What is Metamodern Christianity?

Yesterday, I listened to this wonderful dialogue between Brendan Graham Dempsey and John Vervaeke:

They discuss Brendan’s proposal of a “metamodern” Christianity and explore the potential to reclaim faith in Christ in a contemporary, intellectually responsible way. The conversation revolved around the evolution of human understanding and relationship with what, following Jung, we can call “the God image,” tracing the journey from ancient, medieval, modern, and postmodern to possibly metamodern phases.

The discussion highlighted how various historical transitions have reshaped the way humans relate to the divine image or the idea of God. John invokes the figures of Socrates and Buddha as points of comparison, which raises the question of the extent to which Jesus Christ is somehow unique. While I do think there is something unique about the Christ Event, asserting the uniqueness of Christ does not negate the universal wisdom found in other traditions like Platonism and Buddhism. 

There need be no competition between spiritual figures like Christ and Buddha; rather, there is a universal value in their teachings that all humans can and, indeed, should learn from. Human beings are participants in an evolution of consciousness, and I believe that a deep understanding of the missions of both Buddha and Christ is essential for human spiritual development (see my essay from 2011, “Religious Dialogue as Soul-Making: A Prayer to Buddha and Christ”).

I wanted to offer my two cents on these issues as someone who, in my late teens, unexpectedly found myself called by Christ. I was raised by an agnostic Jewish father and an evangelical Christian mother. By about 12 years old, influenced by my mostly still uncomprehending reading of people like Stephen Hawking and Richard Dawkins, I was proudly identified as a scientifically informed atheist. I thought of religious belief, especially Christianity, as something only the most gullible people could fall for. But later in my teens, I broadened my reading to include people like Carl Jung, Alan Watts, and Friedrich Nietzsche. I realized that the history and psychology of religion was more complicated than reductionistic materialists had led me to believe. 

The turning point was in my 19th year: my encounter with what, again in Jungian terms, I feel most comfortable now referring to as the “Christ archetype.” I use this language not to diminish the ontological shock or to negate the palpable reality of this encounter, but to make this story more digestible to those who have never had such an experience. I certainly did not relate to this being as a projection of my psyche at the time. Christ appeared to me—or better, erupted into my soul—about 45 minutes after I’d ingested psilocybin mushrooms for the first time. I felt His face just behind my own face as a glowing warmth, a loving embrace unlike anything I had ever felt. But along with love there was also an almost angry insistence that I wake up. To what? To the fact that Christ inhabits every human soul on Earth, dwelling just behind our human faces and literally dying to be recognized and embraced. 

This experience was unexpected because at the time I was a practicing Buddhist who continued to view Christianity as a uniquely irrational belief system. I did not realize it at the time, but I had totally swallowed “Buddhist modernism.” This made Buddhism appear compatible with a secular scientific world view only because it stripped the tradition of many of its core elements (ritual, cosmology, reincarnation and karma, etc.). That Christ should erupt into my consciousness with such transformative force after I’d spent my entire teenage life making fun of Christianity was humbling.

After this experience, I began a serious study of the esoteric and mystical streams of Christianity. I had not fully appreciated the extent to which the West, too, had its own forms of nondual awareness and spiritual practice. 

I’ve come to understand Jesus as a historical figure, even if our lack of detailed evidence of his real doings and sayings limits what we can say for certain about his ministry. But Christ is a cosmic being, a deeper spiritual power that informs while transcending human culture and psychology. Christ is thus an ontological power that cannot be owned by this or that church or religious sect. Christ is not a brand name. Christ does not belong to nominal Christians. I relate to Jesus as the initial vessel for the Christ being to incarnate, but, crucially, not as the unique vessel.

Jesus answered them, “Is it not written in your law, I said ‘Ye are gods’”?’ -John 10:34 

This cosmic perspective invites a relationship to the Christ Event as something numinous, a moment as pivotal as it is mysterious where the eternal meets and mingles with the historical, significantly transforming human consciousness and the longer term arc of our now planetary civilization. In light of such mingling, we cannot refer to it simply as a historical event. Christ is still incarnating, being born and dying in every human soul. Yes, even in those who couldn’t care less about the religion called “Christianity.” 

I get the sense that Brendan views “God” more as an emergent construct that humanity is collectively creating, rather than a pre-existing Being that created humans. This emergent view of God aligns with the idea of a dynamic and evolving universe. I also reject the classical idea of a creator God, but I find more satisfaction in a dipolar conception like Whitehead’s or Teilhard’s, where there is a sense in which God is both Alpha and Omega, both primordial and consequent in relation to the evolving cosmos. I agree with Brendan and John that the divine always remains in excess of human attempts to understand or control it. This excess, often terrifying, is what the great wisdom traditions have striven to help humans cope with. Unfortunately, these institutions too often overstep their human frailty by pretending man could rule God (i.e., that any one human institution might possess the final word on God’s plan). We need religions that can protect those who need it, while also encouraging those on a growth path to journey into the mystical cloud of unknowing without fear of excommunication.

Religions are both coping mechanisms and training methods, guiding humans through life’s inevitable challenges, especially death. Secularism, too, is a kind of religion, as it also functions to shield humanity from the unruly chaos of reality by way of its own unique coping mechanisms (e.g., shopping, nationalism and other surrogate identities, etc.). Secularism also often represses the essential role of myth and magic, which are integral to human experience. I don’t mean to suggest we forego science and rationality to return to the superstitions of the past. But what modern Enlightenment reason can only (mis)understand as superstition remains even more effective in modern societies because of its repression: think of the way secular societies relate to money, obsess over sporting events, and worship celebrities. Think of the myth of progress haunting our ecocidal economy. Think of the numinous feeling that drives millions of people to watch someone else unwrap a new Apple device on YouTube. Myth and magic are ineradicable aspects of human consciousness that we’d do well to integrate instead of foolishly imagining we might eradicate them by the application science and technology. If anything is magical thinking… 

My relationship to Christ has also been deeply influenced by Rudolf Steiner. He refers to the Christ event as the “turning point in time” and insists that “we are but at the beginning of Christian evolution” (Occult Science, p. 246). I discuss the context of his statement in this session of our Urphänomen reading group: 

Urphänomen Research Guild: Occult Science: An Outline – Session 13

…

Ultimately, I’d hope that a “metamodern” approach to Christianity can transcend binaries—between history and eternity, Jesus and the cosmic Christ, and between religions themselves. Such an approach would also be able to integrate scientific and religious wisdom, recognizing that both are necessary for a comprehensive understanding of reality. After all, science, in its devotion to truth, is itself a variant form of religious pursuit grounded in metaphysical assumptions about the intelligibility and unity of nature. How are these assumptions to be justified? 

…

The thoughts above were written after I recorded this video reply to John and Brendan: