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Docta Ignorantia XVIII Theology of the Mass Second set of comments on a new Anglican Mass, plus, response to demand for verification of Pythagorean background of Christian theological formation. I am deeply saddened, as you must be also, that the Confession is omitted now at Grace Cathedral. Such a point we have come to. I am sure there will be a restoration, but we must be patient, as you know. Meanwhile, I hope your work will drive the restoration. I am sure it is doing that, in ways Providence sees and directs that are not available to our sight. As you imply, the didactic value of public Confession outweighs its implicit toxicity for adepts who might be present. They are tough enough to take the tinge of superficiality and understand its purpose for others. The Dean of Grace is eliminating public Confession, I am sure, not to avoid grieving the penitent but to placate the haughty and bring forth the bravura and pomposity you mention. The humility derived from public Confession is vital to the public Mass. My reservations about public Confession would apply more to the monastery (adept) context, where, the argument for didactic value and elicitation of humility could still be made but, hopefully, so could the argument that Confession must be intensely personal and private with a close associate. In a public forum such intense Confession is practically impossible so public Confession is necessary, or can be legitimately argued as so. Perhaps a footnote could be inserted to the effect that the fullest Grace of Confession is obtained in deep confidence, deep privation and deep association with an intimate acquaintance, such as really only monastic context affords, or should. Also, confession should be a total way of living, the basis of every thought, every moment, not something done periodically. Renunciation is the foundation of Life. On the Sabellian tone of your Trinitarian formulation (God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit): it's both the colon and the proximity of God with Father, Son and Holy Spirit that create this impression. But I think the colon is the main thing that does it. Putting a full noetic stop after God -- via the colon -- can give this impression of Modalism. I am sure you are using the colon with great care, so, you apparently feel either that it does not give this impression or that the risk of that impression is less or less productive of odium than something else you have in mind is. In other words, I am inclined to trust your sense of propriety here. As you so well know, Trinitarian language is famous for saying what its does not mean and meaning what it does not say. Even Athanasius accepted homoiousias if it were taken in the sense the council meant by homoousias. Meaning: either word can be taken either way, which in fact is true. The creed settles nothing. It is a negative (exclusivist, elitist, unable) instrument which gets inconclusive results. The Antiochene Fathers tend towards Sabellianism, more and less, and the Latin Church has always favored the Antiochene trend against the Alexandrine, which was always in Logos (emanation) theology. Nicæa itself is a Monarchian (Sabellian) statement in tone, though not in absolute wording. So, as a member of the Latin church, with its interest in sin and historicity, you -- and I, too -- would be expected to use a language which tended more towards a Monarchian or Modalistic tone. It fits with our traditional soteriological interest in sin and salvation. In contrast, the Alexandrine Logos theology fits more with their soteriological interest in immortality, not dying. As an aside, we can mention that the gradual move of many Anglicans (and also Protestant fundamentalists) into the Greek orbit is indicating that, today at least, the interest of Western spirituality is in overcoming death rather than in overcoming condemnation, the traditional Latin preoccupation. The Greek interest in immortality is closer to the true Eastern spirituality (India) than the Roman interest in salvation from sin and its consequences is. Although, one aspect of Indian religion is just as sin-and-surrogate-atonement-[killing animals]-conscious as Latin Christianity [killing Jesus and Saints] is. Sicilians have the measure of Roman spirituality: a culture of death, to use the Polish murderer's own words. The iconography is quite explicit about this. I think we are so used to seeing it that we overlook what it is saying. For example, Dances with Wolves reprises the iconography of St. Sebastian, which excites anthrophobes (homosexuals). Your Mass reflects both interests -- immortality and salvation -- which is good. But that you reflect the interest in immortality -- being like God, in the Platonic, Origenistic, Greek Church orbit -- and that you have used Greek models speaks volumes about the sea-change of reform which your work really is. My sense is that you are not yet fully aware of its historical significance. Perhaps what you are really doing is healing this unnecessary schism in Christian spirituality. Wouldn't that be a nice thing to do? I'll trust your sense of the syntax in the Trinitarian statement. It's an impossible thing to do, anyhow, without tipping towards one side or the other. You're aware of that and have composed with that in mind. I just want to re-mind. On my career of Jesus and the ætiology of Christianity: this is something which, you rightly intuit, would require a rather thorough rearrangement of your accustomed sense of what is a source for these things. The sources I use are, for the most part, the same ones you do. Only, I look at them differently. I am more aware than you are of the hooey scholars and prelates write up as history and theology -- and why they do it -- and I am better able than you are to see through it to what is likely to have happened. You have an awe of the tradition which I do not share entirely. Therefore, we can look at the same material and derive different conclusions. It's no sense my talking evidence to you because we're looking at the same evidence already, for the most part. It's how the evidence is taken, to begin with, which accounts for the difference in view. On this, there is no convincing you. You are content with how you take the evidence. I am content that you take it so. But I am also content that the evidence can be taken in a very different way -- leading, however, to the same or same-enough soteriological end, which is important -- and I am satisfied that you may or may not ever come to grasp how I am taking it. Of course, if you were not loyal to the tradition to begin with, as best you can see it, you would not have my company. So, here's this much: most of what we take for our theological tradition -- and certainly the two main creeds -- is written for the equivalent of newspapers and magazines. The main theologians of the patristic period were, for the most part, the Rush Limbaughs and Johnny Carsons of their day. They were rhetoricians, public arguers, entertainers in fact. They earned their living as what Mel Brooks calls stand-up-philosophers. Paul Lehmann called the type newspaper theologians. He had reference to Harvey Cox, Malcolm Boyd and the then-ascendant (1967) death of God theologians. These are entertainers who hustle religion as their routines because it's a shtick. They were called rhetoricians, public speakers. We would call them celebrity entertainers. You take them for Holy Fathers of the Church. A couple are genuine religious, but most are disk-jockeys of their day. Between Paul and Jerome/Augustine there is no seminal spiritual figure that the record overtly remembers, excepting two: Origen and the individual who comes to us as Dionysius the Areopagite. The issues we were bequeathed by the newspaper theologians are newspaper issues. They have some importance but nothing existentially ultimate. Athanasius showed that when he authorized use of homoiousias. Priests and Prelates parade the creedal languages as something momentous. Well, momentous for in-house food fights, perhaps, politics and beating the table with their manhood, but for essential piety ?? -- when was the last time you felt emotionally bound to a bi-natural hypostasis? What was it Francis saw on Alverno, after all? The Original Text of Chalcedon? After Aquinas received the Vision of Christ he declared the Summa 'so much straw.' As Mary, Consort of this Hermitage, says, extra ecclesiam nulla salus is a club for terrorizing women, for making them stupid and submissive. She visualizes a pod of monkeys baring their teeth and pounding their thighs in defiant threat and provocation to a rumble. There is nothing sweet in the formula, she is saying, nothing salutary. In most societies, the bulk of temporal wealth is controlled by women, especially widows. Prelates are as aware of this fact as much as other economists are . . . . Why did all the yogis and gurus land first in New York? Because there is the greatest concentration of wealthy, guilt-ridden widows. It is a matter of record that Jerome's plain remarks on this subject aroused the calumny which produced his emigration to Bethlehem. Jerome was independently wealthy. So was his associate, Paula, and her daughter, Eustochium. He used his patrimony to build the monastery at Bethlehem just as Paula used her wealth to build a neighboring convent. Piety has always been in the yearning for grandeur (East) or freedom from condemnation (West). No one's piety is in terms of the creeds. This means, the theological tradition has to be taken not only for what it means rather than for what it says, but also and even more importantly, for WHO said it and why. And this gets us into an entirely different realm of inquiry, one scholars are loathe to touch because they feel, usually rightly, that they have no handle on it, no orderly means of entree. To examine the tradition and reach fruitful insights, one has to be a lot more than a scholar or a prelate. One has to be a Theologian. And to be a Theologian, one has to be a monastic, one has to renounce trying to beat the world at its own game. There is no other way to it. I was to the manner born and have always operated thus. That the justification for my work is not evident is in the nature of the thing. As Jeremiah said, watch events. A critical thing to identify is the extent of Pythagorean influence throughout the first four centuries. One would expect a Mason to say this, at least among Masons, and perhaps they do. I am not a Mason. My eggs are not all in this one basket, by any means, but I must emphasize that very many of them are. Another basket contains the eggs derived from the insight that underneath the newspaper theology of most of our patristic writers there is a genuine religion going on, one which is efflorescent and hardly comprehended with the vulgar contrast of Gnosticism and Christianity. This religion is neither entirely Antiochene nor Alexandrine. It is Name Theology, something partistic, no, patristic writers do not much have in view. So I do not mean to deprecate Christian religion by sizing up the fathers as I have. I feel they have deprecated it with their unable numerological preoccupations. The Trinitarian and Christological discussions of the first four centuries are intra-Pythagorean arguments over the nature of number. They are not discussions of the nature of Jesus, either of He as of Nazareth or of He as Christ. Furthermore, they are arguments conducted by third-and fourth-stringers. For truly capable Pythagorean numerological exposition, see Dionysius the Areopagite, an individual who, of course, is unknown to us. He is an able fellow. He could not have been a public entertainer. He had to have been a monastic. The able ones always are. We have some quasi-trained pseudo-Pythagorean (Stoic, Eclectic, Neo-Platonist, Skeptic, Epicurean Schools, etc.,) entertainers who realize that the personality of Jesus is on everyone's mind. To stay in business, they pick up the trend and develop it according to the modes of the rhetorician, modes that are used for public entertainment for centuries before and after. They banter back and forth. Politicians and prelates take them seriously. Politicians have an eye to what pleases the public and prelates make a living taking and giving acting for sincerity. Then, both politicians and prelates take sides. This precipitates the creedal conventions. It's all over nothing vital and it results in something unrelated to Jesus of Nazareth and God. The real embarrassment of the councils was not that they were political but that they were vulgar with respect to their intended content, namely, Theology. The councils were conducted by theological rubes. This is why they settled nothing. Theologians do not anathematize. They are not so unable as to rise only to so feeble an activity. Theologians do not employ the prerogatives of an Emperor, the procedures of Imperium. They have their own. The objective problem at the conferences (councils) is the relationship between the numbers one and three (Nicæa) and the numbers one and two (Chalcedon). Jesus is just a peg for hanging the discussion, which is an ancient and complex one, common to all civilizations and all spiritual yearning worthy of the name. This is not to deprecate what happened that we know about. Underneath is genuine soteriological concern, stressing existential things felt by the people, who very much wanted a God walking on earth, as in Alexandrine Logos theology, whose homoousias was invented by Origen,. But I am saying that the way the thing was dealt with was according to the traditional form, as a matter of the nature of number, not as a question of the nature of Jesus. Actually, that this could be done with any benefit at all, which it did and does have, is indication of the puissance of the religion Jesus inspired and the Ur-Typicality of His Personality. The religion can assume a number of valid forms -- and a number of invalid ones, also. Another basket of eggs is this: massive amounts of discussion and grades of points of view were extirpated by the victorious parties, who knew how to control history by destroying its tracks. What we have represents, in the main, the victorious formulae, none of which held firm for more than a few hours. Finally, Rome was forced to its native preference: authority is being with the Bishop (Cyprian) and that's that. Rome always chose to define authority as institutional (gang) loyalty. This is the Imperial Way, the way of Rome. Coppola's Godfather series emphasizes this ideal and also the identity of Church and Mafia sharing one and the same Imperial Economy. What in one context is called Church, in another context is called Mafia. Same people, same goals, same organization, same principles, same Imperium -- sometimes different names. My somewhat contrived version has clergy as marketing reps for bishops. What they sell is the loyalty or protection racket. The indulgence and purgatory systems, of course, are outright extortion schemes. Both Cyprian and Augustine claim the Church is Authority, the proper continuation of the Empire. The Cardinals are currently applying this doctrine in the Balkans, against Moslems and Orthodox. It's not a religious war at all, just old Imperial turf struggles for market share. The Polish murderer addressed Austrian and other Central European business leaders, a few years ago, regarding their responsibility to re-establish the Roman Empire with a view to, among other things, re-establishing European unity (Church-Mafia) and the Holy Crusade against Islam (product expansion and market control). However, the real reason for this, for world tours and for the inter-religious conference in Chicago last month, which was Roman-led, is to mask the Presence of Sathya Sai Baba, Who is re-establishing both religious and civil heteronomy world-wide, on the Vedic model. Interestingly, the first rally Baba authorized outside India was at Rome, around 1982. A statement by Him was read by the brother of the then-Prime Minister. Later public meetings in Milan and elsewhere in Italy reintroduced the notions of Jesus' extra-Palestinian pilgrimages. Milan, of course, is the other seat of the Western Church. The See of Ambrose, co-equal or superior to the See of Rome, especially as regards liturgy and monastic spirituality, which is the engine of the Church. Everything Baba does is profoundly significant. I enjoyed the strategic genius of this little wake-up call. It was not lost on its audience, who already were well aware of Him. Jesuits are not lazy folks. I'd like to mention a side-matter here, as between Anglicans. It is that Anglicanism is not a middle way between Protestantism and Catholicism. It is Catholicism. The reason is, the main outlines of the Catholic church, principally the episcopacy, are developed early, by 150 CE at the latest. Thus, the Protestant claim to be the original Christianity is spurious. Practically, Catholicism is the original, so far as the record shows, anyhow. Protestantism has a legitimate claim, but that does not include being the original. Thus, there is no middle ground for the Anglican Church to be. Middle is English for Muddle. Anglicanism is Catholicism without the papacy, without the insistence that the bishop is ipso facto the Church. I think this awareness strengthens your reform efforts. You are not trying to rebuild a valid middle ground, traditional Anglicanism, so-thought. You are rebuilding a valid Catholicism. This is different. But this is what Anglicanism really is. So when we study the early documents, we have to be aware of whose documents they are and why we have these and not others. Then, from this we have to infer, construct and hypothesize to scenarios which, subjected to rigorous scrutiny, stand on account of their similitude with what we know from our own experience about how these things happen, how sacred literatures and public commentaries thereon are formed, selected and disseminated, and, of how the eye of faith and the heart of devotion operate amidst these matters. 'What?' is not the important question. 'Who?' is. There was a Roman Emperor, late first or early second century, who had in his private oratory busts of Alexander, Moses, Jesus and Apollonios of Tyana, the great Pythagorean reformer, a contemporary of Jesus. This has to be explained. It has numerous significant leads. It is just one indicator that comes to mind. One of the things it indicates is the importance of Pythagoreans, pseudo and genuine. Apollonios was genuine. Tertullian and Cyprian, Athanasius and Arius are pseudo. The importance of Pythagoreans is one of the things deliberately scrubbed from the record, like the multiple shots at Kennedy in Dallas, and the murder of John Paul. These things happen. Where is Aramaic Matthew? In the Vatican Library? That the record does not obviously show the Pythagoreans -- it shows their School names, such as, Stoic, Eclectic, Epicurean, etc. -- does not indicate an absence of them. Actually, since the Christian record is so silent about them, attributing nothing to them, this should be taken to indicate that they were all over the place, good ones and poor. And there is plenty of record, but not all in one place and not all with an imprimatur, and also, not all from heretical material. Hippolytus gives a mention of Pythagoreans, cryptically, which is Pythagorean style. The reference is to numerology. Masons, on the other hand, openly credit Pythagoreans. They are a derivative of same. Augustine, himself, was lifted from the despair of Manicheanism by his study of astronomy, recognizing that the stars and the heavens operate in splendid harmony. This is a Pythagorean keynote. Augustine was saved first not by Ambrose, which was later, in answer to a subsequent crisis, that of certainty, but by scions of Pythagoras, in answer to his first crisis, that of the power of evil. The entire Medieval development follows Augustine in affirming the goodness of creation by illustrating with the laws of mathematics and the procession of the spheres. This is the Pythagorean presence. It built the Gothic Cathedrals. Whom do you think they got the architectural mathematics from? Tertullian? Pythagoras sits on Chartres Herself! Christian theology and liturgy are developed in Hellenistic, not in Semitic terms. The specific terms are from the Stoic, especially, but also Platonic Schools of Philosophy. This means Pythagorean monasticism, which is the Delphic/Saivite religion behind all of these Schools. Tertullian, who is credited (erroneously) with inventing Trinitarian language, was a Stoic stand-up-philosopher. Origen, who invented homoousias, and much else besides, sat in class with Plotinus at Alexandria. Both boys developed Logos Theology in ways which appealed to them, Origen was touched by the Personality of Jesus and Plotinus not so. Logos Theology as these boys developed it is from Platonic sources and behind that from the Pythagorean Parmenides and behind that it is standard Vedic non-dualistic philosophy, called Vedantha or Adwaitha (not two). It came into Greece from Africa, from Egypt. It is the backbone of Pythagorean monasticism and became the backbone, though hidden, of Christian religion. Jesus Himself expounded Adwaitha Philosophy: 'I and My Father are One.' This is one reason Hellenistic rhetoricians and genuine philosophers could assimilate Christianity: it had a familiar intellectual base through its Founder's association with Indian Spirituality or Philosophy. Like Pythagoreanism at its best, it was universalist, not sectarian as most Philosophical Schools, Mystery Schools (Gnosticisms) and Judaism were. I have told you before that both English and Greek are derived from Sanskrit. This is known even in academe! German scholarship has been full of it for 250 years. Where do you think Hegel, a lunk-head, is coming from? And Goethe and Schiller, who are adepts -- ? Or Leibnitz, also an adept -- ? Newton's calculus is not used because it is too English, too stuck on itself, too complex because of its not being guided by the clear light of non-dualistic philosophy, as Leibnitz' calculus is. Leibnitz' calculus derived from his exposure to the Vedic Ur-Types. Germans were first to translate Vedas, starting in the 17th Century. They were the ones who first identified Proto-Indo-European, that is, Sanskrit. Greek is a Sanskrit language. So is Persian. Greece and Persia are two aspects of Vedic religion, Saivism and Vaishnavism, respectively. Sathya Sai Baba says that in pre-Homeric days, Greeks were flying to the moon, physically. Why do I have to keep recounting this? Shall you be so ignorant? Shall you sit so smugly and say you'll listen but probably not believe it. If you went to an MD or a lawyer and acted so he or she would take you for a provincial putz and tell you you're an arrogant ignoramus and to get lost. But everyone thinks they can command a Theologian to jump through hoops like a circus dog. Well, I recognize that Theologians, themselves, are responsible for letting this insanity grow apace, and I am calling, 'HALT!' to it. You listen to what I say because I am a Theologian and you prove or disprove it by applying it in practice, just like an adept has to do. Then you come and ask me if you've got it right and we'll see. You will not longer get away with lying back in your divan and flicking your ashes and pulling on your Beaujolais and saying in a tone of affected boredom, 'Tell me about it!' There are sources outside anything ordinary Christian Tradition contemplates. These include travel notes made by a Russian, Nicholas Roerich, during this century, and discourses and recorded private words from Sathya Sai Baba. You may have heard that Yogananda, founder of Self Realization Fellowship, says Jesus was initiated by his -- Yogananda's -- guru. This is hyperbole. Yogananda was a pot-head, same as Gibran. You may also have heard of an Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ. This is a third-tier Masonic release. Cayce is dreaming, not present at what he claims to recount. Clare Prophet's book on Jesus is based on the work of Janet Bock, which was inspired by Sathya Sai Baba and Indra Devi. Clare is a hustler. She talked Janet into letting her use the work, not all of which is discerning, without having to mention the ultimate source, Who is Baba. Janet was too full of herself to see what was happening. Watching the contemporary shenanigans has taught me a lot about the patristic period .... Also, going to seminary and watching the shenanigans there, in the name of scholarship .... The Roerich and Baba material I do not expect you to look at. I don't even ask you to. This is the material we do not share a view of. Some scholars are aware of it. Some have made attempts to circumvent it, others to co-opt and represent it under another ægis. I don't know the destiny of it except that, besides Baba, I am the only person I am aware of having enough familiarity and integration to compel attention for it at the schools. On the other hand, the schools are not the seminal institutions of the society. The monasteries are. Then the schools. Then the governments. Then the corporations. Then the churches. And behind them all is good old Mom and Pop and Kiddies. Sathya Sai's time is spent with the Kiddies, incidentally. This is why we homeschool. Finally, there are some things which I have seemingly made up from whole cloth. One is the near-final redactor who,brought a first cut of a Canon, certified numerology, in the form of Trinitarianism, as a useful element of the religion, and, preserved in the Canon, though not in the Tradition, the most fundamental theology of the religion: Name Theology, the thing that makes the religion Christian. Another thing I seemingly made up from whole cloth are Jesus' words over the elements in the Mass. There are many reasons for doing this and several sources. I have written what He likely did say about these things at various such functions with followers. I have altered the thrust of the words entirely away from what they are in the Gospels, namely, preparation for the dogma of surrogate atonement. I have taken straight aim at this dogma and declared it injuriously fictitious, so, I have had to redo the words at the Supper. What would He have said? Well, that's not so hard to figure out. He wanted to indicate the unity of all life in Himself, something a great personality genuinely experiences and so is entitled to communicate to followers. He would have given numerous discourses to this effect, especially after the resurrection. So I composed in this meaning. The loading of surrogate atonement language into Jesus' mouth by the final redactors is also a fictionalizing but an inappropriate and injurious one. Mine follows what Jesus taught. Theirs is an odious eisegesis. Jesus was not a sacrifice for anyone's sins. He did not sacrifice Himself for anyone's sins. He was bound and held. He had no choice. The only sacrifice He made was of His own ego. He didn't pull the plug, when He could have. The crucifixion is a lesson in the only way to God, through destruction of the ego's operational capacity. It is not part of a sacrificial necessity. There were plenty of these and they were hooey, as Pythagoreans and Prophets always have and always will aver. This is indication enough. I don't want to write a treatise specifying detail. I am a Theologian, not a scholar, a king-maker, not a king, a rule-maker, not a rule-enforcer. This is the last time I will write an explanation. The next person who asks for an explanation or for evidence will be dressed down for sloth, negative un-mindfulness and waste of their and my most precious resource, Time. I hope these little thoughts have been useful. If they have not been useful, disregard them. It is a lovely and a beneficial work you are doing here. I like it a whole lot. Postscript: you might, if your discernment lapses temporarily, imagine from the preceding that I am a sæcular humanist, taking man's religious yearning in an entirely horizontal way, sans the sense of transcendence. I don't think you would be this weak, but just in case, let me say that I pretty much accept the miracle stories at face value and have no problem or concern with them. They are rather ordinary, in fact. I have never doubted their possibility or their reality, not for as long as I can remember. They occupy the world I live in. I am thoroughly comfortable with them. Furthermore, I have seen as much and more with my own eyes. Such things happen around extraordinary personalities. I hope this will convince you, if convincing you need, that I am not a supercilious academic. I endure ostracism by sæcular humanist (academic) acquaintances because of my credulity in this matter. Miracles have always been ordinary things to me, even before Baba pulled me in. And around Him, you don't even notice, it's so quick, quiet and easy. I am amused when someone calls some little event a miracle -- because they're not accustomed to it -- while taking for granted the miracle which is the Universe itself. This is an error of epistemology so egregious as to be humorous.
Adwaitha Hermitage
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