A Secret History of Christianity: Jesus, the Last Inkling, and the Evolution of Consciousness

By: Mark Vernon

Narrated by: Mark Vernon

Length: 6 hrs and 45 mins

Publisher's summary

Christianity is in crisis in the West. The Inkling friend of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, Owen Barfield, analysed why. He developed an account of our spiritual predicament that is radical and illuminating.

Barfield realized that the human experience of life shifts fundamentally over periods of cultural time. Our perception of nature, the cosmos, and the divine changes dramatically across history.

Mark Vernon uses this startling insight to tell the inner story of 3000 years of Christianity, beginning from the earliest biblical times. Drawing, too, on the latest scholarship and spiritual questions of our day, he presents a gripping account of how Christianity constellated a new perception of what it is to be human. For 1500 years, this sense of things informed many lives, though it fell into crisis with the Reformation, Scientific Revolution, and Enlightenment.

But the story does not stop there. Barfield realised that there is meaning in the disenchantment and alienation experienced by many people today. It is part of a process that is remaking our sense of participation in the life of nature, the cosmos, and the divine. It's a new stage in the evolution of human consciousness.

©2019 Mark Vernon (P)2019 Mark Vernon

An exceptional read.

This book changed my entire paradigm on how I see the teachings of Jesus, the evolution of how they came to be , and the genius practicality of use in everyday life. His definition of Love transformed the way I read, say, and think about that word. Truly an exceptional book.

Excellent

Using this to lean into Barfield. Learned much that expanded my understanding of God's truth emerging through the mess of human living.

Listen With New Ears

After listening to Mark Vernon give a talk,via The Fintry Trust, I am listening to this book for the second time. The listener is invited to consider that some of what we were taught could use a review. Perhaps we are different beings from the ones who first heard the words of Christ two thousand years ago. His words have not changed but our ability to grasp their meaning has. Mark’s book is refreshing and kind of exciting. Mark gives permission to try Christianity anew and is an excellent guide.

A Book I'll Be Returning To

Incredible summary of the Barfieldian perspective towards Christianity. Excellently written and well explained while also full of references that can be used as a jumping off point for exploring these ideas through other authors. I'll be going back through several of these chapters again.

Exactly the book I needed

This put words and research to the journey I’ve been on towards “oneness” with God rather than simply a belief in creedal statements. Well articulated journey through the development of consciousness within the Christian faith.

Interesting but unconvincing view Christianity

I enjoyed and learned a lot from discussion of Barfield’s philosophy. I have read Barfield in the past and found him difficult to penetrate. Vernon does a good job making difficult concepts easy to understand. He is less successful in translating these ideas to Christianity. Still, his views are interesting and worthy of consideration.

This

I absolutely love this book. Mark has a tone and embodies a genuine desire for humans to fully understand God’s unconditional love. This book is an inspiration for anyone who has been searching, asking and potentially relearning a relationship with God. Much respect for

Fascinating

I occasionally get an offer to obtain a book for free on the condition I provide a review, and that's the case here. Every once in awhile I find a gem, and this is one of them. Owen Barfield, the "Inkling" the author cites as a launch point for the book, theorized that humanity's development occurred in leaps at specific periods of time. Judaism's development occurred during the early Axial age and was largely "peoplehood" oriented, and Christianity following the development of Greek thought, which over time placed individuality in the forefront. The author presents us with a clear, and I think accurate, enriching and enlightening understanding of the historical development of Judaism and Christianity, as far as how Jews and Christians thought about religion, G-d, and the world around them, in the context of these leaps. Eventually, Christianity evolved as a combination of Jewish and Greek philosophies, explaining some of the clashes in values that confuse us so much today, resulting in religion being left behind as a useful contribution to our lives. Nevertheless the author provides hints on how persons alive today can participate in a new "leap" based on the two previous ones. Just as Christianity was modified in the centuries following Jesus to take a shape and form given to it by Apostles, so too today individuals are well positioned to syncretize once more a way forward. It seems to me that this is the approach taken in Jewish thought, from its start until now. Somehow, in the author's mind this form of syncretizing seems to be absent in Judaism. I therefore don't understand what's "new" in grasping for answers in Greek thought, when Jewish thinkers (Jesus included) from the Talmudic period onward dabbled there and in Persian, Babylonian and European thought as well. Jesus was simply doing what Jews do, and did. Rather, Christianity as we know it and the incorporation of Jesus as a divinity in human form seems to me to be unnecessary to the author's case, that persons today can benefit from Christianity in ways that for now they seem to be ignoring. If you want to live like Jesus, why not do so and try to understand his Judaism? If you want to integrate today's influences, why not do so from that place of understanding of Jesus as a syncretist, rather than from the one offered up in the New Testament by its authors? As fascinating and as enriching as this book is - and I highly recommend reading it - and even though he built his points convincingly inasmuch as he's advising us to embrace religion as the means by which we tackle the unknown (which is to say, recognizing the limits of science to do so) while shaping and improving our inner lives and awareness and cooperation with others, I think bringing forward Christianity specifically as an antidote needed to be considered with other alternatives. It could be he'd conclude the same, but I think starting with the supposition weakens the conclusion. So, awesome book. Highly recommended, for persons of all beliefs.

It is pretty good

It is pretty good. The author reads the book. His performance is pretty good. This book doesn’t rock my world.

The book does what the other reviewers said that it does. The author discusses why people are staying away from the church in droves. He describes how the writer Owen Barfield believed that humanity has gone through stages of evolution of our consciousness in the past and the evolution continues to the present and the future. The author, Mark Vernon, uses Barfield's work as a jumping off point. He says people are staying away from the church because it operates and provides worship services that would have been appropriate for humanity during earlier stages of our evolutionary consciousness but are not appropriate for us now or in the future.

Vernon continues with a church history that highlights the evolution of human consciousness. He doesn't say a lot about Barfield's work for a lot of the book. Then Vernon brings Barfield back in toward the end of the book when provides his conclusion in which poetic imagination will make the church relavent again.