A Book Review from Books At a Glance
by Thomas Haviland-Pabst
With this new book, the first in a series of three, Horton explores the historical development of a spirituality disconnected from religion. Drawing from the work of Paul Heelas and Linda Woodhead (The Spiritual Revolution: Why Religion is Giving Way to Spirituality [Wiley-Blackwell, 2005]), Horton defines “religious” as referring to a life which subordinates subjective experience to “transcendental meaning, goodness and truth” which is in contrast to a spirituality that is “individualistic” and not regulated or “discipled by any community” (p. 1).
Horton’s aim in this series is to draw the reader’s attention to the “formative and enduring legacy” (5) of this irreligious spirituality in the development of modernity. His main focus in this first installment is on “the emergence of the notion of the ‘divine self’” which he sees as central to “a major transition from a locative to a utopian cosmos” (p. 5).
After discussing the relevance of exploring this history for our contemporary Western landscape (e.g., the implicit paganism of people in Western society expressed in the belief in reincarnation and the validity of astrology), Horton surveys the Bronze Age background leading up to the Axial Age (8th to 3rd century before Christ). Here, he notes the transition from “local kings invested with sacred authority” to “the rise of the autonomous individual” (p. 9) as people began to belong to a universal, wider society rather than a particular family and community. This transition resulted in a move away from traditional religions with the emergence of belief systems that were more universal and subjective in nature.
This transition from particular to universal, first proposed by Karl Jaspers in Origin and Goal of History (NY: Routledge, 2021), brings the reader to the Axial Age. Horton argues that this age can be described as a move away “from polytheism to monism” (p. 16). He delineates a number of features of this age: first, the diverse world “emanates from the Absolute” (p. 16); second, the divine soul, separated from the Absolute “through embodiment,” returns by “philosophical ascent” (p. 17); third, sense experience is treated with skepticism but mystical, unmediated vision is appraised as certain knowledge; fourth, ritual is replaced with ethics; and fifth, divine kings are replaced by the philosopher who articulates transcendent ideas (p. 18).
Horton goes on to discuss four terms that he plans on using throughout his history. The first, “natural supernatural,” he defines as “pantheistic or panentheistic cosmotheology” (p. 20). This phenomenon stands in contrast to a monotheism which posits a personal God distinct from created reality. The second term, “orphism,” Horton defines as the soul’s immortality, its subsequent imprisonment in various bodies via reincarnation, and its hopeful release to “reunite with the One and All” (p. 24). “Perennial philosophy” (p. 27), Horton’s third term, refers to the tradition which taught orphic, natural supernaturalism and, hence, stands in contrast to a modern narrative which sees “reason and science” (p. 27) as intellectual maturation. Another term, “philosophical religion” (p. 28), speaks to the trans-historical, or, rather, ahistorical conception of the divine which permeates the pantheistic orphism of perennial philosophy.
This book consists of eleven chapters. The first chapter discusses the transition from the mortal who merely survives the reproach of the gods, which Horton labels “hero-that-failed” (p. 34) (cf. Gilgamesh in the Enuma Elish) to the shaman. The shaman is the “hero-that-succeeded” (p. 51) by breaking through the barrier between gods and human beings and accessing the “divine within” (p. 52). The second chapter surveys the arrival of new, orphic myths which serve to elevate the status of the shaman to one of a sage who instructs listeners in pantheistic, orphic philosophy. Intriguingly, Horton argues that Pythagoras stands at the center of this development. With the third chapter, Horton traces the development from shaman-philosopher to the promotion of monism, whether understood as there is only one substance or “all things come from and return to the One” (123).
Chapter 4 gives attention to Plato, whom Horton sees as continuing the line of thought established by Pythagoras and others before him. Chapter 5 focuses on the development of Plato’s thought by various subsequent Alexandrian thinkers such as Plutarch and Philo. The sixth chapter surveys hermeticism and Neoplatonism. Here, Horton writes, “Hermeticism privileged theurgy [roughly magic] over theology, offering spirituality without religion, [and] experience without dogma” (284). Chapters 7-11 discuss this history in light of the arrival of Christianity, moving from the arrival of Gnosticism to the medieval thinker, Eriugena. The final chapter brings the Neoplatonic thought of Eriugena in tandem with mystic tendencies of the late medieval figure, Joachim of Fiore, “to the threshold of the Florentine Renaissance” (405).
Horton’s first installment of this series is off to an excellent start. It is simply remarkable how much primary and secondary literature he is conversant with in this first volume of his history. The weaving together of pan(en)theistic, orphic themes throughout thinkers ranging from the ancient Greek philosopher Pythagoras to the late medieval theologian Joachim of Fiore is both compelling and revealing inasmuch as it uncovers a trend in Western thought that is parallel to that of the scientific revolution. Hence, already with this first volume, Horton’s contribution to western intellectual history and development is significant as it modifies Charles Taylor’s thesis regarding the move from enchantment to disenchantment by beginning to demonstrate that “mythos, mystical enthusiasm, and magic were from the beginning integral to Western rationality” (p. 25). In fact, by placing humanity in direct access to the divine and thus possessing divinity, this “other of modernity” (p. 25) gives room for political utopianism to emerge in the early modern and beyond, a development which Horton briefly highlights in the final chapter.
In other words, what Horton’s work is beginning to suggest is that secularism, or a disenchanted age, is something of a misnomer. It is inconceivable biblically speaking for human beings, due to the sense of God within and without (cf. Romans 1-2), to ever conceptualize a world devoid of some kind of deity or transcendence. Rather, by disenchanting the world, secularism replaces the enchanted world of demons, angels, fairies, etc., with a new myth (which is really an old myth, as Horton contends), the ascended Man, who transcends the gap between God and creation and thus becomes God himself. Thus, a man-centered secularism is in fact a man-worshipping mythology with Man placed at centerstage of the universe. Here, we see the ultimate impulse and aim of paganism or, in fact, any religious allegiance set in competition to God in Christ; namely, the aim and impulse to displace God and exalt humanity, either by making creation divine (pantheism) or by relegating God to a place and role exceedingly (and, as the case may be, completely) removed and disconnected from creation, providence, and redemption (e.g., deism, Islam).
One minor criticism is worth mentioning. Horton’s discussion of Origen and his adaptation and application of Neoplatonism would have been strengthened by engagement with John Behr’s more favorable interpretation of Origen. This omission could be seen to betray a broader lack of consideration for interpretations that contradict Horton’s reading of particular thinkers. Despite this criticism, this series promises to be required reading for any serious student of western intellectual history.
Thomas Haviland-Pabst