WAS HEGEL CHRISTIAN OR ATHEIST?
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After Hegel's death there was a great clash of intellectuals which the
Hegelian theologian David Strauss called the clash between "the Left Hegelians
and the Right Hegelians." The Left Hegelians were atheists, led by the
ex-minister Bruno Bauer and his famous follower, Karl Marx, and by the radical
editor Arnold Ruge and the radical egoist whose real name was not Max Stirner.

The Right Hegelians were Christian fundamentalists. They found Christian
inspiration in Hegel's philosophy, and they condemned David Strauss'
progressive New Testament critique, THE LIFE OF JESUS. Strauss also took his
inspiration from Hegel. He showed how the earliest Christian communities
altered the Gospels with their local traditions. Albert Schweitzer praised his
book as epoch-making, and by today's standards the book is tame. But it was
the 19th century death-knell for Hegelian scholarship.

Strauss defended himself by accusing Hegel himself of ambiguity on the
subject. Bruno Bauer was living evidence of this. Bauer was first the leader
of the Right Hegelians, and led the damnation of David Strauss' theology of
demythologization. After more years of reflection, however, Bauer turned coat
and became the leader of the Left Hegelians. (In either role, Albert
Schweitzer praised Bauer's scholarship as world class.)

Scholars for generations have reviewed the arguments of the Left and Right
Hegelians, and are still divided on the question: Was Hegel a Christian or an
atheist?

One way to decide is to review Hegel's earliest writings on religion,
especially Christianity. This will help us decide if the idea of the Absolute
in Dialectics is simply a variation on the fundamentalist idea of God. If it
is, I will plead guilty to Gary's charge of mysticism and authoritarianism. If
not, then I hope I will have shed some light on a complex modern question.

A little background may be in order. In Hegel's day, the official Government
pose in most European constitutions was a Christian one. Unlike the American
Constitution, which never once mentions the words "Jesus" or "Christ,"
European Constitutions, even after the French Revolution, were officially
Christian and even sectarian. Non-Christians were routinely stripped of Civil
Rights throughout European history.

The Industrial Revolution, which gave Europe the decided economic and military
edge over all other nations in the world, did much to suggest that Christian
civilization was inherently superior to all others. Was this not a Divine
Blessing? Weren't all other nations and all other religions now obviously
inferior?

This was the world in which Hegel grew up.

When Hegel wrote about the relative status of religions in 1820, he did not
have the vast materials we have today. Our century has translated
hieroglyphics. We have discovered and translated cuneiform. We have discovered
great libraries from long dead civilizations. We have translated Sanskrit,
ancient Persian and Babylonian. Hegel had only a minute fraction of the
information our century has on this subject.

So it should not be surprising that when Hegel wrote about Christianity and
other religions, he wrote about them from the dominant European viewpoint
which was all around him. He preferred Christian theology to all other
theology. He believed that Christianity was the highest form of religion the
world would ever produce.

He remained a Lutheran all his life, and he believed that the Lutheran sect of
Christianity was superior to the Catholic, Anglican and Puritan. As any
Lutheran, he was a critic of the oldest, most conservative Christian
institution, the Roman Catholic.

If Hegel's philosophy can be made to fit into this ethnocentric mold, then
we're justified in minimizing its value for a progressive science.

But I maintain that Hegel's philosophy can't be made to fit that mold. I'll
summarize Hegel's earliest theological essays to show why this is so. I'll use
Hegel's, EARLY THEOLOGICAL WRITINGS (Tr. T.M. Knox and R. Kroner, University
of Pennsylvania Press, 1971), as my primary source for what follows.

Hegel's early method is speculative synthesis. He experiments with equations
of metaphysical idea like God, Soul, Universe, the Good, Courage, Virtue, and
Freedom. He concentrates on defining Ethics.

For centuries Christian sects have labored to uncover the original core of
Gospel teachings, to prove their case against other sects. Hegel believed
secular philosophy also has the right to enter this debate in its effort to
vindicate Ethics over authoritarianism. Hegel's hypothesis is that
authoritarian doctrines have always been sectarian forgeries.


HEGELIAN ETHICS

Hegel identifies himself as a rationalist and a moralist. The Gospel about
Jesus, he said, is nothing if not a teaching of morals and Ethics. Now,
Ethics, to be truly Ethics, must be pure, free from all force and
authoritarianism. So the original Gospel could not have been otherwise than a
religion of freedom, free from authoritarian principles.

Authoritarianism devalues free will and so devalues the philosophy of Ethics.
From the point of view of Ethics, authoritarian religion isn't true religion,
because only free Virtue is true Virtue.

Ethics is most compatible with Reason. Reason is inborn. We inherit it freely.
Ethics should be the same. We discover Ethics naturally, by following our
sense of Reason. The only honest morality is respect for this inborn morality,
this law of the heart which makes love the guide of life. True morality can
awaken itself spontaneously, or someone else's moral example may inspire it to
awaken in me. We can't force it. Nothing else can awaken morality except
morality.

Ancient Hellenic civilization let moral freedom reign, and it enlightened
Europe for centuries. In our time, Immanuel Kant defined the moral realm in
scientific terms, though it may take centuries for humanity to rise to his
lofty vision.

Authoritarian religion does not measure up to either of these ideals.

Authoritarian religion teaches us that morality comes from outside humanity,
beyond people, so that humanity can never directly touch it.

What we must freely, bravely discover for ourselves, authoritarian religion
claims to have for us in a pre-packaged form. It has Laws which specify how we
are to act, think and feel. These Laws are the crux of its whole power.

But if subjection to alien, external Laws without representation is the
definition of oppression, then the Law of authoritarian religion falls into
this category.

All other arts and sciences have progressed by leaps and bounds, but the
science of Ethics hobbles along and falters century after century. 

Might authoritarianism be to blame?

To be responsible for ourselves isn't just a right, it's a Duty and a valid
definition of humanity. To renounce the right to Reason, responsibility and
free thinking is tragic. It smacks of renouncing humanity. Perhaps this best
explains man's inhumanity to man.

Might authoritarian religion be to blame for this, too?


HEGELIAN CHRISTIANITY

Hegel's definition of Christianity stands or falls entirely with the question
of Ethics. It's a form of Ethical Christianity, and as such is antagonistic to
authoritarian Christianity.

For Hegel, the stories about Jesus' miracles were originally of secondary
importance. For Hegel, the doctrines of resurrection and of the Messiah were
merely ploys that Jesus employed to get into the hearts and minds of his
listeners, so he could preach his perfect message of morality.

The doctrines of miracles, resurrection and Messiah were not only secondary,
but were positively superfluous for Hegel. They may have even been negative in
value, since they tended to distract people from the primary lesson the Gospel
wants us to hear--the lesson of higher morality.

Authoritarians claimed that the human mind is incapable of grasping the
Absolutes of reality. They demanded that we accept the force of Christian
history. Didn't Christianity overwhelm the mighty Roman Empire? Aren't those
who quietly accept Christianity in our Western world more calm and well
adjusted? Didn't non-believers lose their Civil Rights in Europe for more than
a thousand years, as if to underscore their lonely misery?

But Hegel sees another view of things. Christianity is a highly splintered
religion. Its doctrines have changed over the centuries, usually to conform to
this or that national belief or holiday, or to promote the interests of this
or that sectarian committee. Accounts of such compromise fill the history of
Dogma.


GOSPEL ETHICS

The Gospel portrays Jesus as often rebuking the Pharisee leaders of the Hebrew
religion. These Pharisees, we're told, taught that the essence of Ethics is
the fastidious observance of the Law. Jesus disagreed. The essence of Ethics
is more than that, he insisted.

For Hegel, this is the core of Christianity. Miracles, eschatology and
messianism are secondary. The primary message of the Gospel is that the
Pharisee definition of morality was in error. Even if someone were to prove
that the Gospel is pure literary fiction, this Ethical message would still
stand on its own as a courageous, immortal proposition.

The miracles in the Gospel are not as impressive. Rationalists have for
generations proposed ingenious explanations for nearly all of them. No Roman
or Hebrew historians of the day bothered to write about them. History tells us
that other people in the region cured demoniacs. Itinerant exorcists were not
rare in Galilee and Palestine. In the Gospel's account of Jesus healing a
withered hand in a Synagogue, what impressed the Synagogue was not the marvel
but the desecration of the Sabbath.

The Gospel portrays Jesus as one who rejected any faith based only on a
miracle or sign. He sought freely believing disciples.

Perhaps the Gospel's resort to miracles, like a highway detour, only made the
road longer, with more ways to get lost. It became too easy to mistake
externally-grounded lip-service for self-grounded morality.

If the Gospel's moral teaching had become the object of devotion, as intended,
then perhaps the Person of Jesus would not have become the object of such
intense focus. As it is, many revere the miracles first, revere Jesus' Person
as a result, and finally his moral teachings are given weight by proxy, rather
than in themselves.

The Gospel portrays Jesus as a moral teacher. Ethics, or as he might have
said, Divine Purpose, is the great duty of humanity. As portrayed, he taught
this by parables, stories, and especially by his moral example. He spoke about
himself and his mission often, ever aware of himself. He was attentive to his
personal example of the morality he preached, since it was obvious that some
people can't understand Ethical ideas from a mere hearing. They have to see
examples.

Authoritarians seize upon his examples as sacrosanct, leaving as secondary the
greater principle of free Ethical action.

Who inserted this authoritarianism?


ETHICS

Ethics is more subtle, more beautiful and more sublime than the Law. The Law
is only the minimum comportment we require before we collectively restrain or
otherwise apply force.

Liberal, Ethical believers, if they condemn anything, condemn only willful
cruelty and destruction, not differences in interpretation. They may view
mythological religion as unworthy, but not as damnable. 

By contrast, authoritarian believers say that Ethical philosophy and crass
superstition have the same root--human imperfection. They say that individual
interpretation is damnable in itself. They make official belief and official
morality into a new Law. Just as the Sadduccees made the temple-cult into the
essence of their faith, so has Christendom made an ancient catechism and an
external ritual into the essence of its faith.

If we live Ethically only by carefully following rules and rituals, what
becomes of our free will? Do we have no salvation except that outside of us?
Are we born blind and deaf to Ethics, dependent entirely on external
benefactors and unfamiliar revelations?

If we aren't born with the possibility of Ethics in our hearts, then no amount
of preaching can strike that chord in us. But if we're born with Ethics in our
hearts, then only our own hearts are the proper measure of external systems of
Law.

The Gospel portrays Jesus as one who holds the Ethics of the Heart to be
superior to the Ethics of the Law.

This is no mystical interpretation of the Gospel, but a rational
interpretation which also speaks to the highest levels of human awareness, the
levels of beauty and morality.

Morality is an invisible realm, where laws are potent but do not have
discernibly physical roots. Legislation, rules, codes and rituals do little to
illuminate our knowledge of this invisible realm. But simple inner faith and
inner confidence in one's own heartfelt feelings, these are the road to
spiritual awareness. This is the esoteric Gospel teaching, hidden beneath
mounds of doctrines of miracles, eschatology and Messianism.

The Gospel's moral preachments at one time shone with an inner truth and
beauty of pure Ethics. But the demand to believe in Jesus' Person first, and
in his Ethics only secondarily, shouted out the original lustre. Duty was
reduced to belief in Jesus' authority. Dogma asked Reason not to judge, but to
remain silent and listen.

When Christendom became an enforced Dogma of canned Ethics, it became a self
contradiction. An Ethic not rooted in freedom is a fraud.

Where did this authoritarianism come from?

One answer suggests itself immediately. Those who twisted the Gospel's
original message of pure Ethics were those who had a vested interest in
Authoritarianism, the holders of State power.


THE STATE

The Gospel portrays a Jesus who used the Hebrew idea of the Messiah to reach
his audience, but who changed the meaning of that office. Instead of a warrior
Son of David, the Gospel tells of a peaceful Son of Man who taught universal
morality for all nations.

The Gospel presents this as his undoing. Nationalist interests would not hear
of the universal morality heresy. Universalism is treason, they charged. The
Gospel portrays Jesus as having to defend his actions often, and he tried to
keep his wider mission as secret as possible. We're told of his arrest for
heresy and treason, for coming into conflict with the State.

Now, anyone who knows Hegel knows he isn't a fierce critic of the State. He is
conservative on that score. But he does show strong feelings against mixing
Church and State.

I can belong to MENSA and still be a full member of my State. But if I belong
to a religious sect, I voluntarily restrict my membership in the State because
of sectarian loyalties. This helps us define a sect. A sect is a smaller, more
intolerant group nestled inside a larger, more tolerant group.

But if a religious sect grows to become a majority, then a struggle ensues
between State Law and sectarian Law. When this happened in Constantine's Rome,
the Christian Church won the struggle and became the State.

Perhaps this is the time when Christianity was first corrupted with
authoritarianism.

(It's tempting to accuse Hegel's critique of the Roman Church-State of mere
Protestant sectarianism. In fact, Protestant Church-States have been just as
guilty of authoritarianism as ancient Rome ever was. The core of truth in
Hegel's narrative is that since the Catholic was the first Christian
Church-State, we who look for the origins of Christian authoritarianism have
an obligation to look here first.)

When Christianity became the State, the cold, public community of the State
diluted the warm, separatist community of the sect. The State quickly
abandoned the original Christian tradition of communal social organization,
where elders administered all the community's goods. Weekly contributions and
the continuing support of monasteries replaced the early communes. The State
then abandoned the early practice of Christian equality. Equality became real
only in God's eyes, and only in heaven. Phony public rituals, like washing the
feet of the poor in public, replaced the original equality.

Did the State have an interest in modifying other original Christian
practices?

The Gospel portrays Jesus' last moments on Earth at a table, eating a
nourishing meal with his friends, conversing about Fate, Attitude, Duty and
Courage, and how these may lead to Love of Humanity. It was pleasant, so Jesus
asked his friends to remember him at similar mealtimes.

Was this ordinary supper transformed into a sacrificial cult by the Roman
establishment, as an attempt to replace the Jewish and Roman sacrificial
cults? After the Church-State dismissed common property and equality, were
simple supper gatherings also replaced by a mandatory public ritual?

Were Jesus' original disciples really passive and unreflecting? Did they
really seek to mimic Jesus' example, with no thought of their own? Did they
really sacrifice all for Jesus' mission? Did they really go out for missions
so short they had time only for the most authoritarian appeals?

Or were the simple, Ethical teachings of the Gospel altered over time, making
passivity the highest virtue? Rather than Love and Tolerance, the
authoritarians seem to have made professed belief and baptism into the sole
marks of the Christian.

If the authoritarian State is to blame for making the originally Ethical
system of the Gospel into an authoritarian tool, how did this happen? How were
they able to do so?


CHRISTIANITY: HEBREW OR ROMAN?

One of the most fascinating spectacles of Western History is the mass
conversion of the Roman Empire from ancient paganism to Christian Religion, by
way of ordinances from the Emperor.

Scholars do not agree on all the details of this phenomenon of history.

Some scholars, including Hegel, Bauer and many others ancient and modern,
explain it by saying that the change was not as great as we may first think.
The essential core of Christian imagery is Greek and Roman, not Jewish, they
say, so the conversion was not so radical. 

Of course, this is what Hebrew leaders have said from the beginning, which is
why they rejected Christianity as an evident pagan dilution of their original
faith. Jesus' anti-legalism, his anti-Mosaicism, was their evidence.

Not that Hegel and Bauer agreed with the Hebrews on all matters. On the
contrary. They still rejected Judaism, but they went even farther than the
original Christians by not only rejecting Judaism, but by cutting even more
ties between Christianity and Judaism.

There is substantial material available to show how Christianity is less a
form of Judaism and more a form of Greco-Romanism. For centuries Protestants
accused Catholics of absorbing and retaining too much paganism in their
religion. More exclusive Protestant sects also criticize the older Protestant
sects for retaining too much alleged pagan Catholicism in their religion.

Scholarship which shows how modern Christian theology links up with the old
paganism (cf, John Hyslop's THE TWO BABYLONS), is a two edged sword. One may
use it to show how much paganism remains within the most refined Christianity.

For Hegel, a Hellenophile who loved the Classical Greek civilization, this
wasn't shocking, it was exciting.


THE LOVABLE PAGAN

Hegel, in preferring Hellenism to later European culture, found himself
preferring some pagans to some Christians in many ways.

In his mind, the parts of Christianity which are most important are those
parts which are Platonic, Hellenic, philosophical and rooted in Ethics. Hegel
saw Jesus as the Socrates of the masses. Those Scriptures which were
superfluous, perhaps supra-added over time, were those which struggle to
reconcile Jesus with the same Mosaic Law which condemned his neo-paganism.

Hegel sympathized with pagans. He praised their relative tolerance of foreign
religions. He sympathized with their pain when Hebrews and Christians mocked
their ancient religion. He admired their fierce patriotism, their blunt
honesty, their rugged fearlessness and especially their love of freedom for
those willing to fight for it.

Hegel admired how the holidays of pagans were emotional events, celebrated
with great abandon and uncommon revelry. Pagans knew how to have a rip-roaring
good time. They celebrated their religion in all aspects of their home and
state. Theirs was a happy religion.

Pagans had great intellectuals like Plato, Aristotle and Marcus Arelius. They
had great leaders, free states, great art and great moral courage. We still
imitate their Senate, their Olympics, their military and legal systems. For
the Hellenophile, Athens and Rome are like an Atlantis, whose many virtues are
so grand they seem to belong to an alien species.

Hegel appreciated that pagans didn't demand that their gods be perfect moral
examples. Morality was just freedom, and freedom was everywhere. They even
enjoyed comedies about the gods. What they wanted from the gods was Beauty,
Drama, Art and Fate.

The pagan was neither passive nor zealous, neither pious nor sinner. The pagan
didn't use history to prove his religion. The final authority of religious
truth, for pagans, was the human heart.

Every aspect of the life of Greece and Rome interweaved Pagan mythology in its
bosom. It was at home, at school, in the theater, in the Senate, in the
battlefield and in the public square.

How then did paganism fall to Christianity? It did not fall peacefully, and
the commoners in the countryside persecuted the Christians more than any
Emperor. Emperors even denounced the spontaneous persecution of Christians, as
in Lyons. In fact, the so-called monster, Emperor Dominitan, while he
reinforced some anti-Christian legislation, was himself married to a
Christian, and had a Christian daughter.

Yet, in the span of twenty years, after the Emperor's decree, the masses of
pagan society converted to Christianity and forgot all about their old ways.


THE RISE OF CHRISTIANITY

Could Christianity have overwhelmed the Roman Empire if it was not
psychologically superior to paganism? Was this not a proof of Divine forces
behind Christianity?

Hegel believes otherwise. In his view, Rome fell to Christianity by way of the
Emperor's bureaucracy.

Rome developed the most massive, most efficient Bureaucracy of the time. It
was enormous, and although it suffered from the same abuses which plague every
bureaucracy, it served to manage the affairs of the ancient world's largest
army, largest highway system, largest economy, largest welfare system, all on
an international scale.

It worked well, but no single person knew exactly how it all worked. So the
authorities were very reluctant to tamper with it. It became sacrosanct.
Critics of the State were dealt with severely, perhaps justifiably, since this
State was the most productive and humane state ever developed in the ancient
world. It served the greatest good for the greatest number, and to denounce it
was to attack the good of all.

Unfortunately, the price paid for the bureaucracy was mass passivity. The
bureaucracy was as impersonal as it was efficient. No individual could ever
have more value than the State machine. The Emperor was the personal
representation of the Bureaucracy, and so he assumed all value, but only by
proxy.

The individual lost value, and could never compare well with the power of
organized groups like the bureaucracy. Heroes no longer looked so heroic.
Compared with the benefits which the Emperor's State could now grant, the
individual had little to offer besides doing his or her little job as a tiny
cog in a huge wheel.

A slave no longer looked up to his master as a hero. There were no more
heroes. Those slaves who were better educated than their warrior masters now
had fewer reasons to admire them. Class tensions arose. 

The individual became a property-acquisition-unit. The State's relation to
this unit was the role of property-protection-unit. Long before our society of
money-based relationships, impersonalism and alienation had already reached
new heights under the Roman bureaucracy.

The gods of joy were useless in this new realm. Only a god who was remote,
untouchable, totally serious and solemn, who held all good while people were
all worthless, and who graced people arbitrarily, by his undeserved kindness,
bore any relation to this new reality.

The devaluation of individual action seemed to prove that human nature was
worthless and corrupt. Only by attaching to something larger than itself, like
the State bureaucracy, could the individual find any value for his or her
actions.

The pagan gods only ruled nature. Now, with the doctrines of individual
worthlessness, anti-heroism and human corruption, the god which fit the spirit
of this time would demand to rule the individual will as well. The right
theology appeared at the right time. Christianity began to spread.

The poverty of impersonalism was felt as a crisis which only a serious God
could resolve. Once people accepted that, the Second Coming became the focus
of every wild and futile hope. The free morality of the past was gone, and
Christians promised to restore morality. The masses flocked to it, and the old
paganism was abandoned en masse.

The Emperor would learn to appreciate that Christians placed all desire for
social change in God's hands, that they resigned to wait passively for
centuries. Perhaps this was not such a bad development after all, he mused.

Constantine proclaimed the official Christianity of the Roman State. It seemed
to fit like a glove. The Roman Empire quickly adapted.

When the State entered this arena, the aristocracy created a hierarchy of
privileged Christians above the masses, the hierarchy of priests and pontiffs.
Perhaps this is the source of authoritarian Christianity. The class of
privileged Christians fit in snugly with the wheel of State. All the ills that
attend State power, like ambition, greed and envy, replaced the original
Ethics of the originator of the movement.

Roman literature became dominated by theological themes. But instead of love,
tolerance and reconciliation, dogma and doctrine became the obsession of the
Roman legal system. Heresies became the most important political issues of the
day, and massacres resulted from differences of theological opinion.


THE STATE WITH NO FREEDOM

The Church-State is a state with no freedoms. In a state with no freedoms,
citizens live without souls. This is because freedom is the very condition,
the very definition of the human soul.

In such a state, total sacrifice seemed like a little sacrifice since the
citizen had little to lose, anyway. Martyrdom seemed a reasonable career,
since life without freedom is a kind of martyrdom.

For those without souls, the image of the crucified Jesus has its own value as
a cathartic image.

The masses were never well educated in the ancient world. But now even the
educated were falling from the Hellenic ideals of Reason and Liberality.
Belief in miracles replaced Reason. Convictions replaced decisions.


THE ROMAN CHURCH ADOPTS THE OLD TESTAMENT

The Gospel portrays Jesus as a Jewish critic of Jewish society. But the
Christian religion which adores him is largely Roman. This Roman religion
sought somehow to appropriate the Jewish Old Testament for its own purposes.
Why?

As noted above, Hegel sees Christianity as a religion developed from the path
of Greco-Roman civilization. Not only the pagan influences (which the Hebrews
noted), but its later support of sculpture (which Hebrews avoided, since it
reminded them of graven images), finer paintings, finer architecture, finer
music, drama, tragedy, and finer literature--these were the beautiful
hallmarks of Catholic Christianity. In Hegel's theory of Art, Christian Art
was only an extension of Greco-Roman Art. This was evidence of its deepest
roots.

Why bother, then, incorporating the Hebrew Testament into the Roman Catholic
Bible? Hegel avoided this question. He didn't spend much time with the Old
Testament. It seemed to him to be completely overshadowed in spirit and in
substance by the New Testament. It was completely fulfilled, so he saw no
point going back to it for anything. He thought Matthew's Gospel was beating a
dead horse in trying to justify Jesus' career by repeating, "In order to
fulfill the Scripture..."

I think it's worthwhile to explain why Rome decided to make the Hebrew
Testament into part of its own State Religion. I have my own theory which I'd
like to share with you. It focuses again on the State.

Rome was not the first Imperial World Power. It took that power from Greece.
But Greece was not the first Imperial Power, either. Greece took it from
Persia. Persia had taken it from Babylon, Babylon took it from Assyria and
Assyria had taken it from Egypt. Egypt, as archeologists have shown us in our
own generation, inherited much from Sumer, which was not Imperial, but was the
first culture to develop an advanced system of city-states more than 6,000
years ago near Babylon. Imperialism doesn't begin with Rome, but was very well
developed when Rome took it over.

The Hebrews, the Bible says, came into conflict with every single Imperial
Power from Egypt through Rome. This is because its location was exactly in the
center between Egypt, Arabia, Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, and tended to be in
the way of the larger nations as they fought for world control. Although the
Hebrews had a tiny state, it was at the crossroads of all civilization. In its
relations with all the world powers of History, the Hebrews kept a diary, a
library of books we call the Bible. Of course, all diaries are biasd. But the
Hebrew Testament is a remarkable record of the past, and is perhaps the most
valuable of all archeological materials.

Modern scholarship suggests that many parts of its Bible are taken directly
from the archives of these Imperial Nations.

Some experts say some Psalms are taken from Pharao Ihknaton. Some say Moses
borrowed much from "all the wisdom of the Egyptians." Some say the first
chapters of Genesis are taken from Sumerian and Babylonian archives, and its
later chapters from Arabian traditions. Some say the books of the prophets are
different in content from Moses' books, not because of new revelations, but
because the Assyrians and Babylonians had a profound influence on the
prophets.

The Persians, the Hebrews' only Imperial friends, relayed much of their
culture to the Hebrews when they rebuilt the Hebrew Temple. The proof is that
the Persian doctrines of angels, the End of Time and the Resurrection, were
taken up by the Hebrew Pharisees after this period.

Hellenist influence on later Hebrew works is well known.

My point is that the Old Testament is a testament to all the Imperial World
Powers. It's an eye-witness diary of World Power. It makes sense that the
latest Imperial Power, Rome, would not only demand it for its Imperial
Library, but would seek to transform it into its own possession by a religious
explanation. The New Testament provided this transformation for Rome.

The Hebrew Testament is a truly priceless Imperial history. It unconsciously
catalogues the transition of power from the ancient Semitic Empires of Assyria
and Babylon to the younger Indo- European Empires of Persia and Greece. This
is one reason Rome had to appropriate the Hebrew Testament. It was valuable as
a common Imperial archive, though compiled and edited by an articulate nation
which never realized its own Imperial calling.

I think my interpretation supports the Hegelian claim that Christianity is a
Greco-Roman religious development, modified by the need to dip into
international Imperial history to give its own status legitimacy.

Rome was an Imperial nation above and inclusive of all other nations. It was
important that Roman religion be the same. The teachings of the Ethical Gospel
were simply so much more grist for its mill. The Imperial State Church
included all these elements. If Hegel is right, we may reasonably lay the
blame for the authoritarian element in Christianity at the feet of the Holy
Roman Empire.


THE ROTTEN FRUIT OF STATE RELIGION

The problems of Christendom are a splendid example of why a State should never
become a Church nor a Church a State.

Morals, ideally, are the domain of an Ethical community. Law enforcement,
ideally, is the realm of the State. When these become confused, chaos results.
Force is the great possession of the State. Love is the great possession of an
Ethical community. Conformity is the song of the State. Freedom is the song of
a choir of free, Ethical people.

The State should stay out of the business of monitoring morality. No society
can afford the number of police officers that would require, nor the bother
that would entail.

The State should be able to tax me to contribute to a legal Fund for the Poor,
but should not be able to spy on me to prevent me from encouraging
panhandlers. Nor does a panhandler, who is the State's problem, have a right
to ask me directly for money. If I give him anything, it's a completely free
moral decision I make with my own inner counsel.

The State does have an interest in the honesty and integrity of its citizens,
with an eye to good business practices in its jurisdiction. But how can it
guarantee high morality when it barely collects enough taxes to ensure a
minimum of crime-stopping? Traditionally the State goes to the local Church
for moral support, tacitly admitting that morality is outside its natural
scope.

Unfortunately, when Church and State sleep together, the resulting system of
Ethics isn't a self-evident system of axioms for living in society, but a
strange brew of Doctrines one would never guess on one's own. Only
indoctrination can relay them. Duty is that which is pleasing to God, but the
authoritarian Church-State reserves the exclusive right to define God's
pleasure.

The Roman Church State developed an embarrassing neighborhood-watch morality.
One's neighbors spied upon by every petty, arbitrary choice. The State, via
the Church, snooped into every private thought, every emotion, every glance,
every friendship and social contact.

No amount of prostration was ever enough. If I confessed my sins and
worthlessness daily, it profited me nothing at all. No amount of inhibition
sufficed. The Pharisees only told people what to do. The Roman Church State
also told people how to feel.

In defense, millions retreated into hypocrisy and phoniness. Unworthy people
posed as true believers, and freely moved within the Church-State as long as
they followed all the rules on how to act and appear to feel. No wonder so
many Christian holidays are hollow, spiritless and void of true feelings. The
work-place is happily free from such asceticism. If secular morality catches
on, we can hope for a diminishing of this kind of hypocrisy.

The Church-State has given us mass phoniness, mass self-deception, mass false
security, and eventually promises to bring us mass disillusion, disorientation
and lonely frustration. The State can never produce anything except legalism.
At its worst it may cow people into lying and hypocrisy. When Christianity
took over the Roman State, it itself was sadly reduced to this legalism.


THE JOY OF SECTS

The most intelligent Christians attacked this legalism, not with philosophy,
but by making a radical breach in the State. They created splinter groups,
smaller sects which could practice the ideals of the earliest Christian
communes, where equality and morality had some meaning and tangible
application.

People have an uncanny intuition that they must have the right to determine
their own morality.

As these sects grew to enormous sizes, their leaders grew into new
authorities. The three great schismatic sects began along national boundaries.
Luther's German sect, Henry VIII's Anglican sect, and Calvin's Swiss sect, all
began as moral protests to Rome's State Church, but soon became State Churches
themselves, with all the dogmatic and legalistic problems of Rome. So, new
sects, in rebellion against State encroachment upon morals, sprouted up again.
And so it goes.

I think sects are good. They keep the big bully Churches from taking too much
political power. They are a controlling, limiting factor in the politics of
religion. We should allow them, even encourage them, to flourish. 

I mock the folly of the USSR which spent good tax dollars to dissuade people
from being religious. First, stomping on one religion usually serves only to
make other religions stronger. Second, stomping on all religions is useless,
since most people see their religions as the home of their morality, the most
valuable thing in life to them. Religion bashing only makes martyrs.

I'm astonished once again at the brilliant wisdom of the Founding Fathers of
the US Constitution. By granting to all citizens a carte blanche freedom of
religion, they ensured that religious sectarianism would forever keep itself
in check, that religion might never overtake the State, and that the State
would more often keep its nose out of private morality.


CONCLUSION

The Gospel portrays Jesus as one who wished to inspire us to a free morality
which arises from within our own hearts, rather than from the Law. Observance
of the Law isn't nearly enough to constitute morality and Ethics. He wished
people to be free from authoritarianism, legalism, to act in goodness freely,
without force or obligation. This is Ethical religion. For Hegel, this is the
only true religion.

This is the heart of the debate between the Left and Right Hegelians, the
debate which ruined the prospects of Hegelian philosophy for 150 years.

We must make a choice. If we believe that the essence of Christianity is pure
Ethical philosophy, then we can say Hegel was an orthodox Christian. But we
can't say he was authoritarian. 

On the other hand, if we believe that the essence of Christianity is a mystery
which we should not argue about, but faithfully believe on the authority of
Church-State, then we can say Hegel was an atheist. But we can't say he was
unethical.

I'd like to propose an answer to the question of the Left and Right Hegelians.
Hegel's position is not ambiguous. The debate arises from differing opinions
about how to define Christianity itself.

Hegel was one of the first great liberal believers. These liberal believers
rationalize so much Scripture that no fundamentalist doctrines are left. The
reason the Hegelian School split into Left and Right is because of a confusion
in the theology department. This made the issue political, and the politics of
that era confused everything for more than a century.

The great theological debate was taken up by Hegel's most brilliant pupil,
Bruno Bauer (1809-1882), theologian, ex-theologian, and Nietzsche's elder
confidante. Leader of both Right and Left Hegelians when he bothered to belong
to either, Bauer gave the world the most controversial pronouncements about
Christianity ever written. His important works are available only in German.
Albert Schweitzer's summaries of his books are the English reader's primary
peek into his creative mind.

I tend to agree with Hegel. Religion should be a celebration of pure Ethical
freedom. If it isn't that, then perhaps we're better off as atheists, since in
a state of authoritarian religion, only dissenters are free.

There is nothing authoritarian in Hegel's philosophy. The Absolute Idea is a
flexible, bending, compromising and all-inclusive idea. It isn't based on
Hegel's authority, still less is it based on the authority of the Laws of
Identity and Contradiction.

Dialectics, we may find, is the greater Logic of synthesis and reconciliation,
and complements a complete philosophy of Ethics.


Paul E. Trejo
.