Joseph Campbell's Limitations

 

Joseph Campbell in the late 1970s (Wikipedia).

This is the first essay in a series on the failure of leading 20th century mythologists to uncover significant antecedents of the religions they studied. The second addresses Raimon Panikkar's Limitations, the third concerns the limitations of Carlos Castaneda, and the fourth essay considers the strengths and weaknesses of Mircea Eliade's work. 

Dr. Alice C. Linsley

Joseph Campbell (1904-1987) was the most notable mythologist of the twentieth century and a prolific writer. His thought was influenced by the work of Carl Jung, James Joyce, and Heinrich Zimmer on Indian myths and Hindu philosophy.

I have read most of Joseph Campbell's books including The Masks of God: Occidental Mythology (1964); Myths to Live By (1972); Primitive Mythology (1987); and The Hero's Journey (1990). As an anthropologist with a strong background in philosophy, I appreciate his extensive cultural research and range of thought. The enduring power of myth and symbol is evident in what he has written. He makes significant connections between the religious traditions of the world and provides examples of how mythic themes and motifs are enacted ritually.

Campbell was attuned to the unification hopes of many intellectuals of his time, and he hoped that his work might contribute to "human mutual understanding" (Introduction of The Hero's Journey). As Robert Ellwood notes in his book The Politics of Myth (1999), Campbell believed that ancient myths are a valuable resource for people "baffled by the ambiguities and superficiality of modern life".

In his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949), Campbell discusses his theory of the journey of the archetypal hero common to most world mythologies. He called this the monomyth. Campbell does not offer a detailed explanation for how this emerges universally, but he suggests that it is deeply rooted in Mankind's collective unconscious (The Hero's Journey, p. 57). I propose that the universality is due to the wide dispersion of the early Hebrew ruler-priest caste that moved out of Africa well before 3000 BC and spread what might be called the "Proto-Gospel" wherever they settled.

Campbell delves into myths of Native Americans, Hinduism, Judaism, Islam, and animistic religions. He sometimes strays with seeming reluctance into the territory of the Roman Catholic faith in which he was raised, but never to elevate it above the other faiths. He stopped attending Mass as a communicant in his twenties.

Perhaps Campbell embraced the symbolism of Christ, the Immortal Hero, on his deathbed in a Catholic hospital. In an interview with his widow entitled "Campbell and Catholicism", the Catholic journalist Pythia Peay reports that Campbell "experienced profoundly the depths of the Christian symbol" during the last weeks of his life. She quotes his wife Jean Erdman as saying, "He was thrilled to see that [Christus Victor Cross] because for him this was the mystical meaning of Christ that reflected the state of at-one-ment with the Father. It had been through this image that he had come to a resolution the problem of his Catholic religion. While he didn't say it in so many words, "he was probably preparing himself for eternity." In the hospital, according to his wife, "he experienced emotionally what he had before understood intellectually."

However, Campbell did not receive the Last Rites and there was no formal religious service at his burial.

The Limits of Campbell's Exploration

Most of the myths that Campbell explored come from religions that emerged in the Axial Age (c. 900-200 BC): Hinduism (the Upanishads), Judaism, Buddhism, Jainism, Daoism (Taoism), the Mediterranean mystery cults, and Zoroastrianism.

Even his discussions of Nilotic myths involve the late syncretistic expressions of Egyptian imperialism. He does not explore the antecedents of the Ra-Horus-Hathor narrative among the early Horite Hebrew at Nekhen (4200 BC).

The core dogmas concerning the life-generating Spirit, God Father and God Son, including the Son's divine conception by overshadowing, his third day resurrection, his descent to the place of the dead to declare good tidings, and his co-substantial and co-equal nature with the Father were already held by the early Hebrew long before Judaism.

The Edenic Promise of Genesis 3:15 foretells how the Woman (not Eve) would bring forth a son who would crush the serpent's head and restore paradise. Psalm 91, recognized as a Messianic psalm, says, "You will tread on the lion and the adder; the young lion and the serpent you will trample underfoot." This early Hebrew expectation was expressed about 1000 years before Psalm 91:14 in the Ancient Pyramid Texts. "Horus has shattered (tbb, crushed) the mouth of the serpent with the sole of his foot (tbw)" (Utterance 388).

Horus is the Greek for the Ancient Egyptian HR, meaning "Most High One" or "Hidden One". He is hidden by His own radiance. The terms for ritual purity in Sumerian, Akkadian, biblical Hebrew, Hittite, and Ugaritic are related to the idea of radiance. (See The Semantics of Purity in the Ancient Near East, p. 5). The ancient Nilotes associated purity with the radiance of the sun, the emblem of the High God Re. In Ancient Egyptian, Re means "Father".

Hathor overshadowed.

As the sun was the symbol of the High God and his Son among the early Hebrew, divine appointment was expressed by overshadowing. When the Virgin Mary asked how she was to become the mother of the Messiah, the angel answered, "The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God." (Luke 1:35)

A Horite song found at the royal complex at Ugarit, speaks of HR (Horus) who descends to the place of the dead "to announce good tidings." The text reads: Hr ešeni timerri duri - "below in the dark netherworld" and has the Hittite phrase Šanizzin ḫalukan ḫalzi - "to announce good tidings". (See Note 2 on page 2012.) 

Horus is described as rising on the third day and ascending to the place of the immortal stars. (The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts, Utterance 667).

In the Pyramid Texts, a priest's prayer on behalf of the King, he says, "Horus is a soul and he recognizes his Father in you." (Utterance 423) 

In the Egyptian Book of the Dead, Horus is called the "advocate of his father" (cf. 1 John 2:1). The Son's advocacy is militant as described in Psalm 110:1 - The Lord says to my Lord: "Sit at My right hand until I make Your enemies a footstool for Your feet." This belief is expressed 1000 years earlier in the Coffin Texts (Passage 148). "I am Horus, the great Falcon upon the ramparts of the house of him of the hidden name. My flight has reached the horizon. I have passed by the gods of Nut. I have gone further than the gods of old. Even the most ancient bird could not equal my very first flight. I have removed my place beyond the powers of Set, the foe of my father Osiris. No other god could do what I have done. I have brought the ways of eternity to the twilight of the morning. I am unique in my flight. My wrath will be turned against the enemy of my father Osiris and I will put him beneath my feet in my name of 'Red Cloak'." (Myth and Symbol in Ancient Egypt by R.T. Rundle Clark, p. 216)

Conclusion

Joseph Campbell's work remains a rich source of valuable information for anthropologists, philosophers, and students of world religions. He was writing before some of the information I have provided about the early Hebrew was available. R. O. Faulkner's English translation of the Pyramid Texts had only appeared in 1969. My own research into the myths of the early Nilotic populations, including the Horite and Sethite Hebrew, began only 3 years before Campbell died in 1987.

Related Reading:

Why Joseph Campbell Left the Catholic Church | Fr. Dwight Longenecker (patheos.com)

The Impact of Mythologist Joseph Campbell ~ The Imaginative Conservative

Heretic of the week: Joseph Campbell - Catholic Herald

Joseph Campbell: 'Earth is in the heavens' | National Catholic Reporter (ncronline.org)

Joseph Campbell was once my hero – Catholic Heart and Mind

Campbell and the Deathbed Conversion - Joseph Campbell Foundation (coho-archive.org)

An Anglican I Remain

 

Dr. Alice C. Linsley

I make no apology for being an Anglican Traditionalist. However, I will be an apologist for the Anglican Way of Christianity.

Our confession as Anglican Christians is Christ crucified, risen, and coming again. Until His arrival, we make disciples, strengthen one another, and receive Him in the Sacrament of Holy Eucharist. The kerygma and the Nicene Creed express Anglican dogma, and the Bible informs and shapes our doctrine and practice. We require nothing to be believed that is not attested by these our authorities. That is why we reject innovations, be they from Rome, the Episcopal Church, or the Church of England.

Unfortunately, some who call themselves "Anglican" have departed from this confession, aimlessly wandering the trails of modernism, process theology, feminism, and social activism. These give Anglicanism a bad name. They leave a foul smell wherever they go. It is no wonder that some seek to escape the reek. 

Some Anglicans who have left for greener pastures include G. K. Chesterton, John Henry Newman, and more recently Michael Nazir-Ali, and Gavin Ashenden. Their departure to Rome meant gain for Roman Catholics and loss for Anglicans. However, the Roman pasture has not proven to be much greener.

Recently an Eastern Orthodox friend asked me, "Why not just head east, and become Orthodox?" Here is my response:

Because our history, our ethos, some doctrines are quite distinct. As you know I spent 6 years with the Antiochian Orthodox and value those years because they renewed me after the Anglican "wars". They also connected me with sacred Tradition whereby I can identify dangerous innovations.

The friend replied that it didn't make sense that people choose to be outside the One True Church, and had I tried the Western Rite, to which I replied:

The tendency to triumphalism among some Orthodox is troubling. It is so contrary to the Orthodox emphasis on humility as a primary virtue. Also, the Orthodox exclusive use of the Septuagint for study and as the text behind the Divine Liturgy is a problem since it leans into the Greek perspective of the soul rather than the biblical Hebrew understanding of the Soul-Body unit. Further, a detailed study of the planting of Christianity in the British Isles reveals a patrimony easily as old as that of Jerusalem, Antioch, Rome, and Constantinople. With the Great Schism of 1054, Constantinople became the seat of the Eastern Orthodox Church. The Byzantine liturgy, which I prefer greatly to the Western Rite, developed contemporaneously with other early liturgies of the Church and is not objectively superior to them, only different.

The friend then pointed to brilliant men who left the Anglican Way for Orthodoxy, including Jon Braun, Peter Gilquist, Patrick Henry Reardon, and Stephen Freeman. She asserted that these men were "on a search for the truth. For the TRUE Church."

It should be noted that some Orthodox are not orthodox in every aspect of their theology. David Bentley Hart and Alvin Kimel, both former Anglicans, are examples. Kimel has waffled a great deal over the years. He was a priest in the Episcopal Church who left for Rome and then converted to Eastern Orthodoxy. He and Hart have been promoting apocatastasis, a belief that the restoration of creation to a condition of perfection will involve escape from eternal separation from God for those who have willfully rejected God.

The departure of great Anglican thinkers for either Roman Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy suggests that Anglicanism is a natural pad for launching people in different directions. However, it seems that former Anglicans rarely go to Protestant denominations because what we have found satisfying in Anglican Christianity is lacking among Protestants. We are conscious of divine mystery, the efficacy of the Sacraments, the importance of sacred tradition in the interpretation of Scripture, the beauty of holiness expressed in reverent worship, the wisdom of the Church Fathers, and the necessity of the universal Creeds.

A Crisis of Authority and the Burden of Central Authority

The confusion within Anglicanism is the result of a crisis of authority. Our collegial polity has been weakened by a club mentality among the bishops. None wish to give offense to their fellow members. When they should have stood in defense of the Faith once delivered, they showed themselves complacent. Complacency leads to decline and decline leads to decadence.

Some who were raised by modernist Anglican clergy wandered far from the orthodox faith and led others astray. Alfred North Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne are examples. Both were raised in the Church of England. They put forward a view of God as one affected by temporal processes. In Hartshorne’s process-based conception God always changes. This is not the orthodox view of God as eternal and immutable.

For Anglicans the authority of Scripture and Tradition is central to our identity. While we share a rich heritage of reason and intellectual acumen, we do not disregard these authorities in favor of philosophical speculation about God and humans. That is fatal to our identity.

Some Anglican clergy dabbled with spiritualism. James Pike was raised Roman Catholic and became an agnostic. After WWII, Pike and his second wife, Esther Yanovsky, joined the Episcopal Church and Pike became an Episcopal priest. He was charged with heresy three times, though the charges were dropped. He rejected the central dogmas of the Christian Faith touching on the Incarnation and the Trinity. In October 1966, he was formally censured by his fellow bishops, but he was never deposed. That same year his son James Jr. committed suicide, an event that prompted Pike to try to communicate with his dead son using a medium.

The crisis of authority within Anglicanism is also demonstrated in the liturgical revisions of the Episcopal Church in the 1970s. The Episcopal priest and theologian, Urban T. Holmes, understood that ECUSA's liturgical revisions drew more on Process Theology and modern philosophy than on Scripture, Tradition, and the Church Fathers. In reference to the Episcopal Church 1979 Prayer Book, he wrote, "It is evident that Episcopalians as a whole are not clear about what has happened. The renewal movement in the 1970s, apart from the liturgical renewal, often reflects a nostalgia for a classical theology which many theologians know has not been viable for almost 200 years. The 1979 Book of Common Prayer is a product of a corporate, differentiated theological mind, which is not totally congruent with many of the inherited formularies of the last few centuries. This reality must soon ‘come home to roost’ in one way or another."

Holmes added, "The church has awakened to the demise of classical theology."

If Holmes believed that "classical" or orthodox theology is not viable, he should have left the priesthood.

Hoping to Escape the Chaos

The crisis of authority in Anglicanism has led many to seek refuge with other sacramental bodies. The departees have gone to churches where authority is either centralized, as with the Pope and the Magisterium, or is sustained by synods of Orthodox bishops who resist modernism and innovation. Within those churches, there are rebellious persons who try to impose their will. There are feminists campaigning for women priests. There are reactionaries demanding the Latin Mass as their right. There are theological and liturgical debates, and jurisdictional conflicts among the Orthodox ethnicities. The necessary imposition of ecclesial authority tends to homogenize and invariably some people will resist conforming.

Anglicans excel at resisting homogenization. It comes of our history under Rome, the bloodshed of the 16th century in England, and the iconoclasm of the Puritans. Some regard the Thirty-Nine Articles as their Confession. Others regard the Articles as important to Reformed theology but take the universal Creeds as the only proper reflection of the catholic Faith. Some use the Book of Common Prayer as a resource out of which they pick prayers and rites. Others uphold the liturgies of the 16th century through the mid-20th century as the historic Anglican formularies which are not to be tampered with. 

Some Anglicans ordain women and believe this practice does not impinge on the Gospel. Others believe rightly that this development stabs at the heart of the Gospel since the priesthood ultimately is about the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, and this innovation breaks with catholic tradition, and is without the consent of the Church worldwide. 

There also is a huge range of aesthetic expressions in Anglican churches. Some maintain the elegant architecture of the great cathedrals. Some are scrubbed clean of embellishments and resemble Congregational places of worship. Some are warehouses with big screens and platforms for praise bands. These variances express different theological perspectives, yet all claim to be “Anglican”.

Let us consider also the great intellects who remained Anglican in the face of this crisis of authority: C.S. Lewis, Dorothy Sayers, Evelyn Underhill, William Temple, Austin Farrer, Matthew Green, and John Stott. Additionally, the Anglican Way of Christianity has many millions of adherents in Africa and Asia where there has been less pressure from their cultures to adopt modernism, feminism, and innovations that break with tradition.

I remain an Anglican in good company! An Anglican I remain against the current spirit of the age.

Related reading: Change Coming for The Episcopal Church?; Anglicans and Process Theology; The Priesthood in England (a 4-part series); Alice C. Linsley's Speech at the International Catholic Congress of Anglicans; Patrick Henry Reardon, "Days of Trials"; Beyond Anglican Identities