“if we look at the Platonic philosophy from the viewpoint of world his­tory, and especially the profound influence which it exerted on Christian thought, we must conclude that it is not easy to overrate the real importance of Orphism for the evolution of human thought.”

 

CHAPTER X

PAST AND FUTURE

This book has centered about two ideas: the primi­tiveness and the distinctiveness of Orphism. The proof of the first idea was the chief task of the first five chap­ters; my primary aim was to exhibit the principal features of Orphism, especially the collective ecstasy,’* the collective communion, the spiritual rebirth’ and their origin in primitive mentality. The remaining chapters have been devoted especially to the distinctiveness of Orphism. I have tried to make explicit its ecstatic and eschatological nature, arising in the early Mycenaean age through a Nebi, or prophet, born in Thrace and named Orpheus by later tradition. I have followed this cult during its first struggles against the Greek state religion, before it gained entrance into Greek society; then its further career, its endeavors to gain control of Greek culture, and the means by which it succeeded. Then came the second period, marking the great philo­sophical conquests of Orphism, its contributions to the Pythagorean, Heraclitean and Platonic philosophies. And finally, the third and last period, the part played by Orphism in the making of Paulinism.

Let us now come to a conclusion and draw our little moral is, to repeat, its indifference to the state religion. It ac-) cepted neither the state gods nor their myths, though it had neither a rich pantheon nor a rich mythology of its own. Another characteristic which differentiates it from the Greek religion is its remarkable conservatism. Com­pared with the unremitting changes of Greek mythol­ogy, incapable of keeping to any definite myth and professedly eager for new tales and new gods, Orphic immobility appears one of the most astonishing features >’ of ancient history, comparable only with the miraculous tenacity of the Egyptian religion. The myth of Zagreus as expounded by Neoplatonists of the fifth century is the same which Thracian tribes of the bronze age had conceived. The golden leaflets of Thurii, buried as late as the third century b.c., contain doctrines professed two centuries earlier by Pythagoreans. The funeral rite of the timponi of Thurii agrees perfectly with the ac­counts of Plutarch, who lived in the latter half of the first century a.d. Most probably the Orphic books studied by Julian,¹ and still extant in the time of Pro- clus,² had the same content as the Orphic texts of the fifth century b.c. The Orphic-Eleusinian mysteries were performed without interruption from at least the eighth century b.c. down to 396 A.D., when the sanctuary of £- Eleusis was destroyed by the monks in the train of Alaric; in other words, for at least eleven centuries, perfectly indifferent to historical catastrophes and up­heavals. If you take into consideration what an enor­mous change came over the Greek religious consciousness during even the short period from JEschylus to Euripides, or, if you wish, from Phidias to Praxiteles; moreover, if you recall what an influence the Greek poets exerted on the evolution of Greek mythology, you will admit that the Orphic conservatism can be ex­plained only on the hypothesis that Orphism was an out­sider in Greek religion and developed according to its foreign essence. Hence I conclude that, far from being a constructive element in the history of Greek religion, Orphism appears to have been thoroughly alien to it and somehow an unconscious foe of Greek religion.

Now I wish to emphasize the part played by doctrinal religions in the history of philosophy. These religions always tend in a peculiar philosophical direction, owing to the importance attributed to dogmas and creeds, which, apart from any consideration of their content, make for clear and precise thinking. However severe our judgment of theology may be from a religious standpoint, we can not doubt the importance of theol­ogy in the making of philosophy by paving the way for conceptual thought. History proves that philosophy arose from doctrinal religions: Jewish philosophy from Jewish religion, Buddhist philosophy from Buddhism, Islamic philosophy from Islam.

Greek history furnishes a clear illustration of this law. Greek philosophy did not arise from the Greek state religion, which was a spontaneous religion, but, on the contrary, pre-Socratic speculation arose either from a materialistic notion of the world which completely ignored the state religion or from a professed enmity against the state religion. Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes, Diogenes of Apollonia, Anaxagoras and Xenophanes tend toward a materialistic explanation of the world which dispenses entirely with religion. Em­pedocles attributes to a divine energy a part in the making of the world, but is far from borrowing these energies from the state religion; instead of turning to Kronos or to Zeus, as the old theogonies do, he invents a myth of his own, the struggle between Neikos and Philia, discord and love, in order to explain the origin of the world. There is something very impressive in this struggle for freeing the human spirit from the bonds of traditional religion. The philosophers prior to Soc­rates give the first example of a philosophy whose starting point is not religion, but, on the contrary, deliverance from religion. In order to understand the meaning of this struggle, we must remember that his­tory witnessed a similar struggle in the eighteenth cen­tury, namely, the French philosophers of the Encyclo- pedie, such as Pietro Gassendi and Baron d’Holbach.

The philosophy of the Sophists appears to have been another speculative endeavor which broke with all pre­vious ideas. It is customary for the general public to misunderstand the real significance of the Sophists and to overrate some of the shadowy sides of their teach­ing, but the philosophical results of the Sophistic philos­ophy were enormous. It brought philosophy from nature to man, from the outer world to the inner one; it emphasized the greater value of the individual mind and paved the way for the Socratic philosophy. Of course, nothing was better adapted than this audacious philosophy, with its emphasis on the value of the self as a standard of judgment, to criticize the anthropo­morphic state religion.

Plato belonged to the same line of thought; he was an outstanding adversary of Homeric anthropomorphism. Aristotle marks the climax of this unremitting process whose aim was the deliverance of Greek thought from the Greek state religion. His notion of God as a spiritual power directing the whole world by his energy can cer­tainly not be harmonized with the traditional anthropo­morphic notions of God which formed the background V of the Greek religion.

Parallel with this progressive conquest of pure philo­sophic thought free from all religious bondage runs the criticism of the Olympian gods. Heraclitus condemns Homer;⁸ Xenophanes criticizes the Homeric notion of the gods and explains the origin of the Homeric myths on purely anthropological grounds;⁴ Theagenes breaks down the Homeric myths by assuming them to be al­legories ;⁰ Protagoras is thoroughly sceptic and agnos­tic; ⁸ Prodicus explains the origin of religion as resting on human needs;⁷ Critias attributes to religion a polit­ical origin;⁸ Plato condemns the Homeric myths on the charge of immorality and leaves no room in his philosophy for personal gods;⁹ Aristotle attributes to natural forces all the benefits which in former times had been considered divine gifts.¹⁰

In fact the whole history of Greek philosophy from its very beginning down to Aristotle, who marks the summit of the Greek speculative process, affords proof that no link ever existed between Greek religion and Greek philosophy. But on the other hand, along with this unremitting struggle against the state religion goes the increasing influence of Orphism, first on Pythagoras and Heraclitus and afterwards on Plato. At first sight, it seems that Aristotle was victorious in his reaction against Platonic mysticism. But if we look at the Platonic philosophy from the viewpoint of world his­tory, and especially the profound influence which it exerted on Christian thought, we must conclude that it is not easy to overrate the real importance of Orphism for the evolution of human thought.

This gradual victory of Orphism was favored by the decay of the state religion, which accompanied the development of Orphism, and insured the final triumph of mysticism. Thus the history of the Greek state re­ligion from the fifth century onward appears to be a slow, unconscious dissolution, the explanation of which undoubtedly lies in the complete absence of any fixed creeds and the consequent impossibility of establishing any tradition whatsoever. Greek religious conservatism relates, outside of Orphism, to rites, not to creeds; the Greeks felt obliged to keep faithful to ritual traditions, but they never felt a spiritual need for fixed, definite ideas about the gods. Their myths had no religious authority, and every Greek felt entitled to criticize them. Aristophanes, who was quite conserva.tive, did not shrink from making fun of Dionysus on the stage. The absence of any intellectual basis brought Greek re­ligion to the gradual, unconscious decay which con­stitutes, properly speaking, its very history.

The best evidences of this decay are poetry and sculpture. If you compare the religious feelings ex­pressed by ?Eschylus with the consistent scepticism of Euripides, who seems to find a particular joy in exert­ing his pitiless criticism at the expense of the poor Olympian gods, you get the impression that a great spiritual upheaval had taken place in the meantime. The mythical schemes of the tragedies are the same: very often the titles even of the Euripidean tragedies conform with the titles of yEschylus. The great source of the subject matter of tragedies is, as before, the Homeric poems; but the spirit has undergone a deep transformation, consisting in the fact that /Eschylus considered myths as religious truths, and Euripides found nothing more in mythology than an inexhausti­ble source of subjects for his tragedies. Hellenistic poetry conveys the same impression. Callimachus, for instance, imitates the Homeric hymns, but no one en­dowed with the smallest degree of spiritual insight can fail to have the impression that the hymns of Cal­limachus are nothing but rhetorical pieces and that the Homeric hymns are, conversely, the outcome of deep faith. The same impression is conveyed in the period which extended from Phidias to Lysippus. No doubt Phidias ought to he considered the highest artistic ex­pression of the fifth century, a thoroughly religious age. We are sufficiently acquainted with the master­pieces of this great artist to be certain that a profound religious consciousness inspired his art, the religious consciousness of JEschylus and of all Greece, believing it owed the defeat of the Persians to the gods. But no more than thirty years later, Greek art shows no re­ligious stamp at all. Praxiteles, the friend of Protag­oras, considered Greek gods beautiful models for his art. His tendency was to work into the Greek gods as much beauty as possible, without taking into considera­tion their consequent loss of divine content and their purely human character. Lysippus marks the climax of this humanizing process. He aimed consciously at re­alism, and was not worried in the least about the religious results of his realistic trend. He applied human shapes to gods; gods became human beings. The enor­mous gap which had divided men from gods in the Homeric age was bridged forever. Greeks conceived the divine world as a complex of beings to whom, how­ever beautiful they might be, no one ever had recourse.

But I need not dwell longer on this theme. The main fact, which poetry as well as art undoubtedly illus­trates, is that the philosophical enmity against the state religion is to be considered not as the isolated trend of some philosophers, but as the philosophical expression of the religious thought of the great majority. Greek criticism destroyed Greek religion. But along with this dissolution came the gradual victory of Orphism de­scribed above. This result is a double concomitant proc­ess which is characterized by an inner logical harmony; on the one hand, a decay of state religion; on the other, the progress of Orphism. The great constructive powers of Greek culture, estheticism and mysticism, or, if you like, intellectualism and intuitionism, necessarily took opposite lines of development. Around this vast double process centered the whole history of Greek thought. From the seventh century b.c. down to the Neoplato- nists, a period of more than ten centuries, we can fol­low the progressive decay of Homeric intellectualism and the progressive triumph of Orphic mysticism. Ac­cording to appearances, and especially for anyone who considers the external features of art and poetry, the Olympian religion never lost its dominant position, and died only under the victorious assaults of Christianity. But on closer analysis, Greek religion appears to have been an empty phantom by the time of its struggle with Christianity, barely maintaining the appearances of a living body. The Greeks themselves had been working toward Christianity for many centuries. Christianity, apart from the person of Jesus, appears as the inevitable issue of the long process we have depicted. The Jewish revival, centering around the Messianic person of Jesus, can not be considered the real Christianity. What people call Christianity, and what Christianity turns out really to be, is the product of Greek thought, is the result of Greek belief in Jesus.

By this statement I do not mean to over-emphasize the work and person of the apostle Paul. On the con­trary, I think that in the light of history Paul appears to have been not so much a theologian and reformer, as I r the embodiment of a collective religious movement. Paul symbolizes the conjunction of Jewish faith and Greek thought. Orphism supplied him the theological tools which he needed to clothe the faith in Jesus in the garb of Greek conceptions. I do not wish to minimize either the Jewish or the Greek side of Paul; his work is the result of a harmonious blending of these unwitting allies, which though decidedly alien to each other were compelled by history to cooperate for its own mysteri­ous ends. Had Paul not been a Jew he would never have given concreteness to the Adamic inheritance nor at­tached great importance to the Dionysiac deliverance from sin. Without Judaism, Orphism would have had no meaning to him; but as it was, Orphism showed him a real path of salvation from that burden of original sin which the Jews felt most keenly. Orphism thus sup­plied him something which Judaism never was capable of furnishing: a way of salvation by which an his­torical event, Jesus’ death, becomes a redeeming event in the life of an individual. Judaism led him to con­ceive Jesus as an expiatory victim for human sins but never to the idea of a continued expiation by oneness with Christ, by dying and being resurrected with him. Orphism and Judaism completed and explained each other, and the product was Christianity.

It is not easy for us to explain how it happened that these two opposite currents finally became identified, un­less we see the facts from the Greek point of view. Hellenism had always been endowed with an extraor­dinary unifying power. What to us appears contradic­tory and opposite found reconciliation and harmony in Greek thought. Hence the tendency to consider evolu­tion and history as the result of the harmonizing activity of opposite forces. Empedocles assumes that the world arose from the contrasting forces of Neikos and Philia, discord and love. Heraclitus bases his whole philosophy on the notion of the unity of opposites. The contradic­tion between man and God found its resolution in the concept of the hero. The antithesis so essential for Jews between man and God, life and death, good and evil, was conceived by the Greeks as a temporary and appar­ent contrast within an ultimate harmony. Hence the tendency toward syncretism, which brought into contact and identified gods coming from many countries and diverse quarters, implying opposed lines of thought, symbolizing contradictory beliefs. In the light of these tendencies, Orphism and Judaism became a ready prey to the unifying mentality of Hellenistic Greeks. The mutual completion of Orphism and Judaism appeared to them not as absurd, but as the logical and natural out­come of Hellenistic thought.

What, then, was the part played by Orphism in his­tory? I believe it might be defined as the mediator be­tween the Jewish revival of Jesus and the Greek world. The teaching of Jesus could never have surmounted its Jewish milieu and become diffused in the world without undergoing the profound remodelling necessary to make it intelligible and acceptable to the Greeks. The whole subsequent history of Christianity depended on this is­sue. The possibility of further development lay in the fact that the teaching of Jesus had a universal content along with its local meaning. But the historical realiza­tion of this universal content depended upon the adapta­tions which it might be possible to effect without de­stroying its essence. How far was the new faith able to remain what it was and yet become Greek? What new form would it adopt ?

The problem was a very serious one, as it is for any religion that passes from its birthplace to other coun­tries and cultures. It is the problem that confronts the Christian missionary wherever he endeavors to carry his gospel to people whose intellect permits them to accept his message only through transformations which often constitute a genuine syncretism. The problem of medi­ating Christianity for the Greeks could not be solved by recourse to the Greek state religion, because nothing was more decidedly opposed to the spirit of Chris­tianity than the Greek religion. After the fourth century B.c., on account of its scepticism and ritualism, it had lost all religious content. The state religion was especially incapable of understanding the experience of unity with God, for in it, as illustrated by the Homeric poems and the tragedies, the divine and the human spheres were thought to be distinct and separate. Man felt God to be far away in a different world. The possibility of communion and identification with God was out of the question.

But mysticism among the Greeks had grown along­side the state religion, and, due to its influence, the whole of Greece became in Jesus’ age, consciously or unconsciously, impregnated with Orphic ideas. Now these ideas centered precisely in the notion of com­munion and union with God. Thus, thanks to Orphism, the Greeks were able to accept the notion which con­stituted the very heart of Christianity.

In still another particular, Orphism was suited to be­come the interpreter of the new faith. It could effec­tively interpret the person of Jesus. In Jewish Christian­ity, properly speaking, it would have been impossible even to employ the word “Christianity,” since in reality it had no Christ. The person of the Master had a purely human content; he was the Messiah, indeed, but this term was understood in a Jewish, human way. To be sure, the disciples believed in Jesus as a being endowed with divine powers, but in a vague way. He was a mortal who attained divinity by his spiritual exaltation. But Judaism lacked the adequate theological concept which could express this feeling; it lacked the concept of the God-man, in which man and God converge in a

single being. On the other hand, the Greeks had long ago realized this concept in the figure of the hero. And Orphism possessed an entire theology in which every­thing the disciples of Jesus believed with reference to his person found adequate expression. Thus the Greek myth served as the medium for the interpretation of all that was mysterious and inexpressible in the person of the Master.

Are we to think that the person of the Master suf­fered degradation when reshaped into a myth? This would mean a refusal to recognize the value and func­tions of myth. In a certain sense, of course, any inner experience whatsoever loses something by being molded into imaginative form; but there is no denying that only by means of myth does our experience become concrete and communicable. Similarly, any artistic intuition necessarily loses something when the painter expresses it in a picture or the poet embodies it in a poem; but by means of the picture or of the poem it can be passed on to others. Every idea thus loses something of its force on being expressed in language; but it is none the less true that without language none of our ideas could be perpetuated.

Myth, therefore, is necessary for religious history. The myth can and ought to be reduced to the simplest possible form; but it cannot be dispensed with, since the divine, the mysterious, the ineffable cannot be expressed except by imagination, that is, by myth. If it could be adequately expressed rationally it would no longer be ineffable. Therefore the divine element perceived by the disciples in the person of Jesus, their feeling of his intimacy with God, could never have been transmitted to the world had it not taken on mythical form. And it was this form that the Greek mentality was able to provide. The new religion, in passing from Judaism to Hellenism, was under the same necessity that devolves i / upon every religion in making the transition from its ; ‘ own civilization to another. It must accept symbols and terms that are not its own. Everyone knows, for instance, what profound changes Christianity undergoes when it is transmitted to Africans or Hindus. It be­comes a new species of Christianity, no longer Euro­pean but Africo-European, or Indo-European. Never­theless we do not believe that in this process Christianity is degraded; we welcome these transformations because they permit the African to become Christian. Orphism, by reclothing the Savior’s personality with its myth, in­terpreted and defined him and his relation to mankind, making it real and intelligible. Without this mythical in­terpretation he would have remained restricted to so- called Jewish Christianity.

On the other hand, it is obvious that it is not the external form but the essential content to which value is attached. It is not the material of the picture, but the idea it embodies that gives it value. It is not the mechanical fact of language that has significance but the idea expressed therein. Hence it is not the myth which is of consequence but the idea it serves to express.

Above all we must remember the new content that Christianity introduced into the Orphic form. There is no doubt that the essential character of the Orphic Zagreus is totally different from that of the Pauline Christ, since there was nothing behind the Orphic myth, while behind the Christian myth there was Jesus. For an Orphic who lost faith in the Orphic myth, nothing was left; but to a Christian who loses faith in the Pauline myth, there remains the person of Jesus, the prophet, the master, the friend. Zagreus had never be­come a master of life for his believers. Indeed, abandon­ing this strictly mythological viewpoint, it would really be a waste of time to prove the enormous superiority of Christianity when compared with the magic rites of Orphism, its barbaric myth, primitive initiations and materialistic eschatology.

From the Greek point of view, the Jewish revival of Jesus furnished to Greek mysticism the opportunity and the means for fighting successfully its old adversary. Christianity is the final defeat of the Greek Olympian gods. The Fathers of the Church had a deep sense of what the victory of Christianity over the Olympian gods meant and also of what a contribution Greek mysticism had brought to this victory, and they always remained unrelenting foes of the Greek state religion without con­cealing their sympathy for Greek mysticism. Their criticism of Greek mythology did not minimize at all their deep sympathy for Heraclitus and Plato, whom they considered with some degree of truth as forerun­ners of Christianity.

This should not be taken to mean that the Christian victory was a complete one. Greek gods disappeared from the religious world but the Greek mentality still remained. Above all, its realism. This realism entered Christianity and gave to it its characteristic dogmatism. Ideas may be discussed as long as they are conceived as activities of the spirit; but when they are conceived as beings, they become really certain. I may dispute or doubt an idea, but I cannot dispute or doubt a tree. Plato, in fact, never entertained any doubt as to the ideas, and never attempted a proof of them.

From realistic reflection on faith issued theology, in other words, as the name itself indicates, the science of divine things. But science being certain, theology was led to conceive its own affirmations as objectively true, its dogmas and myths as concrete realities. Just as Plato considered myths to be facts, and had re­course to them to confirm the truth of his ideas, so Christianity considered its myths as real facts and saw in them not so much the expression as the confirmation of faith. With Augustine the Platonic world of ideas became identical with the realm of God, and the divine world of Christianity became as truly concrete as Plato’s world of ideas. There was a passage from the spirit to nature. A true and special science of divine things was formed, just as there was a science of earthly things. A geography of the celestial world was actually constructed correspondent to and as certain as that of the terrestrial world. It is the Platonic point of view again: two worlds, the human and the divine, not only equally true but also equally recognizable. The theologian knows the divine world with the same cer­tainty as the human world. He knows that God is triune just as he knows that the sides of a triangle are three. We must not confound this realistic certainty with the certainty of faith. Faith is certain of the real existence of God, but it is not certain of its own representation and its definition of God; nay, the stronger the faith, the better it knows that it is impossible to condense religious experience into a formula. The certainty of faith is not a formal but a spiritual certainty. The­ological certainty is formal; it has nothing to do with God, but with formulae and dogmas concerning God. Thus was formed a divine science, which in so far as it is science has the right to confront human science with equal prerogatives. Theology and geology had equal rights; the story of the creation of the world was con­sidered both as divine and as natural history. This pseudo-scientific realism is Greek, and these pretensions of theology are not derived from Jesus’ teachings. Theology has a pagan origin and it makes Christianity pagan.

The only way to deliver Christianity from this im­position is to transform theology into mythology, that is, to cease to consider it from a religious viewpoint as a sort of knowledge and to view it in the light of the history of religion as a complex of symbols by means of which man realizes his faith. There is really no essential difference between theology and mythology; their con­tent is the same. They differ in that theology involves faith and implies truth, whereas mythology makes neither religious nor philosophical presumptions. The sacred myth assumes a theological character for every­one who believes it, and appears as a mythological product for everyone who sees it with the eyes of criticism or of science. Conversion involves a passing from mythology to theology. Neophytes and new con­verts regard as theology all that they once thought of as myth. A pagan employs the theological viewpoint to­wards the same stories of Zeus or Hera which he will condemn as myths after having been converted, and in this case he will view the same stories of Christ with theological eyes which once appeared to him as mere myths. For Origen the whole Orphic theology was nothing more than mythology; conversely, for Celsus the whole Christian theology was mythology. The re­duction, then, of all theology to mythology is tanta­mount to delivering one’s self from all religious pre­sumption, and to inquiring into the origin and history of theology in the light of philology.

From this reduction of theology to mythology arises what seems to some a great danger, to others a great hope, the hope in a possible reintegration of Chris­tianity. The history of Christianity has been a long process of disintegration. From the apostolical age down, it has shown a dispersive tendency, a tendency to divide and dissolve into churches, sects and heresies. This centrifugal tendency is remarkable in a religion which had its center in a person and ought therefore to present the greatest unity. But the centralizing force of the gospel of Jesus had to meet another force, Greek realism, with its demand for religious knowledge. What man believes must be true; the forms in which he clothes his experiences must constitute knowledge. Hence the necessity not only of differentiating creed from creed, but of opposing one creed to another, as knowledge to ignorance. For in matters of knowledge, one can not be tolerant. If my piece of knowledge is true, another assertion contradicting mine can not also be true. A body can not be at the same time white and black, or heavy and light, but must be either one or the other. When experience is reduced to knowledge, or better, spirit to nature, and the believer is convinced that he possesses the only true knowledge of God, as a scientist is convinced that he has the only true knowl­edge of nature, the way is opened to intolerance. The whole sad history of Christian disintegration takes its rise from the theory of the cognitive function of theology.

But with the reduction of theology to mythology, the reintegration of Christianity becomes possible. The dogma-concept may be replaced by the dogma-symbol which permits harmony in difference. Hence the great importance of every inquiry into the mythological ori­gins of theology, and, in the interests of Christian unity, I should be pleased if I could think that this inquiry has made a small contribution to the solution of this problem.

Vittorio Macchioro