Myth And Ritual In Christianity Part 10

Finally, the rites of the Incarnation reach their climax with the Feast of the Purification on February and, otherwise known as Candlemas. For at this time the Church blesses all the lights to be used in its ceremonies throughout the year, since it was at Christs Presentation in the Temple that Simeon called him "the Light to lighten the Gentiles, and to be the glory of thy people Israel", in the canticle Ntsnc dimittis which is now sung nightly at Compline:

Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace; according to thy word.

For mine eyes have seen thy salvation; which thou hast prepared before the face of all peoples.

To be a light to lighten the Gentiles; and to be the glory of thy people Israel.

As the choir chants this hymn, all the clergy and people a.s.sembled for Candlemas receive the blessed candles before the altar, and then go in procession with them around the church, singing:

0 daughter of Sion adorn thy bride chamber, and welcome Christ the King: greet Mary with an embrace, who is the gate of heaven; for it is she who bringeth the King of Glory, of the new light. She remains a virgin, bearing in her hands the Son begotten before the daystar; whom Simeon received in his arms, declaring him to the people as Lord of life and death, and Saviour of the world.

During the Ma.s.s which follows, all hold their lighted candles during the chanting of the Gospel as well as from the Elevation 1 Tsaiab 6o, used for the Lesson and Gradual of the Ma.s.s.

128 }bla ~ and Ritual in Christianity to the Communion, while the bread and wine-mystically changed into the Body and Blood of Christ-remain upon the altar. The Sun which first shone in the cave has now given forth an ocean of stars.

The entire theme of the Incarnation is the transformation of manhood into G.o.d-the birth or awakening of the divine and eternal nature in man as his true Self.

0 wondrous interchange! The Creator of man, kind, taking upon him a living body, vouchsafed to be born of a Virgin: and proceeding forth without seed as Man, hath bestowed upon us his own Deity (largitus est n.o.bis roam Deitatem).1

This, however reluctantly and grudgingly admitted by theology, is the actual dogma of the Incarnation, and the dogma is always that which const.i.tutes the authentic form of the myth-the rest being individual opinion. The dogma of the Incarnation, as fully formulated by the General Council of Chalcedon in A.D. 451, declares the Christ to be one Person in two Natures. The Personz is G.o.d the Son, who is, from all eternity, of the divine nature-"G.o.d of G.o.d, Light of Light, very G.o.d of very G.o.d". By reason of his Birth from the Virgin Mary he is also endowed with human nature and 1 Office of St. Mary on Sat.u.r.day, antiphon at the Hours. "Without seed" is the exaa equivalent of asamprajnata, the word which Patanjali employs for the state of consciousness, the sama'dhi, in which the divinity of the true Self (atman) is fully realized. It is described as a state of consciousness which is, figuratively speaking, perfectly empty-virgin, immaculate, and pure-since not a trace of "I" remains in it. This is not literal empty mindedness, but the equivalent of the Chinese wu-bsin ("no.mind") or wu-Wien ("no thought"= niruikalpa), and of the Christian agnosia ("unknowing") whereby G.o.d is truly known. In this state the mind is "emptied of the past" and of all "things" in the sense that it perceives the world of abstract construction for what it is-mays, measurements upon the Void. Instead, it perceives the world yathabbutam, i.e. just as it is in reality-existing undivided and undifferentiated in this eternal moment.

s "Person" is hypostasis, that which "under" (hypo) "stands" (stasis), i.e. the "ground" or "basis" of the being-in of er words, the Self, which in Sanskrit is the purusa (person) or iftman.

all that pertains to it, so that he is not only true G.o.d but also true--that is, complete and pefect-Man. But he is not, as the Nestorians believed, a human person. He is man, but not a man. The inference is obviously that personality does not belong to the perfection of human nature, being essentially a divine and not a human property.l But the importance of the truth that the Christ is Man and not a man is that the Incarnation of G.o.d is not something which comes to pa.s.s in a single, particular individual alone. Theological, as distinct from mythological, Christianity has always wanted to insist that such an Incarnation ocurred only with respect to the historical individual called Jesus of Nazareth. It has confused the true uniqueness of the Incarnation with mere historical abnormality. For the Incarnation is unique in the sense that it is the only real event, the only ocurrence which is Now, which is not past and abstract. It is thus the one creative and living act as distinct from dead fact, eternally happening in this moment. One would readily agree with the theologians that the Birth at Bethlehem is not simply-indeed not at all-the symbol of G.o.d incarnate as each and every man. There never was any question of Gad becoming each, a, or this particular man in the sense of any individual human personality. For there are no human personalities; at most one can say that there were such person, alities, every ego being a construct of memory only. But HeWho,Is is never at any time That-Which-Was. "Before Abraham was, I am."

It is true that the Binh of Christ is told as a history--that it happened in that particular place and that particular time, but history has an eternal significance only when it is also myth, 1 Human nature has personality (i.e. creative life and originality) only to the extent that it manifests the Creator and the Origin, the Person of the Eternal Word While every such manifestation is outwardly unique, the words "personality" and "originality' are utterly misused when applied to the super fi ial idiosyncracies of purely abstract egos. "Human personality'' is thus a contradiction in terms.

13o Myth and .Ritual in Christianity when the past fact symbolizes the timeless, present reality. Otherwise, its significance is merely temporal, since it is nothing but a past event whose effects must in time wear off, and pa.s.s into oblivion. To say that this historical event was the Incarnation of G.o.d is, quite necessarily, to say that its signifi, cance is eternal rather than temporal since G.o.d, the Eternal, is what it signifies. But it is almost nonsense to say that it is the only historical event which has this significance.

This "historical abnormality" version of the Incarnation was doubtless based, in the beginning, on the extreme insularity of the culture in which Christianity arose, since it knew of other cultures only as vague and legendary places from which merchant/adventurers brought such luxuries as silk and spices. It was thus unaware of the other Incarnationmyths of a stature equivalent to its own.i Furthermore, what had become, after the fourth century B.C., the extreme racial exclusivism of the Old Israel, became in turn the extreme spiritual exclusivism of the New Israel--the inferiority complex of a repressed nation becoming that of a repressed religion. In part, the notion of Jesus as the sole historical Incarnation was due to such a simple confusion as the appli, cation of the term "only,begotten Son" to Jesus as man, whereas it refers strictly to the Eternal Word "begotten before all ages".2 1 St Jerome, adu. Jouinianum i. 42, mentions the Virgin Birth of the Buddha, but of course knows nothing of Buddhism, of the cultural and spiritual context which would give this myth a stature equivalent to the story of Christ. The Buddha was born miraculously though not, expressly, virginally, though this may be presumed in that he descended from the Tus.h.i.+ta heaven, entered the womb of his mother Maya in the form of a glorious white elephant, and was delivered painlessly from her side. According to Ashvaghosha's life of the Buddha, Fo-SbodHing,Tsin King, his mother Maya "was beautiful as the watevlily and pure in mind as the lotus. As the Queen of Heaven, she lived on earth, untainted by desire, and immaculate." At the Buddha's birth, "the child came forth from the womb like the rising sun.... Celestial music rang through the air and the angels rejoiced with gladness."

2 Cf John r: 14. Even if one were to take a literal and legal view of the authority of Scripture, this notion could not even be justified by Acts 4: 12, In later times the theory that G.o.d has been incarnate but once in history has been defended for the curious reason that it illumines the special value of history, stressing the eternal value of unique and particular facts. It is felt that incarnations which came to pa.s.s more or less regularly-Krishna, the Buddha, Jesus, Ramakrishna-would render the act of incarnation almost non/historical", like the recurrent cycle of the seasons. But if one wishes to advocate this special respect for history, it is hardly proper to base one's version of the facts upon one's theory of the value of history. Besides being a begging of the question, it is also a profound disrespect for scientific historical study to argue from the theory to the event, saying that because history is deeply significant therefore there must have been but one historical incarnation. Furthermore, this point of view involves the principle that cyclic and repet.i.tive events are without historical significance, which is only to say that the Western view of time and history is linear---that the course of events is a series of significant steps towards G.o.d. Repet.i.tions are not significant because they lack linear direction. But this is again to determine ones version of history by a particular philosophy of history and theory of time.

Yet here is another example of the marvelous way in which myth continues to be revealing even when distorted. The very insistence on the one historical incarnation as a unique step in a course of temporal events leading to the future Kingdom of G.o.d reveals the psychology of Western culture most clearly. It shows a mentality for which the present, real world is, in itself, joyless and barren, without value. The present can have value only in terms of meaning-if, like a word, it points to something beyond itself. This "beyond which past and present events "mean" is the future. Thus the Western intellectual, as well as the literate common man, finds his life meaningless since the Name of Jesus is always to be understood as the "spirit" of Jesus, which would, ofcourse, be that Eternal Word which is embodied in every Incarnation or avatar.

1 32 Myth and .Ritual in Christianity except in terms of a promising future. But the future is a "tomorrow which never comes", and for this reason Western culture has a "frantic" character. It is a desperate rush in pursuit of an everrreceding "meaning", because the promising future is precisely the famous carrot which the clever rider dangles before his donkey's nose from the end of his whip. Tragically enough, this frantic search for G.o.d, for the ideal life, in the future renders the course of history anything but a series of unique steps towards a goal. Its real result is to make history repeat itself faster and more furiously, confusing "progress" with increased agitation.

But the Western disillusion with past and present events-excluding the Incarnation-is based on a sound intuition. We said that it seeks for the meaning of events, as if they were words: and, indeed, this is exactly what they are. In so far as we are aware of life as history only, as a series of facts, the life that we know is an abstraction without real value or joy. This will include our specious "present", which is not the true present but a memory of the immediate past-the so.called nwnc fuens as distinct from the nunc stans, the present which is always flying away as distinct from that which is eternal. Our plight is that in failing to be aware of the true present we look for the meaning of events in the future, and it disappoints us perpetually because it is as abstract as the past. This is the folly of "laying up treasure upon earth", that is to say, in time, and of "being anxious for the morrow", for the Kingdom of Heaven is not future, within time, but now, above time.'

St. Paul's "redeeming the time" is often understood to mean that, through Christ, the course of time is redeemed so that it leads to G.o.d, and not just on and on. This is not quite the sense of the pa.s.sage in Epbesians 5: 14-16, "Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light. See, then, that 3 e walk circ.u.mspectly, not as fools but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil." Arising from the dead is ceasing to identify the Self with the past as a result of which time "leads to" or "ends in" Christ, not in the future, but now. Cf. Lynn White, "Christian Myth and Christian History," in Journal of the History of Ideas, iii. 2 (New York, 1942), p. 145-an excellent discussion of this whole problem of "the course of time" in Christian thought.

When, therefore, man awakens to the true present he finds his true Self, that wherein the reality of his life actually consists, as distinct from the "old man", the If that was and is not. He is then "no longer I, but Christ", and this "Christening" of mankind is the clear sense of the whole symbolism of the Incarnation, apart from which it is difficult to see how there can be any meaning in the important conception of Christ as the Second Adam. "For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. "1 If the First Adam communicates sin to Al, the Second must communicate divinity to all-a point which was clear even to the earlier theologians.

But we hold that to the whole of human nature the whole essence of the G.o.dhead was united.... He in his fulness took upon himself me in my fulness, and was united whole to whole that he might in his grace bestow salvation on the whole man.... Further, the mind has become the seat of the divinity united with it in sub/ sistence, just as is evidently the case with the body too.2

Patristic literature is, indeed, rich in its testimony to the truth that in the Incarnation G.o.d "so united himself to us and us to him, that the descent of G.o.d to the human level was at the same time the ascent of man to the divine level."3 St. Cyril of Alexandria explains the symbolism of the New Adam thus:

We are all in Christ, and the totality of mankind comes to life again in him. For he is called the new Adam because by sharing in our nature he has enriched all unto happiness and glory, as the first Adam filled all with

i x Corinthians Is: za. Cf also xs: 4s, "The first man Adam was trade a living soul (psyche), the last Adam a life giving spirit (pneuma)." Note the contrast between psyche and pneuma, nefesh and ruacb, ego and true Self: 9 St. John of Damascus, De Fide Orthodoxa iii. 6.

8 St. Leo, Serm. VII de Nativitate Damini, ii. Cf. also his Serm. LXXIII, iv: "We have been trade one Body with the Son of G.o.d, and by him placed at the right hand of the Father."

Myth and Ritual in Christianity corruption and ignominy. Thus by dwelling in one, the Word dwelt in all, so that, the one being const.i.tuted the Son of G.o.d in power, the same dignity might pa.s.s to the whole human race.

Perhaps the point could hardly be put more strongly than in the words of St. Maximus of Turin:

In the Saviour we have all risen, we have all been restored to life, we have all ascended into heaven. For a portion of the flesh and blood of each one of us is in the man Christ. Therefore, where a portion of me reigns, I believe that I reign; where my blood rules, I conceive that I rule; where my flesh is glorified, I know that I am glorious.

Likewise St. Gregory of n.a.z.ianzus maintains that G.o.d became man "to sanctify man, and to be, as it were, a leaven for the entire ma.s.s; and by joining himself to what has been condemned, to free the whole from d.a.m.nation. "3 For "from the whole of human nature, to which was joined divinity, arose, as the first fruit of the common ma.s.s, the man who is in Christ, by whom all humanity was united to divinity."

Naclantus even goes so far as to stress the still deeper truth that, by virtue of the Incarnation, we have become not only of one nature but also of one Person with Christ:

He not only is clothed, sheltered, and fed in us: "As long as you did it unto one of the least of these my brethren, you did it unto me"; but we are reputed to be one and the same Person as he, and we receive his

In loan. Evans., i. 9. 24. St. Cyril returns constantly to this theme: "We were crucified with him when his flesh was crucified; for in a sense it contained all nature, just as when Adam incurred condemnation the whole of nature contracted the disease of his curse in him." (In Epist. ad Rom., vi.) 2 Horn. VI in Pascha.

Or. x.x.x, xxi. in MPG x.x.xvi, p. 132.

4 Or. de verbis i Cor. 15, in MPG xliv, p. 1313.

throne.... And thus at last, from having been adopted sons, we become in a sense natural sons, and we call to the Father not one by grace but, as it were, by natural right i

For "he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit,"2 that is, one and the same Self or Person, and it is with this union of the divine and the human in mind that wine and water are together poured into the chalice at Ma.s.s, with the prayer

Grant that, by the mystery of this water and wine, we may be made partakers of his divinity who vouch/ safed to become partaker of our humanity.

The feeling that the Incarnation has, in principle, already achieved this union is the clearest indication of its mythological character-of the fact that, as a story, it is the outward and visible symbol of a perennial truth about man. For upon the historical figure of Jesus the "common man" has projected symbols referring to the inmost, unconscious depths of his own nature. For this reason the Christ of Catholic dogma is a far more powerful conception than the rationalized "Jesus of history". The latter is a mere preacher and exemplar of morals who, like all such, can only suggest superficial transformations of conduct which do not affect the inner core of our being. But the transforming power of the myth depends upon a full and effective realization of its meaning, which is something very much more than a devout fascination for the numinous quality of its symbols.

Yet the full sense of the myth comes to light only as it is seen

De Regno Christi, from Thoma.s.sinus, De Incarnatione viii. 9. 18. To "call to the Father by natural right" means to have the same relations.h.i.+p to the Father which is enjoyed by G.o.d the Son as the Second Person of the Trinity. Some modern theologians have argued that so substantial an ident.i.ty between man and G.o.d would destroy the possibility of love between the two, reducing all to a "meaningless monism". But by the same argument it would have to follow that there could be no love between the Persons of the Trinity, since all Three are One G.o.d! 2 r Corinthians 6: 19.

ro 136 Iblytb and Ritual in Christianity in the spirit of a true catholicity-quod sernper, quad ubique, quoa ab omnibus, of the truth held always, everywhere, and by all-which is neither the official ideology of a "party religion" not the lowest/common/denominator faith of a statistical demo, cracy. That which has been held "always, everywhere, and by all" is the one common realization, doctrine, and myth which has appeared with consistent unanimity in every great culture, without benefit of historical contacts between the various traditions. It was even obvious to St. Augustine, though he later retracted the statement, that the very thing now called the Christian religion was not wanting among the ancients from the beginning of the human race, until Christ came in the flesh, after which the true religion, which already existed, began to be called `Christian ." In the light of such a catholicity the Virginborn One, who is both G.o.d and Man, is that uncaused Reality which is both the timeless and the present, which is simultaneously the true life of man and of all. Every avatar, every incarnation of the "only/begotten Son speaks in the name of this "one/and/only Self who is YHVH, I am.

I am the way, the truth, and the life.... I am the resurrection and the life.... I am the door.... Before Abraham was, I am.'

I am the Self in the heart of all beings; I am the beginning, the middle, and the very end of beings.... I am the origin of all. . . . I am the father of this world.... I am light in moon and sun. . . . I am the insight of the wise.2

I was in many a guise before I was disenchanted, I was the hero in trouble, I am old and I am young. ... I am universal 3

I John z4 6, II: 25, 10: 7, 8: 58.