Christianity

The Sad Fate of Oriental Theosophy

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In Aleppo, Syria, on July 29, 1191, Saladin had a philosopher, Sohravardî, killed.

Why? He was too subversive. Rulers do not like ideas that do not comfort them.

Sohravardî had been searching all his life for what he called the « True Reality ». He recorded the results of his investigations in his book: Oriental Theosophy. Henry Corbin wrote that he had « resurrected the ancient wisdom that the Imams of India, Persia, Chaldea, Egypt and the Ancient Greeks up to Plato never ceased to take as their pivot, from which they drew their own theosophy; this wisdom is eternal leaven. »i

This short sentence, full of names, has immense implications. It summarizes the dream, the common aspiration of many minds, that fly from century to century, leaping through space and time, or creeping in discreetly, invisibly, in a few chosen minds.

It evokes the idea of a shared intuition, a unique wisdom, a common thread linking the Indus to the Aegean Sea through the Oxus, the Tigris, the Euphrates, the Jordan and the Nile.

These rivers have been irrigating the nations that crowd their shores for thousands of years. The roads that cross them from East to West never ceased to transport words, cultures and ideas.

But today, the dream of a common wisdom shared by all humanity seems more chimeric than ever.

Nothing has been learned.

Dead is the idea of a common wisdom, spread among countless peoples.

Diverse religions, during millennia, Vedism, Avestism, Mazdeism, Zoroastrianism, Chaldean Magism, Hermetism, Orphism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (be it Sufi, Shi’ite or Sunni), all bear witness in their own specific and unique way to the fundamental unity of the human spirit. They are as many yeast in the same dough.

But they all failed, in their own way, since none of them succeeded in bringing real peace and lasting wisdom in the minds of men.

A universal cradle of ancient visions, the Middle East is still or again devastated by war.

Universal hatred, encouraged by specific interests, seems unabated.

We need to reassert what Sohravardî pointed out in Aleppo, eight centuries ago.

But the Powers, the Rulers, and their diplomats, the Sykes, the Picots, or the men of the day, have been playing their own Great Game in this vast region all over again. They laid the groundwork for today’s suffering. New corrupt leaders, men of little meaning and wisdom, have brought more harm on this part of the world, but they will not be judged by some International Court for all the suffering they have inflicted, after deliberately provoking endless disruptions, wars and mass migration.

i Henry Corbin, En Islam iranien. Aspects spirituels et philosophiques, t.2, p.35

The End of Judaism

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« I am the end of Judaism »i.

Jacques Derrida wrote this sentence in his 1981 Notebooks.

The context? Starting from a question asked by Saint Augustine: « Quid ergo amo, cum Deum meum amo? », Derrida adapted it in his own way: « What do I love, who do I love, whom do I love above all? I am the end of Judaism. »ii

« What God do I love? « asks Derrida, fifteen centuries after Augustine.

Answer: He loves a « unique » God, – unique as birth, unique as death, unique as circumcision (because it only happens once).

What does Derrida like most of all? Answer: Judaism.

Who does he love above all? His mother, who is dying, and who no longer recognizes him.

His mother represents « the end of a Judaism, » adds Derrida (« la fin d’un judaïsme »).

As for him, he says he is « the end of Judaism » (« la fin du judaïsme »), of that Judaism that his mother embodied, to which his mother gave her face, and which he will not transmit.

The maternal face has now disappeared, although indelible.

« It’s over. »

His own face, disfigured by a viral facial paralysis, affects him, and opens up an unpredictable future for him.

Derrida claims that he is the end of this Judaism, that of his mother. But why does he generalize by saying: « I am the end of Judaism« ?

What allows him to make this assertion, this prophecy? His name Elijah?

After the end of this Judaism, Jacques Derrida wanted to found another one. He says that he will start a new Judaism, a « Judaism out of religion, inherited from his people but detached from them »iii.

He wants to found another religion, and even, through his philosophy, « to rebuild all religions »iv.

Colossal project, amazing idea. Questions quickly come to mind. Is there any analogy between Derrida’s new religion and Christianity?

Hadn’t Christianity already been a kind of first ‘exit’ from Judaism, and perhaps was it not even a project to « re-found » religion?

No and no. Derrida is categorical: « Christianity has abandoned the letter and circumcision ».

Is it worth starting a dispute? In Christian services, the letter is read. The Bible is a reference. The letter is there, literally. As for circumcision, it has not really been abandoned, either. Of course, it is not the foreskin (« orla », עָרְלָה), but rather the heart, eyes and ears that are recommended to be circumcised.

Derrida says he is faithful to the letter and circumcision. But since he wants to found another religion, which would be an « other Judaism » after the « end of Judaism », how will he go about innovating?

Let’s consult his program.

He says we must « re-found religions by playing with them, reinvent circumcision, re-circumcise what is uncircumcising, thwart the re-appropriation of languages by a God-Unity »v.

These formulas call for some comments.

« Re-founding religions by playing with them ».

The metaphor of « play » is curious, even surprising, in this charged context. « Playing » with religion is a dangerous game. Nowadays, a mortal one.

Moreover, where there is only one game, how can we judge what is at stake? What can be based on a game? When a foundation stone « plays », the temple trembles, religion falters.

« Reinventing circumcision. »

In what way is this idea new compared to what the Judeo-Christian Paul already said about circumcision, not of the foreskin, but of the heart?

What more can we invent to circumcise after the sex, the soul, the heart, the eyes, the ears? The fruits of the trees? Atoms? The stars? DNA? Eschatology? Or Judaism itself?

« Re-circumcise what is being uncircumcised. »

Derrida says that circumcision is a unique act, a founding event. How would flesh foreskins « uncircumcise »? Or would « uncircumcision » be only a metaphor, applying not to the flesh but to the spirit? But then isn’t this just Paul of Tarsus’ proposal?

« To defeat the re-appropriation of languages by a One God ».

Again a metaphor of a game. It is no longer a question of playing, however, but of « thwarting God ». Babel’s confusion had indicated a lead. The God « One » had then shown himself hostile to the idea of a « one » language among men.

Why would God – who once allowed the confusion of languages – have « re-appropriated » languages and unified them in the process?

What does Derrida want to thwart in God? Words, language? He plays them, he plays with them, he thwarts them. He is a poet of the word who opens, and who provokes.

« I am the last of the Jews. »vi

Here is Pierre Delain’s comment on the Derridex website: « This sentence, « I am the last of the Jews », Jacques Derrida signs it, and at the same time he mocks it (UTD p101). It must be put in quotation marks. It is the ironic sentence of the one who listens to himself speak, a stereotype, an outrageous statement. By quoting and reciting it, he staged the mockery, he laughed and cried too. From a certain angle where writing is put in abyss, it can be taken seriously. »

The philosopher Derrida wants to have the last word. This is his last card in the big game. The last one was a stunt. « Religious is a fighting sport (especially not for journalists!) ».vii

He is the last thinker, the thinker of eschatology.viii

« The most advanced is the one that keeps the future open. « Always open, even at the last minute…

« I am the last » means, really: « I am the one who opens, again, always. »

ihttp://www.idixa.net/Pixa/pagixa-0506201121.html

iihttp://www.idixa.net/Pixa/pagixa-0506201121.html

iiihttp://www.idixa.net/Pixa/pagixa-0505131252.html

iv Cf. Circonfession, p.206

vhttp://ww.idixa.net/Pixa/pagixa-0710201132.html

vihttp://www.idixa.net/Pixa/pagixa-0506190802.html « Cette formulation de Jacques Derrida, « Je suis le dernier des Juifs » [avec une majuscule], est reprise des carnets de 1976, non publiés mais cités dans Circonfession (1990). En septembre 1991, elle est rappelée dans une interview donnée à Elisabeth Weber, et enfin reprise le 3 décembre 2000 à l’occasion du colloque Judéités, qui s’est tenu au Centre communautaire de Paris. Elle est donc constamment réaffirmée sur plusieurs décennies. (…) dernier des Juifs, c’est aussi celui qui habite ce qui reste du judaïsme. Le dernier des eschatologistes maintient l’avenir ouvert. S’il annonce la fin du judaïsme, c’est pour en fonder un autre, qui ne serait plus le même. Tout se passe « comme si » le moins pouvait le plus (il insiste sur le « comme si ») : moins tu te montreras juif, plus tu le seras (c’est la formule du marrane). Le dernier des juifs peut être le pire des juifs, mais aussi celui qui garantit la série. Exclu-inclu, dehors-dedans, il n’appartient pas de fait à la culture juive, il est au bord de la série et la débordant. »

viihttps://diacritik.com/2016/03/25/jacques-derrida-le-religieux-est-un-sport-de-combat-surtout-pas-de-journalistes/

viiihttp://www.idixa.net/Pixa/pagixa-0506190808.html « Il n’est pas seulement le dernier des eschatologistes, il est aussi le plus avancé (p91) : « ils n’ont m’ont jamais pardonné d’être l’eschatologiste le plus avancé, la dernière avant-garde qui compte ». Le plus avancé, c’est celui qui maintient l’avenir ouvert, sans horizon. »

The Veil of Death

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Deep mysteries are made of successive veils. Their unveiling never offers a complete revelation. It is a long process – that is a veil in itself.

In his diary on 26-27 November 1906, Tolstoy describes his daughter Macha’s death, which just happened: « Macha died earlier today. Strange thing. I felt neither frightened nor afraid, nor aware that something exceptional was being done (…) I watched her all the time she was dying: with astonishing tranquility. For me – she was a being who unveils herself before my own unveiling. I was following this unveiling, and it was joyful for me. But this unveiling has ceased in the domain that is accessible to me (life), that is, this unveiling has ceased to be visible to me; but what was being unveiled is that. »

The unveiling of death begins in life. Its signs still belong to life, until this singular unveiling is no longer visible to those who do not die, to those who remain in the unveiling of life.

Their lives veil their death. And death continues to reveal what cannot be revealed to those who do not die.

This is what can sometimes be revealed at the death of a loved one, that there is an unveiling of death, which continues in death. Tolstoy attests to this. Capital information, but imponderable. There may be reason to doubt such a fragile testimony, based on tenuous clues. Yet I believe that Tolstoy is a precious, sensitive and credible witness.

The death of those we love is not of the visible order. But it waved, it showed a possible path. Nine months before Macha’s death in February 1906, Tolstoy had already noted: « What is the matter before me? The most important: a good death », and also: « You grow up to death ».

Growing in this way is certainly a metamorphosis, a movement. A movement towards what? On 31 December 1906, Tolstoy replied: « Movement is the awareness of our divine character. »

This movement towards death can be brief or long, sharp or languid, confused or sustained. Only the tempo varies, not the end.

As a man who seems to have experienced the essence of death, Tolstoy notes this strange formula, not without a whiff à la Newton: « The value of life is inversely proportional to the square of the distance from death. »

Fatal attraction of bodies by the dark star. A black hole in the vicinity of which thought is accelerating. Plato said that death is for the soul the deliverance of the body. It remains to meditate on the speed, acceleration and gravity of this deliverance.

The Vedic Skandalon

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« Mirror neurons » are activated in our brain when we observe particular movements or behaviours in others. They then allow us to actually reproduce them, after having virtually mimicked them in neural networks.

This is the neurobiological basis of a much larger anthropological phenomenon, imitation, – at work within societies, cultures, civilizations, religions. René Girard, who worked on mimetic mechanisms, identified the figure of the scapegoat as essential to the foundation of the first human institutions. The programmed sacrifice of the victim creates the conditions for religious and social identification.

In some of the oldest religions, such as the Vedas, the notions of victim and sacrifice take on such a central value that they reverse their relationship with believers. It is no longer the believer who makes the sacrifice, but the sacrifice that creates the believer, and even the world. It is the sacrifice that creates men, gods and demons. The sacrifice ultimately reveals itself to be the Creator God himself, Prajâpati.

This is one of the highest mysteries of the Veda. Bhagavad Gita devotes its chapter IX to the « Yoga of the Sovereign Mystery of Science ». The text proposes to reveal « sovereign science, the sovereign mystery, the supreme purification graspable by immediate intuition ». Verses 16-18 deliver it, in this form:

« I am the Sacrifice, I am worship, I am the offering to the dead; I am the herb of salvation, I am the sacred anthem; I am the anointing; I am fire; I am the victim.

I am the father of this world, his mother, his husband, his grandfather. I am the doctrine, the purification, the mystical word Om; the Rig, the Sâma, the Yajour.

I am the way, the support, the Lord, the witness, the dwelling, the refuge, the friend. I am birth and destruction; halt; treasure; immortal seed. »

Let us note in passing the rhetorical form consisting of the enumeration, one after the other, of countless divine names. The long series of these names points to the existence of a mystery, which none of these names claim to capture, but which their accumulation attempts to evoke, or at least to symbolize.

In these Vedic verses, God identifies himself successively with the Sacrifice, the fire, the hymn and the victim. In the Veda, God is everything in everything.

This is a far cry from simplistic dichotomies, built on exclusion or inclusion, such as: « The myth is against the victim, while the Bible is for it. »

The word « Veda » means « knowledge ». The association of the idea of knowledge with the religious universe evokes the role of « Gnosis » in the Mediterranean area. But the « knowledge » revealed in the Veda differs fundamentally from the « Gnosis » that Basilides, Valentine or Marcion tried to adapt to the Hellenized world of the first centuries of Christianity. To summarize: the Veda unites, the Gnosis separates.

Gnosis opposes on principle the good god to the bad god. In this, it brings to the world of the gods the unlimited violence that lies in the hearts of men.

The Gnostic idea, although ancient, is still alive. It is even possible to argue that the modern era is fundamentally Gnostic.

In fact, modern times are not very capable of understanding what the Veda sings in these hymns, namely that the victim of sacrifice is God, and that God is the victim.

A ‘crucial’ question, though. A stumbling block for intelligence and character. A Skandalon, the Greeks said, in the Christian context.

Deus and humus

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Christianity offers the opportunity to ask a question that has no place in Judaism or Islam.

Why does such a high, transcendent God, creator of the worlds, king of the universe, stoop so low, dying crucified, under the spitting and mocking of some of his creatures? Why does he humiliate himself by incarnating himself? What does the Deus have to do with humus?

The theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar proposes the idea of « kenosis » in response to these questions. The « kenosis » of the Son (the God nailed to the cross) is linked to another « kenosis », that of the Father (the « descent » of God to man).

Two thousand years ago, Paul of Tarsus had already strongly marked that this idea of kenosis was a « madness » for the Greeks, and a « scandal » for the Jews.

Why is kenosis scandalous to them? Jewish Tradition admits that there is a certain analogy between God and man, since according to Scripture, man is created in the « image » and « likeness » of God.

If man and God have any « similarity », any « resemblance », it is first and foremost the fact of « being ». Scholastics called this similarity relationship the analogy of being (« analogia entis »).

But does the fact of « being » have the same meaning for God and for man? There is a good chance of misunderstanding this word, with its multiple meanings, and its drawer obscurities.

Objections abound on this subject, even within Christianity. Karl Barth points out that Reform theologians formally deny the analogy of being. Since creation is stained by original sin, there can be no analogy between the being of man and the being of God.

The only accepted analogy, according to these same theologians, is the analogia fidei, the analogy of faith. Only faith can bring us closer to the mystery of being. By means of reason, no knowledge of God is possible. Only a gift of grace makes it possible to « know God ». Philosophy and its representations, ideas or images – like the analogy of being – are in this context powerless, useless.

The God of the Reformation is certainly not a God accessible to philosophers.

However, how can we understand this name of God, revealed to Moses: « I am he who is »?

How can we understand « I am », and « He who is », if no « analogy of being » can make us understand its meaning?

If no analogy of being is admissible in the context of the encounter between God and Moses, it means that the word « being » itself is only an empty word, a false image, which does not reflect the infinite difference in nature between being as it is said by God (« I am he who is ») and being as it is lived by man. We use the same word (« to be »), but for things that have nothing to do with each other. We are in the middle of an illusion, in the middle of a mistake.

But then why bother with this question, if the language is perfectly useless? Why read the Torah if the word « to be » is meaningless?

Why would God tell Moses words that would objectively have no meaning for human understanding? Why would God maintain confusion in this way, by playing on the obvious inability of human language? Is this God a « deceitful » God?

If the word « to be » is devoid of any common sense, does it nevertheless have a real meaning, reserved for the initiated?

If each way of being is only a fleeting image, a partial appearance, a transitory phenomenon, where does the ultimate essence of being stand?

God revealed to Moses to be the being who is « the being who is ». By contrast, it is deduced, man is a being who is not « a being who is »; he is a being, undoubtedly, but he is not « the being who is ». Nor is he a being who is not, because then he would be nothing more than a void, and the question would be resolved. This is clearly not the case. What is it then?

The metaphor of being like a « garment » can put us on a track. Serge Bulgakov dares the idea of a God who undresses himself freely from his Glory, while remaining God in himself.

To what extent can this free disregard for God by Himself go? To infinity? Is there a lower limit below which God can no longer « undress », or infinitely « naked »?

Impotence of metaphors…. What does it mean, « to undress », or « to be naked », for God?

In the absence of a precise answer, we borrow from Paul a Greek word, « kenosis », which means « emptying », to enrich a deficient theological vocabulary. « Kenosis » refers to the fact of a naked God, as delivered in Scripture, but does not explain why, the end or the essence of it.

When God says: « I am the one who is », does he then « undress » himself with the Glory of his « being », by this very word? Or is this word still a glorification?

Does he undress from his glorious « Being » to remain humbly gathered in this simple word, which twice uses the word « to be », which is also part of the miserable lexicon of man?

The word that Moses heard on the mountain has no visible equivalent. The « burning bush » was well visible to him, but it was not the visible image of the divine words (« I am he who is »). At the very least, it can be argued that the « burning bush » is perhaps an image of Glory, of which it is precisely a question of seeing if God can decide to undress himself from it.

If Glory is a garment, and God undresses himself, what remains to be « seen »? Or to « hear »? A fortiori, if the being is a garment, and the man undresses himself in it, what remains to be shown or said?

Under the garment of the being, what ultimate nakedness is she lying waiting for? Under the divine Glory, what darkness reigns?

Boring questions, no possible answers. And yet we must continue to wander, in search of new paths, as the darkness thickens here.

Noxious darkness invades the brain as soon as we speak, not of the Divinity that is said, or that reveals itself, but of the one that hides or lowers itself.

« The darkness of the abandonment of the Son has its roots in the darkness of the Father » (Adrienne von Speyr).

These similar darknesses may also, in their darkness, carry an infinitely weak glow. The deeper they are, the deeper you dive in them, the more you drown in them, the more they make you hope to find at the bottom of the sea the glow of the unheard-of, the glow of the unthinkable.

An infinitely weak glow at the bottom of infinitely dark darkness is a good metaphor for the infinite.

Any concept or image that can be formed about divine infinity must be renounced immediately. It is necessary to leave (as if by iteration, in the construction of a mathematical infinity) the place to a new enigma, to a new darkness, always deeper, each provisional concept annihilating itself, each proposed image immediately becoming obscured.

In the absence of being able to say anything positive, therefore, we can only try the negative path, the one that one of the best specialists in the field has called the « dark night ».

It is necessary to hypothesize that God is also incarnated, in his own way, in « night » and « powerlessness ». He can be « night » to himself, reveal himself deep darkness and absolute nakedness under the garment of his Glory; admit to himself « absence » at the heart of his Presence.

These are other ways of defining kenosis, other metaphors.

In the 4th century, Hilaire de Poitiers said that the Word of God has a « disposition to annihilation » which consists in « emptying himself within his power ».

This idea is still based on the raw fact of kenosis, as reported in the biblical text.

Let us return to an index, the only one we have of « annihilation » and « emptiness ». Jesus shouted just before he died: « Elôï, Elôï, lema sabachtani? »

Jesus expresses himself in Aramaic, and this phrase is translated as follows: « My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? »

This cry of agony and dereliction is also a notable, though not obvious, reference to the first verse of David’s Psalm 22, which reads in Hebrew as follows (note the difference with Aramaic):

אֵלִי אֵלִי, לָמָה עֲזַבְתָּנִי

« Eli, Eli, lamah, azabthani? ‘’

The spectators who were watching Christ’s agony on Golgotha made a mockery of Christ’s cry: « And now he is calling Elijah to help him! ».

It can be assumed that the dying person misspoke the words, suffocated by the cross, or that his dying breath was too weak for the crowd to hear him clearly. Another hypothesis is that Aramaic was perhaps not well understood by the Roman soldier? Or was the allusion to the verse in David’s psalms perhaps not obvious to the witnesses present?

All these hypotheses are obviously superfluous, inessential; but they refer to a single question that is essential:

Why this cry of abandonment, in the mouth of the « Messiah »?

The abandoned Son, the Father abandoning. At the supreme moment, extreme loneliness. Absolute failure, total nil. Jesus denied, despised, mocked by Man. And abandoned by God.

All this, from beginning to end, even today, incomprehensible, laughable, scandalous: « Madness for the Greeks, scandal for the Jews. »

This madness and scandal are two thousand years old. What can they still mean, under the lazzis, hatred or indifference, for a civilization of reason, order and « lights »?