Cathars and catharism

he foundations of Christian dualism are to be found in the philosophy of Paul of Tarsus. His disciple, Marcion of Sinope, demonstrates the relentless opposition of the two concepts of God featured in the old Bible and the Gospel. His spiritual church extends from East to West from the second century, until it hands over to the new church of the good Christians (the cathars) and then disappears in the eleventh century.

There is no such thing as God in the real world. He is absent and cannot be opposed. And yet the idea of a pure God is present in our minds. This purification is a path of truth which cuts through reality and reasoned logic. Any study of the foundation texts has to draw on the critical-history method which invalidates theological reasoning.

The old Bible talks about a law-making God, who was attached to worldly values, whilst the Gospel unveils a God detached from the world. Paul develops the idea of two creations:

• the biblical god creates an instinctive and passionate man, derived from the animal kingdom;
• Christ creates the son of man, derived from the spiritual kingdom, capable of discerning conscience. He doesn’t preach about the regeneration of the flesh, rather he rebukes it.

The fundamentally evil world in which we live belongs to the Devil. Evil – which is, quite simply, that which causes pain – takes priority, goodness only comes to relieve the excess of evil. Dualism offers non-violence to counter violence. Since evil is intrinsically linked to life as we know it, why would we imagine a God creator of all things good? There is a sort of emotional attachment which links us to the Devil like a slave to his master.

Cathar philosophy is a philosophy of liberation which turns the common view of the world upside down. In human society, cathar philosophy encounters as great a difficulty as that met by Galileo, who was trying to demonstrate that the evidence was wrong.