The Iron Bed of Procrustes
Address by Peter Ferguson, 2nd August 2009
Procrustes, the son of the sea god Poseidon, is a figure from Greek mythology. His stronghold was in the mountains. There he would offer travellers his hospitality, telling them about his magic bed that would adjust exactly to the size of the person who slept in it - no matter how tall or short.
Once inside, however, Procrustes would force them onto the bed and make them fit it.
If the guest was too tall, the legs would be amputated; if the victim was too short, he would stretch them out.
Today the Iron Bed of Procrustes has become a symbol of enforced conformity.
This notion of conformity to fit in with the beliefs of others is central to Islam and Christianity with few notable exceptions: one of them being the Unitarians.
In Australia and most of the rest of the world religious fundamentalism is, to put it mildly, “on the nose”. At the same time these cults have millions of devout followers as they seek to fit others into their Procrustean bed.
There is an amazing similarity among all fundamentalist beliefs.
For example, when Osama bin Laden’s Al Queda claimed responsibility for the attacks on the Twin Towers in New York on 11 September 2001, one of his reasons was because the liberal permissive values of America and the West were seen as a threat to Islam and undermining the faith that was brought to them through the prophet Mohammed.
These are some of the things Al Queda hates:
- They hate liberated women and all that symbolizes them.
- They hate it when women compete with men in the workplace.
- They hate the fact that women should have the right to decide whether they will have children.
- They hate the laws that have given women equal rights in our society.
- Islamic fundamentalists abhor gay and lesbian lifestyles and hate homosexuality.
- They hate the emphasis on individual freedoms.
- They embrace capital punishment as an immutable law of Allah. Witness the practice of the Taliban in Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and Iran.
Without going into detail the Christian fundamentalists’ hate list is astonishingly similar.
They claim that the wide range of sexual orientations and permissiveness had adulterated the strength of US society leaving it exposed and vulnerable to attack.
Further, they argued that national security had been jeopardized by the ongoing destruction of the nuclear family, where only the husband works and where the wife stays at home with the children.
Like Islamic fundamentalists they actively support the use of the death penalty.
They both claim for their authority the inherent word of God – The Bible or The Koran.
So, my friends, as you journey on beware of those who offer to accommodate your mind and heart in their iron beds!
Equally Procrustean are the demands of Christian orthodoxy with their own iron beds into which each member has to fit.
Chances are that most of us are here today because we couldn’t fit into the beds of the orthodox mainstream. You found Unitarianism an attractive alternative. You like to be part of a group where you are encouraged to form your own views about life and death.
The doctrines of the Anglican Church include belief in the Trinity: that there is God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit: that God the Father sent his son who had existed with him and the Holy Spirit from all eternity to planet Earth to be born of a virgin, to live a perfect life, die a sacrificial death, rise again two days later and ascend into heaven.
In the very latest Anglican prayer book is the statement of faith that those who don’t believe in the Trinity will suffer eternal punishment and I quote “in everlasting fire”.
The Roman Catholic Church has given its followers even more impossible things that you have to believe in before breakfast every day: such as the infallibility of the Pope, and the bodily assumption to heaven of Jesus’ mother, Mary,
If you disagree with the cardinal dogmas of the orthodox churches you will be labeled a heretic. The word heretic comes from the Greek “haeresis” meaning one who chooses.
Countless are the men and women who have been punished, banished and sometimes executed for not believing in the Three Person Godhead.
When I left the Anglican Church about ten years ago, the Archbishop wrote me a very nice letter thanking me for my contributions over the previous 40 years. Then came the sting in the tail of his letter. He stated that if I abandoned my Unitarian belief I would be welcome back in the Trinitarian fold. As if?
“Seek the truth”. For us heresy is sacred: choosing for ourselves is all about our human dignity.
Unitarianism is not a cult. A cult is a system of religious beliefs that replaces your beliefs with its own.
A cult gives legitimacy only to its own teachings. If you do not conform you are excluded.
By this definition all the orthodox mainstream churches are cults – from the Roman Catholics down.
It is the Iron Bed of Procrustes. You have to fit the mould whether you believe it or not.
The final part of this essay concerns the doctrine of the Trinity and the position of women in the Church.
The Trinity is and has been an important part of the teachings of the orthodox churches for a very long time.
Is it Biblical?
Did Jesus, the monotheistic Jewish prophet, and his Jewish disciples really believe he was God?
Of course not, but there is one passage in the Bible that describes the Trinity. It is found in the first letter of John, chapter 5, verses 7 and 8. It states, “There are three who bear record in heaven, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit and these three are one.”
But it is a fraud. It was added to the text by St Jerome circa 382 AD, i.e. three and a half centuries after Jesus. Incredibly even though the fraud was uncovered in the 16th century you will still find this so called Johannine Comma found in the New King James Bible and many other modern versions. Next time you are in an hotel, check out the Bible for yourself and you will see the fake insertion placed there to mislead.
The Trinity was unknown to the early Church Fathers. It was the unbaptised Constantine who called together a meeting of Christian leaders at Nicea in Turkey in 325 CE.
He saw in the Christian church an opportunity that would be to his own political and military advantage. On the advice of the pro-Trinitarian party Constantine banished all bishops who disagreed with them and in the end, quoting historian Walter Nigg, “Not a single bishop said a single word against the Trinity monstrosity …”
With few exceptions the Trinity was not seriously challenged for more than a thousand years until the enlightenment and Renaissance.
Now for the story of Michael Servetus who was born Miguel Serveto on St Michael’s Day 29 September 1511 in Aragon in north east Spain. A child prodigy by the age of 13 he could read French, Greek, Latin and most significantly Hebrew which was considered dangerous and subversive by the church.
In their book “Out of the Flames” Lawrence and Nancy Goldstone describe the life and death of this young man. They point out that Michael’s background in Spain was set against the struggle of the Jews and Muslims to resist Catholicism and the Inquisition. Both were powerless minorities fighting a desperate battle for survival.
At a young age he learned to identify with the outcast long before he was to discover that he himself was persona non grata. At 13 he attended the University of Zaragossa the capital of Aragon.
A year later he was reading the classics and also the works of the German Monk Martin Luther.
At age 16 this extraordinarily talented young man was sent by his father to the University of Toulouse, France, a centre of conservative religion. His father was worried about his son’s radical views.
Unbeknown to Michael’s father, however, while the City of Toulouse was conservative: for example a special iron cage had been mounted on a platform on the river and used for drowning those who deviated from the Catholic faith, the University, however, was a hot bed of radicalism.
At age 19 Servetus’s biblical scholarship was colossal.
He knew that nothing of the Trinitarian Nicene Creed was stated or even hinted at in the scriptures which he had read in the original Hebrew and Greek.
He knew too that the inclusion by Saint Jerome of the Trinitarian passage in 1 John was a fraudulent attempt to legitimize this belief.
For Servetus, the Trinity was a contrived teaching and Christianity could never be purified until it was stripped away.
As long as the Trinity was its central teaching, any outreach to the Jews and Muslims who were monotheists would be futile. He had a dream of the Christian Jews and Muslims being as it were “under one umbrella”.
He decided to write a book “On the errors of the Trinity”. He was a teenager 19 years old at the time. The book was a sell-out – 1000 copies sold immediately and it became a best seller.
However, he had become a marked man both to the Inquisition and the Protestant reformers.
Like Salmon Rushdie, Servetus was soon to discover that underestimating one’s religious opponents can be very dangerous. He was sentenced to death in absentia by the Spanish Inquisition.
Not only the Catholics but the Protestant reformer Calvin were now equally furious.
Servetus wisely changed his name and identity and studied in mathematics and medicine at the University of Paris under the name of Michael Villeneuve.
A brilliant mind he described the pulmonary system of the blood 75 years before the British physician, William Harvey, made the same observation.
Harvey was accredited with the discovery but actually it had been Michael Servetus.
In 1553 his cover as Dr Villeneuve was blown and he fled from the Inquisition to Geneva, ruled over by Calvin, arriving there on Saturday 12 August staying at a safe place in the Inn of the Rose. The following day he attended church and was recognized and arrested and thrown into a lice-infested cell.
At his trial Servetus bravely defended his belief in the absolute unity of God.
The obedient lackeys of Calvin were unanimous in their condemnation of him. And so on 27 October 1553 at the age of 42 Michael Servetus was led to the stake, an iron chain wrapped around his torso and a thick rope wound several times about his neck. A crown of thorns and leaves filled with sulphur was placed upon his head, and his book “The Errors of the Trinity” were lashed to his arm. Green wood was placed around the stake to ensure his death would be slow. The fire was lit. It took him half an hour to die. He did not break down and was heard to say, “Oh, Jesus, son of the Eternal God, have pity on me.”
So even in death he had remained true to his faith otherwise he would have said, “Oh Jesus eternal Son of God …”
Orthodox Christianity gained ascendancy in 325 CE nearly 200 years after the time of Jesus and began the task of suppressing women with greater vigour. It was a no-holds barred struggle as the male-dominated Church set about adjusting women to fit into the male oriented Procrustean bed.
Of course Jesus’ 12 disciples were all men as one would expect of a rabbi in 1st century Judaism. However, on his travels Jesus was accompanied by women. They provided financial help.
At his crucifixion when the male disciples had fled, it was the women who were with him to the end. And it was the women who were the first to testify to his resurrection.
Jesus proclaimed that in the coming Kingdom there would be no more injustice. All people rich and poor, slave and free, men and women, would be on an equal footing.
This message was especially attractive to the underprivileged, the outcast, lepers and women. Indeed early Christianity was denigrated by critic Celsus because the churches were made up largely of children, slaves and women: in other words the people without social standing.
The earliest Christian letters by Paul show clearly that women held prominent places in the young church.
In his letter to the Romans, Paul mentions Phoebe who is a minister in Rome and Paul’s most trusted patron, Prisca, who is responsible for the missionary work to the gentiles. He names Tryphaena, Tryphosa and Persis and calls them his co-workers in the Gospel.
There is Julia, too, who has a high profile in the church in Rome.
To use Paul’s words about the newly formed church.
There is neither Jew nor Greek
Neither slave nor free,
There is not male and female
For you are all one in Jesus Christ. Galatians 3:27.28
The popularly held perception is that Paul was a misogynist. Was it not Paul who ordered women to be entirely subject to men?
Let a woman learn in silence with complete submission. I permit no woman to teach or have authority over a man - she is to keep silent for Adam was created first then Eve, and Adam was not deceived but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. Yet she shall be saved through childbearing.
How do you equate those words with, There is neither male nor female for we are all one in Jesus Christ.
The answer is simple. Paul’s first letter to Timothy was not written by him but some other anonymous writer who fraudulently used Paul’s name.
In his first letter to Corinth there is another anti-woman passage put into the text of Paul’s letter to emphasize that women had no public role in the church, that they should be silent and subservient to their husbands.
The iron bed of orthodox Christianity is not only uncomfortable for those of us who are able to think outside the square but also dishonest.
Religions that demand that we should think and believe in their irrational teachings don’t make any sense. It’s much better to be a free spirit.
We should enjoy our lives despite the fact that everything is transient and fleeting.
The fact that we are mortal and that we are going to die at sometime, should not make us despondent or depressed.
Rather we should see life as an incredible source of joy as we live for the moment.
At the same time we serve humanity and dream of trying to make the world a better place for ourselves and others including those who are not human.
The slogan of this Church is to Seek Justice and Serve Humanity: which includes the call to put an end to poverty.
What I love most about our Unitarian family is the atmosphere of freedom.
Unitarianism provides an environment where it is safe to voice one’s beliefs whether religious, moral, social or political.
You are not made to feel a second class person or a candidate for hell and damnation if your views and ideas are not mainstream.
Free thinking Unitarians do not have the answer to all of life’s problems. But that does not mean that we cannot respond to the needs of those who share our life’s journey.