Beyond Theology: The Art of Godmanship by Alan Watts

Author:Alan Watts [Watts, Alan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781608688241
Google: AveBEAAAQBAJ
Barnesnoble:
Published: 2019-11-01T23:05:26+00:00

B E Y O N D T H E O L O G Y

point of view. It was not until 1700, or later, that Christian artists attempted to dress Jesus and his apostles with the historical realism of burnooses.

They were always shown in the dress of the artist’s day, or in the ecclesiastical vestments of the day. If we were now following the spirit of traditional Christian art, we would show Jesus in overalls or a tweed suit. It was taken for granted that the Gospels told of historical events, but that aspect of the matter was of minor importance. The important thing was that through the cycle of the Church year, and through the daily celebration of the liturgy, these marvelous and saving events were constantly relived in the present. They were not merely memorialized. They were mysteries in which men partook immediately, and this is still the basic attitude of Catholic spirituality. The notion that Christianity is the uniquely historical religion, stressing the intervention of God in the historical process, hardly occurred to theologians before the nineteenth century. But it was just at this time that Christianity also began to cultivate a pious antiquarianism, now culminating in the s_entimentality of building Romanesque churches in steel and concrete. And watch out for plastic Baroque.

It is also in quite modem times that clergy have developed the attitude that there is something robust and realistic in committing oneself to the belief that, say, the virgin birth was a “hard, historical fact.” This kind of commitment is contrasted with the alleged wooliness and feeble-mindedness of understanding it in the “impoverished” sense of “mere” myth or symbol. Obviously, such attitudes are a form of professional posturing which attempt to justify obscuran-

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