Salvation and Christian typology in Philip K Dick

Philip K Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep is one of the most powerfully - and genuinely - Christian books I've ever read. I don't say this lightly, not being a Christian myself but as someone who has on occasion felt the raw power of Christian mythology. I read it in a little under a week, and probably affected me because of the depression I've been in myself recently, one I saw evocatively echoed the descent of Isidore (the subhuman, mutated by the poisonous atmosphere of the earth) into the tomb world. As the real world collapses around him - literally it breaks apart at his fingertips - he finds himself in a subterranean place of bones, spiritless and unformed. But after an aeon life begins to emerge again, and takes him with it, and he realises that the origin of the person Mercer, this new world's popular messiah figure, is unimportant - the fraud has just been revealed as a conspiracy based around an unwitting and unknown actor - whether Mercer actually lived, or experienced any of the events people go through when they 'fuse' with him. He lives in human beings, in the people who look to and rely on him.

The androids, conversely, don't care. When media celebrity Buster Friendly exposes the fraud, they mock human empathy (typified in the fusion with Mercer provided by the ubiquitous 'empathy machines') as a hoax, one proved false by the swindle of Mercerism. But the final proof of Mercer's 'untruth' is negated by Isidore's experience as a result of the androids' mutilation of a spider he found outside. Wild animals are extremely rare in the poisoned earth, and cherished by the philosophy of Mercerism. Just as Isidore is saved by the false messiah of Mercerism, so is all reality; all of creation is resanctified, death is defeated and life returns.

Just as in this process, even the tomb world is essential (the appearance and experience of death is necessary for the salvation, when death is revealed as conditional), so the bounty hunter Rick finally realises his wife Iran's meaning: Iran had claimed that depression was a healthy human reaction to some conditions, one necessary to a full human life. The absence of such a correct reaction to the sterile world, abandoned and devoid of life, that surrounded them, she identifies as an archaic mental illness. This flattening of affect typifies the androids as well as the pathological bounty killer Phil Resch who is consistently mistaken for an android; an absence of any emotional depth or resonance which is in fact the problem of the novel's world.

Rick identifies in himself a defect: he has begun to identify with some androids. Phil Resch has no such problem. Although Rick initially feels this overactive empathy as a horrifying mutation, a symptom of dust-infection, it slowly becomes clear that it is not him but the world which is wrong: the cold world, devoid of compassion, involved in a constant struggle to tell androids from humans when even some humans are pathological. Even Isidore, a cripplingly mutated chickenhead, demonstrates his superiority to the androids in his response o the spider - he is terrified by their curious desire to experiment on it, and it is Mercer, the false prophet, who saves them both.

Philip K Dick lived during the last half of the 20th Century, the period when Christianity began to be popularly reduced to the status of a falsehood under speculations about the historicity of Jesus. Dick's own interest in the early Gnostic mythology of the Nag Hammadi texts evidences a belief in the power of myth to guide our lives, and reimbue reality with a sense of meaning and purpose. In Do Androids Dick fully realises the potential of myth as an element of human thought to again bring life to a dead and cold world: Rick finally realises that, in his own identification with Mercer, he has become immortal, identified with an archetype who, despite his literal falsity, is imbedded in human consciousness. Mercer, as the name suggests, is a personification of mercy - mercy to all life, and to that we may call the soul of reality.

'Judaism', Christianity and the origins of 'religion'

A lot can be learned from Steve Mason's article on the origination of the term Judaism. I was unaware for instance that the term Judaism stems from a Greek word Ioudaismos which is almost exclusively Christian in its usage. Prior to the 337 appearance in Greek Christian texts, the only instances in Jewish literature are 4 in 2 Maccabees and 1 other in 4 Maccabees. (2nd and 1st century BCE respectively).

The author argues that the instances in 2 Maccabees demonstrate not a 'religious' use of the term but rather a practical cultural one. He compares the term Judaism to the term baptism - the latter meaning to baptise, the former meaning to Judaise. I.e., Judaism is used initially to mean the promotion and inculcation of Judaean culture and practice, in opposition to Hellenism (Hellenismos; also a term 2 Maccabees uses).

Of course, we are wise to remember that 'religion' is a relatively modern invention. Previously a peoples' 'religion' was inseparable from their culture. It was not a facet of life, but completely integrated into day to day and year by year living. The author argues that not only is 'paganism' as a religion or ideology a Christian invention, but so is Judaism as a religion. For writers such as Philo and Josephus, what they were describing was not an ideology but a living civilisation which contained and embraced philosophy, politics, commerce, festival, ritual, marriage etc.

Another interesting sideline that the author throws in is that Christianity faced much trouble during its first two centuries, precisely because there was no convenient social category as 'religion' - the Christians were a way of life without a history or homeland, more akin to a private club than the other cultures we may now characterise as 'religions'. Modern terminology makes invisible the vast categorical differences between these systems. Christianity thus appears to have been one of the first fully 'transferrable' ideologies (it occurs to me that Buddhism shares in all the same esential qualities also - predating Christianity by 600 years or so). Whereas nowadays we can easily comprehend what a 'religion' means in our society, and understand how it operates as a factor within multicultural society, a new ideological movement springing up from nowhere two thousand years ago would have been met with bewilderment by the populace. The same is clearly true in the early history of Islam, when Muhammad renounced the tribal practices of his forefathers in order to promote his monotheistic vision. 'Religion', it was claimed in both cases, was not something portable, not something that could be detached and passed around between individuals but a tradition and way of life that we inherit from our culture.

Of course, one is wise to know the difference between 'Christianity' (the ideology of the early church) and the teachings of the prophet Jesus. Jesus never intended to begin a new 'religion' (as we have seen, there simply was no such category in those times). His attempt, as best we can reconstruct it, was to refresh and revise the practice of Judaean culture in the face of the challenges from the Roman empire and Hellenic culture. The ideology of Christianity is largely a creation of the apostle Paul and the church which he made from the Jewish-Christian sect.

The archetype of Christ

The past one hundred years has seen an increased focus on the historical figure of Jesus - our investigation into the specifics of his life, environment, and teachings have brought undreamed of information (and the most ludicrous sensationalist speculation under the guise of unbiased research) and perhaps shattered forever the Church's previous presentation of him.

However, the one thing made most apparent by this trend is not the failings of Christianity but the problems at the very heart of our world view.

The symbolism, the meaning of Jesus - and crucially, his message - have been forsaken in the search for historical fact. Historical fact which ultimately is doomed by its nature to leave us spiritually disappointed.

The crux of 1st century messianic Judaism and the Christian movement which drew on much of its ideology, was the apotheosis of mankind; that each individual could reach up to the heights of divinity. That the Godhead was in fact an imminent part of our own nature, just waiting for us to realise it.

This concept has been more and more misunderstood in our search for historical rather than eternal truth (eternal meaning present in every moment, outside of particular, temporal, constraints). The immanence of the Christ archetype has been forgotten, lost, as we externalise Christ; we are then validated in our mundane, disrespectful self-image as we realise 'oh, he was just another dull human, just like the rest of us - not special at all'. Those searching for the truth of Jesus miss the point entirely. The truth was in his message, which was the same message as many teachers in those times: Man and God are one, but we must strive to transcend our mundane nature and rise above our lower selves.

Now it seems we have entirely lost this idea and we view ourselves - like we view Jesus - as purely material, unimportant, interesting maybe but ultimately meaningless.

We are more than that. In these times, we have to realise the divine that rests within us. That, or watch our nature slide into chaos.