Abraham Rotstein, Weekend Notes III

Week-end Notes (Overview)

Text in English to type

Religion and Revelation

[4] Christianity was not understood by the Apostles or since. It was carried along by the Christological element. Only exceptionally did we get Christian heresies such as communism? The Apostles met Jesus alive after the crucifixion and then preached that he was the son of God and this story spread. There is nothing of the meaning of Christianity in the Crusades which was long sustained movement.

Amon the Jews there was an intolerant eradication of their idolatrous sects to the extent where no trace of them remains although they are referred to in the Old Testament. This seemed to go with a strong religious sense.

The Essenes didn't with to continue. They didn't marry nor have children. There is a strong feeling in Christianity that the end of the world was imminent. The Acts was the only contemporary recounting of events.

Polanyi has spent several years in all of the world religions. Then Well's Outline of History came out. Each religion talked about the 'Path', the 'Way', 'the 'Road'. This leads to the question of whether there was a common problem for the world at this time.

Confucius had no notion of theism or God. He was in the great Chinese liberal tradition - not to label. The English also have this aversion to labelling - it is limiting. This Chinese idea of [5] allowing and wanting all opinions is an expression of the reality of society.

The teachings of Christ were not understood - were called the interim ethics.

P. Thinks my last draft (July 12/56) reveals that my grasp of the revelations is complete - I have it all internalized. What I wrote in my letter reveals that I see things the same was as P. does - things are in the same sequence and context in which they belong and everything else is incidental.

P. Personally tends to keep to a minimum of assumptions and starts on the inner insights. He does not tend to link them, nor give than an etiology - a causal background. This is probably because any causational background brings in definite assumptions of a historical or literary kind.

For exemple, if you link something to the Old Testament, then the truth of what you say hinges on the criticism of the Old Testament, e.g. do Fundamentalism and the Synoptic agree, or what about John's view?

Old Testament criticism was created by Wellhausen and the Jews didn't take note of it, when less than had the Christians didn't taken note of the New Testament critics. German Fundamentalist, preferred obscurantism to New Testament criticism, but the English took up the New Testament criticism. The Jews decided for obscurantism all the way and took no note of Wellhausen, nor of Weber and Meyer's books on the history of Judaism. The Jews said that this was antisemitic and therefore anti-progressive and anti-liberal. The Deuteronomy story wasn't taken note of.

[6] Its discovery in the temple in 621 was slurred over. The post-exilic and pre-exilic part of the O.T. was not noted. After the Codex Hammurabi's discovery - 1902, a fashion spread generally that Judaism was Babylonian. There is a Babylonian origin of the story of Eden. Jewish scholarship stopped and retired into obscurantism.

The post-exilic period - 445, corresponds in time to Periclean Athens. Egyptian literature takes us back 1000 years and Ugaritic literature echoes another 1000 years (It is a lovely literature in which much is entirely enchanting.)

The point is, that if the structure of human consciousness is analyzed, the changes and sequence of revelations, in a sense, the historicity in terms of race is irrelevant, because it may be the individual who goes through them. The phylogenetic hold - every child has the fear of death experience and it would be irrelevant whether the race went through it in the Paleolithic or Neolithic or when in history. We are much more sure that these elements exist than when and how they originated.

The certainty, validity and dignity of this knowledge is of a different order than the kind of knowledge about the origins or causes and this inner knowledge is the only evidence we have for religion. It is called revelation because we can't deduce it from anything. Revelation implies that it wasn't there before, or that it doesn't exist in other cultures. It is knowledge which comes about, but when it's there it's certain. In religion it os natural, because these are the concepts that apply to the subject. There is nothing more certain than the knowledge of inner experiences, since outer experiences are only mediated. It is knowledge, not faith or belief. It doesn't differ from knowledge as faith differs. It is not that we only believe it - this is a misconception about religious knowledge. It is external knowledge that is mediated. It is just that the subject is different, not the certainty of the knowledge.

[…] [7] Some religions would be shattered if miracles proved true and others would be affirmed. Jesus refused to do miracles, although he could do them in the then-accepted sense. It meant rare powers of influence and these powers were not infrequent in the East - psychologically and physiologically rare phenomena. They couldn't understand then what e.g. the physiologist means by miracle, since nature's laws were not formulated. […]

There are no adequate theories of mind and consciousness. The mind is an English word and other words exist in other languages, [8] e.g. "Geist" and spirit or mind don't mean the same thing. Their real importance lies in their use and the situation in which they are used. This is an Instrumentalist idea which is near the Pragmatist or Dewey position. In the theory of knowledge there are many sound elements in the Nominalist rather than the Realist position. P. is not a Pragmatist nor an Instrumentalist, although there is some truth in both positions. P. only says this to excuse himself. The distinction of the basic terms consciousness and mind and the term "awareness" are important (what most people mean by consciousness).

P. thinks… […]

For Macmurray, the movement of the mind as pure dialectic was shown in the dream - moving according to its own inner law - that is dialectic.

[9] The theological content or revelation doesn't mean anything and there is no point in it. If God was revealed to you, you think of God. Revelation is a personal event. It happens to you (?). God is the meaningful entity in the world, or the world is a meaningful entity. Otherwise we could never have found meaning in it. Yet that is what we do. The one thing that is certain is that we can't originate meaning. "Logos” in John signifies means meaning. Any other belief is either illogical or nonsensical.

The philosopher says that this is nonsense. In terms of his discipline he has excluded the assumption on which P. rests - the mind satisfied with the certainty that he participates in the meaning of the world. That we couldn't have invented meaning is obvious to P. It is obvious that the sphere of existence with "You" being "I" to yourself is different from a mechanical or organic event. Nor is there this meaning in growth e.g. the apple tree is the seed of last year. In the world of the organic, different things are the same, and in the mechanical world, measuring of effect is meaningful. Gravitation is statement of causation in the mechanical world. There is also a statement of identity in the organic world e.g. my friend at the age 3, is now 68.

Personal meaning is the third type of statement. What is more certain its the meaning? Otherwise you get into the crazy behaviouristic circles of George S. Mead - two people communicating like two dogs illogically conceived as machines. Meaning doesn't bear explanation i.e. reducing it to something more familiar. One can't reduce meaning further. It is the basic element in the theory of knowledge.

P.'s scientific training and inner life coincide. There is no contradiction here. That comes from formulating religious knowledge not as [10] making society all that it can be we are free to resign ourselves to what it is and live the light of our freedom. This is a different existence.

The growing… (…) We can't resign ourselves to the reality of society limiting Christian freedom, in the sense in which the responsibility to our conscience requires it, unless we do what we can to ensure the right, the just and the demands of love. (…)

Owen says we have to resign ourselves to these dangers. P. agree… […]

Owen suggested that we put machines in a village to alleviate conditions. He only tried to answer the question that reform are no good [11] anyway since you can't remove the curse of labor. […]

[12] Perhaps other things are like law - if something is objectified for a third person is a law. The Objectification is Hegelian term. He said that spiritual realities like law are the objectification of spirit or 'geist'. P. doesn't share this form of the idea but it comes into the argument as the reality of society and you can't contract out of it. […]

[13] P. has these things on record 30 years ago. It is not possible to contract out of society. (Cf. Tolstoy and "nicht tun" - not doing, i.e. doesn't need machine, power and police - doesn't work).

The Christian idea that every individual is unique may now be grounded on the permutations and combinations of genes. […]

P.'s friends were then on the non-resistance line of Ghandi. His doctrine was directed against the Gandhist utopia, which was the same as Tolstoy's.

[…]

[15] institution meaning privileges - auto nemos, you own land to yourself (?). Luther's "Christian menschen freiheit" is a theological concept.

[…]

…meetings (Jews had similar idea in spring?)

Paul activates the life of the spirit.

[16] (My letter July 10/56):

The first industrial revolution was tillage. […]

Jesus said man may be washed out forever right away and this is a terrible message. He said to resign yourself but if you do it you are in state of the life of the spirit, and this gives you abundance of life.

P. points to each of the terrible revelations because it is the beginning of life, and this is the real meaning of Christianity. It reveals something man is not conscious of and the very resignation is the fount of the life of the spirit.

Buddha is very similar to Jesus but Buddhism has nothing much else to say either. […]

[25] It was the corporatists who reversed the position and said go back to the biological basis.

Christianity never accepted that and the Communists couldn't accept Socialism as a Christian derivation.

[26] As far the Fromm position is concerned we must mobilize the essential Christian position as being a limited one. The Christians don't realize it and don't like it. They say that Jesus didn't mean it in the social sense. One centers here on nuclear phenomena like power or economic value. The inevitable alternative is that whether you do something or don't, you are affecting other peoples' lives. […]