Welcome!

Thanks for stopping by to read my blog.

If you’re new, get to know a bit more about what I’m about at the About page. You can also find my definitions for a lot of esoteric technical terminology at my Esoteric, Hermetic & Mystical Glossary, a living document which will likely serve to explain a lot about my own ideas and experiences as well as clarifying my blog posts somewhat.

The most popular posts so far, which may not be bad places to start reading, are: A Commentary Upon the Middle Pillar Exercise and In Defense of the Ego.

I’ve also started to post reviews of books and other media over at Your Daily Hermes. Please take a look! On a related note, I also now have a Librarything account. Check it out and start your own!

Once again, thanks for stopping by! I hope that you enjoy what I have to say, and even decide to say something back. God bless.

In Peace Profound,
Nicholas Graham

The Emerald Tablet of Hermes the Thrice-Great

1. True it is, without falsehood, certain and most true.
2. That which is above is like to that which is below, and that which is below is like to that which is above, to accomplish the miracles of the one thing.
3. And as all things were by contemplation of the One, so all things arose from this one thing by a single act of adaptation.
4. The father thereof is the sun, the mother the moon; the wind carried it in its womb; the earth is the nurse thereof.
5. It is the father of all works of wonder throughout the whole world.
6. The power thereof is perfect, if it be cast on to earth.
7. It will separate the element of earth from that of fire, the subtle from the gross, gently and with great sagacity.
8. It doth ascend from earth to heaven; again it doth descend to earth, and uniteth in itself the force from things superior and things inferior. Thus thou wilt possess the glory of the brightness of the whole world, and all obscurity will fly far from thee.
9. This thing is the strongest of all powers, the force of all forces, for it overcometh every subtle thing and doth penetrate every solid substance.
10. Thus was this world created.
11. Hence there will be marvellous adaptations achieved, of which the manner is this.
12. For this reason I am called Hermes Trismegistus, because I hold three parts of the wisdom of the world.
13. That which I had to say about the operation of sol is completed.

In praise to God for giving me to understand the Arcanum of which I sought, I pray as Hermes did to the Divine Poimandres (Corpus Hermeticum 1:30-32)—

I have come, divinely inspired by the truth. Wherefore, I give praise to God the Father with my whole soul and strength:

Holy is God the Father of all.
Holy is God whose will is accomplished by his own powers.
Holy is God who wills to be known and is known by those that are his own.
Holy art thou who by the Word has united all that is.
Holy art thou of whom all Nature became an image.
Holy art thou whom Nature has not created.
Holy art thou who is stronger than all power.
Holy art thou who art higher than all pre-eiminence.
Holy art thou who suprasses praises.

Receive pure offerings of speech offered to you by inner mind and heart, thou who art unutterable, vast, beyond description, who art spoken of by silence.

I beg you that I may not fall from the knowledge that leads towards our essence, and endow me with vitality; by this grace, I shall enlighten those of the race who are in ignorance, my brothers and your sons. Wherefore, I have faith and I bear witness. I go to life and light. You are blessed, Father. He who is your man wants to share in your holiness, as you have given him all authority.

A Criticism of Common Approaches to Spirituality

[Excerpt from an as-yet untitled upcoming book, taken specifically from an exploration of some of the Hermetic/esoteric meanings of the Ten Commandments.]

“You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.” (Ex 20:17)

A topic of much contemporary interest to the New Age and Neopagan movements is that of cultural appropriation. For instance, are the “neoshamans” and “urban primitives” of our day merely spiritual thieves, or are they rightfully adapting the ideas and method of cultures past and present for their own traditions?

The key to this first question lies in the uncomfortable bravado and indignation with which the issue is usually met by the growing legions of “tribal” tattoo-covered “neoshamans” and studded-black clad “chaos magicians” of the urban landscape. For my part, I must ask: What traditions? If the hungry legions cannot point to true religion as their foundation, a living orthodoxy, they will remain hungry, no matter how many techniques of ritual, vision questing and pseudo-meditation they pry from the hands of their living brethren or lift from the defiled tombs of the holy dead. “Occultism” and “spirituality” have become only the intellectual homes of ghouls dressed in the mishmash of the expensive burial clothes of those from whom they have eaten. And like the ghouls of legend, lore and Hollywood, their hunger never abates.

Dramatic language to be sure, and seemingly harsh when used to describe fellow seekers. Still, my description is unfortunately apt. An entire “system” of sorcery has been built around what I have described above, though using the more picturesque title “paradigmal piracy”. This, a radiative anti-magic practice wherein the sorceror seeks to consciously “paradigm shift” from one religion or spiritual tradition to another and another and another as casually as I change my socks, is only the most extreme example of what Arthur Versluis refers to as the “anti-tradition”. (See The Philosophy of Magic for a brilliant study of this topic written in the 1960s, by a genuine magician watching the dramatic public emergence of the anti-tradition all through our culture.)

Such a condemnation might seem odd, coming, as it does, from a Christian Hermetic who enthusiastically learns from Buddhist, Taoist, Hindu and Pagan sources. Am I not committing theft or fraud as well? Such a question deserves a serious response.

The commandment under our present consideration is one of envy sourced in a great cultural lack in the West (spreading rapidly through the East as well): as Versluis points out, orthodox religion and the arts of mysticism, magic, alchemy and related pursuits have been rent asunder over the course of centuries of spiritual decay. This is not to say that our culture has not made some important forward movement, but that we have lost our soul as a cultural unit. It is only when religion and mysticism (used here to refer to the individual application of religion) are one, or at least when they respect one another fully, that either one of them is healthy. Mysticism is the life-force of religion, while religion give mysticism a body and a context (or matrix). Religion is also important because, contrary to modern occult cant, not everybody is a mystic, magician, priest or shaman by talent or temperament. This point is essential, but only if taken with proper humility: “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” (Mark 9:35) These are callings for some just as medicine, engineering, and auto repair are callings for others. “The powerful magician, the artistic genius, the profound thinker, and the radiant mystic certainly merit all these qualifications and perhaps still greater ones, but they do not dazzle God. In the eyes of God they are dear sheep to him; in his consideration of them he desires that they shall never go astray and that they shall have life increasingly and unceasingly.” (Meditations on the Tarot, pg. 39) Make this a theme for contemplation and much occult nonsense, as well as the pride of “human progress”, dissolves.

This dissolution has not reached the same degree in much of the East, and never existed at all in most “primitive” or “tribal” cultures. It is not, therefore, unwise to examine them from the perspective of a Western spiritual seeker. The problem arises when we seek to completely replace our own beautiful traditions, supplanting them with random elements lifted from the traditions of others. The so-called Perennial Philosophy is still alive in the West, as are our religious traditions. They are not dead, or even diseased, but wounded. Therein lies the essence of a healthy approach to exploring the spiritual traditions of others, living or dead.

When a person breaks a limb, even all four limbs and several ribs to boot, we do not leave her to die or, worse, bury her alive. yet, this is precisely what most occultists in the West are trying to do! Similarly, we would never dream of fusing that person’s whole body with the bodies of multiple other injured parties, thinking that so to do would leave us with one whole, healthy individual, but again that is the approach taken by numerous New Age practitioners every day!

Instead, we perform skillful surgery in a few problem areas to remove truly dead tissue and build bridges across the resultant gaps with transplanted or donated tissues, we infuse healthy blood from a willing donor, and we make certain that the healing body takes in proper nutrients in correct proportions to enable it to repair itself (always the best solution when the damage is slight enough to make it viable). A more difficult process, perhaps, and often painful, but if performed ably and with dedication, we have a whole, healthy, vital person in the end, rather than a disease-bearing corpse or a monstrous chimera.

I think that the point is probably plain enough, but for the sake of absolute clarity, let’s examine the metaphor. The spiritual traditions of the West—Hermetism, Christianity, Judaism and Islam*—are vital and alive, with much will for survival and the inner power to thrive. But they are most definitely wounded, each to its own extent and in its own way. In order to rehabilitate them, we must fill in gaps with borrowings from other living traditions. We do this in full awareness, rather than out of semi-conscious envy for the spiritual powers and experiences of others, because we know that our own traditions once held those very same practical methods explicitly, but they have since been wrenched away by the overzealous, or else forgotten by the indifferent. Such is the way of the “march of progress”.

This, though, is the mission of the Hermetist of any religion: recombine orthodoxy with mysticism. This is a task of lifetimes, and it cannot be artificially forced into a religious body or the culture at large, so each must first make this a personal effort. That is, each Hermetic must make this unity of soul and spirit (literally, and in terms of the present discussion) within her own person. In so doing, many philosophies, religions, theological constructs and methodologies will be explored, with bits and pieces being taken along for the ride and fitted back into the holes proper to them. The records of many such recent journeys exist for Christians to learn from and enjoy, such as our anonymous Unknown Friend, as well as Arthur Versluis, Thomas Merton, and Mouni Sadhu, many of which have been invaluable sources of teaching and inspiration for me personally. I hope to add some small measure by way of this present book.

In Hermetic/gnostic terms, then, this final commandment refers first to the full edifice of the religious and spiritual traditions of others (“your neighbor’s house”), and then to the more or less important ideas and practices within them. We shall not unlawfully desire and use them, either to replace our own, or by misguidedly grafting them all together into a harmful mishmash, but shall instead respectfully explore and examine them as humble students and servants, knowing that if we but ask, that which we lack will be given for our everlasting health.

*Others could be named, such as Neoplatonism, Platonism, Orphism, Zoroastrianism, Mithraism, and many more. However, they have all more or less lent their vital force and central fire to one or more of the traditions named above.

Some Notes Toward a Deeper Understanding of the Elements

Just as the title would indicate, this is not a complete essay. These are just some notes I’ve recently taken for my own use, and for use in my current book project. I thought that I’d post them here for the use of anybody else who might be interested in a deeper understanding of, and practice with, the Elements.

Sound—Akasha—Omnidirectional—Original Substance
Sight—Light/Fire—Straight Lines—Willed or directed motion
Touch—Air—Whirling—Neutralized motion
Taste—Water—Balanced—Passive motion
Smell—Earth—Inertia—Halted motion

Akasha through the planes:
Spiritual—Pleroma—Supercelestial Heaven
Mental—Akasha—Celestial realm
Astral—Astral Light—Planetary realm
Physical—Ether—Elemental realm

Descending Action — As in creation
Akasha -> Fire -> Water -> Air -> Earth

Ascending Action — As in spiritual growth
Earth -> Water -> Air -> Fire/Light -> Life/Wood (Taoist)
Consider a tree’s growth: from the Earth it grows first with the direct aid of water, then it breaches soil and partakes of air and light, which all produce Life/Wood. In spiritual growth, Life comes about through the dynamic admixture and action of the four Elements, though the matrix of life (Akasha/Ether) and the spirit which animates it are always present. They take advantage of the Elements and their activities to accomplish the goal of reaching back to the Source.

Glossary of Terms

I have begun working on an ongoing esoteric, Hermetic and mystical glossary. This is definitely a living document, as I will be adding to and editing it considerably over the course of time.

On Maya

[Excerpt from an as-yet untitled upcoming book.]

Certain early Christians, influenced by Greek pagan gnosticism, declared the material creation “evil”. Much early Hermetic literature followed this example, and even the Gospels hinted at it at times by ascribing presidency over the world to the Evil One. But is this world evil?

Many Eastern systems, including most forms of Buddhism and Hinduism, call the material universe “Maya”—that is, illusion. Most such systems extend this to all worlds and planes experienced chiefly through the senses, emotions and thoughts, thus declaring even the most sublime of mental spheres to be illusory. But is all we know merely a phantasm?

As in all truths, each understands according to her maturity. The doctrines of evil creation, and of Maya, are no different. Most of the modern books on Gnostic Christianity fail in their understanding, as they are translations of, and commentaries on, the old “gnostic gospels” from the perspectives of modern academics with little to no acknowledgment of the spiritual dimension of the teachings they are interpreting. Likewise most translations of Eastern tantras, sutras, and the like. There is a spiritual writer of great popularity who, as of this writing, has the ear of much of the New Age and New Thought movements as well as the moral, financial and public backing of an extremely popular television hostess, who appears to have done little more than compounding the errors of past academic scholars and projecting them outward in the form of spiritually and psychologically immature books proclaiming the literal evil of the conscious ego and the factual immateriality of the physical universe. This is nothing new. Much of the spiritual literature published in the English-speaking world since the late 19th century has been of like mind, from Theosophy to Religious Science to the Beatnik and Hippy movements on. Is there any truth behind this corpus of misapprehension and misapplication?

There certainly is, but the point is subtle.

Perhaps if we begin with a quotation: “In all the history of human thought, in all the forms, without exception, which this thought has ever taken, people have always divided the world into the visible and the invisible; and they have always understood that the visible world accessible to their direct observation and study represents something very small, perhaps even something non-existent, in comparison with the enormous invisible world.” (P.D. Ouspensky, A New Model of the Universe, 1997 Dover Publications, pp 67-68.)

Suddenly the issue is clarified! Yet, more commentary will prove fruitful.

Only God is real. That is, only God is eternal and self-existent, without cause and without dependence. This much, given religious testimony and mystical experience, is clear. So why should God, who alone is good (Mt 10:18), create an illusory universe, peopled by tiny minds so easily fooled?

The answer is that the universe is not illusory in the usual sense of the word. Maya is a technical term. Creation is only illusory in comparison to the Ultimately and Eternally Real—that is, in comparison to God. Meditate on that statement deeply, and much will be given to you. Eventually, all of creation will dissolve. Or, at least, it would if God turned his attention away from it for even a moment. Our entire reality is like an infant in its Mother’s arms; if she were to set it down and look elsewhere, it could not survive even a short while. Yet God loves us all so much that not only does he hold us tightly, he also pervades us, interweaves himself throughout all things! It is this love and attention, God’s Light, which gives us and all other things reality at all. And it is up this Ray of Light that we travel to become more and more aware of our central Selves, our spirits, and in so doing anchor ourselves with love to the Real.

Interestingly, the more of us who undertake this journey, the more real the whole of creation becomes. This is the salvation that Christ offers to all things. Creation will be gradually remade from within by infusion of the Holy Spirit.

The unreal or illusory or, as we have said, partly real creation, seen from this perspective, is not evil in any absolute sense, but may be harmful if we take it at face value. The unforgivable sin is denying the presence of God’s Holy Spirit; when the universe is seen only on its own terms, independent of God, it becomes an evil trap of souls. This is no malice on the part of either God or Nature, but one more consequence of free will. We may either acknowledge God or not. The degree to which we worship the Supreme is the degree to which we are liberated from the illusion of a self-existent, accidental and mechanistic universe. From this perspective, pantheism, polytheism and the worship of Nature are more exalted than Deism, for at least Nature and the created gods are vibrant, immanent lives which interact with our own. Neopaganism is not a reaction against Christianity, but against Deism, atheism, and a purely mechanistic view of Nature (which many well-meaning Christians unthinkingly carry on). In truth, the new Paganism is a more healthy expression than cold industrialism and catatonic modernism. Christians rejoice! Welcome your Pagan brothers and sisters into the congregation of those seeking Truth! Unhappy are those who deny God’s presence in, and love of, Nature; cursed are those who blaspheme the names by which another knows God!

It is said that the closer we approach to God, the more like a dream do we experience the universe. This is true, but not because the universe is merely a hollow apparition. It is because the universe is God’s dream, and it comes to us to act as touch points between God’s beautiful ideal and the imperfect reality which we inhabit. Beings who act principally from a given plane will experience the other planes as more ephemeral than their own, yet those operating from higher planes have the benefit of being able to observe and act upon those below, while the lower planes only experience eve a ghostly glimpse of the higher when the higher see fit to draw nearer. This explains the relative majesty of archangels and the comparative powerlessness of demons, for the one comes from above, and the other reside beneath us. Imagine, for a moment, how our world must seem to God, and the whole question resolves itself.

Essential Spiritual Training

I’m using my Librarything to compile a list of books of particular value in spiritual and magical training. I will be adding to it and modifying it over time, so please check back periodically!

The New Atheists

I have respect for atheists. I would far prefer that a person were intellectually honest enough to say that they don’t believe in God, and to move on with their lives than stay in a religious tradition for which they had no love or passion out of a sense of obligation or fear. (With caution, I suggest that God would probably also prefer that attitude over hypocrisy.) The so-called “new atheists”, led by such thinkers as Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchins, are a different story altogether.

For as long as people have thought about such things, there have been doubters, skeptics and unbelievers on the religious spectrum. Like I said, I think that’s great. Sure, I think that faith is important, but being without it doesn’t make somebody a bad person, doesn’t mean that God hates them, and doesn’t mean that they’re going to burn forever. It just means that they’re being honest with themselves and the world, and that’s also important. This kind of honesty allows for a far wider range of inquiry than does a cultural assumption or a fear of questioning. There has even been a lot of amusing literature on both sides of the fence in which thinkers of every stripe have poked fun at their adversaries while making useful or interesting points. Just read some Voltaire for a great example. So what makes the new guys different?

The new atheists share their approach to the subject with Christian, Jewish and Islamic fundamentalists. They have latched onto a philosophical system, almost always founded on one or more large assumptions, insist that their system must be taken as a priori factual truth. Experience and observation are of no importance to the new atheists if those experiences do not agree completely with their theoretical framework. Further, just like other religious fundamentalists, the new atheists choose ridiculing and attacking those whom they consider to be their opponents as their first resort. They then go on to criticize those opponents for making use of the same tactics (always forgetting that it is only their fellow fundamentalists who do so, not the more moderate believers and unbelievers out there who make up the majority of both “sides”).

Take, for example, the new atheist holiday, Blasphemy Day. On this day, new atheists the world over commit acts of blasphemy against any and all religions (other than their own) as an invocation of the god of reason, ignoring the fact that reason is a posteriori (that is, reason has an opposite strategy for inquiry to mere assumption). Blasphemy Day was celebrated this year by an art exhibit full of images of Christ in various ridiculous postures. Some of them actually were pretty funny, like “Jesus Painting His Nails” which showed Jesus using fingernail polish on the nails used to crucify him. The capper, though, were other, more significant activities such as PZ Myers driving a rusty nail through a consecrated host.

I can’t even begin to express what that action means to a Christian, and therein lies the problem: I can’t express it because the new atheists wouldn’t listen. If I were to say, “Charles Darwin was completely wrong and evolution is complete shit,” (a statement with which I do not agree, by the way, being a supporter of evolutionary biology myself) it wouldn’t even begin to compare to destroying a consecrated host. I am not here trying to condemn the action as a damnation-worthy sin as many Christians might, but instead as an extremely hurtful and cruel public act on par with repeatedly slapping a person’s parents as they look helplessly on from behind shatter-proof glass. And I’m not even Catholic!

I’m frankly more hurt by this than angry. I would never drive a rusty nail through God Is Not Great; I just choose not to partake of it myself. Can’t the next generation of atheists have similar courtesy for something of significantly greater importance for their neighbors? And there is an additional layer to this issue: I very much doubt that a priest just gave them that consecrated bread and said, “Oh, sure! Have fun!” Did somebody sneak it out of a Mass hidden in their mouth like the supposed witches were accused of doing in the 17th century? Isn’t that just a bit juvenile? I suppose that many of the attendees at Blasphemy Day events just don’t feel like ponying up the cash to join the Church of Satan, so they have to hold their own low-budget black masses without membership cards.

In the end, I can only feel a bit of pity for the new atheists. They clearly aren’t as intellectually rigorous as their forebears, and their philosophical system is entirely reactionary. What’s more, they’re reacting to a reaction! Fundamentalism in religion is what happens when rigidly-minded religious people fail to integrate new information; atheist fundamentalism is what happens when rigidly-minded atheists fail to take account of the good work that moderate and liberal religionists have worked for. I hope that those of us unhateful faithful may befriend the “unfaithful” who are willing to dialogue with us as we, as a species, move forward.

Seasonal Power

Halloween falls on October 31st every year, and is the evening before Hallowmass (Hallow’s Eve). Samhain, or true Halloween, however, falls on November 7th this year (and a different day every year; check a good Witch’s calendar or astrological calendar), the Saturday following the secular Halloween. How does true Halloween (which I will call Samhain through this article, for the sake of clarity) differ from the secular holiday?

The first answer depends upon your current religion, and your religious background. For most adult Americans, Halloween is just a way to indulge in the “dark and spooky” without social stigma, and for children to indulge their sweet teeth during the increasingly cold and dark half of the year.

For those who practice magic, divination, ancestor veneration, or anything similar, Halloween is an effective time for all of the above due to its cultural associations. The actual tides themselves have not changed to suit modern proclivities, but enough cultural energy has built up around the night of October 31st (and the day of November 1st for Roman Catholics) that it serves as a particularly effective time for all of those aforementioned activities. It is also close enough to the actual date of Samhain (which, again, changes yearly, but which is never far off of Halloween) that it naturally partakes of some of the Samhaintide energy.

Samhain itself is, of course, an even better time for magic and all things “dark and spooky” (as defined by modern Western culture). The natural tides are in motion at this time of the yearly cycle, when the Sun enters 15 degrees Scorpio, in such a way as to very literally thin the veil between the planes. The planes, it must be remembered, are not separate in the same way that one room is separated from another by a solid wall. Instead, they are segments of a continuum which runs from the physical to the spiritual. The segments are useful for defining the areas of the continuum which tend to interact more directly with one another, but are not absolute. For instance, the “lower astral” and “higher astral” are just the more and less dense sections of the astral plane; as different as they can be, they are still just “the astral plane” because they have more direct interplay with one another than either of them has with, say, the spiritual plane. Ultimately, though, everything is made out of the same “mind-stuff”, so neither the physical plane nor the spiritual plane, nor anything between, is firmly separated off from the rest.

I will be honest in saying that I don’t really understand the mechanism by which the planes “become closer”. Maybe the lower planes become less dense, or maybe the higher planes become more dense, or maybe something totally different happens; I don’t know. Experience shows, though, that this is what happens, and because of it many different metaphysical operations become a bit easier to perform.

Divination is the traditional activity for this time of year. Tarot readings, scrying, rune-casting, whatever it is that you do (or whatever you can have done for you) should bring you clearer answers with less effort this time of year. Take advantage! Samhain is not the only good time for divination, of course. Any time of year will do, with waning moons typically best. Still, Samhain, Yuletide, and Beltain are typically the best times for it. Along with divination, astral projection should also be easiest at Samhain, and easier throughout the dark half of the year than the light half.

General spellcasting can also be done to better effect at this time of year. The energy is flowing more freely all around, and messages get here and back with less resistance, so go ahead and do some magic (or have your friendly neighborhood spiritual worker do it for you).

Of particular interest on and around Samhain, too, is evocation. Because the planes are in closer communion, it is far easier to evoke a being to either astral presence or physical appearance. The higher beings, such as archangels, angels, and the greater spirits of the elements and of nature, are generally not too difficult to a well-trained summoner at any time of year. Samhain, then, is best for the evocation of “lower” elemental entities and demons, as well as for necromancy (the evocation of the dead). Now is a great time to set up a shrine to your ancestors, or to begin to befriend the spirit(s) of your home and the surrounding land.

The created gods, especially the earthy variety, are also much closer to us at this time. Cernunnos, Herne, Herodias, Habondia, Aradia, Osiris, Hermes Cthonos, Hel, Hades, Pluto, and so on are much easier to contact around Samhain, and throughout the dark half of the year. Light candles to one or two of them to whom you seem to be drawn in particular and ask them for their presence in your life. Don’t ask for anything until you have a real relationship with them; just talk to them and try to become friends. Friendship is its own reward, apart from any favors you may do one another.

I’m sure that other people have a lot of different ways of taking advantage of the season, things that I’ve never thought of. The above should give the interested some ideas, though.

Happy Halloween!

Scripture & Revelation

I’ve been told by some Christians that one can’t be a Christian without accepting the Bible as the direct words of God. I’ve also been told by some non-Christians that it is impossible to be truly “spiritual” while holding that view of Scripture. As for me, I find the whole issue to be a confusing one.

N.T. Wright describes the Bible as being one among many circumstances (person/place/thing, time and event combinations) which link Heaven and Earth (God’s dimension and ours). Any person who is in the Holy Spirit is also one such connecting point, as is group worship, and an infinite variety of others. (Simply Christian by N.T. Wright, 9th ed. 2006, HarperSanFrancisco) I would add the practice of mysticism to the list, as well, but mostly I agree with Wright: Heaven and Earth are linked together in a myriad of ways, in a multitude of places and times, and through the agency of only God knows how many people (perhaps all of us, in different ways). By suggesting that Scripture is “merely” one of these points on the grid, many conservative Christian and Jewish theologians would say that I have fallen into relativism. Only by returning to the past, they say, prior to the Enlightenment and the birth of modernism, can we find the truth that Scripture is the directly inspired Word of God.

There’s only one problem: the idea that Scripture is the directly inspired Word of God, in all ways factual, is a modern idea. The argument between “holy fiction” and “absolute divine fact” is a modern argument.

Scientific rationalism revealed a lot of skeletons in the closets of religious leaders and institutions, which is a good thing. The fresh air of a developed mind in motion is a beautiful thing. Rationalism also had a few overwhelmingly negative impacts on Western religion, only one of which is relevant to us now. Rationalism teaches that there is only one kind of truth, and that is called fact. Facts are ideas which can be proven through repeated observation, either by the human senses, or by instruments which augment those senses. Of course, higher mathematics begs to differ, and many branches of physics, psychology and neurology are increasingly breaking this scheme down, but it has still become the “official religion” of the West and will probably continue to be so for many more generations.

Before moving on, I want to make clear that I am in no way criticizing science as a philosophy, nor the necessarily factual, falsifiable and repeatable approach to science which has grown up from that philosophy (and which has, in turn, caused the philosophy of science to grow up as well). I am merely pointing out here that science and religion must necessarily take different approaches to their chosen topics of inquiry. That is as it should be, and one can not defeat or invalidate the other.

The pre-modern view of Scripture was as truth, but not fact. That is not to say that the stories in the Bible did not happen. We know that many of them did. It means, though, that some of them probably did not happen in a factual sense but that in no way decreases the value of the volume.

This is a very difficult point to make. This will seem to conservatives to be rank liberalism, while liberals will see it as either confirmation of relativism (which it is not) or as overly orthodox (which it is). The Bible is a collection of living documents. This does not mean that they are changeable, or that they should be changed, as some groups try to do. Instead, it means that the Scriptures will continue to communicate in new and fascinating ways for so long as they exist, and will always be a place we can go to talk to God and to hear him talk back. In a very real, very important sense, then, Scripture is the word of God.

Even when the Scriptures are not factual, though, they are still true, which is a point that is almost impossible to make to people bound completely in rationalism. Even if Job never existed, the Book of Job still shows us in visceral terms what life in a fallen universe is like, and how we may profitably respond to it as spiritual people. Did Job exist? Maybe. I don’t know, and we can never be sure about the existence of a single person from that long ago, especially one who was not a ruler. My point is that the power and value of the Book of Job is in no way changed one way or the other.

There are exceptions to this rule, of course. For instance, if Jesus never lived, or never performed miracles, never died and was resurrected, then three of the four gospels become worthless, and even the fourth loses most of its power. I am not trying to argue the factuality of the gospels at this time, but only pointing out the exceptional nature of the New Testament documents.

Even given the New Testament exceptions, the Bible as a whole was treated as a mystical gateway more than a history text in the way we generally think of them today. Christian contemplatives of the Benadictine, Franciscan and Trappist orders made use of the Scriptures in this way through ritual, meditation and contemplation, but also through incorporating Scripture into their daily lives by memorizing passages, chapters, and whole books in order to ponder them, contemplate them and recite them during chores. Those orders still exist, and mostly still use Scripture in the same way.

Biblical criticism and scholarship has been an important development for us. We now have better common language translations of the Bible than we ever could have had otherwise. We also have a much better idea, thanks to history, psychology, folklore studies and the hard sciences, of what in the Bible was likely to have happened, and was likely did not. Any god that would damn us for these studies, for using the beautiful brains we have, is no god of mine.

Still, when approached strictly scientifically, the Bible has become one of only two things: an interesting historical and cultural curiosity to be studied for its place within human thought and society but basically “just a book”, or the only revelation of God by God left to us after Christ’s ascension.

The ancient tradition is so much more full of life! We can see the Bible instead as a book of social and cultural importance, while also coming to know it as a living creature, written by humans, through which God does choose to reveal himself, and through which he may communicate to us. It is not so much that God inspired all of the individual authors, editors and translators of the biblical documents (though he probably did in a few cases), but that God has inspired the Bible itself! God has breathed into the Bible and made of it more than a document, more than a mere account of lives lived and lost. The Bible, when read with reverence, faith, doubt and humor, when studied critically and contemplated mystically, when treated as a living being, is among God’s most important representatives on Earth.

I will probably never understand exactly why Scripture is so moving, so truly powerful. It is hard to make sense of, yet it makes perfect sense. I must ultimately admit my ignorance, pray for guidance, open the Book and read.

Homosexuality

[Excerpt from an upcoming book. Title as yet undecided.]

Now, into the breach!, to the issue of universal controversy: homosexuality. The Hebrew laws against homosexuality (Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13) specify that a man “shall not lie with another man as with a woman.” This phrasing seems to refer to anal intercourse as opposed to oral or manual. Let us begin there.

Returning to our desert people with poor hygiene, why might anal sex be banned? it does not take much imagination to come to an understanding of the rapid spread of diseases caused by anal sex without the benefit of hot and cold in-house running water and ample supplies of antimicrobial soap. I feel no need to go into the gruesome details. This is simply not a factor in our day and place. Despite the stigma of HIV as a “gay disease”, it is not homosexuality which passes diseases around; it is heedless promiscuity and the objectification of oneself and others (leading to lack of care in sexual hygiene) which spreads sexually-transmitted diseases today. Loving, committed homosexual couples are no more a moral problem than responsible pet ownership or—I’ll be flayed alive for this comparison in some circles—loving, committed heterosexual couples.

Other Hebrew Bible passages often used to condemn homosexuals are the stories of Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen 19-29) and the Levite’s concubine (Judges 19:1-20). The latter is a much simpler tale (though no more gruesome), and can be dealt with simply: lack of hospitality is bad, but violent rape (of man or woman, by men or women) is very bad. The horror of the story is compounded by the callous treatment of a woman by the Levite, followed by his carving her up to serve as an example to others who lack hospitality (as if that were the greatest crime of the Benjamanites!). Let us summarize the moral of this hideous tale: Rape and murder are wrong! Now onward.

“Sodomy” is often used as a legal and cultural term intended to bludgeon people with the “evil of homosexuality”. In truth, however, Sodom and Gomorrah where not destroyed merely for harboring homosexuals. The narrative itself simply tells us of God responding first to a general “outcry” by sending angels to investigate, rescue the righteous of the area (which turned out to amount to only one family, that of Lot, his wife, and their daughters), and then to destroy it once these steps had been taken.

The Sodomites saw these angels, who appeared as (likely attractive) men, and not only did they not offer them food and beds, they actively tried to rape them! The crimes of Sodom, then, were greed, violence, lack of charity, and rape—the supreme act of human objectification. Lot went so far as to offer to the Sodomites the bodies of his own daughters in order to save the two strangers. The angels of God, not being ones to allow young women to be raped in their stead, put a stop to the whole proceeding by blinding the Sodomites just in time to circumvent violence, and made Lot and company abscond to yon mountains while Sodom was judged and sentenced.

Before I move forward, I would like to make an important point. Some may interpret the above to imply that the Hebrew purity laws were not “God-given”. In fact, that is the view of many liberal Jews, Christians, and secularists: the purity laws were totally man-made, and were put into God’s mouth either by tradition, or a need to legitimize them on the part of the clergy. More conservative elements of the faith community, however, state that not only are these laws the words of God Himself, but that they are therefore immutable and eternal laws. Why, then, do we Christians not follow the vast majority of them?

In answer, many Christians have looked to a middle way: the Law is certainly God’s Law, but laws change. It is not we who get to change them, but they are still dynamic. Jesus himself pointed to this fact multiple times, such as His pronouncement in Mark 2:27, “The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath[.]” All of the laws and commandments, in fact, exist for us and for creation, not as arbitrary dictates of a cosmic tyrant. A Jewish friend of mine put it thus: the Law exists to preserve life and to encourage love. Whenever it gets in the way of those things, it must be suspended. It seems, then, likely to me that God would give us laws to protect us from certain avoidable dangers, rather than just to give us “holy busywork”.

It is easy to move forward from here to the New Testament. Even a cursory reading of the Gospels shows that Jesus had little or nothing to say on the subject. That silence proves nothing on its own, and likely means that as a first-century Jew, he did not have to answer the question. It just wasn’t that pressing. Still, given his track record, I have a feeling that Jesus would have rebuked us for our judgments, had dinner with that nice lesbian couple on the next street over, and had done with it.

That sort of approach, though, is never enough for modern Christians, and it wasn’t enough for first-century Christians either, which is why Paul had to say a few words.

Paul specifically condemned a lot of things. He mentioned homosexuality in 1 Corinthians 6:9, and again in Romans 1:18-29. According to Gordon Atkinson, preacher at Covenant Baptist Church, lover of New Testament Greek, and all around swell guy, the words used by Paul do not translate simply as “homosexual”, but instead refer less generally to young make prostitutes, and the older men who frequent them (a topic designed for daytime talk TV if ever there was one).* The picture painted here is not one of homosexuality, but of promiscuity and human objectification. And that about does it for the biblical sources. The rest is up to human prejudice and our devilish tendency toward Justice miscarried and aborted late-term.

*http://reallivepreacher.com/node/868