[MD] are theism and mysticism mutually exclusive notions?

[david buchanan]

dmb quoted from "The Oxford Companion to Philosophy":
"...This sort of mysticism is likely to find a more comfortable religious 
home in the great non-theistic religions." (p.600)

Case replied:
I think you are making much ado about nothing with this quote...

dmb says:
I don't think the complexities of history make this distinction any less 
important. The Oxford entry is only a brief sketch and the editors still 
chose to include it. Further, Pirsig, Campbell and Northrop have found it 
worthy of discussion in their work. We're here to discuss Pirsig's work, 
which was influenced by Northrop and in which he recommends Campbell. The 
relative importance of this distinction is open for debate, but I think it 
would be a mistake to ignore the role it plays in the MOQ.

Case said:
Theism is anthropomorphic mysticism and mysticism is narcissistic theism.

dmb says:
Sorry, but its hard to take this seriously. If I were to pretend that you're 
not just yanking my chain and that you were try to make an acutal point, I'd 
object by saying, "your assertion, sir, is pithy but its also full of 
nonsense'. 1) Theism need not include an anthropomorphic concept of god. 2) 
The word "narcissistic" is just an insulting alternative to 
"anthropomorhic". It introduces no meaningful difference and it is not a 
reasonable mirror image either. 3) Putting BOTH of the central terms (theism 
and mysticism) on BOTH sides of this equation has a slightly humorous 
effect, but in terms of an actual philosophical discussion you are merely 
begging the central question.

Case said:
To say the enlightenment is the belief that one is God/is the world, is not 
only narcissistic the Jews would regard it as blasphemous. Identifying with 
the eternal is not the same as being eternal.

dmb says;
Well, here you seem to be supporting the Oxford quote after all. The fact 
that Judaism would regard the assertions of mystic as a blasphemy sort of 
shows you what it means to say that theism and mysticism are incompatible.

Case said:
Theists on the other hand are definitely concerned with their relationshipto 
the eternal and in the Judeo-Christian tradition they are concerned about 
how men related to God. By ascribing to him human traits they make this 
relationship more accessible to just plain regular folks.

dmb says:
Good. It looks like we are in agreement: theism is about Relationship, a 
duality, rather than an Identity and a unity.

Case said:
Also as I have pointed out repeatedly both of these approaches rely on 
personal experience and in the absence of any means of testing the claims 
made by either one of them they just spiral down the hole in the middle Ian 
mentions so often.

dmb says:
As I understand it, the MOQ is aimed at that very problem. The expansion of 
rationality was motivated, at least in part, by the fact that mystical 
experience has been excluded by the limits of the traditional "means of 
testing". I have worked up some pretty good answers to this objection, if I 
do say so myself, but it takes lots of explaining. Maybe later. And Ian's 
hole is another huge one all by itself.

Case said:
...Stephen Mitchell in the Gospel According to Jesus make an effort to place 
Jesus within the mystical tradition. He "edits" the gospels and just by 
reordering familiar passages casts Jesus in a very different light. You 
might find this worthwhile. Jesus does speak in koans and aphorisms. And if 
you listen to them as such they have deeper meaning than you are likely to 
get out of most pulpits.

dmb says:
Sounds like something I could use for my term paper AND it would be fun to 
read. That's hard to top. Tis timely and sound advice. I'm grateful.

Tell me what it means to be an associate of the Jesus Seminar, will you, you 
Jesus freak? I've been interested for years as well.

Case said:
One of the unique features of Jesus' teaching does speak to the issue raised 
above. In the synoptic gospels Jesus does not refer to himself as divine. In 
fact when the young man asks him "Good Master what must I do to attain the 
Kingdom?" Jesus says, "Why callest thou me good? There is none good but the 
Father." Or when Jesus performs a few miracles and this disciples ask him 
about it he tells them that they will be able to perform even greater 
miracles by the power of heaven. Or in Mark when Jesus asks, "Who do men say 
that I am?" Peter said, "You are the messiah," Jesus rebukes him and says 
get thee behind me Satan."

dmb:
Yeah, there is a whole spectrum from the parable spouting Jesus, where he 
doesn't talk about himself at all, to John's treatment where he has Jesus 
saying, "no man cometh unto the father but by me" and "I AM", which is a 
claim that would get a guy killed back in those days. The latter is the name 
of the God of Judaism. That's what Yahweh means, "I AM". That's why there's 
been a fatwa out on Popeye since 1949, by the way.

Case said:
On the other hand Jesus calls God "Abba" which is other translated Father 
but is more like Daddy. The term implies a friendly loving personal 
relationship with the divine.

dmb says:
Well, I'd emphasize the friendliness over the dualism implied by the use of 
"Abba". I mean, my mind immediately lept to the notion that we'd be better 
off to feel a part of the world rather than an enemy of it. And it seems 
that the parabolic Jesus almost always used the friendly word for "father" 
in conjunction with "kingdom of the". I mean, he talked about the kingdom of 
the father and the kingdom of heaven almost exclusively in the parables.

Case said:
If you read the parables a fresh in the regular canon they are mind 
shatteringly paradoxical. I do not think they were drained of it at all. In 
fact the differences between the stories in Thomas and the other gospels are 
very slight and there is virtually nothing in it that is not in the 
traditional gospels.

dmb says:
Well, the stories themselves are not drastically altered, they are softened 
by comments that follow, qualifications that do not appear in Thomas at all. 
The synoptic gospels all add non-paradoxical material beyond the softening, 
which even takes the edge off even further. But the synoptics do overlap 
with Thomas, there's no doubt about that.

dmb said:
I mean, its pretty easy to see that Christianity was drained of mysticism 
fairly early on and it has been treated with great hostility ever since.

Case replied:
On the contrary in some respects Christianity is Judaism infused with 
mysticism and this happened very early on. The whole idea of Jesus as fully 
human and fully divine was a compromise between the Arians who thought that 
Jesus was a man who became godlike and the docetics who thought Jesus was 
God pretending to be a man. The Gnostics where on the fringes of the later 
view and it was indeed deemphasized. But at the same time the Ebonites and 
others who thought Jesus was merely human where also deemphasized.

dmb says:
It seems we have different ideas about what mysticism is, because I don't 
see how these early disputes have any relevance to mysticism or our 
conversation about it. See, I'm talking about a non-theistic mysticism, one 
where a debate about the relative humanity and divinity of Jesus wouldn't 
even make sense because it is a stance which asserts identity as opposed to 
that duality. That's badly put, but basically this is a debate that can take 
place only after that monistic, non-theistic mysticism has already been 
rejected. Its not even on the table in that kind of debate because it 
rejects the distinction between god and man as the illusion to be overcome.

Its been fun.
dmb

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