, or are we talking Noah?
It's desperate stuff, and yet the Sydney Anglicans don't dare say boo to this goose, because over in the corner are the fundies ready to out them as sinful heretics. And that's always worked amongst Catholics and Protestants, because dammit they all know they're guilty as hell sinners deserving punishment (perhaps a good whipping, if only they had the sense to settle for good sex and good food and a nice steady job).
Anyhoo, about the only joy to be had was seeing one of the few who contribute theological discussions to the site get tangled up in another bit of ethereal Pauline special pleading.
Why does it matter? Well only a month or so ago, the Anglicans were apologising for the part they played in forced adoptions in the 1960s, involving "clean breaks" with mainly hapless, young and single mothers (here), thereby reminding the world that it's not just weirdo Republicans demanding women carry a rapist's baby and assume responsibility for life.
There are other original sinners, and that unholy punishment for young women and the children born to them sprang from the notion of original sin and guilt and sex out of wedlock, and the ease of whipping away babies born because abortion was a crime ...
The theology of original sin ends up with practical consequences, judgements and punishments, all too often without justification.
Meanwhile, over at that other factory of guilt and original sin, Cardinal George Pell scribbles on for the Sunday Terror and the pond is too stingy to splash the cash when the Cardinal's thoughts on Marriage can be had a week late ... for free. They could take a year to land for all that it mattered ... it's the "for free" bit that counts.
In the usual way, Pell is shocked and horrified, or at least startled by the way young 'uns shy away from marriage:
It is not surprising that children of broken marriages can be hesitant about marrying, helped to evade deciding by the encouragement to keep their options open.
On the other hand, they could just join the Church, indulging in a most peculiar marriage, encouraged to keep their options open for a life of chastity, or perhaps a lifetime fiddling with their charges.
This hinders the decision to commit among those who enjoy adult freedoms without all the adult responsibilities. University students can fit this stereotype. Especially among the prosperous, adolescence can continue into the thirties.
And pompous prattling can continue until senility sets in, since a clergy which refuses to marry can hardly berate others for refusing to marry.
As Thomas Keneally once wisely noted this sort of chatter about adult responsibilities, and stereotypical university students is the domain of the institutional capitalistic church. He contrasted Leo XIII's Rerum Novarum in 1891 with the narrow legal proscriptions of Pope Paul VI's Humanae Vitae in 1968:
"The first is nearly Marxist with faith sown in. It's socialist, socially progressive and says things about capital which would be considered extremely left wing in today's Australia," he says. "On the other hand, Humanae Vitae has become a sort of keystone of extreme Catholicism as it wants to proscribe and censure, as if legalistically, human sexuality and reproduction." (here)
Uh huh. And this from a man who loves to dress in expensive frocks! Surely we've got time for just one example of prosperous cross-dressing? (not that there's anything wrong with that):
No? Okay, let's get on with the proscripion and censuring:
We now acknowledge that almost 79% of couples live together before marriage. I can remember when they were a bit embarrassed to tell this to the priest celebrant, or avoided the issue by listing their parents' address.
Sinners! Guilty, and dammit, they're so casual about it:
Today the majority, even of those coming for a church wedding, are matter of fact about cohabitation, because a marriage ceremony is now the celebration of what a relationship has become. For only a minority does the wedding ceremony celebrate the beginning of an intimate deeper love between the spouses, which is now expressed physically.
Yep, that'll do for a sweeping generalisation about sex and love in the younger generation. They're only in it for the fucking, the dirty young things. So what to do?
The percentage of those who marry rather than simply living together has slumped drastically in parallel with the decline in church weddings. Some like to be married in a park or on the beach, hoping that it won't rain, when a church marriage has considerable practical advantages!
Get married in church, no need for wet weather cover!
Oh it was probably meant as a droll, dry witticism - though the exclamation mark seems the only clue, because it's not very funny, nor comical, merely verging on the pathetic. Is that all there is?
Seems like it, unless you include the usual panics and alarums about women failing to understand their role in life is to breed for Rome:
The contraceptive revolution has made cohabitation possible. One of the ironies of today's situation is that natural family planning clinics are more used to enable pregnancy to occur, rather than limiting the number of births.
Women are marrying later, when they are past peak fertility and their inability to conceive is enhanced. This is especially so for those who have been using the pill for many years, which can sometimes mask an underlying fertility problem.
Yes women of Australia have a couple for yourself, one for Peter Costello and one for Cardinal Pell and while you're at it one for the Pope because the way enrolments are going in the Catholic church, the attractions of incense and altar wine seems to mask an underlying ability to attract recruits.
Or some such thing. So how do we and Pell end?
The state of marriage merits discussion and debate outside and inside Church circles...
The end of the world and shifty young people locked in filthy, grappling, sweaty sin on a hot Sydney night, and it only merits discussion and debate?
Excluding affluent university students of course, who have nothing to offer as they work the night shift at the local pub.
Why anyone would listen to this sort of nattering abuse and chit chat about sinners sinning from Sydney Anglicans or Sydney Catholics is a profound mystery to the pond - perhaps deeper than transubstantiation, which at least can be explained as a yearning for cannibalism.
Maybe Keneally's explanation is obvious and simple but on the money. He's often said he found it hard to resolve the conflict between totalitarian tendencies within the institutional church and democratic liberalism. And he's right on the money about original sin and guilt attracts neurotics like honey attracts flies ...
He should know of course. Not because he was once a seminarian but because as a supporter of Manly rugby league club he's guilty of original sin. Is there any greater original sin?
And if you'd like to hear Keneally on guilt, here he is on the BBC. He's recently been out and about in Britain spruiking his latest book, but he gets on to neurosis and guilt and Catholics and shame about the seven minute mark. No mention of Manly Tom? (There's also an except with Keneally speaking on why guilt can easily turn into narcissism, or why supporting Manly will inevitably lead to narcissism ...)
Dorothy, I'm sure a cat o' nine tails will help you with your guilt. Surely Sydney Anglicans sell them on Sundays. I think you might enjoy this...being Sunday and all.
ReplyDeleteThe cat is a tad severe ... the pond always recommends the cilice ... but it's good to see the Rev Troll is back in business ...
ReplyDelete