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JEAN
DANIÉLOU, S.J.
THE LORD OF HISTORY
Reflections on the Inner Meaning of History
Translated by Nigel
Abercrombie
LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO LTD 6 & 7
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© Longmans, Green and Co Ltd, 1958
First published in
France by Editions du Seuil, Paris under the title "Essai sur le Mystère de l'Histoire"
This edition first published 1958
PRINTED IN
CONTENTS
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We are indebted to his Grace the Archbishop of Westminster, and Messrs. Burns Oates & Washbourne Ltd. for extracts from Mgr. Ronald Knox's version of the Bible.
PREFACE
TO THE ENGLISH EDITION
HISTORY, like
morals, may be considered on either of two distinct levels of intelligibility.
The chronicle of past events may be more or less comprehensive and accurate,
more or less penetrating and persuasive; at thi
It is with history
in this latter sense, alone, that Father Daniélou has concerned himself in this
book.
In the
Introduction, he shows how the bare possibility of history (as distinct from
chronicle) arises from the revealed knowledge of God's creative work, and why
this particular dimension of thought was discovered late in time.
The next ten
chapters investigate a variety of contemporary topics from the point of view of
history as a succedaneum of the Christian revelation.
Part II of the book
elucidate
In the last six chapters, the author looks at the present and future course of history, to see in what sense the Christian 'makes' history.
In the preface to the original French edition, Father Daniélou explained that parts of the work had been composed in lecture form: the present translation follows the printed French text closely enough for this remark to have some application still -- it seemed that more would have been lost than gained by any attempt to disguise the book as a treatise.
Quotations of Scripture are taken from the Knox version (or, occasionally, from its footnotes), with two exceptions: biblical material in patristic passages, which is commonly not in verbal agreement with the Vulgate, is given in the form which the context seems to require; and Father Mackey's version of St François de Sales (p. 296 ), including a quotation from St Paul, stands unaltered.
NIGEL ABERCROMBIE
Lewes. Easter 1958.
INTRODUCTION
I
THE Bible is
a record of the evidence for certain events, certain historical works of God:
as, the covenant with Abraham, the birth and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and
Pentecost. Consequently the Christian outlook is primarily determined by a
series of divine operations, tracing a distinct line of development: each of
these events marks a new stage in the actualization of God's design, and a
mutation of human life. Two aspects of the whole process are of especial
importance: first the nature of the event itself, and of the divine decision
transforming reality; and secondly the succession of events, exhibiting at once
a certain continuity and a certain discontinuity, i.e. by definition, progress.
If we now examine
the forms of thought and philosophical systems current at the time when
Christianity first made its appearance in the world, it is clear that they were
by no means ready to assimilate this Christian conception: on the contrary,
they were wholly antagonistic thereto.
In the first place,
there was the influence of Greek thought: here, that which is divine consists
in the unmoved eternal order of Ideas. Immutable law, whether of nature or of
society, represents to the senses the changeless eternity of the intelligible
world. The phenomenon of movement itself is an imitation of immobility, being
conceived as cyclical, both in the regular motions of the heavenly bodies and
in the eternal recurrence which governs the course of history, so that the same
events will be everlastingly repeated. By going round in a circle, even change
thus conforms to the stable eternity of the ideal world, and no longer implies
innovation. No such thing as an event can ever infringe the eternal order.
The opposition is
fundamental between this conception and the Christian belief in a unique,
irrevocable value belonging to the historical Incarnation. In the Epistle to
the Hebrews, Christ i
Curiously enough,
the earliest Christian theologians were slow to realize the originality of
their own position, and in fact began by trying to eliminate it. Thus Origen
held that the spiritual creation existed in a state of perfection from the first,
and is presumably co-eternal with the Word: [1]
but it fell: consequently the purpose of the Incarnation was to restore a
pre-existing condition of affairs. There is nothing new in history. It would
have been better if nothing happened at all, and everything had remained in its
primordial stability. Similarly Eusebius [2]
teaches that Christ brought about no innovation of truth, but came simply to
re-establish the pure religion of primitive man, for which Judaism had been a
temporary substitute. In both these instances, we find the same Greek idea of
perfection a
In St Augustine City
of God, there is a vivid awareness of the Christian conception of history,
in all its paradoxical originality. Sacred history is here seen to consist of
positive beginnings which subsequently last for ever. The notion is refractory
to the normal processes of human understanding, which is accustomed to conceive
reality under a two-fold classification: there are things that have neither
beginning nor end, which Philo called Θεîα, the things of God,
and there are things that have a beginning and an end, namely corruptible
material things. The possibility of things that have a beginning but no end is
offensive to reason: it seems to derive directly from Christian thought. In the
City of God, all the great creative decisions of God which have
determined the course of history are seen to be of this kind: the creation of
the world (XI: 4), and of mankind (XII: 13), the Covenant with Abraham, which
St Augustine called articulus temporis (XVI: 12), and the resurrection of
Christ and life eternal, determining the everlasting destiny of man (XII: 21).
St Gregory of Nyssa gave expression to the same conception of history when he
wrote that 'it proceeds from beginnings to beginnings, by successive beginnings
that have no end'.[3]
This example is
enough to indicate the method which characterizes the theology of history: it
consists precisely in the use of scriptural principles for the resolution of
questions to which these principles were not, in scripture, explicitly applied.
In the case mentioned in the foregoing paragraph, the particular principle to
be applied belongs properly to the Covenant: it is this, that God's promises
are irrevocable because of his faithfulness; men may be unfaithful, and thus
withdraw themselves from the beneficial enjoyment of the promises, but they
cannot have the promises withdrawn. So the union of the divine and human
natures in Christ, which took place at a given moment in time, is thenceforward
permanent, irrespective of all the possible sinfulness of mankind. St Augustine
takes over this principle as applicable also to such matters as the creation,
or the eternal destiny of man, for these have the same quality of occurring in
time (or with time, in the case of the creation of the world), but once for all
thereafter.
* * *
II
In conflict with
the trend of Greek thought, which may fairly be taken as representative of pure
reason, the aspect of the Christian outlook on history that came into
prominence was the absolute significance of individual events. In controversy
with the representatives of Judaism, a second aspect of the same outlook had to
be more precisely formulated: this was the interrelation between those events.
There is no such thing as history unless events, besides having some
importance, can be shown to be in some way continuous. It is just this latter
point which distinguishes the idea of 'historicity', as understood by
existentialists, meaning no more than the present decision of an individual
free will, from the idea of sacred history, wherein the individual fits into
the pattern of a larger and objectively planned arrangement of reality.
Jews and Christians
agree in believing that the religious institutions of Jewry, such as the
circumcision, the sabbath, and the temple, are of divine origin; but Christian
St Irenaeus was the
first to discover and propound without ambiguity the basis of a definitive
solution. Here again it was highly offensive to pure reason, for it introduced
the notion of time, καíρος, as a necessary
element in the formation of value-judgements concerning reality. Thus it must
be confessed, on the one hand, that the Old Testament is good, and that it is
the work of the same God who made the New Testament. On the other hand the
values of the Old Testament were provisional; they are no longer to be prized
when once their due season, their καíρος, has
elapsed. The error of the Jews i
This, then, is the
second distinctive feature of the Christian view of history; the historical
process i
The mention of
'types', or 'figures', here is of cardinal importance, for the typological
method of exegesis defines the relationship of the Old Testament to the New,
explaining both the similarities and the differences between them. So the
Flood, the resurrection of Christ, and holy baptism all conform to one basic
structural type: in all three, there is a judgement of God, importing the
destruction of the sinful world, the old man; in each case, the righteous i
* * *
III
Enough has been said to illustrate the essentially historical character of the Christian notion of reality; but there remains a further point: the two categories of event, and progress, do not exhaust the topic. If they did, we should be faced with a theory of indefinite progress, on the model of contemporary theories of evolution. Any such view would leave out of account the further, essential truth, that Christianity is not only progress, but itself the goal of progress. This third and final characteristic of the Christian outlook on history is its eschatological quality; the idea of an end, ἒσχατον, is of capital importance in the system, from three distinct points of view. First, history is not conceived as an indefinite progress, but as finite in scope; it is a determinate, circumscribed design, called by the Fathers of the Church the cosmic week, which is to be followed by the eighth day, representing the life of the world to come. Secondly, Christianity is itself the term of development: Christ professedly comes 'late in time', and inaugurates the stage that will not pass away. So there is nothing beyond Christianity. It is indeed ἒσχατος, novissimus, the last thing. And it is the everlasting juvenescence of the world, which makes everything else obsolete. Thirdly, the end of history has already taken place, because the incarnation and the ascension of Christ fulfil its purpose.
It is the great merit of O. Cullmann's book, Christ and Time, that it gives powerful emphasis to this truth: Christ's resurrection being the decisive event in all history, nothing that can ever happen will equal it in importance. This disposes at once of all the errors of evolutionism. No progress now can ever bring about for us what we have already got in Christ; that which is beyond all progress is here and now in him; the last state exists already in the Christian mysteries. Consequently no identification is permissible between the Christian hope and a belief in progress: they are radically different things. We have said that Christianity gives a metaphysical value to the idea of innovation: but as it now appears that Christ is the ultimate event, he is, in a sense, the culminating and final innovation. It is a further peculiarity of the Christian outlook on history that the centre of interest is neither at the beginning, as it was for the Greeks, nor at the end, as it is in evolutionary theories, but in the middle. It follows that history differs in kind between B.C. and A.D. History before Christ was a preparation and an awaiting. Once he is come, the essential business is to hand on (παρἀδοσἱς) the sacred and now immutable trust delivered once and for all. The idea of tradition thus acquires a real meaning, because the world to come is there already.
Granted that the
last days have come with Christ's gift of eternal life, a new problem of
another sort arises, not now from the impact of Christianity upon other systems
of thought, but from the actual historical situation of Christianity itself. If
it be said that the coming of Christ has altered the state of mankind, the
objection has to be met that, in the world about us, no change is in fact
apparent. It is as old as Origen: 'It is obvious in the fall of
The whole life of
the Church is characterized by this constant eschatological reference. Present
knowledge 'through a glass, in a dark manner' points towards vision 'face to
face'. The visible organization of the Church prefigures the heavenly
hierarchy. The sacraments are types and pledges of eternal rewards. Origen says
of Baptism that 'in the regeneration through fire and the spirit, we shall be
conformed to the body of Christ's glory as he sits on the throne of his
majesty'. [13] The
holy Eucharist i
This last question
notoriously exercised men's minds a great deal in the earliest Christian times.
Their preoccupation with Christ's coming again provoked a variety of speculative
suggestions, some based on the 'weeks of years' in Daniel, others on the idea
of seven millennia. Hippolytu
* * *
IV
Consideration of
the lapse of time before the Second Coming leads us to examine the current
history of the Christian Church.
Cullmann does
indeed repudiate this extreme position, and the fact is worth noting. He
acknowledges 'an existing
What has been
already accomplished once for all time is the union of manhood and godhead in
Jesus Christ. What is awaited at the end of all time is the manifestation of
Christ's victory, in the transfiguration of the universe and the general
resurrection of bodies. But what is now in progress i
This, then, is the
purport and import of current history: the Christian mission. Christ delays hi
The need to wait until the rest of the world has been evangelized is the explanation and justification, for those who belong to the earliest group of Christian peoples, of the delay of the Second Coming. It is thus really their missionary charity that alone can help them to put up with it. Their distinct vocation is to further the spread of Christianity, whereby they actually hasten the coming of the Lord. But in the meanwhile they have their distinct temptation and risk, like other ripe fruit, which is to fall into decay. The threat of interior decay is the characteristic problem of Christendom: there was a crisis in the sixteenth century, when the Churches were divided; there is another in the twentieth, with the growth of communism. Thus the question of Christian unity has to be seen in historical perspective, just as much as the conversion of the heathen, or of the Jews.
The Christian mission is what give
The mere geographical extension of the mission is not, however, the whole meaning of current history. As we have already seen, the Christian outlook implies a notion of progress; there is an element of progress in Church history, and notably in the history of dogma. Of course the object and content of revelation is unchanging; there can be no question here of what is called evolution in the modernist sense: but there is a development of dogma, because the Holy Ghost enables the living Church in its teaching office to define certain aspects of revealed truth which are not explicitly spelt out in the Scriptures. Karl Thieme has clearly brought out the strictly historical quality of these definitions: they are not just the result of theological analysis, nor even of the inner mind of the Church; they correspond to particular historical situations, indicating the main turningpoints in the Church's life. Mohler and Newman recognized in this development one of the distinguishing characteristics of current sacred history.
Continuing thus the
series of the wonderful works of God in the world, the life of the Church is
traversed by the fact of sin. The powers of evil which were destroyed by the
cross of Christ retain the appearance of effective hostility until the Second
Coming. Christ's Church is thus at odds with sin as the people of
Secondly, however,
the enmity of the devil is evinced by divisions within the Church, as well as
by persecutions from without: as St Augustine said, 'this vine, as the Lord had
foretold, had to be purged, and the unfruitful branches taken away, whence came
schisms and heresies, the work of men who sought not the Lord's glory, but
their own'. [19] And
here should follow the theology of the separation of the Churches and of the
return to unity, as Fr Congar has written it: the history of heresy thus
acquires a valid theological significance.
* * *
V
So far we have been
concerned with the nucleus of sacred history, which is coterminous with the
history of the
Church; but this is
not the whole of history. We have to consider the relationship of history
commonly so-called, the history of civilizations and empires, with the history
of salvation: as to which, opinions vary widely. In
On thi
First, the interaction of sacred and secular history is an
established fact. The Christian outlook embraces the whole field of historical
reality. St Irenaeus, in primitive times, saw that universal history was all
part of the Divine dispensation; and in this respect he was only expounding the
doctrine of Genesis. The Creator and the Redeemer are one and the same God.
Civilization is not devils' work: society and culture belong to creation, they
are part of the work of God's hands. They represent the organization of a world
that has fallen from grace, but is not essentially evil. E. C. Rust rendered
valuable service by his clear demonstration of the way in which the totality of
world history fits into the pattern of the Christian synthesis. [20]
It is a two-way relationship. On one hand, extrinsically, the history of the
Church is affected on the surface by the fate of cultures. The Church may be
regarded not only as transcendent, but also as incarnate; and from the latter
point of view, the history of the Church is a record of the various and
successive Christian civilizations -- Palestinian, Byzantine, Medieval,
Baroque, Romantic and modern. (For there is nothing wrong, despite certain
suggestions to the contrary, in such multiple incarnations of the Church in the
different forms of social order: the harm lies in attempts to identify the
Church exclusively with any one of these forms.) It is also true that the
Church exercises a reciprocal influence on the cultures into which it is
adopted. Thus on these extrinsic considerations, the history of Christianity
falls within general history, being one of its most important constituents. But
from another point of view the history of civilizations falls within the
history of salvation. This is not because of any strictly religious value to be
attributed to human progress, whether technical or social: by Christian
standards this i
Nevertheless, this interaction of
sacred and secular history, which constitutes an integral part of the history
of salvation, is not the whole of it, or even its most important aspect; the
second of our observations at thi
The fact of the matter is that the
world of human social organization is already obsolete. In this third
observation we find another application of strictly historical criteria. The
coming of Christ has brought the
* * *
VI
Seeing Christianity
and culture face to face, we have been led to consider how they stand in
relation to each other in regard to the whole history of salvation. There is
another species of confrontation which is of capital importance for the Church
today, though it was already one of the preoccupations of such an early writer
as Clement of Alexandria: namely, the position of Christianity in relation to
the heathen religions.[21]
Once again, there are variou
As before, it is
possible to find in the theology of history a resolution of these difficulties,
which preserves what is valid in both theories, and enables us to see how the
heathen religions fit into the broad picture of the history of salvation.
In the first place,
there is an element of truth in the nature-cults. They belong to the earliest
of all the covenants, that made with Noah, wherein God is revealed through the
regularity of natural processes, but not yet, as in the covenant with Abraham,
through the singularity of historical events. In the rhythms of bodily life,
and the movements of the stars, and the succession of the seasons, we can learn
something of God and his ways: they are hierophanies, affording us the
knowledge of a personal
The fact remains
that this primitive revelation is nowhere to be found free of corruption. That
is not to deny the soundness of its foundation; but things have since gone
awry. So Emil Brunner was justified in saying that 'no religion in the world is
without some elements of truth. No religion is without its profound error.'[24]
The same thought appears in the Epistle to the Romans, just after the verse
from which the previous quotation was taken: mankind 'exchanged the glory of
the imperishable God for representations of perishable man, of bird and beast
and reptile'.[25]
Idolatry consists in taking the things of nature, wherein God is revealed, as
objects of worship. Thus paganism is ambivalent, and incurs condemnation on one
hand while exciting compassion on the other. It is truly both a kind of
'toothing-work', from which the building of Christianity may be securely
developed, and also the chief obstacle to its progress.
The heathen
religions obstruct the march of Christianity because of their obsolescence as
much as by their corruption. It is once again a question of historical
development. The covenant with Noah was the true religion of mankind until the
covenant with Abraham was made; but from that moment it wa
The supersession of
the primitive revelation of nature by the historic covenant does not involve
its annihilation, but rather its fulfillment, just as the Old Testament is
fulfilled in the New. In both cases, all the real values of the former are
taken over into the latter and raised to a higher plane. So, in Genesis, the
narrative of Creation and the Fall of Man embodies mythical material, enriched
with new meaning. So, too, the Jewish Passover is a celebration of the
historical Exodus within the framework of a vegetation-ritual of spring, and
itself came afterwards to serve as the liturgical framework for the festival of
the Resurrection. Seen in the full context of the history of salvation, the
sequence of religiou
* * *
The Christian conception of history was plainly not the result of any systematic process of reasoning. As questions arose out of the circumstances of the Church's continued existence in time, so the Church was induced to work out its own idea of the history of salvation. The theology of history became possible only when Christianity had become aware of the fact of its own duration, and enucleated the inner significance of that fact.
PART I
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CHAPTER ONE
SACRED AND PROFANE HISTORY
IT was a just
observation of Father Thornton's that although Christianity is itself
independent of any particular type of culture -- and therefore independent of
modern society -- yet, as every organism must, it 'lives by virtue of its
"response" to the environment in which it has been placed by the
Creator'.
There is a real
problem, though this is not always recognized, about the situation of
Christianity in the modern, technocratic world. A worker, a scientist, an
economist of the present day may well, and in fact often does, find the outward
forms of Christian life bafflingly strange, simply because these derive, as a
matter of history, from patterns of social existence that are quite obsolete.
Thus he gains an impression that Christianity itself belongs to the past, and
corresponds to a state of affairs that no longer exists.
Such views are characteristic of a
whole field of contemporary thought. Christianity, regarded as a social
phenomenon, is felt to be essentially transient. Its intrinsic worth may not be
challenged, but its permanent relevance is denied. It represents a stage,
perhaps an essential stage, in human development; but thi
If we are to have an effective grasp of the whole problem, we must recognize a two-fold relationship between Christianity and history. On the one hand, Christianity falls within history. It emerged at a given point in the sequence of historical eventuation. It provides a constituent part of the fabric of recorded facts. To this extent, it belongs to the historian's province to describe its appearance in the chronicle of documented reality. But on the other hand, history falls within Christianity: all secular history is included in sacred history, as a part, a prolegomenon, a preparatory introduction. Profane history covers the whole period of this world's existence, but Christianity is essentially the next world itself, present here and now in a mystery. The fundamental reality of Christianity is 'to come', not just in relation to a particular moment of time, but in relation to all historical time, past, present and future. It is indeed novissimus, the last thing: with Christianity, the end is already achieved. But in the mystery of the being and working of the Christian Church, this thing which is beyond history exists now in historical fact.
Both aspects of this two-fold relationship are equally essential. Take first the inclusion of Christianity in history: this is a real incarnation. As Christ himself belonged to one nation, one culture, one period of time, so the Church is embodied in successive cultural forms -- which are themselves no less transitory than the very civilizations they represent. Karl Marx may show how the economic conditions of first-century Galilee were reflected in the primitive Christianity; or how the Byzantine orthodoxy conformed to the theocratic theory of the Eastern emperors; or how the Reformation followed the economic expansion of the Renaissance, disrupting the medieval forms of social organization: he is discussing what we may call successive Christendoms. In Marxist terminology, these unstable, more or less ephemeral phenomena belong to the superstructure, not to the unchanging, permanently valid infrastructure, which is represented by the Church itself.
The distinction is clearly applicable
to the circumstances of the present day. There has been, over the last four
centuries, a perfectly normal materialization of Christianity in terms of
western civilization. This Christianity of the bourgeois has borne fruit
in miracles of charity and holiness. But our world is now in the throes of such
a cultural crisis as previous history hardly records: the old world of the bourgeois
is in collapse, with all its categories of civilized life and behaviour. This i
This is critical for the purposes of
our analysis. Christianity ineluctably requires, always, both an incarnation
and a detachment. Incarnation, solidarity, is a matter of simple duty. Any
attempt to withdraw the Christian religion from its historical settings, into
some timeless ideality, is a plain case of mistaken identity. There are critics
of our presentday movement towards a workers' Christianity, who complain that
this movement is a dangerous error, comparable with
For detachment is just as much a
matter of duty as integration. Christianity is not finally identified with any
of the types of culture in which it i
This is the crux of the business. A
middle way must be found between two opposite and equally dangerous errors. On
one hand there is what Cardinal Suhard called intégrisme, a conservative
attachment to inadequate categories and conceptions wrongly identified with
imperishable truth. This archaizing tendency takes various forms, according to
the particular stage of history chosen to represent the ideal of Christianity
-- it may be a nostalgic hankering after the
Of course, any exaggerated concern
with the outward forms of religious activity would be symptomatic of a certain
superficiality in spiritual understanding. If we have insisted upon the
contemporary need for a renewal of these patterns, we are at least entitled to
emphasize also our conviction that this does not affect the heart of the
matter. What is required of the Church is primarily that it should bestow the
gift of Christ's life upon men: what is required of priests is primarily that
they should be holy. It is not so important that they should be up to date.
Many Christian institution
With these qualifications, then, it
is clear how and to what extent the Church is a part of history, and subject to
the laws that govern the rise and fall of civilizations. The complementary
assertion, and much the more important, is that secular history is entirely
comprised within sacred history. The latter i
In the Christian
tradition, the history of salvation begins, not with the choosing of Abraham,
but with the creation of the world.
Then, as we have
just observed, the final consummation of this history is to consist in another
cosmic event -- the resurrection of the body, or, to use what is really a more
appropriate terminology, the creation of the new cosmos, for this event,
properly understood, is not simply a physical transformation of mankind, but of
the whole creation. So the history of salvation extends from one cosmic event
to another, each involving the totality of existence.
It is not only the
beginning and the end of our history that consist in actions on a cosmic scale.
The central point is also a creative act, the resurrection of Christ, himself
the Word of God, by whom all things were made, who is to come in the fullness
of time to make all things new.
As he is the
almighty Word of God, whose invisible presence is among us and in all the
world, so the effects of his power extend throughout the world in height and
depth and length and breadth: for all things are under the rule of salvation
through the Word of God, and the Son was crucified for all things, marking
creation with the sign of his cross. For it was necessary and fitting that he
who took visible form should bring all visible things into a share of his
crucifixion: thus his personal influence i
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The point has lost
none of it
Within this frame
of reference, how shall the relationship of the Church to political and
economic society be expressed? In this question also there are two contrary
extremes. On one view, the progress of science and material civilization
appears to be directly related to the
Neither thesis is
admissible. Organized society derives from the plan of creation, and cannot be
radically evil. For this reason, when political organization is made an end in
itself, whether as nationalism, democracy, progress or what not, it represents
the city of Satan over against the city of God.
This was formerly
an essential element of Christian teaching, as may be seen in
Two cities, one of
sinners and one of saints, are to be found throughout history from the creation
of mankind until the end of the world: at the present day they are mingled
together in body, but separate and distinct in will; in the day of judgement,
they will be separated bodily. All men who take pleasure in the lust of power and
the spirit of domination, in the pomps and vanities of the world, and all
spiritual substances who approve these things and take pride in subjecting men
to themselves, all these are united in one city: even when they fight among
themselves over such advantages, they are none the less borne down together in
the same direction by one and the same burden of cupidity, and bound together
by common behaviour and deserts. On the other hand, all such as humbly seek the
glory of God . . . belong together in one city.[33]
Alternatively, the
earthly city can be assimilated and taken up into the history of salvation; the
principalities and powers of this world can become part of the city of God,
when 'earthly rulers themselves forsaking those idols in whose name they were
wont to persecute Christians, acknowledge and worship the one true God and
Christ our Lord', and when they 'afford peace to the Church -- albeit a
temporal peace -- and quiet opportunity to build up her spiritual edifice'.[34]
But there is no middle way between these alternatives of war and peace. No
autonomou
These are then the basic principles for a religious interpretation of the history of mankind in society. The history of civilization does not conform to a law of continuous evolutionary progress; nor does it consist in a Spenglerian succession of discontinuous and independent cultures; it is to be regarded as a series of καίροι, moments of decision, crises, each representing at once the break-up and the condemnation of a society that has committed the sin of ὕßριç in the pride of life -- each consisting also in a parallel renewal of the Church through purgation. These decisive moments, times and seasons, each reflect the supreme ̻Aαίροç of the passion and resurrection of Jesus, as they also anticipate the ultimate ̻Aαίροç of the Last Judgement. Bultmann's conception of the Judgement as an abiding reality is thus reconcilable with faith in the judgement to come; for each individual, judgement is always with us in a continuous present, but for the whole world of created existence there must be a confrontation of crises, a verdict of damnation and salvation. The Judgement is in truth always upon us, yet still withheld; history consists in a perpetual judgement of the world, whereof the Second Coming will be simply the final pronouncement.
CHAPTER TWO
CHRISTIANITY AND CULTURES
AMONG the most
important developments of our age is the formation of modern nation-states by
peoples hitherto subject to the Western hegemony. In the
This development brings the Church up against a serious
problem. Hitherto we have been content to think of civilization as meaning
Western civilization -- which, during the ages, we have moulded into Christian
patterns. We now have to recognize the existence and vitality of other
civilizations, which are not Christian. It is of no use in this context to
insist that Chritianity is universal; any such pretension is liable to involve
a most dangerous fallacy. As long ago as the third century Tertullian believed
that the whole world was Christian. True, there were Christians at that time in
all the known world, that is throughout the Mediterranean basin; but they were
mostly Roman settlers. Christianity had not made much impression on the native
populations. When the Roman civilization collapsed, the true state of affairs
was discovered plainly enough: the Romans retreated from
In these circumstances there is a
plain and pressing requirement for a re-incarnation of Christianity in the form
of these resurgent civilizations, the Oriental, the NearEastern, the African. .
. . In this way alone can the Christian religion take root among the
populations. It has become part of our Western heritage only because it has
been incorporated into our cultural traditions; the concrete thing called
Western Christianity exists because there have been such men as
There is nothing extravagant about this vitally important process of evangelizing exotic cultures. Christianity is not essentially linked to any one form of cultural tradition; it is not even a product of civilization, but an historic act of God. The fact that its development has chiefly taken place in the Western world does not mean that it is a Western phenomenon. The revelation was in any case first bestowed upon a people of semitic origin and language. Christ was an Aramaic-speaking Jew. The preaching of the Gospel to the Greco-Roman world represented a first translation of the Word of God into terms of another civilization. Today we need another translation. There is nothing extraordinary about this, as the Popes have recognized in their insistence upon the need for native clergy.
But although the process is perfectly
normal, it is none the less enormously difficult, as will appear when the
formidable problems involved are fairly examined. In the first place, the
cultures in question are never found in the pure state, a
A second problem arises from the
difficulty of idioms, and the question how to transpose the data of revelation
from one cultural and linguistic medium into another. Christianity is by now so
deeply rooted in the Western way of life, borrowing from Western source
Finally there is the third question:
is this very difficult enterprise worth while? Granted that one of the
characteristic developments of our time is the growing-up into adult nationhood
of 'native' societies -- is it possible to feel sure that the new nations will
be able to withstand the pressure of an expanding Western civilization? Toynbee
has enumerated twenty-two civilizations in the course of human history, many of
which have disappeared altogether -- as, for instance, in
Such views have been vigorously
enunciated by Karl Thieme. He links the Church closely with Western
civilization, which he regards as, simply, civilization itself. His method is
as follows. He lays it down that there are two essential, constitutive
pre-requisites for the existence of 'history': first, the continuity of one and
the same 'bearer' (Träger) of successive events. For this
continuity, geography is not enough: the
In Thieme's view, the necessary
conditions have only once been fulfilled, namely, in the case of Western
civilization. In thi
There could be no stronger
affirmation of the identity of history itself with the development of our own
civilization: nor is the argument devoid of solidity. It is undeniable that
Western civilization has, as a matter of fact, obtained a position of unique
ascendancy in the world, and that, on its merits, it has rendered unique
service to those ideals of justice and freedom that are of the essence of all
truly humane society. But for our own part, we would be chary of linking
together too intimately the Church and the Imperium, the Roman theme and
the Latin theme. In this part of his work, Thieme does less than justice to the
Eastern world -- whether of
We can now formulate certain conclusions. We start from the belief in a fundamental unity in the spirit of man, which underwrites the truth of scientific and metaphysical judgements. Western achievements in this way belong to the common inheritance of mankind. The differences of idiom between one people and another can only affect methods of enunciation, which derive from special patterns of mental habit -- they cannot affect the truth of statements, which is universally valid. In the particular case of Christianity, it is of course obvious that, after two millennia of Western history, this religion, as it exists today, cannot be properly understood without some prior understanding of the Western way of life; but this does not by any means imply that Christianity may not in future materialize in altogether different shapes. The great Chinese Benedictine, Dom Lou, shows a fine understanding of this point, in a book whose title epitomizes a whole programme of education: La rencontre des humanités -- Humanities in contact'. Granted that a Chinese will have to learn Latin in order to gain a real knowledge of Christianity, he argues that in future this ought not to be a one-way traffic; more Western Christians must learn to appreciate the worth of Oriental culture. For in time to come, the Latins in their turn will find in a Far Eastern Christendom sources of unsuspected wealth. For this reason (if for no other), one of the best ways in which intellectuals can serve the interests of religion is to specialize in Oriental or African studies: in such directions their work can effectively help to catholicize the Church.
Here, then, are two distinct points of view, in the convergence of which it becomes possible to find the objective solution of a very difficult problem. First, as we have seen, the Church is not to be identified with any single race, culture or society; just as Christianity, whose original idiom was Aramaic, absorbed in time the culture of the Hellenes and finally the social structure of Rome, so now the Church must grow to be Chinese in China and Indian in India -all things to all men. . . .
But secondly, the
Church, in its freedom from any permanent attachment to a particular
civilization, derives an imperishable enrichment from each of the cultures with
which it is united: and equally -- to take a particular example -- China can
welcome Catholicism, and allow it to take root in Chinese culture, without
repudiating the capital value of its existing investment in Latin forms, which
would indeed be a ridiculous act of xenophobic self-impoverishment; the new
accretion represents for the recipient a gain beyond all human expectation. The
true Church is no more Greek or Latin than Chinese or Indian. The Church of the
future will have passed through all history and incorporated every variety of
human civilization, in order to wear that wedding dress, 'a robe of rich
embroidery',[35] for the
eternal union with the Bridegroom.
In the second of
these two complementary points of view, it is clear that the Church is
characterized for ever by its Semitic origins -- the word of God is always the
message that was originally given in Hebrew. It is equally clear that the
Church has ineradicable connexions with the Latin culture, and with the
historical circumstances of Petrine Rome; but it is also true that the Church
can never lose its tincture of Hellenism. This last point deserves to be
emphasized. The Church was born in
Hellenism has come to stay in the Church, as an integral
component, being in fact a permanent category of Christianity. This has of
course nothing to do with racial types, or with any particular geographical
delimitation of
The persistent Hellenism of the Church is evident in the form of the liturgy: 'baptism' and 'eucharist' are Greek words, and in the Kyrie Eleison of every Mass we repeat one of the most primitive prayers of Greek Christendom. The permanent structure of Christian theology is even more profoundly Hellenized, for it was born in the Greek-speaking world. The very word 'theology' symbolizes the blessed union of Christian thought with the language in which it came to maturity. Its earliest formulation was in the expressions and categories of Plato and Aristotle, giving it a character it can never lose. The same is true of spirituality, where 'ascesis' and 'mysticism' are Greek words again: and despite Nygren and others who regard it as a mistake, there is nothing more wonderful than the definitive linking of the Greek 'eros' -- the Platonic nostalgia for the world of ideas -- with the Christian 'agape', the wholly free gift of the love of the Blessed Trinity which over-abundantly fulfils the deepest longings of mankind.
It may be said that this Hellenism
belongs to the Eastern Churches, that it is no concern of ours: but that is
what I strongly dispute. It is our Hellenism. It belongs to the whole catholica.
The cultural divergence between the Eastern and
The fact that Christianity has been embodied in Western civilization is a great and lasting achievement, part of the Divine scheme of redemption, a splendid tradition commanding our undivided loyalty. For all that, we must never forget that this is only one incarnation of Christianity: the Christian message transcends all cultures and all forms of society; the Gospel must be received by all the peoples of the earth; and so long as the Christian religion has not been deeply rooted in every civilization, so as to find expression in its native language, its dialectic, its philosophy, its art -so long as Christianity has not exploited and hallowed the hidden cultural treasures of every people, we must recognize that something is wanting yet.
These are the principles at stake in
the grave problems of unity and catholicity. The Church cannot but be ecclesia
una, one true Church because there is one God, one baptism, one Christ: but
this unity cannot but be a catholic unity, the divers peoples and cultures
being one in the Church without prejudice to their distinctive properties.
There is always a temptation to turn the idea of unity into that of uniformity;
in matters of organization, to think of unity as meaning centralization, and in
matters of doctrinal expression to think in terms of terminological identity.
On the contrary, there is no real unity without catholicity, which implies a
continuing diversity of mentality, culture and civilization, within the single
round of one faith, one Church, one dogma, one Eucharist. That is how the
Church takes possession of the world to hallow it for God's acceptance. Just as
Christ was incarnate in the Jewish race, so the Church must become incarnate in
every nation in order to redeem it. The problems of unity and catholicity
impinge at this point and in this manner upon the task of the
From this point of view, too, the present time is thus an exceptional period in church history: for it is in our own day that the essential requirements we have described have come to be most clearly recognized, now that the great non Western civilizations are growing up, and properly insist upon being treated no longer as children but as equal kinsmen with a right to live their own lives. The consequences of this development are far-reaching. Pius XII showed his awareness of this more than ten years ago, when he declared that we must no longer think only of the contribution the West could make for the benefit of the coloured races: that we have now to live in a world where the relationship of various Churches is mutual; that the West will expect to learn from the Christendom of China, or of Viet-Nam, or of Africa, no less than these Churches may learn from the West. This ideal of equal fellowship in the enjoyment of a commonwealth is at once essentially catholic and essentially missionary.
We cannot all be said to have really grasped it yet. Indeed, we may be approaching the matter from the opposite angle, feeling a scandalized astonishment at the variations of Catholicism, instead of admiring its inexhaustible wealth. The missionary approach, which we have to cultivate, is not just a tolerant acceptance of the distressing aberrations we have to put up with; it recognizes and welcomes a state of affairs which in the wonderful providence of God helps towards the enlargement of the frontiers of his kingdom, embracing diversity in unity. We must put away all narrow insularity of views, as well as every trace of xenophobia; we must recognize in the infinite variety of the Church one of her best titles to our affection.
CHAPTER THREE
CONFUSION OF TONGUES
IT is clear from
the opening pages of the Bible that the speech-barriers between peoples are a
factor of some significance in the religious history of mankind, for they are
there represented as a consequence of sin. The eleventh chapter of Genesis
tells us that the Lord 'said, Here is a people all one, with a tongue common to
all'.[36]
But when they decided in the pride of their hearts to build a tower at
Let us examine
first a passage in Origen Contra Celsum. On both sides in the
controversy it was agreed that God had divided out the earth among angelic
powers, each of whom had received for hi
Hi
The argument
presupposes an established body of doctrine on the subject of national angels,
considered as acting in obedience to the will of God, faithful to the role with
which he has entrusted them in guiding the destinies of men: it is not to be
confused with the doctrine of the fallen angels, who also play a part in
national history. Its analogies are rather with the accounts given of angelic
influences in nature, upon the cosmic scale. Thus in both cases the angels
themselves, whether of the nations or of the heavenly bodies, are not to blame
for any idolatrous worship they receive -- this is all the fault of men.
Seen in this light, these speculations prove to be of
universal application, as part of the general Christian theology of history:
for they furnish an interpretation of one of the paradoxes of the current
epoch, namely, the co-existence in one world of the pre-Christian system of nationalitie
Here, Origen echoes a Jewish theological tradition, which is exemplified in the following passage:
And do not forget
the Lord your God . . . who was chosen by our father Abraham when the nations
were divided in the time of Phaleg. For at that time the Lord . . . came down
from his highest heavens, and brought down with him seventy ministering angels,
Michael at their head. He commanded them to teach the seventy families which
sprang from the loins of Noah seventy languages. . . . But the holy language,
the Hebrew language, remained only in the house of Shem and Eber, and in the
house of Abraham our father, who is one of their descendants. And on that day
Michael took a message from the Lord, and said to the seventy nations . . .
'You know the . . . confederacy into which you entered against the Lord . . .
now choose today whom you will worship, and who shall be your intercessor . .
.' Nimrod . . answered . . .: 'For me there is none greater than he who taught
me and my people in one hour the language of
It is clear that
this narrative contains much that is also to be found in Origen: the
distribution of the nations among the angelic powers; the angelic origin of the
national languages; the preservation by
Each of these
themes is more or less commonplace in the old Jewish tradition. The allocation
of the nations to angelic rulers appears in the Septuagint version of
Deuteronomy: 'When the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance . . .
he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the angels of God.'[43]
Equally traditional
is the coming down of the angels to earth, to take up from God their commission
to govern the peoples -- something altogether different from the expulsion of
the fallen angels from Heaven: it appears in the Book of Jubilees ( IV:
15).
The figure seventy
for the number of tutelary angels is given in the eighty-ninth chapter of
Enoch. The special position of Abraham at the time of the dispersal of the
nations is described in the first-century Liber Antiquitatum, formerly
ascribed to Philo ( VI: ed. Kisch, 1949, pp. 126etseq.). The interpretation of nature-myths, particularly
in the form of astral cults, as an idolatrous worship of angels, has a long
history ( Wis.15: 2; Col.2: 16). Even the connexion between tongues and angels
is attested in Scripture (1 Cor.13: 1). The idea of a divine origin of Hebrew
is found in Jubilees, XII: 26.
But even the
peculiarly Origenistic conception of a punitive mission of angels, on the
occasion of the
The special interest of this passage
of Philo is in the way in which the esoteric doctrine of national angels is
used, from the first, to account for the fact of national polytheisms in the
face of Jewish belief in one God. Philo was confronted with variou
To return to Origen, the next
question is to know whether he found the legacy of Jewish traditions for
himself in the written apocrypha (with which he was certainly familiar),
or orally from rabbis (with some of whom he was personally acquainted): or
whether, on the other hand, this wa
These
last-mentioned works furnish certain parallels with the account given by
Origen. In the eighth of the pseudoClementine Homilies, angels come down to
earth to take care of mankind; here, too, appears the idea of angelic
incarnation, which is also found in Origen. Again in Recognitiones I:
30, the Hebrew language, which God gave to mankind, i
The two themes --
of national angels, and of the distinction of tongues -- appear in conjunction
in the eighteenth Homily, 4: 'According to the number of the Children of
Israel when they went into
In conclusion, it
may be said that the Jewish tradition exhibits practically every element in
Origen's doctrine of nationalities. It is true that Origen goes further than
any one of the sources we have examined, in particularizing the linguistic
activity of the national angels; the most detailed development is as follows:
'In Genesis, when God says -doubtless to his angels -- "Go to, let us go
down, and there confound their language", is it not clear that different
angels have given mankind a diversity of language and dialects, one giving his
people the speech of Babylon, . . . another the speech of the Hellenes?'[51] 1
It is also true that Origen emphasizes the penal character of
speech-barriers, to a greater extent than the haggada. But there is no
means of deciding whether, even in these points, Origen was elaborating his
material for his own purpose, or simply drawing on traditional sources that are
no longer extant. Either way, his account represents the supreme attempt of all
to analyse and define the particular phase of humanity denoted by the confusion
of tongues.
But the state of affair
Origen was
perfectly aware of this duality. He was prompt to show how the good angels
welcomed Christ's coming to their aid, and freely proffered him their services:
'It was a great joy for those who had charge of men and nations that Christ
came into the world'.[55]
According to
Cerfaux, the thought was already in
The question remains
to know what shall be the effects of this dispossession of the angels upon the
dependent social and political structures: are these abolished in reality,
along with their spiritual prototypes? Is the whole diversity of peoples,
cultures and tongues to disappear, along with polytheism? The several answers
proposed for this question correspond to differing eschatological theories.
One point, however,
is established beyond doubt: Christ inaugurates a new phase of' existence, in
which former lines of demarcation have vanished. Instead of the old order,
based on the separation of races, languages and cultures, there is one new
world in Christ. This unity wa
But if we consider the meaning of Christ's monarchy in
relation to the kingdoms of this world, we find two contrary principles of
interpretation. The first is represented by Eusebius, who considered the
unification of the world a
The doctrinal background of this
thesis is obviously to be found in a strict identification of political
organization with the régime of the angels: so that the dispossession of the
angels necessarily involves the disappearance of nationalities, which were but
the visible effect of their government. Similarly, monotheism involves as its
normal expression, world-monarchy; which in turn must bring peace, since wars
only occur between separate nations. The pax romana was thu
Such was to be the theory of
* * *
Speech-barriers, like national
frontiers, are to be reckoned as belonging to the fallen state of mankind, not
to the primordial destiny of the race; the obscure stirrings of an urge towards
unification have, in thi
At
It is now possible
to define the distinctively Christian position in face of this complex of
questions, from speech barriers to internationalism. The Christian believes
that the final achievement of linguistic and political unification is a matter
of eschatology; he find
The existence of
civilizations altogether unlike our own is thus by no mean
EXILE AND HOSPITALITY
FORCIBLE transfers
of populations are one of the most shocking symptoms of the cruelty of the
modern world. We have seen Hitler's
These racial shifts appear new and strange to us only
because they have begun to disrupt the superficial tranquillity of a world
whose people
In the Bible, as we
have already seen, the fragmentation of mankind into nationalities is
recognized as a feature of the condition of life under sin. It is described as
a consequence of the particular sin of
On one hand, the
existence of separate nations i
Yet this brutal
disruption of the normal conditions of human life, wicked and dangerous as it
is, may be the occasion of an even greater good. It is true that the spiritual
activity of mankind must be exercised, as a general rule, within the context of
a patria, but this natural frame of reference can also be a barrier. The
deeper a man's roots lie in his native land, the more easily he may forget that
patriotism is a secondary and conditional virtue, while essentially his most
intimate allegiance is common to all humanity. Deportation, removing him from
the home of his earthly fathers, may lead him to a clearer understanding of the
fact that he has here no continuing city: 'our spirits are exiled from the
Lord's presence so long as they are at home in the body'. [64]
So the anonymou
Thi
Even this does not
exhaust the potential gains of the Captivity. There is a remarkable passage in
Tobit, showing how the deported Jews were to be apostles of Jehovah, so that
the captivity appears as a mission -- the means of making known among the
heathen the name of the Lord: 'if he has dispersed you among heathen folk who know
nothing of him, it wa
Nevertheless, though
exile may be productive of good, even though it may be freely chosen as a mode
of the apostolate, the fact remains that the dispersal of mankind is one of the
consequences of sin: mankind is essentially one community. On the other hand,
this union which is required by the nature of man i
Thus. while individual historians are free to put their own gloss on the phenomenon of deportations, we may stand by the view that it represents one distinctive element in the mysterium, the inwardness, of contemporary historical development; and that those responsible are but blind tools in the hands of God, who 'moves in a mysterious way' to produce unsuspected good out of obvious evil. The Jewish people, says Butterfield, 'provides us with a remarkable example of the way in which the human spirit can ride disaster and wring victory out of the very extremity of defeat. We have had an opportunity in recent years of picturing to ourselves the chilling horrors associated with the displacement of populations, and some of us may have made for ourselves a vision of such a tribulation as almost a kind of living death. Such things apparently took place amongst the grim empires of the ancient world, to the cruelty of which our own world has been fast reverting. Yet . . . the Old Testament people . . . showed that by resources inside themselves, they might turn their very catastrophe into a spring-board for human achievement.'
In the measure in which the
deportations of our own time have reproduced some of the conditions of the
ancient Völkerwanderungen, so they have re-introduced the currency
of the ideal of hospitality -- the very counterpart of that social instability
in which we live. Now this whole question of hospitality i
Yet hospitality, apart from all other
considerations, is a priceless human asset. The Greeks recognized it as one of
the criteria of civilization, so that, from one point of view, the measure of a
community's approach towards a fully civilized polity was given by the theory
and practice of hospitality maintained therein. Some idea of the real value of
the moral achievement represented by the very notion of hospitality may be
gathered from the curious fact that many languages have only one root for the
words 'guest' and 'enemy'. The two categories have as their common basis the
single undifferentiated notion of 'stranger' or 'foreigner', the outsider, not
belonging to the same tribe or race, not a member of the same social or
biological group;p such a one may either be enemy or guest. It is thus a
triumph of civilization, or even the supreme triumph of civilization, to have
made a foreigner a guest instead of an enemy; for this is essentially the
brotherhood of man. Before thi
I have spoken of
linguistic roots, and must now give my references: in Latin, a guest is hospes,
while an enemy is hostis; the two words have a common ancestry. An hotel
in German is Gasthaus, gast representing the same root. These observations
are highly significant, because philology records the development of society.
The Greek word for 'stranger' or 'foreigner',
ξένος, may be used pejoratively, as in
'xenophobia', but also in the contrary sense of 'guest'; 'hospitable' in Greek
is Άιλόξενος, 'loving strangers'.
No doubt the same kind of development can be traced in other linguistic systems
as well as in the Indo-European group.
The primordial
condition of the 'outsider' is described in the tragic words of Cain, at the
dawn of human history: 'I shall . . . wander over the earth, a fugitive; anyone
I meet will slay me.' [70]
The normal, appropriate reaction, on finding a refugee, a wanderer, an
outlandish man, is to kill him. To take him in instead, as a guest and a
godsend, is, simply, revolutionary. It will be of interest to notice the
workings of this revolution within two great cultural systems from which our
own civilization is derived -- the Greek and the Semitic.
Taking the Greeks first, their exalted conception of the
value of hospitality dates from a remote period of history, as may be seen from
the wonderful passages devoted to hospitality in the Homeric poems and
especially in the episode of Ulysses, on his return to Ithaca, arriving home in
the guise of a stranger, and being taken in as a guest by the swineherd
Eumaeus, and by Penelope. Here we may recognize the theme of the mysterious
guest who i
On another plane,
there is a paragraph in the Laws of Plato, about the status of guests in
Greek society, which is one of the fundamental texts for any understanding of
the Hellenic culture. Plato has dealt with the mutual obligations of his
citizens, and turns to the subject of foreigners:
as regards the alien, we must
remember that compacts have a peculiar sanctity; indeed, offences by alien
against alien, we may say, compared with sins against fellow-citizens, more
directly draw down the vengeance of God. For the alien, being without friends
or kinsmen, has the greater claim on pity, human and divine. . . . What anxious
care, then, should a man of any foresight take to come to the end of life's
journey guiltless of offence towards aliens. [71]
To read a text like this is to understand what the Greeks understood by Άιλοξενία, hospitality, namely that all men whatsoever are worthy of respect. It is, furthermore, to understand the meaning of civilization, namely that state of human life in which individual man is accorded his due of respect and of love, being loved the more in proportion as he may be defenceless, lonely, or unlucky. Thus it appears that any condition of society in which the contrary applies, where weaklings and outsiders are undervalued, discarded, or liquidated, is not civilized at all, whatever its degree of technological achievement. We must be clear about civilization, that it is not a function of material progress, but a stage in the emergence of humanity: and hospitality is one of the oldest and most reliable tests of humanity.
The Semitic peoples, and particularly
the Arabs, share this tradition with the ancient Greeks: it is a commonplace
that their inherited customs of hospitality are sacrosanct for them above all
others. The Bedouin of the desert treat their guests as their ancestors did in
the second and third millennia B.C. Once a man, even an enemy, ha
The actions of Abraham, bowing down before his guests, washing their feet, giving them bread to eat and milk to drink, embody the immemorial outward expressions of hospitality. Washing the feet, as the first service to be rendered to a guest, has been adopted into the Christian liturgy of Maundy Thursday; and in the ancient rites of Baptism all the ceremonies that follow the administration of the sacrament itself seem to constitute a pattern of hospitality -the feet of the new Christian were washed, his head was anointed with oil, milk and honey were set before him. Along with water for the way-worn feet, and with the sharing of food and drink, the application of unguents to refresh the weather-beaten, sunburnt head and face was one of the sacramental rites of hospitality. The liturgy makes use of these simple actions, just as they were practised in the beginnings of the Hebrew civilization, to signify the supreme hospitality of the divine host receiving a stranger into his Church.
Christianity has
thus consecrated these ancient practices, by conferring upon them a quasi-sacramental
status; but this is not all: Christianity has also developed and transformed
the very spirit of hospitality, and brought it to a new perfection. In the
earliest ages of the Church, great importance was attached to hospitality as
one of the essential Christian virtues. (It had to be said, earlier in this
chapter, that the absence of hospitality in the modern so-called civilized
world is proof of a real want of civilization: in the same way, if contemporary
Christians are inhospitable, their Christianity can hardly be more than
skin-deep.)
Among the early
Christians, hospitality was not merely a private virtue, but a feature of the
public life of the organized hierarchical community. The bishops who governed
the churches were required, among other things, to be actively hospitable: this
was already mentioned in the First Epistle to Timothy -- 'A bishop, then, must
be one with whom no fault can be found; faithful to one wife, sober, discreet,
modest, well behaved, hospitable'[72] ;
and again in the second century, by the popular Roman writer Hermas, when he
speaks of the trees giving shelter to the sheep, in hi
And there are two
sides to this question, for hospitality involves a receiving as well as a giving,
and this exchange of values is an aspect of the communion of saints: it means
opening and broadening the narrow circles in which we live and move,
establishing channels of human communication, through which the life-giving
spirit of Christ may freely flow. Thus we cannot fulfil our obligations merely
by taking in strangers who come our way: we must sometimes be strangers
ourselves in the way of others. This is the link between hospitality and the
mission. The early Christian missionary, who had forsaken everything for the
Gospel'
These words reveal
the true significance and inwardness of hospitality, which had been adumbrated
even among the pagans, in the figure of the stranger who came to
The mystery of hospitality is thu
In this world, Jesus is the guest we
receive into our houses; but we know that he is also the host who will receive
us in the end. Today, he is with us as a stranger: he comes among men and men
receive him not. But in the end we shall be the strangers in another world;
rounding the promontory of death, adventuring into uncharted places alone, with
no friends and companions, no kith and kin to help us; then we shall know with
a vengeance what it means to want a home. How will it feel, then, to hear a
well-known voice saying to us: 'Come, you that have received a blessing from my
Father . . . for . . . I was a stranger, and you brought me home'? And when we
say: 'when was it that we saw thee a stranger, and brought thee home?' he will
reply: 'when you did it to one of the least of my brethren here, you did it to
me.' If we want the perfect host to take us into his eternal home when we come
to knock at his door, he has told us himself what we have to do: we must be
ready to open our own door to the earthly guests that come our way. That shows
the value and importance of our hospitality -- it i
MARXIST AND SACRAMENTAL HISTORY
IN former times, 'the Christian Missions' were exclusively concerned with propagating the gospel among such communities of men as were geographically outside those territories which had been evangelized already. But latterly there has come into existence a new kind of civilization, common to the whole human race, and alien from all the civilizations that have so far received the Gospel. The distinctive achievement of the nineteenth century, the fruit of technological advance and of the industrial society which this led to, was the establishment of new communities of men, standing outside all the old social categories, but themselves drawn together by an identity of conditions and interests, to constitute new urban collectivities around the towns and cities of the old world -- the working-class districts. For although the recent structural changes in society affect all mankind, their primary manifestation is in the workingclass, which owes its very existence directly to them.
The reaction to this new world has followed the pattern
of reactions to the ancient non-Christian cultures. The first move was an
attempt at colonization, an endeavour to annex and assimilate the workers to
the constituted forms of bourgeois Christianity -- just as Christians once
tried to impose their Western traditions upon the
So we have eventually arrived at a
third position, equally appropriate to the working-class world and to the
The idea of any return to 'Christendom' (which is, in any case, a somewhat imprecise and mythical conception, constantly eroded by historical criticism) is going out of date: the Christian's aim is now rather to set about his business of being a man, in a true-hearted spirit of partnership with anyone who is trying to build a decent world for men to live in, and with a sincere respect for the worth and autonomy of human ideals. Words like 'conquest' imply the enrolment of the masses into Catholic organizations, or the growth of a Catholic party at the expense of other parties: instead of these words, there is a growing use of such significant expressions as 'gospel witness', 'missionary spirit', conveying the idea that a Christian's function is to 'be there', on the job.
This means that the problem of
establishing Christianity on a solid basis in the working-clas
The Christian worker has, and must have, two loyalties: he cannot deny the claims of either. He must be true to his class, even though the working-class movement, as it exists in fact, is anti-Christian. But, within the movement he must keep clear of any complicity with its idolatrous tendencies. Without this absolute intransigence, which is required of him, his position is meaningless. The combination of these two attitudes in the working-class Christian may well be called incomprehensible, self-contradictory, or just impossible. But that is the way he has to be.
And after all, it
is no wonder: for this i
Such is the lot of
every Christian, but particularly of the working-class Christian in our own
day, who thus typifies the apostolic ideal. He is rejected on all hands -- by
Christendom instinctively, because he is committed to a hostile movement; and
by the Marxists, who will not indefinitely tolerate his deviations from their
idolatry. 'Filth', 'offscouring', he is 'made a spectacle . . . to angels';
jetsam in the strongest cross-currents of a world in travail. He is a
contradiction in terms, standing for something that does not exist in reality.
His affirmation is meaningful only as a prophecy; but that is the point of it:
he embodies the future. He asserts the impossible as a fact, for he is himself
the rough draft of a Christian working-clas
He is in a position to make personal
trial of the solidity of those working-class values, which are the preparation,
as it were the toothing-work, for the building of Christianity in time to come.
There are three experiences in particular, belonging to the working-class, the taste
of which is enough to cure a man of bourgeois tendencies for good, on pain of
treason against himself. The first is poverty -- not playing at poverty, a
Then there is the experience of a
brotherhood of man. Bourgeoi
Finally, the working-class, a
Well: but these factors in the
working-clas
The class-conscious worker who is
also a Christian has to live in the point of intersection of these contrasts --
he must always be on both sides of the fence at once. In this position he
exactly reproduces the situation of the
For a Christian who has to live among
men whose preoccupations, under Marxist influences, are exclusively
materialistic, the main difficulty will be to preserve his faith in moral and
spiritual values. Marxism interprets the historical process as a transformation
of mankind through economic change. The social mechanism of progress is
classwar: the rising class, which conforms to the economic infrastructure of
the future, struggles to displace the exploiting class, which belongs to an
earlier state of the economy. In order to exist, a man must take part in thi
But the right answer, as we
understand the matter, should be sought from the other end, in the dedicated
life of Christianity, especially through the sacraments: there is no reason why
Christian
The modern mind is habituated to an evolutionary, or historical, conception of reality. This universal attitude is partly due to the rapid growth of human knowledge, which has automatically familiarized us with the notion of progress, and partly to the scientific recovery of the pre-history of mankind. No system of thought which fails to take account of the time-process, as one of its dimensions, will survive criticism today. If Hegel was the first to give philosophical form to this attitude of mind, it has been increasingly fortified since his time, and particularly by the Marxists.
But the Marxist formulation of the position is curiously restrictive. The basic idea of Marxism is that history consists in a dialectical process whereby man creates himself -- that is, progressively attains to the full stature of humanity, by successive changes in the economic conditions of his existence. Consequently the men who really count, the heroes of modern history, are the scientists and the manual workers: poets, artists, philosophers and saints rank lowers; they are not, in the Marxist system, indispensable -- as the scientist is, for the methods of material progress, and the worker, for its achievement. It is obviously a stimulating doctrine for these two categories of people, that they are the essential factors in history-making: that history really consists of a succession of industrial processes -- the Iron Age, the ages of fire, steam, electricity, or atomic energy -- that everything else is only superstructure. The whole mechanism of human progress is comprised in the techniques of production, and the improvement of these techniques is the only way to a better world.
The compulsive force of this position
comes from the fact that it is not simply an intellectual account of reality
presented for men's acceptance, but invites an engagement of the will by
exhibiting a morally valid reason for activism. The system is not just a brute
materialism, but a kind of humanism; its conception of mankind is certainly
atheistic, but supremely exalted: it is in fact a religion, or cult, of man. A
In these circumstances it is quite useless for Christians to put forward any more or less half-hearted form of Christian humanism in competition with the Marxist doctrine.
Christian thought is always and inevitably at a disadvantage in this field, unless it holds fast to the essential principles of Christianity, which are the religious worship of God, and the recognition of God in history. The product of history, in the Christian view, is not only a certain social organization of mankind, but primarily mankind's fulfilment of God's will. Our only hope of defeating Marxism depends on our conviction that Christianity is the real maker of history. The crucial conflict in our time is between these two philosophies of history: for Christianity, like Marxism, is basically historical -- it is not at all, and never has been, a system of ideals to be superimposed on a different and more or less refractory world of real life. Its interpretation of the entire historical process is final.
The structural pattern of history, as the Christian understands it, is given by what is called Sacred History, that is, the temporal succession of works whereby Almighty God, the Creator, proceeds to the building of the eternal city of mankind. Thus the interpretation of Christian history requires more than an understanding of outward and visible events; it must take account of what happens in the hearts of men, which is revealed to us by the Holy Spirit -- and chiefly in the Scriptures, the chronicle of the mighty works of God, wherein his ways are made known to us, and the characteristics, so to say, of his creative policy and methods. Our discovery and comprehension of God's universe will be no more than proportionate to our acceptance and assimilation of the Holy Scriptures as containing the fundamental realities of life and truth.
The Bible starts with the historical
record of creation, and proceeds to exhibit the continuous effect of God's
action in the course of events. God makes choice of Abraham to be the Head of
his people, and enters into a covenant with him. Thereafter, he guides his
people in his own ways. But at once we find a new and important set of
considerations: thi
At the nodal point of history, the
Son of God himself became incarnate, came down to earth to take upon him the
nature of mankind, purifying and perfecting it in his own person through the
shedding of his precious blood, setting man free from death and sin, to inherit
the Father's kingdom for ever. For it is indeed freedom that the human race
requires, and release from the burden of captivity; but this enslavement i
Thus the activism of the Marxists i
Marxists, for their part, are not strictly obliged to deny the worth and beauty of historical Christianity, or to minimize its revolutionary consequences: but they maintain that its work is done, that the crisis of dissolution is upon it, that a new era has begun; mankind has progressed beyond Christianity towards a religion of the future. The Christian answer to this contemporary challenge is a confession of faith: there is no superseding Christ, he is the fulfilment of all things, he is Alpha and Omega, the last end of the world as he is the spring of its eternal youth. In him all things are made new, and the word 'beyond' has no meaning in relation to him who is the consummation of all. His coming is the completion of the human story; therefore we look for no progress, no development comparable in importance with that which we already possess in Jesus Christ. He has given us infinitely more than any technological advance or social revolution could offer.
The Marxist conception of history is
open-ended: his preoccupations are with the future. For Christians, the
structure of history is complete, and its decisive event, instead of coming
last, occupies the central position. Nothing can ultimately go wrong. The
acceptance of final justification and salvation as a gift, not as of our own
making, i
In this later
current period of time the outstanding events are those of the sacramental
life. This i
The working of God's power among us is through the
sacraments. As we have seen, there is a worse captivity than the economic
enslavement of the workers through capitalist exploitation: it is the captivity
of men, 'slaves of sin',
[82]
and exploited by the powers of darkness. From thi
The significance of
baptism is not only a liberation, but a creation.
TEMPORAL WORKS AND THE MARXIST MYTH
GRANTED the data of
the previous chapter, we have still to meet the question implied in the title
of Father Montuclard book, Dieu pour quoi faire? 'Why God?' See the
contemporary hardships of individuals and communities, between the disasters
from which they have just escaped and those which already threaten their future
-- is there nothing that Christianity can do to alleviate this tragedy, we ask?
How can we be deaf to this cry? It is true that our Lord Jesus Christ refused
to be accepted by the people as a magician, who should provide for the
satisfaction of their temporal needs: yet, for all that, 'he had compassion on
the multitude', and he did give them bread. The Christian's due
recognition of eschatological values, his rightly exclusive concern with
eternal salvation, can never make him callous or indifferent towards the
sufferings of mankind in this world; this is the tragedy that moved Fr
Montuclard, and moves us today.
There remains room, however, for an independent
commentary on hi
If we understand the author's
argument correctly, this means that, apart from the saving of souls, there is
an 'earthly paradise', 'a boundless hope', founded upon the extraordinary
scientific extension of mankind's natural potentialities. In this 'boundless
hope', there is included the possibility of a 'transformation of the life of
man'. The prospect is open to Christians -- despite the communists, who exclude
the eschatological dimension from their programme: that is their error; but the
temporal prognosis i
Thi
Yet the notion of 'improvement' in
this context still requires analysis. It may refer simply to the limited
practical humanitarian measures we can take to alleviate the pressure of
economic laws in the world as we know it. Christians have always played a part
in this kind of work, just like other men, with more or les
Why is it so often said that
Christianity does not work? 'You have been on the job for nearly two thousand
years in this world: what is there to show for it?' -- so runs the familiar
accusation. The results that we are alleged to have failed to achieve are
something quite different in kind from the limited progress which, a
This is what is commonly understood
today when people talk of an improvement in the lot of humanity as 'a boundless
hope'. This is what Fr Montuclard appears to find perfectly compatible with
Christian ideas, apart, of course, from the atheistic corollaries of its
Marxist context, and without prejudice to the status of hope as a theological
virtue. On this hypothesis it is fair to complain that Christianity does not
work, because Christianity has not enabled man to recover the earthly paradise
for himself. Fr Montuclard himself puts the crucial question, in another
passage: 'How can you maintain that salvation, all salvation is through Christ
alone, when you insist that Christians in the world must work for the material
betterment of living conditions? Thi
That is exactly the point. All Christians
agree in recognizing the reality of sacred history, which records the sequence
of events in the salvation of men. On the other hand there is no denying, as a
fact, the contemporary acceptance of a view of profane history, according to
which the progress of technology, taking over from biological evolution, is in
process of making man. How are these two forms of history related? Fr
Montuclard starts by affirming that belief in progress 'affords to those who
have no religious affiliations a kind of faith and hope, a certain conception
of life and reality, which may be inchoate and dim, may fall short of any full
understanding of the range and scale of what is involved, but which does
nevertheless call for a measure of self-sacrifice and an exacting standard of
conduct'. In short, faith in progress works like a rudimentary form of
religion: but what is its essential significance for those who are Christians
already? Fr Montuclard, who has the great distinction of being the first to
analyse correctly this temporal development of sacred history, arrives at the
following conclusion: 'The Church's main concern must be to recognize thi
There will be many to whom thi
Gabriel Marcel has explored the metaphysics of this delusive pretension. He observes, first, that technology is itself morally indifferent and cannot be regarded as inherently wrong -- 'a condemnation of Technique would be meaningless verbiage'. He then proceeds to show that what is wrong is 'the transition from Technique itself to the sacrilegious attitude that makes an idol of it. Along this line of analysis it will appear that the primary deviation into idolatry determines a further step down into autolatry, self-worship'. Here Marcel confirms Kraemer: the danger of the cult of technological progress lies in its tendency to restrict and confine mankind within the adoring contemplation of his own creative power. Thus technology may lead to a substitution of the means for the end, losing sight of 'the irreducible, inviolate mystery of Being'. Technique, in itself a thing indifferent, neither good nor evil, becomes a 'technique of sin'.
It follows unquestionably that the
religion of progress and the dogma of 'salvation of mankind through man', so
far from being a rudimentary form of real faith, is on the contrary the real
sin of our contemporary world. When people talk of 'efficiency', if they mean
the production of results commensurate with the idea of progres
The scope of progress in this world must always be limited. Christians are undoubtedly obliged to work for the betterment of the conditions of human existence, and against the common disasters of sickness, war, and want.
But on the one hand, mankind itself
opposes against these efforts the blank wall of finite human nature as it is,
with all its innate predetermined and ambivalent tendencies: there is no panacea
for moral disorders and for the misery they lead to. Death itself may be
deferred by the aid of scientific discoveries, with no better result than the
indefinite prolongation of human misery -- as Simone de Beauvoir pointed out in
Tous les homme
What is wrong with the 'boundless
hope' of humanity, the chief defect of it -- in spite of its capacity to evoke
the sort of generous, even heroic, response which understandably makes a
profound impression on Fr Montuclard -- is its radical unreality. The Marxists
call Christianity a hoax, but they are themselves the hoaxers. The real 'opium
of the people', distracting men's minds from their essential task, is the
communist myth of an earthly paradise: because this orientation of working-class
action towards a world revolution, with promise of a perfect classles
Even so, this is not the whole story.
Certainly we must first get rid of the illusion that Christianity is a means of
obtaining earthly happiness. Christianity does not make a perfect world; no one
can, for there is no such thing. The tragedy of the world's pain and sorrow i
Once again, it is not the purpose of
our religion to improve the standard of living; but there is an influence of
religion on social ethics. I am not referring to the secular activities of
Christian people, but to the effects of religious faith a
The influence of the Christian religion upon civilization has not completely transformed the structure of social life, but that is because, as we have repeatedly urged, such a transformation is nothing but a myth. The effectiveness of human activity is limited by conditions which are outside human control. A proletarian revolution can secure the redistribution of the fruits of production; but it cannot alter the basic conditions of the means of production -- for example, it cannot simply abolish sub-standard conditions of underground employment in the mining industries, where progress depends on scientific developments, which will be no more rapid in a collectivist than in a capitalist society. The deceitful, lying aspect of Marxist communism is the suggestion that the social revolution will transform conditions of labour. In fact, the lot of the working-class is everywhere more or less alike: the nearest equivalent to the Russian labourer's life is the life of an American labourer.
What can be done is to make the
existence of man more human, within the possible and practical limits of real
life. In this context, there are certain identifiable human values, not
peculiarly Christian, which nevertheless flourish only in a Christian setting,
and tend to wither away when Christian influences are withdrawn. With the
removal of Christianity, men lose their religion, but also in a measure their
humanity. We should be the last to exaggerate the value and importance of the
civilizing aspects of Christianity, especially in comparison with its essential
other-worldly significance. And we are satisfied that non-Christian
civilizations have their own values, which are not to be depreciated. But when
we consider the universal constant work of civilization, which is the defence
of mankind against necessity, or fate, we remain convinced that civilization's
most reliable ally is Christianity, though the essential purpose of
Christianity i
Even so, this does not exhaust the
function of the Church in the matter of history-making. The formula we quoted
earlier, from the pen of Fr Montuclard, would suggest that history belongs to
human society, while the Church, as a supra-temporal institution, acquires
historical status only by reason of it
Thu
The whole of this development is of course something essentially secondary. Emmanuel Mounier shows a want of proportion when he defines the progress of the Church exclusively in terms of 'sanctifying the new shapes of the world'i and again when he accuses those who oppose a 'liturgical cosmos' to 'the scientific and rational cosmos' of confusing 'the eternal essence of the religious act' with 'outmoded forms of representation'. [86] Even those of us who are least disposed to set much store by the preservation of obsolete forms, may hesitate to believe that the introduction and substitution of new and living patterns in Christian worship, however desirable or necessary, makes up the whole matter of sacred history in our time. Fr Montuclard makes the same disputable point when he writes: 'it is obvious that the progress of the Church cannot be left to the mystics'. If the expression 'progress of the Church' is defined in terms of an adaptation to successive patterns of social organization, then indeed this is not the saints' affair: but such a definition is excessively superficial; it is on the plane of Marxist communism. In this conception, progress takes place essentially in the infrastructure of economics, and the Church can do no better than to follow suit. But that is not really history at all, as we have been trying to show. The real progress of the Church is the deliverance through baptism of souls in bondage, and the greater glory of God in the holy Eucharist: and the protagonists of this history are in truth the saints.
CHAPTER SEVEN
A BIBLICAL INTERPRETATION OF MODERN
HISTORY
MUCH has been
written in our time by philosophers and theologians about the interpretation of
history. Their work is alway
Butterfield is quite clear that 'academic history' is not
self-sufficient; plainly, as he appreciates, there must be an interpretation.
It is the merest hypocrisy to pretend to be writing 'pure' history. The
simplest arrangement of facts presupposes an act of judgement. This does not
mean that all historical writing is irremediably subjective: one can pass
beyond the stage of mechanical enumeration without necessarily forsaking
science in favour of prejudice. There are certain criteria of truth in
'academic history' to ensure the correctness of the record, and there are
equally valid criteria for its interpretation. It remains to be seen what they
are: but although they are obviously something other than the rules of
historical criticism, they must be no les
The aim of Butterfield's book is to
discover the principles of a right interpretation of history. He starts from an
examination of the wrong interpretations. Considering the Protestant historical
schools of fifty years ago, he observes with a certain friendly sharpness that
'the unanswerable Pope wa
The result is to encumber men's minds with a mass of preconceived ideas, wrongly mistaken for observed facts. Instead of seeing 'things as they really are', we tend to see them 'in the categories which historians have created . . . attributing things to the Renaissance when the Renaissance is a mere label that historians have chosen to apply to a generation of people'.
It is bad enough that any dogmatic
system should be interposed between the minds of men and the reality of their
experience, but the worst of it is that the systems actually distort our
perceptions. Butterfield shows the frightening influence that particular
notions of history can have in shaping men's minds -- a far more powerful and
graver influence than that of the corresponding notions of physical science,
because historical ideas have to do with human life and conduct. One danger of
thi
The Marxist vision of history is
another preconception, concerning which Butterfield's ideas are interestingly
complex. He starts by acknowledging that there is a great deal of truth in the
Marxist view of the importance of social conditions as a factor of human life.
But he detects an illusion, common to all systems which presuppose a direct
relationship between technical and moral progress, namely, the erroneous belief
that living conditions modify the nature of man. This error arises from the
correct observation that certain social forms do in fact produce a certain
standard of conduct, called civilization. But these conventions are essentially
nothing but mutual arrangements in restraint of selfinterest; they do not
eliminate it. A
No technical advance or social progress has any effect on human nature. 'No man has yet invented a form of political machinery which the ingenuity of the devil would not find a way of exploiting for evil ends.' Nothing is more dangerous than a failure to understand this truth: worst of all is the kind of optimistic idealism which persuades people of one culture that they are the privileged possessors of absolute social and ethical values, and thereby entitled to judge their inferior contemporaries in the light of this monopoly: 'situations become more frantic and deadlocks more hopeless because of man's universal presumption and self-righteousness'.
Hence follows another essential principle of historical interpretation, not to have faith in human nature. It is impossible to understand history unless you start from the conviction of universal sinfulness.
On this observation, which is the key to his book, Butterfield establishes a connexion between the two points of view, that of the pure historian and that of the biblical theologian. He shows that any really objective historian, honestly scrutinizing the record, must come to the conclusion that all the mistakes as well as all the crimes in history derive their origin from the sin of self-righteousnessi while the basic axiom of revelation, in the Bible, is that no man is righteous, but all men are sinners: this is the essence of the dogma of original sin. 'Though history does not carry these questions to the searching depths at which the theologian may make his judgements and expose the fallacy of our pretended righteousnesses, it seems to me that even at his own level, even in the realm of observable historical happenings, the historian must join hands with the theologian.'
The conclusion is plainly one of
far-reaching importance. We are not dealing with an extraneous rule of
interpretation, superimposed upon the results of historical reflection,
deriving its validity from the private judgement of the individual critic. On
the contrary, the historian himself, objectively inspecting his material, is
compelled to this particular conclusion -- admittedly a negative conclusion,
ruling out the possibility of any constructive theory of interpretation: but
coinciding in this with the biblical view of reality. The ground-work of the
prophetic message wa
The speculations of Christian
theorists are no more valid than those of atheists. In his most interesting
chapters, Butterfield discusse
As a matter of fact, the
working-class movement, led by communism, has achieved much more than the
Church in the way of social justice (though that does not mean that communism
is progressive). But then it is not the function of religion to save
civilization, but to convince man of sin, and to teach him that it is only when
he acknowledges hi
How does history look in the light of
the dogma of original sin? When Butterfield has disposed of bogus ideologies,
whether of Christian or non-Christian inspiration, he addresses himself to the
constructive aspect of the case. It has never been easy for an observer of
historical trends 'to see that morality itself was part of the structure of
history, a thing as real and as drastic in its operation as the material
strength of principalities and powers'. At first sight realpolitik seems
to be universally triumphant, whether in the case of Napoleon, or of
If anything is certain about the Christian view of economic and political values, it is that these are entirely relative. To treat them as absolute is a form of idolatry. The fundamental mistake in communism is the belief that communism is good and capitalism is evil; and the capitalist's mistake lies in holding the contrary belief. Collectivism and capitalism are both half-truths. If people understood this, they would not turn policies into ideologies; for there is no such thing as a mystique of politics: mysticism belongs to the revelation of God in Jesus Christ. It is the intrusion of mystical attitudes into political questions that leads to fanaticism, and to ideological wars, which are conflicts between false gods. The Christian's duty is to denounce these groupidols. There is no possibility of peace in the world until everyone recognizes that his own way is only a half-truth, so that instead of trying to exterminate other people, he must love them for their share in the truth.
If external prosperity affords no assurance of God's blessing, it must be extremely dangerous to derive moral satisfaction from the circumstance of temporal success. Selfabasement would be a more appropriate attitude. But the lesson must be taken further. The inward reality of history is not to be understood as consisting in an onward march of civilization, where particular nations or classes, successively co-operating in the general progress, assume in turn the role of providential agents. In actual fact 'every generation is equidistant from eternity'. The real purpose of history is to achieve -- through the mill of temporal vicissitudes -- 'the manufacture and education of human souls'. The real measure of history is not to be sought in the level of technical attainment, but in the more or less effective production of personalities, 'which represent the highest things we know in the mundane realm'.
From this point of view it becomes
clear that historical disasters may be as richly productive as historical
triumphs, and often more so. Once again, Butterfield recalls the history of
In sum, the quality of an age is not
determined by its material characteristics or by its ideological colour, but by
its fruits of human and spiritual experience. What counts, in the end, is the
response of personalities to circumstances; the circumstances themselves have
neither value nor demerit of their own. Adversity is not itself a creative
force, but it may call forth a response from the depth of men'
This, then, represents the
accumulated experience of a first-rate historian, which he has chosen to record
for us after many year
One of the key-words in Butterfield's
book, highly expressive of its particular human and spiritual atmosphere, is
'judgement'. For one thing, the word sums up the mature, reflective wisdom of
the experienced historian, who knows what he is talking about, and presents us
with a true picture of the facts. That makes his book worth reading as an
intellectual production. But the word also indicates a divine perspectivei for
Judgement is the revelation of things as they are in God'
This is the Judgement that really illuminates human history; and the great merit of Butterfield's book is to have shown that history is meaningless without it. For those of us who are convinced that the most dangerous tendency of the modern world is the way in which bogus theories are given the force of dogma -- as that technical progress is good in itself, or that a particular class or nation has a messianic function -- for us, the book is like a gust of fresh air to clear away all these poisonous fogs. Seen through all the false, pretentious trappings of theory that it habitually claims to wear, here is the nakedness of history, and it is in the likeness of everlasting sin. Only so long as history acknowledges the truth of this likeness can it find its place in real history, the history of salvation.
Butterfield's interpretation is endorsed in a truly extraordinary fashion by the author of another book of the same period -- not an historian, this time, but a philosopher, starting from an entirely different position. [88] Mr Löwith's question is to ascertain whether historia, defined as research into the facts of human behaviour in the past, is reconcilable with the theology of sacred history: can we find in sacred history a valid interpretation of empirical history? It is a question that has exercised the minds of Christian thinkers for some two thousand years, and may be said to have remained unanswered: though it is true that some have tried to impose a 'providential' form on the succession of civilizations, in the shape of a tendency towards the evolution of a Christian civilization. Löwith pays particular attention to Bossuet, in this connexion; but it should not be forgotten that Eusebius of Caesarea had already developed the same theory when he characterized the imperium romanum as a providential preparation for the Constantinian monarchy. It may also be remarked that Toynbee, at the other end of the Christian era, arrives at a similar conclusion, by identifying Christianity as the latest form of civilization.
What is ordinarily called the
philosophy of history derives its origin from this Christian conception of
design in profane history. It begins with Voltaire'
But in fact this philosophy of
history falls a long way short of the scientific precision claimed for it by
such writers as Comte and Marx: for it has never succeeded in overcoming the
basic difficulty that vitiated the 'providential' theory (from which it
derives, through a process of secularization). It i
If we turn to the 'providential'
theory, this proves equally invalid. It has a solid basis, indeed, in the Word
of God: but this word has to do with the things of faith. Attempts, like those
of Eusebius and Bossuet, to interpret the history of the empires in the light
of revelation, are thus necessarily misleading. Here Löwith's criticism
coincides with Butterfield's. The growth of empires, economic change, social
progress -- these thing
Thus profane history and sacred history appear to be perfectly independent of each other; at all events we cannot establish any relationship between them. Our knowledge of them derives from two incommensurable sources, since profane history is known by research, historia in its ancient meaning, while sacred history is only known by faith. There is no common ground for a philosophy of history, whether religious or secular: 'More intelligent than the superior vision of philosophers and theologians is the common sense of the natural man and the uncommon sense of the Christian believer. Neither pretends to discern on the canvas of human history the purpose of God or of the historical process itself. They rather seek to set men free from the world's oppressive history by suggesting an attitude, either of skepticism or of faith.'
The conclusions of the philosopher
Löwith are startlingly like those of the historian Butterfield. Both are
in reaction against optimistic theories of progress, which Butterfield
unanswerably convicts of pharisaism. Both are also in a most salutary reaction
against the secularization of the biblical conception of history, as they
plainly declare that the ultimate meaning of history is a matter of theological
faith and not of empirical research. It is, no doubt, also true that they both
go rather too far in the direction of pessimism when they make an impassable
gulf between sacred and profane history. We should prefer to say that although
the latter is meaningless in itself, it make
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS:
AND THE HISTORY OF SALVATION
ANY investigation of the great
non-Christian religiou
Tritheistic speculations, or the symbol of the cross, found in Indian traditions, invite us to think about the fundamental relationship between these things and the Christian dogma, or sign. We can hardly acknowledge the good we get out of reading a Buddhist or Mohammedan mystic without wondering about the distinctive character of Christian mysticism, recalling perhaps Simone Weil's provocative formula: 'In practice, mystics belonging to nearly all the religious traditions coincide to the extent that they can hardly be distinguished.' [89] ut granting all this, what becomes of the unique transcendence of Christianity? And if e are still sure of it, can we justify our conviction? First of all, what is it?
Here we have to avoid two errors. One
is to regard all non-Christian religions as gros
But the opposite error is more harmful
still. On every hand, among our contemporaries, we hear arguments tending to
minimize the transcendent quality of Christianity, or denying it altogether --
obliterating the frontiers that mark its distinction from all other religions.
Sometimes it is made out to be merely one element (and not even the most
indispensable element) in a single stream of 'religious tradition'. Again, it i
These are obviously unacceptable ideas. But they are all around us; they make a certain impression; we hardly know how to refute them. The problem, simply expressed, is this: given the real worth of the pagan religions, what exactly is the superiority of the Christian religion?
* * *
The first
characteristic of Christianity is belief in an event, the resurrection of
Christ, which represents an incursion of God's action into the historical
process, a radical change in the conditions of human life, an absolutely new
thing. Here is a fundamental difference from all other religions. This was what
René Guénon missed, when he saw no more in Christianity than a particular form
of the original religious tradition -- he left out just what is original in
Christianity itself. The great non-Christian religions know of an eternal world
over against the world of time; but they know nothing of an irruption of one
into the other, giving substance and form to the flux of time, making it into
history.
Greek thought
furnishes examples, in the Platonic theory of ideas, and in the Stoic theory of
eternal recurrence. But I am more concerned now with living religiou
It follows from this view of things that no particular occurrence has any permanent reality, and that the historical process pays no dividends. Real value is only to be found in re-presentations; to quote Mircéa Eliade again: 'reality is acquired solely through repetition or participation: everything which lacks an exemplary model is "meaningless".' And this reality is achieved in and by the abrogation of normal, everyday time. 'No event is irreversible, and no transformation is final. In a certain sense, it is even possible to say that nothing new happens in the world.' The contrast is evident with the opposite, Christian idea of the particular occurrence of the Incarnation -- an irreversible fact, of supreme value, wholly a new thing.
In Indian religious thought, time is
even further cheapened, though in another manner. The notion of time is highly
developed, in the theory of yuga, or cosmic cycles, manifested in
regular procession. But the appearance of progress is deceptive: the succession
of yuga amounts in the end to destruction and renewal. If time is
cyclical it is not irreversible -- we are back in the eternal recurrence, the
myths of periodical destruction and creation. As Eliade ha
So that here the aim will be not to revivify temporal existence, as in primitive rites, by returning to the beginning of time, but simply to escape from time itself. The whole technique of yoga is designed for this escape out of time, not only through a conviction that time is unreal, but positively through the practice of a timeless trance. Once more, there is a diametrical opposition between this and the content of Biblical revelation: for the prophets, time is neither unreal nor evil; it is the framework of God's plan, within which the body of Christ is built up. And, as will appear, this fundamental contrast involves a contradiction between the two corresponding ideas of contemplative ecstasy.
Islam is no different from the rest,
which is the more extraordinary because of its Biblical tradition. Yet the fact
is certain (and provides evidence of the regressive character of this religiou
There is a measure
of truth in these notions of time. They represent for mankind, more or less
faithfully through all the aberrations of paganism, one plane of reality, the
plane of natural religion. The Epistle to the Romans acknowledges this measure
of truth: 'men have caught sight of his invisible nature, his eternal power and
his divineness, as they are known through his creatures.' [91] God is revealed in
the alternation of seed-time and harvest, his witnes
Here we do indeed
find something that is new, for God here breaks in upon history. Christianity
is first and foremost an historical event, the Incarnation of Jesus Christ.
Thus the substance of the Christian revelation is not in a knowledge of God's
existence (which other religions have as well), but in the perception of his
activity on the scene of time, his effective interventions in the world of
human history. From the Creation to the Resurrection, by way of the choosing of
our father Abraham, the Christian revelation is a sacred history, the chronicle
of the wonderful works of God, a documentary narrative: alone among sacred
books, the Christian's Bible is not a collection of doctrine but a story.
* * *
So much for our first point, that
Christianity means belief in God's coming into the world as the man Christ
Jesus.
Now we proceed to a second statement, namely that this divine act alone can save mankind; there is no salvation but in Jesus. This truth is contrary to another of the syncretistic notions we have been considering, the idea that all forms of mystical experience amount to the same thing: a broad view, which has its attractions for those who are repelled by the intransigent claims of Christianity. But if religious mystics are all alike, this means that salvation is brought about by the practice of detachment from creatures, and by the efforts of man to achieve union with God, rather than through the work of Christ's cross. Once again, we must recognize a fundamental contradiction.
To avoid possibilities of
misunderstanding, let it be said plainly that we do not undervalue the
instances of a truly interior life and spiritual detachment that are to be
found among non-Christian religions. From
But these aspirations presuppose that
it is possible for man to attain to God through his own efforts, which
Christianity absolutely denies for two reasons. The first is the solid fact of
original sin, cutting man off from God. Man cannot cancel thi
And, secondly, our God is,
absolutely, unattainable, so that he alone can confer upon man that
participation in himself which we call supernatural life. If the soul i
From this position, several
consequences flow, each of which emphasizes the singularity of the Christian
religion -and first of all this: that salvation comes through faith in Christ
Jesus our Saviour, not through works (as
It is in the light of these
considerations that we may see the difference between non-Christian mystics and
Christian mysticism. For the former, union with God is the term of an ascetic
process whereby the soul strips itself of all extraneous attachments, to find
at last its own true being, which is God himself. The emphasis is on technique
-recollection, singleness, etc. Christian mystics may make use of these
methods; but then they are matters of secondary importance, and they cannot be
effective in themselves: for our God is a living God, the all-highest, not to
be encompassed by any technical proficiency. He grants his favours and himself
to whom he will, freely and as he chooses. Mystical experience is not subject
to the rules of method. Divine grace smote down Saul the persecutor on the road
to
The same contrast can be described in another way, by
saying that the difference between the Christian and the non-Christian
religions is the difference between saints and heroes. The ascetic achievements
of the Indian sages are admirable, indeed: they may be said to mark the limit
of human possibility. But the saints are not like that. Humanly speaking they
are often cowardly and weak, yet they undertake hard things, superhuman tasks,
relying on the power of God. So it was with the early martyrs: so it was for
Jean Brébeuf, who admitted he had not the courage to prick his own finger with
a pin, and went to preach the Gospel to the Iroquois in the knowledge of
hideous tortures awaiting him. This explains how a saint can remain personally
humble in the performance of heroic deeds; and how martyrdom and sanctity
constitute a proof of the divine origin of Christianity. If the evidential
value of martyrdom consisted simply in proving that Christianity can inspire
the highest kind of self-sacrifice, it would be reasonable to object that men
have been willing to die for other causes, too. The real point is that
martyrdom a
Origen and
* * *
So far we have been mainly concerned
to point out how the Christian religion is characterized as an immediate act of
God. Its transcendent quality is equally visible in the content of dogma,
despite that third group of syncretist theories, claiming to trace in other
religions the outlines of the chief tenets of Christianity (the Trinity, the
Redemption, and so on). There is in fact a certain number of these parallels.
They have been shown, over and over again, to be quite superficial; no
instructed person can really take them seriously: but they have enjoyed a wide
publicity, and still serve to introduce into people's minds a kind of
ambiguity, debilitating the force of conviction. To this extent they deserve
consideration. As it happens, Simone Weil made a collection of these talking
points in her Letter to a Priest. It is extraordinary that anyone with
such powers of penetration a
She relates Christ's words 'I am the
true vine' to the Dionysiac cult of the fruit of the vine. These are, as is
well known, two different ideas: one, Palestinian, of the vine symbolizing the
chosen people ( Isa. 5: 1); the other, Greek, of the vine symbolizing
immortality, through the notion of drunkenness. She finds parallels for the
motherhood of the Blessed Virgin in the various mother-goddesses of antiquity;
but it is matter of proof that the Christian worship of our Lady derives from
the fact of her share in the historical process of human salvation, and not
from any sublimation of womanhood, comparable with the development of
nature-cults. Again, Christ's death upon the cross is related to the
crucifixion of the world-soul in the Timaeus, whereas, obviously, the Christian
cross derives from the instrument of our Saviour's passion, which was T-shaped
-and not from the multidimensional symbolism of other religiou
Simone Weil quotes
the Greek and Hindu triads in parallel with the Christian doctrine of the Holy
Trinity -but this teaching has plainly nothing in common with any dialectical
process, it is rather in direct conflict with human reason; our God is not
revealed as primal unity in separate manifestations, but as three Person
The formulae of
Christian liturgy are often borrowed from the rites of natural religions. Thus
in the third century, Hippolytus of Rome develops the cosmic symbolism of the
cross. [95] From the fourth
century onwards, the terminology of the pagan mysteries is used in connexion
with the sacraments. In the catacombs the vine symbolizes immortality. Within
the last few years, Abbot Monchanin has proposed the use of the term saccidananda,
which denotes the Hindu triad, for the mystery of the Holy Trinity.[96] All these
developments are secondary, matters of cultural acclimatization. Christian
dogma starts by being a new thing.
This is not to deny
that natural religion possesses a measure of God's truth -- we have already
seen that it does, and that 'from the foundations of the world', as
But beyond the reach of all human reason there i
The reality of the Biblical
revelation being radically different from the content of the other religions,
the former cannot be regarded simply as one form, even as the supreme form, of
the natural religious instinct. Nevertheless, as we have before insisted, the
nature-religions are not destitute of positive values. They represent an
authentic manifestation of true religion, the representation of God through the
regular procession of cosmic events, corresponding to the covenant with Noah.
But when a new and better covenant was made, the former covenant wa
Are we at all concerned in these
survivals of a former dispensation? They enshrine something of absolute worth,
the relics of a primitive revelation: would it be no loss if they were to
disappear altogether? Simone Weil felt this anxiety: 'were these other
traditions to disappear from the face of the earth, it would be an irreparable
loss. The missionaries have already made far too many of them disappear as it
is.' Notwithstanding the finality of the revelation of Jesus Christ, our
understanding of this revelation is progressive, and can be furthered by these
other categories of insight. In his encyclical, Divini praecones, Pius
XII gave an exact definition of the Catholic position in this matter (in a
sentence which we have already quoted in part), and of the respect that is due
to the genuine worth of the natural religions: 'The Church has never despised
pagan teaching, but rather freed it from its errors, perfecting and crowning it
in the light of Christian wisdom.'
It is to be observed that the Bible
itself affords instances of this method. The chosen people lived in a world of
other religions, rich in myths and cults of their own; rejecting these
inadequate and faulty Gentile creeds, the Hebrews nevertheless constantly
borrowed from them. The authors of the first chapters of Genesis controverted
the very Babylonian or Canaanitish nature-myths, from which they derived their
own patterns of representation. The Mosaic liturgical practices reflect the
rites of
The Sapiential
books are especially characteristic from this point of view. Throughout the
The Biblical revelation brought with it a new and better
wisdom: as the Third Book of Kings has it, 'Wisdom, too, God gave to Solomon .
. . For that, no king of the east or of Egypt could vie with him, of all men
the wisest; wiser than Ethan the Ezrahite, or Heman, or Chalcol, or Dorda, that
were sons of Mahol'. [98] Christ was to
teach a yet more perfect wisdom, which to the wisdom of men would seem folly:
'a greater than Solomon is here'.
[99] But the
utterances of the rabbi of
This formula contains an excellent summary of the Christian position. The spiritual values contained in the pagan religions are not under-estimated; but they need, in the first place, to be purged of error and corruptions, especially idolatry. Conversion therefore always involves an abjuration -- there is no gradual evolution from paganism into Christianity. And secondly, Christianity perfects and fulfils, in the light of Christian wisdom, the incomplete truths that are to be found in paganism. It takes over the religious capital of the natural man, and sanctifies it. In the first ages of Christianity, the riches of Greek philosophy were thus purged and assimilated. It may be that in future years Christianity will similarly cleanse and incorporate the treasures of Hindu asceticism and the wisdom of Confucius. The mission of Christianity, rightly understood, involves no destruction of pagan religious values, but liberation and transfiguration. Christ came not to destroy, but to fulfil.
CHAPTER NINE
STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS OF RENÉ
GUÉNON
THE work of René Guénon,
who died in 1949, wa
A first service to truth was his rehabilitation of symbolic understanding in opposition to scientific epistemology. This was perhaps his most violent departure from modern habits of thought. For men trained in the methods of the exact sciences, as chemistry or astronomy, any idea of a return to alchemy and astrology is a monstrous absurdity. Guénon held, on the contrary, that the whole direction of modern thought was hugely astray: he found more of the substance of truth in the childish fancies of the astrologers than in all the technical achievements of scientific astronomy. The two things are not on the same plane. Science enlarges the dimensions of the cage in which the mind of man is imprisoned, but all the science in the world will not get him out of it. But in the intuitive perception of symbolism, the mind reaches out from material reality to grasp another reality beyond: this is an enlargement of the spirit.
To avoid misunderstanding, it should
be said that Guénon was not concerned to re-establish the popular
pseudoscientific conceptions of astrology and alchemy. His point was that
mankind's interest in stars, or metals, a
It is the same in other departments
of knowledge. Thus astronomy teaches us the mechanics of the heavenly bodies;
but this is a superficial knowledge. The stars are full of meaning, which is
much more important. Guénon knew well enough that there could be no question of
regarding the stellar motions as determinants of sublunary events; their
significance would be rather a
The same critical principles are
applicable to geometry and the science of numbers. Geometrical figures are of
interest, apart from their mathematical properties, for qualitative reasons;
they are the basis of all pictorial symbolism. Guénon was particularly
concerned, in this connexion, with the form of the cross, as we shall shortly
see. Arithmetic is in the same position as geometry, for there is a symbolism,
as well as a science, of numbers. Guénon pointed out that the special
importance of the number
For it must not be overlooked that
the symbols found in the various racial and cultural traditions are identical,
or at least similar. It will hardly be admissible to explain this phenomenon by
the hypothesis of unbroken tradition from a common sources though Guénon, in
some of his les
Guénon sees Christian symbolism as an
element in the universal tradition. He compares the significance of the cross
in the Hindu and the Christian systems. He notes the number of the twelve
apostles, as a parallel for the twelve signs of the Zodiac. The Pope's white
cassock is part of the evidence for the special regard paid in all religiou
Of course Christianity recognizes the
existence of an authentic natural symbolism, which belongs to natural religion,
and to the revelation of God to all mankind through the world of creation,
which we have already discussed. But Christianity itself is just not that at
all: it i
Guénon completely failed to
appreciate the special position of Christianity as the religion of a new thing:
and it is no wonder, for a wholesale repudiation of history was one element in
hi
We must not underestimate the full force of Guénon's courageous assault on some of the most deep-rooted and pernicious of modern prejudices. It is the fact that, by looking to science for salvation, mankind inevitably turns away from the true saviour; and all those who foster this delusion, be they Marxists or liberals, incur responsibility for the unhappy state of the world today. It is unquestionably true that the conceptions of scientific development and of biological evolution have no relevance for the life of the spirit. It is equally true that an exaggerated and exclusive preference for the methods of the experimental sciences tends to disqualify our contemporaries for the intellectual exercise of philosophical judgement. And it is true that, in the order of nature, the lapse of time affords no substantial increment of human values, for substantial values belong to the timeless world of metaphysical reality.
In the order of nature there is no
real innovation. But this rule does not hold good for Christianity, which
consists of a series of events effectively transforming the life of man in a
perfectly new way. The most superficial inspection of the writings of
These considerations lead towards a third and last aspect of Guénon's work, dealing with the inter-relation of science, wisdom and faith. In this field, as elsewhere, the author's positive contribution is what first claims our attention. In despite of relativity and pragmatism, Guénon insisted upon the primacy of the speculative intelligence, both in the temporal and in the eternal orders. The highest reality is in the world of incorruptible Ideas, whereof material things are only a transient reflection: so the highest activity of man is in the understanding of these essential principles. Thus Guénon reproduces the Platonic theory of contemplation. Then, secondly, it is only through the knowledge of eternal truth that human affairs can be wisely regulated; the possessors of such knowledge constitute Authority in the spiritual sphere. So Guénon, by restoring the basis of an hierarchical society, offended against another modern dogma, namely the universal law of democracy and manhood suffrage. Spiritual authority derives from the guardians of tradition. It belongs in an eminent degree, archetypically, to the roi du monde. It is visibly embodied in certain human characters, one of whom is the Pope. Hence Guénon's championship of the authoritarian aspect of Catholicism, contrasting with his denigration of Protestantism as a perversion of true Christianity.
Authority consists in the trusteeship of tradition; and the tradition in question consists of intellectual principles, primarily those of the Hindu philosophy, in the Vedanta, which was the subject of Guénon's first book. This is rather a dubious position, even from a narrowly philosophical point of view, for the Hindu philosophy is notably inadequate in such essential chapters as the transcendence of God, the immortality of the soul, and the creation. What is worse is the very postulation of philosophical truth as a supreme reality: while religion, and particularly the monotheistic tradition of the Mediterranean basin, is presented as a compromise between pure metaphysical principles and the affective demands of human nature, which require mystical and liturgical satisfactions. This inversion of the relationship between metaphysics and revelation is the great weakness, the fundamental flaw in Guénon's work.
Here is the point of insertion of the
theory of esoterism, which occupies an important position in the system.
Esoterism may mean either of two entirely different things. Within a single
religion, there may be a group of doctrines which are held to be too mysterious
for indiscriminate promulgation, especially to neophytes: for instance, in the
case of Judaism, such matters as the interpretation of the Song of Songs; or, in
the case of Christianity, the teachings of mystical theology. There is no
difference in kind between the content of these esoteric doctrines and the
substantial truths of religion, but only in degrees of spiritual penetration.
Thus, for
The other meaning of esoterism, which
was Guénon's, implies the existence of a secret body of doctrine behind and
beyond the varieties of organized religion, but intrinsically common to them
all, and attainable through a distinct initiatory process. Such were the
gnostic heresies of the first centuries of Christianity. In this conception,
the common people and the initiates have actually differing objects of faith or
knowledge. The content of the secret doctrines i
It is obvious by now why Guénon's work is at once so important, and so disappointing. He compels attention by concerning himself with things that are really interesting in themselves, and by his bold denunciation of fallacies that seem to us, as they seemed to him, to be ultimately responsible for the decadence of the modern world. But his constructive system proves, upon examination, to be fundamentally incompatible with Christianity; for he has eliminated the very substance of our religion, in denying the privileged status, the absolute factual unicity of the event of Christ's resurrection.
SYMBOLISM AND HISTORY
IT is a fact of
experience that symbols have an important function in all religious life and
thinking. Theological expression draws largely, in the normal course, upon
images taken from sensory perception, in order to deal with spiritual
realities: this is equally true of Biblical theology, and of the theology of
the sacraments, as of mystical theology. Yet we have to recognize that there i
It is a comparatively
recent aberration, and one with which the theologians of former times had not
to reckon. Even apart from scriptural texts, which are obviously full of
symbolism, patristic and medieval theology clearly made generous use of
symbols: the de Divinis nominibus of the pseudo-Dionysius, which belongs
in a sense to both periods, is a kind of Summa of symbolism, resuming
from this point of view the teaching of the Fathers and preparing that of the
scholastics. It is our intention in the present chapter to show that thi
Let us first
consider the facts. The use of visual images to represent the realities of
religion is universal throughout the Jewish and Christian traditions. Already
in the first verses of Genesis the creative power of God is likened to a great
bird hovering over the surface of the waters, eliciting the first stirrings of
life: this was, no doubt, the picture that first prompted the image, in the New
Testament, of the dove descending over the river Jordan, as the Holy Ghost
elicited the first-fruits of the new creation. Again in the closing chapters of
the Bible,
The Christian
liturgy has taken over these images. At Christmas, after the winter solstice,
when the days begin to lengthen once more, the Church celebrates the nativity
of Christ as the eternally rising sun of the new world, of whom the prophet
Zacharia
Granted the facts, what is the real
importance of all this?
A system of imagery which is authorized by the whole scriptural and liturgical tradition can certainly claim the tribute of reverence; but is it anything more than an incrustation, a patina of antiquity? The cosmic symbols in question are clearly derived from obsolete general notions of astronomy and physics. The theme of the 'waters of death' belongs to an ancient Eastern belief in 'the waters under the earth'; what meaning can it have for us today? It was already superseded to some extent when Christian thought first accepted Hellenic influences, the maleficence of water being associated no longer with the Semitic idea of the dragon, but with the idea of the turbulent passions of men.
The difficulty is not to be lightly dismissed. Can we establish that certain material things are by their very nature intrinsically and distinctly appropriate to 'signify' or symbolize this or that? or does the quality of 'sign' depend in each case upon a positive attribution, extrinsically relating one thing to another? In the latter case it is clear that symbols would have little or no cognitional value. In their illustrative function, they would have a certain significance derived solely from the meaningful reality which they serve to indicate, but no distinct significance of their own at all. The question being generally regarded as open, the value of symbols, as a means of knowledge, is consequently discounted: they are felt to be too imprecise and uncertain to be trustworthy.
Admittedly, symbols are always liable to exhibit in fact a multiplicity of signification. Night, for instance, can symbolize the world of death and evil, as well as the idea of transcendence. The ocean is an image of destructive, as well as creative, power. Hence the variation of symbolic representations in different cultural traditions. The multivalence of symbols at least serves to elevate the technique of symbolic interpretation above the level of elementary algebra: and it must be remembered that such variations as there are take place within definite limits. The range of meanings is not unrestricted, for every actual instance of symbolic representation is always related in some way to the natural qualities of the symbol. But it remains to be seen whether this relationship can be more exactly defined.
The comparative history of religions
furnishes valuable evidence for the pursuit of such an inquiry, for it shows
that identical patterns of symbolic imagery recur universally. Thus we find the
sun representing creative power both in ancient
These parallels might be explicable as due to the influence of one system or another. Comparative religion has notoriously overworked this hypothesis: every traceable analogy between the Bible -- in particular -- and ancient Eastern religious traditions, or between Christianity and the pagan mystery-religions, has been attributed to an 'influence'. Unquestionably there may have been such direct influences in points of detail: but the theory simply will not bear the weight of the facts to be explained. Another school would interpret the worldwide conformity of symbolic representations as vestigial evidence of a single primitive tradition, more or less imperfectly preserved and corrupt. On this view the various Flood-narratives would represent the tradition of an historical event that must have taken place before the separation of men into distinct races.
All such explanations are quite
inadequate. The only acceptable conclusion is that the existence of a common
set of symbols in the various religions is due to the parallelism of mental
processes; but this means that the objective reality of the symbols themselves
must be common ground as well. The
argument i
On this foundation it is possible to
construct a positive science of religiou
It i
Whether by way of analysis of
concrete symbols in actual religiou
The question remains, what is this
reality which is known through symbols? Many writers would maintain that
nature-symbolism refers only to a simple representation of nature itself in
terms of archetypes, or to a primitive conception of nature. On this
hypothesis, myths are a sublimation of the laws of biology, a picturesque
formulation of the cyclical movement of the universe: symbolic ritual, so
understood, has the function of perpetually renewing the actual life of every
day by keeping mankind in touch with the rhythm of physical existence -- the
classical theory of nature-myths and its counterpart in psycho-analysis both
point towards this conclusion. If it i
But in fact these theories fail to
take account of the real significance of symbols, whose function is to afford
us access through the visible world into a higher, transcendent plane of being.
Rudolf Otto rightly observed that there are particular symbols, such as the
boundless desert or the unfathomable night, whose echoes in the mind are
specifically 'numinous', and irreducible to other types of experience. Mircéa
Eliade has made masterly use of the same idea: he calls each of these
individual phenomena an hierophany, a manifestation of the holy, so that
one aspect or another of the divine being and activity is revealed in all of
them -power in the storm, constancy in the circling of the stars, inexhaustible
productive wealth in the rain and the sunshine. That theory of nature-myths is
at fault which would make of human symbolism nothing but a sublimation of
created biology. That which is revealed to us through these symbols i
There is an objective validity in
religiou
* * *
We have so far been concerned with
religiou
It has been
established that religiou
Yet, as we have said, the continuity of a thread of natural
truth in the religious order throughout all the varieties of paganism is
everywhere distorted by unnatural deviations.
The distinctive feature of a religious nature-myth, from this point of view, is that an hierophany is thereby frustrated; instead of leading up to an analogical apprehension of the transcendent Godhead, the process is arrested at the level of biological significance, and results in a mere ideal