All things are full of gods

[Steve Hayes]

I've seen quite a lot of mentions on social media of a book with the
title "All things are full of gods", so I looked it up on GoodReads,
and found that no one had written a review of it there yet.

<https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/210129380-all-things-are-full-of-gods
Has anyone here read it?

Any comments?

I was quite intrigued by the title, which seems to be rather
anti-modernity, because modernity maintains that all things are NOT
full of gods. As one modernist theologian put it, some 60 years ago:

Desacralization modernity.
Source: Cox, "The Secular City". 1965:36.
"We should oppose the romantic restoration of the sprites of
the forest. It may seem pleasant at first to reinstate the
leprechauns, but - as Hitler made all too clear - once the
Valkyries return, they will seek a bloodthirsty revenge on
those who banished them. We should also be wary of any attempt
to resacralize politics. Political leaders and movement should
never be granted any sacred significance, and all efforts to
use public authority to support traditional religious beliefs
or the quasi-religious beliefs of ideological secularism must
be resisted."

I half agree.

The supreme example of granting political leaders sacred significance
was the ancient Roman religion of emperor worship, and similar cults
of political leaders continue or are revived in modern times, and are
to be deprecated.

But when St Paul says our struggle is not against blood and flesh, but
against the rulers, the authorities, the world powers of this present
darkness (Eph 6:10-12) I believe he is saying that systemic evil is
demonic. These demons have been given different names at different
times.

Back in the days of apartheid, here in South Africa we often just
spoke of "the System", and in North America they spoke of "the
military-industrial complex".

All things are full of gods, but not all gods are good, or
well-disposed.

Back in the secular sixties Western theologians were concerned to
demythologise the Christian faith. But there seems to be a rapidly
growing field of scholarship that concerns itself mostly with those
who in that period tried to remythologise it, such as the Inklings --
J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams et al. Relatively little
attention is paid nowadays to the demythologisers.

[Paul S Person]

On Thu, 29 Aug 2024 07:58:46 +0200, Steve Hayes

Post by Steve Hayes
I've seen quite a lot of mentions on social media of a book with the
title "All things are full of gods", so I looked it up on GoodReads,
and found that no one had written a review of it there yet.
<https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/210129380-all-things-are-full-of-gods
Has anyone here read it?
Any comments?
I was quite intrigued by the title, which seems to be rather
anti-modernity, because modernity maintains that all things are NOT
Desacralization modernity.
Source: Cox, "The Secular City". 1965:36.
"We should oppose the romantic restoration of the sprites of
the forest. It may seem pleasant at first to reinstate the
leprechauns, but - as Hitler made all too clear - once the
Valkyries return, they will seek a bloodthirsty revenge on
those who banished them. We should also be wary of any attempt
to resacralize politics. Political leaders and movement should
never be granted any sacred significance, and all efforts to
use public authority to support traditional religious beliefs
or the quasi-religious beliefs of ideological secularism must
be resisted."
I half agree.

That's more than I can say.

I read that in the early 70s. I thought (perhaps "imagined" would be
more accurate) that I understood it.

I re-read it a few years ago. I didn't understand it at all. I
disposed of it, probably in a metallic book donation bin.

So I can't say whether I agree or not, since the whole thing was
opaque to me.

Post by Steve Hayes
The supreme example of granting political leaders sacred significance
was the ancient Roman religion of emperor worship, and similar cults
of political leaders continue or are revived in modern times, and are
to be deprecated.

There is a theory that this was done to provide all residents of the
Roman Empire with /one/ god they could /all/ acknowledge, thus
building a sense of unity. That's the problem with polytheistic
societies that are /very/ tolerant of other people's gods: no unifying
god.

Post by Steve Hayes
But when St Paul says our struggle is not against blood and flesh, but
against the rulers, the authorities, the world powers of this present
darkness (Eph 6:10-12) I believe he is saying that systemic evil is
demonic. These demons have been given different names at different
times.

That is a reasonable interpretation, although, AFAIK, the actual
context of his remarks is unknown -- presumably, there was a
philosophical or religious (and, since Paul was a Jew, probably
Jewish) position that posited rule of the world by, indeed, demons in
effect if not in name.

One of the books in /The Nag Hammadi Library in English/ is titled
"The Hypostasis of the Archons", which the translators translate in
their introduction as "The Reality of the Rulers", so I (at least)
wonder if Paul was into something that eventually produced Gnosticism.

Post by Steve Hayes
Back in the days of apartheid, here in South Africa we often just
spoke of "the System", and in North America they spoke of "the
military-industrial complex".
All things are full of gods, but not all gods are good, or
well-disposed.
Back in the secular sixties Western theologians were concerned to
demythologise the Christian faith. But there seems to be a rapidly
growing field of scholarship that concerns itself mostly with those
who in that period tried to remythologise it, such as the Inklings --
J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams et al. Relatively little
attention is paid nowadays to the demythologisers.

I once rendered one of these guys speechless by pointing out that,
having demythologized the Christian faith of its ancient imagery, it
would then be necessary to re-mythologize it in modern imagery.

Apparently, he really /believed/ that his high-level sophisticated
intellectualism was free of all imagery but was a plain unvarnished
view of reality.

Well, in all fairness, Moses probably felt the same way when he came
down from the mountain. It is an easy delusion to slip into.

[Steve Hayes]

On Thu, 29 Aug 2024 08:52:09 -0700, Paul S Person

Post by Paul S Person
On Thu, 29 Aug 2024 07:58:46 +0200, Steve Hayes

Post by Steve Hayes
I've seen quite a lot of mentions on social media of a book with the
title "All things are full of gods", so I looked it up on GoodReads,
and found that no one had written a review of it there yet.
<https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/210129380-all-things-are-full-of-gods
Has anyone here read it?
Any comments?
I was quite intrigued by the title, which seems to be rather
anti-modernity, because modernity maintains that all things are NOT
Desacralization modernity.
Source: Cox, "The Secular City". 1965:36.
"We should oppose the romantic restoration of the sprites of
the forest. It may seem pleasant at first to reinstate the
leprechauns, but - as Hitler made all too clear - once the
Valkyries return, they will seek a bloodthirsty revenge on
those who banished them. We should also be wary of any attempt
to resacralize politics. Political leaders and movement should
never be granted any sacred significance, and all efforts to
use public authority to support traditional religious beliefs
or the quasi-religious beliefs of ideological secularism must
be resisted."
I half agree.

That's more than I can say.
I read that in the early 70s. I thought (perhaps "imagined" would be
more accurate) that I understood it.
I re-read it a few years ago. I didn't understand it at all. I
disposed of it, probably in a metallic book donation bin.
So I can't say whether I agree or not, since the whole thing was
opaque to me.

I read it when it first came out in the 1960s.

It made half-sense to me then. The other half was a book called "The
Primal Vision" by John V. Taylor, which described how Western
Christianity, which had been contextualised into Western modernity by
the 19th century, was brought to Africa, which made little sense to
kost Africans, whose thinking was largely pre-modern.

Western missionaries therefore thought that Africans had to be
"civilized" before they could be Christianised.

"Civilization" means developing the worldview and thought patterns of
city dwellers, of which Harvey Cox was singing the praises in "The
Secular City". It can be contrasted with "urbanisation" which means
people phyically moving to cities, though they might still retain a
lot of rural patterns of thinking.

I reread "The Secular City" in 1995, 30 years later, and by then
people were talking about modernity, premodernity and postmodernity,
which provided an easier way of understanding it. And now another 30
years have passed.

Post by Paul S Person

Post by Steve Hayes
The supreme example of granting political leaders sacred significance
was the ancient Roman religion of emperor worship, and similar cults
of political leaders continue or are revived in modern times, and are
to be deprecated.

There is a theory that this was done to provide all residents of the
Roman Empire with /one/ god they could /all/ acknowledge, thus
building a sense of unity. That's the problem with polytheistic
societies that are /very/ tolerant of other people's gods: no unifying
god.

While that is possible, it could also have been influenced by the
Roman conception of a genius, a kind of guardian spirit that
accompanied a person throughout life (not entirely different from the
Christian conception of guardian angels). And the idea, common in the
Mediterranean and Middle Eastern societies at the time, of divine
kingship, that political authority was a spiritual power that attached
itself to the human ruler.

This notion was modernised and congealed in Western modernity in the
notion of the Divine Right of Kings.

Post by Paul S Person

Post by Steve Hayes
But when St Paul says our struggle is not against blood and flesh, but
against the rulers, the authorities, the world powers of this present
darkness (Eph 6:10-12) I believe he is saying that systemic evil is
demonic. These demons have been given different names at different
times.

That is a reasonable interpretation, although, AFAIK, the actual
context of his remarks is unknown -- presumably, there was a
philosophical or religious (and, since Paul was a Jew, probably
Jewish) position that posited rule of the world by, indeed, demons in
effect if not in name.

It is not altogether unknown, and several books published over the
last few years have dealt with it. Here are some of them, listed in
publication order, from the earliest to the most recent:

Caird, G.B. 1956. Principalities and powers: a study in Pauline
theology. London: Oxford University Press.

van den Heuvel, Albert H. 1965. These rebellious powers. New
York: Friendship.
Discusses principalities and powers especially
in relation to politics, economics etc

Montgomery, John Warwick. 1974. Myth, allegory and gospel.
Minneapolis: Bethany Fellowship.
ISBN: 0-87123-358-4
Contains articles on Tolkien, C.S. Lewis,
Charles Williams and G.K. Chesterton as
Christian apologists.

Montgomery, John Warwick. 1975. Principalities and powers: a new
look at the world of the occult. Minnealpolis:
Dimension.
ISBN: 0-87123-460-2

Wink, Walter. 1984. Naming the powers. Philadelphia: Fortress.
Dewey: 235.3
Deals with rulers and authorities, and the
theology of power, both political and
spiritual.

Wink, Walter. 1986. Unmasking the powers: the invisible forces
that determine human existence. Philadelphia:
Fortress.
ISBN: 0-8006-1902-1
Dewey: 235 WINK

Burnett, David. 1988. Unearthly powers: a Christian perspective
on primal and folk religion. Eastbourne: MARC.
ISBN: 1-85424-055-2
Dewey: 291 BURN
Ghosts, possession, the evil eye and sorcery
touch the lives of many people in their folk
religion. Even in our secular culture many
people turn first of all to the horoscope in
their morning paper. References secular
worldview sees humankind as dominant over
nature (p. 21) AICs and primal worldview (p.
33)

Stewart, Charles. 1991. Demons and the devil: moral imagination
in modern Greek culture. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press.
ISBN: 0-691-02848-6
Dewey: 306.691 216 094 99
The exotika - neraida, imps and demons etc in
modern Greece are not mere survivals of
pre-Christian Greek religion and culture, but
have been profoundly transformed by the
Orthodox Christian faith. Some interesting
parallels between inculturation in Orthodoxy
and the African independent churches,
Ethiopian Church etc.

Post by Paul S Person
One of the books in /The Nag Hammadi Library in English/ is titled
"The Hypostasis of the Archons", which the translators translate in
their introduction as "The Reality of the Rulers", so I (at least)
wonder if Paul was into something that eventually produced Gnosticism.

I think the "something" was the mystery of power and authority, to
which St Paul gave a Christian interpretation, and the Gnostics gave a
Gnostic interpretation. and there were various other interpretations
as well, including those of the human rulers of ancient empires.

Post by Paul S Person

Post by Steve Hayes
Back in the days of apartheid, here in South Africa we often just
spoke of "the System", and in North America they spoke of "the
military-industrial complex".
All things are full of gods, but not all gods are good, or
well-disposed.
Back in the secular sixties Western theologians were concerned to
demythologise the Christian faith. But there seems to be a rapidly
growing field of scholarship that concerns itself mostly with those
who in that period tried to remythologise it, such as the Inklings --
J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams et al. Relatively little
attention is paid nowadays to the demythologisers.

I once rendered one of these guys speechless by pointing out that,
having demythologized the Christian faith of its ancient imagery, it
would then be necessary to re-mythologize it in modern imagery.

You dreadful postmodernist, you!

Post by Paul S Person
Apparently, he really /believed/ that his high-level sophisticated
intellectualism was free of all imagery but was a plain unvarnished
view of reality.

Aye, that is the difference between modernity and modernism. Modernity
is the phenomenon and the world view, whole modernism is the ideology
that promotes it as the best and truest one. Postmodernity is
primarily the questioning, from various points of view,

Post by Paul S Person
Well, in all fairness, Moses probably felt the same way when he came
down from the mountain. It is an easy delusion to slip into.

:-)