How to find God §17: Christ as Anti-Abraham

Christianity as a language

Grace

The birth, life and crucifixion of Jesus Christ is popularly, in the Bible itself, said to be fulfilment of old testament prophecy. They spend a lot of time on the in the new testament. One of the more interesting parallels to me is between Jesus Christ and the mythical Abraham, who established the initial covenant with God.

Abraham, again popularly, was prepared to sacrifice his only son Isaac to God, and is rewarded for his faith and commitment with becoming patriarch of the nation of Israel. An angel intervenes and stops him at the last moment. it’s the kind of thing that’s very difficult to wrap your head around if you are a coddled literalist modernist, and the story has been revisited in coddled literalists culture for the last many years, as video games, Jordan Peterson, and early 00’s religion vs science Richard Dawkins talking points: How could a Loving God ask a man to murder his own son?

As with all these things that public intellectuals care intensely about in the public sphere, it has of course already been solved a hundred years ago. Kierkegaard resolves the Abrahamic language problem by rejecting modernity and returning to tradition: the contradiction is the point. It’s supposed to be terrible and horrible, that’s what makes Abraham’s faith praiseworthy. He is putting God before even his own sense of reason, which is what makes him interesting to us today, in the secular age of Reason. Breaking the most profound taboo of our time – not sacrificing children of course – but of denying the primacy of Reason.

This is all very interesting stuff and I recommend Kierkegaard's “Fear and Trembling”, but it is also beside the point. What I think is extremely interesting is the relationship between the crucifixion of Jesus and the sacrifice of Isaac. There is a mirroring going on: A father is prepared to sacrifice his son. The Christians say, with the death of Christ, the old covenant is fulfilled, and a new covenant is established.

What is the old covenant? The prohibition of Child sacrifice. Abraham and Isaac is mythologically the point of human development where we make the first turn towards civilization, the first step out of paganism, towards monotheism. And that first step, civilizationally, or “social technology” or “memetically”, is the prohibition of human sacrifice, and child sacrifice in particular. That is, it is only “obvious” to us as being “wrong” because we live in a post-Abrahamic era. Carthaginians famously started murdering their own children when they were losing a war, to try to gain heavens favour. Happens all the time in pagan society.

The answer to the meme question of “How could a Loving God ask a man to murder his own son” is, to teach him that it is wrong. Because people are retarded. You have to drag them kicking and screaming through even the slightest cognitive exercise. And frankly lets not pretend there isn’t a deliberate movement today of trying to reverse this moral discovery.

The development of monotheism is a more complex and abstract mode of being, requiring a higher level of neuroplasticity. It is a development, physical as well as spiritual as well as social. Abstract ten specifics to a general rule, and you clear out brain space to deal with new problems, where you would otherwise have no more brain to use. Worshiping one almighty God instead of a pantheon of specifics is simply a matter of efficiency, and it requires a higher IQ. Abstracting from specifics to a general rule, or, compartmentalizing, is pretty much the only thing you can use IQ for in the first place.

In this realm of abstraction, I would like for you to consider exactly the mirroring aspect between Christ and Abraham. I think there is something much more profound going on than mere prophecy.

My main interest all my life has been language and communication. My first conscious memory is my discovery of communication, and of other minds. I may have written about it before. I was maybe 4 or 5 years old, and playing a game of pretend with a group of boys. One boy gets upset, and starts crying. My very first memory is the experience that: “I understand, know, I can see what he sees, and how it is different from what I see”. I can see how there is a miscommunication, a misunderstanding between him and the rest of us. The game became too real somehow, and he forgot we were playing a game, and now he is hurt and sad. And I can see how to reconcile us. With the discovery of other minds, I sprung into sentience. My first emotion as a sentient being was: I want to make Michael stop crying and cheer him up. All of my life has been about this principle. Reconciliation through solving language problems. I instinctual read everything this way, as communication. I feel like I can see language, and I can see the particular contour of failed communication. I can see what you mean and I can see what the guy you are fighting with is trying to say, and I can see all the little nuances that you can’t see in each other. I spent my early childhood talking my friends down from fights, by saying “When Thomas says x, you're hearing y, but what he really means is z”. I believe this is what Wittgenstein is referring to when he says in the introduction to Tractatus that “this text will only be grasped by those who have already had similar thoughts”.

And when I was reading the new testament as an adult, a couple of weeks ago, I recognized language again.

One kind of very primitive language is a call-response game. Animals do it. People do it. I point at a chair and say “chair”, and you respond by saying “chair”. This is how you establish the most primitive of languages between people. Shared priors, we agreed on a verbal signifier: this sound “chair!”, means, that-wooden-object-over-there-with-four-legs-and-you-can-sit-on-it. Something like that. This is what you do when you are a foreigner in a foreign land, with no shared language. This is what you do with children. The establishment of language is mirroring. Marco - Polo.

Now, what is the crucifixion? A mirroring of Abraham.

A father is prepared to sacrifice his only son. Chair. The abrahamic covenant is the abolition of child sacrifice. Chair. Abraham is going to sacrifice his son to God. Chair. God is sacrificing his son to mankind. Chair.

Something is trying to speak to us.

The crucifixion is not “just” the fulfilment of the covenant: in being that, it is also establishing a shared syntax.

Pagan Ritual sacrifice to the gods, the “burnt offerings” - What is this trying to “say”? What are we trying to communicate to the heavens by offering sacrifice? What is the primal prayer? Sentience is death-awareness. You become self-aware only through the notion of your own death, as you can only define something by it’s limitation. You only become sentient when you realize your ultimate limitation. What is the first human prayer?

“I am afraid of death”.

Humanity throughout history builds empires and cathedrals, mausoleums and pyramids, because we know we are going to die. Pagan sacrifice and abrahamic sacrifice is articulating a single word, which means something like: I am afraid of death. For thousands of years, mankind was repeating this same phrase over and over and over again, hoping someone would listen.

When Jesus Christ accepts the crucifixion, and willingly goes to it, when the ritual of screaming “I am afraid of death” is mirrored, and the Heavens say Chair back to us, what is He saying back to us?

I have Power over Death/I am greater than Death.

Or maybe, simply.

Be not afraid.

I believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, because I think it’s rude to assume that someone you’ve just met, and especially someone who has been trying really, really, really hard to speak to you - literally dying to speak to you - is lying. It’s really just a matter of politeness.

John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.