23. Manichaeism

we are interested today in an obscure little movements tracing back to the 3rd century called manake ISM we wouldn't care a bit about manake ISM we wouldn't mention it probably wouldn't even know about it but for the fact that Agustin was for nine years a member of the mana key movement and that does seem to have shaped a little bit of his thought and we're gonna be spending time with a Gustin of course soon enough and so in order to set up kind of an understanding of Agustin we're going to do a little bit with the mana keys ever come across the before was this anybody ever heard of the manichaean heresy movement is this brand-new Jakob ever heard of the mana keys never Megan manic Eve Spencer mana keys Sydney thinks so mana keys rings a bell don't remember anything about it alright well this is more than you ever wanted to know about the man accused but you do need to know it so here we are the founder of the mannequin movement is a guy by the name of oddly enough Manny you know makes you wonder about somebody's mother you live from 210 to 275 some people have argued that the term Manny is not really a personal name but it's more of a title of respect connected with Persian culture and it was indeed a Persian religion so that may be the case hard to say but in any event he took that title for himself and he founded this movement in the year - 42 - 42 in Mesopotamia the word Mesopotamia means what's the answer Krista I've always wanted to test the experiment of multitasking can somebody talk to their neighbor be fully engaged in a side conversation and still hear the question that I asked so Krista let's hear what's the answer there's nobody back there I'm up here what that is so wrong that makes me feel so much better I now want to establish that women are not able to multitask hey we finally have established by scientific strict analysis that women are as well I'll just start to leave it right there what is the answer the question do you remember Spencer engaged in a side conversation here you know No yes close between the mirrors thank you thank you oh man all right so which has nothing to do with Mesopotamia key ISM but all right so mana key or maniy actually the founder of this claimed at an early age probably at his teens to have received a great divine revelation not unlike many religious leaders who've come along you know usually it's in their mid-teens that they claimed that God came and said something special to them Mohammed made that claim Buddha made a claim like that others have made similar claims so at this point he's kind of you know following pro forma the style of religious movements his claim however was interesting he claimed in the air to 42 to have been told by God that he was Manny was the coming parakou Periclean I almost said parakeet that's not it Paraclete what is the Paraclete great Parakletos what is that then yes okay that's right he actually made that statement in the upper room we have it in John's Gospel chapter 15 16 to some degree and 14 Jesus says I will not leave you without a para clay toss an advocate but I will send one we read that text and gathered that's the Holy Spirit who we would assume came on the day of Pentecost but Manny said nope you got that wrong I am the para clay toss you see and he claimed to be finalizing a succession of religious personalities prophets that include the following Zoroaster Hermes Plato Buddha and Jesus so manyy claim to be the end of a line of luminaries Zoroaster is associated with what religion who is Zoroaster connected to Stephen because our history nism that's very good yeah yeah and what can you can anyone give me any more data then the Zoroaster is connected to Zoroastrianism any part of the world that that's associated with do you know Laura no really it doesn't as far as I know it doesn't you're in the right part of the world seriously connected with yeah it's bad actually it's Persian it's a Zorro aster was was the founder of the persian religion and the great Persian god Ahura Mazda which is not a car it is a God goes back to Persia was the religion really founded by Zoroaster sometime around a thousand BC Hermes who's that who is Hermes Nicole that's right so the Greeks make it to the list in the person of their famous god Hermes known to them to the this is the Greek name what's the the Roman counterpart to Hermes his name is mercury I think is right yeah all right Plato you all know Plato Buddha what does Buddha live what's his time frame ready no generally you know Jacob Buddha know anybody but you know 3rd 4th century BC and Jesus you've all heard of Jesus so so he claims to be the the final great leader actually greater than Jesus so Manny has some pretty extravagant claims that he makes on his own behalf and so on yeah yeah oh it's very Cod this is this is really common though you know I'll tell you the the mani reminds me a lot of a character who called himself bah bahah lua Baha Lua who founded the religion that you know of as you know he was 1800s founded founded the Baha'i religion right and you've heard of the Baha'i religion right usually know what's out there and really they're very similar the Baha'i religion claims to be the religion that will unite all the other religions of the world and so I wants to tip its hat to all of them you know tip your hat to Buddha tip your hat to za roster all these Moses makes the list all of these different religions are supposedly now going to be united in this wonderful final expression of religious spirit and so it was kind of the way Manny was operating and it's not it's not uncommon you see that on other occasions as well Steven well one of tour I don't know I don't know him personally just didn't you know make it to Persia that year but it's either that he was a megalomaniac it's possible he was a extraordinarily convincing liar or a fruitcake I don't know but one of the above I think I think it counts for it I don't know what else to say it's like take your pick there yeah well I don't know it's hard to say and Mohammed claims that he was visited by Gabriel and a kick you know Sun Myung Moon you know that name founder of the unification Church the Moonies claims that God met him somewhere in Korea when he was 16 years old you know what what can you say these people come along they make these claims and I'll tell you then if you can if you make that claim about yourself and say it with enough fervor you'll get some people to believe it you will you will spend eternity in hell but in the meantime you can have a great life you know it's just the way it is so anyway I don't write really don't know the psychology except that that certainly these people come along they make these extravagant claims and they get traction they get people to believe it and all of a sudden you got yourself a movement and it is kind of self reinforcing if I were to walk in here into this classroom and say God met me last night and told me I and the Parekh that I hate to even say this I'm lightning like coming I want to stand back but just by way of illustration if I were to say that yes that's right that's the proper response but then I can say I'm being persecuted for being a prophet I could get and I'm not any of you you're much too smart but I could get some people to believe it you know and I could probably get some people to sell their stuff and give it to me and give me a really nice life for a while right before I dropped right into the pit of hell I mean it you know it works that way you could do that and that's what happens all history is peppered with these characters so this is one of them anyway we wouldn't care about it it's not that he was that brilliant but it does just turn out that he touched the life of Augustine and that made his influence highly exaggerated in the history of the church and that's why we're interested in it so anyway he competes for dominance he's trying to win over Christianity he's trying to win over Zoroastrianism and Persia and various other religions he doesn't really succeed he gets the following there's people that certainly believe in him but eventually he dies in a Persian jail waiting execution that's the end of Manny and his but his religion continues so it continues on beyond his own life it is a religion that you would say is synchronistic is that a new word you know that word syncretism never heard it anybody okay learn this word syncretism is a word that applies to any religion which attempts to simply combine other religions that's what I like to call cafeteria theology you go into the cafeteria and you just take what you like you know you take the parts that you enjoy you leave out the parts that you don't I went to the cafeteria I would certainly take you know the bread pudding I would leave out the yellow squash I mean we just go through and we kind of pick and choose what we like and you can do that in your religion and you can create kind of a little religion of your own design and that's what he did so it's a syncretistic religion it had some affinity to mystery religions which were very common in that time fairly secretive there was in manake ISM kind of two circles the outer circle and the inner circle the inner circle was called the elect the outer circle were called the auditors the elect no the deep dark secrets the auditors are still learning and only when they go through a fairly severe regimen will they be admitted to the inner secrets Agustin was never a member of the elect but he was an auditor for nine years obviously before he became a Christian this would be when he was in his 20s and so it did influence his thinking now let me say it influenced it in a sense negatively that is he later repudiated and attacked vigorously the mana keys but some people think part of his thought was shaped in a sense by his negative reaction to the man accused and I'll talk about why in a minute all right so let me give you the themes there's kind of major themes in manic II ISM that I want you to know one first theme dualism we've used this word before so it's not new to you you all have a tread on the tip of your tons when I say the word dualism it immediately Matthew sparks in your mind the idea of what what comes to mind when we speak of a dualism that would be one form of dualism what is the word itself mean well let's take that what would be a body soul dualism creative okay all right that's the idea there's something else that we need to kind of complete the thought conflict that's right conflict possibly between body and soul but dualism itself just means conflict so anytime you hear kind of hear dualism you think of two forces at war with each other usually they are either equal or nearly equal forces a dualism is not descriptive of a contest between you and an ant you will win ordinarily in that conflict but if the ant weighs 500 pounds then it might look more like a dualism where you've got equal or nearly equal forces coming at each other in what usually amounts to an ongoing struggle and so Matthew mentioned body and soul what Plato had an idea of a body soul dualism in which the body and the soul have almost equal power and leave you in a conflicted state right it's kind of the experience you have when you come to philosophy the better part of you the more virtuous part wants to pay attention listen attentively take good notes do well but part of you the evil bass part wants to be distracted talk to your neighbor not pay attention engage in side conversations ignore the teacher you see if the duel isn't you know what I'm saying there and you just have to kind of figure out which way you're gonna go which side you're gonna tilt with in this conflict all right well Manny was a duelist he and he gave us what's called there's a term I do want you to know abbreviates UMD ultimate metaphysical dualism ultimate metaphysical dualism he's not the only one but he's an important one who gives us that idea but he suppose an ultimate metaphysical dualism would look like Trevor what do you think what what am i describing there when I use the expression ultimate metaphysical dualism okay good and evil is Right usually the good will say over here and the evil over here are symbolized what are the typical symbols that designate the good on the one side and the evil on the other what do you suppose any idea no Sara moves and I call on her go ahead mr. Dupre exactly light and darkness and so ultimate medical metaphysical dualisms usually have this notion that in all of the universe there is an ongoing struggle between two great forces not just in us but in all of creation all of the universe and one side is the side of virtue and light and goodness and the other side is the side of evil and darkness and those two are in this constant eternal wrestling match sometimes white gets the upper hand sometimes darkness seems to be winning but nobody ever finally is able to squish the other one it's always this ongoing struggle and Manny was one of many who's given us an idea like that think about the movie star wars is all the sudden I get everybody's attention amazing is the force as its developed in star wars reflective of an ultimate metaphysical dualism okay Ben says yes said he says yes this Sydney is not so sure anybody want to take a position and defend it one way or the other is the force in Star Wars consistent with what's called an ultimate medic metaphysical dualism Ray I'm over here ah do you have an opinion Steven knows all right that's right that's right that's the dualistic aspect of it but it's not true ultimate metaphysical dualism how come pardon me why does one win ultimately I don't know either yeah he never Fenton Lukas never finished his series so we don't know what do you think Krista to have an opinion that's true you have change over that's right I don't think it is I it has a dualistic aspect to it but the problem is the force is one thing and you just have the dark side of the force it's not like you got the good force and the bad force you've just got the force right so actually it's a little bit more of a pantheism than a dualism but but there's a little bit of an element to it anyway second feature I gave you this word already but I want to put it up here as a theme syncretism syncretism as I said earlier just means it's taking themes from various religious traditions putting them together this is absolutely your culture this is this is kind of the prevailing paradigm for religion in American culture today especially among people your age you just sort of take the things you like you know you create a religion that really suits you it's called designer theology you just you just kind of you know make it like you'd make some clothing that fits you perfectly and you know if the designer religion that I have for me isn't quite the same as the designer religion that Spencer has it's fine because it's just what works for me it's what's true for me and that's that's you know that's really I think you know very much a part of your culture well that was kind of the way man he was Jesus was viewed as one among many many different religious leaders that have come along Jesus is just one of them he believed in reincarnation he believed very much like the Hindus would that you've got this kind of repeating cycle that goes down he tried to find a place for every major religion and his kind of pantheon of religions as a result of that the mana keys preserved a lot of documents that would otherwise be lost to us and so you've heard of lost books of the Bible you know the Gospel of Thomas and so on some of these that are apocryphal sometimes Gnostic part of the reason we even have those at all is because the manna Keys hung onto them and so we can see a little bit about some of the offbeat you know religious thinking because thankfully the minor Keys actually kept them alive for us all right so anyway it's syncretistic third thing that you should know about it and this is of special importance for Agustin was the so called creation myth his creation myth this was borrowed largely from Christian and Jewish sources and it goes something like this God created Adam and Adam was original light in this dualistic conception Adam is light and I he's in some kind of paradise situation Adam however is attacked by the god of darkness this dualistic paradigm Adam is there light he's attacked by darkness darkness swallows Adam and the entire creation of light darkness kind of wins the upper hand for a moment and then darkness flows up this is your typical myth you know regurgitates the light that it swallowed it's a little case of influenza and out Buse in the vomit the moon the Sun stars and Eve Eve has a little bit of light but not nearly as much as Adam she's a darker character not totally dark but darker she comes you better close the door I don't want the little kids to hear this it gets it gets worse you know it's the x-rated lectures that we have to kind of be careful and Eve comes and offers Adam an apple but of course as you probably can guess the Apple she offers is her own self it's a sexual offer that she makes and Adam is unable to resist the overwhelming temptation presented by Eve heesu commies and they have intercourse and as a result of that Abel and Seth are produced both of those sons who are more light type sons you know then however Eve who is really not a very I'm sorry no no I'm giving it to you here it is these she produces a bowl and set those two then Eve who is not a very virtuous lady of course because she has so much darkness enter later has intercourse sexual relations with Satan and out of that relationship out of that relationship is produced then Alicia Kane okay so all of the succeeding generations from Adam and Eve and Satan are men trapped in darkness and God then has to send to the messengers messengers of light whose purpose is to free them rescue them from the darkness in which they're trapped and the messengers that God has sent through history include names most of which you would recognize Noah is a character that comes as a messenger of light to try to rescue people from the darkness in which they have found themselves trapped Abraham is a messenger of light Zoroaster is a messenger of light Buddha Jesus but finally the consummate ultimate messenger of light the one who's also not gonna get the job done and free men from this bondage to darkness is of course our good friend Manny Josiah question well Manny's answer to that would be that God takes people of particular virtue and gives them more knowledge you know now Manny lived before Muhammad but he would say the same thing of Muhammad he would say that along comes these people with some kind of great spiritual sense to them more than most and then they're given this additional help all right now I realize that little story strikes you as a bit bizarre and that's good of course if you've read Theogony if you've read you know classical literature you know that this is not all that unusual these kinds of rather bizarre and fanciful accountings for creation and so on so it shouldn't strike you as too strange but and that was his little presentation of it the the thing however that is important to us is that Agustin as a auditor of the mana keys for nine years was deeply influenced by the thought of the mana keys particularly at the point of their view of Eve I don't know if you're aware of it or not but in church history there has generally been a pretty negative attitude toward Eve Adam is kind of regarded as you know a guy that messed up he should have been more stalwart II should have been more backbone you know that kind of thing but Eve is often conceived of in the traditional art of the church and in some of the kind of thought of the church and the poetry and so on as a truly sinister character a person who comes on the scene with a true dark side all right and that is just part of Christian history it's part of the Christian lore I guess I'd say the New Testament doesn't really give you in fact of anything the New Testament is rather sympathetic toward Eve Paul says you know she was that that Adam do what he was doing and and was had greater guilt he was tricked he actually makes a little accommodation for her you know but the Christian history has been pretty severe on Eve and it's been highly tempting in Christian history to take this story of the garden and restated in sexual terms I don't know if you know that or not but I'm just telling it to you now that that's been a very common way to spend that story so that the way that what's actually going on in the garden is not this kind of innocent here's an apple Adam why don't you take a bite you know it's something like that it's it's you know it's a vastly more profound temptation that's being offered to Adam and have he protected his virtue he would have resisted that that she comes on here offering something that is decidedly a kind of evil you know namely the sexual temptation and so this is the man aqui look out look and this really does get into the thinking of Augustan and so what you find in Christian history and you really find this in Agustin is a very negative view of Eve in particular and then I'm not so negative but net definitely visible negative view of women in general all right now I don't want to say too strongly because I think Agustin you can overstate this case but it's certainly present and it creates an interesting little kind of paradigm in terms of how you understand it's the development of some thought so here we have Adam and Eve all right now in the New Testament we hear that as there was a first Adam there was a last Adam right you're familiar with that and who is the last Adam Jesus that's right there is also a persisting idea not so much in the New Testament but in Christian history that just as there was a first Adam there was a first Eve and just as there's a last Adam there's a last Steve who is the one who in a sense repairs the damage done by the first Eve in this tradition her name would be Mary who we commonly referred to not simply as Mary but is what the Virgin Mary you know say that about Eve she's the temptress she's the seductress sexually mary is the one of sexual purity you see she's the Virgin the Catholic Church of course insists that she's not simply a virgin at the time of the birth of Jesus she's white she's always a virgin the perpetual virginity of Mary why are they so interested in the perpetual virginity of Mary why is you know why is that such a big deal to them because there is this idea that any sort of sexual activity at all has a kind of taint to it and they want to protect Mary from that and it's given rise to a whole interesting ethic of sexuality you'd say in church history you know where and even in marriage there's a kind of a taint to it that's still to this day a kind of Roman Catholic idea are you aware of that is that are you familiar with that at all there is this kind of taint aspect the in the Catholic Church sexual activity even in marriage has in it what the Catholic Church calls a little bit of concupiscence concupiscence the concupiscent aspect of sexual activity even in marriage I mean let alone outside of marriage I'm saying even between a husband and a wife there's still a little tate you know hence to a Catholic the only truly legitimate reason to engage in sexual activity is what children that is the offsetting virtue and therefore the Catholic Church says if you engage in sexual activity without some it's in some sense or other an eye toward having children than you are succumbing to the conclusion aspect of sex and even between a husband and a wife it has a kind of sinful taint to it so the Roman Catholic Church takes a strong stand against any kind of birth control you know that for that very reason you see the logic there and that's been with us hey you know down through the history of the church so anyway you've got this this view of Eve as kind of the seductress and you have an a sort of an equally elevated view of Mary so Mary in the New Testament from the Roman Catholic point of view almost competes with Jesus for importance you know that don't you from a Catholic point of view you find almost as much celebration of Mary as you do of Jesus and you have to say and I'm saying this with a certain degree of hesitation because I love Agustin he is one of my you know all-time big-deal heroes and I'm going to speak very glowingly of his thought when we get to Agustin but at least at this point I think in fairness you have to say this is one where he didn't do us a lot of good you know this kind of emphasis on the negative aspects of Eve and the sort of compensating exaggeration of the virtue of Mary gave to church history an echo of that that continues to this day especially in Roman Catholic thought not so much in Protestant thought the Protestants generally object to the idea that marry after the birth of Jesus had a normal marital relationship with her husband and that children were produced between Joseph and Mary that were brothers and sisters of Jesus do Protestants have a problem with that generally generally no we look at the New Testament we see references to Jesus brothers and sisters you know we find those references we actually find names of people who were said to be the brothers and sisters of Christ you show those verses to your Roman Catholic Frey you say what is up with this perpetual virginity of Mary stuff but you know I thought I thought the New Testament said that Mary had some more children and here they are and they're the brothers of Jesus so what's what's the Catholic response to that Megan cousins that's right or possibly children that Joseph had by a prior marriage there's a very widespread theory that Joseph was an older man had been married once his wife had died and he had children and then he married Mary who was many years his you know younger say you know be like Joseph was maybe 45 50 years old Mary is in her late teens that wasn't all that uncommon in those days so Joseph eventually dies because he's a lot older and Mary is left without Joseph and you know the gospel narratives Joseph kind of disappears from the scene we don't hear of him anymore presumably because he's dead so anyway there's a lot of kind of side narrative there that tries to explain that Mary is sexually pure she's also and this is course part of Roman Catholic thought free from any original sin why is she exempted from any original Senate on in other words the Catholic teaching would be that Mary never sinned that she from the time she was born never sinned nor does she have original sin we would say everybody's born with original sin we all come into this world already sinful you know if you don't believe it just babysit a two-year-old sometime it'll you know prove it to you but the Catholic Church says that Mary was protected from even original sin and what is the doctrine that teaches us that I would assume you'd all know this I see one hand in the air y'all know Steven what is that doctrine that's correct the Immaculate Conception how many of you knew that how many of you've heard of Immaculate Conception every hand in the room is up all right that's somebody we play what basketball with us all right soccer sorry you know man I'll tell you what I all right how many of you knew be brave that Immaculate Conception is describing not the birth of Jesus but the birth of Mary how many of you knew that so I mean okay now you all know it don't you from this day on you all know Immaculate Conception is describing the birth of Mary not the birth of Jesus this is part of how they protect her purity you know and of course their great interest in in preserving the the virginity of Mary throughout eternity that she is always always a virgin is in some ways to fix this problem which is a highly sexual problem as they see it connected with Eve in the first place comments about that that any of you kind of aware of that already is this new material to you did you know this not really thoughts comments feedback this is the this is the Manichean influence the other one we're gonna look at which will be next week not tomorrow is the neo platonic influence so there's two kind of pagan influences that shape to some degree the thought of Augustan who's the next big guy we're going to consider mana keys are one of them and we're interested in the mana keys because of what I've just described to you the other is Platina s-- and the Neoplatonic movement which takes place about the same time and so we'll look at that probably Monday please Agustin good question you know if you know anything about gustin's life we'll talk about a gustin's life but you may already be familiar with it Agustin was converted at about the age thirty maybe a year or two later and up until that time he had not been which he'd call a paragon of virtue he'd had multiple relationships with women you know he had one kind of long-term girlfriend but he'd had many others one-night stand kind of read all things if you're familiar with that term and so you know they'd been that part of his life and he really so so you'd say from Augustus point of view women represented one of the single biggest impediments to his conversion he you know he wanted to become a Christian but he didn't want to give up women he was really I mean that's frankly yet do you read the confessions thoughtfully you kind of see that sub-theme going through there and when he finally did become a Christian he really almost as if to make it real he had to cut himself off entirely from that whole relationship with any women at all he sent away his long-term girlfriend and their son together and of course he lived a celibate life from that point on well if you asked me Megan I don't think that's healthy I think God intended us to be in a marriage relationship and I'm real glad I'm in one and I hope all of you have that you know wonderful blessing in your lives but if sexual activity has been so constantly connected to your own evil inclinations it's real hard to get over it and I think for a Gustin he never did get over it and so in some ways Eve for him symbolized all the evil that women represented to him generally and I think it did I think it kind of filtered in in an unhealthy way not only to his view of Eve to his view of women in general I'm I'm psychoanalyzing this genius from 1,500 years distance and I'm doing it very very humbly but that's my opinion as to what happened there

Channel: Bruce Gore

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Keywords: Mani, Manichaeism, Syncretism, Bruce Gore, Augustine

Id: P4YgJP2N2_Y

Length: 47min 3sec (2823 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 10 2015