First of all, I can't understand ignoring the largest elephant in this room:
'But Jesus answered them, “You are wrong, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God. For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven."' - Matthew 22:29-30.
The context is the Sadducees attempting to refute the resurrection by pointing to how remarriage after death could not work in the afterlife. I have no doubt that if such a marriage between individuals extended to the afterlife in some spiritual sense, that Jesus would have refuted them in a different way then by denying this marriage in heaven. He was God, after all. He does not lie. On the contrary, however, he explicitly rejects the idea of individual marriage in heaven, contrasting the earthly life with the angelic life in heaven. Traditionally, angels are always male, and they are not sexed, nor partake in sex. So, to partake of the life of an angel in heaven does not in any sense imply sex, on the contrary it implies the opposite. This doesn't mean humans will be androgynous in the afterlife, just that personal sexual relations will become irrelevant.
I think to understand this it's important to realize the extent to which the church has always idealized celibacy as the most spiritual path, going back all the way to St. Paul. This is why Catholics have celibacy of the priesthood. Whether you agree with it or not, it has always been the mainstream of apostolic Christian tradition to value celibacy. I understand that you're protestant so this point might not land, but you should at least be able to notice a contradiction with the scripture itself.
To be honest, I'm very surprised you didn't. This seems like the most relevant consideration, far more than the symbolism of the heretic William Blake. I don't mean Blake didn't have real spiritual insight into many things as an early critic of modernity and probably the first critic of scientific modernity, but all the same he was a libertine who attempted to level heaven and hell, very much left-hand, subversive spirituality. So on this subject in particular it is bizarre to cite him as an authority for what Christian spiritual practice looks like.
Now, in favor of sex in heaven you would be right to point to the marriage of the church to Christ in revelation. To be honest, I'm very surprised you didn't. It's the second most relevant consideration when it comes to Christian spirituality on this topic. However, pointing to this would have revealed a rather uncomfortable truth for your position: namely that God is male and the creation female. Jesus is the male groom and redeemed creation his bride.
Let me run through the false reasoning you use to argue that God has no sex. It is true that God is divinely simple, and so depends upon nothing outside Himself and certainly not on attributes apart from His own nature to be what he is. So, male and female are creations of His, not something which have causative power upon Him. But, it is also precisely because God is simple that He is masculine. The feminine is the passive, whereas the masculine is the active. God is impassible, because He is pure Necessity, and so can have no potential in Him whatsoever, and as Aquinas says He is pure Act.
The fallacy you are committing is assuming that if something can be placed within a binary that it is therefore caused by the principle of that binary, but since this not true, then you cannot reason from this that God must be outside the binary so as not to be affected by it. As a non-theological example, blue is not spicy. Placing blue on one side of the spicy / not spicy dichotomy does not put it under the principle of flavor, because not spicy is a genus including more things than just food. Even if the distinction between spicy and not-spicy did not exist, because there were no spicy foods, still blue would not be spicy. Likewise, God is not female. This does not put Him under the principle of sexuality. That is, male here is not the opposite of female, only its negation, at least in this case. Creation however is female because it is passive, created by God. That is why the Church is the bride as redeemed creation, whereas God is always male (Father, Son, Holy Spirit). The interpretation of the Holy Spirit as feminine is a Kaballistic heresy. There is no feminine shekinah of God.
Now, you might object that to speak of God even with so simple a label as "not spicy" or "good" or "not evil" is still to place him within a dichotomy, which is to make him dependent on the principle of difference or logic. Aristotle and Aquinas at least seem to have assumed that God must transcend all genera. Truthfully, however, they must be wrong, because it is simply a fact that God is good, not evil. The simple reality of the matter is that a genus need not be causal of whatever lies within it. The number seven is not in the northern hemisphere, which does not make its existence dependent upon geography. God existed in the past, but He did not exist at that time due to the time, His existence being independent of time. You see? God depends on nothing, being entirely free, self-caused, and necessary. He is pure freedom, and freely through this independence creates all that exists, which is masculine, not feminine, not meaning He is caused or bound by masculinity, only that He is masculine, that is falls under its genus.
I remember you saying once that you disagreed with Trinitarian orthodoxy, presumably from a monistic objection. I'd be interested to hear more about your views on the Trinity specifically. For now all I'll say is that the Trinitarian nature of God reflects this inner freedom, in that He both commands as Father, obeys as Son, and is interpersonal love as Holy Spirit. You seem to interpret this as a real duality in God, but it is not. Each is the one God, and there is no difference between these persons, only distinction between them in the eternal light of God. This is indeed manifested in creation through a duality of different created things, but it is indifferent in God. These are objectively distinct persons, eternally in God before creation, but the principle of Person or Personality, or even of Number or Non-being do not cause God. There is still only fundamentally one thing, God. Logic designates the three things as distinct, but only qua person, that is with respect to how God manifests in the principle of person (note, He would be the same even if this principle did not exist, since how he manifests in this principle does not depend upon the existence of this principle).
All this is to say that I believe this Eastern non-dual theology is profoundly wrong, in that it mistakenly believes that the possibility of considering something with respect to a principle is the same as being bound by that principle, and consequently that the distinction between God and creation must be somehow illusory, which I assure you it is not. Creation is by no mean cut off from God, since as you rightly said sexual relations reflect the relations of the Persons of the Trinity, but creation exists through God, not as God.
Alas, it seems that somehow the followers of the traditionalist school always manage to be untraditional, at least when it comes to Christianity. Guenon was always at his weakest trying to explain how Christianity somehow says the same thing as the confused theology of Eastern religions. It seems you've inherited this defect from him.
Matthew 22:30 is mentioned, so is the Church as Bride. I’m not a Protestant, nor do I consider Blake a heretic, because I don’t subscribe to any creed on the basis of which he’d be anathema.
I reread and I guess you did talk briefly about the church as bride. My bad. I still don't see where you talked about Jesus's words in Matthew, but oh well.
I consider Blake a heretic because he says things like,
"As a new heaven is begun, and it is now thirty-three years since its advent, the Eternal Hell revives. ... Without contraries is no progression. Attraction and repulsion, reason and energy, love and hate, are necessary to human existence. From these contraries spring what the religious call Good and Evil. Good is the passive that obeys reason; Evil is the active springing from Energy."
Evil is not necessary. That would imply that evil is an aspect of God. I'm sure that's what Satanists like Blake want us to believe but it's not true. All evil will be destroyed at the end of time and no one will mourn it. Or here's another sacrilegious r/atheism quote I found with minimal effort.
"The ancient poets animated all sensible objects with Gods or Geniuses, calling them by the names and adorning them with properties of woods, rivers, mountains, lakes, cities, nations, and whatever their enlarged and numerous senses could perceive. And particularly they studied the Genius of each city and country, placing it under its mental deity. Till a system was formed, which some took advantage of and enslaved the vulgar by attempting to realize or abstract the mental deities from their objects. Thus began Priesthood. Choosing forms of worship from poetic tales. And at length they pronounced that the Gods had ordered such things. Thus men forgot that all deities reside in the human breast."
-Marriage of Heaven and Hell.
Anyways, I respect your work but just really disagree with you on this on this one.
Then Blake should have said that impulses and energy are not evil, but then he wouldn’t have been able to be subversive. So instead he opted to literally play the devil’s advocate so he could be subversive. He was ultimately an eccentric hippie.
Wow, super interesting post from Europos and excellent reply in the comments Archist. Quite excited to read the latest article in response to this one. Some reflections below:
Based on my own life experiences I am inclined to believe this sort of acceptance towards sex for the sake of pleasure is a human, and not divine attitude, and of course humans always look for ways to justify their cravings. I personally feel a lot of Eastern philosophy operates from a much more wordly (or mundane) starting point as the founders of the ideologies were typically powerful in life, and so could enjoy earthly pleasures galore while demanding a certain amount of dutifulness from their subjects, and needed a philosophy that justified that. Confucianism, Islam, Hinduism, Shintoism, Buddhism, Judaism, all have this to some degree. We tend to get very whitewashed versions of them in the west, but visiting their temples and talking to the monks is often quite revealing. I think the Eastern forms of Christianity also tend to justify greater power distance and elite excess than the western and northern ones (but less than other religions). Religions are shaped by their political context, and Catholicism had to learn to be subservient both to Rome, and later to the HRGE, and this is reflected in it being both criticized and complimented for being a religion of slaves. Single, monogamous enforced marriage is a rather socialist or pro-poor measure with regards to men, as we are finding out nowadays.
On a personal note I also think it is much harder to be close to God when you are engaged in carnal pursuits for the sake of pleasure. This seems rather self evident to me now but it did not before, but perhaps this is not what you meant Carlos. In any case I didn't mean to strawman anyone's argument, I just wanted to add my 2 cents from a different point of view.
The examples cited here precisely describe the preservation of individual existence, not its melting away. The Divine is realized as one's own essence and yet, being Absolute, always also manifests as other selves, with which we can interact (sometimes as theophanies). Evola makes a bit of a mess of this, and has to ignore the status tradition awards to devotional practice (as in the Gita, etc.)
The problem with the jnanic vs. bhaktic path as Evola (to a degree Guenon, depending on the work) frames it is that it isn't really traditional. When you find it, as in the Bhagavad Gita, the bhaktic path is higher and precisely is what allows you to continue to experience individuated existence.
The aim of any spiritual path is unio mystica, and attachment to any form as though it were God will ultimately impede realization, as God transcends every form. Since God is not a cause at the start of a chain of causes and effects, or an undifferentiated substance, individuated existence is never abolished, even when one realizes one is That. I don't know what you mean by "sentimental" devotion, but "sentiment" has nothing to do with spirituality except in a preparatory sense
Impressive 🌟 thank you for your helpful article ✨️
Yeah okay I like the meditation. But all the Vedanta and Islam references do not really jive with Jesus response to the Sadducees - do they?
.
Love you.
Do you know Cupids Poisoned Arrow by Narnia Robinson. She does refer to ancient traditions in one chapter.
This reminds me of the "sex magick" concept in the New Age movement.
First of all, I can't understand ignoring the largest elephant in this room:
'But Jesus answered them, “You are wrong, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God. For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven."' - Matthew 22:29-30.
The context is the Sadducees attempting to refute the resurrection by pointing to how remarriage after death could not work in the afterlife. I have no doubt that if such a marriage between individuals extended to the afterlife in some spiritual sense, that Jesus would have refuted them in a different way then by denying this marriage in heaven. He was God, after all. He does not lie. On the contrary, however, he explicitly rejects the idea of individual marriage in heaven, contrasting the earthly life with the angelic life in heaven. Traditionally, angels are always male, and they are not sexed, nor partake in sex. So, to partake of the life of an angel in heaven does not in any sense imply sex, on the contrary it implies the opposite. This doesn't mean humans will be androgynous in the afterlife, just that personal sexual relations will become irrelevant.
I think to understand this it's important to realize the extent to which the church has always idealized celibacy as the most spiritual path, going back all the way to St. Paul. This is why Catholics have celibacy of the priesthood. Whether you agree with it or not, it has always been the mainstream of apostolic Christian tradition to value celibacy. I understand that you're protestant so this point might not land, but you should at least be able to notice a contradiction with the scripture itself.
To be honest, I'm very surprised you didn't. This seems like the most relevant consideration, far more than the symbolism of the heretic William Blake. I don't mean Blake didn't have real spiritual insight into many things as an early critic of modernity and probably the first critic of scientific modernity, but all the same he was a libertine who attempted to level heaven and hell, very much left-hand, subversive spirituality. So on this subject in particular it is bizarre to cite him as an authority for what Christian spiritual practice looks like.
Now, in favor of sex in heaven you would be right to point to the marriage of the church to Christ in revelation. To be honest, I'm very surprised you didn't. It's the second most relevant consideration when it comes to Christian spirituality on this topic. However, pointing to this would have revealed a rather uncomfortable truth for your position: namely that God is male and the creation female. Jesus is the male groom and redeemed creation his bride.
Let me run through the false reasoning you use to argue that God has no sex. It is true that God is divinely simple, and so depends upon nothing outside Himself and certainly not on attributes apart from His own nature to be what he is. So, male and female are creations of His, not something which have causative power upon Him. But, it is also precisely because God is simple that He is masculine. The feminine is the passive, whereas the masculine is the active. God is impassible, because He is pure Necessity, and so can have no potential in Him whatsoever, and as Aquinas says He is pure Act.
The fallacy you are committing is assuming that if something can be placed within a binary that it is therefore caused by the principle of that binary, but since this not true, then you cannot reason from this that God must be outside the binary so as not to be affected by it. As a non-theological example, blue is not spicy. Placing blue on one side of the spicy / not spicy dichotomy does not put it under the principle of flavor, because not spicy is a genus including more things than just food. Even if the distinction between spicy and not-spicy did not exist, because there were no spicy foods, still blue would not be spicy. Likewise, God is not female. This does not put Him under the principle of sexuality. That is, male here is not the opposite of female, only its negation, at least in this case. Creation however is female because it is passive, created by God. That is why the Church is the bride as redeemed creation, whereas God is always male (Father, Son, Holy Spirit). The interpretation of the Holy Spirit as feminine is a Kaballistic heresy. There is no feminine shekinah of God.
Now, you might object that to speak of God even with so simple a label as "not spicy" or "good" or "not evil" is still to place him within a dichotomy, which is to make him dependent on the principle of difference or logic. Aristotle and Aquinas at least seem to have assumed that God must transcend all genera. Truthfully, however, they must be wrong, because it is simply a fact that God is good, not evil. The simple reality of the matter is that a genus need not be causal of whatever lies within it. The number seven is not in the northern hemisphere, which does not make its existence dependent upon geography. God existed in the past, but He did not exist at that time due to the time, His existence being independent of time. You see? God depends on nothing, being entirely free, self-caused, and necessary. He is pure freedom, and freely through this independence creates all that exists, which is masculine, not feminine, not meaning He is caused or bound by masculinity, only that He is masculine, that is falls under its genus.
I remember you saying once that you disagreed with Trinitarian orthodoxy, presumably from a monistic objection. I'd be interested to hear more about your views on the Trinity specifically. For now all I'll say is that the Trinitarian nature of God reflects this inner freedom, in that He both commands as Father, obeys as Son, and is interpersonal love as Holy Spirit. You seem to interpret this as a real duality in God, but it is not. Each is the one God, and there is no difference between these persons, only distinction between them in the eternal light of God. This is indeed manifested in creation through a duality of different created things, but it is indifferent in God. These are objectively distinct persons, eternally in God before creation, but the principle of Person or Personality, or even of Number or Non-being do not cause God. There is still only fundamentally one thing, God. Logic designates the three things as distinct, but only qua person, that is with respect to how God manifests in the principle of person (note, He would be the same even if this principle did not exist, since how he manifests in this principle does not depend upon the existence of this principle).
All this is to say that I believe this Eastern non-dual theology is profoundly wrong, in that it mistakenly believes that the possibility of considering something with respect to a principle is the same as being bound by that principle, and consequently that the distinction between God and creation must be somehow illusory, which I assure you it is not. Creation is by no mean cut off from God, since as you rightly said sexual relations reflect the relations of the Persons of the Trinity, but creation exists through God, not as God.
Alas, it seems that somehow the followers of the traditionalist school always manage to be untraditional, at least when it comes to Christianity. Guenon was always at his weakest trying to explain how Christianity somehow says the same thing as the confused theology of Eastern religions. It seems you've inherited this defect from him.
Matthew 22:30 is mentioned, so is the Church as Bride. I’m not a Protestant, nor do I consider Blake a heretic, because I don’t subscribe to any creed on the basis of which he’d be anathema.
I reread and I guess you did talk briefly about the church as bride. My bad. I still don't see where you talked about Jesus's words in Matthew, but oh well.
I consider Blake a heretic because he says things like,
"As a new heaven is begun, and it is now thirty-three years since its advent, the Eternal Hell revives. ... Without contraries is no progression. Attraction and repulsion, reason and energy, love and hate, are necessary to human existence. From these contraries spring what the religious call Good and Evil. Good is the passive that obeys reason; Evil is the active springing from Energy."
Evil is not necessary. That would imply that evil is an aspect of God. I'm sure that's what Satanists like Blake want us to believe but it's not true. All evil will be destroyed at the end of time and no one will mourn it. Or here's another sacrilegious r/atheism quote I found with minimal effort.
"The ancient poets animated all sensible objects with Gods or Geniuses, calling them by the names and adorning them with properties of woods, rivers, mountains, lakes, cities, nations, and whatever their enlarged and numerous senses could perceive. And particularly they studied the Genius of each city and country, placing it under its mental deity. Till a system was formed, which some took advantage of and enslaved the vulgar by attempting to realize or abstract the mental deities from their objects. Thus began Priesthood. Choosing forms of worship from poetic tales. And at length they pronounced that the Gods had ordered such things. Thus men forgot that all deities reside in the human breast."
-Marriage of Heaven and Hell.
Anyways, I respect your work but just really disagree with you on this on this one.
Then Blake should have said that impulses and energy are not evil, but then he wouldn’t have been able to be subversive. So instead he opted to literally play the devil’s advocate so he could be subversive. He was ultimately an eccentric hippie.
Wow, super interesting post from Europos and excellent reply in the comments Archist. Quite excited to read the latest article in response to this one. Some reflections below:
Based on my own life experiences I am inclined to believe this sort of acceptance towards sex for the sake of pleasure is a human, and not divine attitude, and of course humans always look for ways to justify their cravings. I personally feel a lot of Eastern philosophy operates from a much more wordly (or mundane) starting point as the founders of the ideologies were typically powerful in life, and so could enjoy earthly pleasures galore while demanding a certain amount of dutifulness from their subjects, and needed a philosophy that justified that. Confucianism, Islam, Hinduism, Shintoism, Buddhism, Judaism, all have this to some degree. We tend to get very whitewashed versions of them in the west, but visiting their temples and talking to the monks is often quite revealing. I think the Eastern forms of Christianity also tend to justify greater power distance and elite excess than the western and northern ones (but less than other religions). Religions are shaped by their political context, and Catholicism had to learn to be subservient both to Rome, and later to the HRGE, and this is reflected in it being both criticized and complimented for being a religion of slaves. Single, monogamous enforced marriage is a rather socialist or pro-poor measure with regards to men, as we are finding out nowadays.
On a personal note I also think it is much harder to be close to God when you are engaged in carnal pursuits for the sake of pleasure. This seems rather self evident to me now but it did not before, but perhaps this is not what you meant Carlos. In any case I didn't mean to strawman anyone's argument, I just wanted to add my 2 cents from a different point of view.
The examples cited here precisely describe the preservation of individual existence, not its melting away. The Divine is realized as one's own essence and yet, being Absolute, always also manifests as other selves, with which we can interact (sometimes as theophanies). Evola makes a bit of a mess of this, and has to ignore the status tradition awards to devotional practice (as in the Gita, etc.)
The problem with the jnanic vs. bhaktic path as Evola (to a degree Guenon, depending on the work) frames it is that it isn't really traditional. When you find it, as in the Bhagavad Gita, the bhaktic path is higher and precisely is what allows you to continue to experience individuated existence.
The aim of any spiritual path is unio mystica, and attachment to any form as though it were God will ultimately impede realization, as God transcends every form. Since God is not a cause at the start of a chain of causes and effects, or an undifferentiated substance, individuated existence is never abolished, even when one realizes one is That. I don't know what you mean by "sentimental" devotion, but "sentiment" has nothing to do with spirituality except in a preparatory sense