Objective Content and Subjective Transformation: A Non-Christian Example
The approach to interpretation of New Testament writings that I advocate in these essays is very different from more usual approaches. Most approaches focus on what I call the “objective content” of these writings: what doctrines do they teach? Some approaches might try to reconstruct the intention of New Testament authors.
I think we must start from the fact that these writings were intended to bring about a “conversion” in an intended audience. To understand the meaning that these writings had for this audience, we must try to reconstruct the kind of conversion, the personal transformation that they mean to bring about.
Understanding this transformation is a more complex task than it is in the case of early Buddhism. Early Buddhist teaching describes in a very direct way the psychological mechanisms involved in the internal transformation it means to bring about. It offers specific meditation techniques, based on Buddhist psychology, by which a person could gradually bring about this internal transformation.
When we read Paul’s letters, however, what we mainly have is not a direct psychological description of the internal transformation he means to bring about in his audience. What we mainly have is the objective content of the preaching, consisting of images of sin and God’s salvation through the death and resurrection of Jesus. In some members of Paul’s audience, this brought about a subjective transformation. We cannot understand the full meaning of Paul’s message without understanding the inner transformation which, in the ideal case, it brought about in his original audience. But this inner transformation itself is something we must try to reconstruct for ourselves. We can only do this by imaginatively reconstructing an historical audience whose psychological state was such that the Pauline message would have awakened a strong and transforming internal transformation.
Many readers will be unfamiliar with this kind of experience — internal transformation brought about by the power of emotionally charged images. So the present essay explains this in more detail, using a passage from a modern book whose content and impact is completely different from what we find in Paul.
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This example involves a book by Carlos Castaneda titled Journey to Ixtlan. Castaneda was a University of California anthropology student who went to Mexico ostensibly to study the use of hallucinogenic drugs among indigenous peoples in Mexico. When he returned he wrote some books telling stories about his encounters with a wise man, “Don Juan” from the Yaqui tribe — stories about spiritual lessons Don Juan taught him.
Once at a Christmas party someone gave me a copy of Castaneda’s Journey to Ixtlan. While still at the party, I started reading some pages at random and came upon one passage that caused in me a completely unexpected flood of emotion, such that I had to leave the room sobbing. For months afterwards, I could not read this passage without breaking down in this same way.
The objective content of this passage (completely different from the content of Paul’s preaching) pictures human life on the model of a warrior engaged in a series of battles. According to this passage, what is important in these battles is not winning or losing, but storing up “personal power” in the battles. After every struggle of power, the warrior goes to a certain hilltop to store the power gained in these struggles. At the end of the warrior’s life, Death will tap him on his left shoulder, but cannot claim him until his spirit flies to his hilltop to complete a dance which is at the same time a manifestation of the power he has stored and the story of his life.
This is how “Don Juan” describes it:
Every warrior has a place to die. A place of his predilection which is soaked with unforgettable memories, where powerful events left their mark, a place where he has witnessed marvels, where secrets have been revealed to him, a place where he has stored his personal power. A warrior has the obligation to go back to that place of his predilection every time he taps power in order to store it there. He either goes there by means of walking or by means of dreaming. And finally, one day when his time on earth is up and he feels the tap of his death on his left shoulder, his spirit, which is always ready, flies to the place of his predilection and there the warrior dances to his death.
Every warrior has a specific form, a specific posture of power, which he develops throughout his life. It is a sort of dance. A movement that he does under the influence of his personal power. If a dying warrior has limited power, his dance is short; if his power is grandiose, his dance is magnificent. But regardless of whether his power is small or magnificent, death must stop to witness his last stand on earth. Death cannot overtake the warrior who is recounting the toil of his life for the last time until he has finished his dance…. Any man that hunts power has to learn that dance… Soon you may have a worthy opponent and I will show you then the first movement of power. You must add the other movements yourself as you go on living. Every new one must be obtained during a struggle of power. So, properly speaking, the posture, the form of a warrior, is the story of his life, a dance that grows as he grows in personal power….
A warrior is only a man. A humble man. He cannot change the designs of his death. But his impeccable spirit, which has stored power after stupendous hardships, can certainly hold his death for a moment, a moment long enough to let him rejoice for the last time in recalling his power. We may say that that is a gesture which death has with those who have an impeccable spirit… You will dance to your death here, on this hill top, at the end of the day. And in your last dance you will tell of your struggles, of the battles you have won and of those you have lost; you will tell of your joys and bewilderment on encountering personal power. Your dance will tell about the secrets and about the marvels you have stored. And your death will sit here and watch you. The dying sun will glow on you without burning… The wind will be soft and mellow and your hill top will tremble. As you reach the end of your dance you will look at the sun, for you will never see it again in waking or in dreaming, and then your death will point to the south. To the vastness. (Journey to Ixtlan, NY: Simon and Schuster. 1972. p. 187-89)
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The objective content of this passage is completely different from the content of Paul’s preaching, as was my subjective experience in response to the passage.
My main purpose here is to illustrate the way in which the “objective content” of a piece of writing can, through the emotional power of its imagery, potentially bring about a “subjective” internal transformation in a person.
The objective content of this passage is what anyone can read on the page. It consists in ideas about “personal power” that can be stored up, a “spirit” that can fly to a hilltop to store it, and a person-like being “Death” which will watch a person do a dance that expresses the power he has stored up in a life of doing battle.
My psychological state on reading this objective content was such that it was deeply moving to me. It had a meaning for me that could not be understood without connecting it to the emotions that it evoked in me, or the potentially transforming effect it might have on my fundamental attitudes to life, described below — a possible “subjective transformation” potentially brought about in some individuals by reading this passage.
But the passage itself does not explicitly describe this psychological state or the potentially transforming emotional effect it had on me. It is quite possible for a person to read what the passage explicitly says (its objective content), be unmoved by it, and consequently have no idea about the meaning that it had for me.
This is my basic thesis about Paul’s preaching. The psychological state of his original audience was such that the objective content of his preaching (very different from the objective content of the Castaneda passage) was deeply moving to them, potentially transforming their basic life-attitudes. It is quite possible for those not psychologically prepared in this way to read the objective content of Paul’s message and be unmoved by it. They can easily understand its objective content, without understanding the meaning that it had (in the ideal case) for Paul’s audience. In my experience, this has been the case with most students in this course, both Christian and non-Christian.
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We can go further:
The meaning that this Castaneda passage had for me as I first read it was also beyond my rational comprehension. The feelings it evoked were surprising to me, coming from somewhere beyond my conscious thinking and conscious control. These feelings lay almost completely outside my sense of myself as a rational person trying to live by rational principles, and to take practical steps to make my way through what is commonly called “the real world.” I would describe my rational self as somewhat ambitious and competitive, but above all peace-loving, with an extreme aversion to overt confrontational battles. I always prefer to look at things from a realistic, “practical” point of view, figuring out what is practically possible, and focusing on practical means of avoiding or resolving conflicts rather than actively “fighting battles.” Consequently I would never consciously choose “warrior” to describe my image of what my life is about. This is why my reaction to this passage came upon me completely by surprise. Although I have reflected a great deal on this passage, the strength of the feelings it arouses are still something beyond my abilities to explain.
To take this further: One could say there is a “rational” self which takes seriously a particular social “world” as the context for measuring success or failure, and defines its identity and self-image in relation to this context. But this rational self is not the whole of oneself. Some other part perceives and experiences life in a way that conflicts with this “rational” self-image and cannot be adequately represented in the context of the normal social world. People do not completely control their perception of the world and the meaning of life, deciding rationally how they think they should experience life. Some part of us escapes rational control and actually experiences life in ways that are unpredictable and uncontrollable. The way this part experiences life often cannot find adequate expression within the framework constituted by normal social life, finding adequate concrete expression only in images of entities and events that have no place in “this world,” i.e. the world which is the object of rational attempts at adjustment and success. In the present case note that the entities and events in the Castaneda passage have an otherworldly, “supernatural” character — a spirit able to fly to a hilltop, personal power stored up, “Death” as a person-like being able to watch a person do an inevitable dance in the last moments of her life.
One can see here the connection between “irrational” feelings, supernatural imagery, and a certain kind of “otherworldly” worldview concerning what finally matters. Normal rationality takes seriously the ordinary social world as an evaluative context for determining what counts as a “successful” or “unsuccessful” life. The warrior imagery in the Castaneda passage replaces this social context with an entirely different evaluative context. In this new otherworldly, “supernatural” context, success in life is not measured by normal standards — getting my way, achieving my goals, enhancing my reputation, gaining status or wealth, etc. “It’s not whether you win or lose, but how you fight the battle.” This worldview is strengthened by the image of cumulatively “storing up personal power,” a power able to counter the common feeling that death is a final defeat. Death is not denied. But personal power, and a dance recounting one’s life story, is “stronger” than the felt power of death to deny life’s meaningfulness.
I call my response to Castaneda’s imagery “irrational,” not in a negative sense, but in the sense that it came from some part of my being beyond my normal, rational, in-control self.
My response to this passage was also “irrational” in another sense. That is, to borrow a novel-title from Margaret Atwood, this response could be pictured as the “surfacing” of a different self, previously submerged and repressed, now surfacing by a kind of spontaneous, self-asserting, emotional power of its own — not a self-image either rationally contrived or freely and deliberately chosen. This previously submerged, “warrior”-self feels life as an intense drama, a struggle to maintain one’s integrity in the middle of constant challenges. But in some ways this is a “private” drama and struggle, in that the integrity maintained is not something commonly recognized in the social world. The importance of this struggle can feel denied by the social world which recognizes only successes and failures. The cumulative integrity built up, the “strength of character” formed by the way one meets life’s challenges, receives recognition in this new context as “personal power” in a cosmic drama mirroring its actual importance, an importance not adequately recognized in the comparatively dull transactions of everyday practical concerns. The cosmic drama of personal power and a final death-dance is felt by this previously submerged “warrior”-self to represent “the truth” about life, representing the truth better than “the real world” that our rational self is constantly trying to adjust to and be successful in.
But when I refer here to “the truth about life,” what does “the truth” mean in this phrase? It seems clearly a mistake to think here about objective factual truth, an assumption that would lead us to ask questions about the literal existence of “personal power,” a spirit able to fly to a hilltop, a person-like being called “Death,” and so on.
We can speak here instead of a ready-to-emerge “identity,” which is awakened, brought to emergence, and also defined and supported, by the concrete imagery of Castaneda’s supernatural narrative.
In this context, the term “identity” refers to the way a person defines himself as a worthwhile being leading a meaningful life. In this case we have a possible transition from one identity to another. One more “rational” person defines himself in relation to a relatively ordinary social context, getting his self esteem from his “successes” and “failures” defined the way his society defines them. But in my case there was evidently another possible self, another possible identity, “ready to emerge” in the sense that some less conscious and rational part of me was experiencing the world quite differently from the way my more rational self experienced it.
This other self felt its view of the world well-articulated by Castaneda’s supernatural narrative concerning life’s meaning, and reading this narrative awakened this other self, causing it to emerge and actualize itself in a flood of emotion. One can also see that Castaneda’s supernatural narrative could potentially become the centerpiece of a person’s worldview, supporting this emergent identity in an ongoing way.
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This is the kind of thing needed to explain the success of Paul’s preaching. There must have been a relatively large audience psychologically prepared for just his particular message, with a ready-to-emerge new identity, lurking below the surface of rational consciousness. It was awakened and emerged into being in a flood of emotion by the particular supernatural imagery that was the objective content of Paul’s charismatic preaching. Another essay The Historical Mindset of Paul’s Audience: Why Were They So Emotionally Moved and Transformed by His Specific Preaching? attempts an account of the kind of cultural and religious background (scripture study in synagogue communities) which would have brought about this ready-to-emerge new identity, awakened by Pauline preaching. Afterwards, the objective content of Pauline preaching would become a centerpiece of the Pauline-Christian worldview, supporting this new identity in an ongoing way.
The supernatural imagery employed in Paul’s preaching was very different from the supernatural imagery in the Castaneda passage, and so the ready-to-emerge identity it awakened must have been very different as well. But two things are noteworthy about the concreteness of the imagery in both cases.
First, only concrete imagery possesses emotional power. Castaneda’s imagery of life-battles, personal power, climaxing in the concrete scene of a desert hilltop where a person dances the story of her life while Death watches — all this had an emotional power for me that no direct psychological description of the ready to emerge identity could have had. This is also true of the very concrete imagery regarding God, sin, and salvation through the cross of Jesus, that forms the objective content of Paul’s preaching.
But, secondly, concrete imagery brings with it its own liabilities. It tempts readers to focus their attention on questions about the objective factual truth of the imagery. Is there really a spirit able to fly to a hilltop to store personal power? Is there really a person-like being “Death” that will watch a person dance the story of her life in her last moments? This temptation to focus on the factual truth of the objective content will be especially strong in readers who remain emotionally unaffected by the imagery.
But this is obviously a mistake. The emotion-driven internal transformation that the Castaneda passage potentially brings about may be admirable or not admirable. But whether this transformation is admirable or not has nothing to do with the question as to whether flying spirits, personal power, or Death-as-a-person objectively exist or not. We can think critically of the meaning of this passage in terms of “true” or “not true” in this case. But the “truth” we should think critically about is not the factual truth of the supernatural imagery taken literally apart from its emotional power. The truth we should examine concerns the transformation itself and the newly emerged identity it brings about. This may or may not be a truly admirable identity. The question as to whether it is truly admirable or not — what it might be at its least and its most admirable — is something we can and should critically examine by means of Socratic reasoning.
This makes possible a rational evaluation of a transformation initially brought about through “irrational” emotional response rather than through rational thought.
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This is how we should treat the concrete imagery of God, sin, and salvation that forms the objective content of Pauline preaching. On the one hand, its concreteness was important for the emotional power of Paul’s preaching. On the other hand, we must resist the temptation to focus on questions about the factual truth of this concrete supernatural imagery, assuming that if it is not factually true, this means that Pauline Christianity is based on falsehood and illusion. This temptation is especially strong among science-minded individuals who feel emotionally unmoved by the objective content of Paul’s preaching.
This is in accord with the project of critical reconstruction. Critical reconstruction does not ask, “What did Paul believe?” or even, “What did Paul regard it as essential to believe?” It asks rather: “What needs to be true in order for the Pauline-Christian way of life to be well-founded?”
In other words, Paul certainly thought it essential to believe in certain literal and objective facts about God, sin, and salvation-through-Jesus, to make this a centerpiece of one’s worldview, to define one’s identity in relation to this worldview, and to live a life that expresses this identity.
But suppose hypothetically it turns out that Paul’s beliefs about God, sin, and salvation-through-Jesus are objectively false. Would Paul and Pauline Christians have led foolish and wasted lives, because their lives were based on an illusion? From the point of view of critical reconstruction, the answer would have to be no. What crucially matters is a person’s virtue. If Paul’s otherworldly worldview brings about and supports an admirable identity — an identity essentially connected to particular admirable virtues — then from a strictly rational point of view it doesn’t really matter whether this worldview consists in objective facts or not.
This is also in accord with the point made in another essay about Platonic Forms as the centerpiece of Plato’s otherworldly worldview (Plato on World-Transcending Virtue-Forms) This essay argues that a worldview should not be understood and evaluated as a reality map. It doesn’t matter whether Platonic Forms, as the centerpiece of Plato’s otherworldly worldview, objectively “exist” or not. What makes a worldview a good worldview is not its ability to accurately picture objective facts about reality, but its connection to an admirable moral identity.
This Castaneda example provides matters for reflection on several issues central to my approach to other religious writings.
First, discussions above make it clear that it is a mistake to focus on issues about factual truth–in this case asking questions like: Is this really what will happen when I am about to die? Is there a person “Death” who will tap me on my left shoulder when my time is up? Is there really such a thing as personal power? Is it true that everyone’s life is a series of battles? What about Carlos and Don Juan and Yaqui wisdom? Was there really such a person as Don Juan who was teaching Carlos the traditions of the actual Yaqui tribe? Or did Carlos just make up this story?
I think all this does not matter. What matters is that, however this story came into existence, it had very great moving power for me when I read it.
This is relevant when it comes to the death-and-resurrection story Paul tells, how he tells it, and the meaning that he gives it in the Letter to the Romans. It doesn’t matter whether this story is true or not. A big issue in this case seems to be the very particular life-history of Paul’s audience that made his message so moving to so many of them, and brought about the kind of transformation he describes. As I reconstruct it, this a life-history that is very different from that of many people today, accounting for the fact that Paul’s preaching in his letters has such a different probable impact on his audience than it has on many individuals today.
Finally, my theory of religions is fundamentally pluralist, in the sense that there is not only one one correct answer, but many good answers, when it comes to questions about how a person should lead her life. Early Buddhism and early Christianity offer very different answers to this kind of question, and there are very many other potentially good answers, offered in the many writings available to us today.
How is a person to choose, then?
I think reflection on my personal experience with the Castaneda passage offers a basis for one good answer to this question. This passage happened to touch something deep in me, which is why it was so moving. A good argument could be made that this is one good criterion for choosing. When it comes to choosing ideas or images to live one’s life by, all other things being equal, it seems better to choose ideas and images that can find deep roots in one’s own unique personality. This makes it much easier to integrate these ideas and images into one’s own being, making them an instinctive basis for spontaneous reactions to the world–in contrast, say, to ideas and images one might choose for other reasons, but which one then has to constantly think about and impose on oneself by will-power.
The present essay argues a particular thesis about Paul’s supernatural narrative concerning sin and salvation. Evidence suggests that this narrative had great emotional power to move considerable numbers of people in Paul’s intended audience, and bring about a fundamental transformation in their lives. I argue that this emotional power and the transformation it brought about is what matters–not the question about whether this narrative is objectively true or not.
I argue this same thesis regarding the Jesus-stories told in the Gospels. The purpose of telling these stories was not to inform people of some objectively true facts about Jesus’s life. These narratives about Jesus’s life had the same purpose as Paul’s supernatural narrative: To transform people’s lives. This is why I think that, although it can satisfy our curiosity to apply historical methods to try to reconstruct true facts about Jesus’s life, it is a mistake to substitute this reconstructed historical narrative for the Gospel narrative. I explain these ideas further in an essay on The Quest for the Historical Jesus. They also form the basis for my approach to understanding the message of the Gospel of Mark.
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