oldgoddetective - Tumblr blog

[oldgoddetective]

opinions on liberation theology?

this is a big question! liberation theology looms large in a lot of the circles I've run in in my journey as a Christian communist. I enjoy a lot of Ivan Illich's work, and while he was undoubtedly an influence on the development of liberation theology in Latin America, he was also one of its most outspoken critics (at least on the left). His issues with it generally tie back to concerns about undermining the gospel by tying it to existent political movements. This is a very Illich type of criticism, but I think since the teachings of Jesus do actually have implications to him which many would consider political, he's getting at a frequent problem liberation theology generally, which is its inadequately radical focus--"radical" both in the sense of political radicalism & as in "at the root" theologically. The throughline of liberation theology is taking the content of Christ's teachings regarding freedom & overcoming evil and connecting it to contemporary struggles for liberation. I think this is generally a good impulse as it sets up a theology of an active God--a "God who speaks"--but I haven't found liberation theology to adequately reckon with how the institutional Church can have taken such an active role in the supression of such struggles throughout history. A belief in the liberatory potential of Jesus' ministry is also at the core of my belief, but so is an understanding of the institutional Church as the Antichrist. Illich lets me down here as well, optimistic as he is about the potential for change in the Catholic Church specifically.

Admittedly, I still have a lot to read in this field, and if you have any recommendations, I'm very open! Mainly, my work theologically is about tracing countercurrents in Christianity historically as manifestations of the conflict between this Antichrist and the actual teachings of Jesus.

[oldgoddetective]

”There is none like you among the gods, O Lord, nor are there any works like yours.“

‭‭Psalms‬ ‭86‬:‭8‬ ‭NRSV‬‬

[oldgoddetective]

What happened to the Old Gods?

For thousands of years, humans of various cultures, nations, and peoples across the world worshiped an equally amount of varied gods. And then suddenly, at least in Western Europe and the Americas, the influence of these gods waned. In this post and over the next few posts I will propose that a plurality of gods coexisted and worked with nature and humanity to maintain balance and that the community of the Western gods suffered a period of collapse in which the Western God achieved his current hegemony. In a future post I plan to talk about how there is a current movement of rebellion or upheaval in the heavens, as well as about the relationship between the gods, nature, spirits, and humans.

I am approaching this with a careful but honest belief that the divine is real and that God, Jesus, the Western God, and the so called "pagan" gods are (or at least were) real. I will also be focusing on God, Western Europe, and the Americas (here and throughout the blog), as these are the areas I am most familiar with. Lastly, I stand by the truism that history is written by the victors, so while I may use the Bible as a source, I will approach it with academic skepticism. With all that out of the way, let's begin.

Before the rise of Christianity, once could find a diversity of gods across the world. These were seen as tribal or local gods. That is, their worshipers largely recognized the existence of other gods that ruled over the same aspects of nature, but that were distinct from their own gods and belonged to other regions and people. Examples of this are Hades and Hel, from Greek and Norse religion respectively. These two gods ruled over similar realms (the realm of the dead), but were limited in their jurisdiction by geography and by who their followers were. We also see examples of gods spreading across regions, sometimes adopting different aspects as they do. One way in which this happened was when people colonized an area and brought their gods with them, as was the case with Ancient Carthage being ruled by Phoenician gods. If a god and their people had enough influence, they could also expand to new regions, although this usually caused them to undergo changes as they were adapted to and by the new environments they encountered. Such was the case when Ares took over the aspect of war in Rome and became Mars, and similarly when Gaulic people adopted Mars under the name of Albiorix. These were likely all the same entity, but rather than be worshiped as one god, it chose to, or was forced to, adopt different aspects that better suited the cultures it encountered. Thus we see a world where various gods existed within a changing landscape of realms and personalities.

There is one more way in which gods expand and replace others: warfare. A famous example of this is found in the books of Exodus and Joshua, where the followers of God conquered the people of Canaan and slowly tore down their gods. The relationship between humans and the gods is not the focus here, but it is well known to be symbiotic to some degree. With believers gone or dwindled, the gods are weakened and easier to depose by another god.

The various gods were, according to the Bible, organized into an assembly of gods or a divine council (Psalm 82 NSRV). It is unknown what God's position in this council was or how many gods belonged to it. But it does reveal that the gods were in some sort of community with each other and that some sort of order existed. This same psalm claims that God has the authority to hold judgement, but as this is an account written by God - even if indirectly - we can not take for granted that this claim of a position of leadership is accurate and that it wasn’t made to legitimize his rule. I will take a detour into the realm of speculation and say that this council likely did not include all the gods on earth or in existence, but may have been limited to those over which God already had authority. That is, the gods God had defeated through conquest and the lesser gods many call angels. If this is the case, this divine council was a prototype for how the Western God would achieve his current hegemony.

Now we turn to how the old gods “went away.” I’m not talking about how their cults were persecuted or their beliefs syncretized into Christianity, although this did play an important role in the Old God’s demise. Instead I am talking about the deities themselves. Here we can only make informed guesses, so here is what I believe happened. A new god, Jesus, arrived on the scene deriving his legitimacy from his claim to be the son of God. Whether this claim is true or not does not matter for our purposes, although it has interesting implications. What matters is that it allowed him to have a head start in the follower gaining game. Whoever Jesus was before the incarnation, he was already a relatively powerful god. He was likely a member of the aforementioned divine council. Following his death and resurrection, his following grew, which in turn gave him more power. Through some clever maneuvering he came to gain influence over the Roman Empire and become its dominant god. Eventually the gods of the Roman pantheon would be weakened, exiled, or incorporated into Jesus’s divine council. The behavior of Christianity from this point forwards indicates a change to the previously egalitarian and regional workings of the divine council into one that was increasingly centralized. With the power of the divine council and a great number of followers, he was able to create the infrastructure that would give rise to the various organized Christian churches.

Then something went wrong. We can’t pinpoint when, how, or why, but at some point Jesus lost control of the divine council, and the Western God took over. This explains the rapid changes to Christianity, including a practical abandonment of its peaceful and loving ethos that remains unpunished to this day. Human activity was likely both a symptom and a cause to this change in heavenly leadership. Ultimately, the chaos in heaven caused or worsened the fall of the Roman empire. It was during this period of upheaval that the gods of the germanic tribes tried to stop the growing power of Jesus or fill the power vacuum the Western God’s rise to power was causing. In the end, it was the Western God who prevailed over Jesus and the other “pagan” gods. Unlike Jesus, the Western God learned from his predecessors and did not rule as one, but rather adopted various identities among the various Christian sects and allowed other gods to wield authority as angels or saints of the divine council.

Most of Christian history has been led by this Western God who usurped Jesus’s place and derives his legitimacy by using the identity of Jesus and of the son of God. I will talk in a future post about how this hegemony has been changing for centuries now and what the new cosmic order could shake up to be.