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Footnotes:
[1]: This understanding of YHWH could change the meaning of “The Lord our God” (translated from YHWH Elohiym) from something “The One God, our ruler” or “Supreme God among gods”, to something more like “The Ground of Being, which rules us.” Sources related to YHWH:
http://www.hebrew4christians.com/Names_of_G-d/YHVH/yhvh.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetragrammaton.
[2] Some extensive commentary from Christian scholars on the meaning of Logos can be found here: http://www.bible-researcher.com/Logos.html
[3]: There are few places in the Bible pregnant with more meaning than John 1. It is a chapter that is often used to bolster the interpretation that Jesus was God incarnate. I would like to here suggest a nondualistic interpretation of the transliterated King James Greek, using definitions from Strong’s Concordance:
I can read this as suggesting that Logos precedes and informs theos, similar to how the Tao is conceived as informing nature. This idea is also found in Proverbs 8:22, with Logos as “Wisdom,” from Hebrew Chokhmah, which is the first point of the Keballah sephire and first connection between the the incomprehensible Keter and the rest of reality. If theos implies YHWH (as God), and YHWH as the creator and ‘ground’ of Being or Existence rules or governs mankind and the universe, then I would paraphrase this this interpretation as saying: ‘The Way existed always, and The Way Being-itself, and The Way was Being-itself.’ All of John 1 is a fascinating hermeneutic study, with many interpretations seemingly available. It would take far too much space to go through it all here.
[4] In the esoteric teachings of Kaballistic and Hasidic Judaism, Chokhmah is the first tier below the transcendent Father, Kether, in the Sephirot “tree of life.” In Gnostic Kaballah, Chokhmah is represented by the Son.
[5] Death is frequently compared to sleep in the Bible: Job 14:12, Psalm 13:3, Daniel 12:2, 1 Kings 2:10, 1 Kings 11:43, Acts 7:60, I Thessalonians 4:13-18, Psalm 76:5, Jeremiah 51:39, and in many other places. This relationship also ties to the assertion that reincarnation was the original presumption of biblical authors.
[6] In Mark 15:34, Jesus’ final words are “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” This saying always baffled me. I could imagine no reason why Jesus, knowing he was the Son of God, would view himself as forsaken by God in his final moments. Of the various “final words” attributed to Jesus, the account in Mark seems most plausible to me; in part because of its difficulty, and in part because Mark is considered the oldest of the gospel accounts. However, if God is understood as Being, Existence, closely associated with consciousness, and “forsaken” (sabachthani) means to “abandon, desert – then rhetorically asking why God has forsaken him may be something more like a tautological observation. Being/Existence is indeed abandoning him in that moment.
A relatively unrelated but very interesting (at least to me) side note is the close correlation between the death of Jesus and that of Socrates, both in the circumstance of trial and death (innocence) and the willingness to face death.
[7] I find this view of Jesus coherent on a great many levels, but whether it is historically or even spiritually “true” is a different question. Here, I am primarily concerned with logical coherence for now. And this interpretation removed the incoherency of standard Christian doctrine (imho), while simultaneously aligning with startling coherence to the “perennial philosophy.” My point is that the message in Christian texts can be understood to say something different than standard orthodoxy contends. The standard interpretation is not the only option.
[8] The KJV Greek of Luke 11:34 reads ‘luchnos (light, illuminator) soma (body, material form) esti (to be) ophthalmos (eye, or faculty of knowing) oun (therefore) epan (when) sou (thy) opthalmos (eye, faculty of knowing) o (be) haplous (single, whole) sou (thy) holos (all, whole) soma (material form) kai (also) esti (to be) photeinos (well lit, lustruous or transparent) de (but) hotan (whenever) o (be) poneros (troubled, desirous) sou (thy) soma (body, material form) kai (also) skoteinos (darkness). To me the key words to understanding this verse differently are ophthalmos, haplous, and poneros. Opthalmos translates as eye, but also connotes “faculty of knowing” according to Strong’s Concordance. Haplous translates as single, or whole is the key word explicitly including a nondual interpretation. Poneros is often translated as “evil,” but Strong’s lists the definitions as “1. full of labors, annoyances, hardships”, “a. pressed and harassed by labors”, “b. bringing toils, annoyances, perils”, “2. bad, of a bad nature or condition,” “a. in a physical sense”, “b. in an ethical sense.” 2b is the approach used through most of the New Testament, but by using the primary definitions, the meaning move towards the Buddhist concept of “suffering,” turning the consequence of an improper understanding to be a sort of self-induced hardship.
[9] A 3rd century writing from Dionysis reads: “Thereupon they all with one consent made a rush on the houses of the believers, and, falling each upon those whom they recognized as neighbours, plundered, harried and despoiled them, setting aside the more valuable of their possessions and casting out into the streets and burning the cheaper things and such as were made of wood, till they produced the appearance of a city devastated by the enemy. But the brethren gave way and submitted and accepted the plundering of their possessions with joy like unto those of whom Paul also testified.” This account is wedged between pages devoted to the gruesome ways various Christians had been tortured and killed for their faith by local rulers.
[10] In the Gospel of Thomas is replete with explicit nondual teachings. There are two dialogues about the Kingdom of God specifically that further suggest this interpretation: “The disciples said to him, “When will the kingdom come?” Jesus said, “It will not come if you look for it. Nor can you say, ‘It is here’ or ‘It is there.’ For the kingdom of the Father is already spread out over the earth, but people don’t see it.” (Thomas, 113) The disciples said to him, “When will the repose of the dead happen, and when will the new world come?” Jesus said, “What you are waiting for has already come, but you don’t recognize it.”
[12] The word translated as “evil” in Genesis; word used for “evil” at time in New Testament – connotes something closer to “off the mark” than “moral” evil as typically understood in the modern western conception.
[13] I interpret talk of eating Jesus (e.g. John 6:54-58 and the Last Supper) in this same manner.
[14] This philosophical understanding appears most explicitly in Ecclesiastes 2:11: “ Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind; nothing was gained under the sun.” Generally speaking, I think it is a dominant theme throughout the book.
[15] Christianity and world religions: I read volumes 1 and 2 of Paul Tillich’s Systematic Theology during the editing and proof-reading stage of composing this essay. In the words of Paul Tillich: “The ‘Word of God’ contains neither revealed commandments nor revealed doctrines; it accompanies and interprets revelatory situations.” “The unconditional and universal claim of Christianity is not based on its own superiority over other religions. Christianity, without being final itself, witnesses to the final revelation. Christianity as Christianity is neither final nor universal. But that to which it witnesses is final and universal. This profound dialectics of Christianity must not be forgotten in favor of ecclesiastical or orthodox self-affirmations. Against them the so-called liberal theology is right in denying that one religion can claim finality, or even superiority. A Christianity which does not assert that Jesus of Nazareth is sacrificed to Jesus as the Christ is just one more religion among many others. It has no justifiable claim to finality.”
Role of Judgement in various traditions: The correlation between the Jesus story and that of other other ancient religions is unmistakable in reading the material. The Egyptian god Osiris, whose cults remained strong for thousands of years (including into the early Christian era), Marduk of the Zoroastrian cult in Persia, and many other lesser cults (Mithros is commonly cited, though I have not studied that cult at all) all held notions of a savior god and a final judgement. In conflict with these views are those of the Brahmanic HIndu (and later Buddhist) traditions in the East, some conceptions of monotheism that align with pantheism, and later neo-Platonic philosophy in Greece. In the views of the East, God is within and all is One (nondual). In the Persian and Egyptian views, there is good and bad and they are not One, they are Two. These two views, it seems to me, are in irreconcilable conflict because while the Eastern view sees the two as facets of the one, the Persian/Egyptian/Abrahamic view has them as mutually exclusive enemies. Eastern views embrace the idea of reincarnation as a “soul” is worked out of many appearances in the physical realm, with the ultimate objective being dissolution into God.
Reincarnation: There is a lot of research that’s been done on reincarnation, including a lot of current research at the University of Virginia that is quite compelling. There is also little doubt that reincarnation was an idea that held sway in at least some quarters of Judaism. Most scholars suggest that in the time of Jesus, Pharisees accepted reincarnation, but Sadducees did not. It is also evident in some quarters of the early church like Origen and the Essenes. Many suggest the belief was the predominant view in the early Christian church. There are no shortage of reincarnation references in the Bible:
http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Bible-Verses-About-Reincarnation/
http://www.thenazareneway.com/reincarnation.htm
References to reincarnation can be found among many Church Fathers, such as Justin Martyr (AD 100-l65), St. Clement of Alexandria ( AD 150-220), and Origen ( AD 185-254).All taught the pre-existence of souls, taking up reincarnation or one or another aspect of re-embodiment. Synesius (AD 370-480), Bishop of Ptolemais, also taught the concept, and in a prayer that has survived, he says: “Father, grant that my soul may merge into the light, and be no more thrust back into the illusion of earth.” And in a hymn writes: “It is possible by labor and time, and a transition into other lives, for the imaginative soul to emerge from this dark abode.” It also known that some early Christian sects, like the Essenes for example, held reincarnation as fundamental doctrine. The several differences in teaching among the Christian sects of the fourth century paralleled the provincial disturbances under the weak emperors, so that by the time Justinian took charge of Rome in 527, he had serious problems. He worked desperately to reunify his crumbling empire, and one tactic seems to have been a campaign against the beliefs of the Nestorian Christians and other minority groups, and to do so he had to circumvent the decisions of the Council of Chalcedon (451). He ordered Mennas, the Patriarch of Constantinople, to convene a local or provincial synod to deal with this and meet the demands of several churchmen who opposed certain teachings, including Origen’s on the pre-existence of souls. In all, it seems the extraction of reincarnation from Christian doctrine may have been political, not spiritual, in both motivation and execution.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justinian_I
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodora_%28wife_of_Justinian_I%29
[16] I have been very hard-pressed to find Christian refutations of nondualism. Where I have found them, they typically include rejection of many new age concepts that I would also consider drivel (essentially various ways of re-incorporating and embellishing Self). Here are the Christian criticisms of this idea that I was able to locate and review online:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/v1ch3-nonduality.doc
[17] The details of the resurrection vary widely in each the gospel accounts (Part 3 detailed this), but most scholars think the oldest reference is in Paul’s letter to the Corinthians (1 Corinthians 15). In it, Paul is explicit about Jesus’s resurrection, but by the end of the chapter it also seems clear that he is using the word resurrection in reference to “spirit.” At no point do I see a clear delineation where he suggests these uses of the word “resurrection” refer to a substantially different kind of resurrection (material versus spiritual). He refers to his own witness to the resurrected Jesus as akin to the apostles’ witness, making no effort to separate his own experience as a dissimilar kind of witness. Paul’s witness to the resurrected Jesus seems clearly non-material to me (Acts 9:1-19). Add to this that the earliest gospel account, Mark, has no witness to a physically resurrected Jesus in the oldest versions of the book. The assertion of a physically resurrected Jesus seems to first appear (chronologically) in Matthew and Luke, both typically dated around 65 BCE. Both books also include the first mention of a virgin birth, as both gospels seem intent on establishing the materially supernaturalistic identity of Jesus. Origen, one of the most prominent church fathers (2nd century) also refers to the “mystery of the resurrection” and contrasts it to the (exoteric) story of a physical resurrection. To me, the historicity of a physical resurrection is uncertain at best, and doubtful at worst. Even if it is the case that Jesus was physically resurrected, that would not necessarily prove an incarnation of God. There are others accounts of resurrection from the dead in the gospels, in other religious traditions, and even in modern times there are medical mysteries involving resuscitation after certified “death.” To me, the notion of a physical resurrection is not pivotal to my understanding of the gospel message. Rather, I think its importance is in its symbolization that death is not the end; that death does not have the final say in the matter of existence.
[18] From Wiki: In 1884, Leo Tolstoy wrote a book called “What I Believe“, in which he openly confessed his Christian beliefs. He affirmed his belief in Jesus Christ‘s teachings and was particularly influenced by the Sermon on the Mount, and the injunction to turn the other cheek, which he understood as a “commandment of non-resistance to evil by force” and a doctrine of pacifism and nonviolence. In his work The Kingdom of God Is Within You, he explains that he considered mistaken the Church’s doctrine because they had made a “perversion” of Christ’s teachings. Tolstoy believed that a true Christian could find lasting happiness by striving for inner self-perfection through following the Great Commandment of loving one’s neighbor and God rather than looking outward to the Church or state for guidance. His belief in nonresistance when faced by conflict is another distinct attribute of his philosophy based on Christ’s teachings. By directly influencing Mahatma Gandhi with this idea through his work The Kingdom of God Is Within You, Tolstoy has had a huge influence on the nonviolent resistance movement to this day. Tolstoy’s relationship with his wife deteriorated as his beliefs became increasingly radical. This saw him seeking to reject his inherited and earned wealth, including the renunciation of the copyrights on his earlier works.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Tolstoy
[19] From Wiki: Mansur Al-Hallaj believed in union with the Divine, that God was within him, and that he and God had become one and the same. Mansur was cut into many pieces because in the state of ecstasy he exclaimed Ana Abrar-al Haq “I am the Abrar of truth”. He was executed in public in Baghdad. They cut him into pieces and then they burnt his remains. He kept repeating “I am the Truth” as they kept cutting his arms, legs, tongue and finally his head. He was smiling, even as they chopped off his head. Al-Hallaj wanted to testify of this relationship to God to others thus even asking his fellow Muslims to kill him (Massignon, 79) and accepting his execution, saying that “what is important for the ecstatic is for the One to reduce him to oneness. ” (Massignon, 87) He also referred to the martyrdom of Christ, saying he also wanted to die “in the supreme confession of the cross” (Olivier Clément. Dio è carita, p. 41) Like Christ, he gave his execution a redemptive significance, believing as he did that his death “was uniting his beloved God and His community of Muslims against himself and thereby bore witness in extremis to the tawhid (the oneness) of both. ” (Mason, 25) For his desire of oneness with God, many Muslims criticized him as a “‘crypto-Christian’ for distorting the monotheistic revelation in a Christian way. ” (Mason, 25). His death is described by Attar as a heroic act, as when they are taking him to court, a Sufi asks him: “What is love?” He answers: “You will see it today, tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow. ” They killed him that day, burned him the next day and threw his ashes to the wind the day after that. “This is love, ” Attar says. His legs were cut off, he smiled and said, “I used to walk the earth with these legs, now there’s only one step to heaven, cut that if you can. ” And when his hands were cut off he paints his face with his own blood, when asked why, he says: “I have lost a lot of blood, and I know my face has turned yellow, I don’t want to look pale-faced (as of fear)… .”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mansur_Al-Hallaj
[21] I think there is probably a stronger “historical” case that he was an apocalyptic prophet or composite of savior traditions. To me, the mainstream interpretation is one of the least plausible scenarios..
[22] This ties into the Muslim (and Calvinistic) notion of ultimate submission to the sovereignty of a Divine logos. Ironically, in opposition to my original position (from “Part 1”) on “free will,” I am now very open to interpretations of temporality that remove “free will” as illusion. My fundamental holdup was the pairing of predestination with divine judgement, but with divine judgement removed from the equation, some form of predestination is not problematic for me.
[23] From Wiki – “Nietzsche contrasts the Christians with Jesus, whom he regarded as a unique individual, and argues he established his own moral evaluations. As such, Jesus represents a kind of step towards his ideation of the Übermensch. Ultimately, however, Nietzsche claims that, unlike the Übermensch, who embraces life, Jesus denied reality in favor of his “kingdom of God”. Jesus’s refusal to defend himself, and subsequent death, logically followed from this total disengagement. Nietzsche goes further to analyze the history of Christianity, finding it has progressively distorted the teachings of Jesus more and more. He criticizes the early Christians for turning Jesus into a martyr and Jesus’s life into the story of the redemption of mankind in order to dominate the masses, and finds the Apostles cowardly, vulgar, and resentful. He argues that successive generations further misunderstood the life of Jesus as the influence of Christianity grew. By the 19th century, Nietzsche concludes, Christianity had become so worldly as to parody itself—a total inversion of a world view which was, in the beginning, nihilistic, thus implying the “death of God”.”