Reflections on culture, nature, and spirituality from a Christian perspective
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Many people get confused about worldviews and how different religions compare. So I thought I would try to illustrate it.
Hopefully this makes the problems that arise with comparing pagan gods to the creator God clearer. Pagan gods are more meaningfully compared to Christian angels than the Christian God.
interesting…
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Actually, I should have added a few things.
Firstly, in some worldviews the “upper” domain is primal chaos. This relates back to what I have said about violent video games and the “Indo-European” worldview “…a central feature of which is the myth of redemptive violence, whereby the cosmos (order) is established out of chaos (war between gods). This contrasts rather sharply with the Biblical worldview whereby cosmos (order) is established by logos (God alone through his word) and where violence is extrinsic to creation and thus temporary.” See here for the original reflection:
http://mattstone.blogs.com/glocalchristianity/2008/06/killing-muslims-and-christians-a-game.html
Consider how the contemporary goddess revival could potentially be viewed as an inversion of the Indo-European myth and how this might relate to Christianity. In ancient Babylon, the king of the gods, Marduk, was said to have triumphed in the chaos war to establish order in the heavens and on the earth. This was celebrated as a good thing. Compare this with Wiccan historical romanticisms about an original anarcho-matriarchal society that was overrun by nasty warrior-patriarchal religions in the dim dark past. The story reverses how order and chaos are perceived. Goddess religion may be interpreted as a protest religion aimed at de-legitimizing oppressive order and re-establishing a liberating chaos. Consider Wiccan rhetoric and the symbolic associations they make between women vs. men; pluralism vs. universalism; Dionysian rites vs. Apollonian rites; ethical relativism vs. ethical objectivism. It gets a bit messy but I how you catch the drift, about how it’s a protest.
But we forget – the book of Genesis can ALSO be interpreted as an attack on Babylonian religion and, by extension, the Indo-European redemptive violence myth. But it does it a different way. Both the goddess religions and the warrior religions affirm a primal chaos, they just disagree over whether chaos is good or bad. In the book of Genesis however, the oppression of Marduk is attacked in a different way, by denial of chaos as the primal reality. The Bible says, no, order is the primal reality, the chaos war is something that came later, after ambitious men tried to put themselves in the place of God. Violence is not redemptive, it is something grounded in human sin. What gives the Wiccan protest its power is the contemporary dominance of a distorted Christianity than has adopted the Indo-European worldview as its own. This syncretism, this compromise, is something we should renounce. The cross of Christ is a denial of the Indo-European myth: war and violence is not redemptive.
Hmmm, got carried away there.
Secondly, what we call folk religion is religious expression that focuses on the “middle” domain. So, Catholic movements that focus on saints, Protestant movements that focus of demons, the New Age Movement which focused on ascended masters, angels, aliens, auras. All folk religion. Why so much western evangelism fails to engage with folk religions is that it too is confusing categories. We are giving people upper domain answers to middle domain questions. Pentecostals do better at this which is why they are by and large doing better. But unfortunately Pentecostals also tend to be more confused than most over the previous issue I mentioned, Indo-European syncretism, so I am unsatisfied with their overall response. I think a more missional-incarnational Christianity needs to engage with both these worldview issues.
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Matt, this is very helpful. Much clearer than other things I’ve read. I hope you will write more on it.
Dana
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Dana
Glad you found it helpful. I caution that this model can be a little simplistic. For instance, it fails to recognize the various tiers of the Hindu caste system and that worldviews which assume a primordial chaos can at times have a chaotic theology which is difficult to “neatly” categorize.
Nevertheless I thing it helps to draw attention some of the category confusions that can come up in comparative religion and evangelistic practice. I refuse, for instance, to entertain talk of YHWH being a “sky god” as if YHWH is not also an earth and sea and whatever else god who needs no counterpart or consort in those domains. And it has highlighted for me the importance of theologically addressing middle domain concerns such as guidance (divination/prophecy/wisdom), health and wealth.
Matt
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Thanks, Matt, for another great summary chart. I realize it is simplistic, but it is very helpful in getting one’s brain around the basic differences.
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Matt,
It may be simplistic, but I think it is useful nonetheless, and I will refer Yvone to it, who asked about pagans adding Jesus to their pantheon. In many ways it’s a Christiancentric presentation, but one should expect that of Christians!
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Steve, yes that’s exactly where this sort of thing is important.
Treating Jesus as one amongst many gods in a wider Pagan pantheon involves a subtle demotion of the Son / Logos to the middle domain, whether it is recognized or not.
I am reminded of Hebrews 1:1-4:
“In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe. The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven. So he became as much superior to the angels as the name he has inherited is superior to theirs.”
This is why I consider Christopaganism as owing much more to Paganism than Christianity – you can’t marginalize Jesus, so that he is no longer “Christ”, and still call it “Christian”. It is not just that we worship Jesus that makes us Christians but that we worship Jesus as Christ. In this respect, Pagan appropriation of Jesus is no different to Muslim and Hindu appropriation – that alone doesn’t make it Christian.
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This does work as a starter for discussion, and it is great visually, but is it wholly accurate?
For example, the division into upper/middle/lower tiers is problematic – shamans might say that there is this world, in which the tangible exists, and an upper and a lower world that can both be accessed in altered states of consciousness. Elevation carries connotations of superiority. And what of biblical descriptions of Man being higher than the animals as well as lower than the angels, or of sinking into the earth at death (Ecclesiastes), or of becoming sons (and daughters) of God?
Also, to place the Christian God firmly in the upper tier spiritualizes God completely. How then are we to understand the incarnation? And if Jesus is wholly God and wholly Man, what relationship does he have with the middle tier, other than just passing through it?
Like all models, I sense these are great provided permission is given to re-imagine them topsy-turvy at will – otherwise they risk becoming mini-idols.
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Thanks for your comments Steve. They give me an opportunity to expand on this.
You’ll note I have already warned the model is a little simplistic, with particular reference to the Hindu caste system? Well, the same comment holds true for shamanism. You are quite right there. The thing that needs to be noted is, and this is VERY VERY important, is that this model draws no distinctions between “upper realms” and “lower realms” of the unseen creation. It lumps them all together indiscriminately as “unseen creation”. Sky gods and earth goddesses, heavens and hells, yes, they’re all unseen creation. That’s the way it needs to be interpreted, for better or for worse. Visual connotations be damned. The beauty of this model is though, in the process of simplifying matters, it draws out other distinctions that might otherwise be missed.
Coming to this incarnation, the important point to recognize here is that the Son is eternal, uncreated. This model is incapable of encompassing everything we understand by the incarnation, but it does highlight that what Christians mean by the logos is incomparable to what Wiccans mean by sky gods.
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Thanks, Matt! I’m sure you’re right, within the scope of the model, to bracket shamanistic lower and upper worlds in the middle tier. That would mean, of course (and your discussion on chaos acknowledges this, I think) that the model makes no claims as to the intrinsic goodness or otherwise of any of the tiers.
Can I worry away at the incarnation issue a bit more, though? I’d want to say that yes, by all means, we can place the Son, as eternal and uncreated, in the upper tier; but surely the essence of Christianity, as we know it, is that it claims the Son barnstormed the other tiers of existence, without which action, we could not know him.
So Christianity begins from a position where, in Christ at least, there is free traffic between the tiers – the three-card deck is constantly being shuffled. If, as Christians, we genuinely hold that trickster view, do we gain anything by freeze-drying the worldviews of others, or should we not allow for those others to traffic between tiers as they understand them, in the expectation that it is the freedom to travel that defines a person as Christian, not where they choose to travel(Please excuse my dualistic language – I am adopting the Christian label here for the purposes of the argument.)
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Yes, this model makes no claims as to the intrinsic goodness or otherwise of any of the tiers. This model says more about power relationships than moral relationships.
On the incarnation, I have been reflecting on the Chalcedonian creed, which affirms that the Son is perfectly human and perfectly divine, two natures within one person. The two natures may be related to the uppermost and lowermost domains. In his divinity, the Son is more properly located within the upper “unseen, uncreated” domain. In his humanity, the Son is more properly located within the lower “seen, created” domain. In his person, he unites the two, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation.
The essential point though remains the same, that insofar as pagan gods are limited in both power and duration, they properly belong to the middle domain and their divinity is of a lessor order than the Son’s divinity.
Nevertheless, it could be worth reflecting further on how we interpret the ascended Jesus. Does his post-resurrection ascension also place him in the middle domain too, without nullifying what has already been said about the other two domains? Hmmm, I’ll have to think about that. Good discussion.
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