God and the World - Part 8

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Dear All,

 

We concluded Part 7 with:

 

(P.164) " The theme of God's utter incomprehensibility was taken up by Dionysius

the Areopagite, who is a key figure here. He is generally supposed to have been

a Syrian monk of the sixth century who was a disciple of the Neo-platonists. He

speaks of the Godhead as beyond all names, all images and all concepts, beyond

being itself. Rather like the position held by Nagarjuna, this involved a

systematic elimination of all names, all images and all concepts. The only way

to know God is by unknowing, by going beyond concepts, beyond the rational mind

and receiving a ray of the " divine darkness " . This is mystical language. One has

gone beyond and experienced God in the darkness, as the light beyond the

darkness, and as the light in the darkness, as it were. So that is the essential

Christian mystical experience. "

 

A New Vision of Reality (Western Science, Eastern Mysticism and

Christian Faith), Pg.164

Bede Griffiths

Templegate Publishers - Springfield, Illinois

ISBN 0-87243-180-0

 

Here now, is Part 8.

 

Enjoy!

 

violet

 

 

God and the World - Part 8

 

(P.165) Dionysius the Areopagite was for a long time accepted as having been a

disciple of St Paul. This was a fortunate mistake because it led to his being

taken into the whole Catholic tradition, where he became one of the authorities

for St Thomas Aquinas and the medieval doctors of the Church generally. In fact

his teaching became fundamental Catholic doctrine. It was largely lost at the

Reformation because the reformers went back to the Bible alone and in the Bible

the mystical tradition, although present as we have seen, is not so strong. In

the Catholic tradition it has always been there, although to some extent it has

been underemphasised, especially in recent times, but it is in fact at the

centre of tradition.

 

In the Bible itself this incomprehensible Godhead, which is one with the

mystical vision of India and of Islam, is revealed in Jesus of Nazareth. That is

the essential Christian faith. The ineffable Godhead, the one absolute reality,

was revealed in the historic person of Jesus of Nazareth at a particular time

and at a particular place. It has to be emphasised that, in the biblical faith,

it is a matter of the infinite being manifest in the finite, the eternal in the

temporal, in a specific historical time and place. This is a key point by which

the Christian revelation is distinguished from the Hindu and the Buddhist view.

For the Hindu the 'avatara' is first of all not historical. Many 'avataras' are

purely mythological, the tortoise, the fish, the boar and the lion, for

instance. Even Krishna and Rama, the supreme 'avataras', are not fully

historical. They are legendary figures, probably with some historical

background, but in their case the historicity is not important. Any Hindu will

say that whether Krishna lived or not he is a symbol of the divine, a symbol of

the Godhead. As such he is of infinite value, whereas his historicity, or

otherwise, is not significant.

 

It is the same with the Buddha. Buddha was a historical person, no doubt, but

for the Buddhist this is not important. (P.166) There were hundreds of buddhas

and 'bodhisatvas', all symbols of the great 'sunyata'. But in the Christian

tradition the infinite reveals itself in a historic time and place and this

gives value to history and time. In the Eastern traditions time is cyclic. In

Hinduism everything comes out from the 'brahman', as the 'Bhagavad Gita' says,

and it returns and comes forth again in endless cycles. But in the

Judeo-Christian tradition all time is moving towards an end, the 'eschaton',

which is the final fulfilment of all things. This is why Jesus is said to be not

an 'avatara' who can come again and again, nor a buddha who has many other

buddhas before and after him, but rather the one who brings the whole purpose

and meaning of the entire universe to a head. It was the divine plan, " in the

fullness of time, to bring all things to a head in him, things in heaven and

things on earth. " (Ephesians 1:10) That is one of the central affirmations of

the gospel.

 

The infinite, then, is manifest in Jesus, in this historic person coming within

the historic context of Israel. He was the prophet who was expected to initiate

the Kingdom of God, the priest who was to reconcile man with God, and also the

king, the ruler, the messiah, who was to rule as God, in the place of God. Jesus

was born in that historic context and was recognised to be the fulfilment of all

these roles as God's revelation on earth. That is the understanding of Jesus

within the Hebrew context. Further, Jesus's earthly life ended at the

crucifixion and the crucifixion is an historic event. " He was crucified under

Pontius Pilate, " as the Creed says. It is really an extraordinary thing that it

should be of the essence of Christian faith that Jesus was crucified under

Pontius Pilate at a particular time in history and under a particular Roman

governor. This kind of thing is absolutely alien to Hinduism or Buddhism. When

Krishna or Rama, or Buddha in the Mahayana, lived is of no account whatsoever;

they are manifestations of the eternal, not confined to any time or place.

 

(P.167) Jesus, on the other hand, manifests the infinite God in historic time

and place and in his historic death, dying on the cross. There are many ancient

myths of the god who dies and rises again but these are symbolic figures and

their meaning is deep but different. Jesus' death, on the other hand, is not

simply symbolic. He was an historic person, and the descriptions we have of his

suffering and death, in the four different accounts in the Gospels, are given in

minute detail. On that historic death and on the resurrection the whole

Christian faith centres. The experience of the disciples after the death of

Jesus, that the body was not to be found in the tomb and Jesus' appearances to

them, convinced them that he was risen from the dead. They understood that,

unlike Lazarus who was raised from the dead but simply carried on with his

limited life in this world, Jesus was alive for evermore, transcending this

world. What this means is that in the death and resurrection of Jesus the matter

of this world was transformed. In other doctrines, in other great faiths, matter

is often conceived simply as an appearance and the appearance disappears when we

have reached the one reality. But in the Christian understanding the matter of

the universe is transformed. The atoms, the molecules, the cells of Jesus' body,

which are part of this cosmic energy, were changed. Matter is a temporary

condensation of energy and that structure of energy which made up the body of

Jesus on the cross was transformed into a new structure. It maybe suggested that

in the resurrection that structure of energy became a psychic body, which is a

more subtle body. His body was first of all what is called a gross body which

anyone could recognise, and then it became a subtle body, which could not always

be recognised. This subtle body could appear and disappear, as we know from the

Gospel narratives. Finally he becomes a spiritual body at the Ascension. (P.168)

He transcends matter at both the gross and the subtle levels and enters the

spiritual level and, with that transformation, the matter of this universe is

taken up into the Godhead. That is the Christian mystery. It is amazing when we

begin to grasp it, that the matter which exploded in the so-called Big Bang

fifteen or even twenty billion years ago at that point was finally transfigured.

In fact the transfiguration has been going on all through history and we

ourselves are involved in this transformation of matter, as consciousness is

working on matter. The Christian understanding is that in Jesus consciousness

finally took possession of matter, and this means that matter was spiritualized.

In him the matter of the universe was, in other words, made totally conscious

and became one with God, in the Godhead.

 

A New Vision of Reality (Western Science, Eastern Mysticism and

Christian Faith), Pg.165-168

Bede Griffiths

Templegate Publishers - Springfield, Illinois

ISBN 0-87243-180-0