GOSPEL - From the Editor
A Rather Ironic Beginning
GOSPEL
From the Editor
The aim of the Metamodern Spirituality Series is to address issues related to religion and spirituality as they are arising within metamodernity. For, obviously, our engagement with matters of ultimate concern looks quite different now than it did 500 or even 50 years ago. The advent of modernity forced a critical reappraisal of our traditional meaning-giving religions: a subjugation to reasoned analysis and empirical study—whose methods and presumptions have since come to be criticized in their turn by the various deconstructive forms of postmodern critique.
Today, as we enter an integrative post-postmodern paradigm—one that would attempt to assimilate each of the previous epoch’s genuine insights into a yet more advanced and nuanced perspective—the stakes could not be higher. Civilization itself has reached an existential inflection point, occasioned in no small way by a “meaning crisis” brought on by our very advances in critical thought. And so it is with our moment’s radical urgency in mind that this Series asks: What new religion is possible? How do we reassimilate meaning and regain our footing in wisdom in a way that remains faithful to the insights of the modern and postmodern projects, without losing the priceless essence of spirituality itself? Indeed, what does a word like “spirit” even mean in the 21st century?
The fate of the world may very well depend on how compellingly we answer these questions over the next ten to twenty years.
I first met Azul Bernstein when I was a boy. Well, more accurately, it was his work I discovered. I remember being captivated by his History TV specials like Secret Wisdom of the Ancient World or Mysteries of the Bible. I can still feel the excitement I had while watching him scour the Middle East for rare finds or descending into cavernous tombs like a real-life Indiana Jones. With his unusual mix of erudition and charisma, he has always struck me as a sort of magical hybrid between Graham Hancock, Simcha Jacobovici, and David Attenborough.
Much has changed since those early years, of course. Indeed, I had gone many years since tuning in to one of his much-hyped programs, or thumbing through one of his archeological bestsellers in the local Barnes and Noble. And so I was quite surprised when, seemingly out of the blue, I answered my phone last autumn and heard the voice of my childhood imagination—somewhat older, but still as animated as ever—booming out excitedly from the other end.
What he said stunned me, and immediately captured my imagination the same way all of his sensational adventures had when I was a kid. Only now, I was a big boy editor for Palimpsest Press! which, it turned out, was precisely why he was calling. His long-time publisher, he said, had dropped his latest project, and he was now on the prowl for a new imprint to publish what he promised was the biggest religious bombshell in all of Western history: a lost Gospel—the first one ever written, in fact!—and brimming with never-before-known insights about the greatest story ever told…
After looking into the matter more, things quickly became complicated. It seemed there were more sides to the story—other perspectives on what Bernstein had found and what it all meant. The plot thickened…
I spent some time processing it all, wondering how best to proceed. In the end, after some helpful input from Vol. III contributor Prof. Ivan Caiaphas, I felt I hit on a solution that would work for everyone.
The metamodern integration now occurring depends upon the influence and assimilation of multiple perspectives. It is not static, but a dynamic interplay of sensibilities, an oscillation of epistemes, an interchange and contemporaneous co-existence of different cultural codes. The Gospel Azul Bernstein was trying to bring to the world should indeed be published, I decided, and I would do it—but not without the counterbalance of other crucial voices. They, too, should weigh in on what the Gospel really means.
And so their perspectives appear in this volume as well. While in my role as general editor I recognize the opportunity my privileged position affords me to give some sort of final account, as it were—to say here, up front and with authority, how all this ought best to be interpreted. This, however, is precisely what I will not do. As ever, I present you only with polyphony. Here, many roads diverge into polychromatic woods; which one you choose to follow is up to you.
Brendan Graham Dempsey
Editor, Metamodern Spirituality Series
NEXT: INTRODUCTION
