After reviewing assignments or
getting certain questions I often send out messages through Nicenet
dealing with points that have come up. For each section I am
going to
include some of these past messages and occasionally add to them.
STUDYING CHRISTIANITY In the next two
weeks you will be going over the material on the
tradition that most of you are somewhat familiar
with--Christianity.
However, one thing I have seen in teaching this course over a great
number of years is that in some ways it is the most difficult section
because of students' tendency to understand Christianity only in terms
of what they are already used to. When you looked at Buddhism,
which
like Christianity is very different in both beliefs and practices
depending on where you are, nothing was particularly familiar, so in a
way it was much easier to develop a more complete picture.
With
Christianity we are discussing a number of traditions that involve
substantial variations in what is held to be true and what is expected
to be done. There is the Roman Catholic tradition, the Orthodox
tradition, various Protestant denominations, the Church of Latter Day
Saints, Jehovah's Witnesses, and various other groups. All are
alike in accepting the New Testament
as authoritative, but not all accept that the Bible as a whole is meant
to be understood literally (for instance, that creation took place over
six days somewhere around six thousand years ago). Most accept
Jesus
as divine (the Second Person of the Trinity) but differ on ideas such
as the Second Coming.
The degree to which a Christian is live a distinctive lifestyle can
also vary, with groups such as the Amish keeping apart from American
society and others expecting that Christianity ought in effect be the
standard for the American legal system. Yes, it can get very
confusing, and the chances are that much of what you think you know
about who Christians are and what they believe will be challenged as
you go on with your reading.
As with Buddhism, one of the things
I emphasize is the place of monasticism, although in Christianity it
turns out that the dedicated life of a "religious" (a person who has
taken certain vows and typically lives in a communal setting) will mean
quite different things if you are talking about a Benedictine, a Franciscan, a Jesuit, or any of the various other
congregations of men and women found in the Catholic Church.
With Judaism or with Islam (apart from the Sufis) there is not such a
distinction between ordinary people and those committed to a stricter
set of practices, which itself may help you understand why being a
"good" Jew or a "good" Muslim may seem considerably more demanding than
being a "good" Christian.
To some extent I do ask you to
understand the doctrinal differences--the points about belief that
separate various Christian groups. This is definitely one area in
which Christianity is most unlike the Asian traditions we have already
studied. Professing a specific set of beliefs is actually seen as
more
important in terms of defining one's identity than observing a specific
set of rules: someone, for instance, may be a "bad" Catholic if he gets
divorced or never goes to Mass, but he is still a Catholic. A
particular point is what the beliefs are that broke apart the Christian community
in the sixteenth century in the time of the Reformation so that we
would say what it would mean not to call someone a Catholic at all.
THE IDEA OF AN ORIGINAL SIN
Make sure that you
understand
the difference in Christian thought between what is called original sin
(the failure of Adam and Eve as the origin of all humanity to obey God
in Eden) and personal sins or failings. From the time of
Augustine early in Christian theology the idea has been that all human
beings
were barred from heaven until somehow "redeemed" or bought back (the
way someone in the ancient world was bought back from pirates who would
have enslaved him). The concept of baptism, then, was that
through
this ceremony a Christian was, as it were, bought back, with the
payment having been the "atonement" of Jesus through his crucifixion.
This
is a concept unique to Christianity. It does not appear in Asia
and it
is not present in either Judaism or Islam.
Above all, think how the idea of salvation would
make a difference in the way Christian missionaries view their job as
opposed to the outlook of their Buddhist counterparts. Moving on
to the notion of how the world
we know is supposed to end, think how the idea of a final
judgment
following the dead coming back to life ties in with all three traditions' view
what is supposed to happen to those who were not "true
believers"
even though they may not have lived "sinful" lives. One idea in
Buddhism is that eventually all sentient (conscious) beings will attain
enlightenment: nirvana is for everyone, but it may take thousands of
lifetimes to get there. With the Abrahamic traditions you get
something much more dramatic. Perhaps only some will be "saved"
while
the fate of most others is truly horrible--and you have just one chance
to get it right.
As you go forward in looking at
current movements, we will be looking at some of the
traditions that insist that the "end days" are already upon us and that
the day of judgment will be in the lifetime of those already born. Do
pay attention to how such an outlook affects everyday life for those in
the tradition.
CHRISTIAN ASCETICISM
As you read about
Christianity, I do want you to pay some attention to
the concept of asceticism (fasting, sleep deprivation, and a general
reduction of pleasure-giving actions). In India
from early on the concept that the "true" self was unable to be fully
aware of its own divine nature (with the bliss this would bring) as
long as it attended to the interests of the body led to often extreme
asceticism and is what is behind the theory of Yoga as a set of
practices to turn off ordinary sensation and thought. Buddhism
abandoned the extreme practices (Gautama argued for a "middle path")
but in the monastic tradition there was still a strong emphasis on
simplicity and the rejection of a hedonistic lifestyle.
Judaism
rejected asceticism as a lifestyle (there never were Jewish monks,
apart from the Essene community, from which someone like John
the Baptist may have come),
although there is the day of fasting on Yom Kippur.
Islam similarly rejected it, although there is month-long fasting once
a year. One reason is that in both traditions there is not the
dualism--the separation of body and soul--characterizing Hinduism and
Buddhism. Jews might have differed on whether there was a
resurrection
of the body and Islam does accept it, but for both it is the body and
the soul together that make the person. To reject the body for
the
sake of the soul does not make sense, then.
Christianity had internal struggles
over how to understand the relationship of body and soul, with a strongly dualist approach often
winning out. The Gnostics in particular tended to see the body as
the prison of the soul, and asceticism or severe penitential practices
was seen as a means of escape.
Also, the early centuries of persecution came to emphasize the
martyrs--the individuals put to death for their religion--as instant
saints, and when persecution died down there was a tendency for
individuals, first off in Egypt, to embrace an often extreme asceticism
(spending one's life sitting up on a pillar, somewhat like the Hindu
fakirs, is an example) to emulate the sacrifices of the martyrs.
Pleasure-seeking, then, was unacceptable. Throughout the monastic
tradition, then, there were various reform movements (the Trappists, for example) that saw
pain (or discomfort) as good and pleasure as bad.
In the Protestant Reformation there was a renewal of this outlook with
the Calvinists,
and all we need to do is think of the Puritans and their successors in
the Congregationalist missionaries who came to Hawaii.
Unlike Judaism and Islam,
for which dance and music remained important even in religious
celebrations, there was a tendency to limit or ban both with various
Christian congregations. Judaism and Islam both expect a certain
joyfulness; more typically we think of one aspect of Christianity as
being its emphasis on the morbid.
A special point is the role of
celibacy (no sex at all) as defining a religious outlook. This is
expected for Hindu and Buddhist monks although not for the ordinary
person, and it is one of the promises or vows defining the member of a Catholic
religious order
(monks, friars, nuns, etc.). Celibacy otherwise remains a theme
in
Christian thought as though the individual who does marry and raises a
family is less "perfect" than the one who doesn't. For Catholics
in
particular, it has been important to emphasize that not only did Jesus
never have sex but that his mother did not, either.
Both Jews
and Muslims expect marriage and child-rearing as the standard for
everyone, especially for their religious leaders. There is not to
be
sex outside of marriage, and sexual expression is otherwise very
restricted (think of the dress codes for women among the more
"orthodox" or "fundamentalist" groups in both Judaism and Islam) so as
to discourage sex outside of marriage. Sex itself, though, is not
"wrong" in these traditions. In Christianity the
tendency has been to
think of even marital sex at best as permissible for the sake of
procreation but not quite "right" otherwise--and this certainly has
played a role in the continuing Catholic opposition to birth control as
well as in the insistence on celibacy for Roman Catholic priests.
