Art and Logic

At the beginning of the movie Joe vs. the Volcano, the protagonist Joe, enters an office. In the background a man is arguing on the phone.  The man is Joe’s boss, Mr. Waturi, who is shouting repeatedly over the phone, “I know he can get the job, but can he do the job!” Interestingly, in his book, The Republic, Plato seems to be asking his audience much the same question about the Philosophy and Arts. That is, while philosophers may talk about what art is, or what art does, it is very careful to point out that art and philosophy are fundamentally different.  Thus, in Book 10 of the Republic, Plato bans artists from the Republic not because art is mere imitation but because he is afraid that people will confuse the art of an artist with the art of the philosopher.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the average reader found this confusing. After all, isn’t there a substantial difference between art and philosophy? Philosophy is a study of the nature of knowledge. It is rational, it is orderly, and it is systematic. Art is a study of the human condition. It is emotional, it is empathic, and it is messy. So why does Plato expel artists from his Republic, his ideal city? Perhaps he fears the competition that artists will give philosophers, since both disciplines aim at a revelation of some type of truth, one about logic and knowledge the other about the human condition. However, Plato believed that the type of knowledge that artists communicated was an inferior type of knowledge. And even if we put that aside for a moment and admit that there are types of “truth” that each discipline espouses, at first glance these two types of truth seem very different from one another.

Plato states quite plainly that artists are solely concerned with the particulars of appearance, and as such they do not fit into the broad scheme of universal ideals that Plato believes to be the penultimate goal of the philosopher’s quest. Plato calls the refinement of knowledge aimed at revealing "universal ideals" phronesis, a word loosely translated into English as "judgment". In other words, refining our judgment is the definitive intellectual virtue. I suppose then, for Plato, there can be no match between what the artist does and what the philosopher does.

Aristotle, on the other hand, divides our knowledge of understanding into three different parts, and while part of our understanding of the world is theoretical (i.e. Plato), it is also productive and practical. Thus phronesis or judgment is not an unqualified intellectual virtue, but only in matters regarding human conduct.  Furthermore, because humanity exists as a multiplicity, and the judgment of the individual is subjective the individual can share his or her aesthetic appreciation of an art object with the community. Thus I can contemplate an object of art, appreciate it, critique it and discuss it with others and arrive at a universal understanding that reflects the multiplicity of the community.

It is interesting because, aside from judgment, the overlap between the disciplines of art and philosophy may take the form of moral virtue, by which I mean that artists goal is to create a work of art that reveals some truth about the nature of the human condition to elevate the viewer, and in the same way the philosophers the aim it to arrive at a kind of moral virtue through a refinement of phronesis. That is both discipline ultimately strive to reveal truths about the nature of existence that will ultimately better human kind.

Universals and Particulars

When discussing the definition of portraiture with my students, I always begin with this, “Good portraits convey likeness; great portraits convey personality.” Surprisingly, no one ever seems to argue with this statement. I mean, what is a portrait if not a likeness? Also in an attempt to glamorize the sitter, wont an artist make the characters easily excitable and colorful? Don’t these additions subtract from the reality of the individual? Isn't the only reliable identification of the sitter their likeness?

At the same time don’t actions speak louder than words, and don’t we know a person by their moods, their peculiarities of habit and so forth, and isn’t an individual's personality just as important as what they look like? I mean, how do we recognize a person? By their looks? A face in the crowd? Or by the memorable quirks of character that are so defining?

Interestingly the Greek word for mirror, katoptron, is at the heart of an analysis of the purpose of artistic activity in Plato’s Republic. Just as a mirror reflects the details of life as it appears to us, says Plato, so an artist imitates all things. In contrast to the artist is the artisan or craftsperson, like a cobbler or a carpenter who are also creative, but who, in Plato’s esteem, occupy an invaluable place in society. The artisan, unlike the artist, doesn’t simply reproduce mere representation, but creates something useful and valuable to society.

Unlike the artist, who creates an imitation of reality, the artisan holds a specific idea in view, like the pattern of a shoe. In this way, the artisan works from a universal ideal and creates a particular that is contained under it.

One might object that once the artisan has created an object, for example a shoe, the artisan has created something sensible, no longer ideal and that this is an inherent contradiction in Plato’s logic. However, I do not believe that Plato was as concerned about shoes as he was about a paradigm of thought. Plato calls possessing the highest form of thought “phronesis”. It is a knowledge both scientific and theoretical and works from universals to particulars.

Aristotle, of course will invert this relationships. Whereas Plato confines artists to narrowly reflecting particulars, Aristotle insists that the artist is not concerned with the factual, but with the possible. Aristotle defines the activity of art making as a process of composition, bringing together different particulars in order to form a cohesive plot. What is more, because the effort to link particulars to universals is forever potential, there is no universal way of teaching art or rules for implementing art.

I suspect, though I am not certain, that when one looks at a portrait in search of a series of personality traits that make up the individual, that portrait is going to vary from person to person, and that each person is going to bring their own understanding of particulars and thus the understanding of the portrait will be different for each person who looks at it.  This is the anathema to Plato’s understanding of aesthetics, because it relegates beauty to an open ended series of judgments that have nothing to do with the ideal.

At the same time, there are works of art that are often agreed upon as “masterpieces of art.” Which suggests that while these works may not be taken from universal blue prints, so to speak, there are, none the less inspirations, works of art that are familiar, historical references, and other likenesses that allow us to appreciate both likenesses and differences in a universal way.  A balance must be struck between genius and taste, between universal and particular, between the likeness of sitter, and their personality. And really this is what makes a great portrait, or any great work of art.

Beauty is Divine

Years ago I was glancing at the headlines on a paper in a newspaper vending machine when one tagline caught my eye, Science Confirms Plato, Beauty is Absolute. Unfortunately I did not buy the paper and subsequently did not read the article. For all I know it was an op-ed piece on gardening tips. Still, my interest remains piqued. I have tried to Google variations of the title but have never found any writing that presents definitive proof demonstrating categorically that Beauty is an Absolute.

When talking about Plato’s term “absolute” it might be more appropriate to say “beauty in itself.” Anyone who is even vaguely familiar with Plato’s theory of ideal forms understands that Beauty is not tied to things that we would describe as beautiful, like a flower or a woman. Instead beauty leads us to a love of truth, which for Plato was the divine. In Plato’s world, everything that is good or noble must be beautiful. The lover of truth purifies the mind of desires and appetites and focus instead on knowledge that wells up from within.

You might ask how can beauty be thought of as objectively separate from the thing that we call beautiful? Shouldn’t beauty be a relative value instead of an absolute principle? Isn’t what I call beautiful and what you call beautiful necessarily going to vary? Beauty changes over time. The flower wilts.

Plato says that the absolute is independent of thoughts existing in men's brains. At the same time Plato identifies his universal Ideas with characteristics of a particular objects, such as the chair-ness of a chair, which would not appear to have an independent reality. I suspect this is the character of the divine that is necessarily resident in Plato’s understanding of the Absolute. These absolutes must exist as some emanation of God’s thought, otherwise, if they are just the stuff of our thoughts they are mortal and not eternal.

So beauty is divine, and if the newspaper headline is to be believed, science has proven it.  I begin to think that my memory may not be as accurate as I once imagined, and that the article might be less about Plato’s world of heavenly forms than I once believed.

Another possibility that occurs to me is that we may be dealing with a problem of semantics, and just as the Eskimos had a hundred words for “snow”, or as C.S. Lewis had his 4 loves, shouldn’t there be many types of beauty, one for every taste and imagination?

Anyway, I was talking with a friend a few days ago and she suggested I start dusting off my writing skills when it comes to the topic of aesthetics. Mainly because I have been thinking about going back to school again to study the philosophy of art know as aesthetics. So be warned faithful readers, the next few blog posts will probably be more of the same.

having a human expereince

One of my earliest memories involving prayer took place in my then eighth grade study hall. I remember leaning over my desk, taking a deep breath, and as I exhaled I uttered the words “Dear God, why do you hate me so much?”

I don’t know if this qualifies as a pray per se, but of all the times that I have talked to God since, it certainly counts as one of the most sincere prayers I have ever made.

I wouldn’t call myself a religious man, or even profoundly spiritual, but I do like to contemplate my relationship to the divine from time to time.  I suppose I should categorize that by saying that I prefer to focus on personal, inward discoveries, rather than speculations about the nature of God or other supernatural entities.

I suppose it is nature to question our spiritual existence. Evidence suggests that people have been asking questions like “Where do we come from? Who are we? And Where are we going?” For about as long as people have walked the earth. Archeologists are quick to deduce that, while the exact nature of cave drawings can never be completely known or understood, they seem to represent the same kinds of questions that the artist Paul Gauguin was asking in his great masterpiece.

As a young man I was drawn to the idea of “enlightenment.” I liked the idea of having a goal towards which one could strive. I have long since abandoned this notion in conjunction with spirituality as “enlightenment” no longer holds the allure of being some far away mystical state. Anymore when I think about the word "enlightenment" to me it just means “paying attention.”

I do not believe that a spiritual experience is connected to thoughts, feelings, emotions or any dogma or system of morality. The problem with these things is that they tend to ground us in ourselves and our existence, that is, thoughts and feeling tend to be about our selves and our lives, and really have very little meaning outside of the reality of our existence while by “spiritual experience” I mean any experience that transcends our meager existence. Among those spiritual experiences I would include, Love, Creativity and the Sublime.

I first learned of the Sublime while studying art history. In art the term is typically used to describe Romantic landscape paintings of the nineteenth century.  In a general way the terms refers to “greatness beyond all possibility of expression.“ Anyone who has ever experienced and extraordinarily deep sense of joy or sorrow has touched upon the threshold of the sublime.

In my own spiritual practice I frequently substitute the word “Universe” for any suggestion of divinity. I do this for a couple of reasons. One, because invoking "the Universe" reminds me of the sublime nature of existence, from the lace-like intricacy of a snowflake to the vast emptiness of interstellar space, the Universe is one amazing place.  Another is that it reminds me that I am mortal, and that no matter what my personal religious beliefs, this does not change the fact that I am merely a human being among human beings and that I should approach all beliefs with humility and compassion. Pretty much everything thing else can be summed up in the poem “A Guest House” by Rumi in which he states in the opening line “This human being is a guest house” and that all experiences are transitory and should be welcomed with gratitude.

For me spirituality is a never ending and evolving process. It makes sense, considering the fact that everything, the universe, is constantly changing, and that if we are going to keep up, we need to constantly pay attention. It changes, and we change and so our understanding changes. I think my only regret is that I will never have the chance to explain this to the eighth grade boy crying at his desk. Still, I am glad he began to understand this, however gradually, despite my being there to comfort him.

Watching the Watchers

Sitting at my daughter’s swim lesson I watch a cloud as it drifts across the open blue sky. Hovering low, it appears as if it is going to encounter a nearby water tower. I want to climb the tower, or even the branches of the nearby trees and extend my hands out into the velvety softness of the misty haze. I imagine the cloud passing over farms and cities, looking down as it soars on the trade winds, spying down on people like me. Wondering, perhaps, why we stare back.

Long before the movie American Beauty showed us the image of a plastic trash bag dancing on currents of wind in a small alley I have wondered about the about the life behind ordinary objects. 

Take, for example, the tomb of Tutankhamen. His tomb was robbed in antiquity, but based on the evidence found in the tomb it is entirely possible that these robberies took place within several months at most of the initial burial. Antiquarians suspect that eventually the location of the tomb was lost, forgotten, perhaps buried from the debris of subsequent tomb constructions, or covered over by the sediment of floods.

As I sit here thinking about this I imagine those robbers resealing the tomb. Behind those locked doors lays a vast treasure that is theirs for the taking. I can see the hand of the last robber departing the scene. He gently pats the walls in farewell, a treasure enough to sustain his family for lifetimes, envisioning the time when he will soon return. History suggests he never will.

I think about the lock on my garden shed, hanging there in the heat of the day, in the rain and the night and the dew of the morning. I think about the things contained with, sitting there in the dark; a mower, a few children’s toys, a bag of fertilizer. They sit there in the dark, slowly aging. As I press the lock together I am sure that I will be back in a day or week and that the things I left behind will be waiting there for me.

Authors sit in front of screens describing the world, even as readers patiently make there way across lines of text. I wonder, does the screen look back? Long before I had ever heard of Alice and her looking glass I imagined that the face in the mirror, the one that looked so much like mine, might actually be alive, and that as he turns his back on mine and walks through the bathroom door, he enters into a world surprisingly familiar.

“Jesus said, "If your leaders say to you, 'Look, the kingdom is in the sky,' then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, 'It is in the sea,' then the fish will precede you. Rather, the kingdom is within you and it is outside you.”

Walking down the bike path I am suddenly struck by a thought, what if I am not looking at the world at all? What if all that I am seeing is nothing more than the world’s gaze reflected off of me and in reality it is the world that see me long before I see it? Thinking this way I feel entirely surrounded by things: the air, the trees, the grass and stones, all of them patiently watching me as I walk by. Their gaze like a warm blanket envelops me holding me in place. There is a comfort here, and quiet to as all the world is stillness.

Name the behavior

Yesterday I got a comment on my blog from a post that is almost four years old. It is hard to imagine that I have kept my blog that long. I am not what you would call a steady blogger, but only because I set up my blog for myself, as a record of my thoughts, my interests and my experiences, and not for any greater altruistic ideas.

None-the-less, occasionally people stumble across my blog and some even leave comments. For the most part the comments are discursive; some insightful and others brilliant. Other times they are strange, even ugly, like the time I received an angry rant of a comment from a guy claiming to be Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

They say there are topics that one should avoid in polite company. I think the list is sex, politics and religion. Though I am not sure. Either way my blog doesn’t really shy away from these topics, so I am bound to get a little push back from people that hold contrary opinions. Different opinions I can tolerate, though it is hard to swallow negativity, and I am never sure how to handle these situations gracefully. In the instance involving the individual claiming to be Ahmadinejad I deleted the comment because, in my opinion, it was disparaging against certain religious groups and I really don’t tolerate that kind of behavior.

I suppose that brings me to the comment I received yesterday.  It is not a very well written comment, and in reality I should probably just ignore it. But the problem is that I think there is something veiled in the comment that is disparaging of others and, as I said before, I don’t tolerate other people’s bad behavior.  In fact I could let the whole thing go with a shrug if it hadn’t been for the last line in which the speaker says “You can keep your warm fuzzy.”

In one sentence the speaker has summed up what I believe is the problem with most organized religions, namely that statements of faith can masquerade as an argument, and that this argument once presented should be understood as incontrovertible.

I have no problem with the statement that the speaker makes regarding his faith in Jesus, however to suggest that this somehow negates or otherwise refutes contrary opinions is a fallacy and worse, it subtly disparages other groups who may hold differing opinions. While it falls short of outright condemnation of others, it does fall dangerously close to a discriminatory attitude towards people of differing ideas and beliefs.

Sadly, intolerance always seems to be the answer to intolerance. Which is why these debates seem endless and never appear to reach resolution.  I say that I find the speakers position intolerable, and then they counter with an equally entrenched attitude until we are so far from common ground that any reasonable settlement seems impossible. You see it in the Middle East and Western Europe, you see it in the politics of the United States and countries of the orient. Things cannot get better this way, they cannot.

There are many challenges to addressing contrary opinions, especially when they are entrenched in topics that are so loaded. Still I believe that one can refuse to accept unacceptable behavior without intolerance or violence. I think that it is important to name a behavior that we find unacceptable, to call it out, lest we allow these attitudes to perpetuate themselves unchallenged. That is why I would say that I am glad that the speaker has found Jesus, and would ask him to remember that “God is Love” and not wield the name of Jesus like a sword in a conversation about how ridiculous the generic use of the word “green” has become.

love what you do

My fascination with brewing beer began when I was working in bars and restaurants. Though I was in management, I was much more at home in the kitchen or standing behind the bar learning to mix different cocktails. Eventually I began cooking, learning how to recreate different dishes that I had tasted and developing a pallet for different varieties of wine to accompany each meal. A creative personality, I imagine the kitchen and bar appealed to some primal need of self-expression.

The explosion of microbreweries in the 1990’s, hip little restaurants that also brewed and served their own particular styles of beer, caught my imagination, and on a road trip to Dallas, I stopped into a homebrew shop and purchased a kit. I tried a few times to make a decent batch, but never really got the hang of it. Circumstances changed and the kit ended up back in the box, there to be forgotten for the next fifteen years.

Flash forward to about a year and a half ago, I was talking with a friend of mine when I discovered that he was a seasoned home brewer. Bit by the bug, I asked my brother to retrieve the kit from my parent’s attic and ship it down to me, in Dallas of all places. I began visiting the old homebrew shop and before you knew it I was making a few half decent batches of beer.  Making beer, it turns out, is like everything else, you have to do it a few times before you get good. Persistence, and a willingness to accept occasional failure are sure fired recipes for moderate success.

Most of the things that I love to do I have taught myself, and while I doubt I will ever win awards, I firmly believe that if you do what you love to do you will always be happy.  Not surprisingly, most of the things that I love to do involve making something: Painting, cooking, brewing. Though I am not sure I would say that I love to brew, as much as I love the idea of drinking my own home brew. In fact, this is an interesting quirk of my personality. In the same vein I wouldn’t say that I love to cook or paint either. But what I love to do is eat things that I have made in the kitchen, and to look at paintings that I have made.  What I really love is the moment that comes with the satisfaction of having done something well.

(I suppose one could make the argument that I love cooking or painting or even brewing more than I love, say, yard work, or hunting. And to that I would agree.)

I often say I love my work because I do what I love, namely teach art. I don’t get the same satisfaction at the end of the day that way I do with painting or cooking, probably because teaching itself doesn’t appeal to the creative aspects of my life. However teaching affords me other luxuries like talking about history, philosophy, and, in short, about the world of ideas. In this way, teaching allows me to be creative and to feel that moment of satisfaction indirectly and thus is a source of great content for me.

Ultimately, I suppose that is why I blog as well, not so much because I love writing, but because I can look back on the myriad subjects that I have written about and feel some satisfaction that I have lived a well examined life. And a pretty good life at that!

indirect ontology

The opening line to the Godfather rolls around in my head. “I believe in America. America has made my fortune.” Like a tune that gets stuck in your brain, I hear it over and over again. I don’t know why it’s there. I try playing out the rest of the scene in my minds eye thinking that this might somehow quell the flow. No avail. Apparently watching the Godfather is not the cure. I don’t know what is. I don’t know why it is there. I suspect it has something to do with all of the political rhetoric that is in the media these days. Like the line stuck in my head, I wish it would all go away. Every time I hear a politician speak, it reminds me of how divisive the country has become. Maybe its always been this way and I just didn’t notice, just like all the tunes of all the songs you ever heard are in there somewhere, but you don’t notice till one wants to stand out.

Typing this, I am acutely aware of all the sounds that are around me. I can hear someone rummaging though the drawers in the kitchen. A fan drones from a bedroom. The little girls are bickering; I catch snippets of the conversation. It sounds ugly. Most likely I can hear these things because I want to concentrate, and each little disturbance is a disturbance in the force, so to speak, each one a little microcosm that beacons me to join. I try to force a separation between these different events, as in Buddhism where each moment in time is separate and distinct, where consciousness is like a string of pearls. But these moments collide into one another and influence one another. The harder I try to concentrate the more consciousness looks like pearls shot through a particle accelerator. The bickering in the next room gets louder and then abruptly stops, there are a few tears, and then the sound of play begins again. The cycle has reset itself. The children like actors on a stage preparing for act two.

Everyone is bored. The long hot days of summer are beginning to take their toll. To hot to go outside, the children pace through the house. “I wonder why they let out school in the summer” My therapist asked. “It seems like winters are much nicer and would be a better time for children to play outside.” The obviousness of this question hits me. Though the answer is probably equally obvious. Like everything else, I imagine it probably has something to do with tradition.

“I believe in America. ”

 I was brewing beer yesterday with my friend Chris when the topic of politics came up. “I’m not a political guy” he said “but something tells me it is going to get a whole lot worse before its gets better.” As he was talking I imagined Congress as a bunch of drunks trying to hit bottom before they could get sober. “You’re probably right” I tell him, shrugging my shoulders, the mute bodily perception of an overarching truth. In the background the aroma of hops and sugar fills the air with a sickly sweet stench. “You’re probably right.”

A little blue

I woke up this morning and I knew something was wrong. I’m down. Most morning I wake up feeling tired, or sore, but I usually snap out of it pretty quick. Once my body gets moving the aches and pains go away and so does the grogginess. But this morning was different. I felt so blue, and what made matters worse was I didn’t understand why. Why? I mean, shouldn’t there be a reason for a feeling? Of course depression uses this kind of thinking as the club with which to continually beat you. So I tried to think of something else, anything else.

I’ve felt down before, so I know how insidious this feeling can be. Unattended, this feeling will turn on everything that you hold dear. Before long I can easily convince myself that friends, family, coworkers, and everyone else have abandon me. My solution? Don’t give it power. The more this feeling pushes, the more I push back. “Shut up” I tell it. Though it never listens.

So I did everything you are supposed to do. I talk to people. It’s hard to be honest about being down but I think it is important to own how you feel lest it begins to own you. I exercised and ate, got a little sunshine, and tried to work and still this feeling persists. That’s when I knew my situation was serious. In the past, any combination of two or three of these activities was usually enough to snap me back to my senses.

In the past my feelings of depression have sometimes been tied to the stories I tell myself, what my friend Stuart lovingly refers to as “monkey mind.” So I listened to my thoughts, scanning them for potential pits falls, but when I realized I wasn’t being pointlessly negative or hostile to myself, I ruled monkey mind out as the culprit.

Aside from the fact that I cam getting older, one of the reasons I wake up sore most mornings is I suffer from back pain. Chronic back pain touches just about every part of your body, and when it flares, which it hasn’t recently, you know to sit up and take notice. There are drugs you can take, but really these only mask the pain for a short time, and if you don’t get ahead of the pain and stay ahead of the pain with these drugs, they are almost completely useless. The same is true of exercise, it is a management technique, but not something that is going to free you of pain if you are hopelessly immersed in it.

One technique I learned in dealing with chronic back pain is mindfulness. Mindfulness isn’t a cure. It won’t make your pain go away, but it does teach you ways of coping with pain when all else fails. As I said before on this topic: As one more closely observes the inner reality, one finds that happiness is not exclusively a quality brought about by a change in outer circumstances, but rather by realizing happiness often starts by releasing attachment to our thoughts and predispositions. Basically I allow myself to be aware of my reality, and by challenging old assumptions and the bric-à-brac of my own mind, and sometime able to make better judgments for myself.

And so, when all else fails, I have fallen to this old stand-by as the remedy dejour for my depression. For as my favorite book, the Bhagavad Gita says, “One must free oneself by mindfulness and never put oneself down, as surely as self is the only friend of the soul, and its only enemy”

All things to all People

Over the last few weeks I have been leading a series of conversation on Satan. We began by following the first uses of the word Satan, literally “to obstruct” as it appears in the Old Testament in passages like that of Numbers 22:22. Next we examined the use of the word Satan to describe a personification, as in the case of the angel of God in the book of Job. At some point one of the class member raised her hand quizzically and asked, “All this is nice, but where are the pointy horns and pitchfork?”

By way of answer we talked about ways in which the story of Satan evolved. We discussed passages in Isaiah and Ezekiel that each talk about the fall of an ancient king and which many people associate with the fall of Satan, and we talked about the influence of other religions, namely Zoroastrianism in which the Persian pantheon of gods are reduced to two, a God of good and a God of evil. We hypothesized that this influence during the period in Jewish history known as “the exile” may have fundamentally changed the way the Israelites thought of God.

Many passages in the Old Testament speak of God as being both the source of good and of evil. These include Isaiah 45:6-7, Job 9:22-23, Lamentations 3:37-38, Deuteronomy 28:20-23, or Jeremiah 25:37-38. However by the end of the 1st century BCE Apocryphal literature has begun to surface that clearly reflects a division of thought about the nature of God, namely one in which God is all good and Satan is all evil.

It is in this time period in which the figure of Jesus emerges, and in many respects I wonder if the central tenant of his theology, namely that God is love, wasn’t somehow an attempt to reconcile the conflict inherent in a question like “If god is all powerful and all good, why would he allow evil to exist?” Enter the first Gospel that narrates the life of Jesus, namely Mark.

The Gospel of Mark does not begin with Jesus as divine incarnate, that is, there is no story of Mary being impregnated with the Holy Spirit. Rather, Jesus receives the Holy Spirit though baptism “At once the Spirit sent him out into the wilderness, and he was in the wilderness forty days, being tempted by Satan.” (Mark 1:13) It is interesting to note here that the Spirit of God is referred to here as both an absolute authority that direct Jesus into the wilderness, as well as the dualistic forces of good and evil that Jesus must confront in the wilderness. It is as if the author is trying to reconcile these two contrasting interpretation of the nature of God. Either way, from this moment on Jesus become the central figure in war between good and evil that is being waged here on earth, one that is ultimately a spiritual war that is being waged across the cosmos.

Jesus returns from the wilderness and immediately begins his teachings in the temple. There he is confronted be a man possessed of demons. Jesus demonstrates his power over evil by casting out the man’s demons. “The people were all so amazed that they asked each other, “What is this? A new teaching—and with authority! He even gives orders to impure spirits and they obey him.” (Mark 1:27) Elaine Pagels, in her book, The Origin of Satan hypothesizes that this construction sets up a major theme in the Gospel of Mark, namely one in which the battle between good and evil is epitomized in the struggle of the early Christian sect to identify itself up and against the larger Jewish majority.

In fact Satan is only mentioned a few times more in the Gospel of Mark, once in which Jesus asks, can a house divided stand against itself, as possible reference to the schism that existed between early Christian fathers and Jewish elders. A second time in a parable about the sowing of seeds, where seeds that fall on the existing path (Judaism?) “Satan comes and takes away the word that was sown in them.”(Mark 4:15). And finally where Peter is rebuked because “"You do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men."

Pagels will use these instances to support a claim that the ending of the Gospel, the dual trials of Jesus, downplays the role that Pilate and the Roman authority played in the death of Jesus in order to villainize the Jewish establishment. She goes on to add in later chapters how the authors of Matthew, Luke and John will pick up on this theme and greatly expand it. I found her arguments compelling mostly because I have always been mystified at the behavior that many religions, including Christianity, exhibit in demonizing those that hold different views than their own.

In trying to turn this topic into a discussion class I thought for a while about how to phrase this as a question that would elicit conversation from the class. In the end I decided that in the next class I would phrase it in the form of two questions, the first being “Who killed Jesus?” to which I might expect most liberal minded Christians to respond, “The Romans.” And the to follow this question with a second, “But who is responsible?”

I tried these question on first one friend and then another. The first readily answered “Romans” to the first question, then paused and thought long and hard about the second question before answering “Romans”, but not, I might add, without muttering something about Judas. My second friend had a very different response, but one that none-the-less demonstrated the underlying confusion about this topic. Her answer was, “Pilate” to the first, and to the second she said “It seems like all those Aristotelian causes are at work: I could argue for Judas, a Roman Soldier, the Jewish Leadership, [even] God Himself.” An answer, I might add, that I loved because, just like the pause that my first friendgave to the second question, this more elaborate answer reveals the complexity of the problem, something that Pagels herself would probably agree upon. The matter is difficult.It is confusing. It is not cut and dry.

Difficult too is the idea that even as Satan evolves, so I imagine the idea of God evolves. Perhaps as little as fifty years later Sethian Gnostics will postulate the dualistic split that occurred between good and evil is not a division of God at all, but one that represents a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of the divine. The Old Testament god, they will argue, was not split in twain, but is actually the incarnation of a deceiver god, and the true god, the ineffable Divine, is one that defies our very comprehension…

As I think about these thing I am often remind of another saying, one that has little or nothing to do with a conversation about Satan, but one that is perhaps very applicable. I image that our idea of God has changed over the eons, certainly Jesus made that evident when he declare that “God is love.” “I am all things to all people” said the Apostle Paul summarizing the radical changes of his time. That about sums it up for me alright. God is going to make himself known, sometimes by wrath and sometimes by goodness, but so that all people may have a path to spiritual grace.

Satan

In a recent conversation with friends, the question was raised, “”Who here believes in the Devil?” To which the overwhelmingly unanimous reply was, “Not I.” However one intrepid soul did venture to add that while he didn’t believe in the Devil, he wanted to believe that wrong doers somehow got theirs in the end. He wasn’t sure if that meant that there was a Hell or if there was some other means of punishing those that deserved it, but that the wicked needed to be punished in the afterlife. Not surprisingly there were more than a few voices that murmured in consent.

I have been thinking about this for the past few days and have come to the conclusion that people want justice, and that there are some crimes, some transgressions, that are so egregious that our mortal system for punishment will not do. I have tried to imagine what these crimes are. Rape? Murder? Genocide? Each word evokes an image of crimes so horrible that that are difficult to comprehend let alone punish. I mean, how do you give a rape victim back their dignity? How do you give a life back to the family that has lost one? How do you atone for wholesale slaughter and destruction? They very nature of these crimes suggests that, as mortals, it is impossible to find an answer to these crimes.

I tried to compile a short list of people whose crimes were so heinous that everyone would agree that person needed to suffer eternally. The list included Hitler, Judas, and Cain. But the list is problematic because even these people have their supporters, that is, not everyone would consign them to the ranks of the damned. Even though some might argue that the supporters of someone like Hitler themselves are wicked people, I suspect that the truth is far more complex. Again, it is not situation for which an immediate answer is apparent.

In my youth I was a huge fan of the German author Herman Hesse. Among the many books that Hesse wrote was a slim novel called Demian. It is the story of a young man, Sinclair, struggling with, among other things, an understanding of spiritual truth. Sinclair tries to understand his own inward feelings, some good and some evil. One of the major themes is the existence of opposing forces and the idea that both are necessary. At one point Sinclair’s friend Max Demian, compares Sinclair to the figure of Cain. Demian explains that throughout history there have been people who have exalted Cain, not because he killed his brother, but because of his dual nature, one that sacrifices and give praise to god, and the other that falls into darkness. Like Cain, Sinclair is conflicted by feelings of good and evil, a dualistic interpretation of the world split between our carnal instincts and the morals of society.

In another part of the book, Demian argues that the Christian God is an insufficient god; it rules over all that is wholesome, but there is another half of the world. Hesse's Demian evokes the Gnostic god diety Abraxas, symbolized as a bird breaking free from an egg or a globe, to talk about a God of Heaven. This is a common theme in Gnosticism, namely that the old testament god s a deciever and the the true god, the god of love abides in some heavenly domain. We as mortals are unaware of this division, this deception, except through the spiritual purification given to use by Jesus. One Gnostic text, based upon the life of one of my short list evil doers, Judas, repeats this same theme.

The Gospel of Judas is a Gnostic text which depicts Judas not as one who betrays Jesus, rather as a follower of Jesus who, on Jesus own command delivers Jesus up to the authorities in order to set the events of the crucifixion into motion. The Gospel of Judas portrays Jesus as having planned his own death in order to free him from a prison of flesh and return to Heaven.

While Hesse’s Demian and the Gospel of Judas are resoundingly dualistic documents and not part of the New Testament, the problem of a dualistic universe lies at the core of Christian Dogma. In her book, the Origin of Satan, Elaine Pagels discusses how the author of the Gospel of Mark radically transforms the understanding of Satan. There, Satan is portrayed not as a kind of attorney for the prosecution, as he is in the Book of Job, rather, in Mark, Satan is depicted as the leader of a band of demons engaged in constant spiritual warfare with the forces of Heaven, good verses evil, us verses them.

Pagels expertly concludes her book by suggestion that while one can read the gospels and walk away with the religious vision of opposition to powers that are regarded as evil, there is an alternate trend seen in Christian works from the first century through St. Francis of Assisi to Martin Luther King Jr. who have practiced praying for reconciliation rather than damnation in response to the dualistic forces of the world.

This is the more difficult path. But as is commonly asked in the Gospel, how does one love his enemies? How does we turn the other cheek? The gospels tell us there is but one way, and it is a religion based on love, tolerance and forgiveness. I think this is a profound message, and one that doesn't necessarily require a faith in Christianity to appreciate. As in my conversation with friends, while most people may not agree that there is a Devil or Satan, many acknowledge the presence of evil in the world. The question then is how do we confront this evil? By outright opposition? Or though a spirit of reconciliation that seeks to bring all parties back into the fold?

Footwashing

In November 1992 I wrote a paper for a Biblical studies class I attended at Claremont Graduate School lead my then professor Burton Mack. The focus of the class, as well as much of Burton’s writings at that time, was on the ritualizing and myth making that took place in the earliest stages of a religion’s initial formation. The purpose of the paper was make a critical examination of the act of foot washing in the Gospel of John, and to learn more about its practice and function in the Johannine community, and to determine where it at all, the act of foot washing became a ritualized practice in the Christian religion.

To accomplish my goal I began with the Gospel of John, where Foot washing makes its appearance. The first step was a literary exegesis, an exegesis is a critical interpretation and explanation of a literary work. Secondly, I compared the mention of foot washing in John with those from other sources, such as the writings of Paul, in order to clarify by contrast the interpretations of the act of foot washing in relation to the different communities from which these literary works came. Finally, I try to place the act of foot washing into a brief historical context in order to understand the function of the act of foot washing in terms of the beliefs of the community and as a ritual practice.

This final phase is perhaps one of the most difficult aspects of this investigation, namely uncovering the historical role of foot washing in John. Outside of the reference in the Gospel of John to Jesus washing his disciples feet, there is very little written information about the role that foot washing may have played in the Johannine community, and even less physical evidence.

The episode in which Jesus washes the feet of his disciples occurs entirely within the thirteenth chapter of the Gospel of John. Outside of this reference there are few other references to foot washing in the New Testament. Probably the most recognizable of these is in John 12 (Luke 7). In this passage a young woman burst in on a gathering of Jesus and his disciple and begins to anoint the feet of Jesus with expensive perfumes, using her own hair as the towel to wipe Jesus’ feet clean.

These two separate incidences of foot washing, one by the woman and one by Jesus, seem altogether different from one another, both in terms of the context in which the actions were performed as well as the materials that were used in washing the feet. These differences have lead many scholars to believe that the woman anointing the feet of Jesus is merely a symbolic act penned by the author to suggest the preparation of Jesus body for his eventual burial. Chances are that this story is unrelated to the Foot washing scene that appears in John 13.

It is reasonable to assume too that since the scene wherein Jesus washes the feet of the disciples in John 13 occurs in no other place in the New Testament it is possible that the author either created this story to address practices that were unique to his community, or extrapolated this story from practices whose origins lay outside the community but were nonetheless familiar to the author of the Gospel of John and his immediate audience. In either event it necessitates a closer look at the foot washing passage in John 13, and hopefully this may give us some clues as to its origins and purpose.



Part I. Role of Foot Washing in the Gospel of John.

John 13:1 opens with Jesus and his disciples gathered together for the ritual feast of Passover. This event it typically referred to as “The last Supper” and appears in all four of the New Testament Gospels. All four gospels include a reference to the Passover at the beginning of the respective last Supper Narratives. The Gospel of John last supper narrative is unique from the other three accounts in that the author of John does not elaborate on the ritual feast or offer an interpretation of this setting that connects Jesus the offering of bread and wine with Jesus’ body and blood as the sacrificial food of redemption. Instead, Jesus interrupts the meal already taking place, much to the dismay of his disciples, and begins to prepare himself for the washing of his disciples’ feet.

Further heightening the tension of the moment the author follow his reference to the Passover meal with direct reference to Judas’ impending betrayal of Jesus in John 13:2. The reference to Judas interrupts the foot washing narrative. The author then restates Jesus personal knowledge of his impending death in order to reestablish the flow of Jesus thoughts leading into the foot-washing scene

Curiously, references to Judas bookends the foot-washing scene. As Jesus concludes his washing of the disciple feet he returns to the table. Jesus picks up the bread and states that one of his disciples will betray him. In an interesting switch, Jesus uses the bread to identify Judas as the one who will betray him. The reader, potentially familiar with the other gospels that equate Jesus body and blood with bread and wine, are frustrated. The equation is visibly absent. Jesus passes the bread to Judas, who is then dramatically possessed by Satan. Contrary to the use of bread as a symbol of everlasting life, the bread becomes a medium through which some evil transpires. Foot washing, at first glance, replaces the more familiar bread and wine motif even as the bread now seems to harbor connotations of the betrayal of Jesus on the eve of his crucifixion and resurrection.

The only time, in the Gospel of John, when Jesus equated his body with bread, is in John 6:25-59. This time the supper scene is visibly absent and Jesus begin this section by chastising the multitudes for having become dependent on the bread of the world. Instead Jesus offers a new interpretation of the manna story. For Jesus, manna and bread signify death. “Your fathers ate manna in the desert and died” (John 6:49). Jesus repeatedly offers them the flesh of his body as replacement for the bread of heaven (John 6:50-53). This only confuses the multitude, since they cannot see any bread and are disgusted with the notions of cannibalism. “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” (John 6:52b)

The end result of this narrative is the splitting off of many people including some disciples (john 6:66) over the controversy concerning the spiritual meal. The reader of the Gospel of John is left in anticipation for the last supper narrative to work out the problems of John 6. This anticipation for the last supper is emphasized as John 6 concludes with the mention of Judas’ intended betrayal of Jesus. This anticipation only forces the reader to rely on the interpretation of the upcoming meal in John 13 to work out the dilemma of the divisions between Jesus followers and also to give a final account of the interpretation of Jesus as the Spiritual Bread of Life.

As was mentioned before, the first reference to Judas in John 13:2 is bordered on either side of Jesus knowledge of his own impending death and his entrance into the next. This device seems to serve two purposes. First, it prepares the reader for the reinterpretation of the bread motif. Second, it emphasizes the transition from Jesus ministry (works) on earth to a new interpretation of Jesus as a sacrificial figure with divine authority under god.

Jesus begins by removing his clothing, pouring water into a basin. And then begin to systematically wash the feet of each of his disciples. (John 13:4-5) Taken in itself, the act of foot washing is an. act of great humility. This is evidenced by the Mention of Jesus great love for his disciples. The imagery of Jesus shedding his clothes creates a tender and dramatic scene within the gospel, which draws attention to itself by the internal strength of its literary imagery.

In the act of washing the feet of the disciples, Jesus is questioned by peter. Peter appears shocked and a little appalled that his lord is going to wash their feet. Without offer to exchange places with Jesus or to question the actions of Jesus, peter flatly refuses to allow Jesus to wash his feet. “Truly, Truly I say to you, no slave is greater than his lord, nor a messenger greater than one who sends him. If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them” (John 13:16-17) Jesus rebukes per for failing to understand the function of foot washing, and more importantly, Jesus remarks remind the reader that his own actions are in some way related to the fate of Jesus. To this end the reader is left to reflect on the action of Jesus. Jesus continues by relating his actions as those of a mater performing the functions of a servant Lastly Jesus commands his disciples three times to follow in Jesus own actions. (John 13:14b, John 13:15, John 13:17)

It is not possible, looking at the command of Jesus to determine whether they were intended as a symbolic or literal expression of Jesus desire that his Disciples follow him in the act of washing the feet of others. However when we consider the context in which this section of the gospel was written an interesting picture begins to emerge. John 13 traditionally marks the beginning of what are known as the “Farewell Discourses” by modern scholars. It is interesting to note that the emphasis seems to be on Jesus leaving rather than on his return (resurrection). As many modern scholars place the authorship of John much later than the other three synoptic gospels, Jesus taking his place alongside his father in heaven rather than become the resurrected savior/messiah may help to resolve the problematic return of Jesus, who has yet to return and take up reign as the King of Heaven on Earth. This interpretation of the beginning of the “Farewell Discourses” seems to portray a community whose beliefs focus on the role of Jesus as part of the trinity, rather than on Jesus as a Man. Thus the mandate of Jesus to follow in his actions should be understood by the community for which it was written as a literal command.

By means of conclusion to the first part I offer a summary of the main points.

First, Foot washing has usurped the traditional position of bread in the last supper narrative. Second, bread has been reinterpreted the some extent, as a medium for an evil agent. Third, Jesus associates the foot washing with his impending fate. Fourth Jesus mandates to his disciples that this practice be continued and that his disciples will receive blessings for their continuation of this practice.

Part II Mimesis.

Perhaps the most significant aspect of the foot washing supper in John is the separate commandments of Jesus to his disciples that they should “wash one another's feet” (john 13:14b) and that they should follow the “example that you should do as I have done for you” (John 13:15). In both cases, separated only by a few words, it appears as though Jesus is ordering his disciples to follow the example set by Jesus. The double emphasis of this command seems to suggest that it was to be taken seriously both by the disciples as well as by the readers. As Harold Weiss points out in his paper on the ritual of foot washing, “The community would not have preserve the command, if it had not been obeying the selfsame command.”

The “do this” command is, as noted, a very powerful and significant saying in the foot washing narrative. Jesus goes on to remark that anyone who will follow his example will receive his blessing from heaven. No small promise indeed! The promise of a reward only goes to strengthen the importance of foot washing. The position of this command in the syntax is unique to the last supper scenario when compared to the other gospels. The typical rejoinder is “do this in remembrance of me”. However there is a similar occurrence in Cor. 11-24-26. Here Jesus is portrayed within the context of the Last supper encouraging his Disciples to always associate the eating and drinking of bread and wine with the Christological redemption of the body. Though the language here is not as forceful as that in John 13 as to suggest that the command of Jesus in 1 Cor. 11:26 was intended to become a ritual practice. It is more likely that the ritualized dinner was already a common practice, and that the more innovate foot-washing practice needed greater emphasis in light of existing practices.

The fascinating thing about Paul’s letter to the Corinthians is that it falls within a discussion about the importance of freedom and faith. Paul’s say to his audience, “So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of god” (1 Cor. 10:31) and then in the opening of 1 Cor. 11 “Imitators of me, be you, as I also am of Christ.” Paul seems to be making a distinction between the moral duties of the community and an outright observance of ritual practices.

The ambiguity of Paul’s language seems to underline the practice of those ritual practices that were instructed by Jesus and held I observance by Paul. 1 Corinthians can be read as a direct command, much in the same manner as the command of Jesus in John 13, that the community should follow him in his example. In the second verse Paul praises the community for having “held fast to the traditions” espoused by Paul. We do not know exactly what traditions Paul is referring, or even if he is referring to a particular teaching or an actual practice, though by inference, as the language follows directly from an passage referring to the Eucharistic ritual, and beginning a section on the last supper, I think it is safe to assume that Paul is referring to the Eucharist among the possible traditions being kept by the community. Moreover it is possible that Paul wishes to associate the Eucharist with other, deeper, traditions practiced within the community.

Among the most notable words used by Paul in this passage is the Greek word Mimesis. Its usage in the Greek arose in the 6th Century BCE and was common both in poetry and prose. The most important examples of this use, for our purposes, lie within the dialogues of Plato. There, Plato describes mimesis as the actions of people truing to come into accord with the world of higher ideas. In his dialogue, Phaedrus, Plato describes the goal of the lover as imitating his God.

This usage of the word mimesis is carried though to Josephus and Philo. Philo uses the word repeatedly to signify the importance of keeping the commands of the fathers and, more importantly, “The Logos after his birth imitated the ways of the father.” Josephus does not reference the imitating of God, but will use the word to refer to it in terms of god’s creation as “the model which man should have in his life and work.” Both Authors seem to suggest that there is a divine presence or model upon which we should base our actions.

The idea of mimesis pervades the philosophy of the day, but its absence in religious teaching is equally notable. Mimesis appears almost nowhere in the Septuagint and it presence in the New Testament is limited entirely to the Letters of Paul. The, Paul uses the word mimesis frequently, though his usage varies, owing perhaps to the variant of authorship attributed to his various letters.


Within the letters of Paul there appear three different uses of the word mimesis. Firs is the simple iteration of modeling after that which comes before or that which sets precedence Second it the following of an example, typically where Paul himself is the role model to be imitated. Third is a usage where obedience to the law is predominant, as the exclusive manner in which one is expected to act. Kittle puts 1 Cor. 11 in this category as members of the community; their actions were expected to fall directly in line with the model of Jesus. Paul fashions the hierarchy from Jesus, through himself, to the common man in order to establish the necessity of following the example of Jesus with perfect obedience.

If we image this usage of mimesis within the context of following the Eucharistic practice, Paul anticipates that actions of the community as those following in direct accordance with the actions of Jesus himself. In this way we understand that, whether or not the last supper was being practiced as a ritual meal in this time, the seeds for such a ritual practice were sown in the idea that Jesus actions should be imitated, and that his promise that all might receive eternal life by partaking of his sacrifice would, by inference, also have then been taken literally by the community.

While we can thus say that Paul’s community was most likely practicing the Eucharistic meal, it is not clear if all Christians of the first Century practiced this ritual event. In fact, if we take the interpretation of the Gospel of John’s last supper narrative at its face, it is possible to believe that some communities distrusted the Eucharistic practice and may have abstained from its practice. Moreover The Johannine community may have emphatically taken the call to mimic Jesus and have forgone the practice of communion, for whatever reason, to become more active, servile participants whose consciousness of the humility of Jesus and acting in his stead, as the willing servant washing the feet of the other, come to symbolically represent the passion of Jesus more sincerely that the passive reception of his body an blood in the form of bread and wine. While this conclusion is at best speculative, it may help to serve in our understanding of the enigmatic symbolism that pervades the Gospel of John and certainly lies at the heart of any interpretation of the foot washing narrative, mainly one that espouses works as a means to grace.


Part III Historical Reconstruction

While certain speculative conclusions may be drawn about the intentions of the author and the community which he or she served, the third part of this paper will attempt to place some of these conclusion within an historical context of the Gospel oh John.

Indeed one of the most challenging aspects of this inquiry is placing the role of foot washing into an historical context, particularly within the Johannine community, chiefly due to a lack of tangible evidence. Up until now evidence for either a literal or metaphoric practice of foot washing has gone unchallenged. As one scholar pointed out, “Unfortunately, in the majority of the works on the Fourth Gospel or on the Johannine community one looks in vain for the slightest degree of interest in the practice of foot washing.”

However in his book on the Johannine community, John C. Thomas has challenged the skepticism of many scholars by attempting an historical reconstruction of the Johannine practice. By drawing from a wide source of second through fourth century authors, Thomas has Hypothesized that it is possible to place foot washing as a ritual practice within the Johannine community. Though in his conclusion Thomas concedes that such questions as to frequency, location and mode of foot washing may be difficult to answer. Thomas’ further study does suggest that foot washing was, in most likelihood, practiced in conjunction with a Eucharistic celebration and probably preceded by the Lord’s Supper as a significant part of ritual practice performed by members of the community.

In my attempt to interpret the literary content of John 13, is does not immediately appear conclusive that the meal and foot washing were necessarily combined. If the community has begun to introduce foot washing in place of the Eucharistic meal, and possibly even viewed the Eucharistic celebration with skepticism, then it is possible that foot washing may have moved outside of the ritual meal setting and was understood by the community in connection with a wider range of practices. However, whatever appearance this ritual would take in an historical setting would be difficult to identify.

One of the largest problems that scholars like Thomas face is the apparent lack of information concerning the community itself. Much of Thomas research was drawn from later, second though fourth century, writers who are themselves probably only struggling with their own interpretations of John and are not dealing directly with the foot washing ritual.

Among the earliest writers to document foot washing, was Tertullian, an early church father writing at the end of the second century who said, “I must recognize Christ, both as he reclines on a couch and when he presents a basin for the feet of his disciples, and when he pours water into it from an ewer and when he is girt about with a linen towel- a garment specially sacred to Osiris. It is thus in general I reply upon this point, admitting indeed that we use along with others these articles, but challenging that this be judged in the light of the distinction between things agreeable and things opposed to reason because the promiscuous employment of them is deceptive, concealing the corruption of the creature, by which it is made subject to vanity.”

This passage is interesting not only because Tertullian mentions foot washing, but also because there is an implied sense that foot washing is an on-going practice with Tertullian feels he must defend and in which no mention of a Eucharistic celebration appears. As Thomas notes “He (Tertullian) acknowledges that the use of a linen towel is also of significance in the mystery religion of Osiris” and that his community “ continues to make use of the basin, water, and towel, presumably in the observance of foot washing,” and finally that these points “underscore the probability that foot washing was important for the community since Tertullian is willing to risk similarity with the Osiris cult in order to defend the practice.” Thomas concludes from these statements that foot washing was understood as a call for literal fulfillment, but is as reticent as Tertullian in addressing the problem of the relation between foot washing and the mystery cults of the near East.

It seems strange that Tertullian would, in the first place, make such a passing remark about Osiris considering Tertullian is an ardent opponent of Heresies. However taking into account that foot washing is not mentioned in the other Gospels and that it has been, albeit casually, connected with older, non-Christian traditions, we should not dismiss the possibility that foot washings origins may come from or be inspired by other, non-Christian, traditions. It may further point to the unorthodox nature of the Johannine community.

In a 1992 lecture at the Claremont Graduate School, in Claremont, Ca. Greg Riley opened the possibility that the Johannie community was docetic rather than orthodox in its views of Jesus. Doceticism is the belief that Jesus physical body, and this his crucifixion, are illusory. This hypothesis is relevant in the sense that it focuses on the on-going practices of the Johannine community that are not as immediately concerned with the return of Jesus and rather hold Jesus to be a divine figure whose works should be emulated. Moreover, in her Recent book, Beyond Belief, Elaine Pagels suggests that far from foot washing numerous passages in the Gospel of John suggest a contentious even critical stance of the Johannine community not only against other more orthodox communities, but also against “Thomas” Christians or those that use the gospel of Thomas as a document central to their faith and beliefs. Pagels not that passages like those that talk about the “doubting Thomas” figure are unique to the Gospel of John and are likely a rebuttal against these communities that manifest very different Christian beliefs than those of the Johannine community. It is possible that foot washing then, was a practice that was meant not necessarily to set the Johannine community apart from those that practiced the Eucharistic ritual as the primary ritual practice of their religious worship, but was a critique on the direction that these other sects were headed.

IV. Conclusion

While we may never know to what extent foot washing was used in the Johannine community. The possibility that the Johannine community saw itself as an exclusive branch of the Christian faith seems evidently clear. The question about how foot washing may have been used in the interlocutor of self identification then becomes central to the discovery of the understanding of this important community and the Gospel which has shaped so much of the history of the Christian faith to this date. What is, I believe clear it that its message, one of works over faith, are as inspiration to those that read it today as it was to its original audience, and continue to be an important sounding board both for the Christian faith as well as focus for future scholarship.

Bigfoot and other truths

I believe in big foot. I mean I really believe. However, I am not a big foot enthusiast. I don’t collect souvenirs or chart the latest sightings of big foot on a huge map I have tacked to the wall of my man room. I won’t bug you about some late night PBS shows I saw documenting the history of big foot, and if you ask me about big foot, I probably won’t show much enthusiasm.

Still, I am a big foot believer. I also believe in aliens, the Loch Ness monster, secret societies, and the Holy Grail. All in all I pretty much believe in any far-fetched, imaginary, or straight out kooky half crock thing that comes down the pipe. Why? Because believing in these things costs me nothing, and having a world that is filled with these mythical, even imaginary creatures, is so much more interesting than the alternative that I will gladly give my belief over to these phantasms.

I like to think of this as Patrick’s wager. A little play on the classical wager of Blaise Pascal who thought that it was safer to believe in God than not, because the payoff for believing and being vindicated in that belief were higher than any alternative.

I remember one time I was asked by a friend, Raven, if I would like to accompany him to the midnight premier of the newest incarnation of the Star Wars saga. While we were standing in line waiting for the doors to open I casually said to him that I was “a huge Star Wars fanatic from way back,” and that I could remember going to the first Star Wars movie with my brother and his friend Jim in 1976 who sat next to me reading the opening paragraphs with tremendous excitement, and that the experience had forever hooked me on the franchise.

Raven looked at me dumbstruck. For weeks he had been talking about going to this premier. It was clearly a big deal to him. “Why”, he asked, “had I not said anything about my excitement sooner.” I looked at him quixotically. “Why would I?” I thought.

The truth is I have never really understood people who are impassioned by their beliefs. I mean, I wanted to go to that premier badly, but I wouldn’t have been crushed if I hadn’t, and certainly I would never have entertained the idea of dressing up as a Storm trooper or Han Solo for the occasion, any more than I could imagine myself wandering out into the woods of the pacific northwest hunting for big foot. Nor will I ever want to vacation in Loch Ness on the off chance that I might accidentally spy Nessie while relaxing in a rowboat.

That being said, going to the premier was awesome; largely because I was going with someone who had looked forward to this moment for months. It was awesome the way sitting next to my brothers friend had been awesome. There is something about being around impassioned people that is contagious. I don’t know if I ever thanked either of these men properly for that experience. But their enthusiasm had shaped my way of thinking and helped my world become a larger and more interesting place

you got a demon on you

About sixteen years ago I was sitting on the back porch of my parent’s house with a friend who, as it happens, was about half my age. We were talking about random stuff when the subject of Nostradamus came up and she admitted to me that she was scared, really scared, about prophecies that foretold the end of days. I looked at her with calm and a reassurance that one can only give another when two people are in completely different places on a topic like this and said something like, “The end may come at any time, all we can do is live the life we have today. The future will take care of itself.”

I know, straight out of a Hallmark card. But it did the job. She later confessed to me that she found the conversation so comforting that she never looked back. For myself, I never really though about it either until this morning when I was catching up on my friend Stuart’s blog and read the following: "Oh yeah. I was horrified of all that end of the world stuff as a kid. The devil. Hell. I thought I was going to hell because I cussed. Because we didn't go to church." It reminded me that there was a time when I was scared of the devil, scared of the end, scared of all the unseen things that go bump in the night, and that what was more, I have no recollection of the time in which that shifted for me. I didn’t have that sudden realization, or comforting talk like I had with my friend all those years ago. I suppose I just grew out of it, which may explain why, sometimes, for no apparent reason, I still slip into crazy little phobias like being afraid of the unseen.

The other day I picked up a book that I read years ago called The Origin of Satan, by Elaine Pagels. I thought it would be a fun topic to offer to my Adult Sunday School class so I began rereading the book. It starts out talking about the Jewish wars of the late first century, and the persecution that early Christians felt both from the Romans as well as from other Jews who saw these followers of Jesus as radicals and a splinter group that threatened the orthodoxy of the Jewish Church. It talks about the us/them dynamic and how people used language about evil and Satan to characterize the actions of others, to demonize them in order to justify your own cause and to place that cause in the context of a greater cosmological battle that give greater credence to your own spiritual views.

Pagels talks about the original context in which the name Satan was used. Satan, an angel of God, it sent to oppose those that go against the will of God, literally Satan is the angle that is supposed to go stand in your way when you are walking away from God. The Greek word diabolos, from which we get the word devil, literally means “one who stands in your way. “ I read this and I felt like I finally understood Satan. Satan was just this misunderstood angel that was trying to help us. Far from being demonized, it was our own short sightedness that prevented us from understanding the motives of the "Lord of Darkness" and more, God’s will for us.

Recently, I shared these thoughts with a Facebook friend, an evangelist pastor in New York State. As you might expect he listened to me patiently, told me he understood my point of view and then went on to say that he had seen real demonic possession, that it was terrifying and real his exact words were “I have seen demonic possession before ... Christianity can be very cooky (sic.) because of the supernatural that flows at its core, and people can get strange when they talk about it, really flaky. Many times they forget biblical fact. Pat[rick] I pray you never have too [see anything like that], its scary and sad.”

I have to admit I dismissed my friend as superstitious and a little…well… backwards. I am ashamed to say that my thinking was something like “you poor ignorant bastard.” And I retreated back into the safety of my scholarly novel about Satan, assured that I would find in its lofty pages arguments that would further cement my intellectual authority.

Pagels’ own words on the subject took me by surprise. “ Many liberal-minded Christians have preferred to ignore the presence of angels and demons in the gospels. Yet Mark intends their presence to address the anguished question that the events of the previous decades had aroused: How could God allow such death and destruction?... The gospel writers want to locate and identify the specific ways in which the forces of evil act through certain people to effect violent destruction… The figure of Satan becomes, among other things, a way of characterizing one’s actual enemies as the embodiment of transcendent forces.”

Catch that? There are a couple of ways that one can read that last sentence by Pagels. But the end all of the matter is that, regardless of Satan’s role specifically, there are demonic forces as described in the Bible, and that as some point Satan becomes the character which personifies them. So, even if Satan is just a scapegoat for all of these other demonic forces, contending with the presence of these other forces is not as easy as saying they are simply misunderstood.

In the conclusion of her book, Pagels states that it is precisely in the demonization of others that evil is wrought, and that Jesus message was one of tolerance and acceptance. She points to such Christians as St Francis of Assisi or Martin Luther King Jr. who “stood on God’s side without demonizing their opponents” and states quite plainly that ”otherness” is the true root of evil and that, in the words of Jesus, that reconciliation is divine.

As a teenager I read a lot of my father’s science fiction hand-me-downs. One series, in particular, comes to mind, The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever by Stephen Donaldson. The story takes place in an alternate world of magic known as “the Land”. In the first Chronicles, Thomas is magically transported to “the Land” and struggles with his acceptance of this new reality even as he must face an ancient evil that threatens to destroy “the Land.” In the second Chronicles, Thomas is again transported to this magical place, only to discover that it is two or three millennia later, that all of the good he had performed had been erased, that evil had infiltrated every aspect of life in “the Land”, and that his task is made all the more difficult be Thomas’ own his bottomless well of self-loathing, confusion, cynicism and rage.

Sitting here writing this, I am reminded of this series, though I have not read it in more than twenty years. I marvel at the parallels. Here I sit, two millennia after the death of Jesus, looking that the words of my friends and calling him a simple ignorant fool. I say these words to myself and to him, not out of some sense of malice, but because, in my own self righteous sense of superiority I think that calling him these names will somehow make him a better person. The truth is that whether or not I believe in demons, I perpetuate demonizing and “otherness.”

I suppose this is why, though I have never had that turn around moment where I realized the superstitious thoughts of my childhood are just the stuff of fancy, I still get those insecure moments where I believe in things that go bump in the night. I have those moments because I, and not some supernatural entity, perpetuate them and give them strength. I create these demons, and I allow them to roam freely in my life, and until I look unflinchingly at that behavior they will remain.