If one is a member of an ideologically-closed community, such one formed by Gnosticism, what should one do? More broadly, how does one live in a community not living by truth, but by tightly-held, iron-clad beliefs? We have briefly considered Gnosticism. Now we broaden out the matter to consider functioning within a Gnostic or ideologically closed community. The major examples I will give come from my experiences in American academia—that is, university life in this country.
There is always a tension between truth and human communities. Every community lives by its beliefs, its myths, and no community is fully open to truth. It is not in the nature of societies—of human beings—to be genuinely open to truth. Even if one individual should arise who is genuinely open to all truth, and lives according to it, the chances are good that he or she will be banished by the community, silenced, or even put to death. Some truths are tolerated, but those which challenge the society in its fundamental beliefs, are usually squashed.
Socrates ever remains a warning to anyone who takes philosophy seriously. Democratic Athens, which was highly tolerant on virtually every issue, found Socrates too much to bear, and put him to death. Granted, the vote at the trial before some 501 Athenians was close, but Socrates was found guilty of “corrupting the youth, denying the gods of the city, and introducing a foreign divinity.” Jesus was not put to death for deeds of compassion, but because his teaching was seen as a direct assault on the prized institutions of Jewish society: the Temple and its priestly cult; the Law as the priests and scribes interpreted it; even their conception of God which so emphasized divine transcendence that it could not tolerate Christ’s openness to divine presence here and now. Jesus’ ministry lasted 1-3 years before he was rejected by the priestly class and political leaders of his land, and turned over to the Romans to kill him. Some of Jesus’ disciples were even more “obnoxious” to Jewish institutions. The foremost example is Stephen, whose name indicates that he was a Greek Jew, living in Jerusalem. He was stoned to death not long after the execution of Jesus. According to Luke in the book of Acts, Stephen was highly provocative: “You stiff-necked Jews, always resisting the word of God. God does not dwell in temples made of stone, but in hearts of human flesh.” His teaching is well-grounded on truth, but it was too much to bear for those caught up in their religious / social institutions. Speaking the truth can be deadly—or at least, costly.
As I quoted from T. S. Eliot before, “Humankind cannot bear very much reality.” No human society tolerates its deepest truths being challenged and overturned. From my experience, the Catholic church now is quite tolerant and generous, but everyone knows that for centuries, bishops and clerical orders allowed men and women to be torched or tortured for “heresy.” Such actions are utterly abhorrent. The Protestant Reformer, Jean Calvin, did the same in Geneva: he allowed a man to be burned at the stake for “denying the Trinity.” Truth and different understandings of it have lead to many deaths, even wars. As disgusting as it sounds, “Christians” took to the battlefield on questions of the nature of Christ, or the proper time to celebrate Easter, and so on. So much for Christian love. As a small child I saw the blood stain of the Mormon “prophet” and political leader, Joseph Smith, preserved on the floor of a building in Nauvoo, where Smith was murdered by an anti-Mormon mob. Such episodes are very common in history. Recall that early Islam spread by the sword: convert or die. Certainty of one’s truth or righteousness often leads to hatred and intolerance of others who disagree.
The most closed-minded society in which I have lived and functioned was academia—the Universities of Washington, Indiana, California. Through my conversion to Christ as an undergraduate, I found out just how “liberally-minded” and “tolerant” professors really were. By far the most tolerant and accepting person I encountered was a Sioux woman who taught at the University of Washington. She was patient and kind with me, even in the days of my excessive evangelical fervor. She was, however, all too rare among political scientists. If one was not a “behavorialist” in those days (a variety of neo-positivism), one had difficulty getting scholarships, teaching assistantships, or being fast-tracked for employment. American political science was the most dogmatically close-minded group I have experienced in my life—and these same persons would pride themselves on their intellectual gifts and supposed tolerance. Not so. Again, there were a few exceptions. They dominated minds both by what they said, and by what they did not say. It was not so much a matter of being “politically correct” in the 1970’s, but of being ideologically correct. In my first paper in graduate school I strongly criticized American behavioralism for its exclusion of the divine from consideration of the human tradition. The professor flunked me on a paper that was well written and thoughtful. I was thinking “outside of the box,” or should I say, outside of the straight-jacket of American social science. My experience as a student of political science was of living in an insane asylum, dominated not by military or police power, but by a far more powerful weapon: ideological conformity. The most free-thinking people I found in universities were in the hard sciences, such as chemistry and physics. Humanities and social scientists were under the dominant ideological of Positivism, neo-positivism, behavioralism. Foolishly, these ideologies limit the pursuit of knowledge to the methods of the mathematizing sciences. Other ways to truth were not tolerated. So much for philosophy as the love of wisdom, and of “God who alone is wise” (Plato).
Needless to say, I could not change academia. No one could. For my part, I lacked a full understanding of the ideological straight-jacket being forced onto students. So I was effectively marginalized. At the Catholic University of America, where I met some truly philosophical minds, I was also treated to harassment. A woman professor in my department, an avowed Marxist, Ph.d from Harvard, assigned one of her students to break into university offices to steal evaluations which students had written on me. The student later came to me and confessed her role in this. The Marxist was looking for ammunition to get me fired. Why? I challenged her Marxism as a mindless ideology, a corruption of truth. After two years of enduring life as a professor, I chose to leave, and entered the monastery. Academia was a kind of mental hell for me. Our chairman, a real gentleman, scholar, and philosopher from Sweden, was so vilified by this Marxist and by other professors behind closed doors that I developed one of the two worst migraines of my life. I could not believe how professors sought to assassinate a man’s reputation and career. This Swedish scholar has since published widely, and lectured around the world. He has an amazing philosophical mind. I never forgot the way some of his own colleagues verbally sought to destroy him behind his back. Frankly, that kind of treatment was too much for me to bear.
Well, withdrawing into a monastery was not the best solution, either. But I longed for peace, and a break from the ideological straight-jacket that is American social science. Ironically, the monastery, an enclosed life, was much less ideologically closed than the University of California, or Indiana University, or Catholic University. And this I observed in the monastery: the monks least tainted by academia, not teaching at a university or a prep school for gifted boys, were more open-souled and better human beings. Is it any wonder that two of the best professors I ever encountered said to me nearly identical words: “If you want to be a scholar, stay out of academia.” So much for “academic freedom” of thought. It is not to be found in American universities—except, perhaps, in departments of natural sciences.
There is always a tension between truth and human communities. Every community lives by its beliefs, its myths, and no community is fully open to truth. It is not in the nature of societies—of human beings—to be genuinely open to truth. Even if one individual should arise who is genuinely open to all truth, and lives according to it, the chances are good that he or she will be banished by the community, silenced, or even put to death. Some truths are tolerated, but those which challenge the society in its fundamental beliefs, are usually squashed.
Socrates ever remains a warning to anyone who takes philosophy seriously. Democratic Athens, which was highly tolerant on virtually every issue, found Socrates too much to bear, and put him to death. Granted, the vote at the trial before some 501 Athenians was close, but Socrates was found guilty of “corrupting the youth, denying the gods of the city, and introducing a foreign divinity.” Jesus was not put to death for deeds of compassion, but because his teaching was seen as a direct assault on the prized institutions of Jewish society: the Temple and its priestly cult; the Law as the priests and scribes interpreted it; even their conception of God which so emphasized divine transcendence that it could not tolerate Christ’s openness to divine presence here and now. Jesus’ ministry lasted 1-3 years before he was rejected by the priestly class and political leaders of his land, and turned over to the Romans to kill him. Some of Jesus’ disciples were even more “obnoxious” to Jewish institutions. The foremost example is Stephen, whose name indicates that he was a Greek Jew, living in Jerusalem. He was stoned to death not long after the execution of Jesus. According to Luke in the book of Acts, Stephen was highly provocative: “You stiff-necked Jews, always resisting the word of God. God does not dwell in temples made of stone, but in hearts of human flesh.” His teaching is well-grounded on truth, but it was too much to bear for those caught up in their religious / social institutions. Speaking the truth can be deadly—or at least, costly.
As I quoted from T. S. Eliot before, “Humankind cannot bear very much reality.” No human society tolerates its deepest truths being challenged and overturned. From my experience, the Catholic church now is quite tolerant and generous, but everyone knows that for centuries, bishops and clerical orders allowed men and women to be torched or tortured for “heresy.” Such actions are utterly abhorrent. The Protestant Reformer, Jean Calvin, did the same in Geneva: he allowed a man to be burned at the stake for “denying the Trinity.” Truth and different understandings of it have lead to many deaths, even wars. As disgusting as it sounds, “Christians” took to the battlefield on questions of the nature of Christ, or the proper time to celebrate Easter, and so on. So much for Christian love. As a small child I saw the blood stain of the Mormon “prophet” and political leader, Joseph Smith, preserved on the floor of a building in Nauvoo, where Smith was murdered by an anti-Mormon mob. Such episodes are very common in history. Recall that early Islam spread by the sword: convert or die. Certainty of one’s truth or righteousness often leads to hatred and intolerance of others who disagree.
The most closed-minded society in which I have lived and functioned was academia—the Universities of Washington, Indiana, California. Through my conversion to Christ as an undergraduate, I found out just how “liberally-minded” and “tolerant” professors really were. By far the most tolerant and accepting person I encountered was a Sioux woman who taught at the University of Washington. She was patient and kind with me, even in the days of my excessive evangelical fervor. She was, however, all too rare among political scientists. If one was not a “behavorialist” in those days (a variety of neo-positivism), one had difficulty getting scholarships, teaching assistantships, or being fast-tracked for employment. American political science was the most dogmatically close-minded group I have experienced in my life—and these same persons would pride themselves on their intellectual gifts and supposed tolerance. Not so. Again, there were a few exceptions. They dominated minds both by what they said, and by what they did not say. It was not so much a matter of being “politically correct” in the 1970’s, but of being ideologically correct. In my first paper in graduate school I strongly criticized American behavioralism for its exclusion of the divine from consideration of the human tradition. The professor flunked me on a paper that was well written and thoughtful. I was thinking “outside of the box,” or should I say, outside of the straight-jacket of American social science. My experience as a student of political science was of living in an insane asylum, dominated not by military or police power, but by a far more powerful weapon: ideological conformity. The most free-thinking people I found in universities were in the hard sciences, such as chemistry and physics. Humanities and social scientists were under the dominant ideological of Positivism, neo-positivism, behavioralism. Foolishly, these ideologies limit the pursuit of knowledge to the methods of the mathematizing sciences. Other ways to truth were not tolerated. So much for philosophy as the love of wisdom, and of “God who alone is wise” (Plato).
Needless to say, I could not change academia. No one could. For my part, I lacked a full understanding of the ideological straight-jacket being forced onto students. So I was effectively marginalized. At the Catholic University of America, where I met some truly philosophical minds, I was also treated to harassment. A woman professor in my department, an avowed Marxist, Ph.d from Harvard, assigned one of her students to break into university offices to steal evaluations which students had written on me. The student later came to me and confessed her role in this. The Marxist was looking for ammunition to get me fired. Why? I challenged her Marxism as a mindless ideology, a corruption of truth. After two years of enduring life as a professor, I chose to leave, and entered the monastery. Academia was a kind of mental hell for me. Our chairman, a real gentleman, scholar, and philosopher from Sweden, was so vilified by this Marxist and by other professors behind closed doors that I developed one of the two worst migraines of my life. I could not believe how professors sought to assassinate a man’s reputation and career. This Swedish scholar has since published widely, and lectured around the world. He has an amazing philosophical mind. I never forgot the way some of his own colleagues verbally sought to destroy him behind his back. Frankly, that kind of treatment was too much for me to bear.
Well, withdrawing into a monastery was not the best solution, either. But I longed for peace, and a break from the ideological straight-jacket that is American social science. Ironically, the monastery, an enclosed life, was much less ideologically closed than the University of California, or Indiana University, or Catholic University. And this I observed in the monastery: the monks least tainted by academia, not teaching at a university or a prep school for gifted boys, were more open-souled and better human beings. Is it any wonder that two of the best professors I ever encountered said to me nearly identical words: “If you want to be a scholar, stay out of academia.” So much for “academic freedom” of thought. It is not to be found in American universities—except, perhaps, in departments of natural sciences.
