World Order/Series2/Volume 7/Issue 1/Text

From Bahaiworks

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World Order

FALL 1972


1260 A.D. OR A.H.?
—CASE OF THE MISTAKEN DATE
Howard Garey


THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE ANISA MODEL
Daniel C. Jordan and Raymond P. Shepard


CANADIAN ARCTIC COMMUNITIES:
A CASE STUDY OF POWER RELATIDNSHIPS
Jameson Bond




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World Order

A BAHÁ’Í MAGAZINE • VOLUME 7 NUMBER 1 • PUBLISHED QUARTERLY

WORLD ORDER IS INTENDED TO STIMULATE, INSPIRE AND SERVE THINKING PEOPLE IN THEIR SEARCH TO FIND RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN CONTEMPORARY LIFE AND CONTEMPORARY RELIGIOUS TEACHINGS AND PHILOSOPHY

Editorial Board:
FIRUZ KAZEMZADEH
BETTY FISHER
HOWARD GAREY
ROBERT HAYDEN
GLENFORD E. MITCHELL
GAYLE MORRISON


WORLD ORDER is published quarterly, October, January, April, and July, at 415 Linden Avenue, Wilmette, Illinois 60091. Subscriber and business correspondence should be sent to this address. Manuscripts and other editorial correspondence should be addressed to 2011 Yale Station, New Haven, Connecticut 06520.

The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the publisher, the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States, or of the Editorial Board. Manuscripts should be typewritten and double spaced throughout, with the footnotes at the end. The contributor should keep a carbon copy. Return postage should be included.

Subscription: Regular mail USA, $4.50; Domestic student rate, $3.50; Foreign, $5.00. Single copy, $1.25.

Copyright © 1972, National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States, World Rights Reserved. Printed in the U.S.A.


IN THIS ISSUE

1 The Intellect: Light of the Spirit
Editorial
2 Interchange: Letters to and from the Editor
4 1260 A.D. or A.H.?—Case of the Mistaken Date
by Howard Garey
23 The Philosophy of the ANISA Model
by Daniel C. Jordan and Raymond F. Shepard
31 From a Hollowed Reed
a poem by Hugh McKinley
33 Canadian Arctic Communities: A Case Study of
Power Relationships, by Jameson Bond
48 Authors and Artists in This Issue




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The Intellect: Light of the Spirit

WHEN Western Civilization began to decline, some of its votaries refused to admit the very possibility of such a frightening occurrence. They not only denied that degeneration had set in but, paradoxically, even welcomed it in the name of moral freedom and personal liberation. Others have deplored the growing corruption of life, rightly attributing it to the pervasive materialism which is the salient characteristic of modern Western civilization.

From the sad state into which that civilization has descended, they have drawn the inevitable conclusion that materialism is evil. Going a step farther, they have identified materialism with science, knowledge, and reason. Such a view is being spread today among European and, especially, American youth who are themselves at once the uncertain beneficiaries of science and technology and their first spiritual victims.

Those who revolt against education, who trash libraries, who preach against science and medicine, who reject rationality, promote unrestrained feeling, wallow in enthusiasm, exalt the primitive, and romanticize ignorance are the new reactionaries. Their vision is only of the past; their imagination is archaic. They commit their worst sins when they clothe their obscurantism in the garb of religion.

True religion is not anti-intellectual, anti-scientific, anti-rational. The Bahá’í Writings glorify the mind, knowledge, the sciences, and the arts. Instead of equating them with materialism, the Bahá’í Teachings see in reason and knowledge the highest manifestation of the human mind which is itself the light that shines from the lamp of the spirit.

“Praise and thanksgiving be unto Providence,” ‘Abdu’l-Bahá has written, “that out of all the realities in existence He has chosen the reality of man and has honored it with intellect and wisdom, the two most luminous lights in either world.” And again, “All blessings are divine in origin but none can be compared with this power of intellectual investigation and research which is an eternal gift producing fruits of unending delight.” And yet again:

God had conferred upon and added to man a distinctive power, the faculty of intellectual investigation into the secrets of creation, the acquisition of higher knowledge, the greatest virtue of which is scientific enlightenment.
This endowment is the most praiseworthy power of man, for through its employment and exercise, the betterment of the human race is accomplished, the development of the virtues of mankind is made possible and the spirit and mysteries of God become manifest.

Thus Bahá’ís are not swayed by fashionable antinomies. They refuse to oppose science to religion, reason to faith, knowledge to feeling, mind to heart. They refuse to identify backwardness with goodness, superstition with spirituality, and ignorance of the world with the knowledge of God.




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Interchange LETTERS TO AND FROM THE EDITOR

RECENT issues of WORLD ORDER have focused on the equality of men and women, a principle fundamental to the attainment of a just and peaceful world. In “Women—Attaining Their Birthright” (Summer 1972) Constance Conrader quoted extensively from talks by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá on this subject during His tour of the United States in 1912. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá stated, for example:

In ancient times and mediaeval ages women was completely subordinated to man. The cause of this estimate of her inferiority was her lack of education. A woman’s life and intellect were limited to the household. . . . The conclusion is evident that woman has been outdistanced through lack of education and intellectual facilities. If given the same educational opportunities or course of study, she would develop the same capacity and abilities.

It seems clear to those who espouse the cause of women that male domination is not simply undesirable but unhealthy. Men and women, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá said, are like the wings of the bird of humanity, and if the wings are not equal in strength the bird cannot fly. “Until womankind reaches the same degree as man,” He warned, “until she enjoys the same arena of activity, extraordinary attainment for humanity will not be realized; humanity cannot wing its way to heights of real attainment.”

But mankind has been crippled for so long—divided against itself, making war, oppressing whole races and religious communities, setting men over women— that our progress toward “extraordinary attainment” occurs in fits and starts. Through industrialization and social revolution we are eradicating some inequalities and perpetuating, indeed creating, others; through technology we are gaining a generally higher standard of living and yet dehumanizing ourselves by divorcing policy from morality; through science and scholarship we are beginning to explore the complexity of human existence, breaking down barriers between and within people; frequently expanding our possibilities, but often serving to buttress dying concepts and values. A few years ago, for example, a respected scholar proposed that IQ differences between races are a matter of genetics rather than of sociology. Moreover, an article in Newsweek (“Forever Female?”—Oct. 9, 1972) reported that two California psychologists are linking submissiveness or dominance in rats to levels of the hormone estrogen in the body; and journalists were quick to point out that this may mean “good news for male chauvinists.”

Whatever may be the motivations of the researchers or the merits of their work, we are slow to realize that equality is not a matter of IQ or estrogen levels. If we accept that the capacities measured by IQ tests are valuable, and if some races seem to be more capable in this regard than others, then let us look deeper at the possible sources of unequal performance —diet, cultural orientation, language use, and modes of thinking. If, in the end, however, it can be proved that IQ is [Page 3] genetically based, let us acknowledge that IQ pertains to a fraction of one’s human reality—and that equality is a matter of the totality, not of parts.

Similarly, one may conclude that absolute biological equality between the sexes is impossible. It may also be undesirable, when society values the biology of woman as much as that of man. Therefore if chemistry and physical functions have implications for personality, they cannot be permitted to cause social injustice. Unlike rats, we can counterbalance estrogen and, more pertinently, the requirements of the reproductive process in a social order where equilibrium is upheld. In practical terms this means that domination and aggression will be rejected traits (and without domination there cannot be submission), and we will learn to value such traditionally “feminine” characteristics as sensitivity and compassion. In order to assure equal opportunity to both men and women, women will not be penalized in their jobs or professions for time spent giving birth and rearing children; indeed, both maternity and paternity leaves will be obtainable, since man, too, must be freed to become more involved in family and community life. Ideas about work and about professional careers will have to be overhauled, as will the established sexual roles. Where biology differentiates, society must assure that difference does not give rise to inequality. Differences between human beings, like too many other aspects of nature, can be turned to humanity’s ultimate good.

This issue of WORLD ORDER contains articles which point in the direction of “real attainment” for mankind. Howard Garey, in his analysis of the twelfth-century visionary, Joachim of Flora, illuminates the age-old aspiration toward a better world which underlies the achievements of religionists, scholars, and scientists. Daniel C. Jordan and Raymond P. Shepard show how this kind of aspiration has produced a new educational model, ANISA, with a philosophy based on a comprehensive view of the nature of man. And, in “The Canadian Arctic: A Case Study of Power Relationships in a Context of Institutional Change,” Jameson Bond describes the gradual movement toward equalizing social and technological inequalities between whites and Eskimos in the far North. Different in style and theme, these three studies are bound together by a common concern with the establishment of a new world order.


To the Editor

ANISA

I read, with great interest and excitement, the article, “The ANISA Model” by Daniel Jordan and Donald Streets, which appeared in WORLD ORDER, Spring, 1972.

There are some of us who refuse to be devoured by a bureaucracy. Articles and ideas like ANISA provide us with more tools, more ammunition, and more hope in the struggle with traditional schools.

H. WELLS FRENCH
Curriculum Consultant, Humanities
Department of Education
State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations




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1260 A.D. or A.H.?

Case of the Mistaken Date

BY HOWARD GAREY


. . . e lucemi da lato
'il calavrese abate Giovacchino
di spirito profetico dotato.
Paradiso 12:140-41


. . . and, shining next to me,
Calabria’s abbot, Joachim, the seer
who was endowed with the spirit of prophecy.
(trans. Geoffrey L. Bickersteth)


BAHÁ’ÍS know that 1260 represents a date of enormous importance for mankind; for it was in the year 1260 (after the Hijira, corresponding to 1844 A.D.) that a Promised One came to fulfill a Covenant. Christians had been looking forward to it as the return of the spirit of Truth (also known as the return of the Son of Man), and many had taken it to promise the return of Jesus; Shí’ites anticipated the return of the Twelfth Imam; the Jews have long been awaiting the Messiah, and still open the door for Elijah, his forerunner, to grace with his presence the Passover repast. Other peoples, other faiths, have awaited such a Return, such a Coming, and this universally expected event took place, Bahá’ís believe, in 1260 A.H. when ‘Alí Muḥammad of Shíráz revealed His mission as the Báb. We know that the date 1844 had been pinpointed by Christian scholars and mystics as the time of the Return of Christ, and we know by what calculations the Shaykhís of Persia had set their hopes on 1260.[1]

But all these high hopes, centered around a particular date, are not without precedent. The year 1260 A.D., in Europe, was a year of just such great expectations. And it is amazing that the expectations of the medieval enthusiasts were very similar to our own; it almost seems as if they had the figures right, but mistook A.H. for A.D.

In the last years of the twelfth century, a Cistercian monk, Joachim, a native of Calabria, wrote a number of works designed to demonstrate that a new age was to begin in 1260 A.D. This would be the third dispensation, the first two having been of the Father, Whose will was revealed in the Old Testament, and of the Son, Whose dispensation was recorded in the New Testament. The third age, of course, had to correspond to the Holy Spirit, and the new Book was to be known as the Eternal Gospel. Joachim prudently protected himself from condemnation as a heretic (we shall examine in a moment the great dangers inherent in the doctrine he proposed) by promising to submit his writings to ecclesiastical authority, and to renounce in advance any proposition which the authorities would deem unorthodox; so that, although his doctrines might be condemned, their author would not be. This prudence is probably not to be seen as a lack of courage or conviction or as proceeding from any other cause which modern lovers of freedom would regard as blameworthy; the terms in which the disclaimer is written seem to [Page 5]




[Page 6] breathe faith in the Church and a voluntary and loving submission to that institution. The prior renunciation of his own work was, however, insufficient to prevent enthusiastic followers of the Calabrian seer from going beyond the discipline of the Church into doctrines which, followed to their logical consequences, could only lead to the destruction of the hierarchy.

We find echoes of the discomfort occasioned by the new doctrines in one of the most widely read vernacular works of the Middle Ages, the Romance of the Rose. This popular French allegory had been begun in the early thirteenth century by Guillaume de Lorris as a peom about the Lover’s attempt to win the Rose; but its composition was interrupted by its author’s death about 1237. Since the reading public was anxious to see the consummation of the Lover’s desire, Jean de Meun finished the poem and saw to it that the Lover plucked his Rose; at the same time he saw to it that his reader would get a liberal education—for there is hardly a subject known to thirteenth-century man not touched upon in a work that had been transformed from the delicately courtly to the robustly didactic.

Well into the second part of the Romance of the Rose, Jean de Meun, a strong partisan of Guillaume de Saint-Amour in his struggle against the increasing influence of the mendicant orders in the teaching and administration of the University of Paris, exposes the dangers posed by the monks to the structure of the Church and therefore to the true faith. In a speech which he puts into the mouth of False Seeming (Faux Semblant), a prototypical hypocrite who, at this particular moment, is expressing himself with complete candor about his attitudes and methods of operation, Jean de Meun tells about a very dangerous book which has been threatening the security of the established order:

If it were not for the vigilance of the University [of Paris], which keeps the key to Christianity, everything would have been twisted out of recognition when, in a wicked intention, in 1255 . . . there was published . . . a book of the Devil’s band called the Eternal Gospel [Esvangile Pardurable], which comes to us from the Holy Spirit, as the title would have us believe. It is entirely worthy of being burned.
There is not a man or woman in Paris who cannot secure a copy of it in the square in front of Notre Dame for transcribing, if he wants. It contains gross misstatements, couched in such analogies



Joachim of Flora (Joachim de Floris, Gioacchino da Fiore) c. 1145-c. 1202

THE AUTHENTICATED FACTS of his life are scanty, the legends numerous and sometimes fantastic. The following summary tries to steer between the extremes of a skepticism which would leave us very few facts indeed and a credulity which would admit details of very limited plausibility. He spent his youth in the company of fun-loving aristocrats (although he was himself only the son of a notary of Celico) at the court of Roger II of Sicily. On a voyage to Constantinople he witnessed the ravages of a severe plague, turned to a religious life, made a long, arduous pilgrimage afoot to the Holy Land. On his return to Italy he became a Cistercian monk. After a time as Abbot of Corazza he found the rule too lax and received permission to found a new, more ascetic order at Fiore. He died in 1202, much loved by his monks and highly respected by the ecclesiastical hierarchy. Of his writings one (probably De unitate trinitatis) was condemned by the Lateran Council in 1215; but Joachim himself was never regarded officially as a heretic. After his death his disciples developed his reputation as a prophet, a seer, an annunciator of a new world order. Many writings were spuriously attributed to him. The Joachimites were persecuted and finally destroyed over a period of several centuries. Joachimite ideas, according to some modern critics, have inspired such nineteenth-century German and Russian philosophers as Lessing, Hegel, Schelling, Nietzsche, Krasinskii, and Merezhkovskii.



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as these: By as much as the sun surpasses the moon in brightness and in heat, . . . and by as much as the nutmeat is better than the shell . . . by that much is this [new] gospel superior to those which the four Evangelists of Jesus Christ wrote in their time. There are many comparisons of this sort which I pass over in silence.
The University, which was fast asleep, lifted her head. She was awakened by the noise about the book, and she has not slept since, but armed herself to meet the attack when she saw the awful monster—all ready to do battle, she was, and to challenge the book before the judges. But those who had submitted it rushed out to take it back and hurriedly set about answering—although they did not know how, whether through direct responses or abstruse glosses—the charges made against the perverse words written in the book. Now I do not know how it will turn out, but the book’s promoters still need time to prepare its defense. . . . It is so written in the book: “As long as Peter reigns, John cannot show his strength.” By Peter is meant the Pope and the secular clergy, who will keep the law of Jesus Christ, and guard it and protect it against all its foes; by John, the Preachers [Dominican monks] are symbolized, who will say that there is no tenable law except the Eternal Gospel, sent by the Holy Spirit to set people on the right path. By John’s strength is meant the grace he boasts of, by which he claims to convert sinners to make them turn back to God. There are many other devilish doctrines set forth in this book . . . which are against the law of Rome and which rally to the Antichrist. . . . Then they will give orders to kill everyone on Peter’s side, but they will never be able to overturn Peter’s law, this I pledge you. . . . and the law which is called John’s will be confounded.[2]

What was all this about? The book which so disturbed Jean de Meun was called the Liber introductorius ad Evangelium aeternam (Introduction to the Everlasting Gospel) by Gerard di Borgo San Donnino. It appeared in 1254 (not 1255, as Jean de Meun claims) and set forth the principal doctrines of Joachim as derived mainly from the Calabrian’s Concordia novi ac veteris testamenti (Harmony of the New and Old Testaments). The book was roundly denounced and was condemned by Pope Alexander IV on October 23, 1255. Jean de Meun seems to have gotten his information from Guillaume de Saint-Amour’s Tractatus de periculis novissimorum temporum ex scripturis sumptis (Treatise on the Perils of Recent Times from Divers Writings).[3]

It seems that Gerard, who had none of the humility which characterized Joachim’s submission in advance to correction from the hierarchy, went further than Joachim had probably ever intended to go. There are some exaggerations and distortions of Joachim’s doctrines—and one may well ask whether Gerard has essentially misrepresented Joachim’s views. (Gerard’s book, by the way, has not come down to us; not a single copy of it has escaped destruction—in spite of the freedom with which, according to the horrified Jean de Meun, copies were made—and all we know of it comes from its detractors, who quote from the Liber introductorius at considerable length.)

An important distortion of fact in Gerard’s book is that the New Testament, which supersedes the Old, will in its turn be replaced by a third one, to be called the Everlasting Gospel (Evangelium aeternum). Joachim had something different in mind when he spoke of the Everlasting Gospel: to him it was the correct, “spiritual” interpretation of the message of God as found in the Testaments; but in the third, “spiritual” age (spiritual in the sense of “under the aegis of [Page 8] the Holy Spirit”) the recourse to reason would not be necessary since the truth would be readily accessible to spiritual men. To Gerard, however, the Everlasting Gospel was written down—and there is a strong suggestion that it consisted of the works of Joachim.

Gerard, as nearly as we can determine from the summaries his enemies made of his work, predicted that the rule of the Church, which is to say, of the Gospel of Christ, would end in 1260 and that it would be replaced (evacuabitur) by another gospel, more perfect, more worthy, than its predecessor; in fact, he claims the Gospel of Christ has less perfection and worth than the Everlasting Gospel to the same degree that the moon is less bright than the sun, or that the nutshell is less valuable than the kernel. The power of the Church, according to Gerard (so Guillaume de Saint-Amour tells us), will be taken from those who keep the Gospel of Christ and will be given, at the aforesaid time, to those who hold to the Everlasting Gospel.

The remarkable fact is that Joachim had never been attacked during his lifetime for views which are substantially those attributed to him by Gerard. While he was still working out his theories, he had been encouraged —even commanded—by several popes to finish the books on which he was constantly working, ever adding new touches.[4] It was probably not immediately evident that his work on the harmony between the two Testaments would predict an end to the established order. Through the mists of a rather involved style, it was not clear that the established order was the Church itself. Joachim predicted that once the hierarchy had recognized that the Age of the Spirit had come, it would welcome the Men of the Spirit with open arms and would joyfully abdicate its positions of power and leadership.[5] Writing from this serene point of view, he somehow did not give the impression of being an aggressive radical, eager to overturn the old order to make way for the new.

By 1255 the situation had changed considerably. The two great mendicant orders, the Franciscans and the Dominicans, which did not even exist during Joachim’s lifetime, had grown enormously in influence and had come to challenge the secular (i.e., non-monastic) clergy in very important ways: their right to celebrate the mass and hear confessions gave them influence over the people, who were often disillusioned by rich secular clergy who had no interest in the humbler members of their parishes; the monks were during the first half of the thirteenth century winning the right to teach at the great universities, formerly the privileged preserve of the secular clergy; they were amassing wealth—not as individuals, for their vow of poverty made that impossible, but as congregations—through the acquisition of important terrains for their monasteries, often as impressive as the holdings of the great feudal lords.

Joachim’s philosophy clearly favored the regular (monastic) clergy over the secular; his most mild pronouncements on the subject made it evident that he considered the secular priests as being at a definitely inferior state of spiritual and social development. His followers were for the most part members of monastic orders who saw in Joachim’s predictions the justification of their control of the world of the future. Although Joachim, who was nearing the end of his life at the turn of the century, could view the year 1260 with a relative detachment, the fiery young Gerard, in 1254, could not tarry in delivering the great message of his master. Furthermore, he knew who the prophet of the new age was to be: it was clear to Gerard, as it could not have been to Joachim, that it was St. Francis [Page 9] of Assisi, with his stigmata, his humility, his holy life, his all-encompassing love. This theory split the Franciscan order in two: those who espoused it were called the Spirituals, in fulfillment of Joachim’s prophecy that the new age would be in the hands of the viri spirituales, or Rigorists, because they believed in a return to the rigorous asceticism recommended by Joachim and incorporated by St. Francis in the rule of his Order, although probably without influence of the former on the latter; and those Franciscans who opposed the near-apotheosis of St. Francis were called moderates, and it was they who finally prevailed and who, in fact, saved the Order and probably the reputation of its founder, St. Francis, who is much revered to this day.

It was this impatience, it seems to me, which brought matters to a head; not only was the Liber introductorius condemned, but with it were condemned certain Joachimitic teachings, although their promulgator was himself never censured, not even posthumously. His loyalty to the Church was recognized in spite of the great peril to it implicit in some of his doctrines.

This discussion cannot proceed without an examination of Joachim’s ideas in somewhat greater detail. They are set forth in four books which have much overlapping between them. Joachim’s ideas flow very largely from his original method of reasoning, and each book is pretty much like the others in style, approach, and, to a great degree, content. These books are:

(1) Tractatus super quatuor evangelia (Treatise on the Four Gospels);[6]

(2) Expositio in Apocalypsim (Explanation of the Book of Revelation);[7]

(3) Liber concordie novi ac veteris testamenti (Book on the Harmony of the New and Old Testament);[8]

(4) Psalterium decem cordarum (The Lyre with Ten Strings).[9]

There is no point, because of the similarities among these works, in attempting to describe them separately; rather, they will be dealt with as comprising the expression of the complex but integrated ideology of one man.


The Allegorical Method

NEAR THE BEGINNING of the Concordia, Joachim defines his method (which he calls allegoria) in the following unusual way, for this is not what we customarily think of as allegory:

Allegory is a resemblance of any small thing to a much bigger thing, as if a day [were made to represent] a year; a week, an age; a person, an order [category of people]; or a city, a people or nation; and a thousand such things. For example, Abraham is one man and represents (significat) the order of patriarchs, in which there are many men. . . . Sarah is one woman, and represents the Synagogue—I say not in the bad sense, as Hagar represents it, but as the Church, barren of just men, who groaned and wept every day because of her barrenness. And here I may touch upon another mystery: . . . David is the son of Sarah, son not of the flesh, but of the promise of the time of her old age, that is, when the fullness of times came, in order that God might send his son, born of a woman, made under the Law, that he [the son] might redeem those who were under the Law.[10]

This passage is very typical of Joachim. The definition which he gives of “allegory” is not adequate to the method which he exemplifies [Page 10] right after the definition; for, obviously, the device to which he is referring is something more than the simple comparison of little things to big ones. Another characteristic is his way of being carried away by his example; he cannot resist going into rather full explanations of what had begun as a simple illustration. Again, we may note how easily he slips from one symbol to another: David is Sarah’s son, because he represents the fulfillment of a promise that she would bear a son in her old age; now “old age” is allegorized as the “fullness of times,” that is, as the moment God selected for establishing the lineage of David, from which lineage the Christ was to spring. And of course, Sarah, as the Synagogue (infertile until she becomes the Church), is the mother of David (and probably, by a typically Joachimitic device, thereby the mother of Christ, which is to say that she foreshadows Mary). In Joachim’s prose, the distinction between David and Christ is totally blurred —and to Joachim it hardly matters, because not only is David the physical ancestor of Jesus, but, even more importantly from Joachim’s point of view, he “signifies” the Christ; both David and Christ were born of a woman and under the Law, that is, the Law of Moses; both come as fulfillment of prophecy; both have, one as ultimate, the other as immediate goal, the redemption of mankind.

So one of Joachim’s most salient characteristics seems to be his blurring of distinctions. There will be one crucial exception to this general trait, as we shall see: his careful distinctions among the three Persons of the Trinity.

A distinction which a reader looks for in vain is that between allegory as a literary device and allegory as a prophetic tool. One can read the Bible in two ways: statically and dynamically. The dynamic way has to do with the unfolding of events in time and can be divided between the historical and the prophetic, according to whether the events mentioned have or have not taken place at the time of writing. The static way has to do with those statements which do not take the passage of time into account: they can be divided into the factual and the moral. One can also read the Bible literally or figuratively.[11] The relationships between these modes of reading can be shown as a four-fold table:


Literal Figurative
Static factual moral
Dynamic historical prophetic


This classification is not perfect, since it does not account for moral precepts literally intended to be such, nor does it account for literal prophecy, that is, predictions of coming events in what one might call the prophetic mode. But such a way of classifying the modes of reading is very useful for understanding Joachim’s method for discovering the meaning of a biblical text. The word meaning is, itself, however, subject to considerable ambiguity, especially when one is dealing with a text supposed by the reader to be of divine inspiration. Not only is there a “literal meaning” of a text to be found; but also all kinds of hidden messages are conveyed by the forms of words and sentences, by the mathematical properties of the enumerations of “begats,” in short by all sorts of features which are ordinarily considered to be part of the instrument of conveying a message rather than part of the message itself. For Joachim, it is not enough to accept as a “fact” that Adam begat Seth, who begat Enos, who begat Mahaleleel, and so to Abraham, who begat Isaac. The important thing is that from Adam to Isaac, inclusively, there [Page 11] stretch twenty-one generations; that twenty-one has as factors three and seven, and that three and seven either occur in the Bible with great frequency or are factors of numbers that do—with such frequency that their significance must not be ignored.

Besides interesting arithmetical relationships, the symmetry of historical events recounted in the Bible suggests to Joachim a certain cyclic pattern to history. Events recounted in the Old Testament which seem to be recapitulated by events in the New Testament appear to Joachim to be fulfillments of a kind of nonverbal prophecy—that is, events themselves, as recounted in the Bible, foreshadow or predict later events, just as the verbal statements of prophets do. Therefore Joachim is always on the lookout for every manner of parallelism in Biblical events, both within the Old Testament and between the two Testaments. In general, prophecies refer to classes of events in the prophet’s future: those which the reader identifies as having already occurred in his, the reader’s past (that is, as having been fulfilled), and those whose fulfillment, not having yet occurred, will take place in the reader’s future. Such events are not distributed evenly along a time line stretching from a prophet to a long series of readers so that a given event will occur before this reader and after that reader; rather, the traditional attitude is taken that prophecies relating to events in the reader’s past most often refer to his remote past, whereas those prophecies relating to the time to come after the reader refer to “the time of the end,” “the day of judgment,” “the day of the Lord.”[12] Now the main value of the prophecy, for such interpreters as Joachim, has to do with the time of the last days: whether Christ will return at the beginning or at the end of the Millennium; who will be the elect and who the damned; by what signs the approach of the last days can be recognized (the “signs of the times”). The only prophesied events which occur in the reader’s recent past or in his present, then, are precisely signs of the times, which point to an imminent fulfillment of the eschatological prophecies.

For this reason, when Old Testament prophecies refer to New Testament fulfillments they can, in Joachim’s view, also point to an eschatological fulfillment, making for a triadic structure: Old Testament prophecy → New Testament fulfillment → fulfillment in the last days. Now since Joachim interprets historical matter in the Bible as if it were prophecy, since it foreshadows future events of similar structure, for him historical events tend to occur in patterns of three. The New Testament fulfillment of an Old Testament prophecy functions itself as the prophecy of a fulfillment to take place in the last days.


Joachim’s Attitude towards History

THAT TRIPLE DIVISION of history which has the greatest scope is the one which divides the history of revealed religion into three eras or states or dispensations. Joachim sees in this division a correspondence to the Holy Trinity and concludes that each of the dispensations is under the aegis of a different Person of the Trinity. The first age, in this system (for Joachim has many systems, as we shall see), is the age of the Father, the second, the age of the Son, and the third, the age of the Holy Spirit.

There are many ways of counting ages. One can simply count dispensations, in which case there are three. But if the first dispensation is seen as beginning with Moses (or with Abraham—there is some vacillation here) we can then count the age between the Creation (Adam) and that first Revealer as the first Age; and for symmetry’s sake we can add (and Joachim does add) an age to follow the Spiritual Age, which he calls the time of the manifest vision of God—and this would make five ages.

As an example of the flexibility with [Page 12] which Joachim uses his allegorical, metaphorical, and prophetic tools, see this from Expositio in Apocalypsim (folio 94v):

Whence does [forgiveness] come? From [the sinners] themselves? Hardly! But from Him who established the [various] times, giving light and darkness at the appropriate times. For He gave the time which was before the Law, as it were dense darkness and gloom of night; the time which was under the Law, as it were under the light of the stars; the following age which began with John the Baptist and has lasted until now, like the light of the moon, because of what the Apostle [Paul] said, Now we see through a glass darkly; [and] the time which is to come, as it were under the light of the sun. However, if we limit our discourse to the two Testaments, then the Old Testament is to be likened to the moon, the New Testament to the sun; for the Law of Moses is to the former like the moon, and the Gospel of the Christ is to the latter like the sun. Therefore one should not be surprised that, if something is promised in a certain age, it is denied in previous ages; for it belongs to the glory of God, the All-high, to increase the gift of bounties, and to grant to the newest what was denied to the first. So let no one boast of the honor of being first, but rather let him emulate, sincerely, the outstanding riches of his juniors.

Aside from this remarkable statement about progressive revelation, the reader is particularly impressed by the flexibility of Joachim’s method. He has a relaxed approach to relativity: If you want to compare two things, try the moon and the sun; but if you need four degrees of comparison, you can use four metaphorical figures: darkness, starlight, moonlight, sunlight. Joachim does not insist on likening Christ’s Gospel to the moon—it may also be compared to the sun.

As we go more deeply into Joachim’s work, we become aware of a systematic method of varying his metaphors. For example, in a typical passage from Expositio in Apocalypsim (folio 5ff.) he shows how we can use a three-unit measure in such a way that five successive periods of time will represent three successive triads. Here is how he does it:

Abraham begot Isaac; Isaac begot Jacob; Jacob begot Joseph; Joseph begot Ephraim. The five men were esteemed great and just men in the sight of God, in no way like those who have been reproved by the Lord, since they have a justification in that the Lord chose them as a sign for revealing [designanda] the uncertain and hidden things of his wisdom, by no means to all the people, but [only] to those who in the Spirit were called Israel. Therefore Abraham signifies the Father, Isaac the Son, and Jacob the Holy Spirit. And so it is—but let no one think that the Son is not in the Father and the Father in the Son; it was necessary to show another mystery [mysterium = complex symbol] in which would be ascribed the name of Fatherhood: Isaac, to whom the likeness [or analogy: similitudo] of the Son was seen to be ascribed, according to which Isaac is said to signify the Father, Jacob to signify the Son, Joseph the Holy Spirit. For this is what the holy mysteries lead us to understand, which are so varied and numerous. And yet, human weakness would have it that the Holy Spirit is not in the Father and the Son, and the Father and the Son in the Holy Spirit. To Jacob is given the meaning [significatio] of the Father, to Joseph that of the Son, and to Ephraim that of the Holy Spirit—and there is Jacob first, he who was thought to be last in the symbolism [in mysterio] of the Trinity! Let us believe nothing to be before or after in [the mystery of the Trinity]; nothing greater or lesser; that is, all three Persons [are] coeternal and coequal with each other.

[Page 13] In another book (Psalterium decem cordarum, folio 258v), Joachim presents the same figure in a table:


Pater Filius Spiritus sanctus
Abraam Isaac Jacob
Pater Filius Spiritus sanctus
Isaac Jacob Joseph
Pater Filius Spiritus sanctus
Jacob Joseph Effraim


The temptation to quote at length is nearly irresistible. On every page one finds tables, diagrams, charts, formulas, which in many ways seem to prefigure modern mathematics and science. Let us yield to one last temptation before moving on to the content of Joachim’s prophecies.

In Expositio in Apocalypsim (folio 38) there is a most startling “pre-figuration” of one of the favorite devices of modern set theory. Three circles are presented, each of which intersects with the other two, as follows:


Father Father and Son   Father and Son and Holy Spirit   Son and Holy Spirit   Holy Spirit
Abraham   Isaac Jacob Joseph Ephraim
One Two Three Two One


Now we leave temptation determinedly behind us. The point has been made that Joachim sees in the Bible demonstrations of general, timeless logical and mathematical principles which have, in addition to their abstract form, historic and time-bound content and applications. History is then a working-out of abstract, eternal principles in a material and temporal setting. The Bible is the source of several kinds of information: It contains accounts of historical events which are to be taken quite literally; in the same vein, it contains genealogies of real people, people who have existed, had children, and died—all subject to the laws of historical time. It also contains mysterious Statements [Page 14] of an enigmatic character and highly symbolic language—so symbolic that it can almost be said to have no literal meaning. These pronouncements, once the symbolism, intended by the prophet to refer in a concrete way to real historical events, has been laid bare, are also to be taken “literally”—to the degree that the symbols’ referents become apparent.

Another source of information, however, is hidden (“occult”); language which can be taken as the vehicle of the literal message, as just described, becomes through its structure —grammatical, narrative, mathematical— the vehicle of another layer of messages. It is this hidden layer that Joachim explores.

The messages which Joachim finds on this level are called by him uncertain (incertum), hidden (occultum), which are to be provided with clear referents (aliquid designare, significare). A complex symbol (mysterium) is made up of several elements which have, when interpreted, a relationship (similitudo, significatio) to historical realities.

A modern reader may ask how it is possible that the juggling of words, rhetorical figures, and elements of disconnected events can be related in any credible way with the great, critical events of history and of the future? A medieval thinker would find the question surprising and perhaps incomprehensible. For it was understood, at least by literate people, that the Creation is an expression of God’s will, that it functions according to unchanging principles (not so different from a modern scientific attitude!), that if God wants to integrate messages to those few capable of understanding them into the pattern of real events, He is free to do so. This feeling of an integrated world, in which the Eternal and the Finite merge, in which the Particular imbricates with the Whole, lies at the base not only of modern experimental science, but also of divination, whether it take the form of I Ching, astrology, or the reading of tea-leaves or cards. They all represent attempts to break through from the particular to the general—and then back again to other particulars. The minute examination of the Bible (for example, in commenting on the verse “I am Alpha and Omega,” Joachim takes several pages to discuss the significance of the shapes of the letters) is really a kind of divination, and based on pretty much the same logic—with the difference that Joachim’s world is an expression of God’s mind (intellectus), whereas most divination (and modern physical science) seems to be based on a pantheistic assumption.


The Prophecies

THE DIVISION OF TIME which is probably most representative of Joachim’s view is that into five periods, as follows:

1. Before the Law;

2. Under the Law;

3. Under the Gospel;

4. Under the Holy Spirit (the Spiritual Intellect, the Spirit of Intelligence, the Spirit of Understanding);

5. In the manifest vision of God.

The summary upon which we have now embarked is drawn very largely from Chapter 5 of the Introductory Book of the Expositio in Apocalypsim starting at folio 5rb (which we shall call our “basic text”), but is buttressed by details from Joachim’s other works. In general Joachim is systematic in his use of tempus (primum tempus, secundum tempus, . . . quintum tempus) to refer to these five periods. He is also fairly consistent in his use of the word status (primum status, secundus status, tertius status) to refer to the period numbered above as 2, 3, and 4. Since the first two of these three status seem to correspond to known dispensations, the Mosaic and the Christian, we shall call these status Dispensations; the five periods considered together we shall call ages, and refer to them as Age I, Age II, . . . Age V. Joachim himself is very apt to refer to the First Dispensation as the First Age (primum tempus), but we shall try in what follows to be as unambiguous as possible.

[Page 15] I have prepared a chart which should make it possible to visualize History as a single process with beginning and end; further discussion will then be on the basis of this chart.


Time before the Law Time under the Law Time under Gospel Time of Spiritual Understanding Time of Manifest Vision of God
Adam Abraham Moses John the Baptist Uzziah Jesus Christ St. Benedict [St. Francis] ? ?
Time of the married Time of the priests Time of the monks End of seculum After the end
Abraham Isaac Jacob Joseph Ephraim
[FATHER SON HOLY SPIRIT]
[FATHER SON HOLY SPIRIT]
[FATHER SON HOLY SPIRIT]
Before sin Old Testament: obedience New Testament: grace Eternal Gospel: spirit of understanding Contemplation of God


The names which appear astride the vertical lines (Abraham, John the Baptist, St. Benedict) represent transitional figures who appear before the end of a given Age to prepare the world for the definitive spokesman for the following Age. It is hard to pin down the identity of one of these transitional figures in Joachim, since it may vary from one exposition to another. Adam himself seems to function both as founder of the Age before the Law and as initiator (forerunner) of the Age under the Law (Age II, First Dispensation), since in our basic text, which underlies our chart, Joachim says: “And the First Dispensation, which shone under the Law and the circumcision, was initiated by Adam.” Yet Abraham, through whom circumcision was instituted and who forbade the worship of idols, clearly foreshadows Moses in a more precise way—and Joachim says this too in other passages.

Similarly, John the Baptist is the immediate forerunner of Christ,[13] but Joachim is really much more concerned with Uzziah, King of Judah, because he comes twenty-one generations before Jesus.

During the Age under the Gospel, a new figure appears, whose importance is determined, not by the number of begats (for the Bible had ceased to be written and with it the careful genealogical accounting), but by the “number of generations” (ex numero generationum), which is to be calculated at thirty years per generation from the time of the birth of Christ. By this calculation, the year 630 A.D. (21 × 30) is indicated, and Joachim refers to this time as the time of St. Benedict, who instituted monasticism. Joachim never states outright (as far as we have been able to find) that St. Benedict is the transitional figure, the one who “initiates” the new Age, but his wish to believe it is plain. If one wanted to use Joachim’s methods without necessarily arriving at his conclusions, the period of Muḥammad’s Revelation and the beginning of His mission would fit in nicely at the same moment. In [Page 16] twenty-one more thirty-year generations, it will be 1260 A.D., time for the new Christ, for the establishment of the Third Dispensation (Age IV), that under the Spiritual Understanding. Who is to establish this new order Joachim does not claim to know. We have already spoken of the attempt to identify St. Francis as the new Light for the Spiritual Age, but this attempt failed, as we know.

The Fifth Age, the Age of the Manifest Vision of God (Tempus manifeste visionis Dei) may be interpreted literally as the time when God will be clearly visible. Joachim gives us rather few details about this Age; we can only apply the Joachimitic arithmetic to calculate that its Initiator is due sometime after the middle of the nineteenth century (1260 + 630 = 1890; or 1260 + 600— twenty generations—puts the beginning of the twenty-first generation about 1860). The uncertainties introduced by vagueness as to the length of the year (a solar year of 365¼ days, or a lunar year of 360?) make these calculations very approximate.

We have inserted, between brackets and in capital letters, [FATHER SON HOLY SPIRIT] in three rows; this represents the relationship of each Age to preceding or following Ages. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, and Ephraim, as far as we can determine, have an ordinal numeral significance; see pp. 12-13 above for Joachim’s explanation.

If we take literally the designation of Age I as the Age before the Law, Adam functions as Founder of this Age, which lasted only until the Fall; at this moment Adam became Initiator of the Age under the Law (Age II). Before the Fall, then, there was no sin: “It is that Age in which sin was not imputed [to anyone], because there was no Law, but rather Death reigned, from [the time of] Adam to [that of] Moses” (Expositio in Apocalypsim, folio 5vb).

This statement raises questions: was there death before the Fall? But, if we are concerned with time after the Fall, then there was sin, even though Moses had not yet revealed the Law. The following may be taken as Joachim’s explanation: “For God the Father wanted to show himself through this judgment as awe-inspiring in his counsels about the children of men, that He might strike fear of Him in man because, not knowing the cause of blame, he felt himself to be punished by such chastisement” (Expositio in Apocalypsim, folio 5vb). Joachim is making a distinction between the feeling of guilt which oppressed mankind between the Fall and the institution of the Law, and the knowledge of sin, which is the awareness of disobedience to an existing law. There is still much room for argument, but let us hasten on.

The First Age is ascribed to the Father, Who is the only Person of the Trinity that may be so assigned, since Ages ascribed to the Son must be preceded by at least one Age, to the Holy Spirit by at least two.

The Age under the Law (Age II, First Dispensation) is initiated by Abraham and founded by Moses. It is referred to as the Age of the Order of the Married (Ordo coniugatorum) in many places in Joachim’s writings. Presumably (although we have not read it in Joachim’s works) the First Age is the Age before marriage, as one would expect for the Age under Natural Law (one of the descriptions of Age I). Isaac is the numerical representative of this Age. If we take the Age before the Law as ascribed to the Father, then the Age under the Law is ascribed to the Son: “The Age which came next, under the Law, is ascribed to the Son, for He is the Teacher and Lawgiver who sheds light on every man coming into this world” (Expositio in Apocalypsim, folio 5vb).

But if we view the Age under the Law as first in the new series of three, the second such series, then we ascribe it to the Father: “That [Age] which was under the circumcision and the Law, that is, from Abraham to Christ, is ascribed to the Father, for then [during that Age] the Father spoke often and in many ways to the fathers [i.e., the [Page 17] patriarchs] as to prophets” (Expositio in Apocalypsim, folio 6ra). It is also the time of the Old Testament and of obedience.

Age III, the Age under the Gospel was initiated by Uzziah, for numerical reasons; but John the Baptist is also occasionally mentioned as its initiator, as, for example, in Tractatus super quatuor evangelia (p. 24): “For indeed the barrenness of Elizabeth, which represents the First Dispensation, which begins with Abraham, is ended with John the Baptist, the Age of Fertility, that is, [beginning] with John the Baptist; his offspring, in fact, at the end of the Second Dispensation, that is, at the advent of Elijah.”

Also, in Expositio in Apocalypsim (folio 6ra), when Joachim explains how Age III (under the Gospel) can be seen as belonging to the Father, with respect to the two Ages to come, John the Baptist is mentioned as initiator of that Age: “That Age which has elapsed since John the Baptist up to the present moment is ascribed to the Father, for in it He procreates for Himself spiritual sons through the Holy Spirit which He sent to Christ in the guise of a dove; whence they are reborn daily that they may be sons of God, in order that God may be made manifest in His sons (Matt. 3:16, Matt. 1:18-23, John 1:32).”

The Order of men characteristic of this Age is the Order of Preachers or Priests (ordo predicatorum; ordo clericalis). Since this is in contrast with the Order of the Married of the preceding Age, there seems, perhaps, to be an assumption of celibacy with respect to the priesthood, but we do not find this explicitly stated.

Age III is ascribed to the Holy Spirit in the first series of ascriptions (primum mysterium trinitatis), to the Son in the second series, and to the Father in the third. I shall not quote or describe in detail the justifications of these ascriptions; the method is by now abundantly clear to the reader.

Age III is the Age of the New Testament, in contrast to the Old (of Age II), and of grace in contrast to obedience.

Age IV, the Age of Spiritual Understanding (spiritalis intellectus), is the Age which is apparently no longer in need of a Book, although, as we have seen, Gerard di Borgo San Donnino did not see it in this light. The Eternal Gospel is referred to in Revelation 14:6; and Joachim takes it to be an intuitive grasp of the essential meaning of the two Testaments. This is the Age of which St. Paul prophesied, “For we know in part and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part will be done away” (I Cor. 13:9-10).[14]

The Age under the Gospel was free compared with the preceding Age but is not free when compared with that to come. The Age of the Spirit will be truly free, as St. Paul said in II Corinthians 3:17: “Now the Lord is that Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.” From this is derived the doctrine that in the Age under Grace the Law is abolished.

Age IV was initiated during the life of St. Benedict, but Joachim never quite makes the flat statement that he initiates the Age of the Spirit. Nevertheless, since the spiritual men (viri spiritales) are to lead monastic lives, St. Benedict is, in Joachim’s eyes, a very likely candidate. Our basic text, in applying the Persons of the Trinity to Ages II, III, and IV, puts it this way: “Just as the Order of the Married, which shone in the First Age [here, to be strictly systematic, Joachim should have said primo statu—in the First Dispensation], is seen by the property of similitude to belong to the Father, [and] the Order of Priests which [shone] in the second [Age, i.e. Dispensation] [is seen to belong] to the Son, so the Order of Monks, to which the last great Ages have been given, [belongs] to the Holy Spirit.

Just as the First Dispensation was under the aegis of the Old Testament and the Second Dispensation under the New, so the Third Dispensation will be under the Eternal [Page 18] Gospel; and as the preceding two Dispensations were characterized by obedience and grace respectively, so the Third Dispensation will be given to the Spirit of Understanding (spiritus intelligentie). If there is any difference in meaning between intellectus and intelligentia, it does not appear in Joachim; in fact they seem to be quite interchangeable.

The transition between Ages IV and V is called the consumatio seculi (in Classical Latin this would be spelled consummatio saeculi), an expression traditionally translated as End of the World. In Classical Latin saeculum designated most often a certain span of time: the lifetime of a human being; a generation (traditionally thirty-three years); the full span of a long human life, that is one hundred years—from which comes French siècle, century, the times, the age, the spirit of the times; the world, society, often in a derogatory sense: the corrupt society and (in Christian writings) paganism. In Christian times the word acquired the sense of the material world or life as opposed to the spiritual. Monks and nuns, speaking of the world outside the convent, called it the saeculum, which translates into English as the world and into French as le siècle. It seems that Joachim had in mind this notion of the material world, intent on its evanescent and corrupting pleasures.

What is the consummation of the seculum? Again, in Classical Latin, consummatio referred to a summing-up, a final settlement: from this develops the meaning of an end or a fulfillment. In John’s account of the Passion (John 19:30), Jesus said “Consummatum est,” and died. In the King James version this is rendered, “It is finished,” but it has been plausibly suggested that it means, “It has been fulfilled,” referring to scriptural prophecy.[15] In any case, it seems clear that consummatio saeculi may as plausibly be translated by “achievement or fulfillment or conclusion of the material era of man”—seen as preceding a more spiritual age—as by “the end of the world” with its suggestion of total annihilation.

At times it is hard to tell whether, in a given passage, Joachim is describing Age IV or Age V. Often it is only by a certain pattern of juxtaposition that one can be sure. Here, for example, is a passage which describes Age IV (the Third Dispensation) through to its conclusion:

The Age which will be from now until the fulfillment of the seculum is ascribed to the Son, since what has been designated as in Christ, born according to the flesh, [will be designated] in that [Age], [in Christ born] according to the Spirit. It is fitting that it be more fully consummated.[16]

We may take this as meaning that, whereas we have been living in the Age of Christ, born of a woman, we shall, in the period from 1260 to the “consummation” of the seculum be living in the Age of a Christ born according to the Spirit. Joachim goes on to describe the following period, Age V:

The future seculum, which will be after the Resurrection, is to be ascribed to the Holy Spirit, for in it there will be not only souls, which by nature are subtler, but also our bodies will be spiritual, and the temple of the Holy Spirit. And when all the corruptions of the flesh will have been consumed, then only the Spirit will reign in the [bodies].[17]

We are beginning to develop a nomenclature for Age V and a clearer picture of life therein. Joachim goes on to assign the Holy Spirit to each of the Ages in question, III, IV, and V. He refers to the ascription of the first three Ages to the three Persons as the “first mystery of the Trinity” (see p. 17 above); to that which begins with Age II as the “second mystery”; and to that which is applied to the [Page 19] last three Ages as the “third mystery.” Thus, in the first mystery the Age of the Gospel is given to the Holy Spirit; in the second mystery it is the Age of Spiritual Understanding (Age IV) which is ascribed to the Holy Spirit. “In assigning [the Persons] of the third [mystery], the life of the future seculum, in which [life] they will neither marry nor be married, but they will be like the angels of God in Heaven” (Expositio in Apocalypsim, folio 6ra).

Here, seculum is used to refer to the time after the seculum of material existence. We might translate it as world order, or cycle. Some Bahá’ís might well see, in that seculum which is to be consummated, the Adamic cycle described by Bahá’u’lláh. Since, by Joachim-like calculations, this puts us in the nineteenth century, the identification is indeed tempting.

Towards the end of this remarkably rich chapter which we have chosen as our “basic text,” Joachim explains that for most purposes, when he speaks of three Ages, he is referring to the three in the middle and is tacitly treating the first and fifth as nonexistent. Modern readers of Joachim have for the most part not heeded this warning and have spoken almost exclusively of the Age under the Law, the Age under the Gospel, and the Age of the Spirit. This fixation upon the middle three is probably due to a preoccupation with the Trinity which is nearly twenty centuries old by now. But let us not forget Joachim’s device of the movable Trinity (the three “mysteries”), or his treatment of the Third Dispensation (Age IV) as ending simultaneously with the old cycle of material interest. If we examine our chart again, we see that Age IV is ascribable both to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, whereas Age V is ascribable to the Holy Spirit alone.

In a way, Age IV seems more “intellectual” than Age V (allowing for precautions against being misled by the superficial resemblance between Latin intellectus and English intellectual); its emphasis is on understanding, whereas that of Age V stresses direct experience: the eternal contemplation of God, the manifest vision of God.

The attraction exercised by these mysteries and enigmas was enormous. No matter how loyal Joachim was to the Church of his time, there is no escaping that he foretold its nearly immediate end. In Age IV, the Order of Monks would interpret the new Gospel, that of the Spirit; the Gospel of Christ would have played its role, the Church would no longer have a function, and the whole world would be organized along monastic lines. By about 1255, the predicted transformation was uncomfortably close, and its promoters were energetically repressed. Scattered Joachimite movements flickered or flared into existence, but no more has been heard of them since the fifteenth century.

What are we to make of it today? Joachim never claimed to be an inspired seer. He did claim that, at a certain moment, the pattern fell into place, the logical structure which combined with his knowledge of Scripture led ineluctably (it seemed to him) to certain conclusions. But this is not Revelation in any technical sense, and Joachim, for all his sureness, never aspires to the station of Prophet. (His followers often did confer this station upon him, and this justifies to a large extent the charges of heresy laid upon them by the Church.) Thus the reading of Joachim by one who believes that divine revelation is a fact of life and history, and that certain privileged figures, such as Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Muḥammad, Bahá’u’lláh, have been favored with it, cannot be undertaken in the same spirit as that in which one reads revealed literature. Joachim’s logic is ingenious, but often a bit slippery. His mathematics, based on sets of twenty-one generations, conforms well with traditional calculations based on well-known passages from Daniel, Ezekiel, and the Book of Revelation, sources and calculations of which Joachim makes frequent use, especially with regard to the key figure of 1260.

[Page 20] Many of Joachim’s predictions bear a startling resemblance to Bahá’í teachings: The end of the Adamic cycle corresponds in many ways to the consumatio seculi; but the history of the world from 1260 A.D. to the present bears little resemblance to Joachim’s Fourth Age—the Age of Spiritual Understanding. No rule by monks, for example, and the clergy has continued to flourish for most of that time. Nor does this prediction correspond to Bahá’í expectations for our future, since Bahá’u’lláh called for the monks to leave their monasteries and marry. The end of the clergy, which did not take place in 1260 A.D. may well have begun in 1260 A.H. One could say this for the Age of Intellect, though, if we choose to translate the Latin word in that way: There has been a steady growth in science and philosophy and all manner of intellectual achievements.

There is a question with respect to the conversion of the Jews: Does this event announce the beginning of Age IV or of Age V? Let us examine the passage which has reference to the “unbelieving Jews”:

The Third [Dispensation], as far as it is possible to tell from the number of generations from the time of St. Benedict, whose most outstanding brilliance is to be expected about the end, that is from that time in which Elijah will be revealed and the unbelieving people of the Jews will be turned towards the Lord, . . .[18]

The reference to Elijah is associated with the transition to the Fourth Age; we need only recall our quotation from Tractatus super quatuor evangelia (see p. 17 above); “the end of the Second Dispensation, that is, at the advent of Elijah.” It would seem to Bahá’ís, just on the basis of experience, that the conversion of Jews is more a characteristic of this Dispensation than of the period beginning with 1260 A.D. It is not fair to Joachim, however, to pin him down too rigorously to this date. As LeRoy Edwin Froom remarks so justly:

It is clear that Joachim himself never intended to press a precise year for the epoch of the Spirit. But after his death the specific year, 1260, came to be considered by Joachim’s followers as the fatal date that would begin the new age, so much so that when it passed without any notable event some ceased to believe any of his teachings.”[19]

The clear statement of the principle of progressive revelation is one of the most startling features of Joachim’s writing; let us see once more how clearly he put it in Expositio in Apocalypsim (folio 94v):

One should not be surprised that, if something is promised in a certain age, it is denied in previous ages; for it belongs to the glory of God, the All-high, to increase the gift of bounties, and to grant to the newest what was denied to the first. So let no one boast of the honor of being first, but rather let him emulate sincerely the outstanding riches of his juniors.

It is this capacity to see the broad outlines of religious evolution that lifted Joachim far above his contemporaries. Though he, like all men, was a child of his age, though his ideas inevitably moved within the limits of Western Christian tradition, though his theological method was primitive and at times fantastic, he intuited truths which were fresh then and are fresh today. His influence on his contemporaries must have been in large measure a result of their awareness of his having seen farther, his having “understood” more than the rest.

It is that same quality of religious intuition transcending the limitations of time and place that makes Joachim attractive today and rescues him from oblivion. His vision of the succession of ages, of the renewal of faith, of the unending flow of divine grace, no matter how strange his language, is still inspiring because it is in essence true.


  1. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Some Answered Questions (Wilmette, Ill.: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1968), pp. 46-52; Shoghi Effendi, God Passes By (Wilmette, Ill.: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1970), pp. 93-96; Billy Rojas, “The Millerites,” World Order; 4, no. 1 (Fall 1969), 15-25.
  2. Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun, Le Roman de la Rose, ed. Felix Lecoy (Paris: Champion, 1965), tome II, 11. 11761ff. All translations from the Old French and Latin are by the author.
  3. See Lecoy’s note on 1. 11767, ibid., tome II, p. 287.
  4. The popes in question are Lucius III, Urban III, and Clement III. See Johannes Chrysostomus Huck, Joachim von Floris und die joachitische Literatur (Freiberg im Breisgau: Herder, 1938), p. 99.
  5. Paul Fournier, Études sur Joachim de Flore et ses doctrines (Paris: Picard, 1909), p. 38.
  6. Joachim of Fiore, Tractatus super quatuor evangelia, ed. Ernesto Buonaiuti (Rome, 1930).
  7. Joachim of Fiore, Expositio in Apocalypsim (Venedig, 1527), Unveränderter Nachdruck (Frankfurt: Minerva G.M.B.H., 1964).
  8. Joachim of Fiore, Liber concordie novi ac veteris testamenti (Venedig, 1519), Unveränderter Nachdruck (Frankfurt: Minerva G.M.B.H., 1964).
  9. Joachim of Fiore, Psalterium decem cordarum [Venice, 1527], Unveränderter Nachdruck (Frankfurt: Minerva G.M.B.H., 1965).
  10. See Joachim of Fiore, Liber concordie novi ac veteris testamenti, II, ch. 3, folio 8r.
  11. The tradition of allegorical method as practiced by the earliest Christian interpreters of the Bible and those Greeks and Jews who were their contemporaries or immediate predecessors is dealt with thoroughly and lucidly by Harry Austryn Wolfson in The Philosophy of the Church Fathers, Volume I: Faith, Trinity, Incarnation (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1956), especially in Part One, ch. II, “The Allegorical Method,” pp. 24-72.
  12. Wolfson, ibid., p. 27, distinguishes the first type, “historical predictive interpretation,” from the second, “eschatological interpretation.”
  13. “In the Second Dispensation, which began with John the Baptist, the Son became known to the Christian people.” Tractatus super quatuor evangelia, p. 24.
  14. Expositio in Apocalypsim, folio 5rb.
  15. In the Greek Testament, Jesus said, “Tetélestai” (It is finished); but the Greek verb contains the root tel (goal) so it can mean, “the goal or predestined end has been reached.”
  16. Expositio in Apocalypsim, folio 6ra.
  17. Ibid.
  18. Ibid., folio 5rb.
  19. LeRoy Edwin Froom, The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers (Washington: Review and Herald, 1950), I, 716.




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[Page 22]




[Page 23]

The Philosophy of the ANISA Model

BY DANIEL C. JORDAN AND RAYMOND P. SHEPARD

THE PURPOSE OF PHILOSOPHY is to disclose the nature of our experience and to make sense out of it by presenting evidence in support of basic premises from which logical thought proceeds. By revealing consistencies and inconsistencies in our experience it creates a coherence on which understanding depends. It provides perspective—a gradation of relevance—which orders experience and gives meaning to an otherwise overwhelming abundance of fragmentary details. A more specific function of philosophy is to stimulate the formulation of theory from which testable hypotheses may be deduced. As hypotheses are confirmed, theories from which they are derived become laws; and the body of knowledge expands.

Contemporary education lacks a philosophy broad enough in scope to unify the vast knowledge we have about human growth and development and produce a body of theory that would enable us to provide solutions to the difficult and complex problems facing education as a social institution. These problems are compounded by the rapidity of social change; the future spills into the present like a torrent. Adjustments to a new situation are scarcely begun before the situation changes, making the plans to deal with it obsolete. Trying to make adjustments under such conditions, in the absence of theory derived from a unifying philosophy, has brought us to a state of crisis. The profession is rent with internal conflict; diversity has degenerated into disunity. Vast resources are wasted. Several generations of students are caught in a system impotent to serve their educational needs in a complex, modern world.

The inadequacy of contemporary educational philosophy becomes apparent when we look for a set of assumptions about the nature of man. Because it has not defined the nature of man, education is in the untenable position of having to devote its energies to the development of curricula without any coherent ideas about the nature of the creature for whom they are intended. What is true about curricula is also true about teaching methods. Surely the nature of man has profound implications for both. To ignore those implications is to precipitate a crisis.

The philosophy of the ANISA Model deals with this crisis. It incorporates a view of man full enough and rich enough to account for and to illumine the concrete experience we have of our own growth and development as we interact with the environment. From the premises of this view, we are able to proceed logically to a body of theory about education which could be empirically tested over the next several decades. The philosophy we propose represents a significant departure from contemporary educational thought and practice. It is the result of a long search that combines insights from diverse disciplines into a coherent view of man—a view [Page 24] which can account for the knowing and loving capacities of the human being and provide a conceptual framework that is realizable as a model for education. Since it is difficult to know where we are going unless we know where we have been, understanding the ANISA philosophy depends upon having an historical perspective on the development of the human sciences and their role in shaping education as we know it today.


WHEN PSYCHOLOGY WAS WEANED from philosophy and set out on its own to become an empirical science, there was every reason to believe that the fledgling discipline would provide a firm foundation for the development of educational theory and practice. This hope was never fully realized, largely because our psychological concepts have been based on views of man’s nature which were primarily derived by analogy from the current doctrines of other disciplines, disciplines whose central interest was not in the nature of man. In fact, the history of psychology can be told as a series of conceptual borrowings from the dominant physical sciences. We find, for instance, Thomas Hobbes asserting that man seeks pleasure and avoids pain with the same necessity and compulsion that causes a stone to fall downwards. In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries men such as J. F. Herbart drew upon the concept of physical gravity in proposing that the motion of ideas was the basic principle of mental mechanics. James Mill followed the same form of theorizing whereas his son, John Stuart Mill, substituted the more advanced ideas of chemistry for the older mechanistic outlook of his father by propounding a theory of “mental chemistry” to replace mental mechanics.

Francis Galton, whose efforts in mental testing and statistics make him an immediate predecessor of modern American psychology, held a geologically inspired model of a stratified mind consisting of lower nutritional strata and higher strata of memory and reasoning. In this view, mental testing was akin to sinking shafts into the mind at critical points to ascertain the stage of development.

Another important example of the application of externally derived explanatory models to theorizing in the human sciences is the work of Sigmund Freud. In his case the model is not derived from a purely scientific analogy but is, nonetheless, an externally derived explanatory system. A dominant Freudian metaphor is based upon a military model of mental processes. Here, thought processes become tactical military simulations of the anticipated confrontation with reality. Blocked development is compared to the resistance of hostile enemy forces; repression, to retreat in the face of an attack; and psychotherapy, to the intervention of an ally in a civil war.[1]

A central and seemingly often unconscious assumption underlying this borrowing approach is that the methods of the natural sciences are adequate to the study of man and to a description of his more complex and distinctively human aspects. In characterizing the nature of those early basic assumptions of prerelativistic scientific philosophy, we are also characterizing the materialism of the modern age. This materialism rests on the acceptance of scientific understanding as centering around the increased knowability of the character of matter and the laws by which it [Page 25] operates. Further, since matter could be reduced to discrete “billiard-ball-like” elements which behaved according to the immutable laws of nature, all that is real was seen as analyzable into its atomic components.

The most important implication of this materialistic thought for the developing human sciences revolves around the issues of causality, unity, and determinism. These issues form an important part of the fabric of our “standard” interpretation of nature. In fact, they have become so commonplace that it is almost unquestioningly assumed that all events are explicable in terms of their immediately preceding events which are ultimately describable as laws of nature acting on particles. From this perspective one can only develop a view of the unity of nature in which everything must be the result of the same laws acting on the same particles with man being but a more complex form of organization of particles and laws.

Unity, however, viewed in this way is not congruent with what we know of the type of unity applicable to the process of man’s evolution and the structuring of human societies. We therefore require a definition of unity which accounts for the diversity within its essence and explains the transcendent relation of man to the lower-order physical unity of atoms and molecules. Thus we come face-to-face with the age-old philosophical problem of determinism. How is man, who is a part of nature, produced by and subject to its laws, ever to be capable of independent action? Free will is an illusion in a world where every effect must have a necessary and sufficient physical cause. Yet, the very enterprise of producing any sort of scientific description of natural phenomena rests upon the assumption that man, at least, is a self-determining organism. Whitehead indicates that the main effect of such a radical inconsistency in the basis of modern science results in an enfeebling of our thought with superficial orderings and arbitrary starting points.[2] Many of the problems created in the wake of this style of thought are interpretable under the general heading of reductionism, which is simply the uncritical acceptance of the understanding of mechanisms and processes that operate at lower levels of nature as explanations of higher-level phenomena. The assumption is that the explanation so produced leaves no remainder which is unexplained. This fallacious assumption is derived from the assimilationist doctrine that abstractions which illumine one aspect of reality also apply to all others. Scientific materialism of whatever variety mistakes the part for the whole by using abstractions (e.g., irreducible billiard-ball atoms) as if they were a concrete reality and then building a description of the concrete whole in terms of the abstraction from the part.

A prime example of reductionism is the development of Gestalt psychology. The Gestalt field, which was inspired by the discoveries of electromagnetic phenomena in the early twentieth century, was meant to replace the earlier atomistic-mechanistic views by interpreting mental processes in terms of physical fields in the brain. Actually, this did help to explain some mental phenomena simply because field concepts are more inclusive in their generality than the earlier atomistic notions they attempted to replace. However, the explanatory power of Gestalt psychology is still limited because its theory is derived from lower orders of existence. Our more [Page 26] modern attempts to reduce the explanation of human phenomena to principles derived from the study of animals, as seen in the work of B. F. Skinner and the behavioral school of psychology, suffers from the same defect.

Efforts to capture the reality of human experience through the application of the methods of sociology and anthropology reflect a similar inadequacy. Still another popular form of reducing human behavior to manageable terms is the focusing on the chronological factors of child growth and development as the major determinants of personality. However, the attempt to lay all social problems upon the doorstep of improper childrearing does not provide a fully satisfactory answer because it fails to add useful insight into the means by which adults can be changed so that their childrearing practices can be changed.

A final form of reductionism which is very influential today is the attempt to explain all forms of experience at the level of neurophysiological processes. Such pervasive determinism has so disposed us to seek causal explanations that we have produced descriptions of human life which seem to leave almost no room for the kind of individual determination that can transcend the programming of genetic endowment, culture, and tradition. The attempt to reduce the complexity of mental life to the lowest possible levels of physical phenomena signalizes the alienation of man from nature.


AT IMPORTANT MILESTONES in the development of our scientific thought, in the work of men such as Galileo, Descartes, and Kant, the stamp of philosophical approval was placed on each new scientific development that was simultaneously creating and filling the gap between man and nature. As the development has progressed, we have become more accustomed to the idea that scientific knowledge can only come from laboratory experiments where special conditions and constraints are imposed upon the subject. We do not run into serious trouble with this approach until we come to the study of man and are confronted with the curious situation of imposing our own conceptual forms upon ourselves. In other words, with the advent of modern human sciences we have come full circle—the looking glass of scientific inquiry has indeed become a mirror in which we see the image of our own conceptualizations reflected upon ourselves. In the past technical man observed nature through the glass and asked “How?”; today modern man in his increasing awareness of the reflection of his own image is inclined to ask “Why?” This is a critical question for us because the efforts to create modern science have also watered the seeds of alienation that were sown in the soil of the seventeenth-century view of the universe, richly composted by the discarded doctrines of the scholastics.

This condition of alienation is primarily an outgrowth of the world view which prevailed during the formative age of psychology. It was the era of the unquestioned supremacy of Newtonian physics, and it naturally assumed that the methods of the physical sciences could and should be applied to the study of the mind, even if the phenomena were of a different order. As a result, the entire development of the human sciences has been overshadowed by a scientific metaphysic which has exerted a continual bias toward the search for the same type of invariant and deterministic laws which characterize the physical sciences. It has been all too easy to translate the belief in physical atoms and laws into a corresponding faith that their psychological [Page 27] equivalents could be found in elementary sensations and conditioned responses.

Under the influence of materialistic science the dominant impulse has been to seek a scientific understanding of the reality of man by examining levels of reality which are essentially behind him (or below, if you prefer)—that is to say, levels which are included within but not descriptive of the reality of man. The lowest levels, of course, are not characterized by life. Examining such levels can only lead to an understanding of lifeless things which achieve nothing, rely on nothing, and therefore never make a mistake. Yet, as Michael Polanyi has pointed out, the very idea of life involves the achievement of something—and making mistakes in the process.[3] How can processes that achieve something be described in terms of processes which do not incorporate achievement? Polanyi’s answer to this logical impossibility is that “a principle not present in the inanimate must come into operation when it gives birth to living things.”[4] In other words, a higher level of being can come into existence only as the result of a process which is not manifest at a lower level. In this View, the comprehensive understanding of any being is dependent upon understanding the operating principles which apply to its level of patterned functioning and cannot be achieved through principles which apply to inferior levels.

Whitehead identified four major aggregations of patterned activities hierarchically arranged, each with a specific pattern of expression.[5] The first level is the nonliving which functions according to the laws of nature with a total suppression of individual self-expression. The next is the vegetable level in which life is superimposed upon inorganic nature. Viewed differently, the latent potentiality in lifeless matter can be seen as awakened into realization in the vegetable by the operation of a higher-order principle. In the animal level of existence the lower levels are incorporated into that of a unified and self-directed organism. Finally, the human level incorporates them all and adds the ability to respond to the influx of ideals which shape its purposes and mold its actions.

Here we can discern the beginnings of a possible reconciliation between the world as given in experience and the world as known in science. The hierarchical view suggests a type of scientific unity which focuses on the importance of patterned action. It is a unity of process and purpose rather than a unity of kind. Furthermore, it is a view which not only admits but requires diversity as a necessary element in the structure of reality and one which places man and his potentialities at the pinnacle of an evolutionary process which is seeking its meaning through man’s transcendent actualization of these potentialities. Thus, it is the spiritual and not the material nature of man which is the central determinant in the future course of evolution, and the meaning of man is to be sought in that transcendent generality which is the essence of his being rather than in the operation of laws whose powers have been expressed primarily in lower-order categories of existence.

It is a bold assertion indeed that we need a new cosmology, one which suggests that the transition from mechanism to organism, from immutable laws to hierarchical [Page 28] processes, is indispensable to the advent of a new era in man’s awareness of the nature of the reality underlying his existence and a corresponding new era in education. This is the cosmology upon which the ANISA model is founded.

As we have seen, at the base of the problems of education is a need to eliminate the philosophical distortions which afflict the human sciences. These distortions make organization of information impossible and are the basic reason education has been unable to draw upon its “mother disciplines” in the human sciences in the same way medicine, for example, has fruitfully applied the basic principles of the physical and biological sciences. In education little success has been achieved in explaining how all of the research findings and analyses fit together to make an adequate picture of man. There is no way to make them fit so long as the spiritual reality underlying man’s flesh-and-blood existence remains excluded in the persistent search to understand his material being.


ANISA makes of education an adventure in the growth of the human spirit and seeks to create a new ethos that reflects the organic and spiritual wholeness of man. The intent of ANISA is therefore to move from our present limits of understanding to a more complete picture of the potentialities of man and the conditions which foster his development. The failures of the last hundred years’ efforts at giving a scientific description and reaching a scientific understanding of man have convinced us of the limitations of the scientific materialist philosophy. We have therefore adopted a philosophy of organism which can illumine those features of our existence which are characteristically human, such as consciousness, will, purpose, creativity, and the capacities to know and to love.

The first and most obvious implication of adopting such a philosophy is that the goal here sought does not lie within the borders of any existing discipline. The task of forming a more complete picture of the potentialities of man thus involves an attempt to further our understanding by recognizing that newer scientific ideas can grow out of and be made harmonious with their predecessors by including them in a larger explanatory context. From this point of view, the task is not only to criticize and disregard ideas and theories of the past but also to explain and include.

One of the clearest examples of scientific progress seen in this light is the development of modern celestial mechanics. In the early seventeenth century popular opinion held that the earth stood still and that the heavens moved. Galileo, however, asserted that it was the sun which remained stationary and that the earth moved around it. His apparent heresy was subsequently given explicit shape and theoretical elegance by Newton in the formulation of a set of laws which applied to earthly and heavenly bodies alike. Newton’s more encompassing view stood until Einstein, with his relativistic mechanics, asserted that everything moves and that it is simply a choice of one’s vantage point which determines the “correct” view.

No one has ever suggested that it was a change in the character of the heavens which prompted these new theories. Rather, it was the same reality which had been more successfully described by models which sprang from a more inclusive, hence more general, grasp of the problem. This example simply demonstrates that the formulation of theories requires the imposition of limits upon the phenomena to be described in order to abstract them into a special explanatory context. Abstractions [Page 29] may thus omit part of the truth. They are nonetheless useful to the extent that the omissions do not vitiate the conclusions drawn from them.

In the same way, the assumptions which underlie the development of the ANISA model and the basic concepts of releasing human potential through attainment of learning competence are not necessarily asserted to be an exhaustive set of ideas. They are viewed as the most basic terms upon which to build a theory useful to pedagogy that can now be formulated. They are basic in the logical sense of being more fundamental terms which, even though they themselves are abstractions from the larger reality of man’s existence, still contain the seeds of those very qualities we are ultimately seeking as the flower of the process of education here proposed.

The philosophy of organism sheds light on that larger reality of man’s existence by distinguishing him from a mere mechanism; for man, at the highest level of creation, represents a unity of all existence in that he incorporates the diverse qualities of lower-order mechanistic phenomena while transcending them all. His transcendence depends upon his ability to know and to love and to organize these capacities in terms of purpose or aim. Thought and feeling expressed in action under the direction of purpose reflect a nonmechanistic principle which characterizes the process of his becoming—process being the reality of man which education can no longer afford to ignore and the reality which is the central concern of ANISA.[6] The unity of all existence represented in man is dynamic; it is experienced as a consciousness in which the stored accumulations of past experiences are brought to bear upon immediate circumstances in anticipation of the future—an anticipation felt in the immediate present as purpose fused with hope and aspiration. Man is thus a conscious creature capable of creating his future out of his past by virtue of the decisions he makes in the immediate present. The quality of those decisions determines the rate by which his potentialities are translated into actuality. It is that process of translating potentiality into actuality which the philosophy underlying the ANISA model illumines. Learning, very broadly defined, is the essential dynamic of that process and gaining conscious control over the process is what is meant by learning competence. It is for that reason that we define learning competence as the key factor in the release of human potential at an optimum rate. Such competence depends on learning, for how to learn is in itself something that has to be learned; yet it is never taught directly in traditional schools. The focal concern of the ANISA model is the provision of experiences for young children which enable them to become competent learners—effective transformers of their own potentialities into actualities.

A translation of this philosophy first into theory and then into educational practice would bring a revolution in education by itself, but the picture is more striking than that. If the process of translating potentiality into actuality is managed in accordance with pedagogical principles derived from the view of man as a spiritual being, the actualization of potentiality is accompanied by a further creation or extension of potentiality. It is such capacity to create potentiality that enables man continually to move beyond himself. It constitutes another basic feature of his transcendent nature. [Page 30] Furthermore, his almost unlimited capacity to store information about his experience, his ability to form an infinite number of sentences to elaborate on those experiences and communicate their meaning to others—the indwellingness of his past surfacing into consciousness as he negotiates the immediate present—make him immanent. Thus, man is both immanent and transcendent. The fusion of immanence and transcendence makes him conscious and places him in a position to shape his own destiny, to differentiate his knowing and loving capacities into an infinity of potentialities which are integrated in action as he shapes his future. Man, the highest pinnacle of creation, thus reflects an ongoing progressive unity in the diversity of all existence.


IT IS THE PURSUIT of a comprehension of the relationships among all aspects of our experiences that brings us meaning. We are creatures which require meaning in order to continue the process of creating higher levels of organization or unity within ourselves—a process synonymous with the release of potential. That we can love and be loved, know and know that we know; that we can consciously move beyond ourselves into the future on the basis of what we decide to do at any given moment, thereby making the most out of our past as we push into that future (which makes us both immanent and transcendent); that we are able to have a sense of purpose which brings meaning and directs unlimited creative powers in making decisions and carrying them out—all of these are meant by the phrase the spiritual nature of man.

This understanding of man and his potentialities removes the obviously “factual” and the “material” from the center of our view of the cosmos and replaces them with the sensitive reaction of the experiencing and self-actualizing subject himself as the ultimate determinant of the “grain” or “texture” of reality. A reality which is so constructed reflects a recognition that man’s desire to find meaning and purpose in experience comes from deep within his being and is an expression of that same upward thrust which in past ages was responsible for mere survival of the species and is, today, urging him onward to new attainments far removed from mere physical survival.

Any educational system that hopes to facilitate the release of human potential has the prime responsibility of recognizing that meaning in life. Therefore relevance in education is associated not only with the highest intellectual achievements of mankind but also with his most profound emotional and spiritual insights; for within the individual occurs the interaction of the breadth of his thought with the depths of his being—his ability to know and his ability to love—that reflects a higher-order purpose, establishes the relationships among things, and creates a meaning in experience.

Since mankind at large has asserted the meaning of experience in its art as well as its science, educators, in their concern for the whole individual, must recognize that both our art and our science share the common obligation to open our minds, to refine our emotions, to protect our sense of beauty, and to heighten our ability to create it.

The two main assumptions upon which the development of the ANISA model rests—the unity of mankind and the spiritual nature of man—are not only directly [Page 31] related to the character of the hierarchical process model which ANISA represents. They are required by it. They are required in the sense that a scientific view of education must express both the being and the becoming of man. Being and becoming require each other. Together they constitute a complete picture of man; individually they are abstractions which can only be evaluated by examining one of them in reference to the other.

In our view, the unity of mankind is determined by man’s true station as the most highly evolved creature in the world we experience; and the spiritual nature of man is an expression of the operation of a higher-order principle as yet transcendent in relation to man’s present condition, a principle which consciousness compels us to accept on faith.

Thus, mankind’s collective evolution into a future, better described in spiritual terms rather than in material ones, requires of education the ability to impart to each individual child the knowledge that it is his nature to be within the world and yet to transcend it; that of all creation, man is the vehicle of the evolution of the universe and the highest expression of the unity in all existence. That evolution and that expression constitute the process of his becoming.


  1. H. Nash, “Freud and Metaphor,” Archives of General Psychiatry, 17 (1962), 25-29.
  2. A. N. Whitehead, Science and the Modern World (New York: The Free Press, 1967), p. 76.
  3. Michael Polanyi, The Tacit Dimension (New York: Doubleday, 1966), pp. 29-52.
  4. Ibid., p. 44.
  5. A. N. Whitehead, Modes of Thought (New York: The Free Press, 1968), pp. 20-30.
  6. In Process and Reality (New York: Macmillan, 1960), A. N. Whitehead expands this thesis into a fully developed cosmology.




From a Hollowed Reed

Each sacred object grows within my hand:
Beauties of past and future pose and bow;
No need to visit ruins, wonder how
Their peoples lived, obeyed Divine command,
Age-blackened sphinx up-rearing from the sand.
Nor past nor future modulates that brow—
My door-tree is the sadreh; golden bough
Enthralls me with the god. Time-freed, I stand;
So, recognize all ages in this Age,
All gleaming heroes in fair well-met men
Who live, who’ll die, who pass beyond my ken
Climbing this stony ladder to assuage
Their angel-hunger—as the wren
Transcended eagle. So, my epic pen.

—Hugh McKinley




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[Page 33]

Canadian Arctic Communities:

A Case Study of Power Relationships

BY JAMESON BOND

The author gratefully expresses his appreciation to his colleagues at the University of Windsor— Dr. Rudolf A. Helling, Dr. Edna O’Hern, and Mr. Thomas Condon—for their helpful comments during the preparation of this paper. He would also like to thank Dr. Leonard Moss of Wayne State University for a critical reading of the typescript.



ANY REVIEW of the position of Eskimo leadership in relation to the dominant white minority in contemporary Canadian Arctic communities necessarily involves an examination of the system of interrelationships between the two groups which was developed a generation ago, during the colonial period, in the Far North. The history of Eskimo-white contact in the Canadian Arctic falls into three periods. The period of European exploration, beginning in the sixteenth century, was followed by the period of settlement (the “colonial” period) in the second decade of the twentieth century. The present period of active political and economic development under federal government auspices began in 1953. Since the establishment of the territorial capital in Yellowknife in 1967, the administration of the Canadian Arctic has increasingly become the responsibility of the evolving Government of the Northwest Territories.

I . The Period of European Exploration

INITIAL CONTACTS between Eskimos and whites took place at relatively infrequent intervals and over a wide geographical area. The accounts of men such as Frobisher, Hearne, Parry, Ross, Franklin, Back, McLintock, Schwatka, Rae, Hall, Dease, and Simpson contained records of encounters with various Eskimo groups whom they met during their travels. During the nineteenth century commercial whaling provided the first opportunity for continued relationships between Eskimos and whites, but effective contact was largely limited to the Eskimos living on the northwestern shores of Hudson Bay and on the northeastern littoral of Baffin Island. By and large, American whalers operated in Hudson Bay while Scottish ships frequented the waters off north Baffin Island. But these contacts were neither long enough nor pervasive enough to produce either important structural change or persistent functional change in the religiopolitical organization of the aboriginal culture as a whole.

II. The Colonial Period

IN indigenous Canadian Eskimo culture, effective social control did not usually develop beyond the extended family which normally comprised a group of perhaps twenty-five people living in a hunting camp. However, a powerful angakok (shaman) in his triple role as priest, prophet, and physician could and often did exert considerable influence over the other people living within a recognized hunting area. Ordinarily, leadership took the form of a camp boss or issumata—the man who thinks. He decided, for example, when the hunt would begin and where it would take place. Although the form of direction which the issumata gave was usually indirect, it was nonetheless effective.[1] In some cases shamanistic leadership was embodied in the same person as the [Page 34] secular leader or camp boss, but not always. In any case, these two distinct kinds of leadership were exercised in camp life, and both were essentially nonauthoritarian in approach.

In contemporary Eskimo society, the secular aspect of life is becoming increasingly emphasized at the expense of the concept of the supernatural control of food resources; but in aboriginal times it was the individual hunter’s responsibility to invoke the aid of his guardian spirit.[2] Should he not possess one, he could turn to the angakok for assistance in the propitiation of spiritual beings. Today, however, other traditional forms of social control, such as gossip, ridicule, or ostracism remain essentially functional and intact. In discussing the informal nature of social control in Eskimo camps Birket-Smith has said that it is public opinion “on which social control really depends, and not on application of physical force in threat or in fact.”[3]

As Max Weber has explained, neither rational-legal nor traditional principles were important in determining leadership among Eskimos.[4] In contrast, the recognized indigenous forms were characterized primarily by their charismatic qualities, but they also contained something of the idea of spiritual inheritance. The Jewish concept of Yikhus, in which a person had to validate his high status characteristics transferred from ancestors, might be considered as an analagous principle.[5] In Eskimo society this was symbolized by the belief in name giving, through which the spirit and qualities of a deceased person returned in a newly named child. As one informant described it:

Take the case of my guardian spirit. There is always more than one guardian spirit. I had five. They were dressed like soldiers. Another man, who had died some time ago, had owned them before I had. He had been a powerful ‘angakok’ and I had been named after him. Because of this, the old man’s spirit came to me as a guardian spirit. He also brought his own guardian spirits with him for me as added protection.[6]

But the naming of a child did not necessarily provide a guarantee of future status equivalent to that already achieved by the previous name holder. In present day Arctic communities, this form of charisma is still significant within isolated Eskimo camps; however, it is being gradually replaced by formal and institutional leadership in the larger settlements.

The concept of leadership was also related to the traditional Eskimo view concerning infrahuman species. Before contact with Europeans, the Eskimo referred to himself as Inuk, meaning a two-legged creature, in contrast to the quadrupeds which he hunted. As such, Inuk viewed himself as master of his environment. With the coming of the white man, whom he called Kabloonak, referring to his big eyebrows, another two-legged creature entered his horizon. The white man did not prove to be as well adapted to the natural environment as Inuk; but, paradoxically, he possessed tools and weapons both mysterious and superior to any that the Eskimo knew. This initial paradox of environmental adaptation versus technical superiority had much to do in defining subsequent leadership patterns between the two groups.

Another factor which has determined relations between Eskimo and white leaders lay [Page 35] in the sharp contrast between the respective basic personality structures of the two ethnic groups. As A. I. Hallowell’s analysis of Saulteaux society has shown, the Eskimos, due to a fear of sorcery, observed a high degree of emotional control in their interpersonal relationships.[7] An overt loss of temper in the presence of an antagonist was tantamount to a declaration of spiritual war with injury or death as the expected outcome. The handful of white men who came into the country during the colonial period were primarily rugged individualists, and the fur traders among them were trained in an aggressive, entrepreneurial system of economic behavior. Not uncommonly among these men, forceful language as well as outward signs of anger or displeasure formed acceptable means of emotional expression. The two contrasting personality types worked to the disadvantage of Eskimo leaders in that a white man’s loss of temper or even his angry face provoked great fear in the Eskimos. Occasionally this resulted in the murder of the white man concerned, but more often it produced anxiety and repression on the part of the Eskimo, which were carefully hidden behind a smiling mask.

An additional factor, which euphemistically could be labeled the “great white father complex” and which embodied an authoritarian attitude towards the Eskimos, proved equally disadvantageous to the latter. Hierarchical authority was inherent in the large organizations which the trader, the missionary, and the policeman represented locally. The informality of Eskimo social relationships and the generalized nature of the hunter’s occupation stood in sharp contrast to the occupationally specialized and socially stratified society from which the white man came. It was easy for the “great white father” to interpret Eskimo circumlocution and verbal restraint in his face-to-face relationships as a form of respect for higher authority. Generally speaking, in the settlements Eskimos held white men in a great deal of respect; but this respect was sometimes based on fear. Within the precincts of the settlement it was easy for any member of the white minority to command Eskimos in their face-to-face relationships. Whether he was trader, missionary, or policeman, the “great white father” played his paternalistic role well and established a pattern of relationships with the Eskimos among whom he lived, which was sometimes benevolent, sometimes dictatorial, but almost always authoritarian.

Notwithstanding the fact that the “great white fathers” functioned as agents of cultural change, none of the institutions which they, as a “troika” represented locally were interested in changing the Eskimo’s traditional pattern of living off the resources of the country.[8] They encouraged the people to live in outlying camps away from the main settlement and to obtain their food by hunting. Having brought about a certain degree of change, these same institutions—trading company, church, and government—were quite prepared to maintain the status quo within a highly authoritarian framework. Much of the power of decision remained vested in the local white representatives of these institutions. A largely autonomous white power structure functioned effectively within each of these small, isolated settlements. In their reference to white dominance in one contemporary community, Van Stone and Oswalt have said, “The concentration of all political and economic power in the hands of outsiders has retarded the development of community cohesion and new leadership forms that would be adequate to deal with the changing cultural setting.”[9]

The “troika” of trader, missionary, and policeman was resident in each settlement [Page 36] and an established power relationship existed between them. In each settlement the total power pie was neatly divided, and each white man had both an occupationally ascribed status as well as a particular set of roles which varied according to a number of locally determined factors. For example, one of the white men usually dispensed medicine on behalf of the government health service, while another might be the licensed radio operator in the settlement, thus controlling the only means of daily communication with other settlements and with the outside world. Yet another would be responsible for the administration of government relief assistance. The distribution of these and other functions has varied from settlement to settlement and also has varied in point of time.[10] Certain individuals by virtue of their particular competence sometimes would continue to perform a given function even when transferred to another community.

In some communities differential role playing was further complicated when a given power function was duplicated by another white man. For example, the second man might start dispensing medicines, or he might set up his own communication facilities. Sometimes this led to competition or even to conflict. In any case, the distribution of power was subject to significant change within the settlement and affected the leadership status of each of the “great white fathers.”

Experienced Arctic hands usually worked out some kind of accommodation; but on occasion a conflict of interests or an incompatibility of personalities resulted in an overt power struggle among the white leaders—a situation which the highly observant and pragmatic Eskimos quickly used to their own advantage. But more often, where a functional equilibrium was achieved and maintained among the whites, they normally presented a united power block in their relations with the Eskimo majority. In contrast, politico-economic power among the Eskimos did not extend beyond a sort of diffuse climate of public opinion. The nonauthoritarian structure of leadership, located as it was in widely scattered hunting camps, did not permit a consolidation of power for Eskimos to use in their relations with the dominant white minority.

Robert Bierstedt’s hypothesis that numbers, organization, and resources are the criteria for social power is applicable to Arctic settlement life.[11] Resources in the form of new tools and weapons were controlled by the white minority. Similarly their authoritarian exercise of power proved more effective in interethnic relationships than did the indirect method employed by native leaders. Therefore the local Eskimo superiority of numbers did not prove to be a real source of power except perhaps in its influence on the concept of time. Especially in the smaller and more isolated communities where the Eskimos were in the great majority, the slower paced and less structured indigenous way of life tended to dominate social and economic interethnic relations and to permeate intrawhite relationships as well. In contrast to the highly structured and complex organization of urban Canadian society, with its frequent ritual obeisances to the hands of the clock, in white settlement life as in Eskimo camp life time was viewed as the servant of human relations rather than as their master. Human activities were geared to the idea that things get done in time rather than on time. In this sense, the Eskimo majority exercised a significant though passive element of social power which experienced Arctic hands accepted either with grace or with resignation or both. This was one of the few areas in which the sheer weight of numbers in the indigenous culture did in fact outweigh the superior organization [Page 37] and resources of the dominant white minority.

Although personality interaction has had an important effect on role playing in human society generally, it is perhaps nowhere more clearly seen than in a small, isolated group. When the whites involved were but two or three in number and when they held virtual local power autonomy, their relative success in role playing was determined in part by a pecking order which they established through their interpersonal relationships. The transfer of one member of the “troika” to another settlement could produce a significant change in the local power structure even though the formal institutional relationships within the settlement remained unchanged. In Arctic settlement life, business and pleasure merged almost imperceptibly within a single concentrated pattern of social interaction. Relationships between officers of a ship at sea during a long voyage would perhaps serve as an analogous illustration.

In the preaircraft days of the colonial period there were few, if any, visitors from the outside world to broaden the spectrum of local interests or to release the emotional tensions which could, under certain circumstances, balloon to pathological proportions within an environment of extreme physical as well as social isolation. It took a special kind of person to be attracted to this way of life. Interestingly enough, the members of the “troika” typically came from different cultural backgrounds. Many of the traders were recruited from the Scottish islands, whereas the missionaries usually hailed from France or England, and the police, for the most part, were Canadian born. Despite holding different kinds of professional interest in the country and in its people, these men shared in common a great attraction for the way of life which was to be found in the Canadian Arctic during the colonial period. Whether by chance or by choice, they became part of a politico-economic system within which they exercised wide discretionary powers, held privileged status, and enjoyed a large measure of freedom from bureaucratic control. These highly individualistic colonists developed patterns of leadership in their relations with Eskimos which persist, although in attenuated form, to the present day.

In any consideration of changing Eskimo-white power relationships during the colonial period it is important to differentiate between secular and religious leadership. It is equally important to note that decline in Eskimo leadership was usually greater within the confines of the white settlement than in the outlying Eskimo camps. In the area of religious leadership, the white power elite—with the dominant role in this case being played by the missionary—effectively broke shamanistic power in settlement life and brought about its rapid decline in outlying camps. But the old belief system dies hard. As recently as 1950, E. S. Carpenter learned of a full scale shamanistic performance among the Aivilingmiut of Southampton Island, complete with seance, spirit exorcism, and confession.[12] This performance took place without any knowledge of it reaching the ears of the “great white fathers” who lived in the settlement a few miles away. In less acculturated areas across the Arctic, the aboriginal system of religious belief still affects, albeit in covert and tenuous form, the thought and the resulting behavioral patterns of Eskimos in their day-to-day camp life.

Not only is it important to differentiate between life in outlying Eskimo camps and life in the white settlement, but also it is significant to note the symbiotic relationship between them. The mutual exclusiveness of interests between whites and Eskimos which characterized the period of European exploration was gradually replaced by one of increasing symbiosis, especially between the trader and the Eskimos with whom he dealt. In Malinowskian terms, European trade goods rapidly extended the range of felt needs among an essentially Mesolithic people.[13] [Page 38] But in noting the Eskimos’ economic dependence on the trader for such items as rifles and tea, it is equally important to observe the trader’s reciprocal dependence on the Eskimos for raw furs.

R. W. Dunning has pointed out that “indigenous leadership waned in the face of the growing prestige and power of the external non-ethnic leader.”[14] In the settlement context, this statement is generally applicable, but it applies in a significantly lesser degree within the isolated setting of Eskimo camp life. In most cases, success in the newly introduced art of trapping merely reinforced the already established high status of a skillful hunter. Away from the settlement, Eskimos continued to follow the traditional pattern of political organization in which the issumata played his normal leadership role. Often the white man’s settlement lay several days’ journey away, perhaps to be visited only a few times a year. To a people necessarily preoccupied with the daily satisfaction of their immediate needs, intermittent dealings with white men became a matter of secondary importance in the overall scheme of camp life. This is not to say, however, that the issumata did not lead the camp in regular Christian devotions, nor does it mean that the ecology of the annual food cycle was not greatly changed by the addition of fox trapping to the traditional hunting pattern. But it was only during visits to the white man’s settlement that the status of the camp leader changed from a traditional (but recognized) nonauthoritarian role to a submissive interethnic one.

By way of a tentative taxonomy, Frank G. Vallee has categorized one contemporary group of Eskimos under several headings, and he has suggested the need for further research to validate or modify these categories.[15] Analytically, it would be unrealistic to attempt merely to dichotomize Eskimos in the colonial period into two distinct types— those who lived in camps and those who lived in settlements. In most Arctic communities a continuum existed between the two modal types, with a small cadre of wage-employed, settlement Eskimos at one end and the ablest of the camp people at the other end of the scale. In between lay a considerable range of people in various degrees of dependence on or independence of the white man’s culture.

In general, the viability and persistence of Eskimo camp leadership vis-à-vis settlement whites might be said to have varied directly with the frequency of visits to the white settlement multiplied by the distance of a given Eskimo camp from it. Usually the poorer hunters tended to make lengthy visits to the settlement, or they might even try to settle there. When this happened, the white power elite usually exerted various pressures to get them to move back on the land. Not infrequently this conflict of interest resulted in such a family’s living perhaps a day’s journey away from the settlement but still within easy travel distance in case relief supplies or other assistance were needed. On the contrary, the most successful hunters, and therefore those least dependent upon the whites for support, would tend to choose camp sites near the best hunting areas; these were often located several days’ travel from the trading post.

In considering the ecological continuum which characterized the colonial period, one must note that locally employed Eskimos were generally chosen from among the ablest hunters in the area, yet by occupationally defined status they were more subject to white control than any other Eskimos. Paradoxically, however, in their relations with camp Eskimos they performed important [Page 39] leadership functions. In his classic work on Negro-white relations, Gunnar Myrdal discussed the concept of accommodating leadership.[16] Subject to certain qualifications, this concept is equally applicable to the Canadian Arctic. The accommodating type of leadership was typified by the “post servant” in his relations with the trading post manager; and, in the Eastern Arctic at least, this was also influenced in some areas by the still earlier relationship which developed during nineteenth-century whaling days between the ship’s captain and the Eskimos he employed.

The title “post servant” well defined the formal settlement status of the Eskimo who was so employed. He not only served as an interpreter, but he also performed an important function as a buffer between the trader and the Eskimos from outlying camps. It was in this latter role as buffer between two often conflicting systems of cultural values that the post servant exercised effective and pervasive leadership in each Arctic settlement. The status of the Eskimo special constable who was employed at the local police detachment gave him a similar role in community leadership. Both post servant and special constable became highly skilled in the art of interethnic social manipulation.

The nonauthoritarian character of indigenous leadership persisted into the colonial period essentially unchanged. But interaction between the two ethnic groups during this same period assumed a dominant-submissive relationship in which the post servant and special constable became the institutionalized means by which authoritarian power was translated into nonauthoritarian terms acceptable to camp Eskimos. This significant process was paralleled by a transfer of the shaman’s roles from angakok to “great white father” which symbolized a shift in economic, political, and religious power from camp to settlement.


III. The Period of Governmental Development

THE THIRD STAGE in the evolution of Eskimo-white relations—the stage of significant governmental participation—began in 1953, when the Parliament of Canada passed an act which established the federal Department of Northern Affairs and National Resources. Prior to this time, the political and constitutional history of Canada had developed primarily along an east-west axis; the Northwest Territories and the Yukon, which comprised the northern third of the country, remained, in effect, a political vacuum and a virtual administrative nonentity. In the postwar period, however, it became increasingly apparent that the government would need to turn its attention northward and initiate an extensive program of social, economic, and political development. At that time world attention was being focused, through the United Nations and its associated agencies, on ethnic minorities in many countries. Canadian policy reflected this trend by showing an increasing self-consciousness about the status of its own indigenous peoples. The sense of immediacy in northern affairs was further emphasized by the exigencies of defense in a postwar world of circumpolar strategy. In the far north a crash program of defense construction proceeded hand in hand with the pioneer stage in the establishment of certain civil services. The urgent requirements of the former influenced the sequence of development of the latter.

The act which created the Department of Northern Affairs and National Resources set in motion a program of civil development which affected a geographic area of approximately one million square miles. The Canadian Arctic, which by definition lay north of the treeline, comprised about two thirds of this total area. The population of the Northwest Territories at the time totaled less than twenty-five thousand people, or more than fifty square miles per capita, which was one of the lowest densities of population anywhere in the world. During the ensuing [Page 40] decade, this legislation found substantial administrative expression in the establishment of sizable physical plants in most of the forty or more permanent settlements which were scattered at great distances within this vast area.

The three districts of the Northwest Territories are named Keewatin, Franklin, and Mackenzie. Most of the Eskimos live in the Districts of Keewatin and Franklin; a majority of the residents of the District of Mackenzie are either Indian, Métis,[17] or white. The Northwest Territories fall into two climatic zones that bear little relation to the boundaries of the three territorial districts. Most of the District of Mackenzie is located south of the treeline; most of the District of Keewatin and all of the District of Franklin lies north of it. Relevant demographic data for the Northwest Territories are summarized in the following table:[18]


ETHNIC ORIGIN MACKENZIE KEEWATIN FRANKLIN TOTAL
NATIVE 11,035 3,107 6,823 20,965
OTHER 15,589 210 1,334 17,133
TOTAL 26,624 3,317 8,157 38,098


In 1953, colonial isolation ended. when civil servants who were appointed as administrators, educators, and health officials began entering the Arctic in increasing numbers. The civil servant brought with him new terms of reference which defined an equalitarian relationship with the Eskimos whom he was to serve. In his person he also symbolized the large increase in power and in resources which the government was introducing into the life of these far northern communities. The arrival of the civil servants produced two new sets of leadership relations: (1) the colonial “troika” vis-à-vis the civil servants, and (2) the civil servants vis-à-vis the Eskimos. In turn, both new systems affected the established relationships between the “troika” and the Eskimos.

Within the white group a power struggle ensued between the old colonial establishment and the new civil servants, resulting in a redivision of the now larger power pie into more segments of different proportions. Concerning this transitional phase R. W. Dunning has written, “leadership in the community was an unresolved power conflict, a continual struggle which was expressed by ad hoc prestige-getting decisions.”[19]

Most of the public services that had been performed by the colonial elite on behalf of the government were now taken over by full-time civil servants, whose professional competence permitted a fuller development of these services. The resident administrator carried out a wide range of civil duties (including such functions as citizenship court judge, coroner, notary public, and fur export officer), supervised departmental activities in the area, and held theoretical responsibility for coordinating interdepartmental government activities at the local level. The nurse-in-charge not only supervised the operation of the nursing station but also made periodic visits to outlying Eskimo camps and carried out various public health measures in the settlements within her area of responsibility. In the case of the school teacher, his nonacademic functions were perhaps best defined by his title of “community teacher.” Since the school building usually served as the community recreation center, the teacher became involved in a variety of community activities [Page 41] aside from his normal classroom activities.

Within the settlement, the locus of power shifted gradually from the “great white fathers” to the civil servants. At the same time the real authority was transferred out of the local community to southern Canada, where all but routine matters were administered by the growing official hierarchies of the various governmental departments concerned. Significantly, for the first time power passed from within the settlement to an essentially impersonal and distant authority. During the initial phase in the process of administrative growth, the resident administrator found himself in a paradoxical position. On the one hand, the transfer of local power from the “great white fathers” combined with an increase in the range of the services which he now provided, placed the administrator in a position of apparent authority even more pervasive than had been exercised by the “troika” during the colonial period. On the other hand, although the administrator held the ascribed status of a “paramount chief,” he became in fact a “talking chief” for an amorphous and immeasurably powerful entity called “government.” Only in time did the Eskimos come to realize that decision-making in important matters now lay outside the local settlement.

During the colonial period, the Eskimos had become aware of hierarchical authority in the white man’s world through occasional visits by senior members of “troika” institutions. But it was not until the recent development of air transportation and of radio telephone services that they came to know, however imperfectly, of the enormous, interlocking complexities of the federal civil service and of its relationship to the public it served. One effect of this process has been to extend greatly the horizon of sociopolitical consciousness among the Eskimos. Frequent radio messages of instruction from the outside world and increased visits to the Arctic by various government specialists have brought a new image of the world which exists to the south of them. For the first time Eskimos have entered into meaningful contact with hierarchical authority which is external to their milieu.

In this changing cultural setting the avowed aim of the civil servant was to reintroduce self-direction among the Eskimo people and to encourage the development of Eskimo leaders within a new political and economic context. This policy has found practical expression in the establishment of a number of Eskimo cooperatives across the north, as well as in setting up several experimental community councils. Here, for the first time, Eskimo leaders have met within a formal group structure. Here, for the first time, the characteristically Eskimo notion of individual self-determination has become subject to a formal consultative process. And here, for the first time, Eskimo leaders have met the dominant white minority across the council table in relative equality.

Asen Balikci has pointed out that an organization with a leadership role might be either specific or diffuse in function.[20] For example, the pragmatic Eskimos seemed to like local producer cooperatives in which direct action followed formal consultation. In contrast, council meetings which discussed relatively abstract topics proved to be less attractive from an indigenous point of view. Specific action organizations, rather than those with generalized functions, may prove to be the more likely forms through which Eskimo leadership can develop during the present period of rapid acculturation. It is noteworthy that both old and new forms of local government involve the consultative method, even though the structural differences in the two approaches are marked.

The present formal approach to politico-economic organization provides the Eskimos, at least theoretically, with the institutional means by which their elected leaders may represent them in their dealings with government [Page 42] authorities. In any case, this is the government’s expectation, and this is the government’s dogma. However, in relation to the new institutions, the local government officer in most cases still plays a dominant although indirect role. In this respect he performs a function not dissimilar to that of an administrative officer in the classic, British colonial tradition of indirect rule. In the one instance the objective was the creation of appropriate institutions for the self-determination of the indigenous group; but in the other, the objective was the perpetuation of well-established, multifunctional, sociopolitical institutions. The government’s purposeful attempts to stimulate the growth of community institutions in order to provide suitable instruments for the development of Eskimo leadership within the new cultural context is perhaps the most significant element of the current federal program in the far north.

Leaders in human communities tend to fall into one of two categories. Either they are innovators, or they are concerned with the maintenance of the status quo. The former may be termed change oriented and the latter tradition oriented. During the colonial period, the indigenous forms of camp leadership provided traditional orientation; the Eskimos who went to work for “troika” institutions became identified as change oriented and in time became established as informal leaders within the settlement. With the coming of the civil servants, some of these established leaders, by assuming an adaptive attitude, have been able to maintain their status within the new sociopolitical context. Others took a posture of passive resistance and reverted to their traditional orientation. A parallel process developed among the camp Eskimos. Those who left the camps and became employed in government service were mostly change oriented, but others still maintained a conservative stance and remained tradition oriented.

The change-oriented category of leadership may be divided further into two subcategories. The first subcategory involves the Eskimo who has accepted the cultural norms of the white minority in toto. In so doing, he has rejected the indigenous lifeways with the same totality. This type of person may be a leader in the eyes of the dominant white minority, but he does not necessarily hold leadership status in the eyes of his fellow Eskimos. This unilateral type of leadership tends to be rather superficial in its effect because of the limited intermediary function which such an individual performs between the two ethnic groups. The second subcategory of the change-oriented leader is the person who has selectively accepted large elements of the new culture, but who seeks to relate these elements interpretively to the context of his native way of life. The second type of individual tends to view critically his changing social environment, and he tries to regain a measure of personal equilibrium within what is essentially a disjunctive social process. This type of leader holds the respect of both whites and Eskimos. He Stands with one foot in each culture, while trying to understand the new set of values and of behavioral norms which are emerging from the process of cultural conflict in which he is caught up. Both these types of change oriented leaders have appeared in the larger settlements. In the outlying camps, where the Eskimos have relatively infrequent contact with life in the main settlements, traditional leadership criteria persist essentially unchanged. In the perspective of the next generation, these tradition-oriented leaders may prove to have had only transitional significance in interethnic relationships.

As the new settlement leaders emerge, there appears thus far to be a remarkable absence of antagonism between the old leaders and the new. However, covert conflict in Eskimo society is not easily perceived by non-Eskimo observers. It is even more difficult for an outsider to document covert conflict because of the traditional restraint exercised by Eskimos in avoiding overt expressions of hostility and aggression. Therefore the absence of open conflict may be more apparent [Page 43] than real. Indeed, conflict in some form is frequently characteristic of social situations involving gross cultural change. If, however, we argue from the position that conflict between tradition oriented and change-oriented Eskimos is minimal, we can adduce some empirical evidence to support this view. First, both categories of individuals are following their respective ways of making a living by their own free choice. External agencies are not pressuring them, at least in any mandatory sense, to follow one way of life or the other. Second, some of the leaders within the new politico-econornic milieu were employed by the whites during the colonial period and simply have carried over the prestige of earlier achieved status into the new setting. Third, civil servants generally have followed the colonial practice of employing men who had already achieved traditional status in the community prior to their permanent employment. Finally, to date there has been no real competition between people who choose to live on the land and people who choose a sedentary “wage and clock” life. Although each group may wish selective elements of the alternative way of life, they reject the alternative in its totality.

During the past decade, one of the important ecological changes in the Canadian Arctic has been an increase in the number of Eskimos who have moved from outlying camps to the periphery of the permanent white settlements. A shacktown is now characteristic in many areas. Some of the families who live in these snow-insulated, packing box dwellings, are attracted either by the prospect of handy government relief assistance or at least by a sense of security in knowing that they will not starve when hard times inevitably come. Others are attracted by the fact that wage-employed kinfolk become a source of food and other support through the operation of the traditional system of kinship obligations. However, as George M. Foster has pointed out, among many indigenous groups where rapid culture change is taking place, the introduction of a wage economy tends to break down the functional effectiveness of reciprocal kinship obligations and to undermine the indigenous forms of leadership.[21] Still other Eskimos are attracted by the diversity of settlement social life with its increased opportunities for visiting.[22] Yet other Eskimos find that life in the settlement provides not infrequent chances to pick up a few dollars in casual wage employment which are converted rapidly at the trading store into consumer goods for the satisfaction of newly acquired felt needs.

It may still be premature to suggest the long term effects on Eskimo leadership of the current ecological shift of the population from camp to settlement. In some areas the Eskimos now ascribe high status not only to able hunters who live in camps but also to bilingual, permanently wage-employed, settlement Eskimos. The homogeneity and informality of camp life is being exchanged gradually for a settlement life with elements of sociopolitical stratification. As the amount of government support increases, either by frank subsidy or by other means, so the indirect forms of indigenous authority are being replaced by those which are direct and institutionalized.

In his study dealing with one of the most intensive centers of culture change in the Canadian Arctic, John J. Honigmann discusses current trends in the development of government-sponsored institutions of formal leadership.[23] These include a Community Council which consults on a variety of topics affecting town needs and community welfare and a dues-paying Community Association [Page 44] which is concerned with matters of entertainment and recreation. Both these organizations are largely Eskimo in membership, but they also include one or two government officers. Significantly enough, it was at the request of one of these officers that three seats for women members were reserved on the Council’s executive despite an initial objection on the part of the Eskimo men. Subject to unforeseen factors, such as a major change in government policy, this direction of growth may be taken as an indication of the probable forms in which leadership will develop in more isolated and less acculturated areas in the future.

In contrast to many northern Indian groups, one of the interesting characteristics about contemporary Eskimo leadership is the absence of the marginal man at least as defined in the Métis sense of the term. Métis as a social class do not exist in the Canadian Arctic. If an individual has an Eskimo-white biological inheritance, he still is considered to be an Eskimo in the eyes of the community. Notwithstanding the absence of this particular socioethnic class in the far north, there are already signs that a formal system of social stratification is developing among the Eskimos. Paradoxically, the social stratification which existed on an ethnic basis in most Arctic communities during the colonial period now gives evidence of changing criteria. In part, this is due to federal government policy which ascribes equal civil status to members of both ethnic groups. In fact, the separation is now substantially on the basis of differences in language, in economic position, and in interest groups, at least in the larger settlements. In the Weberian sense of status privilege, highly acculturated, bilingual Eskimos can now move with relative mobility within white social circles.[24] Criteria, then, for Eskimo admission into the social life of the still dominant white minority in the larger Arctic communities are related to bilinguality, occupation, and housing. In the smaller settlements where traditional influences are stronger, social intercourse between visiting camp Eskimos and whites may still take place in an unheated “Eskimo room” or porch in the white man’s house rather than in the living room.

If we define a marginal man as an individual with a foot in each of two cultural worlds yet accepted by neither, then the marginal man per se, is not commonplace in Canadian Arctic communities. This does not mean that the new Eskimo leaders are not subject to strong cross-cultural pressures as they perform their mediative and interpretive roles in settlement life. Although subject to conflicting influence by two cultural worlds, the new leaders seem to be accepted rather than rejected by both groups. Students of conflict theory may find the Canadian Arctic an interesting area for subsequent comparative work because of the cultural extremes operating with an essentially similar physical environment. However, this is a difficult subject upon which to attempt to generalize at present because of the great differences in the degree of acculturation from one Arctic settlement to another.

A developing class structure among contemporary Eskimos may also be related to the scattered enclaves of urban comfort, set in a physically isolated environment, which the government is constructing across the north, as the necessary physical plant within which a heavily subsidized establishment of civil servants—both Eskimo and white—may operate.[25] The standard of living which these urban oases represent emphasizes by antithetical contrast the paucity of resources and the chronic sense of insecurity which characterizes the life of the camp Eskimos whom they serve. If the long arm of subsidy is not extended to provide all citizens with such basic elements as a minimal standard of accommodation and, more important, the fuel with which to heat it, if this gross [Page 45] disparity in living standards is allowed to continue indefinitely, it may prove to be a significant divisive factor in many Arctic communities. Otherwise, existing differences between these two groups, may well produce a new proletariat among the increasing number of culturally disoriented camp Eskimos who are locating on the fringes of these governmental urban enclaves.

It is not unreasonable to expect that, as the sense of personal security and as the variety of creature comforts available to wage-employed Eskimos increase, the attraction that this way of life will exert on camp people will proportionately increase. We may also expect a corresponding decrease in the status of traditional leadership as the number of outlying camps diminish in favor of the more sedentary settlement life. The influence of certain urban practices, symbolized by a warm house and a bathtub, is producing among the Eskimo elite new behavioral norms, new standards of etiquette, new dietary habits, new dress and hair styles, and other overt symbols of culture change. These in turn reinforce changing social relationships which are related to corresponding changes in attitudes and in value systems. These changes are being further emphasized by the growing gap in living standards between camp Eskimos and settlement Eskimos and by the narrowing corollary gap between the Eskimo elite and the white power group.[26]

Within this environment of rapidly changing cultural values the manifest policy of the Canadian government is the attainment of egalitarian democracy. The means to obtain this goal, however, have not as yet been fully spelled out. Unfortunately, the government is caught between the horns of a classic dilemma. On the one hand, no viable economic base as yet has been developed to provide employment for a substantial number of able-bodied Eskimos. On the other hand, the government has invested heavily in providing educational facilities to prepare Eskimos for the economic growth that sooner or later must take place. Not to provide educational facilities would be to deny Eskimos a basic right of citizenship. To continue to do so without likely prospect of corresponding job opportunities would be an act of economic irrelevance. The alternatives appear to be a cradle to grave governmental paternalism on the one hand, or the perpetuation of existing slum conditions in the Arctic on the other hand. In either case the prospects of developing representative Eskimo leadership may be limited to the elite class of permanently wage-employed Eskimos. It also appears probable that a more complex class structure will develop among the Canadian Eskimos in the foreseeable future. In addition to a settlement elite, and a conservative class of skilled hunters in the camps, we may expect to find a growing proletariat of settlement dwellers. If, however, a major breakthrough in economic development occurs in the Northwest Territories within the next decade, ensuring the employment of a large number of this quasi-educated, sedentary proletariat, this change could significantly affect the newly emerging system of social stratification, as well as subsequent steps in the political development of the Northwest Territories as a whole.

Whatever future forms the class system may take and whatever types of formal leadership may be associated with it, the present role of the professional interpreter as an informal leader in the community has taken on great functional significance during the regime of the civil servant. Especially in the more isolated settlements, relatively few of the newcomers have become fluent in the Eskimo language, and proportionately few Eskimos can speak adequate English. The communication problem has two aspects— [Page 46] one verbal and the other nonverbal. Not only is there a linguistic barrier, but also there exists the problem of interpreting the culturally prescribed meanings of overt forms of behavior. These factors have created a situation in which the experienced and facile interpreter fulfills a literal role as translator and, in addition, exerts a great deal of indirect influence within the community power structure. His opinions are sought by members of both ethnic groups in matters affecting their relationships with the other group. His influence is both pervasive and subtle, and for these reasons it is difficult to measure with any degree of exactness. His functional significance will undoubtedly diminish as the federally supported public school system produces more and more bilingual Eskimos. But in the foreseeable future the highly acculturated Eskimo interpreter will likely play a crucial role as an informal leader in most Arctic communities.

As the frequency and range of Eskimo-white communication increase, the mediative role of the new Eskimo elite, whether they be employed as professional interpreters or in other capacities, will strengthen correspondingly their leadership status in interethnic relations. Civil servants seek the guidance and advice of indigenous employees in many matters pertaining to Eskimos as a group. Already some evidence exists to suggest that, from this process of conflict and change, strongly authoritarian Eskimo leaders, by virtue of their facile bilinguality and forceful personality, may emerge as accepted political spokesmen for the whole Eskimo community. Although this format would be antithetical to traditional patterns of Eskimo leadership, able, power-conscious and highly acculturated Eskimos who are capable of expressing the authoritarian personality in a locally acceptable idiom may well prove to be increasingly influential nor only in local political matters but in Arctic affairs generally.

In 1962, Eskimos in the Districts of Franklin and Keewatin were able to exercise their political franchise in a federal election for the first time. In this way they became exposed, however crudely and fleetingly, to the world of power which is contained in elective and legislative processes. In the span of a single generation, Canadian Eskimos have been exposed to an escalating awareness of at least five different levels of power. Initially they encountered and accepted the very considerable powers of the colonial “troika.” Expressed essentially in local terms, this relationship often worked to the political disadvantage of the indigenous leaders. With the coming of the government administrator, the scale of power expanded visibly not only in the growth of physical plant but in the increase of various forms of social assistance. Next came the realization that local government representatives were but the manipulative hands of a centralized hierarchy of administrative authority which resided far away in southern Canada. Quite recently, the Eskimos have become aware that civil servants, both local and remote, are subject to a still higher order of authority, namely, the legislative branch of the federal government. The apex of this expanding power universe was not reached until the government gave Eskimos an opportunity to participate in the election of a member of parliament for the constituency of the Northwest Territories. For the second time within a decade, Eskimos entered into a new kind of relationship with the outside world. The member of parliament symbolized their first direct contact with the central institution of political power in Canada.

Understandably, only a few of the Eskimos have as yet grasped the significance of this rapid sequence in their political development. Nor would it be easy at the present stage of culture change to predict how long it will take them to attain political maturity, at least in the conventional sense of the term. But if the present rate of change persists, it is not unreasonable to expect that in the foreseeable future an Eskimo member of parliament may represent the constituency of the Northwest Territories in the House of Commons. [Page 47] Whenever this happens, the exercise of authority will have come full circle from informal consultative process in the camp setting, with its associated institutions of the issumata and the angakok through a complex sequence of administrative and political development to a form of leadership which is once again locally determined.


  1. J. W. Van Stone and W. H. Oswalt, “Three Eskimo Communities,” Anthropological Papers, Univ. of Alaska, 9, No. 1 (1960), 45; and Margaret Lantis, “The Social Culture of the Nunivak Eskimo,” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, NS 35, Pt. 3 (1946), 246-49.
  2. Ruth Fulton Benedict, “The Concept of the Guardian Spirit in North America,” Memoirs of the American Anthropological Association, No. 29 (1923), 18.
  3. Kai Birket-Smith, The Eskimos, trans. W. E. Calvert and trans. rev. C. Daryll Forde (London: Methuen, 1959), p. 151.
  4. H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1946), p. 296.
  5. Mark Zborowski and Elizabeth Herzog, Life Is with People (New York: Schocken, 1962) pp. 76-79.
  6. The author used the same informant as Dr. E. S. Carpenter. See Edmund Carpenter, “Ohnainewk, Eskimo Hunter,” in In the Company of Man, ed. Joseph B. Casagrande (New York: Harper, 1960), pp. 418-26.
  7. A. I. Hallowell, “Some Psychological Characteristics of the Northeastern Indians,” in Man in Northeastern North America, Papers of the R. S. Peabody Foundation for Archeology, 3 (1964), 221.
  8. A term first used in this context by Dr. Asen Balikci, Université de Montreal.
  9. J. W. Van Stone and W. H. Oswalt, p. 45.
  10. In any settlement in which a Royal Canadian Mounted Police detachment was located, the police officer normally would act on behalf of the government in various civil matters in addition to his law enforcement duties.
  11. Robert Bierstedt, “An Analysis of Social Power,” American Sociological Review, 15, No. 6 (Dec. 1950), 730.
  12. Personal communication to author.
  13. Bronislaw Malinowski, A Scientific Theory of Culture and Other Essays (Chapel Hill, North Carolina: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1944).
  14. R. W. Dunning, “Ethnic Relations and the Marginal Man in Canada,” Human Organization, 19 (1960), 170.
  15. 15. Frank G. Vallee, “Kabloona and Eskimo in the Central Keewatin,” Department of Northern Affairs and National Resources, Northern Coordination and Research Centre (Canada, 1962), p. 136.
  16. Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy (New York: Harper, 1944), pp. 720-33.
  17. A person of Indian-white parentage. Originally the term denoted an individual with French-Indian ancestry.
  18. Department of Local Government, Government of the Northwest Territories, Yellowknife, N.W.T., Aug. 1971.
  19. Dunning, p. 170.
  20. Asen Balikci, “Two Attempts at Community Organization among the Eastern Hudson Bay Eskimo,” Anthropologica, NS 1, Nos. 1 and 2 (1959), pp. 122-35.
  21. George M. Foster, Traditional Cultures: And the Impact of Technological Change (New York: Harper, 1962), pp. 31-33.
  22. In small isolated human groups, the act of visiting takes on added social meaning and so satisfies needs which may be met institutionally in other ways in more cosmopolitan cultures.
  23. John J. Honigmann, “Frobisher Bay Eskimo Leadership,” North, 12, No. 3 (1965) pp. 38-47.
  24. H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, p. 191.
  25. For a related discussion of this topic see Jacob Fried, “Urbanization and Ecology in the Canadian Northwest Territories,” Arctic Anthropology, 2, No. 2 (1964), 56-60.
  26. No attempt has been made in this paper to comment on the significant changes which have taken place in local community development in the Canadian Arctic since 1967 when the seat of the Government of the Northwest Territories was moved from Ottawa to Yellowknife.




[Page 48]

Authors & Artists


JAMESON BOND holds Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in anthropology from the University of Toronto. He has served as Co-Chairman of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Alberta and is now the Executive Director of the Boreal Institute of the University of Alberta.


HOWARD GAREY holds a doctorate in linguistics from Yale University, where he is an Associate Professor of French and Romance Philology. He has published a number of articles on French linguistics in Language and is currently working on an edition of a fifteenth-century French songbook, “The Mellon Chansonnier.” Dr. Garey is an Associate Editor of World Order.


DANIEL C. JORDAN directs the Center for the Study of Human Potential in the School of Education at the University of Massachusetts and the ANISA Comprehensive Early Education Model, a major project being developed by the Center. Professor Jordan has served as consultant to the U.S. Office of Education and a variety of state agencies working on the problems of education. He holds a doctorate in human development from the University of Chicago, where he specialized in psychology and social anthropology.


HUGH MCKINLEY, poet, critic, and Literary Editor of the Athens Daily Post, lives on the island of Syros, Cyclades, where he is writing a book on Yeats.


RAYMOND P. SHEPARD holds a Master’s degree in experimental psychology from San Francisco State College and is at present completing his doctoral dissertation at the University of Massachusetts. He has worked in satellite tracking and in educational research, at the Stanford Research Institute, helping to develop a training program for use of a new reading device for the blind. Mr. Shepard will soon assume a position at the Institute of Space Research near São Paulo, Brazil.


ART CREDITS: P. 7, photograph of the title page of Joachim’s Expositio in Apocalypsim; pp. 21 and 22, pen and ink drawings by Mark T. Fennessy; p. 32, photograph of Canadian Eskimo hunters by United Press International (Compix); p. 47, photograph of Eskimo boots, mukluks, made from caribou hide, by United Press (Compix); back cover, photograph by David L. Trautmann.

MARK T. FENNESSY, a former Yale University Scholar of the House in sculpture and drawing, is well known for his regular contributions to World Order.

DAVID L. TRAUTMANN, a professional photographer residing in Prairie du Sac, Wisconsin, is making his second contribution to World Order in this issue.