Anime Philosophy: "Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood" and Christianity

So this will be a bit of a different type of work. Instead of going into Conspiracies and Cover-Ups, this time we go into Philosophy, Theology and Anime.
Specifically I want to go into the Philosophy of Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood and its Christian relations.
Obviously this requires spoilers, and I wont hold back. If you didn't watch it I recommend you do that as its one of the best Anime there are and will make it easier to go into the subject as I wont reexplain the very basics.

The story starts with Edward and Alphonse. Their Father left them and their Mother died, but due to both the children being talented in Alchemy, the art of realigning/shaping matter they gather the plan to transmutate/create their dead mother to be reunited again. However the transmutation of Humans is strictly forbidden and they instantly find out why. Both are sucked separately into a different realm where they meet a being that introduces itself as

 This is the first link we get to Christianity. On one side God doesn seem to have a proper name himself, merely designations people gave to him

13Then Moses asked God, “Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is His name?’ What should I tell them?” 14God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I AM has sent me to you.’” 15God also told Moses, “Say to the Israelites, ‘The LORD, the God of your fathers—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob—has sent me to you.’ This is My name forever, and this is how I am to be remembered in every generation

and as Christ proclaims

⁶ Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

 Other parts relate as well

4There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; 5one Lord, one faith, one baptism; 6one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.

So the notion of God being all and being the truth fits right into the Christian view.
The Truth then opens a gate (with a version of the Tree of Life being on it) that sucks Edward and Alphonse in (you see this happening to Ed while Als experience is not shown) and shows both the truth. Ed wakes up missing his leg, which is the price Ed paid for the amount of "truth" he saw while Al disappeared completely.

With his last strength Ed then can bind Als soul into a suit of armour which costs him his arm. This is our introduction to the principle of equivalent exchange, the governing rule in the world of Alchemy, you cant create stuff out of thin air, for everything you take you must give something of equal value. Ed saw the truth and gave his leg, Al saw even more and paid with his whole body.

This kicks off our heroes journey in an effort to get their old bodies back. They start off as the typical Atheist, thinking all they need is science/alchemy and themselves. Their view gets reaffirmed when they come across a town where a priest is tricking people into believing he can do miracles when he uses a philosophers stone, one that apparently avoids the rule of equivalent exchange and enables you to create things out of nothing.

This seems to be a clear case of being anti religion so far, God crippling 2 kids for trying to get their mother back and a fake prophet performing false miracles, but the very next Episode is about an alchemist, about which we found out he got his license by creating a talking Chimera, a hybrid creature. The way he accomplished this it is later revealed was by fusing his own wife with an animal 2 years earlier, and then doing the same with his daughter in an effort to not lose his license. And as if that wasn't bad enough the Chimera his wife got turned into only ever said one thing: "Kill me", and stopped eating until it starved to death. So obviously FMA doesn't want to paint religion as bad and science as good, but embraces the corruption in either dogma.

The two then figure their best bet is to gather a Philosophers Stone to get their bodies back, still trying to solve their problems with alchemy/science, but they quickly find out the way to create such a stone requires an entire country to be sacrificed and all the souls to be bound into the stone which grands its power.

Having this option now scratched from their possibilities they are basically too busy fighting off a vast conspiracy that plans to sacrifice the world in order for the bad guy to overthrow God.

This bad guy is a Homunculus, a Human created in a bottle, or in this case more like a soul, artificially created/dragged from the realm beyond.

This is the closest we get to Satan in FMA. He taught the humans alchemy and was respected in return, much like the fallen angels, who also came from the realm beyond, taught humans all kinds of things to corrupt us, and most notably Satan, the serpent in Eden with the fruit of knowledge. He tricks the country into performing a ritual that kills the country but in return gives the Homunculus's a body, and out of something like gratitude Hohenheim, who becomes the father of Ed and Al several centuries later, is given a philosophers stone too.

The Homunculus strips his different desires from him, the 7 deadly sins which become Homunculus on their own and from then on is called "Father".
So here our equivalent of Satan already tries to imitate God by calling himself father, just like Satan wants to be God all the time, and is the origin of the 7 deadly sins like the serpent created all sin.

In the end Father is dragged in front of truth, proclaiming that he did nothing wrong and just wanted to learn the truth and become perfect, and asks how anything about that would be wrong, still blind to his own failures. The answer Truth gives on what he did wrong is "You did not believe in yourself"

Al sacrifices then his body to give Ed his arm back which he lost so he can transmute and defeat Father. Then  Ed goes back to gate himself a last time bargaining to get the body of his brother back. When asked what he wants to sacrifice this time he points at the gate of truth and saying he wouldn't need it anymore as he has inside himself all he needs. To which Truth smiles and states its the correct answer.

So what is the message behind this? The entire problem Ed and Al had started when they tried to play God by creating a human, and the whole time they are stuck while still trying to solve the problems with knowledge and science/alchemy, basically gnosticism in an effort to overcome God by overcoming fate (bringing back the dead) much like Father tried to do (literally take over Gods place). Scar even proclaims that alchemist are blasphemers as they unrightfully try to do Gods job with their alchemy by giving things new shapes that God didn't intent.

 How did the serpent tempt Eve again?

5“For God knows that in the day you eat of it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

"You will be like God". The promise of becoming/overcoming God through acquiring knowledge, like Father, like Ed and Al.  This is a sign of Pride, thinking you can just take Gods place, and God doesn't like that.

5Everyone who is proud in heart is detestable to the LORD; be assured that he will not go unpunished.

And humbles those that are full of pride

12For whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.

And what does Truth do? As Father put it

“The truth can be such a cruel thing. The two brothers who wanted to feel their mother warmth once more. Their attempt to bring the dead back to life cost one of them the leg on which he stood as well as the only family he had left. The other lost his entire body to have it replaced by a suit of armour that could feel nothing.
The woman who sought  to bring back her only baby was given the body that never again will bare children
The man who looked to change his nation had his eyesight taken from him and now he can no longer see his future.
Humans who would dare to play God must pay a steep price for their arrogance. That is the way of the universe, the natural order imposed by the very thing you claim to worship. That is truth"

 In other words, Truth humbles the prideful and arrogant. 


So why was it important to believe in yourself? To explain this we first need to look into an earlier part of the story, when Ed and Al were left on that island for their training, trying to figure out what does "all is one, one is all" means. They find out that it refers to the circle of life. The principle of Alchemy is that you turn something into its base elements to then rearrange it to give it a new shape. Destruction and then creation (Shivas dance of creation). And our heroes find out that the entire world runs on that principle, the Rabbit gets eaten by the fox, the fox eventually dies and he or its excrements become the grass and plants and those get eaten by the rabbit becoming it again. By these means all is one, and one is all.
Previously it was stated that the circles in Alchemy are needed as that is what gives energy to transmutationcircles, but as our heroes found out they incorporate that energy giving circle through their own existence in the circle of life. That is probably the reason how Ed and his Sensei could trans mutate without drawing circles, as they realised they are the circles themselves that give the energy.

Not only that, but the Philosophers Stone meant to make one all powerful is powered by souls, the very same ones everyone has inside them.

Also take a look at this part

Ling states the pose Ed takes when transmuting is almost as if he is praying, and i do believe this this is another hint.
This brings me to some Occultism
Supposedly (I was told a couple of times) all occult schools lead to the conclusion that all these symbols and rituals are useless and merely your own mindset is what is important, your believe that it will happen.

22“Have faith in God,” Jesus said to them. 23“Truly I tell you that if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Be lifted up and thrown into the sea,’ and has no doubt in his heart but believes that it will happen, it will be done for him. 24Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.

So what matters is the faith, that it will happen and the lack of doubt. Thus the rituals are meant to insert a sense of rationality, "I do x which causes y" instead of "I hope for x and God will provide" and as such they are merely a tool to lead people away from God, exclude God from the equation and ultimately separating him from yourself.




God gave us everything we need, we already are the most precious to him. And its when Ed realises this, and forsakes his gate (with the tree of life on it, which itself is a symbol/path for ascension, mainly through gnosis/knowledge) that we got our happy end.

Another theme with truth is that he is displayed as a white silhouette, a blank slate basically, appearing with those things that were taken from you, in case of Ed his leg and arm.

What does this mean? I would say that it means that truth is just there, and its up to us what to make out of this truth. The truth we find reflects our own nature as it opens up to different truths than others may find.
People get a glimpse of truth and it can make them go crazy, desperate or make them gain hope again depending on what the person does with the truth.
Also remember back at how Truth introduced himself. Different bits of truth lead to different conclusions. For some the bit of truth leads them to the conclusion that the world is all there is, making him the Universe or the World, others see a different bit of the truth and realise there is a sentient God, and he is You. The truth thus is inside all of us (ever wondered why meditation is meant to bring knowledge? because it was inside us all along), and as such the truth is us, and as such is displayed as a reflection of our self.



So as a summary, Ed and Al start off as the typical know it all atheist thinking that science and knowledge can solve all their problem, until they are shown step by step that the science they worship is just as corrupted as the religion they mock and things become resolved when they stop relying on knowledge, alchemy, gnosis or anything like that, and start to embrace and rely on the things God gave them.







Some bit of symbolism I picked up:
The transmutation circles always require 5 points to make the circle work, the number 5 is generally associated, so I believe, with the spirit. In example in Alchemy the classical elements were Fire, Earth, Water and Air for the material world with the 5th being the spirit. In the bible its the 5th day on which the first animals are created, where something with spirit inhabits the earth.

So the way things are transmuted are through the spirit. And I believe this fits the bible as well:

>1In the beginning was the Word (Logos), and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

Now imagining that "in the beginning was the word" actually meant "thought" or "concepts"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logos
than it pretty much fits i believe. Whatever we do, there is first the thought in our mind to do so. You are thirsty so you first think about getting water, your spirit initiates the first step and makes your body than "change" the reality to the desired outcome. Much like in the beginning God thought about something to be created which then was created. We do transmutate things through our spirit all the time, just usually we let our body do the work.

Also the back of Edwards Coat

A serpent on a cross.

 13No one has ascended into heaven except the One who descended from heaven—the Son of Man. 14Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, 15that everyone who believes in Him may have eternal life.

 In the story Moses has a staff that transformed into a serpent and back into the staff. What this bit does mean? No idea, but The son of Man was put on a cross and here we see the serpent crucified instead. The serpent in general is a symbol of knowledge (the serpent in Eden giving knowledge, or Quetzacoatl, the feathered serpent of knowledge) that gets killed here, displayed together with wings (ascension?) and a crown (God being King of Kings). The sacrifice of the gnosis, and probably the faith in its stead leading us to rise up to God.

Another small additional notes to the Anime:



The principles of Equivalent Exchange is essentially Karma. In FMA this leads to a whole lot of misery, just like it would in this world since we all sin and are imperfect, but Christ came to free us of this Karma, of these sins.
Also Equivalent Exchange is basically "For each action there is an equal but opposite reaction", Newtons 3rd law of motion. Newtons 2nd law can be expressed through f=ma, FMA, Fullmetal Alchemist.

The research on Chimera is already done
https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/01/human-pig-hybrid-embryo-chimera-organs-health-science/
https://www.sciencealert.com/scientist-claims-us-lab-engineered-humanzee-human-chimp-hybrid-100-years-ago-gallup-yerkes-oliver

The talk about artificial wombs currently in the talks is basically Homunculus, a man created in a "flask"