Joseph Campbell on Christian Mythology: "Thou Art That"

[Veritass]

Joseph Campbell is one of my heroes. He was an expert on comparative mythology and comparative religion. At his death in 1987, he left a significant body of unpublished work, and the Joseph Campbell Foundation was founded in 1991 to preserve, protect, and perpetuate this work.

A recent release of theirs is the book, "Thou Art That." It is a collection of Campbell's writings and lectures regarding Christian mythology. I have quoted extensively from the book here, because I believe that Campbell’s words speak best for themselves. I think this work touches on many of the topics covered in this forum, including the infallibility of the Bible, the ability to choose your belief system, science versus religion, etc.

From the Editor’s [Dr. Eugene Kennedy] Forward

We men and women find ourselves in the creative expressions of our human longing, and tragedies of our own particular tradition. Indeed, so familiar and almost natural do these seem to us that they almost exclude the possibility that the same feelings and ideals might be expressed quite differently through some other tradition.

To describe the testaments as myth is not, as Campbell points out, to debunk them. The contemporary impression of myth as falsehood has, as Campbell illustrates in these pages by recalling an obnoxious and ill-informed interviewer, led people to think of them as fantasies passing as truth.

Metaphor comes from the Greet meta, a passing over, or a going from one place to another, and phorein, to move or to carry. Metaphors carry us from one place to another, they enable us to cross boundaries that would otherwise be closed to us….Denotations are singular, time bound, and non-spiritual; the connotations of religious metaphor are rich, timeless, and refer not to somebody else in the outer world of another era, but to us and our inner spiritual experience right now.

From Chapter 1: Metaphor and Religious Mystery

…half the people in the world think that the metaphors of religious traditions, for example, are facts. And the other half contends that they are not facts at all. As a result we have people who consider themselves believers because they accept metaphors as facts, and we have other who classify themselves as atheists because the think religious metaphors are lies.

This I would regard as the essentially religious function of mythology – that is, the mystical function, which represents the discovery and recognition of the dimension of the mystery of being.

Mythology may, in a real sense, be defined as other people’s religion. And religion may, in a sense, be understood as a popular misunderstanding of mythology.

From Chapter 2: The Experience of Religious Mystery

Faith, we might say, in old-fashioned scripture or faith in the latest science belong equally at this time to those alone who as yet have no idea of how mysterious, really, is the mystery of themselves.

There are two orders of religious perspective. One is ethical, pitting good against evil. In the biblically grounded Christian West, the accent is on ethics, on good against evil. We are thus bound by our religion itself to the field of duality. The mystical perspective, however, views good and evil as aspects of one process. One finds this in the Chinese yin-yang sign, the dai-chi.

From Chapter 3: Our Notions of God

Think of the electric lights in a room. You can say, “The lights – plural – are on.” You can say, “The light – singular – is on.” These are two ways of saying exactly the same thing. In one case you are giving accent to the vehicle of the light: “The lights – plural – are on.” And in the other, you are giving accent to that which you are finally talking about, namely, the light.

…a basic theological formula: a deity is the personification of a spiritual power, and deities who are not recognized become demonic and are really dangerous. One has been out of communication with them: their messages have not been heard, or, if heard, not heeded. And when they do break through, in the end, there is literally hell to pay.

At an Anglican wedding ceremony, I once overheard the minister instruct the couple before him to live their life is such a way as to merit in the next, eternal life. Well yes, I thought, but that is not quite correctly phrased. He really should have said, “Live your life, your marriage, in such a way that in it you may experience eternal life.” Eternity is neither future, nor past, but now.

…Saint Thomas states in his Summa contra gentiles, “Then alone do we know God truly, when we believe that He is far above all that man can possibly think of God,” it can surely not be proper to think of that which surpasses all human thought either as a male or a female.

On the metaphor of the quest for the Holy Grail:

…Gawain, the nephew of King Arthur, rose and suggested a vow. “I propose,” he said, “that we all now set forth in the quest to behold that Grail unveiled.” And so it was that they agreed. There then comes a line that, when I read it, burned itself into my mind. “They thought it would be a disgrace to go forth in a group. Each entered the forest at the point that he himself had chosen, where it was darkest, and there was no way or path.”
….
There is no meaning in the group, where all meaning was once found. The group today is but a matrix for the production of individuals. All meaning is found in the individual.

From Chapter 4: The Religious Imagination and the Rules of Traditional Theology

The secret cause of your death is your destiny. Every life has a limitation, and in challenging the limit you are bringing the limit closer to you, and the heroes are the ones who initiate their actions no matter what destiny may result.

All religions are ethical in their foreground. But there exists a metaphysical ground beyond good and evil, beyond I and Thou, beyond life and death. When the symbol is opened that background is what shines through and flows forth.

Carl Jung has suggested, as a means for fathoming one’s own creative depths, a technique that he calls “active imagination”. One way to activate the imagination is to propose to it a mythic image for contemplation and free development. Mythic images – from the Christian tradition, or from any other for that matter, since they are all actually related – speak to very deep centers of the psyche.

…The great Indian saint of the last century, Sri Ramakrishna, would ask people who came to him to talk with him about God, “How do you like to speak about God, with form or without?

From Chapter 5: Symbols of the Judeo-Christian Tradition

Metaphor is the language of myth that remains, as we have observed, a still widely misunderstood term. Even many so-called well-educated people think that “myth” means something that is false – that is, a lie or distortion about some person or event.
….
It is vital to recall that if you mistake the denotation of the metaphor for its connotation, you completely lose the message that is contained in the symbol.
….
Heinrich Zimmer…used to say, “The best things can’t be told. The second best are misunderstood.”

The story of not eating the apple of the forbidden tree is an old folklore motif that is called “the one forbidden thing.” Do not open this door, do not look over here, do not eat this food.

In the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus says, “People ask, ‘When will the Kingdom come?’” And Jesus says, in an example of sheer Gnosticism, “The Kingdom will not come be expectation. The Kingdom of the Father is spread upon the earth, and men do not see it.”

One of Freud’s disciples, Otto Rank, wrote a very important book, The Myth of the Birth of the Hero. Rank gave something like eighty-five examples of what is know as “the infant exposure.” The child is born, the family for one reason or another leaves it in the woods or something like that. The child may be adopted by an animal – Romulus and Remus picked up by the wolves, for example – or by peasants, and will grow up thinking this is its family.

[Jesus]…was crucified for saying, “I and the Father are one.” That is good Gnosticism. When Hallaj, nine hundred years later, said the same thing, he was also crucified by the Moslems. You cannot identify with God when you think of God as a fact. When you think of God as a metaphor for the dynamism of life, and attach yourself to that, you are God.
….
With these varying ideas of God – one outside, one within – you are pulled between a religion of identify and a religion of relationship.

That is another kind of religion that has recently had great appeal in America. What its gurus have said to the young is, “What does it matter what happened a long time ago? What is happening now within you?” That is the appeal that the Oriental vision has for young people.
….
Whether Jewish or Christian, our religions have stressed too strongly the strictly historical aspect, so that we are, so to say, in worship of the historical event, instead of being able to read through that event to the spiritual message for ourselves. People turn to Oriental religions because therein they find the real message which has been closed by excessive literalism and historicism in their own religion, and which is now open to them again.

Read the Bible in your own way, and take the message because it says something special to each reader, based on his or her own experience. The gift of God comes in your own terms. God, pure and in Himself, is too much. Carl Jung said, “Religion is a system to defend us against the experience of God.” It may be a species of impudence to think that the way you understand God is the way God is.

From Chapter 6: Understanding the Symbols of Judeo-Christian Spirituality

The first motif is the Virgin Birth. This myth occurs not only in the lives of great persons but in those of many far less important figures as well.
….
In our own tradition we have a tendency to concretize things, so that this Virgin Birth becomes a problem on many levels, including the biological. Can a child be born of virgin? If that is not possible, we conclude that Jesus was not born of a virgin. The Catholic Church emphasize the historical, physical character of Virgin Birth, saying that Mary’s virginity was restored after the birth of Jesus, and making this an article of faith.

I am about 2/3 of the way through the book, but I thought I would share now. I know this has been long, but I hope useful.

 

[fishjie]

yeah that was actually an interesting perspective, a refreshing change from what's usually posted in threads about religion.

cool!

 

[Bozo Erectus]

Truth:

Metaphor comes from the Greet meta, a passing over, or a going from one place to another, and phorein, to move or to carry. Metaphors carry us from one place to another, they enable us to cross boundaries that would otherwise be closed to us….Denotations are singular, time bound, and non-spiritual; the connotations of religious metaphor are rich, timeless, and refer not to somebody else in the outer world of another era, but to us and our inner spiritual experience right now.

…half the people in the world think that the metaphors of religious traditions, for example, are facts. And the other half contends that they are not facts at all. As a result we have people who consider themselves believers because they accept metaphors as facts, and we have other who classify themselves as atheists because the think religious metaphors are lies.

There are two orders of religious perspective. One is ethical, pitting good against evil. In the biblically grounded Christian West, the accent is on ethics, on good against evil. We are thus bound by our religion itself to the field of duality. The mystical perspective, however, views good and evil as aspects of one process. One finds this in the Chinese yin-yang sign, the dai-chi.

Think of the electric lights in a room. You can say, “The lights – plural – are on.” You can say, “The light – singular – is on.” These are two ways of saying exactly the same thing. In one case you are giving accent to the vehicle of the light: “The lights – plural – are on.” And in the other, you are giving accent to that which you are finally talking about, namely, the light.

“Live your life, your marriage, in such a way that in it you may experience eternal life.” Eternity is neither future, nor past, but now.

There is no meaning in the group, where all meaning was once found. The group today is but a matrix for the production of individuals. All meaning is found in the individual.

The secret cause of your death is your destiny. Every life has a limitation, and in challenging the limit you are bringing the limit closer to you, and the heroes are the ones who initiate their actions no matter what destiny may result.

All religions are ethical in their foreground. But there exists a metaphysical ground beyond good and evil, beyond I and Thou, beyond life and death. When the symbol is opened that background is what shines through and flows forth.

“The Kingdom will not come be expectation. The Kingdom of the Father is spread upon the earth, and men do not see it.”

The child may be adopted by an animal – Romulus and Remus picked up by the wolves, for example – or by peasants, and will grow up thinking this is its family.

[Jesus]…was crucified for saying, “I and the Father are one.” That is good Gnosticism. When Hallaj, nine hundred years later, said the same thing, he was also crucified by the Moslems. You cannot identify with God when you think of God as a fact. When you think of God as a metaphor for the dynamism of life, and attach yourself to that, you are God.
….
With these varying ideas of God – one outside, one within – you are pulled between a religion of identify and a religion of relationship.

That is another kind of religion that has recently had great appeal in America. What its gurus have said to the young is, “What does it matter what happened a long time ago? What is happening now within you?” That is the appeal that the Oriental vision has for young people.
….
Whether Jewish or Christian, our religions have stressed too strongly the strictly historical aspect, so that we are, so to say, in worship of the historical event, instead of being able to read through that event to the spiritual message for ourselves. People turn to Oriental religions because therein they find the real message which has been closed by excessive literalism and historicism in their own religion, and which is now open to them again.

The gift of God comes in your own terms. God, pure and in Himself, is too much. Carl Jung said, “Religion is a system to defend us against the experience of God.” It may be a species of impudence to think that the way you understand God is the way God is.

I wasnt aware of this book Veritass. Thank you.

 

[Sparta]

Very interesting, Veritass - thanks!