Nietzsche criticised Christianity as a slave religion which sapped the strength of the masculine virtues as a result of its encouragement of humility and self-abnegation. He said it encouraged weakness and condemned its suppression of natural instincts. For him the Christian runs away from life instead of whole-heartedly embracing it.
It cannot be denied that there is this element in Christianity (though not in Christ) and it is one of the reasons many people these days turn to some form of paganism as a more robust and less vitality draining spiritual approach. There is also an ethnocentric aspect to this in that many Europeans do not wish to adopt what they see as a foreign, specifically, a Jewish, religion. The pagan traditions are regarded as purer and more in keeping with racial identity.
But is Christianity as we know it in the West a Jewish religion or is it really a European one? Although Christ was born a Jew (or half Jewish if you believe the Gospel account of his paternity), the teaching he brought completely overturned the Jewish religion of the time. That is, after all, why he was crucified by the religious authorities or at their behest. That teaching was then absorbed by Europeans and interpreted in the light of their own identity and within the context of their own traditions, Greek philosophy, Roman law and the Germanic/Nordic sense of individuality and freedom to name the three most important. Christ had to have some particular form and he had a Jewish form because the Jews of the time had been prepared by God as a receptacle for his advent, but in himself he is universal and when the religion founded in his name came to Europe it became completely European.
In fact, it was only much later when the traditional European societal structures were undermined and hierarchies destroyed that the enfeebling qualities of Christianity were brought out. Tell the Desert Fathers they had a slave religion, tell St Benedict, St Columba, St Francis and a host of others. Tell the Crusaders or more or less anyone up to the 18th century. It was only when Europe abandoned its traditions and Christianity descended into humanitarianism that it became feminised and lost its spiritual vigour and vitality. Certainly, it was a monastic religion and a priestly religion and suffered much in the way of corruption (though no more than any other religion and a lot less than most), but it was never life-denying even if it did prize celibacy for some and chastity for all. So did many other religions. If you are trying to transcend the pull of this world and the lure of matter you have to take certain steps. It is not denying nature to realise that the sexual instinct needs controlling. On one level spirit and nature truly are at war even if on another level they can be reconciled.
I mention the attraction of paganism for many people these days and that it is seen as a more natural and affirmative spiritual approach for the European mindset than Semitic (so called, it's not really) Christianity. I love many of the pagan traditions, Egyptian, Greek, Celtic, Norse. Many pagan philosophies are replete with wisdom and insight, the Neoplatonic for instance, or the Indian. In my more fanciful moments I speculate that I may have followed some of these paths in previous lives. But there is a problem. All of them have something essential missing. Before Christ it was not known what that was. After him it became obvious what it was. They were stories without the main character, circles with a missing centre. It's no accident that the principal pagan deities are associated with planets* and that behind them there is often envisaged a hidden One. They are satellites to the central sun who is Christ. Before Christ paganism was a valid spiritual path if it worshipped the One Creator God behind all the gods but with him what was hidden became revealed and the old religions were superseded. Things being what they are there were some aspects of Christianity that were lesser expressions of truth than had existed in paganism even if as a whole it went deeper into the heart of truth and goodness and holiness than paganism ever did or could. And as Christianity lost its force, the further it removed itself from the spirit of Christ, these shortcomings became more apparent. But no pagan god can approach Christ in terms of spiritual power or divine radiance, and the way many contemporary pagans look on their gods today is as bathed in his light. Just like the planets and the Sun. The revived pagan gods have taken on aspects they never had because of Christ, but Christ is the source and to the extent they have any true spiritual substance they are just reflecting him.
Christianity is not a Jewish religion. It was specifically rejected by the Jews. It is not a weak religion for resentful slaves simply because it advocates spiritual power over worldly. Christ may have been a servant in this world in order to teach humility which is the overcoming of the ego, but in heaven he is the great solar hero and a King.
*Note: I realise that pagans did have deities associated with the sun but they had to have something along those lines, the sun being of such obvious importance. But these were not ruler deities so I see them more as placeholders until the real thing manifested itself in Christ.
No comments:
Post a Comment