From: joedees@bellsouth.net
Date: Mon 01 Dec 2003 - 04:53:54 GMT
The work of Calvin was the first but not the last of its kind;
moreover, the genus had a prehistory. In the early phases of Western
Gnostic sectarianism, the place of a koran was taken by the works of
Scotus Eriugena and Dionysius Aeropatiga; and in the Joachite
movement
the works of Joachim of Flora played this role under the title of
Evangeliem aeternum. In later Western history, in the preiod of
secularization, new korans were produced with every wave of the
movement. In the eighteenth century, Diderot and D'Alembert claimed
koranic function for the encyclopedie francaise as the comprehensive
presentation of all human knowledge worth preserving. According to
their
conception, nobody would have to use any work antedating the
Encyclopedie, and all future sciences would assume the form of
supplements to the great collection of knowledge. In the nineteenth
century, Augusts Comte created his own work as the koran for the
positivistic future of mankind but generously supplemented it by his
list of the one hundred great books - an idea which still has retained
its appeal. In the Communist movement, finally, the works of Karl Marx
have become the koran of the faithful, supplemented by the patristic
literature of Leninism-Stalinism.
The second device for preventing embarrassing criticism is a
necessary
supplement to the first one. The Gnostic koran is the codification of
truth and as such the spiritual and intellectual nourishment of the
faithful. From contemporary experience with totalitarian movements it is
well known that the device is fairly foolproof because it can reckon
with the voluntary censorship of the adherents; the faithful member of a
movement will not touch literature that is apt to argue against, or show
disrespect for, his cherished beliefs. Nevertheless, the number of
faithful may remain small, and expansion and political success will be
seriously hampered, if the truth of the Gnostic movement is permanently
exposed to effective criticism from various quarters. This handicap can
be reduced, and practically eliminated, by putting a taboo on the
instruments of critique; a person who uses the tabooed instruments will
be socially boycotted and, if possible, exposed to political defamation.
The taboo on the instruments of critique was used, indeed, with superb
effectiveness by the Gnostic movements wherever they reached a
measure
of political success. Concretely, in the wake of the Reformation, the
taboo had to fall on classic philosophy and scholastic theology; and,
since under these two heads came the major and certainly the decisive
part of Western intellectual culture, this culture was ruined to the
extent to which the taboo became effective. In fact, the destruction
went so deep that Western society has never completely recovered
from
the blow. An incident from Hooker's life will illustrate the situation.
The anonymous Christian letter of 1599, addressed to Hooker,
complained
bitterly:"In all your books, although we finde manie trueths and fine
points bravely handled, yet in all your discourse, for the most parte,
Aristotle the patriarche of philosophers (with divers other humane
writers) and the ingenuous schoolmen, almost in all points have some
finger : reason is highlie sett up against Holy Scripture, and reading
against preaching." Such complaints about violations of the taboo were
not innocuous expressions of opinion. In 1585, in the affair with
Travers, Hooker had been the target of similar charges; and they closed
on the denunciatory tone that such "absurdities...have not been heard
in
public places within this land since Queen Mary's day". In his answer to
the Archbishop of Canterbury, Hooker very apologetically had to
express
his hoe that he "committed no unlawful thing" when indulging in some
theoretical distinctions and excursions in his sermons.
Since Gnosticism lives by theoretical fallacies, the taboo on
theory in
the classic sense is the ineluctable condition of its social expansion
and survival. This has a serious consequence with regard to the
possibility of public debate in societies where Gnostic movements have
achieved social influence sufficient to control the means of
communication, educational institutions, etc. To the degree to which
such control is effective, theoretical debate concerning issues which
involve the truth of human existence is impossible in public because the
use of theoretical argument is prohibited. However well the
constitutional freedoms of speech and press may be protected, however
well theoretical debate may flourish in small circles, and however well
it may be carried on in the practically private publications of a
handful of scholars, debate in the politically relevant public sphere
will be in substance the game with loaded dice which it has become in
contemporary progressive societies - to say nothing of the quality of
debate in totalitarian empires. Theoretical debate can be protected by
constitutional guaranties, but it can be established only by the
willingness to use and accept theoretical argument. When this
willingness does not exist, a society cannot rely for its functioning on
argument and persuasion where the truth of human existence is
involved;
other means will have to be considered.
This was the position of Hooker. Debate with his Puritan opponents
was
impossible because they would not accept argument. The ideas which
he
entertained in this predicament may be gathered from the notes jotted
down shortly before his death on a copy of the previously quoted
Christian Letter. Among the quotations from various authorities, there
is a passage from Averroes:
Discourse (sermo) about the knowledge which god in His glory
has of
Himself and the world is prohibited. And even more so is it prohibited
to put it in writing. For, the understanding of the vulgar does not
reach such profundities; and when it becomes the subject of their
discussions, the divinity will be destroyed with them. Hence,
discussion of this knowledge is prohibited to them; and it is sufficient
for their felicity if they understand what they can perceive by their
intelligence. The law (that is, the Koran), whose primary intention it
was to teach the vulgar, did not fail in intelligible communication
about this subject because it is inaccessible to man; but we do not
possessthe human instruments that couls assimilate God for intelligible
communication about Him. As it is said: "His left hand founded the
earth, but His right hand measured the Heaven." Hence, this question
is
reserved for the sage whom God dedicated to truth.
In this passage Averroes expressed the solution which the
problem of
theoretical debate had found in Islamic civilization. The nucleus of
truth is the experience of transcendence in the anthropological and
sociological sense; its theoretical explication is only communicable
among the "sage." The "vulgar" have to accept, in a simple
fundamentalism, the truth as it is symbolized in Scripture; they must
refrain from theoretization, for which experientially and intellectually
they are unfit, because they only would destroy God. Considering the
"murder of God" that was committed in Western society when the
progressivist "vulgar" got their fingers on the meaning of human
existence in society and history, one must admot that Averroes had a
point.
The structure of a civilixation, however, is not at the disposition
of
its individual members. The Islamic solution of confining philosophical
debate to esoteric circles of whose existence the people at large were
hardly aware could not be trtansferred to Hooker's situation. Western
history had taken a different course, and the debate of the "vulgar" was
well under way. Hence, Hooker had to contemplate the second
possibility
that a debate, which could not end with agreement through persuasion,
would have to be closed by governmental authority. His Puritan
opponents were not partners in a theoretical debate; they were Gnostic
revolutionaries, engaged in a struggle for existential representation
that would have resulted in the overthrow of the English social order,
the control of the university by puritans, and the replacement of
common
law by scriptural law. Hence his consideration of this second solution
was well in order. Hooker perfectly understood what today is so little
understood; that Gnostic propaganda is political action and not perhaps
a search of truth in the theoretical sense. With his unerring
sensitiveness he even diagnosed the nihilistic component of gnosticism
in the Puritan belief that their discipline, being "the absolute command
of Almighty God, it must be received although the world by receiving it
should be clean turned upside down; herein lieth the greatest danger of
all." In the political culture of his time it was still clear beyond a
doubt that the government, not the subjects, represents the order of a
society. "As though when public consent of the whole hath established
anything, every man's judgment being thereunto compared were not
private, howsoever his calling be to some public charge. So that of
peace and quietness there is not any way possible, unless the probable
voice of every entire society or body politic overrule all private of
like nature in the same body." This means concretely that a
government
has the duty to preserve the order as well as the truth which it
represents; when a Gnostic leader appears and proclaims that god or
progress, race or dialectic, has ordained him to become the existential
ruler, a government is not supposed to betray its trust and abdicate.
And this rule suffers no exception for governments which operate under
a
democratic constitution and a bill of rights. Justice Jackson in his
dissent in the Terminiello case formulated the point: the Bill of Rights
is not a suicide pact. A democratic government is not supposed to
become an accomplice min its own overthrow by letting Gnostic
movements
grow prodigiously in the shelter of a muddy interpretation of civil
rights; and if through inadvertance such a movement has grown to the
danger point of capturing existential representation by the famous
"legality" of popular elections, a democrastic government is not
supposed to bow to the "will of the people", but to put down the danger
by force and, if necessary, to break the letter of the constitution in
order to save its spirit.
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