Entry tags:

christianity, fundamentalism, gnostics, greek, hyle, hylics, islam, literalism, musilm, mysticisim, pneumatic, pneumatics, religion, spiritualism, sufi, symbolism

Fundamentalists: Hylics and Simpletons
My relaunch of "Fundamentalists: Hylics and Simpletons" by Vexen Crabtree (2003) now has it includes the following new text:

The Roman Empire's early Christians equated textual literalism to be the modus operandi of the hylics, the least spiritual class of Christians. Fundamentalism is in opposition to early Christianity on a number of counts, including scriptual adominitions of legalism. St Paul's "the letter kills, while the spirit gives life" [2 Corin. 3:4-6] is the most famous verse against fundamentalism.

“The Gnostics called those who identified with their body 'Hylics', because they were so utterly dead to spiritual things that they were like unconscious matter, or hyle. Those who identified with their personality, or psyche, were known as 'Psychics'. Those who identified with their Spirit were known as 'Pneumatics', which means 'Spirituals'. Those who completely ceased to identify with any level of their separate identity [...] and realized their true identity [...] transformed the initiate into a true 'Gnostic', or 'Knower'” ["Jesus Mysteries" by Freke & Gandy [Book Review], p156]

In Islam, it is also the case that more those with deeper spiritual connections to their faith consider the literalist to have only understood the first 7 layers of interpretation (which were equivalent to understanding the Koran in seven local dialects, each with slightly different possible meanings for some words).

“Uberweb points out that, according to the mystic, every text of the Koran had 7 or 70 or 700 layers of interpretation, the literal meaning being only for the ignorant vulgar. [...] In the Muhammaden world, however, the ignorant seem to have objected to all learning that went beyond a [surface] knowledge of the Holy Book; it was dangerous, even if no specific heresy could be demonstrated. The view of the mystics, that the populace should take the Koran literally but wise people need not do so, was hardly likely to win wide popular acceptance.” ["History of Western Philosophy" by Bertrand Russell, p418-419]

Christianity and Islam have mystical orders. Mainstream Christianity is quite mystical in its liberalism, whereas Sufi Islam is widely held to be the closest equivalent. In both, however, the fundamentalist literalists have a strong presence (overwhelmingly so in Islam). These simple masses, the vulgar and the hylic, surely represent the biggest threat to true religious understanding. To be a literalist is to destroy the majority of depth and emotion of any written religion. The only advantage of the fundamentalist attidude to scripture is that it caters for the simplistic minded.