What was Constantine up to?

I think it’s interesting that the First Council of Nicaea in 325, the very first ecumenical council, was convened by a political leader, the Roman Emperor Constantine, and not a religious leader. This is the council that gave us the Nicene Creed (which was later revised). This creed was an attempt to settle for Christians the nature of God, Christ and the Holy Ghost and their relationship to one another.

If you look into the disputes and divisions of early Christianity, you can see that the creed is designed by the orthodox to refute all other competing views. “We believe in one God, the Father almighty. Maker of all things visible and invisible.” That’s an assertion that Christianity isn’t like the polytheism of the pagans, and it’s also a refutation of the claim that the god of the Old Testament was a lesser god who trapped divine spirits in the material world. That claim was made by some of the Gnostic Christians. It goes on to say that the Lord Jesus Christ was “begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father.” Some early Christians rejected the divinity of Jesus, and others saw him as divine but subordinate to God the Father. However, the creed is saying that Christ and God are of “one substance.” They are on equal footing, and they are somehow different and the same. It goes on to claim that Jesus “came down and was incarnate and was made man” and that he “suffered.” This is a refutation of those who claimed Jesus only appeared to be a human being and that he was really a divine spirit pretending to be a man. The creed here is saying, no, he really was a man, and when he was executed, he really did suffer as any man would suffer.

Jesus is, of course, the most important figure in the development of Christianity. After him, many would claim that Paul was the second most important figure because Paul is the one who took the Christian message out of Palestine and spread it to the Gentiles in other parts of the empire. Christianity was still a very small religion in Paul’s time, but he planted the seeds. Many would say that the third most important figure in the development of Christianity is the Emperor Constantine. He put an end to the official persecution of Christians and began showing Christians favor. At some point, he converted. Christianity had been growing steadily up until the 4^th century, but after Constantine, it became the majority religion within a few decades, and by the end of the 4^th century, it became the official religion of the empire.

The German scholar Walter Bauer concluded that what we know of as orthodoxy was the doctrine favored by the Christian church in Rome and that the so-called heresies were the favored, and maybe even the original form of Christianity in other parts of the empire. Of course, the Roman self proclaimed Orthodox view would be the version of Christianity that Constantine would be most familiar with. But why would he want to help the Roman church establish uniformity and dominance? Was it really spiritual? Scholars are unsure when Constantine became a fully committed Christian. Some think he wasn’t baptized until he was on his deathbed. Could it have been political? Did he think it would be easier to maintain control over the empire if a majority of the citizens believed in one god, as opposed to a bunch of local deities, with a unifying religion with a single, undisputed creed?

Aunt Patsy Gets married

When I was about 7, my Aunt Patsy—my mother’s younger sister—announced that she was getting married. She was something of a holdout in the marriage department. She was in her late twenties and some were beginning to speculate that she would never marry. This was the early ‘70s, and by that time, it wasn’t unheard of for a woman to lead an independent life, but this was West Virginia, and Patsy hadn’t been raised to be an independent woman. Patsy had lived at home with her mother until she died, and then she moved in with my Aunt Betty and her husband. Patsy never had a job, and Aunt Betty and Uncle Cecile didn’t appreciate supporting her. Maybe that’s why she finally found herself a man and accepted his proposal.

When the news spread, everyone was shocked by her choice, and the general consensus was that Patsy was marrying beneath herself. Now you have to understand that for someone in my mother’s family to do that was quite extraordinary considering most of them lived in dilapidated coal company houses and drove around in twenty-year-old pickups held together with bailing wire. But my soon to be Uncle Robert was someone who didn’t bathe regularly. He was someone who supported himself with odd jobs and had been fired from most of them. A three day gig was obviously too much responsibility for him. He was notoriously unreliable, more than a little nutty, not very bright, not particularly likable and he smelled bad. And Aunt Patsy was going to marry him.

Well, the wedding day came, and we all gathered at a little country church. Some had worried that Robert would wear his trashy, unwashed clothes, so my Uncle Daniel lent him a suit, but no one wore Robert’s shoe size, so many speculated that he would show up barefoot. Robert often went barefoot even in late fall and early spring.

We waited an hour, and many were starting to stir. Then we waited a half hour more. That’s when my uncles Daniel, Les and Boone decided they should go looking for Robert. They found him in the county jail. He had been arrested the night before for public drunkenness and disorderly conduct. My uncles bailed him out and brought him to the church. Thankfully, he was wearing shoes.

Aunt Patsy was a lovely bride. She was a sweet, chatty woman and a hypochondriac. I adored her. I had never been to a wedding before, and seeing her in a long white dress with a train and a veil made quite an impression on me.

Aunt Patsy and Uncle Robert are still together. However, it’s not exactly been a happy marriage, but that’s another story.

If you don't know what you're talking about, be quiet.

I went to WVU a few months after I graduated from high school. I began taking advantage of the university’s free counseling services within a couple of weeks of my arrival on campus. I remained in therapy until I was in my 30s. I saw a number of therapists, and sometimes I went as often as twice a week. For several years, I carried around emergency phone numbers so that I could call a therapist day or night.

A couple of years after I started seeing a therapist, I was referred to a psychiatrist. I saw a number of them over a ten year span, and I took increasing amounts of prescribed psychotropic medications. For about three years, I was taking handfuls of pills several times a day.

A year after I started seeing a psychiatrist, I was hospitalized for the first time. I was hospitalized several times after that. The last time I was in a psychiatric hospital, I underwent electroshock therapy. Sadly, some of the professionals I encountered while in the hospital were quite homophobic, and nearly all of them didn’t have a clue as to how to talk to me about the gay, so they pretended I didn’t even have a sexuality.

When I realized that I wasn’t well enough to work and support myself and that I was in fact making myself sicker by continuing to push myself to lead what I thought of as a normal life, I applied for disability. I was approved quickly even though I was a young man in my late twenties, and this was a few years before I was diagnosed with a brain tumor. My tumultuous mental health alone was enough to qualify me.

My situation is hardly unique. While in the hospital, I met scores of people who had been battling mental illness for a very long time. Some were in their 60s and 70s and had been fighting since they were teens. I’ve met many online that have had to deal with mental illness for most of their lives.

It is more than bothersome when someone who doesn’t even know the half of it thinks they can fix us up by suggesting that stubborn symptoms that many have had to endure for decades can be easily dispensed with. Platitudes are not the healing balm that has been missing from our treatment regiment. Oversimplifying our conditions only exacerbates and annoys. We already know that our symptoms are strange, unusual and not quite rational. And telling someone to “get some help” in a flip, cavalier way is almost as bad as telling them to go to hell. Many of us have already gotten “help.” Sometimes it relieved out situation to varying degrees, and sometimes it only made things worse. It might come as a surprise to some, but professional help is often not a panacea. Sometimes the best you can do is learn to manage your symptoms enough so that you’re able to get a little enjoyment out of life. If someone trusts you enough to tell you about their mental health issues, don’t respond by being dismissive or pretending you know just what they need to do to recover. It is better to say nothing if you can’t be supportive.

A Kindred Spirit

I watched Rachel, Rachel (1968) tonight. It stars Joanne Woodward and was directed by Paul Newman. Rachel is a shy, 35-year-old single school teacher who still lives with her mother in a small town. She has one friend, a fellow teacher named Calla played by Estelle Parsons. Early on, Calla invites Rachel to an evening church service. Rachel would rather not go, but she does anyway to make her friend happy. She thought she could sit and observe and go home to her mother after, but it turns out to be a charismatic church and at one point, the minister makes Rachel the center of attention. Rachel has a panic attack, but the crowd thinks she is filled with the spirit. Rachel flees, and Calla goes after her. When they’re alone in the dark, Rachel finally settles down and admits she is mortified because she believes she made a fool of herself. Calla comforts her, and then she begins kissing Rachel. Rachel is further traumatized, but the two women eventually reconcile.

I saw this film when I was a boy, but I couldn’t remember much about other than it made some kind of impression on me. I don’t remember the lesbian subplot at all. Maybe it didn’t register because I was so young or maybe they edited out for TV.

I related to Rachel. I think we’re a lot alike. In many ways, Rachel has a good life. She has her health, a home and a decent job, but she feels cut off and alone. She doesn’t feel safe in the world. She doesn’t fit in.
 
After a series of events that begins with the episode with Calla, Rachel decides that it is time for a change. She is ready for an adventure, so she transfers to a new school across country.
 
While on a bus headed toward her new life, Rachel admits to herself, “I will always be afraid, and maybe I’ll always be lonely.” She doesn’t say these things in defeat. After all, she found the nerve to finally move. Rachel is coming to terms with her condition and her lot in life, and she is going to make the most of it.

 

Glossolalia

Glossolalia is a fancy word for speaking in tongues. Most of us probably think of Pentecostal Christians speaking in tongues. This form of Christianity emphasizes the alleged transformative power of the Holy Spirit. They believe that a person can be filled with the Spirit, and this causes them to act out in various ways…ecstatic dancing, prophesizing, healing and speaking in tongues. For most of Christian history, this act of worship has been marginalized, but it was apparently common in the early stages of Christianity. Paul speaks of it in his epistles, and it’s mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles. The Acts of the Apostles is a kind of sequel to the Gospel of Luke. It was written by the same author, and it describes what allegedly happened after the death of Jesus. According to this book, the Holy Spirit descended on the apostles and some of the followers of Jesus on the Pentecost, 50 days after Easter Sunday. The book claims that some began speaking in tongues.

Glossolalia is not exclusively Christian. Pagans of the first century also spoke in tongues. As I understand it, glossolalia was part of the worship service of some of the mystery cults. Oracles in ancient Greece spoke in tongues. And shamans from various cultures throughout the world and throughout history are reported to have spoken in tongues.

I think the practice is closely associated with various ecstatic experiences such as bacchanals, bath house orgies, Mardi Gras, Burning Man, frat parties and spring break. Of course, Pentecostal Christians would object to their form of worship being lumped in with practices they would consider sinful. They’d claim their ecstatic gibberish results from them feeling the spirit of God. But maybe this experience can take a variety of forms depending on the cultural context. Maybe the Pentecostal worship service is a way to let go of your rational mind, along with it’s fears and ultimately futile urge to control, and live in the insanity and intensity of the moment. Maybe this is some kind of human need and that’s the reason we see it popping up all over the place and why perfectly ordinary and sensible people occasionally give themselves over to wild partying of one kind or another.

A few words about the Alexamenos graffito.

The Alexamenos graffito, also known as the graffito blasfemo, might be the oldest surviving depiction of Jesus. It was found in Rome, and it’s believed to have been carved sometime in the late second or early third century. Apparently the person who created it didn’t take Christianity seriously, but it is evidence that the Christian religion was beginning to have some kind of impact.

That’s almost two centuries after the death of Jesus. I continue to be struck by how mysterious and enigmatic early Christianity is. Jesus lived and died and there’s no mention of him or his followers in the historic record. The books of the New Testament and the other writings from early Christians that were rejected by the Orthodox were written decades after the death of Jesus, and they were written in Greek, a language Jesus didn’t speak. We don’t have the original copies but copies of copies of copies. The earliest known copy to survive, P52, is a fragment, nothing more than part of a page from the Gospel of John that can fit in the palm of your hand. And the other later, more intact copies are never exact copies. They always differ from one another.

I don’t think this means that Christianity is illegitimate. For many, religion isn’t about certainty that demands a literal and concrete understanding and acceptance. But the belief that the strange, shadowy history of early Christianity created an inerrant Bible that can be readily understood and must be followed to the letter… That seems absurd to me.

A beautiful scene from Maurice (1987)

For the past few days, I’ve been reading Maurice by E.M. Forster. I’ve read it before, but it’s been about twenty-five years. I’ve seen the film quite a few times, probably more than 20, but it’s been about 15 years since I’ve seen it. Reading the book made me want to watch the film again, so I looked it up on YouTube earlier. I think the film beautiful compliments the novel.

Twenty minutes in, you’ll find the scene where Maurice and Clive cross a line and express a kind of affection for one another usually reserved for lovers. The boys have just come back from a vacation to start a new term at Cambridge. They’ve not seen one another for a few weeks. They’re in Maurice’s rooms. Clive is in the floor in front of Maurice. It’s a quiet moment, and the boys talk to one another in hushed tones about how they got on at home. Clive leans back against Maurice’s leg, turns his head and softly rubs his cheek against Maurice’s knee. Maurice tentatively reaches up and begins stroking Clive’s hair above his ear. All the while, a boys’ choir is singing beautifully and eventually reaching impossibly high notes. You can feel the erotic tension, the passion, the longing and the intense fear. This is something they’ve both wanted long before they even met, but they dared not admit it.

At 22, I had never seen anything like this before. It was a validation of my feelings, of course, but it was also an incredibly persuasive demonstration that love between men could be profoundly beautiful. I’ll always be grateful for the director James Ivory along with his creative partner, the actors and everyone involved in making the film. And I’ll always be grateful for E.M. Forster who dared write his novel in 1917.

 

A Breath of Liberty

There is a scene in the novel Maurice by E.M. Forster in which Durham complains that their professor demanded that they “omit the unspeakable vice of the Greeks” while reading aloud from Plato. Durham and Maurice are outside, and Durham insists openly and without shame that the “unspeakable vice” was an essential element of Athenian society. Maurice is hardly a scholar and doesn’t know much about the ancient Athenians, but he understands enough to know what his friend is getting at, and inwardly he is thrilled by Durham’s boldness.

“…no more was said at the time, but he was free of another subject, and one that he had never mentioned to any living soul. He hadn’t known it could be mentioned, and when Durham did so in the middle of the sunlit court a breath of liberty touched him.”

“A breath of liberty touched him.” That line struck me. I can remember so well finding another gay boy to talk to openly and freely after keeping silent for years.