Can Christianity be recreated to work as a metaphor ?

What needs do mythology and religion serve in today's world and in ancient times? Here we discuss the relationship between mythology, religion and science from mythological, religious and philosophical viewpoints.

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krugers
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Can Christianity be recreated to work as a metaphor ?

Post by krugers »

I am new to this site so I hope I am not repeating anything that has already been discussed if it has I would like to read the results..Also I hope no one is offended by my questions.

I have been researching various ways to view Christianity that would be acceptable to my intellectual mind. I recently did a Google search for Metaphorical Christianity and found a book comprising of lectures by Joseph Campbell called Thou Art That. Also I have read a couple of books by Bishop Spong Why Christianity Must Change or Die and Resurrection Myth or Reality I like the direction he is going but he doesn't go quite far enough.

I wonder if anyone has used Joseph Campbell views of Christianity as a powerful metaphor and myth to create a church?

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Post by jonsjourney »

I wonder if anyone has used Joseph Campbell views of Christianity as a powerful metaphor and myth to create a church? -krugers
Gosh, I hope not.

If "thou art that", why would someone need a church?

By the way, krugers...welcome. And I seriously doubt if your question will offend anyone. As to whether or not the various answers will offend you, or other members...that remains to be seen! :wink:
"He was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher... or, as his wife would have it, an idiot." -Douglas Adams

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Post by Clemsy »

Hi krugers and welcome!
I have been researching various ways to view Christianity that would be acceptable to my intellectual mind.
Aren't you glad to be in the 21st century and not the 15th? :lol:
I wonder if anyone has used Joseph Campbell views of Christianity as a powerful metaphor and myth to create a church?
I agree with Jon:
Gosh, I hope not.
However, you will find Unitarians to be comfortable with Campbell's work.

Cheers,
Clemsy
Give me stories before I go mad! ~Andreas

krugers
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Post by krugers »

Perhaps I am asking the wrong question..

The concept occurred to me from some statements Campbell said in Thou Art That. He said that he was a Catholic when he was young and then rejected the church because of the literal stance then later in life, he realized that if you dismiss the literal and view Christianity as metaphorical then you achieve a greater sense of transcendence. He says that the literal interpretation hampers transcendence. I got the impression that Campbell him self felt that the literal views western religions take unfortunately keeps worshipers from finding God within them selves.


and out of curiosity why the answer "I hope not"

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Post by Neoplato »

I got the impression that Campbell him self felt that the literal views western religions take unfortunately keeps worshipers from finding God within them selves.
Hi Krugers. This is my take as well and there is a quote in the Gospel of Thomas that reflects this notion.
39 Jesus said, "The Pharisees and the scholars have taken the keys of knowledge and have hidden them. They have not entered nor have they allowed those who want to enter to do so.
I'll have to dissent from JJ and Clemsy a little. In Mythos Joe recites the Apostolic Creed. And if the creed is understood metaphorically and not literally, there is really no need for a new "church" per se.

Everything is already there in our myths and religions, we (humanity as a whole) just don't understand it. And as long as religion is used as a method of societal influence, it also won't be taught.

Hence the need for a "Hero's Journey". :D
Infinite moment, grants freedom of winter death, allows life to dawn.

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Post by jonsjourney »

I got the impression that Campbell him self felt that the literal views western religions take unfortunately keeps worshipers from finding God within them selves. -krugers
I will not speak for Joe, but I would say this is the impression that I have had of his thinking time and time again. He never failed to criticize organized religion for mistaking the metaphor for reality. I tend to think Joe's views were eclectic. He was raised Catholic, engrossed in Native American Mythology, and then finally "affirmed" by Eastern philosophy. He was, it seems to me, the pluralism, he spoke of so often.
and out of curiosity why the answer "I hope not" -krugers
This could be a long and involved answer, but I will keep it brief. In my view, many of the worst aspects of human nature have come about as a direct result of attempting to externalize what is essentially an internal (inward) journey. When we start building churches and creating symbols, we are missing the message. We are being distracted rather than being informed. We are using somebody else's message to attempt to find our own truth. As soon as we build the temple, we become a tribe. As soon as we become a tribe, we see another tribe that is either the enemy, or needs to be converted into our tribal thinking. You see where I am going with this? Lines that divide us are our own creations. They do not exist in reality. When we view the Earth from space, there is nothing dividing us except our own perceived differences and man-made geographic borders.

I may not understand "you", but this does not exclude my loving "you" in a true way...a way that informs my ability to truly try to see you, to truly try to see me, and to see how our perceptions create our divisions. If we build on the idea that we are one and the same, rather than two separate individuals, we have something to build on.

All that being said...this is my opinion. My life philosophy. It is a way of thinking that helps to inform my existence, and it would be in direct contradiction to that philosophy for me to say this would be right for you, or anyone else. You asked for my opinion as to "why", so I offered it. Peace!
I'll have to dissent from JJ and Clemsy a little. In Mythos Joe recites the Apostolic Creed. And if the creed is understood metaphorically and not literally, there is really no need for a new "church" per se. -Neo
Neo....

I am having a difficult time seeing where we are dissenting? Help me out here, my friend! 8)
"He was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher... or, as his wife would have it, an idiot." -Douglas Adams

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Post by Kalle »

The middle eastern mythologies, including Christianity have lost by focusing their message on the image of a man, the holistic vision of nature. This lack of vision, I believe, has resulted in a direction in the world towards our collective decline. As Campbell suggested the same messages behind the iconography is the same. I think he called this the transcendent. There is no other. There is no other order to the cosmos. He used the Thomas gospel to point at this idea: the kingdom of God is upon the earth and man does not see it. This magic of the whole is everywhere to those who see. In Finnish mythology of the Kalevala, for example, the magic may have been called Sampo. Illmarinen was a craftsman which could form the Sampo. So the stories go all over the world and from very early times.

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Post by Synchrolynx »

In my incomplete reading of Joe's work I'd say you'd have to read a lot before an answer to your question would congeal to the degree you're looking for. A quicker and surer path would be to read Ego and Archetype by Edward Edinger, particularly the chapter "Christ as Paradigm of the Individuated Ego". In it he describes how the Christ myth is symbolic of the process of individuation, that whole making endeavor which discards the false and gives birth to the true, in the end transferring control of your life from your ego to your "Self"/God (the Primary Archetype). Of course this book throws you into the middle of Jungian psychology and so isn't the best place to start but would surely put you in touch with a system of thought that accomplishes what you're looking for.

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Post by pauld444 »

I found Jean Houston's "Godseed" helpful in this regard many years ago.
Paul
"Truth did not come into the world naked. It came in types and images. The world cannot receive it in any other way."-Gospel of Philip, Logion 67

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Post by Rimbaud »

Obviously the life of Jeus was a metaphor of a self individuating archetype in the human psyche. And the tradition of Jesus as a meatphor of this fact would've worked if christianity integrated gnosticism. But they didn't and for the last 1700 years we've inherited the consequences of this mistake. We can still use Jesus as a metaphor without creed, but this intellectualism implies a schism. And any apolegetic attempt at trying to remould religion is futile.

But Western man is defined by individuality or Spengler's 'Faustian Man' and there is no need for a collective myth, or religion. Even escaping to the eastern religions is a futile exercise. But the beauty of the western man is his individuality and in a more profound sense, an incredible love of self, which needs to be rediscovered, if change will ever happen in the world, and invert the ethical life into the mystical.

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Post by Cindy B. »

Some might be interested in this short article from the Jungian perspective: http://www.jungatlanta.com/ChristSelf.html No doubt Campbell would agree with its message.

Cindy
If the path before you is clear, you’re probably on someone else’s. --Jung

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Post by A J »

Thanks for the article, Cindy. I especially liked this:
In addition to finding the terrorists out there, we have to search out and make peace with the terrorists within.
Edward Edinger wrote several excellent books on the connections between Jung and Judeo-Christianity. The Christian Archtype: A Jungian Commentary on the Life of Christ is particularly relevant to krugers original question.

Ann
"Sacred space and sacred time and something joyous to do is all we need. Almost anything then becomes a continuous and increasing joy."

A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living

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Post by S_Watson »

I'm late to participate in this thread, but I'm especially provoked by a comment by Clemsy:
Aren't you glad to be in the 21st century and not the 15th? Laughing
Well, no, I'm not.

First of all, the 21st century is only 9 years old, so we don't yet know how it will turn out. Furthermore, so far is has been a ghastly century. So I THINK Clemsy will agree with me, that what we're really talking about is our lifetimes, circa 1900s-early 2000s.

But how has the 20th/21st century been any better than the 15th century, OTHER THAN the benefits of higher technology and medicine? I agree that we're a lot better off technologically and medically than we were 500 years ago. But in OTHER terms of quality of life? That's not so clear. Because, inter alia:

1. In the 1400s, the working class of Western Europe (the de facto the ancestors of most of our JCF community, both personally and culturally) were required to give ONLY TEN PERCENT of the fruits of their labour to their overlords. That's right. In circa 1400, the de facto tax rate was around ten percent, and it was a flat rate. Today's Americans pay far more to their overlords than any medieval serfs ever did.

2. In the 1400s, the working class of Western Europe enjoyed over 100 days per year, over one third of their days, as holidays.

3. The "peasants" of medieval Western Europe DID HAVE SOME LEGAL RIGHTS vis a vis their employers/landlords, and rights to remain living on their little bit of land. But today's Americans have virtually NO legal rights against any employer who aribtrarily and spontaneously fires/sacks them. And if an American of TODAY becomes homeless? Well, 99.9999 percent of Americans today say, "Screw him, he should have worked harder, it's his own fault for becoming homeless!" But in the 1400s, virtually NO ONE ever became homeless or hungry, because back then there was a social contract that said, "EVERY person belongs to SOME part of the land and has a right to eat if he works on it." This is NOT true of today's America, who says, "If you're homeless and hungry, it's your own fault, so just go GET A JOB!" (Never mind if any jobs exist, and never mind if they pay enough to live on.)

4. As for RELIGION in Western Europe in circa 1400, well it was a pretty simple matter unless you went out of your way to say the Church was "wrong" about something. But how many Americans DARE to do anything similar today? The 21st century American equivalent of a 15th century European saying "The Church is NOT 100 percent True!" is to say something like: "America is NOT the greatest country in the World!"

Therefore, I believe that the TRUE "rebels" and "Protestants" of today's America, are those who have the courage to say, in public: "America is NOT GOD's country! America is NOT the 'Greatest Country in the World'. America - yes including America's Constitution (the American equivalent of the Koran) - does NOT SPEAK FOR GOD! And the American President - no matter how charismatic nor how handsome nor how "multicultural" he superficially appears to be - does NOT represent the dreams and aspirations of all Mankind!"

In sum: I think the MAIN difference we ought to be thinking about today, is NOT the superficial differences between "1410 versus 2010", but rather, the ANCIENT and continuing differences between those who believe in Man (including but not limited to Jesus and Muhammed and the Buddha), versus those who worship material "progress" as represented by 20th century USA's technological boom (the apogee of the Modern Age), which is now dead.

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Post by Cindy B. »

Well, S_Watson, as a Western woman, without doubt I prefer contemporary times to the medieval. :wink:

Cindy
If the path before you is clear, you’re probably on someone else’s. --Jung

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Post by Clemsy »

But how has the 20th/21st century been any better than the 15th century, OTHER THAN the benefits of higher technology and medicine?
Oh, plenty Watson, although those two are more than good enough for me!
Give me stories before I go mad! ~Andreas

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