“Have you no piety toward men [who are] dependent on another’s mercy? Before Lord Zeus, no sanction can be found for one such man to plot against another.”
The speaker above is Penelope, heroine of the Odyssey, which dates to the eighth or ninth century BCE. She is speaking to Antinoos, a suitor for her hand, whom she knew to be plotting against her son Telemakhos. Homer’s “Odyssey,” trans. Robert Fitzgerald, Anchor Books, 1963, p. 303. (Book XVI, 369-428.)
I went on a journey in search of the Christian soul and I didn’t find it, although I learned a lot along the way.
Let me explain, lest this be misunderstood. While I was working on these essays, I noted that many American conservatives identify themselves as conservative Christians, and rely upon what they understand as Christian beliefs to undergird their conservatism, “like a wise man who built his house upon the rock.” (Matthew 7:24)
I was raised to be a Christian. I went to Sunday School most of the year, I was given a Revised Standard Bible when I was promoted to the fourth grade of Sunday School on September 11, 1960, and later I became a member of the Methodist Church before it was United. So I was raised as a middle-of-the-road, wishy-washy sort of a Christian. Jesus has usually been alright with me. He suffered the little ones to come unto him, he taught the Golden Rule, and he encouraged us to take care of one another. (This appeals to people like me, perhaps because we know that we're unable to do without others.)
I‘ve read through the entire book several times. Each time I came away mystified as to what makes it a single narrative, and feeling that the Gospels tell a much different story than the rest. So when I connect Christianity to conservatism it occurs to me to wonder again what a self-identified Christian might gather from reading the Bible to inform his ideological beliefs. Surely, if one is a Christian, one follows the teachings of Jesus, the Son of God? One would be forgiven for thinking this.
The kind of soul I’m hoping to find is the kind that they portray in animated cartoons. Your good angel whispers in one ear while your bad angel whispers in the other. The two daimones are alike, except for the expressions on their faces.
The good angel is the one I’m looking for. I want to find whatever faculty or source of moral insight Christians are meant to rely upon. God foresaw that people would be faced with moral problems, and in His wisdom He prepared us for that challenge. I began my search for the Christian soul in the four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. (These are the only books of the Bible that purport to report words of Jesus.) I expected to find there what Jesus had taught about what is good and bad, that is, how to make moral decisions. Surely this is the lodestone for any follower of Jesus.
I continued my search in the New Testament following the gospels, then looked at the foundational Jewish scriptures that begin the Christian's Old Testament. All these scriptures are considered canonical by various Christian churches today. I reviewed the history of the formation of the Christian church to find evidence there. I was diverted from my quest by an entirely different vision of the human quest for insight, which is expressed in Joseph Campbell’s myth of the quest. Finally, I summarize and analyze what I learned in "About the Christian Soul."
Augustine of Hippo (354-430) described the soul as "a special substance, endowed with reason, adapted to rule the body." [Wikipedia on “Soul”]
The present Catechism of the Catholic Church states that the term soul “refers to the innermost aspect of [persons], that which is of greatest value in [them], that by which [they are] most especially in God's image: ‘soul’ signifies the spiritual principle in [humanity]”. [Wikipedia on “Soul”]
Next: The Gospels
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© 2021, Ross A. Hangartner