Asceticism Religion And Biological Evolution

Author(s): Johannes Bronkhorst
Publisher: Johannes Bronkhorst

Page 11

394
JOHANNES BRONKHORST
ASCETICISM, RELIGION, AND BIOLOGICAL EVOLUTION
395
Those Gnostics who rejected martyrdom did not for that reason choose for a life of case and comfort. The author of the Testimony of Truth, for example, while rejecting martyrdom (see above), speaks out for restraint: "No one knows the God of truth except solely the man who will forsake all of the things of the world, having renounced the whole place ...; he has subdued desire every {place within himself." Renunciation of wealth, of sexual intercourse and of the world are thus advocated (NHL: 410, 414). The Apocalypse of Pelet goes to the extent of accepting the martyrdom of some (NHL: 343; cf. Pagels 1980: 94).
When comparing the situation in early Christianity with the one prevailing in classical India a number of similarities strike the eye. In both cultural spheres there were individuals whom we may call ascetics or martyrs depending on the circumstances-who were determined to face extreme circumstances without reacting to them. In both cultural spheres we also find people, often different from the former ones, who are convinced that their souls are inactive, immov. able. The Gnostic Christians identified their souls with God, who is described in terms of immovability. This corresponds to the Indian identification of the soul with Brahma. (The Indian conceptions elaborated in the classical Samkhya system and in the Bhagavadgita appear to have no parallels in early Christianity.)
The coexistence of so-called) Gnosticism and martyrdom/asceticism in early Christianity might be looked upon as no more than historical coincidence. However, such a position is difficult to maintain in the face of the Indian evidence. There, asceticism and the belief in the inactive nature of the self are clearly related, the intermediate factor being the doctrine of karma. In the case of early Christianity, too, one might therefore consider the possibility that Gnosticism and martyrdom/asceticism are related to each other, even if there is no explicitly formulated doctrine of karma to constitute the link.
How can this relationship be explained? Did the early Chi borrow these ideas and practices from India, or did the Indians borrow them from the Christians? The second of these two possibilities has to be discarded, at least in this form, for purely chronological reasons: religions like Jainism existed many centuries before Christianity came into being. However, the thesis of borrowing in whatever form is not likely to take us very far." Although it is conceivable that
someone takes over an idea from a distant culture, it is much harder to see how such a borrowed idea could become so fundamentally important in a religious movement. (Don't forget, there was no largescale missionary activity of Indians in the Roman world, nor of Westemers in India. It is even more difficult to conceive of the transfer of a two-branched system, presumably from India to the Roman world, without the intermediate link (i.e., the doctrine of karma) coming along with it. But the most unsatisfactory aspect of this thesis is that, even if borrowing did take place, we would still need an explanation why such a complex of ideas should be so widely accepted by the borrowers.
It has already been suggested that the whole set of practices and ideas in India may be expressive of one and the same underlying predisposition, described so far in negative terms: the disinclination to identify with body and mind. It will be clear that the same formulation can be used to cover the features of carly Christianity discussed in this section. Both the martyr and the ascetic were determined to let their bodies be their bodies, and the Gnostic was in possession of knowledge which confirmed that his real self was indeed altogether different from his body. Both the Indian and the early Christian evidence therefore suggest that a common human predisposition expresses itself through these cultures' various forms of asceticism, martyrdom and wisdom teaching. It is time to have a closer look at what we may expect from a "common human predisposition".
4. What do innale predispositions look like?
It would be easy to concentrate on the different cultural contexts in classical India and early Christianity, and to accumulate data that would prove that the similarities presented in the preceding sections are no more than superficial and that they are interpreted very differently in the two cultures. Any textual scholar worth his or her salt can drown the similarities pointed out above in a flood of reflections, arguments, and textual passages that can convince almost anyone that it would be rash to make hasty comparisons, and that much more textual study will be required before anything in this regard can be said with a minimum of certainty. These scholars overlook that their conclusion is already part of their method. It is obvious that any human universal supposing, for argument's sake, that there are
Compare the remarks about cultural dissemination in the Introduction, above.