The Trinity And The Magnolia Blossom

 

                     1  Experiences of divine Presence pointing towards “Trinity”

In the Imitation of Christ we read, “I would rather love the Trinity than define it.” Indeed, the love of God is, with the love of our fellow human beings, our highest and most noble duty, and the main source of happiness. As for “defining” the Trinity, any attempt to do so seems foolish, and reminds me of St. Augustine’s famous insight that he gained on a beach, watching a small boy dig a hole in the sand. As I recall, St. Augustine asked the boy, “What are you doing?”and the child said, “I am digging a hole, and then I will put the ocean into it.” Although the quotation may not be exactly correct, one gets the point, and so did the saintly bishop: Trying to define God is as foolish as the boy’s attempt to put the ocean into a hole. Indeed, it is more foolish, for the hole can more easily contain the entire ocean than a verbal formulations could “define God,” or the human mind could comprehend the mystery we call God.

For the past twenty years or so, on the rare occasions when someone has asked me about “the Trinity,” or I must preach on Trinity Sunday, I have referred to certain concrete experiences, which over the centuries provoked theological reflection, and by which the dogma of “the Trinity” gradually emerged. For one can discern that the ancient and medieval Trinitarian doctrine of the Orthodox and Catholic churches contains within it a variety of spiritual experiences; these experiences helped to induce some of the Church Fathers to develop the dogma of the “Trinity.” Over the years I have sought to summarize the experiences, trying to help parishioners understand them, but given the lack of response, I doubt that what I said has made much of an impression. I have explained that the earliest Christians, including the Apostle Paul and the evangelists, experienced God as personal and dwelling in them, and they identified this divine Presence as Christ, as the Risen LORD. And these men had numerous experiences of impersonal divine Presence—of love, joy, peace, forgiveness, communion; of fervent prayer, visions, dreams, gifts of prophesy and of preaching, of speaking in tongues, and so on—and they identified these spiritual phenomena as “the holy spirit.” At the same time, textual evidence shows that the Apostles and evangelists were aware that there was far more to God than they experienced. In other words, their experiences opened them to divine Presence, rather than close off their minds in self-satisfied certainty. In other words, they were spiritualists, but not Gnostics. The faith-awareness of God beyond all experiences of divine Presence—beyond Christ and his pneumatic presence—they called “Father,” presumably borrowing Jesus’ primary symbol for the God with whom he communed, about whom he preached, and whom he embodied in his life and death. Out of these experiences, and similar ones in countless Christians in the first several centuries after Christ, intelligent minds coined the term “Trinitas”  (Three-One, Trinity) to pull together the rich variety of spiritual experiences at work in disciples of Jesus. 

Presently I still think that this account of the meaning of the symbol “Trinity” makes sense, and it is empirically verifiable on the basis of our best sources, namely, the earliest writings of Christians: the letters of the Apostle Paul, the four canonical Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, and various other letters and documents contained in the body of work known since about the third century as “the New Testament,” that is, “the New Covenant,” grounded as it is in God’s covenant to Moses and the Chosen People. Good sources exist that pull together early reflections on these and similar experiences, and one can follow, if one is so inclined, the gradual emergence of the dogma of the Trinity through the writings of the Fathers. 

After centuries of using the symbol “Trinity” to speak of God, the symbol achieved perhaps its clearest account by the finest systematically theological mind of the Church, St. Thomas Aquinas, as the great teacher discoursed on the Trinity in his major writings. One should note, however, that in his comprehensive Summa Theologiae, St. Thomas first explores the reality of God analogically—with his famous “five ways” that God is known in reality, with his clear presentation of God as “the sheer act of to be,” as “to be subsisting through itself,” with accounts of God’s simplicity, eternity, and so on, before introducing the questions on God as “Trinity.” And so well embedded has the symbol of the Trinity been in Christian consciousness over many centuries, that even the Protestant Reformers—mainly Luther and then Calvin—insisted that their adherents accept the dogma of the Trinity. For although these Reformers rejected Church authority and much of its highly accomplished theological developments, and claimed to base their teachings solely on the Bible (sola scriptura), the post-scriptural dogma of the Trinity was maintained and even vehemently insisted upon, despite the fact that the symbol occurs nowhere in “scripture alone,” but clearly emerged in and through the life of the early Christians outside and beyond the confines of a book.The point here is that the Trinitarian dogma had been inculcated for centuries, and remained active in the thinking of those who deliberately rejected much of the centuries-old Catholic teaching.  For example, despite his claims to be biblically grounded, John Calvin permitted a man, Michael Servetus, to be burned at the stake as a “heretic” for rejecting the Trinitarian dogma. As Calvin wrote, in dealing with such heretics, one must “forget all humanity when fighting for God’s glory.” This attitude no doubt reminds one of other religious fanatics and ideologues, including some active in the world today. And lest one think that I am singling out the Calvinists for persecuting “heretics,” Catholic church authorities were simultaneously seeking the same physician-theologian, Michael Servetus, for persecution for “heresy.” The quality of the man’s thought may have been poor, and his thinking on the Trinity may have been confused and misleading, but one would think that stupidity or foolishness do not justify burning someone alive at the stake.  

                                           2  Lack of interest in the “Trinity”

Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant teaching on the Trinity is commonly accepted Christian dogma; the “Trinity” is not en empirically verifiable truth. I dare say that no one can experience God as “the Trinity,” although, as noted above, Christ as the risen LORD was experienced by disciples; a rich variety of religious experiences were reflectively ascribed to the “holy spirit;” and the early Christians sought to preserve their awareness of God beyond what could be experienced personally or impersonally by the use of the symbol “Father.” Employing the logical part of reason, Church Fathers deduced that “the Father is God, the Son is God, the Spirit is God, and yet there are not three gods, but One God,” as stated in the so-called “Athanasian Creed.” Although the Trinity as such is not known through experience, there have been some occasions in history—quite rare, as far as I know—in which someone claimed to have “seen the Trinity,” or had some special communication with Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. A relatively well-known example of this claim is that of the child, Joseph Smith. As he wrote about an experience in his childhood, three men, identified as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, appeared in Joseph’s bedroom, standing around his bed. Such an encounter, real or imagined, would more fittingly be term “tri-theism,” or a belief in three distinct gods or divine beings, than remotely compare to the meaning of “Trinity” in Catholic teaching. The notion of three separate beings (however divine) is distinctly not part of the dogma of the Trinity. Young Joseph Smith’s “experience” illustrates, if nothing else, the way popular imagination, including that of a child, can misunderstand the Christian symbol of “Trinity.” Based on years of pastoral ministry, I can say that it is not only children in the churches who misunderstand Trinitarian teaching as Tri-Theism, with three separate “persons” (more or less human in every sense) called “God.”Frankly, it can be embarrassing, more than illuminating, to hear ways in which “the faithful” can misunderstand the dogma of the Trinity. But then, the symbol seems to lend itself to misunderstanding, unless one has undergone considerable philosophical and theological education. Few of the faithful with whom I have spoken over the years, however, has expressed a desire to ground himself or herself in philosophy and theology, let alone engage in a study on “the Trinity.” Trinitarian symbology fails to ignite interest.

Given the difficulties in communicating to the faithful a reasonable understanding of the meaning of the dogma of the Trinity, it may well be the better part of prudence not to speak about it. Then again, the ancient Creeds often recited in Catholic and many Protestant churches employ distinctly Trinitarian language, as derived from the fourth and fifth century Church Councils at Nicaea and later Ephesus. In the Creed, Christ is unmistakably identified as “God from God, light from light, true God from true God,” and the Spirit is identified as “proceeding from the Father” in the original and Orthodox Creed, or “proceeding from the Father and the Son” in the western Christian creeds (Catholic and Protestant). As noted, rarely have I heard a Christian ask, “What is meant by the term `Trinity,’ or why did the dogma develop originally? Given the lack of questioning—nay, the silence of boredom—perhaps one ought not to try to throw light on that which does not attract intellectual or spiritual interest. Even more broadly, we wonder: Is not a lack of questioning about the things of God a common characteristic of life in the churches in recent decades? Do not many Christians display more interest in entertainment, sports, and making money than in seeking God? Perhaps we fail to engage the minds of the faithful in ways that truly inspire them to “seek God and live.” We in the churches have done a good job, it seems, of making God boring. 

                                  3  Experiencing God as present and beyond

Although one cannot experience God as Trinity directly, one can experience God. And a man or woman can surely have experiences similar to those of the earliest disciples of Jesus: One can discover by faith the presence of the living God in Jesus; one can feel uncaused peace and joy, and ascribe such experiences to “the Holy Spirit;” and one can have sufficient humility to realize that beyond anything experienced of God’s Presence—however good and beautiful—there remains far more to love and to know in the God beyond all experience, and one can call this transcendent reality “Father,” employing the term sanctified by the use given it by Jesus himself. 

And a man or woman who is open to the reality of God, and not content with mere credal beliefs, dogmatic teachings, ritualistic worship—and far more deadening, contemporary forms of self-absorption—may have diverse experiences of God. And these experiences, if they are genuine and not spurious, should lead one to wonder and to seek, to gain flashing insights, and to love the unseen One called “God.” There are, I submit, two primary tests of genuine experiences of God: that one becomes more open to loving God and to seeking more avidly the truth about God; and that one is inspired to love one’s fellow human beings, and indeed, all creatures, as sharers in the One Divinity. If further seeking of God and genuine charity do not result from one’s “spiritual experiences,” I submit that they are not truly of God, but egophanies—manifestations of the self. Jesus gave us the simple test of truth: “By their fruits you will know them.” A human being who does not seek God actively reveals a soul that is spiritually dull, more or less anesthetized; self-imprisoned; and one who does not live a life of genuine love to one’s fellow beings “does not know God, for God is love,” as the evangelist John tells us in his first epistle. 

God comes as and when God wills. In early Christian terms, this coming of God is called His Parousia, meaning God’s Presence. Among more fundamentalistic Christians, the Parousia was thrown out into an imagined future, sometimes imagined as the “Second Coming of Christ.” Even the Apostle Paul dabbled in this apocalyptic conception according to his earliest extant letters. But as one sees from Romans, II Corinthians, and Philippians (not to mention evidence from still later “Pauline” texts, such as Colossians and Ephesians), the Apostle’s earlier expectation of the Parousia of Christ in the future was strongly toned down, even replaced, by his expectation to die and “be with the LORD” before the End. More importantly by far, Paul and the writers of the four canonical Gospels clearly experienced Christ’s Presence, his Parousia, in their own souls, and in brothers and sisters “in Christ Jesus.” St. Paul’s letters are replete with evidence of his experiences of God’s Presence in him, which he often symbolizes or interprets as Christ: “God was pleased to reveal His Son in me” (Galatians 1); “Am I not an Apostle? Have I not seen the LORD?” (I Corinthians 15). And in a fuller passage: “We all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the LORD, are being changed into his likeness from one degree of glory to another; [this comes] from the LORD, the Spirit” (II Corinthians 3. God shines into Paul’s soul in the person of the Risen Christ. The experiences of “God’s spirit,” or “the holy spirit,” are sprinkled throughout the New Testament documents, with frequent appearances in the letters of Paul, the writings of Luke (Gospel and Acts), and the Johannine writings. To give but one clear example: “No one can say `Jesus is LORD,’ writes St. Paul, "except by the holy spirit.” In even more familiar words from St. John’s Gospel, “The flesh is useless; the spirit gives life,” and “Those who worship God must worship in spirit and in truth.”  

God appears as and when God wills.Our task is to behold the glory of the LORD, as it is revealed to us. And the recipient of such experiences of divine grace must not to forget what one is given, but think about the experiences “with thanksgiving.”  

It was early April of 1979, I believe, when I was summoned to the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., to interview for a position teaching political philosophy in the university’s Department of Politics. Early one morning I was walking on the campus, in a large open area between several buildings and the immense and imposing Shrine of the Immaculate Conception on the west side of campus. I had been in the church, and found it quite impersonal and unappealing. Although a Christian, I was not a Catholic at the time, and perhaps was unable to appreciate the kind of authoritarian Jesus portrayed in a huge mosaic inside the dome of the upper church. Inside the cold stone church I felt enclosed and humanly diminished, and so it was with a sense of release and quiet joy that I escaped from the tomb into the land of the living outdoors. The air was misty, as a light rain had been falling. A dim light filtered through the heavy air. I was vaguely, probably nervously, thinking about my upcoming presentation on my doctoral dissertation. I had written on “The Experiential Foundation of Christian Political Philosophy,” and was unsure of the kind of reception to expect. From the moment on the previous day when I first saw the campus of Catholic University, I felt heartsick, as I found the place so utterly unappealing, standing as it does in the midst of a busy, run-down, and quite ugly American city. Coming from Santa Barbara, California, “the nation’s capital” looked and felt all the more unnatural, congested, run down, and just plain ugly. With the monumental and authoritarian Shrine behind me, I walked slowly through the lush, green grass, admiring as I walked several magnolia trees, which at the time were blossoming. It has been many years since I have seen a magnolia, but as I recall, the leaves had not yet appeared, but only the white blossoms, or so I remember them. 

One blossom caught my attention, and I wanted to see it more closely. Slowly I approached the tree, and looked at the flower, which was just below my eye level. With my poor vision, I drew near to the blossom, and looked at it. What happened in this one moment came to mean more to me than anything else that happened during the visit to Washington—including getting offered the teaching position. Positions come and go. But what I experienced was worth far more than any job, or a church building, or everything I have ever seen in institutional religion.I looked at the flower, and thought, “It is beautiful!” All at once, in a sudden burst of insight, I glimpsed the Beautiful itself. In this moment, I saw not just the beautiful flower, but in and through the single beauty, I beheld with my intellect Beauty Itself, which I recognized or interpreted as God. Divine Beauty was incarnated in that magnolia blossom. In its openness, purity, simplicity, that single blossom at once contained and pointed to the Beautiful, or what by long tradition we call “God.”  

I was filled with awe and joy. In that moment, my spirit was opened up, and I beheld the glory of God as if I had seen Christ himself. “Everything transitory is but a likeness,” as Goethe declares at the end of Faust. The flower was transitory—and not transitory. In the visionary moment, it was eternal, beyond change and the ravages of time. In the moment, the blossom was eternal, and a door of vision into the living and true God. What I did not find or feel in the churches, I saw and felt in the eternal beauty of the one lone magnolia blossom.

                                4 Some further reflections on the Magnolia Blossom

As written, I have recalled the experience of seeing divine Beauty in one beautiful blossom, in one “thing” that was more than a “thing,” a divine creature, filled with grace—that is, divine Presence—and leading the beholder to glimpse eternal Beauty. In this recall, I have already allowed some reflections to emerge, because the context of the experience may have been significant: that as I had not felt anything of God in the lifeless stone edifice, the overbearing Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, I immediately and unmistakably beheld divine glory in the simple flower. The contrast is significant, I believe.  We often look for God in the wrong places. Perhaps to some, God will appear even in the lifeless church. Indeed, some months later, while serving as an assistant professor at Catholic University, I would enter into the basement of the Shrine, and pray in a small chapel with several icons—one of the Virgin, one of St. John the Baptist. And I felt “the peace of God that surpassing all understanding” in this small, seemingly insignificant chapel. (I never experienced anything but poor acoustics and annoyance at the muscle-bound, Fascistic conception of Jesus in the huge upper church. De gustibus non disputandem. “Matters of taste ought not be disputed.”) To this day, I am grateful for the vision of God granted me in that April morning—God’s incarnating Presence in that single magnolia blossom. The softly white, delicate blossom, was as pure and lovely as Mary, and accomplished for me here and now what the Virgin has done for millions of human beings through the ages: bringing forth Christ to a longing, loving soul. The God seen is the God that becomes incarnate in the man or woman gracefully sharing in the divinely-given vision. 

What do such experiences teach about God, and about symbols such as “the Trinity”? For one thing, the experience of God’s Beauty is humbling, and awe-inspiring, and reminds one how little and weak our human understanding is. The vision of Beauty opens up the heart, and in time, leads one to reflect with some gentle sorrow on the transitory quality of beauty in this world. But the vision also fills one with awe towards the never-fading Beauty whose vision is eternal life. 

Comparing the doctrine of the Trinity (at least as presently heard in the churches) with the vision of Beauty, one can tentatively say: What human beings construct intellectually, with elaborate and complicated doctrines, can be communicated more effectively and immediately by the sheer gift of God’s Presence breaking in right now, in a single moment, “in the twinkling of an eye,” even in a flower. Human beings develop the doctrines. Natural processes bring forth the flower. But God gives the vision in which the blossom or flower is not only what it is in space and time—a “thing,”a lovely creature—but also simultaneously a bearer of the eternal, undying God. How such experiences can be rationally linked with the symbol of the Trinity, I do not know for certain. One could piously say that “the Holy Spirit moved me to see the flower, and to behold God,” and that may well be true. I would say: God revealed God to me in and through the magnolia blossom. Or perhaps more precisely: God revealed God’s eternal Beauty to me in and through the magnolia blossom. This is equally important, and to be borne in mind: In revealing divine Beauty present in and through the blossom, I had no doubt that the beauty of the flower was only an incarnation, an instant, of the unbounded sea of divine Beauty. The Unbounded was present in the seemingly bounded. Nothing contains or holds God in a definite way. Nothing holds God unchangingly: not a blossom, not a dogma. The Beauty and the Mystery of divine reality is boundless. And this vast sea of divinity is forever beyond human grasp or control; one may behold lovingly, but not contain or arrest. God flows on.  

Each soul must long for the vision of God, and prepare for it, if preparation is indeed possible. Perhaps the best preparation is a longing to love and to know God as God is, and not allow one’s conception of God to be confined to a book, to a dogma, or even to a God-given vision in a blossom. Hence, I suggest that to the symbol of the Tri-une God, one must add many and various experiences of divinity realized in time. Many human beings have glimpsed the divine reality somewhere—in something, in a quiet grove, on a mountain, in their soul, in a gardener. The world is indeed full of divinity, of the God who is at once both present and ever beyond our boundaries. “Quick now, here now, always—a condition of complete simplicity (costing not less than everything)…”  

To the God beyond all formulations, beyond all beliefs, beyond all that can be known or conceived or felt, I give heartfelt thanks. For allowing me to have such experiences of divine Presence, as I was granted on this one day in April, while looking at a Magnolia Blossom, I feel humbled and truly grateful. And to this prayer of thanks I add words I heard perhaps a year or so before this vision was granted: “Your life-work is to have such experiences, and to seek to understand them.” This is the life of philosophy, so well embodied in Socrates and Plato; and this is also the life of the Benedictine, St. Anselm, with his fides quaerens intellectum—“faith seeking understanding.” Would that each of us had the faith to seek the One seeking us.

The Imprisoning World Of Academia vs. Mental And Spiritual Liberation

Why is it that in reading so much of modern philosophy and more popular thinking from Descartes to the present, I have often felt as though my mind were being imprisoned? As enlightening as Descartes, Kant, Hegel, and others can be for a searching mind, these and many writers restrict their own consciousness, and through their writings and teachings, export these restricted conceptions of reality to others. Rather than engaging in philosophy as an act of mental and spiritual liberation, they seem imaginatively to create mental constructions that restrict their own and the readers’ consciousness. In effect, by their own obscured views and visions, they obscure that of their readers who uncritically imbibe their thoughts.

This experience of imprisonment at the hands of modern philosophers has been even more intense when reading twentieth-century derivatives from modern philosophy, and especially the writings of social scientists. It is not only professors such as the Harvard psychologist, B. F. Skinner, who openly seek to close off the human mind—to destroy the “soul of man,” as Skinner wishes, but so many so-called “political scientists” and “social scientists” who engage in mental games that make the attentive reader feel divorced from reality as he or she reads them. For years as an undergraduate and graduate student, I studied political science at universities; for years I read the works assigned to the extent that I could bear doing so; and for years these writings made me long for far richer pastures of the mind, far more open territory for exploration. Is it surprising that so many young persons become restless and seek to break out of the mental prisons being imposed on them? The mental disorders being inculcated in the young show up in waves of anxiety and depression; in escapes into fantasy worlds of alcohol and drug abuse, and mindless video games; in various political and social activisms; in pornography and promiscuity; in open rebellion and violence; in rape, murder, suicide. Campus life in America often has the distinct and disturbing smell of a cesspool. The American educational establishment, aided by mindless mass media, as well as by diseased and very low quality mass-produced music, has been wounding or killing the minds of youth for decades, and the resulting diseases show up to anyone with eyes to see.

I detest mental prisons. How I survived in social science, earning a doctorate along the way, took considerable perseverance. Often I felt like throwing down the books to flee their restrictive horizons—their nonsense, foolishness, blindness, spiritual sickness. I endured the mental and spiritual agony in part to earn a doctorate for employment, but also to try to understand something about reality. Against the restrictive mental tortures of social science and modern philosophy, I was forced to question, to challenge, to seek out far better guides for the life of the mind than these shrunken souls could provide. Never will I forget the joy of liberation I felt when I first read Plato’s Republic in its entirety in a graduate course in the history of political theory. This joy was intellectual and spiritual, a sense of being liberated from the bindings of mere opinions, and being guided by a first-rate intellect into far more open pastures. Socrates-Plato led, and I willingly and joyfully followed, engaged in a quest which seems to have no end, but grows clearer and more joyful along the way. Plato introduced me, not to mere opinions and mental prisons, but to the joyful quest for the truth about reality, moved by openness to the vision of the Good, and inspired by the example of Socrates.

In tasting spiritual-intellectual freedom, one does not want to be re-bound in the prison-caves of human verbiage. Human beings desire to know the truth about the reality in which we find ourselves. In Aristotle’s famous words opening up his study of “first philosophy,” “All human beings by nature desire to know.” We want “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,” to use courtly language. If that is true, why then are so many of our contemporaries content to stay within constricting “world-views,” or simply give up the search altogether? Mental drugs have their appeal, and evidence of refusal to search for the truth is all around. In my twenties, I noted how so many fellow students seemed not to care about seeking truth, but “having fun” now, and making money later; and the way to find employment was to accept without challenging whatever the professors spoon-fed down their throats. American academia breeds mental midgets who are cut off from the open fields of reality. But the students themselves all-too-willingly play the game, because they want the goodies: better grades; good recommendations; making connections; getting along with their peers; employment at more prestigious colleges, or in better-paying jobs. Little by little, a fairly inquiring mind can let itself become tied up, bound by the chains of received opinions and highly restrictive mental horizons.

Recalling what I experienced during many years in the American educational establishment, elementary and secondary education do not feel as restricting or as destructive as was the so-called “education” delivered up at universities as an undergraduate and graduate student. Indeed, as a youth I had some excellent teachers in elementary school, and some good ones in high school. Although I had the privilege to study with a few professors of high quality, most of the professors I encountered in “higher education” seemed oblivious to reality as a whole, boxed in by ideological world views and by habits of refusal to open up to divine Presence. The ultimate truth of reality, the truth of the divine working in and through everything that exists, was never mentioned, never acknowledged. Most of the professors gave the impression of living in their own egos and thoughts, in their own more or less self-imprisoned worlds. If they engaged in openness to divine Presence, they kept this essential part of reality to themselves, and hence gave the students one loud lesson: God is irrelevant for human life. Although campus life was often very noisy, the silence on God was deadening. The one taboo was to admit that one was open to the truth about God—not as a “true believer” might be, but as a human being desiring to know reality.

In short, the years spent at universities were experienced as more mentally deadening than was high school. On the other hand, my questioning of what I was being taught became more developed, more acute, during my late teens and twenties. A crucial turning point for my own mental life occurred during my first term at the University of Washington. The watch-word on campus in the late ’60’s was “everything is relative,” and this slogan was used to disparage anything and everything to aid in so-called “human liberation.” During my first quarter, in the summer of 1969, fresh out of high school in Montana, I took an anthropology course in which the professor inculcated in her students the truth that there is no truth, that everyone’s opinions are as true as everyone else’s, and therefore we must tolerate others and different “ways of life.” One day, as she had us sit in class and peel an orange for “the experience,” the professor spoke excitedly of her experiments with hallucinogenic drugs, with LSD. And of course, she assured students that “everything is relevant,” that there is no right or wrong in themselves, but only what one thinks is right or wrong. And students repeated her words outside of class in a chorus of approval, because it meant that they were autonomous—free from all rules, all laws, from all authorities, from parents, from any so-called “god.” With gratitude I recall the afternoon when I sat in my dormitory room, in what I recall as a darkened room, and kept pondering in my mind the assertion, “Everything is relative.” Into my thoughts came a question: “Relative to what?” I did not dismiss the question, but let it stand. Then suddenly, at once, my mind glimpsed something that I cannot truly put into words, but to which I can refer: I saw with the intellect, in a single moment, that everything is indeed relative. Everything is relative to the One, to what is called “the Absolute,” or God. Suddenly I saw and understood in a flash that everything that exists is dependent on, caused by, that which is called God. This single insight was the beginning of my intellectual conversion, and for it I am truly thankful. It did not come from what I was taught, but from searching for the truth about a relatively mindless slogan: “Everything is relative.” After this flash of insight, I have seen everything as relative to God, and I understand clearly that there is no other absolute and unconditioned reality in this world: not self, ego, law, government, church, clergy, professor, bible, dogma. Everything is relative to what simply is.

Once I experienced some mental liberation, then I realized how imprisoning and deadening mass education is. For those who do not question the fundamentals of what they are being taught, education feels acceptable and reasonably beneficial. But if one begins to experience inner liberation, and undergoes what Plato called the “turning around of the soul,” the perigoge, then one knows how truly bound he or she is and has been. Before the turning around, I may have considered my education fairly mediocre (although I fortunately had some very good teachers), but I did not realize how utterly restricting these mental worlds were. Tasting freedom in the spirit, one experiences bindings and mental drugs for what they really are.

What can or should be said about my years in Christian churches? After all, it is not only the American educational establishment that binds up students and makes them mental midgets. The churches have surely played a role in restricting spiritual and mental horizons. Fortunately I was not raised in a fundamentalistic church, nor in an authoritarian church, so the dead weight of “the Bible” or “the Church says” was not dumped onto my little shoulders. I was spared such deadening weights. In time, however, I entered a highly restrictive Lutheran church, with its “sola scriptura” and with Luther’s attitude towards “that whore, reason,” and with the damaging creed recited every week, “Man is by nature sinful and unclean.” Fortunately I sensed real spiritual and intellectual problems in such nonsense and got out of the box before my spirit was killed. I entered the Catholic Church in part because I considered it far broader and more liberating in its teachings. And generally, it is, or can be. But in time I also learned at close quarters how authoritarian an institution the Church can be and often is, and how Catholics in relatively higher places often squelch the Spirit lest the boat be uncomfortably rocked. As I recently wrote, Catholicism (that is, “Roman Catholicism”) is largely a static religion, and many Catholics—at least in the hierarchy—do not encourage genuine questioning, and restrict “the faithful” to the confines deemed fitting and comfortable to an aging clergy. And yet, within the churches—Orthodox, Catholic, some of the Protestant communities—one finds men and women who long for truth about God and reality, and who develop lives of prayer, loving service, and genuine meditation. So all in all, the churches are “mixed bags.”

No institution can liberate a human mind. Each person must ultimately learn to question, to seek, to think for himself or herself. Either one keeps tuning into the Spirit, to the divine Presence ever flowing in, at work in all that exists, or one is self-enclosed. In openness to the divine, one lives; in self-enclosure, one dies. This principle applies both to individual human beings, to groups, and to institutions.

Notes On The Holy Spirit

It is a joy and a privilege for me to write anything about the Holy Spirit, but I also feel as though I should cover my face as I dare to speak on such a holy and sublime subject. We are considering God, and any words about God are always humanly limited, and pointing to the awe-inspiring divine mystery that transcends all understanding. If words on the Holy Spirit have any truth to them, they have that truth only from and in the Holy Spirit. If one reading these words does not already participate in the Spirit, then these words sound empty and meaningless. By the Spirit are words understood that speak about the Spirit; without the Spirit, there is only darkness, emptiness, an icy void that chills the heart, and makes one long to die. Without the Spirit, we grope in endless night, a condition experienced and described so well by Friedrich Nietzsche. In his case, he reveals the Spirit by its absence in his soul, for those with eyes to see. Without the Spirit, we are not “Supermen,” but savages ruled by the will to power.
  

The Spirit is love and truth at once. Love without truth is deceitful and self-centered; truth apart from love is lifeless and deadening. In the Spirit, a human being communes with the living God, the One beyond all words, beyond all knowing. The Spirit is the Presence of the unknown God in the soul.  This Presence cannot be controlled or possessed, but must be welcomed, enjoyed, followed. Although ever present, it comes as and when it wills. None of us is always conscious of the Spirit’s presence.  If we were, we would be enjoying the “beatific vision,” the loving-seeing of God as He is. And yet, thanks be to God, there are moments when one knows, “It is the Holy Spirit:” a new understanding, a sudden impulse to goodness, a renunciation of vengeance, a most delightful peace, a seeing with the heart, a renewal of true love for the beloved. It is the Spirit that opens up the soul and mind to love reality in and for that which brings forth all out of nothing. In the Spirit, one experiences a most delightful joy, a lifting up, moments of ecstasy (“standing out” of oneself) that nothing else can deliver.  

Spiraling

Truth does not come at once or whole, although it can be sensed at once, as whole. Truth comes through a spiraling process of inquiry, in which the sought is present leading and pulling the search. One must return, in effect, again and again to the most simple, the most basic, but in returning, it is known better than before. One cannot linger here, but most move on, spiraling, through what may feel like a labyrinth, but at times, it opens up to wide and astonishing vistas. Again, only for moments, as one must move further, spiraling into dark tunnels, in which nothing is known, but hoping to gain light. It will come when it comes. Our task is to keep moving, continue searching, never to suppose that we have reached the sought-for, even though it was here all the time, causing the search as that which is desired, and hoped-to-be-known, or partially known. The end is always present, and sought. Our task is to seek endlessly, for that is our nature itself: human being the seeker of that which is always and ever present.

On Static And Dynamic Religion

 

                                                    Some Preliminary Thoughts
What I write is intended as a thought exercise, as an opportunity to wrestle with a few thoughts that have emerged into consciousness. These brief notes are not intended as a critique or as a guide for reform in the Christian churches. They are meant as a freely roving experiment to move towards truth, towards God beyond all that we are and know.

I use the word “religion” here advisedly, or tentatively. It is not a word I often use, because it is not clarifiable. The word “religion” is a term in popular usage, but because it is not really clarifiable, it is too vague for more strict philosophical analysis. “Religion” was a symbol coined by the Roman thinker, Cicero, and can be applied to all sorts of phenomena, beliefs, actions. The term may be useful as an approximation, however, and gives some initial understanding of what I seek to explore in these brief notes: some qualities of “religious” phenomena—of some structures that emerged over time out of the gospel movement that initiated the Christian faith.

It is possible, perhaps likely, that I found such a phrase as appears in the title to this essay (“static and dynamic religion”) either somewhere in Whitehead’s writings, or more likely, in Bergson’s famous Two Sources of Morality and Religion, a book which I have not read, but skimmed over years ago. Hence, I claim no originality in the theme itself, although the way I develop it will come from my present thinking. These thoughts are incomplete and tentative.

                                        1 A static view of reality and of matters of faith:
                                                   The Case of the Catholic Church

It seems to me that the so-called “Catholic religion,” as it has emerged since the early Middle Ages, and as it developed most of its present structures during the Medieval period of European history, is largely a product of static thinking. By static thinking I mean an overwhelming preoccupation with the supposed eternal and unchanging at the expense of the experienced realm of a reality in constant flux. Static thinking is grounded on a predominantly dualistic conception of reality, in which the realm of being is essentially separated from what becomes, or changes; the “heavenly realm” is understood as fixed and eternal, the “sublunar” world, and concretely our Earth, is understood as a realm of change. The attempt within emerging Christianity was to found a degree of heaven on earth, by establishing unchanging institutions. The Church was understood to be the Kingdom of God on earth, against which “the gates of hell could not prevail.” The Catholic structures embody desires for fixity and emotional security in social forms, in institutions, in dogmas, in the Sacraments, in modes of worship, even in its places of worship. The spirit at work in Medieval and modern Catholicism is, for the most part, a force favoring and protecting stability, or as little social-political-noetic-spiritual change as possible. These Catholic structures aim to preserve and to protect the status quo in the Church, and in the lives of the believers. They are intended to be rocks in the swirling stream of human existence “in this passing world.” The primary or at least overwhelming goal of this Catholic spirit, this static movement, is not so much holiness or growth in the Spirit, or a developing union with God, but the maintaining of what the Spirit helped to form in times past. The Catholic spirit in effect freezes the Spirit’s past movements and achievements into a kind of eternal, non-changing present.

According to this conception of the Catholic religion as giving a high priority to the static, the stable, the rigid, one can consider briefly its major institutions and teachings. First, consider the predominant conception of God as the “Almighty,” or “All-powerful Father.” There is in reality no empirical basis for assuming that God or the gods are “all-powerful.” The conception of the “Almighty” is not a Kierkegaardian leap of faith, but a conceptual leap of understanding, a leap out of the truth as experienced into a truth imagined and desired. “All-powerful,” and “unchanging,” God as the Beginning of all things, as the End conceived as a final state—these are all static conceptions of the Divine, abstracted and removed from concrete human experience. No one has experienced God as “all-powerful,” or “unchanging,” and yet Catholic dogma would encourage the believers to entertain such conceptions. The “afterlife” is generally depicted as a “heaven,” as some kind of life without change in any form, with fixed perfection;
again, there is no concrete experience on which such an imagined state of perfection can be truly grounded. As God is understood to be “perfect,” so “perfection” of the human being is imagined to be attainable in God beyond death.

Furthermore, the social structure of the Church is static and given to fixity, resisting any real or substantial change to the greatest extent possible. There are three estates in the Medieval Church, and one is not free to move from one to another. Medieval society had fixed estates, and so does the Medieval Church. Although a lay person may marry, the marriage is conceived as “indissoluble,” as a one-time event. (This contrasts with the apostolic tradition in the Orthodox churches, which allow for several marriages serially in time, before one is not permitted to marry again, and still share in the Sacramental life of the community). A lay person may become a religious in the church, or a member of the clergy (deacon, priest, bishop), but once the lay state has been abandoned for religious or clerical life, there is no turning back: one is fixed in place within religious life or clergy, or both. This notion of vows being rigidly fixed is not, of course, the only possible way of life. For example, a Buddhist monk takes numerous vows while living in community, but is free at any time to renounce the vows, to leave the monastery he or she made, and return to the lay state at any time. In the medieval Catholic conception, to the contrary, once a man or woman has taken vows, such vows are fixed, and unbreakable in law. Once again, free actions in time are treated as if eternal (as with priestly vows), or at least as permanent and binding until death (marriage and religious vows). Similarly, an ordained clergyman is not free to return to the lay state when he wishes, or when he should be released. Rather, the Catholic priest is statically fixed as a member of the clergy, even if he should no longer believe in God, or wish to be a disciple of Christ—or lives a deeply immoral and scandalous life, damaging to others. A priest is deemed to be a priest even when he acts in ways seriously contrary to the life of Christ. His status has been as rigidly fixed as the stars of the heavens were thought to be before Galileo and Kepler taught humanity that the heavens are themselves ever changing.

The medieval conception of the Catholic Sacraments also embodies a highly static conception of divine action. Baptism is understood as imparting a “character” which persists forever, into eternity. (Whatever this “character” is, I truly do not know, but leave it to theologians to explain, as they conceived it). During the “holy sacrifice of the Mass,” the priest-presumed to have been given a special “power” at ordination—is believed to “confect the Sacrament.” Then the “transubstantiated” elements may not be used for secular purposes afterwards (i.e., for bodily nourishment), but must either be poured into the earth (extra consecrated wine, the “Blood of Christ”), or, as the “consecrated host,” reserved in the Tabernacle for later distribution as Communion. The Communion elements and holy oils are understood to be statically fixed in their being after the religious service is completed. Their “transformed existence,” if we can use that expression, parallels the treatment of men as clergy, and women and men as religious in the Church: once vowed to God, always vowed to God.

Finally, consider briefly the issue of “Sacred Scriptures,” no doubt a conception early Christianity received from its first spiritual mother, Judaism. Once again, a highly static conception of truth and revelation shows up. Judaism had developed the conception of “sacred scriptures” as a fixed canon in response to existence in a culture bombarded by competing truths; it preserved Hebrew and Jewish experiences, even as it limited response and openness to a fuller truth. Similarly, Christian faithful and later Church authorities decided which writings were exclusively “canonical” (in the Sacred Book), and which were not accepted. Hence, the issue of a Sacred Book was presumably decided once and for all, closing off treating other texts as sacred that may come to light later, or be appreciated in the course of time. The notion of a sacred text also dulled the spiritual sense of ever-present attentiveness to the living Word, which is greater than formulated texts. Fixed truth takes precedence over the possibilities of emerging truths in time.

Succinctly we can say that the static God has static ministers, who confect static Sacraments, and instruct the faithful with a static Bible; what is required from the faithful is a static belief in the working of statically conceived “grace,” moving human beings towards the static perfection of an unchanging, static heaven. This is what I mean here by “static religion.”

One could press this theme further by showing ways in which Catholic Church teachings promoted a static view of the universe, with the earth, a body fixed in space, at the center. Or even more fundamentally, the way that God’s creative power is fixed as a past event, complete in a short span of time, as if God is not at work creating from moment to moment. For some fundamentalists in the Church, the “Second Coming” is fixed as a future event, as are the “four last things.” Rather than interpreted as activities always present, as part of an unfolding reality, events such as the last judgment, and heaven and hell, are fixed in a mythic, quasi-temporal, statically conceived future. Present reality is ignored to the extent that minds get absorbed in a static conception of the past, and an equally static and rigid conception of the future. The reality in which human beings actually live is overlooked for mythical objectifications.

                                         2 Towards a more dynamic view of reality and of God

Suppose one were to seek to understand matters of faith based on a more adequate view of reality, grounded not in fixed conceptions, but in reality as actually experienced? Suppose one were to approach matters of “faith and morals,” the stuff of “religion,” with a more dynamic conception of the Whole in which we participate with bodies and mental processes? In this section I attempt such a thought-experiment. Admittedly, my present offerings are elementary, perhaps facile; but one must begin somewhere if one is seeking to view reality by means of concepts and symbols more adequate to the task of exploration, and of right living. After all, we are not just chattering about indifferent matters, but seeking to understand reality, the divine Presence, and our place in the Whole. And we seek not only understanding, but living well and being at peace with what truly is, and with ourselves. In a phrase, we seek right understanding and right action in order to become more truly happy.

“Everything flows.” This familiar saying is one of the basic insights of Heracleitos of Ephesus, who flourished around 500 years before Christ. “Everything changes.” The philosopher, and indeed every human being, is conscious of himself as living in a dynamic, constantly changing world, in a reality with no fixed points, no certainties. “Everything” here means everything—all “being things,” using Heracleitos’ compact symbol. To the extent that one can speak intelligibly of reality, of the Whole, of “Everything” (Panta, or to pan in Greek), one is aware that each particular “being,” or “thing,” or “being-thing,” is from moment to moment undergoing all sorts of changes. What something is in one moment, it was not a moment ago, and will not be identically the next moment. All is ever changing. Indeed, one’s consciousness, one’s mind or soul, is not something given once and for all, not fixed, certain, or known. There is nothing absolute about consciousness, or about “oneself,” about the “I.” One does not know oneself with certainty, but discovers oneself gradually in the context of an ever-changing world, and as a living and changing part of what seems to be an ever-unfolding mystery. In knowing, one knows that far more is unknown than known, and what is known, is ever-changing, rendering partially obsolete the knowledge one gained even in the recent past. If one is truthful with oneself, nothing is known with certainty, and no thing is at once or forever what it is, or appears to be. There is no part of reality as experienced that is not changing itself and changing other things from moment to moment. One experiences processes, activities, changes, and not static persons, beings, things. Persons, beings, and things are approximations, relatively crude guesses of what is ever coming to be and passing away.

Nothing, no one, is experienced complete in itself, all at once, and known fully. Again in the words of Heracleitos, “You cannot step into the same river twice.” Or as Plato developed this thought, “You cannot step into the same river once,” for in the very act of stepping, one is changing, and so is what one calls “the river.” The Whole, including all that one can experience or know in any way, is in constant flux. Every moment comes to be and passes away even before one can stop his flow of consciousness and think about the moment. It is now past, apparently never to return, for each moment is ever new. Again in Heracleitos’ symbolic language, “The sun is new every day.” Everything is ever new, fresh, alive.

A more dynamic faith would not aim at a “perfect God” who is “all powerful,” or “all-knowing,” or even “all good,” but be open to allow God to be whatever God is, and perhaps to become whatever God will become. Does God change? As a young man I asked the greatest philosopher I ever met, “Does God change?” His answer: “The best theologians do not know.” To claim that one knows that God does not change would assume that one knows all that there is to know about God—quite a claim for a limited being such as we find ourselves being. Borrowing from one such theologian, we can say that God is not God, or not a god, or a “divine being” in any intelligible way. What we call “God” refers to an experienced Presence at work in one’s consciousness, and apparently in everything and everyone experienced. What we call “God” is the source and end of reality, of goodness, of truth, albeit not the source in a statically-conceived past. God is not a being, but the present cause of being, the Agent working “above all, and in all, and through all,” to borrow a phrase from the Apostle Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians. The divine is reality—or a “part” of reality—realizing itself in space-time. Such is one way to express the experience in basic (perhaps simplistic) words.

Faith must live and change, as the Divine is experienced as living and dynamic. One must grow with one’s changing faith: becoming more like the God who is good, loving, wise, creative. Faith is itself not static or given once and for all, and it is surely not a belief in words, teachings, creeds, or institutions. Religious faith, spiritual faith, is a loving and dimly knowing participation in the mystery we call “God.” Hence, faith is forever a going-out from what one has been or known, a venturing forth into the divine mystery. By faith one opens up to the Divine Presence, and trusts the One at work in all that is coming-to-be. The lack of faith leaves a person anxious, fearful, close-minded, untrusting, a play to darker forces such as hatred, ill-will, illusion, lust, greed. By faith one allows the goodness and truth of God to become actual here and now in this particular being. Faith is a conscious participation in the divine processes of creating, incarnating, judging, saving. Faith responds joyfully to the presence of God in the conscious, self-surrendering particular being (or “creature”). Through faith the divine incarnates itself here and now.

Here I seek to write from the perspective of faith, from a conscious participation in the Mind coming to be in a limited being. By “creating” we mean the divine Presence bringing greater order, creating beauty, greater truth. Creation is God realizing himself in space-time, or incarnating himself in finite matter and limited mind. In every “person” one meets God incarnating himself here and now; or in other words, one calls a “person” that in which one experiences the divine coming-to-be-present. Every living being, it seems, is to some extent experienceable as an incarnation of what we call “God.” Perhaps every atom, every molecule, is a partial realization of the divine creativity; I do not know, but raise the possibility. Is not all of reality as experienced charged with the creative goodness and beauty we call God? What is God doing with reality? Ordering it, “perfecting” it, making it more hospitable to goodness and truth. And God is at the same time allowing what exists in any way to share in eternity, to an extent; so reality is being eternalized or immortalized from within. (Is this true? It needs further exploring). Such a process of eternalizing the creature is called “sanctification,” “transfiguration,” or even “salvation.” The terms are many; the process is one.

                                                                    ***
If these thoughts are reasonably true, do they throw any light on what the Christian faith is or could be?

As God is dynamic and ever-creating, is there a need for a fixed body of “sacred text” to the exclusion of other writings? Are not all writings sacred to the extent that they are good and true, and move one to think about the Divine Presence, and to be more open to it, to embody God more truly in the world? Rather than have only “the Bible,” why not read many and various texts in order to grow in holiness and in wisdom? Why not consider “every word that proceeds from the mouth of God” as worthy of one’s attention and respect? No one who has immersed himself in the Platonic dialogues, for example, could ever in good conscience deny that there is much in these writings that is philosophically and spiritually superior to much that one finds in the Bible. The same could be said of many Buddhist texts, or of various mystical writings generated in history. Reducing “God’s word” to one collection, to the bible, betrays both a misunderstanding of the nature of “God’s word,” and a blindness to the sheer wealth of spiritually enriching texts brought forth by the Spirit in human history. Or in other words: It is foolish to limit God’s ever-present revealing to a given text. Static religion borders on idolatry, or at least readily lends readily itself to it.

Then again, rather than seek to substitute a more “dynamic” approach to “religion” to the faith of the Churches as they emerged over centuries, why not suggest ways in which various embodiments can exist together? What good would be achieved by replacing the Judaeo-Christian Bible with some other collection of sacred books? Does it not make more sense to leave what has developed as it is, and by its side present other possibilities for due consideration? For example, a Christian could study books of the bible to gain insight into God and to live well and happily, but one could also be encouraged to study the Bhagavad Gita, the Dhammapada, the writings of Heracleitos, the Platonic dialogues, and so on. Rather than replace static, fixed institutions with other would-be fixtures, it seems more reasonable to add, and not to replace. Above all, what is needed is to enter into a genuine faith-inspired openness to God, so that the living Word of God takes flesh in the mind of the hearer, in the human being responded to the God moving him or her to respond. In genuine faith, one is always listening for, and hearing, echoes of the divine Word.

Again, consider the hierarchy of the Catholic Church as a case in point. The hierarchy as an institution developed slowly over nearly two-thousand years, and has become highly fixed and rigid in recent centuries. Some consider the hierarchy to be moribund. It does no good, I suggest, to try to change the ordering of Bishop-priest-deacon, or to insist that the institution be more inclusive, such as by ordaining married men or women. One could simply step back and let the hierarchy be what it has become. Perhaps it will continue to change, or again be open to change, but it does not make sense to spend one’s time and effort trying to change a fixed institution. It will happen when it happens; it will change when it changes. Or given the propensity of the Catholic hierarchy to resist changing itself, change will come only when the Pope in concert with a sufficient number of bishops should will such change. Without genuine change coming from the higher authorities, however, it would seem likely that the institutional Church as a whole will continue to wither, as it is unable and unwilling to adjust well to emerging reality.

Overall, however, we must keep this in mind: Our present task, the spiritual task for human beings, is not to seek to change an institution, but to open up to the freedom and joy of the Holy Spirit, of God’s life-giving Presence in our lives. So in addition to leaving the Churches alone with their sacred texts, priesthoods, clergies, ways of worship, rituals, sacraments, and so on, we explore another way: the way of fides quaerens intellectum, “faith seeking understanding,” the mystical search for God.

What kinds of worship befits the living and true God, who is ever fresh, alive, creative, loving? There is a time for quiet meditation, or study, or contemplation in the ways practiced by Christian faithful, by mystics, Buddhists, and so on. There is a time for sharing gifts of the Holy Spirit in praying and singing together, for “hearing God’s word,” for examining one’s conscience and repenting, for looking after the needs of others. There is a time for a few men and women to gather to study and to discuss questions presented to us by present realities, and consider together the teachings of lovers of wisdom through the ages to help find reasonable solutions for our age. “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.”

For my part, as I see it presently, the time is ripe for using one’s gifts, and for raising questions, exploring reality with the mind open to the Spirit. Now is an apt time for fides quaerens intellectum, for the Anselmian activity of “faith seeking understanding.” Now is the time to “wake from sleep,” to explore the “wonderful works of God” with true openness and a desire to serve God and creature in the modest way of right living. Now is the time to raise questions which have been neglected or forgotten. “Why is there something, why not nothing? And why is the world the way it is, and not some other way?” What is the meaning and purpose of human life? Why am I alive? What is the good at which I ought to aim? How can I, in some modest and quiet way, let the Creator work in me and through me? “Lord, what would you have me do?” How can I best serve the human beings in my life, here and now.

                                                                     ***
For the present, there is little I can add. Static structures, such as the hierarchy and the bible, the Sacraments and the liturgy, are a given, a part of reality as we find it. Attempting to change these structures that have emerged over time would seem to produce little good, and perhaps do damage to those who are highly attached to them. Many people have vested interests in these structures—power, prestige, jobs, money, emotional attachments. Even if these static structures are largely outdated, or overly limited in their abilities to assist human beings in their actual needs in our time, seeking to change them is largely a futile exercise. Let them be.

On the other hand, human beings need and deserve an ongoing sense of communion with the living, ever-creating, ever-renewing God. Rather than dabble with institutional reform, it seems to me, one needs to spend his or her efforts seeking to be response to the Presence of God stirring in one’s soul, and find effective ways to communicate to others the life of divine-human partnership. A dynamic religion may inhabit fixed and static institutions, leave them in place, and seek to engage people here and now with the God beyond all understanding. This God seems to be saying, as Jesus said of old, “Launch out into the deep, and lower your nets for a catch.” Jesus wasted no time trying to reform the static, fixed, even stultifying institutions of his contemporary Judaism. What Jesus did is a highly suggestive and fitting model: he embodied in his words and actions the truth and love of the real God, and presented this One to any and to all who would open their minds and hearts to His ever-flowing Presence.

"The Love Of Christ Controls Us"

The most frequently asked question I have heard over the years as a pastor, is:  “What is God’s will for my life?” Sometimes the concern is stated as a comment, rather than as a question, but it is equivalent: “I do not know what God is asking of me.” 
  
Awareness of not knowing is an essential part of growth in the wisdom of humility. There is much about ourselves, about one another, about our planet, about reality, and most assuredly about what we call “God” that we do not know. Ignorance is part of our human condition—even though many pretend that they know the truth, have God figured out, and know exactly how to live their lives. I think that we all need to undergo considerable change and spiritual growth “to enter the Kingdom,” that is, to live in true and abiding union with God. 

Even with our weaknesses, flaws, and ignorances, there is one resource available which truly “covers a multitude of sins.” There is one divine power available for any being who wants it, and will live it out. We call that power Love, or the Holy Spirit. The older word in English for Love was “charity,” from the Latin caritas, which is not the love of affection, or the love that is desire, or even friendship, but Love that wills to another all the good one wants for himself, or herself—and takes actions to benefit the other. Love works hard for others. 
  
When we are troubled, or perplexed, or wonder how to live, or what God is asking of us, the simplest and most obvious answer is probably the best: learn to love one another “in sincerity and truth.” “Love [Charity] does no harm to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the Law.” “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” These are precious and costly words by the Apostle Paul, who gave his life to bring us the Gospel. 

Love as kindness, as telling the truth, as bearing with each other’s flaws, makes life much richer, more beautiful, more pleasant. Without love as self-giving, as kindness, who could endure “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,” to borrow Hamlet’s phrase.  Love is not cheap or easy, but it is freely given by God’s presence to those who will live love truly.   

God who loves each being for one’s own sake, to benefit each of us, fill our hearts and minds with your divine Presence, with the Spirit who lives by loving. When any of us strays from the path of genuine love, turn us back, and help us to renew our commitments to love, even those who may wish us harm.  To love is to become like You in the modest measure granted to us as human beings.

On Two Approaches To Questions We Are Asked

A few days ago I spoke with a member of the clergy, who told me that he had recently met with a man, about age forty, who was no longer practicing his Catholic faith, but who was considering returning to the sacraments.  According to the cleric, when the man was getting out of his car, he asked, “What is transubstantiation?” Rather than answer the man directly, the clergyman told me that he wrote a 17-page, single-spaced paper on “What is Transubstantiation?,” which he plans to have published. This clergyman has had considerable theological training in his life, with advanced degrees in theology and philosophy. As he said on this occasion, “I am a student of metaphysics.”  So far, he added, he has not yet provided a copy for the man to read.  The man’s question became the occasion for an intellectual exercise. Needless to say, I asked this theologian some questions in our 5 or 10 minute conversation.  My few questions seemed to surprise him, and may have annoyed him; in any case, he did not appear to entertain my questions at all, but defended his scholarly approach. First, I said to the clergyman, “Why not ask the man, `Why are you asking about `transubstantiation?’  Then I added, “Why not ask, `When you share in the Eucharist, are you conscious of communing with the crucified and risen Christ, or not?” At this question, my clerical friend turned away and picked his nose, showing no interest in the questions I would have asked the possible seeker. As I think about this brief exchange, and writing a lengthy paper on the question, “What is transubstantiation?” I call to mind the well-known insight of the Buddha: “Such questions do not tend to edify.” Indeed, how can the question on “transubstantiation” possibly edify the one asking it? Again, in the more prosaic language of Hillary Clinton when speaking to Congress, “What difference does it make?” In truth, what difference does a person’s conception of “transubstantiation” matter for one’s spiritual life? In the context in which the man asked the question—while getting out of a car—does it even make sense to pour hours of work into researching the “doctrine” without asking the man a number of follow-up questions first? I would have communicated with him at a later time and asked, “Are you still wondering about transubstantiation?” If he said, “Yes, what is it?” I would ask him, “Why are you asking this question?” It may be that he heard the word and was puzzled by it. It may be that he holds weak or strong opinions about it. It may just have been a kind of throw-out question in which he feels no personal stake. Or it may be the kind of road-block verbiage that people can put up in order not to do what they may not want to do—such as return to the practice of the Catholic faith. There is more that needs to be pointed out here. In reality, the term “transubstantiation” was introduced by Thomas Aquinas in his effort to throw some light on the mystery of the Eucharist, of the Catholic celebration of Christ’s death and resurrection in “the Mass.” It is one of many possible “explanations” generated over the centuries. When I raised this point briefly with the theologically educated clergyman, he told me that it is a matter of “the real presence” that is at stake. I responded that even the phrase “real presence” was introduced only in the sixteenth century by an Anglican clergyman trying to understand the Eucharist, and that one need not be attached to any such terms or symbols.  He responded that “transubstantiation is in the Creed,” and when I asked him about “which creed?” he mentioned one from a Lateran Council.  And so it goes.  Are not these matters divorced from real life?                                                          *** I choose to take a different approach to questions, a different approach to human beings who ask them, and a different approach to matters of faith.  In truth I find such terms as “transubstantiation” substantially unnecessary for a person’s spiritual life. When one asks a question as the man did climbing out of his car, it does not seem reasonable to lift the question into an abstract intellectual realm and spend hours pursuing historical or theological research to find a suitable answer. Why the man asked the question is relevant, and he may or may not know himself. In the present case, the clergyman spun off abstractions by writing a paper, rather than speak directly with and to a human being who may well be seeking God—not rationalistic explanations. No doubt the clergyman would consider my response “anti-metaphysical,” or “anti-intellectual,” or perhaps “anti-Catholic.” What comes to the fore in such a clash is not being “anti-Catholic” or “anti-intellectual,” but this: How does one truly help another human being to seek God? To symbols lifted out of their experiential and intellectual context, such as “transubstantiation,” have any place in the life of a man or woman truly seeking God? Or do not such considerations truly cloud the mind with needless verbiage, when what is needed is simple faith? While I acknowledge a place among philosophers and theologians to explore real questions, I also know that far too many books and articles have been written on subjects which “do not tend to edify.” Contrast this clergyman’s response by writing a 17-page single-spaced article for publication with the way the first-rate philosopher, Eric Voegelin, treated me. When I asked Voegelin questions during our three-hour conversation, he never went off on a lengthy response, but answered simply, clearly, and surely for the benefit of my mind, right there on the spot. Voegelin was not using me as an opportunity to prepare a paper or a lecture, but bringing the light of his mind to help illuminate my mind. Or more accurately: Voegelin was moving me to be attentive to the reality of the divine Intellect that illuminates human understanding, and was present right there at the moment for me. Consider this example:  As I have written on several occasions, when I asked Voegelin, “What is the Holy Spirit?” he provided the simplest, clearest, and best response I can imagine:  “What do you think is moving you to ask your questions?” That is how to deal with a human being’s questioning: not to cut off the process, but to illuminate it.  If Voegelin had launched out into intellectual meanderings on “the Holy Spirit,” I would have understood little, and gained little. By his question in response to my real question, I was given a wonderful gift: Voegelin’s answer was itself a penetrating question, also moved by the Holy Spirit. In this brief dialogical exchange, I was immediately confirmed in the activity of asking simple questions intended to lead me into the reality called God.