Mani redux

By STEPHEN SWECKER

"When mankind is, as we would say, spiritually sick, something more radical than political sagacity is needed to solve the problem of security."                                                    -- Abraham Heschel

Its fascinating, isnt it, how ancient disputes refuse to go away.

Ones thoughts turn immediately to the Middle East, of course, where Palestinians and Israelis go at it just as their ancestors did thousands of years ago, according to Scripture. The problem then and now, on the surface at least, is land: Who gets to take what from whom? The proposed diplomatic "road map" for resolving the matter is simply the most recent, and probably futile, plan for how to divide up a small piece of real estate.

Underlying that particular conflict, however, is another dispute that seems equally recurrent if that is possible, and even more pervasive, perhaps explaining why the fate of that piece of real estate matters to so many around the world. The fact that this other dispute is rooted in theology and not geography should not obscure its "real world" significance. Its a barnburner, and somehow, despite the best efforts of the likes of St. Augustine and Reinhold Niebuhr, to name just a few warriors in this ages-old fray, it just wont fold.

I speak, of course, of the Manichaen Heresy.

"Manichaeism is a religion founded by the Persian Mani in the latter half of the third century. It purported to be the true synthesis of all the religious systems then known, and actually consisted of Zoroastrian Dualism, Babylonian folklore, Buddhist ethics, and some small and superficial, additions of Christian elements. As the theory of two eternal principles, good and evil, is predominant in this fusion of ideas and gives color to the whole, Manichæism is classified as a form of religious Dualism." (source: The Catholic Encyclopedia).

In short, Mani (this was a title, like Christ, and not a persons name) carved the world up into two component parts: Good and Evil. His resulting worldview was subtler than we can address here, but on the whole it had the virtue of being simple to learn and almost as simple to apply. It did require a decision about what is good and what is evil, a potentially demanding task, to be sure, requiring access to "secret" knowledge. But, once the call was made, it was not open to doubt. With Good and Evil assigned to their proper places, lifes big issues and many of its small ones were resolved. After all, there was no need to settle for faith when certitude was available. Hence, lifes mystery, sweet and otherwise, disappeared.

The banishment of Mystery, in fact, is one of the things about Manichaeism that drove Augustine to intellectual fury (for another, Manis sly positioning of himself to be on a par with Jesus was just plain idolatry in Augustines eyes). A lot was at stake with the banishment of Mystery, as Augustine knew, not the least of which was the power of the Christian priesthood. Chief among his responsibilities, a Christian priest was custodian of the divine mysteries and the channel for dispensing via the sacraments the mysteries saving grace to the masses. No mystery, no priesthood, no sacraments, no salvation, no church. Its the franchise, stupid.

Officially, Augustine prevailed. Church power politics notwithstanding, we can be grateful that he did despite the saints mixed legacy in other respects, especially his influence on the churchs teaching about sex (on this he was almost Manichaen himself and the reason many of us are still hung up about it). Why should we be grateful, especially when there is so much that needs fixing in the priesthood, both Catholic and Protestant? I answer this question cautiously because it invites misinterpretation, but heres my thesis:

Condemning Manichaeism and preserving the dimension of Mystery may be the Catholic Churchs most precious gifts to Western civilization. By those two actions, the church built into the fabric of its witness, if not its official doctrines, a reluctance to absolutize Good and Evil in the world and a tolerance for ambiguity where intellectual knowledge cannot be certain. The former allowed ones enemies, however dastardly, to retain a measure of humanity; the latter left room for humility and equanimity in the conduct of ones temporal affairs.

This witness -- eschewing spiritual dualism and preserving the dimension of Mystery -- has been more a practical ethic than an explicit tenet of church law; as such, it has been under-appreciated as a way of accommodating great diversity under a single authority. This witness, or practical ethic, has been vital to Western democracy, making possible over time the acceptance of increasing diversity within civil society and laying the foundation for freedom of conscience, freedom of religion and freedom of speech. By contrast, the Manichaen alternative was, in effect, an invitation to permanent war: Youre either for us or against us. A world of absolute Good, absolute Evil and absolute certainty allows little other choice.

As of this moment, we have not found our dreaded contemporaries, Osama, Saddam and WMD. And were having difficulty finding reliable drivers to follow our "road map" to a Middle East peace. But, unlikely as it seems after nearly 2,000 years, Mani himself appears to have risen from his Baghdad grave (ironically, he was a Babylonian!) and found us, or at least sizeable numbers of us, and seduced us again into dividing the world between Good and Evil and creating the conditions for permanent war -- all in the name of security.

Adding to our discomfort, Manis siren call sounds more and more like the malignant religion that it once was before Augustine and others headed it off at the pass of spiritual sagacity.

Stephen Swecker is editor of Zion's Herald (www.zionsherald.org).