Forbidden Faith: The Gnostic Legacy From the Gospels to the Da Vinci Code
By Richard Smoley
HarperSanFranciso, 2006. 256 pp. $15.95 paperback.
A while ago I went to my local library to pick up a couple of books on the changes in American spirituality from that associated with institutionalism and a sense of rootedness in place to that of a personal quest orientation. As I was leaving, the library display of books caught my eye. It was a collection of books associated with The Da Vinci Code, but a book on Gnosticism engaged my curiosity. I ended up checking out Richard Smoley's Forbidden Faith: The Gnostic Legacy From the Gospels to the Da Vinci Code in order to explore it further. Smoley is the editor of Gnosis magazine, and co-author of or author of several books on esotericism and “inner Christianity.”
Smoley writes in popular fashion and provides an overview of the history and varieties of Gnostic thought. He looks not only at ancient forms of Gnosticism but also traces it to more recent times in what he calls the “Gnostic Revival.” This chapter, along with Gnosis and Modernity, and The Future of Gnosis, represent some of the more interesting treatments as he traces neo-Gnostic elements in various facets of American culture, including pop culture as exemplified by The Matrix trilogy of films and The Da Vinci Code.
It should come as no surprise to either orthodox Christians or those supportive of various forms of neo-Gnosticism that I disagreed with portions of his book, particularly his discussion of the canonical Gospels and his claim that none of them were written by eyewitnesses. His perspective on the written sources for Jesus’s life go further in that he speculates that the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas might indeed be dated earlier than the second century due to its alleged resemblances to the hypothetical Q document, and therefore it might be the first gospel and represent some of the earliest expressions of the faith of the early Christian communities. A book review is not the place to rehash these debates, but suffice it to say a good case can be made from conservative scholarship that runs counter to Smoley's claims ...
The remainder of this review by John Morehead can be read at:
http://people.ucalgary.ca/~cbr/
Thursday, December 30, 2010
Saturday, December 18, 2010
The Fabricated Luther: Refuting Nazi Connections and other Modern Myths
Siemon-Netto, Uwe, The Fabricated Luther: Refuting Nazi Connections and other Modern Myths, 2007, Second Edition. Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House. Review by Karla Poewe, Department of Anthropology, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta.
In a world ripe with propaganda it is refreshing to find a book dissecting a cliché that was used for just such purposes by people as far apart as Josef Goebbels and Alan Dershowitz, namely, that Luther was the “spiritual predecessor of Adolf Hitler” (p. 23). Siemon-Netto’s book traces the origin of the cliché that “linked Luther to Hitler“ back to the liberal theologian Troeltsch who passed it on to the writer Thomas Mann who, in turn, shared it with the author of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich William L. Shirer (p.24).
From there it was picked up by the Germanophobic propagandist Lord Vansittart as well as by archbishops and priests of the Church of England. It was also popular among America’s Union Theological Seminary faculty in the early thirties and is used by U.S. historians like Robert Michael and Lucy Dawidowicz, among many others, today (p. 23).
In fact, those who were primarily responsible for the Holocaust and generally for the brutality on the Eastern Front of World War II were men who had not only left Christianity but were intent on destroying the entire Judeo-Christian tradition because it was unGerman. To show the ludicrous nature of the cliché that blamed the Holocaust on the line of descent from the Protestant Luther, Siemon- Netto points out that many perpetrators were born into homes and countries (Austria and Poland, for example) that were formerly or nominally Roman Catholic. He raises this point only, however, to emphasize “the absurdity of the charge that one Christian denomination’s theology paved the way for genocide“ (p. 66). Holocausts were also perpetrated by Turkish Muslims, Orthodox Russians, and Cambodian Buddhists, yet these religions are not linked with their crimes (p.66).
At issue is rather the thing that Luther warned against with his “two realms“ doctrine, namely, the danger that comes with blurring state and church or politics and religion. When blurring occurs secular “isms“ are quick to follow. Politicized Christianity, like that of the German Christians, for example, was easily absorbed by the political religion of National Socialism (pp. 74-76). By contrast, Luther’s two realms doctrine “de-ideologizes politics” and “de-idolizes” the state (p.77).
Far from confirming a line from Luther to Hitler, Siemon-Netto shows the role that Lutheranism played in the resistance against the Hitler regime. The author is particularly strong in his analysis of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Carl Goerdeler. Bonhoeffer understood “two realms” to refer to the fact that Lutherans live before God and with God in a world without God, that is, in a secular world. He could therefore easily co-operate with secular conspirators to kill Hitler. Bonhoeffer also accepted the teaching “that all who take up the sword will perish by the sword.” He knew it to refer to him and his circle. It is in this spirit too that he could say “I pray for the defeat of my country, for I think this is the only possibility of paying for all the suffering that my country has caused in the world” (p. 101).
According to Siemon-Netto, Goerdeler, the mayor of Leipzig who was executed by the Nazis, was rooted in nineteenth-century Protestant liberalism (p. 111) but he internalized the “ethos and attitude” of Lutheranism (p. 112). As his daughter Marianne Meyer-Krahmer confirmed when Siemon-Netto interviewed her, Goerdeler warned all and sundry against the danger of Hitler. Her father valued and stood up for Leipzig’s Jewish heritage and citizens and saw as clearly as his other close Lutheran colleagues in the resistance that Hitler was determined to destroy three enemies: the Jews first, then the Christians, and finally capitalism (p. 106, 116). It is a sad chapter in human history that brave men like Goerdeler too were defeated by men who could not understand his subtle Lutheran distinctions and the necessity of thinking on two levels. Goerdeler’s sense, on the one hand, that a moral catastrophe had befallen Germany that would be a danger to the world and his political point, on the other, that National Socialism was largely the result of the injustice of Versailles was seen as deception by Vansittart (p. 145).
In response, Vansittart soon used a race-based “militarism” cliché that fired the hate of the British for a war that could possibly have been averted in 1938 had Goerdeler’s plan of action been debated in British parliament (p. 120, 126, 130). Instead, revenge against and punishment of the Germans lasted until 1949 and beyond (p. 136, 142), and it came from the top: the Roosevelts (p. 134-139), Vansittart (p.126), Churchill (p.128), and the British Bomber Command (p.129).
But Luther was vindicated. Luther’s “two realms” doctrine as it was applied in the German Democratic Republic, which German humor says was neither German, nor Democratic, nor a Republic, was one of the most powerful tools to defeat the Stalin made dictatorship peacefully. The two realms doctrine simply enabled the Christian “to be guided by natural reason while operating in the secular realm without losing his citizenship in the spiritual realm” (p.173).
More than vindicating Luther, it shows how Germany’s resistance of the Nazi regime, the core of it based on Lutheranism, might have toppled Hitler’s government given time and external moral support. That did not happen, and so Siemon-Netto, a son of the city of Leipzig, tells how the “anti-Nazi Confessing Church, having learned from the past, carried on as a brotherhood within the Landeskirche” after the Second World War, supplying the church with “the theological ammunition in its dealing with the Communist state” (p161). Its theologians compared Christianity and Marxism-Leninism and concluded, “Marxism-Leninism is an anti-Christian doctrine of salvation” (p.161). Churches open to the secular world, Christians listening to their secular compatriots, prayers and candles did the rest.
Karla Poewe
In a world ripe with propaganda it is refreshing to find a book dissecting a cliché that was used for just such purposes by people as far apart as Josef Goebbels and Alan Dershowitz, namely, that Luther was the “spiritual predecessor of Adolf Hitler” (p. 23). Siemon-Netto’s book traces the origin of the cliché that “linked Luther to Hitler“ back to the liberal theologian Troeltsch who passed it on to the writer Thomas Mann who, in turn, shared it with the author of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich William L. Shirer (p.24).
From there it was picked up by the Germanophobic propagandist Lord Vansittart as well as by archbishops and priests of the Church of England. It was also popular among America’s Union Theological Seminary faculty in the early thirties and is used by U.S. historians like Robert Michael and Lucy Dawidowicz, among many others, today (p. 23).
In fact, those who were primarily responsible for the Holocaust and generally for the brutality on the Eastern Front of World War II were men who had not only left Christianity but were intent on destroying the entire Judeo-Christian tradition because it was unGerman. To show the ludicrous nature of the cliché that blamed the Holocaust on the line of descent from the Protestant Luther, Siemon- Netto points out that many perpetrators were born into homes and countries (Austria and Poland, for example) that were formerly or nominally Roman Catholic. He raises this point only, however, to emphasize “the absurdity of the charge that one Christian denomination’s theology paved the way for genocide“ (p. 66). Holocausts were also perpetrated by Turkish Muslims, Orthodox Russians, and Cambodian Buddhists, yet these religions are not linked with their crimes (p.66).
At issue is rather the thing that Luther warned against with his “two realms“ doctrine, namely, the danger that comes with blurring state and church or politics and religion. When blurring occurs secular “isms“ are quick to follow. Politicized Christianity, like that of the German Christians, for example, was easily absorbed by the political religion of National Socialism (pp. 74-76). By contrast, Luther’s two realms doctrine “de-ideologizes politics” and “de-idolizes” the state (p.77).
Far from confirming a line from Luther to Hitler, Siemon-Netto shows the role that Lutheranism played in the resistance against the Hitler regime. The author is particularly strong in his analysis of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Carl Goerdeler. Bonhoeffer understood “two realms” to refer to the fact that Lutherans live before God and with God in a world without God, that is, in a secular world. He could therefore easily co-operate with secular conspirators to kill Hitler. Bonhoeffer also accepted the teaching “that all who take up the sword will perish by the sword.” He knew it to refer to him and his circle. It is in this spirit too that he could say “I pray for the defeat of my country, for I think this is the only possibility of paying for all the suffering that my country has caused in the world” (p. 101).
According to Siemon-Netto, Goerdeler, the mayor of Leipzig who was executed by the Nazis, was rooted in nineteenth-century Protestant liberalism (p. 111) but he internalized the “ethos and attitude” of Lutheranism (p. 112). As his daughter Marianne Meyer-Krahmer confirmed when Siemon-Netto interviewed her, Goerdeler warned all and sundry against the danger of Hitler. Her father valued and stood up for Leipzig’s Jewish heritage and citizens and saw as clearly as his other close Lutheran colleagues in the resistance that Hitler was determined to destroy three enemies: the Jews first, then the Christians, and finally capitalism (p. 106, 116). It is a sad chapter in human history that brave men like Goerdeler too were defeated by men who could not understand his subtle Lutheran distinctions and the necessity of thinking on two levels. Goerdeler’s sense, on the one hand, that a moral catastrophe had befallen Germany that would be a danger to the world and his political point, on the other, that National Socialism was largely the result of the injustice of Versailles was seen as deception by Vansittart (p. 145).
In response, Vansittart soon used a race-based “militarism” cliché that fired the hate of the British for a war that could possibly have been averted in 1938 had Goerdeler’s plan of action been debated in British parliament (p. 120, 126, 130). Instead, revenge against and punishment of the Germans lasted until 1949 and beyond (p. 136, 142), and it came from the top: the Roosevelts (p. 134-139), Vansittart (p.126), Churchill (p.128), and the British Bomber Command (p.129).
But Luther was vindicated. Luther’s “two realms” doctrine as it was applied in the German Democratic Republic, which German humor says was neither German, nor Democratic, nor a Republic, was one of the most powerful tools to defeat the Stalin made dictatorship peacefully. The two realms doctrine simply enabled the Christian “to be guided by natural reason while operating in the secular realm without losing his citizenship in the spiritual realm” (p.173).
More than vindicating Luther, it shows how Germany’s resistance of the Nazi regime, the core of it based on Lutheranism, might have toppled Hitler’s government given time and external moral support. That did not happen, and so Siemon-Netto, a son of the city of Leipzig, tells how the “anti-Nazi Confessing Church, having learned from the past, carried on as a brotherhood within the Landeskirche” after the Second World War, supplying the church with “the theological ammunition in its dealing with the Communist state” (p161). Its theologians compared Christianity and Marxism-Leninism and concluded, “Marxism-Leninism is an anti-Christian doctrine of salvation” (p.161). Churches open to the secular world, Christians listening to their secular compatriots, prayers and candles did the rest.
Karla Poewe
Friday, July 9, 2010
Understanding Joseph Ratzinger - Pope Benedict XVI
Probably the most frequent complaint one hears about the current Pope, Benedict XVI, who still publishes academic books under the name Joseph Ratzinger, is that he is either an extreme conservative or, worse still, a reactionary. Yet readers of his books soon discover that he is a very intelligent, open, and articulate thinker
Anyone wanting to understand the Pope’s conservative views, particularly his apparent reversal of some aspects of the implementation of the Second Sacred Ecumenical Council of the Vatican, known as Vatican II, which was held from 11 October 1962 to 21 November 1965, ought to read Derek Hastings’ new book Catholicism and the Roots of Nazism: Religious Identity and National Socialism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).
The book’s title is highly misleading because it is not about Catholicism as such, but rather about a group of rebel Catholics based in the Bavarian city of Munich who were followers of the excommunicated scholar Ignaz von Döllinger (1799-1890). Learning from Döllinger’s mistakes these people determined to remain “loyal Catholics” in terms of their public self-presentation while working hard to undermine traditional Roman Catholic beliefs and practices which they believed were in need of modernization. Essentially disloyal to the Pope and strongly rejecting papal authority these writers and activists embraced German völkisch thought and an ultra-Nationalism that glorified the German race while at the same time rejecting ultramontainism that insisted on a universal Catholicism centered on Rome.
After the defeat of Germany in 1918 many of these figures, but not all, soon embraced National Socialism as the wave of the future. It is this embrace that Dr. Hastings misleadingly argues represents the catholic roots of National Socialism.
In fact, given the intense persecution of official Catholicism after 1933 which to his credit he also documents, Hastings’ argument makes more sense in terms of Catholic modernism and its rejection of both traditional and official Catholicism. Regardless of how one reads Hastings’ book his careful documentation of the way the modernists tried to change the Roman Catholic Church and their desire for change goes a long way to explain Joseph Ratzinger’s rejection of modernism and desire to steer the church back to a tradition based orthodoxy.
Anyone wanting to understand the Pope’s conservative views, particularly his apparent reversal of some aspects of the implementation of the Second Sacred Ecumenical Council of the Vatican, known as Vatican II, which was held from 11 October 1962 to 21 November 1965, ought to read Derek Hastings’ new book Catholicism and the Roots of Nazism: Religious Identity and National Socialism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).
The book’s title is highly misleading because it is not about Catholicism as such, but rather about a group of rebel Catholics based in the Bavarian city of Munich who were followers of the excommunicated scholar Ignaz von Döllinger (1799-1890). Learning from Döllinger’s mistakes these people determined to remain “loyal Catholics” in terms of their public self-presentation while working hard to undermine traditional Roman Catholic beliefs and practices which they believed were in need of modernization. Essentially disloyal to the Pope and strongly rejecting papal authority these writers and activists embraced German völkisch thought and an ultra-Nationalism that glorified the German race while at the same time rejecting ultramontainism that insisted on a universal Catholicism centered on Rome.
After the defeat of Germany in 1918 many of these figures, but not all, soon embraced National Socialism as the wave of the future. It is this embrace that Dr. Hastings misleadingly argues represents the catholic roots of National Socialism.
In fact, given the intense persecution of official Catholicism after 1933 which to his credit he also documents, Hastings’ argument makes more sense in terms of Catholic modernism and its rejection of both traditional and official Catholicism. Regardless of how one reads Hastings’ book his careful documentation of the way the modernists tried to change the Roman Catholic Church and their desire for change goes a long way to explain Joseph Ratzinger’s rejection of modernism and desire to steer the church back to a tradition based orthodoxy.
Thursday, July 8, 2010
Christian Book Reviews is an interdisciplinary, internet, journal dedicated to reviewing books of an academic nature about or relevant to contemporary Christianity. Each review will describe the content of a particular work before offering an evaluation in terms of its scholarly and practical significance.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)