Hans Jonas, "The Gnostic Religion: The Message of the Alien God..." (1958)

Hans Jonas, The Gnostic Religion: The Message of the Alien God & the Beginnings of Christianity (Boston: Beacon Press, 1958).

This is one of the most thought-provoking books that I have ever read. Jonas explores and unravels the intricate fabric of Gnostic religious thought that developed concurrently with early Christianity. The two faiths competed, responding to some of the same pressures rising within Judaism, the Greek cults, and other Middle Eastern religions. Where Jonas’ book is particularly thought-provoking is that he spends almost no time at all placing these beliefs within a socio-political context, instead exploring their philosophical origins, the basic tenets of their faith, and including examples (where they exist) of liturgy and theological writing from the Gnostics themselves.

Just one example of the intriguing concepts Jonas shares from the Gnostics is a comparison of the Greek and Gnostic conceptions of the term cosmos. While the Greeks perceived the word as addressing ‘the all’ as we think of it today, they also perceived this all-encompassing nature to intimate a kind of perfection – a universal order – that was intoned respectfully. The Gnostics, on the other hand, perceiving that the world itself was made faultily, by a flawed and imperfect god among other, higher gods, perceived the cosmos as the ultimate indication of imperfection within the human experience. Instead of perfection, the cosmos was an indicator of what humans needed to transcend. The cosmos’ imperfection was proof of Gnostics ideas regarding God.

The Gnostic Religion was written in the middle of the twentieth-century, and much has been discovered and written about the Gnostics since this time. Jonas updated his text with a chapter related to what were then the new discoveries at Nag Hammadi, but many of these texts had not been fully translated or released in ‘official versions’. Nonetheless, the book conveys a convincing sense of the theological environment in which Gnostic religious thought arose, by identifying different streams of thinking within Gnostic thought avoids the unhelpful reduction of this thought to ideology, and indicates some of the complexity and evolution within this body of thinking.

Fully considered, an excellent book, although with its rather involved theological discussions, perhaps not a good start for those new to thinking about Gnosticism, or those unfamiliar with philosophy or theological thinking.

Bruce's Caves, Wiarton - Oct. 2009

Long lost brothers?





Read the story of Bruce's Caves.

Conservative Party history: Flanagan, "Harper's Team" (2007); Plamondon, "Full Circle" (2006)

Tom Flanagan, Harper’s Team: Behind the Scenes in the Conservative Rise to Power (Kingston, ON: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2007).

Bob Plamondon, Full Circle: Death and Resurrection in Canadian Conservative Politics (Toronto, ON: Key Porter, 2006).

Loathe as I am to do anything which might smack of granting endorsement to the current Canadian government, I am curious how the neo-Tories are beginning to write the history of their coming together as a unified political front. Since 1984, we’ve seen the federal Progressive Conservatives take their largest majority (211 seats) and smallest representation in the House of Commons ever (2 seats) [Plamondon shares the great joke that circulated during Jean Charest’s tenure as PC leader, that Charest’s wife was sleeping with half the PC caucus], we’ve witnessed the rise and fall of Preston Manning’s Reform Party, the conversion of Reform into the Canadian Alliance, and finally, the collapsing of the Alliance and PCs into the Conservative Party of Canada.

Flanagan and Plamondon approach much the same material, but with quite different points of focus. Flanagan speaks directly as a party insider, sharing his insights, observations, and concerns as an election and policy strategist. The book is, in the end, the story of Stephen Harper’s rise from the perspective of someone close to the man. Plamondon, on the other hand, is absent from his own story. He narrates the longer duration evolution of conservative party politics in Canadian from the mid-1980s, primarily by telling the stories of three very different men: Preston Manning, Peter Mackay, and Stephen Harper (although Joe Clark, Brian Mulroney, and Belinda Stronach also figure prominently). His own role in this evolution, however, is never stated.

While it may be small-minded, I couldn’t help but be distracted by the number of typos in Plamondon’s book, as well as his rather heavy-handed potshots at political opponents (at the same time, I admit that the NDPs record during this time does leave much to be desired).

Flanagan’s book is great for those who want to know how the neo-Tories strategized their rise. It is a well-written guidebook for campaigners. Plamondon decently articulates a trajectory of a political movement that has influenced Canadian development for the last 20 years, and to his credit, captures some of the ‘insider’ battles, spite, and compromises that led Canadian conservatives out of the political wasteland. Neither author, however, convincingly gets inside the head of the current Prime Minister, alternately characterizing him as vindictive, hard-headed, and hungry for power, or pragmatic and willing to compromise to achieve his vision for Canada. As he has now served as Prime Minister for a few years, and may (gasp of horror) for a few more, this is an important challenge to resolve.

Bart Ehrman, "Jesus Interrupted..." (2009)

Bart Ehrman, Jesus Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (And Why We Don't Know About Them) (Harper, 2009).

Like Barry Wilson, Ehrman engages in critical analysis of how the texts selected for the Bible were written, how the messages of these texts co-relate, and how the various texts were selected for inclusion into the Biblical canon. He also considers some of the texts that were not included in the canon, exploring the history and themes within the texts, the arguments that raged around whether they should be included in the Bible.

Both authors cover information familiar to scholars of the Bible but that rarely fails to astound those whose critical inquiry has been limited to discussions held in church, or for whom the Bible is foreign territory. Essentially, the message is that the Bible is a product of distinctly human efforts developed over the course of more than a hundred years, that the authors of most of the books of the Bible are not known (despite the various books being named after disciples), and that there are a multitude of contradictions and inconsistencies even between the books accepted into the Biblical canon.

Both authors also describe at length the battles over the right to claim the legacy of Jesus, comparing the faith that developed around Jesus’ brother James in Jerusalem, which adhered closely to Jesus’ attempts to revitalize and strengthen a strict Jewish tradition, and the faith developed by Paul and his adherents that sought to discount many of the distinctly Jewish traits of Jesus’ teachings.

Ehrman's book is well-written and eminently readable, although not - at least to my mind - one of his best works.

See my comments on Wilson's book, How Jesus Became Christian elsewhere on this blog.

Book review: "What a Mighty Power We Can Be: African American Fraternal Groups and the Struggle for Racial Equality" (2006)

Theda Skocpol, Ariane Liazos, and Marshall Ganz, What a Mighty Power We Can Be: African American Fraternal Groups and the Struggle for Racial Equality (Princeton University Press, 2006).

This review was published in the online, open source journal, NeoAmericanist Vol 4/No. 2 (Spring/Summer 2009).

http://www.neoamericanist.org/review/what-mighty-power-we-can-be

Barrie Wilson, "How Jesus Became Christian" (2008)

Barrie Wilson, How Jesus Became Christian: The Early Christians and the Transformation of a Jewish Teacher Into the Son of God (St. Martin's Press, 2008).

Wilson covers much the same territory as Bart Ehrman is better known for: critical analysis of how the texts selected for the Bible were written, how the messages of these texts co-relate, and how the various texts were selected for inclusion into the Biblical canon. These respected authors also consider some of the texts that were not included in the canon, exploring the history and themes within the texts, the arguments that raged around whether they should be included in the Bible.

Both authors cover information familiar to scholars of the Bible but that rarely fails to astound those whose critical inquiry has been limited to discussions held in church, or for whom the Bible is foreign territory. Essentially, the message is that the Bible is a product of distinctly human efforts developed over the course of more than a hundred years, that the authors of most of the books of the Bible are not known (despite the various books being named after disciples), and that there are a multitude of contradictions and inconsistencies even between the books accepted into the Biblical canon.

Both authors also describe at length the battles over the right to claim the legacy of Jesus, comparing the faith that developed around Jesus’ brother James in Jerusalem, which adhered closely to Jesus’ attempts to revitalize and strengthen a strict Jewish tradition, and the faith developed by Paul and his adherents that sought to discount many of the distinctly Jewish traits of Jesus’ teachings.

Wilson offers a particularly intriguing suggestion, proposing that there is little to no historical support for many of the events described in Acts. From this observation, and after observation of theological and factual inconsistencies between Acts and the biblical texts that were likely written about the same time, Wilson concludes that the events described in Acts likely never occurred, and that they were possible written to provide a ‘missing link’ to support the philosophical, theological, and political aims of the Pauline branch of the early Church against the Jamesian/Jerusalem branch that adhered more closely to Jewish tradition and Jesus’ teachings.

I particularly found Wilson's book well-written and eminently readable. This may be partly due to the fact that Wilson was attempting to advance a quite new, contentious position.

See my comments on Ehrman's Jesus Interrupted... elsewhere on this blog.

Sauble Beach, Oct. 2009