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Notes -
St. Thomas Aquinas, late in life, had a mystical experience after which he said "All that I have written is straw". That's not "he believed in a nice, tidied-up, rational form of religion unlike the peasants with their weeping Madonnas". Indeed, you can't disentangle mystical visions from the story of St. Thomas Aquinas, even as he was the great Scholastic mind - angels coming to girdle him with the cincture of chastity, Christ on the crucifix saying "You have written well of me, Thomas"
I'm not arguing he didn't have mystical visions! Man, people really love putting words in my mouth when I discuss this.
I'm just saying that historically, you could have a very strongly knit Christian society where different people, depending on class on intellectual level, had a vastly different conception of God. But they all still believed, had mystical experience, and were bound together in a community.
This my belief as well, and it’s shown in the works of John Scotus Eriugena, especially his inquiry into the ways of seeing God:
The best way to unite a community must be via this “nested” structure of complexity. The basic level of Christianity is so simple that a child or mentally handicapped person can understand it: they have been personally saved by a guy named Jesus, who is a very great guy. The levels increase in complexity when you read deeper into the text: Christ both represents the ideal man, and the relationship of God to man. Then you notice that the progression of his life itself reflects the development of the moral life (beginning under the obedient Virgin Mary, later sacrificing one’s life for the Good of the Community in spite of extreme torture by the high status members). You can add greater and greater wisdom on top of the Bedrock of Christ, and the whole importance of this is that every member of a community can all love the same human exemplar. It’s no surprise then that we follow Christ in the Gospel by the testimonies of his friends.
I think perhaps modern people have trouble realizing that what occurs in the imagination can be as strong as reality, especially in a period of human history devoid of media superstimuli and formal education. (Read Oliver Sach’s Musicophilia for a description of a music lover hearing a full symphony in his head when out to sea, and believing it was real. This is sensory “deprived” humanity).
If a group of people of various stages of wisdom are united by a perfectly imagined friend and teacher, that is all the same psychological stuff as if it were a real friend and teacher. That’s the power of the social technology. You are creating an optimal reality for your community that cannot exist in a materialistic-reductive way of socializing. It will be a better community!
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