I myself am an Orthodox Christian, but like CS Lewis I find great wisdom and even shadows of Christ in authentic Pagan spirituality.
For many Christians, the Pagan gods were indeed real, but flawed, and often over time were thought to have become degraded into forces for evil.
Others see Pagan myths as psychological forces.
First a Pagan perspective, then a brief Christian one.
Edward P. Butler is probably today’s most brilliant polytheistic theologian, in a recent exchange he writes
“In Egyptian theology, we have many myths of divine injury and healing; healing never returns us to the previous state. Many prosthetics in Egyptian myth. One value of these is that humans are given a role to supplement a God's loss.
To take a Hellenic example, one meaning for Hephaistos' being lamed is that He is the agent of human technology. So His disability is directly related to a potency of his in which we especially participate.
Osiris' phallus is lost on the mortal plane because a crucial part of His resurrection lies in mortals going on. In this sense, His phallus is the mortal phalli, Hephaistos' walking is the mortal kinesis.
I don't want to distract anyone from the mysteries of identification with these Gods through the experience of disability through this sort of reading, however. That embodiment, that presencing of the God, is sustaining for individuals and for communities.
@GalinaKrasskova: also something i think worth teasing out: healing not returning us to the previous state....begs the question of what is healing?
@DaphneLykeion: [RE: Hephaistos] It seems as some principle of transformation. As a god who is made lame, from previously being whole, that it gives him a certain access into changing a substance of one state into that of another. Breaking down and recombining that renders a specific service from the original form that the original could not.
Yes, and that's also suggested by His fall from Olympus to Earth, a "phase change".
@DaphneLykeion: I wasn't really thinking so much as a phase change but rather an undergoing of an "alchemical change". That the transformative process which renders change to create a greater product requires destruction and reform.
In my mind this act of destruction inflicted makes the subject bearing higher potential to affect the world. Although not lamed I can see this situations were divinites are killed and brought back.
Or even those gods who were "consumed" by Kronos and delivered again from him. But these are on a different scope from the more permanent evidential transformations that involve destruction.
Yes, I think this is key, to distinguish the change whereby a God acquires a disability from other changes. My theory would be that this corresponds to an extraordinary capacity being acquired by mortals. One could test this hypothesis by looking at myths of divine disability to see whether there is a human capacity that corresponds in some sense to the disability suffered by the God.
@DaphneLykeion: The permanent disability however make these gods in line with processes of transformation and power. I think of it this way that Hephaistos who makes the greatest and powerful armor is himself physically unsound. His superior craftsmanship is inseparable from the fact that he is lame, whereas smiths are usually robust.
As if an exchange of his vitality of form for the soundness and superiority of the forms that he creates. This exchange between his vitality and that which he creates is not separate from the destruction of his limbs.
I think of it this way that Hephaistos who makes the greatest and powerful armor is himself physically unsound. His superior craftsmanship is inseparable from the fact that he is lame, whereas smiths are usually robust.
As if an exchange of his vitality of form for the soundness and superiority of the forms that he creates.
@GalinaKrasskova: You see this with Weyland the smith too, a semi-divine Power.
@DaphneLykeion: Fascinating! It would seem that there is an exchange ongoing, from the process of disabling that lends its gift. The hand which is torn from a guard make him quite superior in his art. The torn eye giving the greatest sight.
@GalinaKrasskova: I could certainly see that with Odin and Heimdall.
@DaphneLykeion: The disabling on the gods acting as a process of strengthening some particular attribute to superior level.
@GalinaKrasskova: Precisely and it's interesting with Odin that He chose to pluck out His eye for that reason.
@DaphneLykeion: This would be related to sacrificed gods who by their all out death provide life/fertility. All different scopes. And this would provide new insight into Hera laming intentionally her son. Not as an act of cruelty as the myth seems to lend, for in Argos cult evidence shows very close relationship.
@GalinaKrasskova: She is the maker of heroes.
@DaphneLykeion: Exactly. If Hephaistos in Argos was called the war-like Zeus when he is lame, it would suggest a notable Heroic nature.
Also suggestive regarding the ontological status of warfare.
@DaphneLykeion: Quite so. And so we find a lame god who is superior in crafting physical forms and who is a great warrior.
Had some further thoughts on divine injury and disability. Note the value of certain founding moments of injury in diverse theologies, such as the castration of Ouranos in Hellenic theology or the dismemberment of Ymir in Norse theology. In these cases, the injury/dismemberment of a primordial God establishes what I would call "pantheon space". (In systematic Platonism, pantheon space is the intelligible-intellective or noetico-noeric plane, or so I have argued.)
Such acts localize the moment of self division or diremption of each henad, which releases the common space of being. Within the pantheon, it may be that all subsequent moments of divine injury participate this moment, as structurations of the field. A subtle moment of this in Egyptian theology is Re's self injury, which generates Hu and Sia, utterance and perception. Utterance and perception in this way become available for mortals to participate, and also subject to independent inquiry, epistemology.
A question which occurred to me, is what would be the significance of a given theology having more injured/disabled Gods than another? If we follow out the theory propounded in last night's discussion, then it might be that the theology with more injured/disabled Gods would be experiencing more elements of experience as occurring immediately within the bodily presence (parousia) of the God.”
“For the God we Christians must learn to worship is not a god of self-sufficient power, a god who in self-possession needs no one; rather ours is a God who needs a people, who needs a son. Absoluteness of being or power is not a work of the God we have come to know through the cross of Christ.”
- Stanley Hauerwas,
Kelby Carlson, himself, disabled, says a disabled person can be an actual image of God, of the reality of God, an vision of disability not as a sinful condition, but an image of Christ crushed upon the cross and therefore a disabled body can be a conduit of grace instead of a horror to be escaped from, for it is in suffering that we can “see” God, that is, when we recognize our own state of dependence and brokenness.
Rather than needing to be redeemed from a broken body, the disabled makes visible God, Christ who was crippled, betrayed, and broken :
“…disabled people can be seen as conduits for God’s grace and service rather than it only images of a broken creation in need of “fixing”….While brokenness itself is evidenced of a creation longing for release from bondage, an individual’s disability is, subversively, a venue for Christ to display his glory.
Disability responds in graphic physical form to the idea of approaching God based on merit. Each disabled person with their twisted legs, nonfunctional eyes, or [whatever] visible or invisible disability they have, directly attacks the presumption of human glory.
Disability is a symbol or metonymy of the larger experience before God: one of weakness, alienation and dependence . . . .
Such a blunt assessment of disability’s pictorial significance might seem harsh, especially coming from a disabled person.
If I left it there, it would be entirely inadequate. But disability is not merely a counter to theologies of merit constructed by man. It represents the opposite of that: a theology that finds its centerpiece in God’s death on the cross.
The theology of the cross is a particular way of doing theology that disabled people can uniquely understand. It is the theology that acknowledges the “visible” things of God:
namely the cross of Christ and visible suffering as the premier way of “seeing” God. God’s grace is manifested, paradoxically, in that which appears weak and nonsensical.
In this view, one cannot blithely skip over the cross as a simple means to God’s vindication and resurrection. This results in an anemic view of suffering: something that is meant only to be patiently endured in the hope that perhaps someday things will get better . . . .
Scripture reveals a redemptive way of looking at suffering, and consequently at disability (which, for a great majority of disabled people, involves suffering to one degree or another). Grace is seen as a means of living in and through suffering.
Chronic weakness is seen as real strength. In fact, it is the only way to truly approach God in faith. Can we view this in an ecclesial way that might take account of the suffering of disabilities in the body of Christ?”
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