From: joedees@bellsouth.net
Date: Mon 01 Dec 2003 - 04:53:54 GMT
From THE NEW SCIENCE OF POLITICS by Eric Voegelin, pp. 133-
144.
...In order to convey an understanding of at least some of the more
important traits of the Gnostic revolution, it will be best to
concentrate the analysis on a specific national area and on a specific
phase within it. Certain aspects of the Puritan impact on the English
public order will be the most suitable subject for a brief study.
Moreover, this selection suggests itself because the English sixteenth
century had the rare good fortune of a brilliant observer of the Gnostic
movement in the person of the "judicious Hooker." In the Preface of his
Ecclesiatical Polity Hooker gave an astute type study of the Puritan, as
well as of the psychological mechanism by which Gnostic mass
movements
operate. These pages are an invaluable asset for the student of the
Gnostic revolution; the present analysis will, therefore, properly begin
with a summary of Hooker's portrait of the Puritan.
In order to start a movement moving, there must be in the first place
somebody who has a "cause". From the context in Hooker it appears
that
the term "cause" was of recent usage in politics and that probably the
Puritans had invented this formidable weapon of the Gnostic
revolutionaries. In order to advance his "cause", the man who has it
will, "in the hearing of the multitude", indulge in severe criticisms of
social evils and in particular of the conduct of the upper classes.
Frequent repetition of the performance will induce the opinion among
the
hearers that the speakers must be men of singular integrity, zeal, and
holiness, for only men who are singularly good can be so deeply
offended
by evil. [My addition: this works circularly, as only the vilest of
evils can be construed to so offend such integrity-ridden, zealous, and
holy men.] The next step will be the concentration of popular ill-will
on the established government. This task can be psychologically
performed by attributing all fault and corruption, as it exists in the
world because of human frailty, to the action or inaction of the
government. By such imputation of evil to a specific institution the
speakers prove their wisdom to the multitude of men who by themselves
would never have thought of such a connection; and at the same time
they
show the point that must be attacked if evil shall be removed from this
world. After such preparation, the time will be ripe for recommending a
new form of government as the "sovereign remedy of all evils". For
people who are "possessed with dislike and discontentment at things
present" are crazed enough to "imagine that any thing (the virtue
whereof they hear recommended) would help them; but the most, which
they
least have tried."
If a movement, like the Puritan, relies on the authority of a
literary
movement, the leaders will then have to fashion "the very notions and
conceits of men's minds in such a sort" that the followers will
automatically associate scriptural passages and terms with their
doctrine, however ill founded the association may be, and that with
equal automatism they will be blind to the content of Scripture that is
incompatible with their doctrine. Next comes the decisive step in
consolidation a gnostic attitude, that is, "the persuading of men
credulous and overcapable of such pleasing errors, that it is the
special illumination of the Holy Ghost, whereby they discern those
things in the word, which others reading yet discern them not." They
will experience themselves as the elect; and this experience breeds
"high terms of separation between such and the rest of the world"; so
that, as a consequence, mankind will be divided into the "brethren" and
the "worldlings".
When Gnostic experience is consolidated, the social raw
material is
ready for existential representation by a leader. For, Hooker continues,
such people will prefer each other's company to that of the rest of the
world, they will voluntarily accept counsel and direction from the
indoctrinators, they will neglect their own affairs and devote excessive
time to service of the cause, and they will extend generous material aid
to the leaders of the movement.
Once a social environment of this type is organized, it will be
difficult, if not impossible, to break it up by persuasion. "Let any man
of contrary opinion open his mouth to persuade them, they close up
their
ears, his reasons they weigh not, all is answered with rehearsals of the
words of John:'We are of God: he that knoweth God heareth us' ; as for
the rest ye are of the world: for this world's pomp and vanity it is
that ye speak, and the world, who ye are, heareth you". They are
impermeable to argument and have their answers well drilled. Suggest
to
them that they are unable to judge in such matters, and they will
answer,"God has chosen the simple". Show them convincingly that they
are
talking nonsense, and you will hear "Christ's own apostle was
accounted
mad". Try the meekest warning of discipline, and they will be profuse on
"the cruelty of bloodthirsty men" and cast themselves in the role of
"innocency persecuted for the truth". In brief: the attitude is
psychologically iron-clad and beyond shaking by argument.
Hooker's description of the Puritan so clearly applies also to
later
types of Gnostic revolutionaries that the point need not be labored.
From his analysis, however, an issue emerges which deserves closer
attention. The portrait of the Puritan resulted from a clash between
gnosticism, on the one side, and the classic and Christian tradition
represented by Hooker, on the other side. It was drawn by a thinker of
considerable intellectual qualities and erudition. The argument would,
therefore, inevitably turn on the issue which in more recent treatments
of Puritanism has been so badly neglected, that is, on the intellectual
defects of the Gnostic position which are apt to destroy the universe of
rational discourse as well as the social function of persuasion. Hooker
discerned that the Puritan position was not based on Scripture but was
a
"cause" of a vastly different origin. It would use Scripture when
passages torn out of context would support the cause, and for the rest
it would blandly ignore Scripture as well as the traditions and rules of
interpretation that had been developed by fifteen centuries of
Christianity. In the early phases of the Gnostic revolution this
camouflage was necessary - neither could an openly anti-christian
movement have been socially successful, nor had gnosticism in fact
moved
so far away from Christianity that its carriers were conscious of the
direction in which they were moving. Nevertheless, the distance was
already large enough to maks the camouflage embarrassing in the face
of
competent criticism. In order to ward off this embarrassment, two
technical devices were developed which to this day have remained the
great instruments of Gnostic revolution.
In order to make the scriptural camouflage effective, the
selections
from Scripture, as well as the interpretation put upon them, had to be
standardized. Real freedom of scriptural interpretation for everybody
according to hus preferences and state of education would have
resulted
in the chaotic conditions which characterized the early years of the
Reformation; moreover, if one interpretation was admitted to be as good
as another, there was no case against the tradition of the church,
which, after all, was based on an interpretation of Scripture, too. From
this dilemma between chaos and tradition emerged the first device, that
is, the systematic formulation of the new doctrine in scriptural terms,
as it was provided by Calvin's Institutes. A work of this type would
serve the double purpose of a guide to the right reading of Scripture
and of an authentic formulation of truth that would make recourse to
earlier literature unnecessary. For the designation of this genus of
Gnostic literature a technical term is needed; since the study of
Gnostic phenomena is too recent to have developed one, the Arabic
term
koran will have to do for the present. The work of Calvin, thus, may be
called the first deliberately created Gnostic koran. A man who can write
such a koran, a man who can break with the intellectual tradition of
mankind because he lives in the faith that a new truth and a new world
begin with him, must be in a peculiar pneumopathological state.
Hooker,
who was supremely conscious of tradition, had a fine sensitiveness for
this twist of mind. In his cautiously subdued characterization of Calvin
he opened with the sober statement: "His bringing up was in the study
of
civil law"; he then built up woth some malice:"Divine knowledge he
gathered, not by hearing or reading so much, as by teaching others";
and
he concluded on the devastating sentence: "For, though thousands
were
debtors to him, as touching knowledge in that kind; yet he (was debtor)
to none but only to God, the author of the most blessed fountain, the
Book of Life, and of the admirable dexterity of wit."
===============================================================
This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Mon 01 Dec 2003 - 09:03:06 GMT