The Experience of God in the Old and New Testaments - Part 7

[Guest guest]

Dear All,

 

We concluded Part 6 with the following:

 

(P.221) Jesus communicates to his disciples the mystical experience he has of

his relation to the Father and they form a community, a 'koinonia', with him.

'Koinos' means " common " and 'koinonia' is " common life " , " community " . The

Christian mystical experience is always in terms of community. The Hindu

experience is essentially individual and has no positive relationship to the

community whereas the Christian experience, although certainly personal and

individual, is always also implicitly or explicitly a community experience. This

is very important. It comes out clearly in the Acts of the Apostles when, after

Pentecost, the Spirit descends on the disciples. Jesus had promised them that

when he departed he would send the Spirit and that the Spirit would abide with

them. So the Spirit descends and then it is said that the disciples were all " of

one heart and soul " . The experience unites the people together in one. Then

another dimension of the experience is revealed. " They sold their possessions

and goods and distributed them to all, as any had need. " [31] So the descent of

the Spirit forms the community and the community is such that in it everything

is shared, even at the economic level. This is a particularly Christian

understanding. It is the descent of God into the whole context of human life.

That is the primary importance of the historic dimension, that God is always

seen in relation to the human world, to human history and to human

relationships. As St John brings out very strongly in his letter, anyone who

does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not

seen. [32] So this love of God is totally expressed in the love of our

neighbour. Love of God and love of neighbour can never be separated. Comparing

this with 'bhakti' in Hinduism, 'bhakti' is always a personal relationship to

God, a self-transcendence, going beyond and being one with God, but, although

the relation to the neighbour is certainly there, it is not normally expressed.

(P.222) It is an experience of identity, not of relationship. The relationship

to the neighbour is implicit but not explicit, whereas in the Christian context

the relation to the neighbour is always explicit and fundamental. And so it is

an experience of God in the Spirit which brings this experience of being of one

heart and one soul with others, and this then spreads out into daily life in the

sharing of the goods of the world. These three aspects characterise the

Christian mystical experience in the New Testament.

 

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

Chapter 10, Pg.221-222

 

Here now, is Part 7.

 

Enjoy,

 

violet

 

 

 

The Experience of God in the Old and New Testaments - Part 7

 

(P.222) In St Paul we find these three aspects very clearly brought out. First

of all St Paul develops the doctrine of the Spirit. In the Synoptics and even in

the Fourth Gospel it is very little developed, whereas in St Paul it is basic.

In the first letter to the Corinthians he makes very clear the relationship

between the human spirit and the divine Spirit. He says that God is " revealed to

us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of

God. " Through Jesus, particularly through his death and resurrection, the Spirit

has been communicated and now this Spirit encounters our spirit. The text

continues, " For what person knows a man's thoughts except the spirit of the man

which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the

Spirit of God " . [33] So in us there is a spirit by which we know ourselves and

by which also we can know God. At that point of the spirit we are open to the

Spirit of God. There is a very important distinction between the Hindu and the

Christian understanding here. In the Hindu tradition there is 'jivatman', the

individual self, and there is 'paramatman', the supreme Self. But in the normal

understanding, as seen in the advaitic school, the individual self is identified

with the supreme Self. " I am Brahman. " " Thou art that. " It is an identity with

the Absolute. That is a genuine and profound mystical experience without a

doubt. (P.223) By contrast, in the Christian understanding the human spirit is

never identified with the Spirit of God. The spirit in man is rather the

capacity for God, the capacity to receive, and always the experience of God

comes as a gift, as a grace from above. So the spirit of man receives the Spirit

of God. This St Paul brings out in the letter to the Galatians where he says,

" God had sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts crying Abba! Father! " . [34]

That is an exact description of the Christian mystical experience. God had sent

the Spirit of his Son into our heart or into our spirit. In the Spirit we are

united with Christ the Son. We becomes sons in the Son and we are able to say,

" Abba, Father " . We share in Jesus' experience of the Father. We enter into the

dynamic of the trinitarian experience. In the Spirit we become one with the Son

and in the Son we are able to know the Father. The whole Christian tradition is

based on the experience of the Trinity. The Trinity is not a dogma revealed from

on high but an experience, an experience first of all of Jesus in his relation

to the Father, and then of the disciples of Jesus who share his experience in

the Spirit.

 

In the letter to the Romans Paul clarifies this by saying, " When we cry Abba,

Father, it is the Spirit himself bearing witness with our spirit that we are

children of God. " [35] The Spirit of God enters into our spirit and actually

transforms it, and our spirit is revealed as a capacity for the Spirit of God.

Through that we realise ourselves as children of God. This is very close to the

Hindu experience of the 'atman', but in the Christian understanding the spirit

in man is a capacity, a receptive power; it is not identical with the Spirit of

God. We receive the Spirit and in that Spirit we know ourselves as sons.

Experiencing this sonship, in relation to the Father, we return to the source in

the Father. But this experience of God in the Spirit can only take place when we

have died to ourselves. " You have died and your life is hidden with Christ in

God, " says St Paul. [36] We are dead. (P.224) We died to ourselves in baptism

and this dying goes on in the whole Christian life which is a continual process

of dying to ourselves, to the ego, and identifying with our real Self which is

hidden with Christ in God. In other words, it is a continual going beyond

creaturely existence to experience the true Self in Christ in its ultimate

transcendence, hidden in God. It is a going beyond, into the Ultimate. The way

St Paul expresses this is authentic mystical doctrine.

 

If we now finally compare the Hindu and the Christian mystical experience we see

in the Hindu the profound exploration of the Spirit, the 'atman', the Spirit

within, and we see how this implies the transcendence of the lower self, the

ego, and the experience of the ultimate Self. Furthermore, that ultimate Self is

conceived in the form of a person, 'purusha', to whom we give our love, our

'bhakti', and we realise that that person loves us. As Krishna says in the

'Bhagavad Gita', 'You are dear to me. " [37] God loves us. So there is in

Hinduism a profound experience of self-transcendence, opening to the divine,

experiencing the divine as the very inner Self but at the same time as one who

is the object of love and who gives love. Then there is the stage of going

beyond that, as we saw, to the ultimate oneness, to ultimate unity. The

Christian experience is distinctive in that identity with God is not claimed. In

the Hindu experience the immanence of God is dominant and there is more concern

with realising God as within one and oneself as within God, whereas for the

Christian, coming out of the Hebrew background, God is always transcendent and

one never identifies oneself with God. There is always a distinction between God

and the human person. The point is, however, that in Jesus, although that

distinction is always present, total unity in distinction takes place. Jesus as

man is one with God, with the Father. He knows himself as the Son in a unique

way and calls us also through the Spirit to become sons, to experience the

ultimate oneness with the Father. (P.225) However all this is a gift of God, a

grace, transforming us. It is essentially a communion of love. It is a communion

so profound that we know ourselves as one with God as Jesus is one with the

Father, but at the same time it is a communion of love, of personal

relationship, of being " all in each and each in all " .

 

Thus we experience God in unity and distinction in the mystery of the trinity,

but we also experience ourselves as living in one another as members of the body

of Christ. St Paul particularly develops the striking image that we are members

of the body of which Christ is the head. Just as Jesus spoke of the vine and its

branches, St Paul speaks of the head and its members. Each of us experiences

through the Holy Spirit, through the power of love, this unity in the body where

we are distinct members of the one body. We share the one life, members of the

one Person, but each distinct in his or her place. We are, as St Augustine put

it, persons within the Person, a communion of persons in love.

 

This mystical community experience also penetrates into the physical world. It

is the whole creation that, as we saw, has been restored to unity with God

through Christ, and our whole person, including the physical body, is not

discarded but is rather transfigured. That the body itself is holy is a

fundamental aspect of Christian experience. St Paul speaks of the body as the

" temple of the Holy Spirit " and declares that " the body was not made for

immorality but for the Lord. " [38] This is deeply significant. It means that

sexuality is itself holy. It is a divine energy within us. It can be used for

immorality but it can also be consecrated to God, whether in marriage or in

virginity. In both cases it is the same energy which is being used, either

externally in a physical relationship or internally in a spiritual relationship.

The ultimate aim of life is, in fact, to convert this physical energy into a

spiritual energy, so that the body itself becomes what St Paul calls a

" spiritual body " , that is, a body which has been wholly penetrated by the divine

Spirit. (P.226) This is the meaning of resurrection. Every human body is created

for the resurrection, which means for the gradual transformation of the physical

energy of the body into a spiritual energy which is no longer subject to the

ordinary laws of matter. Matter, as we know it, is conditioned by space and

time, but the body in the resurrection is beyond space and time. This was

revealed in the body of Christ at the resurrection. He appeared to his disciples

in a " subtle " body, a body which is already not determined by ordinary space and

time, but could appear and disappear at will. Then at the ascension he passed

beyond space and time altogether and entered into the eternal order of being,

transcending this world.

 

We have to keep constantly before our minds that this is the ultimate goal of

humanity. This is the " new heaven " and the " new earth " , prophesied in the Old

Testament and revealed in the Apocalypse of St John. [39] This world of space

and time and the human mode of consciousness which goes with it is destined to

pass away. In fact, as the Buddha saw so clearly and as modern physics

recognises, it is always passing away at every moment. The time-space world is

an appearance, determined by a particular mode of consciousness, of the one

infinite and eternal reality, which manifests itself under these conditions. We

have constantly to learn to see beyond the passing forms of this world to the

eternal reality which is always there. It means passing from our present mode of

consciousness, which is conditioned by time and space, into the deeper level of

consciousness which transcends the dualities external and internal, subject and

object, conscious and unconscious, and becomes one with the non-dual Reality,

the Brahman, the Atman, the Tao, the Void, the Word, the Truth, whatever name we

give to that which cannot be named. It is this alone that gives reality to our

lives and a meaning to human existence.

 

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

Christian Faith)

Chapter 10, Pg.221-226

Bede Griffiths

Templegate Publishers - Springfield, Illinois

ISBN 0-87243-180-0

 

 

Notes:

 

[31] Acts 2:45

 

[32] 1 John 4:20

 

[33] 1 Corinthians 2:10-11

 

[34] Galatians 4:6

 

[35] Romans 8:15-16

 

[36] Colossians 3:3

 

[37] Bhagavad Gita 18:65

 

[38] 1 Corinthians 6:19; 6:13

 

[39] Isaiah 65:17; Revelation 21:1