Spirituality:
Books A
wise church uses metaphor to help people find God within
THOU ART
THAT: TRANSFORMING RELIGIOUS METAPHOR By Joseph Campbell New
World Library, 192 pages, $31 |
REVIEWED By WAYNE A.
HOLST
I was born and grew up a Catholic, and I was a very devoted
Catholic, writes Joseph Campbell in Thou Art That, the first book
in a new series of his collected works. My beliefs, however, fell apart
because the church read and then presented its symbols in concrete terms. For a
long time I had a terrible resentment ... and I couldnt even think of
going into a Catholic church.
Through his study of mythology and related subjects, however,
Campbell began to understand what had really happened. Organized religion must
present itself in one way to children, and in another to adults. What Campbell
had rejected was the literal, concrete, historical forms that were appropriate
when he was taught as a child.
Once he had realized that, he better grasped what the message was.
It is inevitable that children should be taught in purely concrete terms. But
then the young person grows up and realizes who Santa Claus is. He is really
Daddy. So, too, we must mature in the same way in learning about God. The
institutional churches must grow more effective in presenting the message of
religious symbols to adults.
Campbell, who died in 1987, believed that religious organizations
have stressed too strongly the strictly historical aspect of the Bible so that
we are, essentially, in worship of the historical event, instead of being able
to read through that event to the spiritual message standing behind it. People
frequently turn to Eastern religions because there they find the real message,
which in Western religion has been closed by excessive literalism and
historicism. When we read the Bible and transform our religious rituals into
metaphor rather than factuality it is once more possible to mine the deeply
spiritual riches available to us in our Christian tradition.
The overriding theme of this book is that Western religious
traditions have suffered because they have taken their stories and symbols
literally rather than metaphorically. Here in a series of talks, question
periods and an interview are perhaps for the first time in one place
Campbells understandings of the origins, symbols and meanings of
Judeo-Christian spirituality.
To describe significant parts of the two biblical Testaments as
myth, says Campbell, is not to debunk them. Mythology is a vessel of the truth.
Campbells purpose in exploring the biblical myths is not to dismiss them
as unbelievable but to lay open once again their living and nourishing
core.
If you have always wanted to read something clear and substantive
from Joseph Campbell, this book is a good place to find it. If you enjoyed his
phenomenally successful television interviews The Power of Myth with
Bill Moyers, this book provides an opportunity to see that many of the
significant insights from that series apply specifically to the Christian
faith.
Thou art that or You yourself are it
implies the bringing about in the individual, in one way or another, his or her
own identification with the mystery that is for us God. Traditionally, Western
religions focus is not identification with the transcendent
but a relationship between human beings and God. In the West, the
divine is not understood as existing within us. How do we get related to God?
The relationship is accomplished through an institution. This, says Campbell is
the first mythic dissociation in that it dissociates the person from the divine
principle. The individual is only allowed to associate with the divine through
the social institution. Our Western religious culture is committed to these
social groups and various biblical and ecclesiastical claims.
Campbell reintroduces us to the power of Christian symbols and
their intuitive meanings. Traditionally, our symbols pointed to outer objects,
not our inner selves. But it is within us that the true meaning of the symbol
lies. A persons experience of a symbol is more important than trying to
define it. The problem for and the function of religion in this age, according
to Campbell, is to awaken the heart. When clergy do not or cannot awaken the
heart, that tells us that they are unable to interpret the symbols through
which they are supposed to enlighten and spiritually nourish their people.
Frequently, the God of the institution is not supported by
ones experience of spiritual reality. This opens a gap challenging the
validity of the human being. The first aim of the mystical is to validate the
persons individual human experience. In other words, according to
Campbell, the task of the church is to provide people with an opportunity to
identify with the God that is, indeed, within each one of us. Too much effort
has been made to try to create that relationship with God.
Campbell believed that at least some of the reforms of Vatican II
resulted in the destruction of mystery. A significant effort was made to make
ancient symbols and rituals more rational. By translating the Latin liturgy
into local languages, the reforms diluted or removed essential mystery. That
meant a disowning of religious symbols that spoke directly to people without
need of mediation. The old ritual of the Mass spoke powerfully to people, said
Campbell. When Catholics go to Mass in Latin, the priest is addressing the
infinite in a language that has no domestic associations; the people attending
are thereby elevated into transcendence. The priest in a modern Mass risks
losing his role as an intermediary of the mystery, and the very idea of
transcendent experience is destroyed.
Campbell experienced profoundly the depths of the Christian symbol
during the last weeks of his life. He was thrilled to see that, because for him
this was the mystical meaning of Christ that reflected at-one-ment with the
Father. On his deathbed, according to his wife Jean Erdman, He
experienced emotionally what he had before understood intellectually. Seeing
this image in a Catholic hospital room helped release him from the conflict
that he had had with his childhood religion.
Whether or not you agree with all Campbell says, this book will
engage and inspire you. Campbell writes in the mind- and spirit-expanding way
of Thomas Merton who believed that symbols contain structures that awaken our
consciousness to a new awareness of the inner meaning of life and of reality
itself. Through symbols we enter emotionally into our deepest selves, each
other and God.
Wayne A. Holst teaches religion and culture at the University
of Calgary in Alberta, Canada.
National Catholic Reporter, December 7,
2001
|