Owen Barfield Quote

"A work of art, then, is characterized, not by the absence of distinct parts, on the contrary, by the greatest possible distinctness and self-sufficiency of its parts -- provided only that we do not think of them as mutually impenetrable. It is equally clear that interpenetration is a quality which the parts possess, not as mere objects, but precisely as being (a) wholes in themselves and (b) 'parts' of the same whole. They interpenetrate and are pro tanto inseparable, not because the whole is a formless waste, but because the hole has form, and that form enters into each of them. Can we therefore go further and affirm that the ideal organic relation of the part to the whole is a sort of identity of the one with the other? That, in musical terms, ideal counterpoint is fugue -- where the whole melody is found again in each part? Now, according to Soloviev, this is or ought to be true of human society -- that the whole of which individual men are the 'parts.' Not only man in general, but each individual man 'may become all' (he says), as he lives and learns to do away with that inward boundary which severs him from the rest.

"And again: the ideal 'person, or embodiment of the idea, is only an individualization of the all-oneness, which is indivisibly present in each of its individualizations.' Thus, in the 'all-one-idea' realized, the part is the whole, not by merger, but by the contrary by intensive development of its true individuality or part-ness. Or rather the whole is the part; for, whereas when we think abstractly about being, as in the process of logic and classification, the whole is predicated of the part, so that we say, 'A horse is a quadruped,' in the actual process of being, the order is reversed, and the race or archetype is the species or individual -- because it gives it being. "

---- Owen Barfield, "Form in Art and Society," in The Rediscovery of Meaning and Other Essays (Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 1977), 221-2.

It is no mystery: Kant and Thought's Hutterite Mile

On Good Friday, we recall the suffering of our Lord, who descended to the depths of fire and darkness to lift us from the confines of our self-enclosed prisons.
We continually turn away, but He continually reaches out to us, grasping for us amidst the slings and whips of our hearts and minds. He opens the gates of Heaven, the prison walls of our intellects, allowing us to embrace the beauty of mystery. This mystery is a gift often neglected by the modern mind whose gaze is so intently focused on the freedom enabled by this mystery. That freedom was so articulately explored and expressed by Kant, a brilliant thinker who bequethed to our world so many treasures. But without the mystery, these treasures rust and decay. The following is a montage of music and images designed to evoke the emotion and consequences of Kant's legacy.

Kant and Thought's Hutterite Mile

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The Creation of Beauty as a Meaning of History

If the final destiny of humanity lies in eternity, is there any role or significance to history? Does our work and accomplishments upon the earth actually matter? What role are Christians to play in the world – should they live out their eschatological end by renouncing the world and all that is within it because of its transitory nature? Time and again these and similar questions have been asked, and time and again Christians have struggled to answer them without giving away to any oversimplification. This is because of the paradoxical nature of our lives – we know we are made for eternal life -- we are made to be partakers of the divine life in the beatific vision. However, we live here and now, in history, and we are not called to reject the world; the world was created by God, and he called it good. To forsake it would suggest that God made a mistake – both in creating the world, but also in putting us here in the world, in its history. Any answer to this question must understand that while our destiny is eternity, what we do here and now relates to eternity, such as the world and its history, in the end, will not be destroyed but transfigured with us, as we enter into eternity. “The Christian attitude toward the world can never be either an ascetic or eschatological negation. It is always an eschatological affirmation, that is, the constant going beyond the here and now toward the end point,” Paul Evdokimov, The Art of the Icon: A Theology of Beauty. Trans, Steven Bigham (Redono Beach, California: Oakwood Publications, 1996), 64-5. Thus what we do here is important; we should not despair and think that what we do in our lives is meaningless.

What, then, is it that we are expected to do? Possibly one of the best answers we have was one given to us by William Morris: the goal of life is to make the world beautiful, to leave behind us a legacy of beauty, and anything less than this and its realization makes us less than human (cf. William Morris, “The Beauty of Life,” in William Morris On Art and Socialism, ed. by Norman Kelvin (Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, 1999), 37). To make the world a better place, to make it a more beautiful place, does not mean we all must become artists in the most specific sense of the word (that is, we don’t have to become painters, sculptors, or the like). While the work of the artist is a very important way of realizing our role in the world, it is not the only way; there are many other ways to make the world more beautiful. We must realize that beauty is inherent in our nature, and we need only let ourselves be ourselves (which is only possible once we have abandoned sin) in order to accomplish our task. Beauty is created when we make the world a better place to live in, when we treat others with kindness and respect, when we become the stewards of the earth God meant us to be. Beauty generates love; love is experienced through beauty; by being lovers of each other and of the world around us, beauty will follow. “Love alone, properly speaking, proves that the human person is in the image of God, by making his self-determination submit to reason, not bending reason under it, and persuading the inclination to follow nature and not in any way to be at variance with the logos of nature.” St Maximus the Confessor, “Letter 2” in Maximus the Confessor. Trans. and ed. Andrew Louth (London: Routledge, 1996), 86 -7.

God is beautiful, and this beauty is manifested in his holiness; being in the image of God, we are beautiful; in our essence, in our core, this beauty shines out, and no one can destroy it. No matter what we have done, no matter how ugly our physical appearance might at first seem to others, behind it all is the beautiful image of God. Those more attuned to the things of the soul see no one is ugly, because they see the image of God in everyone reflecting the loveliness of God. “For the beauty of any person pleases the soul not insofar as it lies in external matter, but insofar as an image of it is comprehended or grasped by the soul through sight,” Marsilio Ficino, Commentary on Plato’s Symposium on Love. Trans. Sears Jayne (Woodstock, Connecticut: Spring Publications, 1994), 87.

Scripture tells us, however, that we are more than in the image of God, but also in God’s likeness. God’s image is his potentiality, God’s likeness his actuality. In the creation of humanity, like God, our potentiality and actuality were one; we were created to be free, to be given a choice. That integrity could not be preserved by us alone; in order to keep it, we needed to be open to the work of God in our life. When we believed we could do it alone, when we cut ourselves from God and tried to make ourselves into God, sin replaced the presence of God, and with the advent of sin, we could no longer actualize our potential While that potentiality still remains within, that is the image of God has not been rubbed out, we destroyed the likeness we had of God. Our new likeness reveals who we have made ourselves to be. What does this mean? No one, not even ourselves, can destroy the God-given beauty we have at the core of our being; but we are given free reign in how we manifest it: we can create a rather ugly persona, if we so wish. It can be so ugly, that we no longer seem to radiate God’s beauty. When this happens, we no longer know ourselves as we should be; all that we see and feel is the ugliness we have created for our lives. Such ugliness can even make it feel as if God’s presence has been eradicated from our lives.

Our life history is, in part, the record of how we have manifested our internal beauty. God in his likeness is as beautiful as he is in his image: his image and likeness are one, how he is in potentiality is how he is in actuality. We should aim for the same. “Let us always, therefore, contemplate that image of God that we can be transformed to his likeness,” Origen, “Homily on Genesis I,” in Origen. Homilies on Genesis and Exodus.. Trans. Ronald Heine (Washington, DC: Catholic University Of America Press, 1982), 66. When we again manifest our internal nature perfectly (and this can only be done with God’s grace), then the likeness of God, which we once had and then lost, is said to return. Then like God, we will once again unite our potentiality with our actuality.

We are called to beautify the world, but how are we to do this? It is true that our mere existence begins the process, because our mere existence radiates the image of God, however obscured we have made it by our deeds. However, we are called to do more than this; we have been put into the world to represent God to the world, to act out that portion of God’s image within us, to show the world the reason God created us in his image. This means we are called to do the deeds God made us for. Contemplating the fact that our existence is temporal, something fascinating is revealed. While in our origin we contain the potential to be something great, if we had continued to live in and with God, that potential itself would have grown: it would have been deified. The world, however, is the same – it was created good and beautiful by God, but the full realization of what it was meant to be is not to be found at its origin, but only in its consummation, only in its eschatological, transfigured end. We have been put into the world, not only to actualize our own potential, but also to help bring out the world’s potential as well, and with the world, all that lies within it – including each other. “The world was created with time, and this means that at the beginning, it had not reached its full development; it was only an embryo. The purpose of this type of creation is to allow the prophets and ‘good workers’ to arise throughout history and lead creation toward a synergy, that is, cooperative labor, of human and divine activity. This common work is to continue until the Day when the embryo will attain its full maturity,” Paul Evdokimov, The Art of the Icon: A Theology of Beauty, 57. We have been put into time to help in the development of the world; because we are a part of it, what we do to improve ourselves will help in improving the world. This does not mean we should go off into some corner, hide ourselves from the rest of humanity, and try to be reach perfection in isolation. Because we are beings who exist only in relation to others, to be the most of who we can be, we must not cut ourselves from the rest of the world; our perfection can only be found when we raise it with us. We are called to contribute to creation, not hide from it, to be co-creators in the world in union with God, helping the world achieve its final end, seeing it perfectly united with our own.

As we are called to share in the loving work of God, we must not abuse this vocation, that is, we must not think it gives us a right to overrule what God has done. Instead, our task must take into account God’s divine plan; we must look for it, and not thwart it. Then we can realize that this task is not ours alone, but the task of all creation:

But wisdom, being in ground and principle one and the same, is expressed differently in different creatures, just as the rays of the sun, which in their essence are one and the same, acquire different colors in different glasses, and just as water acquires different colors from the different colors of the plants contained in it. That is why we must investigate the Creator’s creation from the small to the great in order to discover in them the signs of wisdom hidden in them. That is why we must penetrate into them and meditate on them to receive a more or less clear understanding of them.
--Pavel Florensky, The Pillar and Ground of the Truth. Trans. Boris Jakim (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 204.

There is no monistic answer for how we should live. There is no one way to be human, even as there is not just one kind of flower – the world would be a boring, dull, and even ugly place if everyone acted the same way and did the same thing. Thus, even in the world, there are many ways of expressing what it means to be human, many ways of beautifying the world, with each person representing a different quality or characteristic of divinity. Thus, while humanity helps finish creation, to do so properly, humans need to freely discern what their own individual vocation is, what their own individual expression of divinity is, and what way they can best express it. This means that we must accept there are indeed some called to the religious life, to a monastic, celibate existence. This call comes much responsibility but even greater temptation: their existence lies in the fact that they express self-denial in imitation of Christ, however, in that self-denial, it is so easy to turn their denial into destruction, and asceticism to rejection of the world. When this happens, they no longer are true to the religious life they have been given. “The genuine Christian ascetic is essentially connected with all of creation and does not despise anything that belongs to creation,” Pavel Florensky, Pillar and Ground of the Truth, 199. Monastic life, if lived properly, seeks in their self-renunciation a vision of God which can only be found in the very center of their being, once all their egoism has been removed. This is done so at last they can let God live through them, radiating through them, transfiguring the world through them. The goal of any monk or nun is the same with the rest of us, but the way they go about it is just one of the many ways this can be achieved. Moreover, their vocation reminds us that humanity is itself not self-sufficient, and should never be confused as being something more than it is – in their self-renunciation they show us that human expression can only finally be affirmed outside the self, only with God.

Beauty can manifest itself in many ways, revealing many glorious aspects to its nature. When we look at a great work of art, when we listen to a wonderful piece of music, when a forest reveals itself in its glory to us, what is it that attracts us, what is it which makes it beautiful? Analyzing what we experience, and dividing it into its constituent parts, do we find that all the parts are equally beautiful? Or do we find that it is their integral unity which generates beauty by harmonizing its diverse elements together? A banging sound by itself might be rather crude; put in its proper place in the middle of a symphony it lifts up the spirit of the listener. Beauty reveals more of itself when divergent parts are brought together as one, but they can only be one if there some mediating principle which unites them. What is ugly by itself reveals an inner beauty when it is placed in its proper context.

When our lives are lived out selfishly, we try to set ourselves up as self-subsistent entities; our life is out of balance, our inner and external harmony is lost. The proper balance which lets our own individual uniqueness and glory shine through is lost; sin creates a defiled life, it makes our life ugly; holiness is a beautiful life lived out in all its splendor. Proper balance requires for us to have an openness to the world and its mediating principle – call it the Tao, the Dharma, or the Logos; we must let that principle guide us as it suggest a multitude of opportunities for our lives, each of which could lead us to our own proper fulfillment, to our own happiness. “In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God” (John 1:1). This Logos is “the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation” (Colossians 1:15). We learn that the Logos is not merely a guiding force, but a guiding person, who, as the express image of the Father, reveals to the world the transcendent glory of the Father (John 14:9). Taking on the flesh of man, the Logos mediates between God and man, by being both in one person – the God-man Jesus Christ. There is only one such God-man, one such mediator between God and man (1 Timothy 2:5 -6), and as mediator, Jesus seeks to restore us to our inner beauty, to bring us back into a holistic, balanced life. When we have ignored his gentle, loving call in the past and sinned, it should come of no surprise that our life loses all sense of meaning, and we feel hopeless, stricken in grief, in the ugliness we have created. But there is hope, because the Logos does not give up on us; he has not left our side; he still mediates for us, calling us back to its loving ways. If we listen to his call, he is willing to heal our spiritual infirmities, transforming us to show us how even our most ugly of actions can be made beautiful in his loving, harmonizing hands.

But let us not forget if we are created in the image and likeness of God then this mediating role of the Logos is itself something we are to imitate, to follow through in our own life. “Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God” (Ephesians 5:1). While we are not the God-man, we are godlike in existence, and called to act as mediators in the world; history is meant to be the process of our mediation in the world, where it build it up and beautify as a pure act of worship and love for God.

“Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are. Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. If it is possible, so as depends on you, live peaceably with all” (Romans 12: 16-18). One way we can live out our role as mediator is in how we build relationships with others, from how we build up our families, to how we build up our society. “When men and women provide for themselves and their families in such a way as to be of service to the community as well, they can rightly look upon their word as a prolongation of the work of the creator, a service to other men and women, and their personal contribution to the fulfillment in history of the divine plan,” Gaudium et Spes in Vatican Council II: Constitutions, Decrees, Declarations. Ed. Austin Flannery, O.P. (Northport, New York: Costello Publishing Company, 1996), paragraph 34.

But as mediators, we must be like the God-Man, the Mediator, who thoughtfully guides us and shows us our way, by acting out the role of mediator to the rest of creation, harmonizing its divergent parts so it can reveal its inner glory, a glory was given to it by God the Father. “Already in creation God the Father has bonded himself to all his creatures, since he has handed over to them as their own the very powers and laws that make them what they are,” Hans Urs von Balthasar, “The Christian Form,” in Explorations in Theology IV: Spirit and Institution. Trans. Edward T. Oakes (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1995), 58. If we are to be mediators to the world, to be the stewards of creation that God meant us to be, we must find a way to experience the mark of God hidden in all things. “I want creation to penetrate you with so much admiration that everywhere, wherever you may be, the least plant may bring to you the clear resemblance of the Creator,” St Basil, The Hexameron. Trans. Blomfield Jackson in Basil: Letters and Select Works Volume 8 in Nicene and Post Nicene Fathers, Series Two (Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishing, 1994), 76. Attuned to the world in this manner, we can find the simple joy of St Francis of Assisi as our own; that troubadour of God was loved by the people because of the artistic way he was able to guide the world to reveal its inner beauty. Ask an artist what it is that inspires them to create, and more often than not, they will say they only revealed to the world what was already there. “Artistic inspiration is a mode of letting-be, of letting the outlines of form slowly dawn according to their own terms. It gathers disparate elements into a form and gives them the movement of life,” Hans Urs von Balthasar, “The Christian Form,”60. In the same way, as the Logos guides and shapes us to let us reveal true nature and selves to the world, so we must in our creative guidance of the world, give room for the world to reveal itself, with just the slightest nudges here and there to keep everything in beautiful balance, centered upon the spirit of life.

The path to the Deathless is awareness;
Unawareness, the path of death.
They who are aware do not die;
They who are unaware are as
dead.
--The Dhammapada. Trans. John Ross Carter and Mahinda Palihawadana (New York: Book of the Month Club, 1992), 16 (Ch II.21)

To do our task properly, we need to center ourselves upon our true center: God. We need to open ourselves up to the Logos, to the guidance the Logos is willing to give us. We need moments of silence, with no external distraction; then we can become aware of the most gentle, most loving embrace of God upon our lives, nourishing our heart and soul, giving it the peace and rest which we strongly desire. This is the meaning of prayer, where we are open to the fullness of God in our lives, and God in his heartfelt love for us, is open to us, open to feel our pain and sorrow, our wants and desires, to be moved by them even as we are moved by him. When St Paul exhorts us to be in perpetual prayer, he is exhorting us to be in perpetual communion with God, having learned to feel the joy of his presence wherever we are, in whatever we do. But when we fully encounter God, we join in with God’s love so that our love is God and God is our love. Then, as Balthasar points out, “Christian contemplation encounters the love of God in no other way than in its commitment for the world,” Hans Urs von Balthasar, “Beyond Contemplation and Action?” in Explorations in Theology IV: Spirit and Institution. Trans. Edward T. Oakes (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1995), 303. God’s love reaches into the world, and is committed to beautifying it; thus when we center ourselves upon God, not only does this give us the strength and rest we all so desperately seek, but it does more – it leads us back into the world, leads us with a stronger commitment to the world, to be the mediator in the world God wants us to be. We become like Christ to the world. “They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me; and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them” (John 14:21).

The Sermon on the Mount is a commentary on love; it reveals to the world not only what God expects out of us, but also the rewards we will receive when we live out this love. Blessed are they who follow the commandments, for they shall see the kingdom of God within themselves, radiating out, transforming the world. Blessed are they who love so much that they are poor in spirit and hunger after righteousness; that desire will be fulfilled. They will be made pure at heart, they shall see God! But who exactly are they who shall see God? They are God’s children, the peacemakers, meek and humble ones who have inherited a stewardship over all the earth. In the madness and folly of their love, they will go so far as to give their very lives for the world, renouncing all claims to the world themselves but finding that it is God and God’s call which is all they need. By losing their life in love, God returns it to them; they are resurrected in eternal, heavenly glory, and have a life more beautiful than they ever could imagine; the foretaste of this is enough to transform even the greatest of sinner into a saint. They find out, holiness is not theirs alone, it is not something which can be grasped and stoppered up as if in a bottle. It spreads, and touches all those who come in contact with the saint. “Spread over and permeating the whole person, the light of Divine love also sanctifies the boundary of the person, the body, and, from there, radiates into the nature that is outside the person. Through the root by which the spiritual person reaches into the heavens, grace also sanctifies all that surrounds the ascetic and flows into the core of all creation.” Pavel Florensky, Pillar and Ground of the Truth,198.

Here, at last, we return where we started, we return to our original answer. What is the meaning of life? It is to be like holy artists, making the world beautiful, and this is done by turning ourselves into incarnations of love, imitating the Logos who is The Incarnation of Love. “God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them” (1 John 4:16). Or, as Nicholas Cabasilas says, “What then may life be more fittingly called than love? For that which alone survives and does not allow the living to die when all things have been taken away is life – and such is love. When all things have been passed away in the age to come as Paul says (1 Cor. 13:8, 10), love remains, and it alone suffices for life in Christ Jesus our Lord, to whom is due all glory for ever.” Nicholas Cabasilas, The Life in Christ. Trans. Carmino J. deCatanzara (Crestwood, New York: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1998), 229.

On the Beauty of Human Relationships, Cultures, and States

Humans are, by their nature, social creatures. We are created to be in relation with other people; from our birth, we are dependent upon our family in order to actualize our potential; as we grow and develop relationships with other people, we truly find out who we are in ourselves. A person is a relational entity who can only fully express themselves, can only be themselves, when they are in communion with an other; they get to know themselves in that act of communion, when they find themselves in a participated unity with an other. They find themselves to be neither entirely different from that other, because they do not exist in total isolation from that other, and yet not identical to the other; the two are differentiated from each other not only according to how they relate to each other, but also in how they relate to the world at large (an experience they then share with one another).

We find Holy Scripture indicating this truth in many ways; for example, in its rich creation myths. “It is not good that man should be alone,” (Genesis 2:18). After making Adam, God saw that he needed a companion, someone Adam could relate to on the same ontological level. “So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then he took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man,” (Genesis 2:21-22). Eve, the first woman, comes out of Adam; she is one with Adam, and yet different, a help-mate sharing in Adam’s stewardship over the earth.

Why does our true personal nature reveal itself only in a proper communal relationship with others? Scripture again indicates the answer. “Then God said, ‘Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness,” (Genesis 1:26). Humanity is created in the image and likeness of God, but what exactly do we see God to be like? God is Trinity, a oneness in expressed in three persons, three relational entities which are united in perfect communion and yet express themselves in three distinct manners. Because we are in the image and likeness of God, there is a fittingness for the incarnation, because humanity unites with its prototype. But there is more to this. “The ‘image and likeness’ of God in man implies, not only an openness of man toward God, but also a function and task of man in the whole of creation,” John Meyendorff. Byzantine Theology (New York: Fordham University Press, 1983), 140. We are called to be like God, to be in relational unity with the rest of humanity, to create the social bonds necessary for this unity to exist. Communion, and not isolation, is necessary in order to express the fullness of our human potential, even as in the Trinity it is through the communion and unity of the divine persons their reality is realized.

Family ties express the foundation of this human community. We come from two parents, sharing qualities from each, making them our own. We show ourselves as being distinct offshoots from our parents, and yet, look behind the obvious differences, we can find that we are not entirely different, entirely separated from them. Genetically speaking, save for mutation, we share one half of our own material makeup with our mother, and the other half with our father. Try as we might, we will never be completely different from them, even though our relative distinction is clear.

We find the Holy Family to have central importance in the life and work of messiah, starting with the call Joseph and Mary received to raise him, and ending with Jesus’ giving over of Mary, his mother, to John and through John, to all of us. “In revealing the Father’s love and humanity’s sublime calling, he made use of the most ordinary things of social life and illustrated his words with expressions and imagery from everyday life. He sanctified those human ties, above all family ties, which are the basis of social structures,” Gaudium et Spes in Vatican Council II: Constitutions, Decrees, Declarations. Ed. Austin Flannery, O.P. (Northport, New York: Costello Publishing Company, 1996), paragraph 32.

It is in this light we can understand how and why ancient Christians took the family to be in the likeness of the Trinity. They understood that the Father, in loving unity with the work of the Holy Spirit, brought Christ to the world, just as a father and mother come together in love and through their love, beget children. Love is not static; it is creative, within and without the Trinity. From this, we can understand why the family is the foundation of all society: human society is the realization of the family by the fact that it is in reality one large, extended family. The same qualities that are inherent in the family should be inherent with society: it should make itself into a loving unity working for the common good, each person having a unique role, each person having qualities which makes the family possible. If society can only be understood in relation to the family, then this means that a breakdown in the family will result in a breakdown with society. One of the grave defects of socialism lay in its breakdown of the family; there was nothing left it could create to justify why some lone individual, theoretically at war with everyone else, would want to give up this war and work for some common good. Raised in such a condition, raised without a proper appreciation of their immediate family, one will not form a proper appreciation of the human family. If the communion between a child with its family is no longer possible, a child raised in such a condition will have a difficult if not impossible time appreciating communion with others. But this truth goes both ways, one who does not realize the common good and the extended human family that one has in society will slowly lose sight of the meaning of family, even at its most basic unit. Why express any concern with one’s most immediate relations if we see the relations between two people to be primarily a relation of discordant opposition and not unity?

However, society is not one megalithic entity, even if humanity is, in its core, experienced through the interdependent but free encounter of relational persons. The communal unity of humanity must be understood as the basis for society, but freedom of expression must be seen as the basis for the variety of rich, distinct cultures. “The essence of society is not the external interaction of isolated individuals, not the collision of social atoms, but a primordially collective multi-unity. Outwardly, in the empirical layer of society, this multi-unity collectivity has two correlative expressions: the free interaction of the elements of multiplicity and the organizational unity of the whole,” S.L. Frank. The Spiritual Foundation of Society. Trans. Boris Jakim (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1987), 169. Only through this freedom can human potential be actualized. It is in the free movements of the human spirit that beauty can be realized here on earth, while beauty is itself what makes life full and rich, a life worth living. We are called to generate beauty in all we do; we are all called to be artists, making the world a more beautiful place because of our very existence. In the matrix of world cultures, we find common methods of generating such beauty, a common language which allows the deep recesses of our heart to be expressed in such a way as to be understood and appreciated by all. “In its essence, culture is the search for the one thing necessary which leads us beyond the immanent boundaries in which we find ourselves,” Paul Evdokimov. “Culture and Faith,” in In The World, Of the Church. Ed. and Trans. Michael Plekon and Alexis Vinogradov (Crestwood, New York: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2001), 214.

Freedom, however, must not be confused with irrational anarchy. While we have the potential to act in many different ways, some actions enliven the spirit, others enslave it; a society understanding this tries to create those laws in which it believes the human spirit can be most free. “A freedom without law is anarchy and therefore the destruction of freedom,” Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI). Values In A Time Of Upheaval. Trans. Brian McNeil (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2006), 33.

In an ideal world, laws would not be needed; but it is only in an ideal world that we would know what actions would cause us harm, limiting our freedom, and what actions would keep it intact. Because, in actuality, we do not know the consequences of our actions, it is quite clear we live in fallen ignorance; but if this is the case, then what guarantees do we have that the laws, once enacted, will fulfill their duty, and produce that freedom which we seek? Sadly, we do not have any; we must use our reason to the best of our ability to predetermine those consequences, but reason is an imperfect tool, and the laws we create will thus show evidence of our imperfection, and even our fallen nature. The rule of law, which is good, could be turned into a tyrannical rule, where a law does not serves its purpose and must be removed. We must keep the rule of law for the sake of humanity, but we must know humanity is not made for the sake of law! “The social order requires constant improvement: it must be founded in truth, built in justice, and enlivened by love: it should grow in freedom towards a more humane equilibrium,” Gaudium et Spes, paragraph 26.

A culture which creates and generates its own rule of law with its own rule of government to protect that rule of law can be seen as the foundation of the state. As such a culture is a good, the state must be seen as a good. But they must only be seen as relative goods, because the final good will always be God. Hence any culture and the state or states it produces must be seen only to exist for a purpose, making the state relative in its value. But in that act, it is to become the outward expression of the social bonds inherent in human nature, allowing for human freedom to express itself in a just and beautiful society. The relative goodness of a state can only be declared in according to how well the state generates and perpetuates this profound human expression. Its failures to do so are failures in its goodness; in extreme circumstances, where it squashes the human spirit, the state no longer performs its function and must be understood as a relative evil, and must be resisted.

Thus we can begin to understand the relationship between a Christian with the state. A Christian exists in the world, and must act in the world, and must not seek to destroy the world, but to transform it to its proper end in Christ. Thus the Christian must not seek to destroy an evil state, but to transform it, to purify it. “The Christian service to the state consists in preserving its greatness while considering it inferior to God,” Hugo Rahner, Church and State In Early Christianity Trans. Leo Donald Davis, S.J. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1992), 20.We realize our final end is in God, and that all states are relative, temporal goods; they are not our final end; we must not turn it into an idol. But this does not mean we cannot and should not love the state we live in; the state, in what good it does, in what freedom it provides, in what cultural matrix it allows human freedom to express itself, is a good and all good deserves to be respected and loved. But that love must be proper to the kind of good it is. We must not love the state so much that its purpose is lost, and love the state more than its purpose.

Our love for our state can cause us to consider our state as being better than some other state, for those qualities in it which we appreciate. This is not necessarily wrong; indeed, if it is done in a good natured way, rivalry between states can be a good. However, this rivalry must exist only with one express aim: for the improvement of all. Nicholas of Cusa, for example, tells us that this is true not only on a secular level. How we worship God and experience God cannot be limited in one way; such attempts will stifle the creative interaction with God, and the ever-increasing cooperation with grace which we seek in the Christian life. Therefore rivalry between states can help develop better relations with God. ”Perhaps as a result of a certain diversity devotion will even be increased, since each nation will endeavor with zeal and diligence to make its own rite more splendid, in order that in this respect it may excel some other nation and thereby obtain greater merit with God and greater praise in the world,” Nicholas of Cusa. De Pace Fidei, XIX. Trans. Jasper Hopkins (Minneapolis: The Arthur J. Banning Press, 1994), 70.

Yet, to appreciate this role, to appreciate the greatness of the state, to realize why a Christian cannot abandon it, we must realize that because the state’s foundation is from the humanity which generated it. Because humans are open in their very nature to the free graces of God, the state is also opened to them, allowing it to be a participant in God’s will and therefore directed, in part, by God. “The state (like all other social unions and relations) is the human incarnation (and therefore always only a partial and inevitably distorted incarnation) of the divine principle of truth which is grounded in Truth itself as it is revealed in the essentially moral spiritual life of mankind, the life of grace,” S.L. Frank, The Spiritual Foundations of Society, 102. When Sts. Peter and Paul declare state authority to be instituted by God, it can only be understood in this context. “Neither Paul nor Peter expresses an uncritical glorification of the Roman state. While they do insist strongly on the divine origin of the legal ordering of the state, they are far from divinizing the state itself. It is precisely because they see the limits on the state, which is not God and may not behave as if it were God, that they acknowledge its ordering function and its ethical character,” Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger . Values In A Time Of Upheaval, 19.

A Christian is therefore called to take part in the development of the state, realizing that there are as many different ways as there are people for how this should be done. Politics, which deal with the government of the state, is important, but we must understand, like the state, it too has a limit, and unless we are called to political service, we must not let our lives be ruled by the temporal conditions of the politics of our state. We must work for their improvement, but we must understand that politics is itself only a means to an end, and not an end in itself. “Politics is the realm of reason – not of a merely technological, calculating reason, but of moral reason, since the goal of the state, and hence the ultimate goal of all politics, has a moral nature, namely, peace and justice,” Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, ibid., 24. Moreover, we cannot be under the illusion that through politics we can transform the world into a utopia; while we seek for the betterment of the world, its pristine reconditioning is only to be had in the eschaton. But we must recognize a key danger that many fall into when dealing with politics: people often become party loyalists over and above the principles in which government should be run. We might believe in one ideal and put it forward above all others, but in doing so it is no longer holistically working for the betterment of humanity. What Sergius Bulgakov points out about how socialism works is true about any principle when it is taken to an extreme: it becomes so important that no other issues seem to matter. “The warmth of human relations is edged out by socially utilitarian rationalism, immediacy of feeling replace by the infamous adherence to ‘principle,’ so that the success of socialism and the growth of social solidarity are by no means accompanied by an increase in love or even sympathy and a decrease in enmity among people.,” Sergei Bulgakov. Philosophy of Economy Trans. Catherine Evtuhov (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 240. The problem becomes more apparent when the Christian puts a secular principle over and above the dictates of their religious faith. Christians can and should engage in politics, but they should not become its slave:

The Christian as such may be utterly deprivatized, commissioned to act publicly as an assessor on the world state (1 Co 4:9; Heb 10:30) – and in this sense he may be political: all the same, his existence cannot be classified in secular terms, and he himself cannot grasp in its totality, and so the Christian cannot be simply put into the “political” pigeonhole. Politics concerns him: as a ‘member’ under Christ, the Head, he is in profound solidarity with each of the Lord’s least brothers and must realize that he has an inescapable responsibility for the conditions under which they live.
-- Hans Urs Von Balthasar. Theo-Drama. Volume I: Prolegomena. Trans. Graham Harrison (San Francisco:Ignatius Press, 1988), 39.

Moreover, as an actor in the world scene, the Christian must realize the temporal nature of the state, even of the culture they live in; there can come a time when a given state or culture has outlasted its purpose and must be respectfully put aside for something better, something greater. “Sooner or later, thought, art, and social life reach their own limits and then a choice is imposed: to be located in the infinity of their own immanence, to be intoxicated by their own emptiness, or to surpass their strangulating limitations and, in the transparency of clear waters to reflect the transcendent,” Paul Evdokimov. “Culture and Faith,” 201.The Christian must not be attached to the state; they must not find themselves attaching to the things of the world; they are to enjoy and appreciate them, yes, but in the end, they must go through an ascetical renunciation of all attachments in order to experience everything in their proper place, to see how all things point to God and participate in existence through God. Their beauty, which we must acknowledge, is but a reflection of the greater beauty that exists in God, a beauty that draws us to experience the intense love shared by the three persons of the Holy Trinity. In this way it can be said, “Intense love, purified by authentic asceticism, is our true destiny,” Paul Evdokimov, ibid., 205.

We Must Sow The Seed of Heaven In Our Lives

Medieval exegetes of Holy Scripture primarily used four ways or methods of interpreting a Scriptural text. The first was to look at the text according to its letter, that is, to find out and understand what the text said happened historically. The second was to look for the hidden, and therefore allegorical, meanings of a text; this method was seen as especially useful for the discernment of doctrinal truth in Scripture. The third was to explain the moral significance of the text: what does Scripture tell us about the human condition and how we should live? The fourth way, called the anagogical interpretation, used typology to explain how Scriptural events, including the people, places and things therein, represent things to come in our hoped-for end.

While all four methods were used, exegetes could produce radically different interpretations of a given text. Through the rise of modern hermeneutics, we can understand why this is so. What you take with you into a text will be the lens by which you understand and read that text. Each exegete would come to a given text with their own theological, philosophical, and historical beliefs, which, without question, led each of them to their own individualized Biblical interpretation. Not all of these interpretations, it must be said, are incompatible with one another; nor are all of them wrong. Indeed, many of them complement each other very well. The task for the exegete was to make sure his or her interpretation was compatible with the context of Christian tradition.

Many people consider the kinds of interpretations we can have of Scripture if we look at it within new cultural or philosophical perspectives. It must be noted that our current life and situation requires we do this. Our culture is radically different from the culture in which the texts were written and from the medieval culture which produced the interpretations of Scripture many know and follow. We must study the Sacred Scriptures according to the new cultural situation we live in. This does not mean that Holy Scriptures have to be made as a handmaiden to our culture, never criticizing it; but it does mean that our own cultural situation and scientific knowledge must be taken into account when we read the sacred text.

In Pope John Paul II’s great encyclical, Fides et Ratio, the Pope noted the need for Christian theologians and philosophers to take the ideas of the Indian religious and philosophical imagination into account, and adapt what in them is good and compatible with the Christian faith. “In India particularly, it is the duty of Christians now to draw from this rich heritage the elements compatible with their faith, in order to enrich Christian thought.” Pope John Paul II, Fides et Ratio. Vatican Translation, 72.

My own work in systematic theology has taken this to heart. There is a great variety of Indian thought, and it would be difficult if not impossible for one to gain a mastery of it all. Therefore, while gaining a broad understanding of it, one should also specialize; for me, that specialization lies with Buddhism. However, once a Christian begins to engage Buddhism, they quickly find out that the Buddhadharma is too wide and broad for one to specialize in all aspects of its history and teachings. One must choose specific areas of interest and focus upon them for one’s scholarly pursuits. The area of Buddhist thought which fascinates me the most is Yogacara Buddhism. Not only is it interesting, but it provides a rather thorough and useful examination of the human psyche and the way we experience the world. While I will not agree with all the Yogacarins profess, I believe many of their insights are compatible with Christian thought.

In the light of my studies, many Scriptural texts have taken on a new meaning. Each time I read them or hear them recited in liturgy, I keep thinking about how Yogacarin they sound. I keep thinking how interesting it would be to put these texts side by side, and interpret them according to a Yogacarin lens. Would such a task be useful? If they provide a new interpretation of the text, one which can be seen as representing at least one of the four primary medieval exegetical methods, and one which ends up being compatible with Christian thought, I would have to say yes. Not only would it provide a possible place for dialogue between Christians and Buddhists, it would also show that Christian thought could be enriched by such a dialogue.

Tradition states that Asanga, under the tutelage of the Bodhisattva Maitreya, founded Yogacara Buddhism sometime in the fourth century. Later, Asanga convinced his half-brother Vasubandhu to join this new school of Buddhist thought, making the two-half brothers the original proponents of its teachings. While Asanga was its founder, Vasubandhu’s writings, it could be argued, were far more influential in the spread of Yogacarin ideas.

Yogacara Buddhism, also known as Vijnanavada (the way of consciousness) or Cittamatra (mind-only) is one of many schools of Mahayana Buddhism. In order to understand the school, one must therefore understand some of the core principles of Mahayana Buddhism. Perhaps the two core Mahayana values are sunyata (which means emptiness) and karuna (compassion). The Mahayanist tries to merge the two together in themselves in order to become a Bodhisattva, one who in their quest for enlightenment seeks enlightenment or liberation not only for themselves, but for all sentient beings, and vows never to enter final nirvana until all beings have been liberated from suffering. While the Yogacarin agrees with the Madhyamakan on the fundamental emptiness of all phenomena of substantial, self-subsistent being, one can say the Yogacarin also looks for a positive ground of framework in which to establish this fundamental emptiness. They want to develop a way to overcome all possible nihilistic interpretations of sunyata.

While the Yogacarins kept to the basic teachings and practices of Mahayana, they provided a unique interpretation of them. Their interest lay in the psyche and how it develops and evolves, and their understanding of the psyche was based upon the combination of canonical Buddhist texts, their authoritative commentaries, and their own experiences in meditation. Many doctrines they produced became widely accepted by other followers of the Great Vehicle; others became hotly contested and disputed. More often than not, the Yogacarins are examined in relation to what they hold distinctly from other Buddhists, making it difficult to understand their teachings holistically. Thus, many of their critics exaggerate aspects of their thought to make their teaching turn into something which it is not: a belief in a substantial, eternal, self-subsistent self.

In saying this, however, I must add that it is many of their distinct teachings which, if they are put into a proper balance in relation to the rest of the Buddhadharma, that I find the most interesting. Any study on Yogacara Buddhism will note that in its understanding of consciousness, it has added several new layers of depth to an earlier, and more commonly accepted among Buddhists, teaching of human consciousness. Traditionally, it was understood that human consciousness was actually the combination of six different elements: the five western senses of sight, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching combined with a sixth mental sense. The mind, like the eye, is viewed as an organ of perception, one whose objects are mental instead of physical. Moment by moment these consciousnesses are constantly in flux, changing what they perceive and how they should be perceived, so that it must be understood that there is no unchanging, self-subsistent entity being described in them. Even the mind must be seen to exist in this perpetual flux so as not to be discerned as an immortal, unchanging eternal soul.

While the Yogacarins accept all six basic forms of consciousness, they believe that consciousness contains two more “mental” realities, and like the rest, they are in constant flux. The most important one, which to them is the root of all consciousness, is the alaya-vijnana, the storehouse consciousness. It is the base upon which all other forms of consciousness flow, what is contained within it influences how all other aspects of consciousness are experienced:

There the maturing [consciousness]
Is otherwise called the
store-consciousness,
Which carries the seeds of all [past experiences].

Stanza 2 of Vasubandhu, “A Treatise in Thirty Stanzas” in A Buddhist Doctrine of Experience. A New Translation and Interpretation of the Works of Vasubandhu the Yogacarin.. Thomas A. Kochumuttom (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1982), 135

The alaya can be said to be the unconscious base of consciousness in Yogacarin thought. It is called the storehouse consciousness because it contains the impressions of past deeds and experiences, which the Yogacarins call seeds:

Residual impressions from past aggregate-moments in the present consciousness-moment have been given the metaphorical designation ‘seeds.’ The metaphor is in some ways a very apt one. A ‘seed’ is actually a constantly changing series of interrelated energy-events which gradually, if conditions allow, will give rise to a sprout. Similarily, a ‘latent impression’ is a constantly changing series of moment-events which will, gradually, if conditions allow, give rise to a memory, or ‘reverberation’ in the consciousness-series.

Stefan Anacker, Seven Works of Vasubandhu (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1998), 61.

Like a seed, these impressions can change and mutate, or even be destroyed. What one does creates the seed, but the seeds then influence how one thinks and how one acts. “If a person engages in acts of lust, he becomes permeated with lust. As his mind repeatedly arises and passes away in tandem with lust, the lust becomes the generative cause for the [lustful] evolutions of his mind.” Asanga. The Summary of the Great Vehicle. Translated from the Chinese of Paramartha.. Trans. John P. Keenan (Berkeley, California: Numata Center For Buddhist Translation and Research, 1992), 21. In western terms, they can be seen as similar to habitual imprints in our consciousness, except for the fact that to the Yogacarins these imprints more than influence how we act, but they also become the hermeneutic base in which we experience reality.

For the second layer of consciousness is a transformation of this unconscious alaya into the conscious manas-vijnana, a consciousness which grasps the unconscious alaya with its contents, believing the alaya to be a reflection of an eternal, self-subsistent being. Grasping the alaya in this fashion, it then divides reality into a personal internal subject and external objects, turning the world purely into a realm of individual, self-subsistent objects to be interacted upon by the personal self. These external objects, however, are only understood and interpreted through the lens of the alaya,, that is, how these objects are experienced (as good, bad, or indifferent), and even the way they are perceived through our sense organs are based upon the seeds implanted within our unconscious mind. They create as it were a filter by which reality is perceived, clouding our vision of the world we live in.

The knowable internal form,
which appears as external,
is the object (of the cognition).

Dignaga. “Investigation About the Support of The Cognition” in Being as Consciousness. Fernando Tola and Carmen Dragonetti (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 2004), 36.

The knowable form, the seed caught in one's unconscious mind, modifies the way reality is experienced. External reality is experienced as an object of perception by the sixth consciousness, experienced as a combination of the internal seed as it is taken and placed upon what our senses perceive, creating an apparent external reality, but in actuality, it is reality mixed with the defiled sense of experience covered by what the manas generates.

The consciousness contains all seeds;
Its such and such transformations
Proceeded by mutual influence,
On account of which such and such [subject-object] discriminations arise.

Stanza 17 of Vasubandhu, “A Treatise in Thirty Stanzas”,147.

From this it can be said that Yogacarins believe that a “common object” could be and would be experienced by people differently according to the seeds stored in their own alaya-vijnana. Indeed they would say there is but one reality with six realms or ways of experience (from the heavenly realms of bliss to the damnable hell-realms). Even in the same basic realm of experience, different people could and would experience a given “object” differently. A rabid dog, an animal control specialist, and a young girl desiring to have a pet cat, could and would experience a cute stray cat walking down an alleyway differently. The dog would attack it, the animal control specialist would view it as a pest that needs to be taken off the streets, and the young girl would see it as a potential friend.

We should keep in mind that what we have said so far is to be understood as a continual process, by which our actions and past actions already seeded in the alaya creates the base by which new actions are done; these new actions create new seeds in the alaya, fundamentally changing it, so that from moment to moment the alaya and its contents are similar to but not identical to one another. There is no unchanging entity behind all these actions. Because of this, the consciousnesses can be purified and transformed. An unclouded, undefiled experience of reality is possible. “From the total transmutation of the seed, there is the transmutation of the appearances of places, objects and bodies; this is the uncontaminated realm, and it has a universal basis.” Asanga. The Universal Vehicle Discourse Literature. Trans. L Jamspal, R. Clark, J. Wilson, L Willing, M Sweet and R. Thurman (Columbia, New York: American Institute of Buddhist Studies, 2004), 134.

How does one go about this transmutation? Surprisingly enough, it begins with its own seed, a desire for enlightenment. One who hears about the possibility of liberation is seeded, if ever so slightly, with the desire for its attainment. “The world-transcendent mind arises because its seed is the permeation of hearing that flows from the purest Reality Form.” Asanga. The Summary of the Great Vehicle , 31. This seed is said to develop into the dharmakaya the body of truth, that is the core of enlightened existence. “This permeation of hearing, whether lower, middle, or higher, is then the seed of the Dharma body. Because it rises in countering the container consciousness, it is not comprised within that container consciousness. Since it is an outflow from the world-transcendent, most pure Reality Realm, even though a worldly state, it brings about the world-transcendent mind.” Asanga. The Summary of the Great Vehicle. 32.

That is, while it is called a seed, unlike the other seeds, this seed transcends the personal alaya, and is able to overcome the contents within. There is a revolution within the alaya where that revolution, as it were, sets fire to the other seeds, destroying them. Of course, like a seed, it too must grow; this transformation of the base does not occur in an instant, but develops as one engages in it in the continued transformation of their consciousness. The goal is to experience the world outside of all defilements in one’s consciousness, thereby showing the world once experienced as samsara is itself in reality not other than nirvana.

In discussing the seeds as defilements of consciousness, we must understand that the experience they bring is not always negative. That is, while unwholesome deeds generate unwholesome seeds, wholesome deeds generate wholesome seeds, and wholesome seeds help create a more joyful and even pleasurable experience of reality. But the two are seen as defilements, because these deeds, even wholesome ones, make us cling to an imperfect and therefore limited experience of reality. Thus one can say that to transcend this defiled state one must transcend the way of works, not by rejecting works, but by overcoming any attachment to their effects.

Because of the concern that Yogacara Buddhism has for these seeds and the desire to purify ourselves of any defiling seeds within our consciousness that when I come to Scriptural texts which directly or indirectly use an analogy using seeds that I take notice of the text and see what a Yogacarin hermeneutic could make for the text.

Galatians 6:7 - 10 says, “Do not be deceived; God is not mocked, for you reap whatsoever you sow. If you sow to your own flesh, you will reap corruption from the flesh; but if you sow to the Spirit, you will reap eternal life from the Spirit. So let us not grow weary in doing what is right, for we will reap at harvest time, if we do not give up. So then, whenever we have an opportunity, let us work for the good of all, and especially for those of the family of faith.”

It does not take a scholar to notice that this text has a rather karmic tone to it. For every action there is a reaction, for every habit we develop, we will experience its resultant fruit. “Either make the tree good, and its fruit good; or make the tree bad, and its fruit bad; for the tree is known by its fruit” (Matt. 12:33). To sow according to the flesh is to sow according to the things of the flesh, making us entirely attached to them. Yet, since these things are impermanent, if we attach ourselves to them, we will suffer when we lose them. “As in the case of seeds, one who sows pulse cannot reap corn, for what is sown and what is reaped must both be of one kind, so is it in actions, he that plants in the flesh, wantonness, drunkenness, or inordinate desire, shall reap the fruits of these things. And what are these fruits? Punishment, retribution, shame, derision, destruction.” St John Chrysostom, “Homily on Galatians Chapter VI” in Nicene Post Nicene Fathers, Series I. Ed. Philip Schaff (Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson, 1994), Vol. 13, p. 45.

While a Yogacarin could agree with Chrysostom in saying that the consequences of such actions are punishments, they would point out that these punishments are self-contained within the actions that have been committed. Instead of trying to say these punishments are placed upon us by God, one could and should say that these punishments are self-imposed. It is not that one desires these punishments, but rather, out of ignorance of the consequences of their actions, one creates the conditions in which one will suffer. You truly reap what you sow, but you should know what seed it is you are planting before sowing it into the ground.

What about the spiritual seed? In interpreting the Parable of the Sower, Jesus suggests that this seed is planted into our consciousness by himself. “The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man” (Matt. 13:37). How then are we to sow this seed, as St Paul tells us we should do, if it is sown by the Son of Man? It is by taking what Jesus tells us to do and to do it. “But the fruit of the Spirit is of a nature not similar but contrary in all respects to these. For consider; hast thou sown alms-giving? the treasures of heaven and eternal glory await thee: hast thou sown temperance? honor and reward, and the applause of Angels, and a crown from the Judge await thee,” ibid. p. 45.

The Yogacarin tells us that the seed for enlightenment is planted into our consciousness by our hearing of the dharma. “So faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the word of Christ” (Rom. 10:17). We must become a hearer of the word. We must be open to this word and receive it into our life. We must realize that this word is none other than the Word of God, the Word which is not-other than God himself. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). Reception of this word is not a one-time event but takes a lifetime sowing, where we must unite ourselves to the very will of God, sowing what God desires us to sow, growing in the spirit, until the seed planted in our soul takes root and cleanses us of all sin and brings us to our desired end. “You have been born anew, not of perishable but of imperishable seed, through the living and enduring word of God” (1 Peter 1:23).

“Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and they sprang up quickly, since they had no depth of soil. But when the sun rose, they were scorched; and since they had no root, they withered away. Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them,” (Matt. 13:5 -7). It is not enough to hear the word and simply believe it: we must act upon it, and let this word completely enter into the very core of our being and transform us, purifying us of all defilement, ““for indeed our God is a consuming fire,” (Heb. 12:29). God desires us to experience the purity of reality, and will set us afire in his love, so that all our defilements, all our impure sowing, can be cleansed from our being. “If the work is burned up, the builder will suffer loss; the builder will be saved, but only as through fire,” (1. Cor. 3:15).

While we are called to sow according to the spirit, we must remember it is God who provides us the seed to sow. It is neither works alone nor grace alone. It is our work, in cooperation with the grace of God which provides to us, that leads us to our desired heavenly bliss. “He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness,” (2. Cor. 9:10).

In ignorance we sow what we do not know, and we create within ourselves the habits which will make ourselves suffer. Sin left unchecked leads to more sin, and eventually becomes habitual sin:

Directly, as when, by one sinful act, man is disposed to commit more readily another like act: because acts cause dispositions and habits inclining to like acts. Secondly, after the manner of a material cause, one sin is the cause of another, by preparing its matter: thus covetousness prepares the matter for strife, which is often about the wealth a man has amassed together. Thirdly, after the manner of a final cause, one sin causes another, in so far as a man commits one sin for the sake of another which is his end; as when a man is guilty of simony for the end of ambition, or fornication for the purpose of theft. And since the end gives the form to moral matters, as stated above (1, 3; 18, A4,6), it follows that one sin is also the formal cause of another: because in the act of fornication committed for the purpose of theft, the former is material while the latter is formal.

St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica. Trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New York: Benziger Bros. edition, 1947), II.75.4.

We have sinned out of ignorance; in gaining wisdom, we can overcome sin. Sin covers and darkens the soul, preventing us from experiencing reality in its pristine purity and goodness. Indeed, much of our sin is caused by our desire for an apparent but unreal good. We think something will bring us joy; momentarily it is so, but then it is lost and we cannot recover it. But when the seeds of sin are cleansed from us by the purifying fire of love, we shall no longer see the world as a world of shadows and darkness. We shall not be fooled by apparent goods. Knowing that they are markers on the road to perdition, we will ignore them, turning ourselves instead to the beauty of pure goodness. “The soul does not want a good that is only apparent. And if it is under the sway of some habit, it is also quite able to overcome this habit. Yet even before the habit was formed it had been deceived by ignorance. Hence one should above all strive after a true knowledge of created beings, and then spur one’s will towards primal goodness…,” St Theodoros the Great, “Theoretikon” in The Philokalia: The Complete Text. Volume Two.. Trans. and ed. by G.E.H. Palmer, Philip Sherrard and Kallistos Ware (Boston: Faber and Faber, 1990), 46.

Proverbs 11:18 tells us, “The wicked earn no real grain, but those who sow righteousness get a true reward.” Evil does not exist in itself; it must be seen as a deprivation of the good; the wicked earn no real grain, only pestilence, because the seed they sow is like a cancer eating away at our very soul. The habits we create determine the direction our soul is moving, but we must realize these habits are created by ourselves and we do not have to become creatures of habit. “Consequently man, while possessing a habit, may either fail to use the habit, or produce a contrary act; and so a man having a virtue may produce an act of sin,” St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II.73.4. If we find ourselves in habitual sin, we must not allow ourselves to become a slave to that habit, but seek for the grace to overcome it. We must not let it become the Lord of our life. Even if we do not overcome it in this life, the seed of grace, planted in our soul, can purify us through the purgatorial trial of fire that leads to heaven, as long as we do not squash that grace and turn it into naught.

Earlier in this essay I suggested that a new hermeneutic for Scriptural understanding should be welcomed if it provides for a complimentary understanding of Scripture; it must be one which does not override Christian doctrine, but rather provides for us a fuller and richer understanding of Scripture, especially if it does so according to at least one of the four primary ways of Scriptural interpretation. However, in this brief excursus, one can argue I have engaged not one but two exegetical senses: that is, according to a moral and an anagogical sense. Morally speaking, Yogacara Buddhism shows us how habits not only influence how we act, but how we think, and explain why bad habits can pervert the way we think. Anagogically speaking, we are shown why all defiled habits must be cleansed from us; because they influence how we think, they influence how we experience reality. If we are to experience the pristine goodness and beauty of God and God’s creation, which is what we seek for, we are shown why this will not be accomplished until the seed of grace, granted to us in baptism, purifies us and leads us to our heavenly rebirth. In the end, when we have truly been born into the heavenly kingdom, we will not sin, and we will not suffer the consequences of sin in our life any longer, since “Those who have been born of God do not sin, because God’s seed abides in them; they cannot sin, because they have been born of God,” (1 John 3:9).

Some Thoughts On Anthropology

One of the most important elements of a good Christology is a good anthropology. Jesus is fully God and fully man. When one’s anthropology is bad, one’s understanding of Jesus in accordance to his humanity will certainly be in error. We live in a time where a critical-historical approach to the New Testament and the Gospels has helped inspire new, but rather, low Christologies. Jesus is made to be seen as another human like us. Scholars such as Crossan, Funk, Marxsen, and Schillebeeckx suggest considerable doubt as to what Jesus could or could not have done, what he could or could not have known, based upon their own experience of what it means to be human. They turn their human experience as being the model in which to read the humanity of Jesus.

While there is merit to this, sadly, it has many limitations –our current understanding of what it means to be human suggests many limitations for Jesus as well. Thus, following this methodology, Roger Haight says, “The subject Jesus, the person, was ignorant, weak, vulnerable to suffering, and did not in the least appear to be Yahweh or the Father or God,” Roger Haight, Jesus, Symbol of God (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis, 2002), 292. For Haight, this leads him to having a difficulty in finding a proper understanding of the divinity of Jesus; Jesus is read as being just like us, therefore he believes that the discussions about the divinity of Christ in the early Christian creeds really meant to merely suggest that Jesus had a special experience of God, “Second, God’s presence to Jesus must be regarded as a presence within his humanity. By this I mean that the divine in Jesus does not appear over and above Jesus’ being a human being, but rather precisely within the way Jesus was human, the way he lived and taught. […] Once again, he was a human being, and one must begin to understand the presence of God to him and within him beginning with this premise of integral human existence. In terms of the theory of symbol, the finite, created integrity of human existence must be preserved in Jesus.” Roger Haight, Jesus, Symbol of God , 293. If this is truly the case, it becomes difficult for us to understand what it means for Jesus to be the only begotten Son of God. His Jesus is not a divine person, but resembles a Nestorian Christ, where the humanity experiences the closeness of the divinity, but not the realization of that divinity as being the same person as Jesus.

The problem is not with a historical-critical reading of the Gospels. As Wolfhart Pannenberg points out, the way we understand Jesus has to include the records we have of his life (the Gospels and early Christian witnesses of Christ we have in the New Testament), and these records should be sufficient to point out to us who and what he is. “If the human history of Jesus is the revelation of his eternal sonship, we must be able to perceive the latter in the reality of the human life.” Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology. Volume 2. Trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1994), 325. The real issue is the fact that most anthropologies being used by those engaging in the historical-critical methodology are wrong, containing significant problematic presumptions which lead to great hermeneutical difficulties. They have a low understanding of the potential of humanity, and thus read this low potential back into Jesus.

What are the problems I mean? There are far too many to relate, but fundamentally, I would suggest that the first and probably greatest problem lies in the prototype used to determine who and want represents humanity. While there is considerable sense in using our own experience as the way to declare what it means to be human, Christian anthropology tells us that the real prototype is not ourselves, but Jesus, and secondly, the reason why we should not use ourselves as the prototype lies in the fact that our own human experience is the experience of an imperfect, crippled existence which does not fully manifest what it is we are intended to be.

“When wealth is hidden, one is ignorant of it
and therefore does not obtain the treasure.”
Buddha Nature. The Mahayana Uttaratantra Shastra. Trans. Rosemarie Fuchs (Ithaca, New York: Snow Lion Publications, 2000), 38.

The wealth is what it means to be human, it is hidden because of our defiled existence, defiled by sin, and therefore if we use this defiled existence as the way to read what it means to be human, we shall never achieve the goal; it will forever be outside of our grasp.

Imagine a land where, once upon a time, some malevolent dictator who, due to some genetic problem, is born without legs, and had the legs of everyone living within his kingdom broken, and incapable of being healed. People were crippled and could not stand up. Imagine if he spread this genetic mutation to his children, and it continues on throughout the rest of the dynasty. Not only were the legs of the people living under the first generation of this new dynasty broken, but state policy makes this a law required to be put into effect for countless generations, and all the children born into this society have their legs entirely mutilated. Eventually, the very understanding of what it means to stand up is lost, and in this society, humanity and its very existence is seen only in this crippled state. Imagine, when you get to the fourth or fifth generation of such a society, and they read stories about people standing up. Since they have never experienced it for themselves, nor could do it if they tried, they believe these stories must be the pure fanciful wishes of previous generations. Anyone who lived in the past, they believe, must be like they are now; and anything which suggests otherwise must be interpreted mythically or allegorically as representing an innate, but deluded, desire of humanity. This is exactly how Jesus is being read in relation to us. When we are used to model what it means to be human, instead of Jesus the author of the new, restored humanity (cf. I Cor. 15:21 -22), Jesus is read to have our own foibles instead of us as being deficient and needing to be healed from them.

One of the significant debates of 20th century theology was the debate over the so-called “pure nature” having its own “natural beatitude.” Is there a pure humanity which can exist on its own without being open to a relationship with the divine, or is the idea of a pure, closed humanity entirely a theoretical fiction? It would seem that many who argue for a low understanding of the person of Jesus, and suggest that he was a rather feeble, ignorant human man, fall along the lines of the “pure nature.” They create a closed human nature incapable of enlightenment, incapable of being penetrated by the divine life. Henri de Lubac rightfully suggests this idea is fundamentally non-Christian, and at the heart of a Christian theology of grace is the idea that humanity was created to be open to and fulfilled by the gratuitous graciousness of God. “Under different forms, and with accentuations varying from one century and school to another, Christian philosophy thus developed the concept of a human nature which is open to receive a supernatural gift” Henri de Lubac, The Mystery of the Supernatural. Trans. Rosemary Sheed (New York: Crossroad Publishing Company, 1998), 119. Indeed, if we try to bracket humanity by itself and suggest a humanity entirely by itself, capable of being on its own without God, happy and blessed, and then consider in relation to this the possibility of a humanity which can exist with God and supernaturally lifted up by God to an even greater existence, the end result is a dichotomy which not only destroys who and what we are, but who and what God is as well. “Then there is the hypothesis that seeks to posit a “purely natural” universe, in which man could claim “natural” happiness from God. Now alongside this another universe is imagined – our own in fact – in which man still requires happiness from God, this time “supernatural.” Whether we add the two together or set them against each other, we can hardly hope to find in them the gratuitousness we are looking for.” Henri de Lubac, The Mystery of the Supernatural. 62. Indeed, Lubac points out in many of his writings that the result of this notion (whatever good reasons there were in originally suggesting it) is a separation of humanity from God which seeks to show how God is not needed and ends up a practical if not an entirely philosophical atheism.

Thus, the debate over how to read what it means to be human, when it is a debate which excludes the evidence we have from the life of Christ and the Christian experience, just ends up re-establishing the concept of a pure, closed human nature. Following Lubac’s analysis of what such a pure nature would suggest, it is not surprising that this hermeneutic is one which atheists use to deconstruct the Gospel narratives, trying to show how the “Jesus of faith” was a creation of the Evangelists. Perhaps they do not realize that the results they suggest are one and the same with the presumptions they took with the text itself: what they offer is entirely circular reasoning.

So, we need to have a different anthropological understanding of what it means to be human, and we must use Jesus in his humanity as the ideal. What he does as man must be seen as something all humanity can and should be capable of doing. He himself said, “Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these” (John 14:12). Many debates on what Christ could or could not do, could or could not know, would be answered if we took this approach.

So what does this mean specifically? What does Jesus tell us about humanity that we could not have known without his example? If we believe those who hold a low Christology, the answer would be nothing. However, this cannot be, and indeed is not the case. Instead of being closed off as a reality unto itself, humanity must be in its very nature open to the gracious penetration of the divinity with itself – its potential must not be that of a weak cripple but of a great, potentially infinite and deified, life. “What then is the ground of the Incarnation? Is it an act of divine omnipotence, comparable to the creation of the world ex nihilo? Or does not the fact of the Incarnation itself suppose the presence in human nature of some inalienable characteristic which makes the possibility of the Incarnation comprehensible, not as the invasion of human nature by some deus ex machine, but, on the contrary, as the complete unfolding of it possibilities?” Sergius Bulgakov. Sophia: The Wisdom of God. An Outline of Sophiology. Trans. Rev. Patrick Thompson, Rev. O. Fielding Clarke and Xenia Braikevitc. (Hudson, New York: Lindisfarne Press, 1993), 83.

Thus Jesus shows us that what it means to be human is to be greater than what we are now; indeed, one religious philosopher has suggested this is what it means to be human. “We can express this in the paradox that man always wants to be something greater and other than what he is; and since this wanting is his very essence, we can say that the distinctive character of man consists precisely in the fact that he is greater than what he is. Man is a self-overcoming, self-transforming being.” S.L. Frank The Spiritual Foundations of Society. Trans Boris Jakim (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1987), 84. S.L. Frank suggests this can be understood by the moral dimension of humanity: that we can look beyond the empirical life and judge it suggests we are capable of transcending those empirical limitation, “Man alone has the ability to transcend himself, to free himself ideally from his empirical nature, and, rising above it, to judge and evaluate it,” ibid. While one might disagree with him on whether or not this is true of man alone, the point is well taken – we do transcend our empirical given self, and so we do transform ourselves into something greater, showing that we are not closed in to what we are given in our origin but we must be seen as reaching out to something greater, becoming this greater thing. In the end, this can only be true because humanity in its pureness is open to the divine, and lives in accordance to how much the divine has penetrated into it. “Man is man precisely because he is more than an empirical natural being; man is characterized precisely by his superhuman, divine-human nature.” ibid. This means, among other things, that the very concept of a closed “pure nature” can be argued against by the human experience; but we cannot know, except through Jesus as prototype, the fullness of this openness, that is, whether or not there is a limit to what we can become. Through Jesus and his experience, we can know what Bulgakov says is correct, “Humankind, on its side, must be naturally capable of receiving and making room for a divine person in the stead of the human. In other words, the human being’s original mode of being is theandric.” Sergius Bulgakov. Sophia: The Wisdom of God., 85.

Nothing whatsoever is to be removed.
Not the slightest thing is to be added.
Truly looking at the truth, truth is seen.
When seen, this is complete liberation.”
Buddha Nature. The Mahayana Uttaratantra Shastra, 40.

Humanity in its proper form must be understood according to this original theandric mode of existence, and Jesus must be understood and studied accordingly, and not through the lens of our current, and even less than human mode of existence, one which is closed off to God because of sin. In saying this we must not see sin as some sort of ontological entity: evil does not exist, it consists entirely as a concept used to explain a deficiency in some good. To be saved by Christ is to be become entirely human. This opens us up to the life originally desired for us by God, nothing more, nothing less. “Obviously, in humans, created Wisdom is obscured by sin; but Christ, the second Adam, assumed a human nature exempt from sin, and so adequate to its divine prototype. But the very possibility of God’s taking human nature and uniting it with his own, rests upon the essential conformity between the two; and that, in its turn, rests upon the unity in diversity of Wisdom, in God and in the created world. That diversity can never abrogate this unity or analogy: this is primary.” Sergius Bulgakov. Sophia: The Wisdom of God., 88.

In order to experience this real, original humanity, we must first empty ourselves of all preconceptions of what we think it means to be human. How we interpret what it means to be human becomes the means by how we re-create ourselves; even when grace is offered to us, we reject its full implications and aid because of the habits we have created for ourselves, habits which we assume we cannot overcome because of our base notions of what it means to be human. “For to me, living is Christ and dying is gain” (Philip. 1:21)We must lose ourselves of all notions, up to and including any notion of what it means to be who we are, and only then shall we gain our true life, our true existence as we are meant to be. “For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake and for the sake of the gospel, will save it,” (Mark 8:35). We must lose all false concepts of what it means to be who we are, to lose our very place in life, in order to gain the boundless openness offered to us by Christ. As long as we struggle to keep hold of our false preconceptions and use them to read Jesus as a reflection of ourselves, our Christ will not be the true Christ of history, but a construction and reflection of ourselves. “Jesus said to them, have you never read in the Scriptures, ‘The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord’s doing, and it is amazing in our eye’? Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom. The one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; and it will crush anyone on whom it falls,” (Matt. 21:42-44). Broken up, all that has closed our relationship to God will be destroyed. Then and only then, with the experience of the divine life restored, can humanity in its glory be understood. That glory is the glory we have seen in the life of Jesus “When he is revealed, we shall be like him, for we will see him as he is”(1 John 3:2).

The Significance of Human Action, Part 2: Action as Defining the Person--The Way to Perfection

The following is a continuation of the previous post, again taken from an essay written a couple of years back. This essay does not take into account the many finely-crafted comments regarding the previous post, though it perhaps presses a little further the central question driving the comments. Such account will have to be given at some point...

It is important to realize that, at the same time that action expresses the person, action also defines or determines the person. We are how we act and how we act makes us who we are. At bottom, each person has the task of freedom. This task is not aimless, for the person is free for the true good. The challenge is to choose the good. In the following, we will focus on Wojtyła’s reflections on the potentiality of the will as well as his phenomenological reading of the experience of action in freedom. In the end, moral action is really about perfecting the person and actualizing his full potential.

Through his exposure to Aristotle and Thomas, Wojtyła is very taken with the metaphysical distinction between act and potency. This distinction is important with regard to how the moral act is formative of the human person. Wojtyła speaks of a certain “potentiality” in the person that makes “formation” through good action or “deformation” through evil action possible.[1] This potentiality is found in the will. The will does not only function as an efficient cause, bringing about action. In addition, the will is “a kind of ability to become.”[2] A person can become good or bad through the will. There is thus a simultaneous external and internal aspect working in the exercise of the will. While a person wills an external act, the moral quality of that act redounds back into the person, forming the will either to good or to evil. As stated above, the will must be in relation to reason. Since reason is the ability to know the truth, including the truth of the good, the will is guided by reason to its fulfillment. As Wojtyła remarks in the context of Aristotle and Thomas, “[T]he very essence of human action consists in the actualization of the will acting under the direction of reason.”[3] Through the actualization of the will, the human person hopefully becomes good and is led further on the road to perfection.

The determinative character of action is also manifest through a phenomenological reading of the experience of acting in freedom.[4] In the experience of acting, the person experiences himself as the efficient or effective cause of the action. Here, Wojtyła remarks that the action proper to humans should really be designated as actus personae. For in an act, it is always a specific person connected to a concrete act who is involved. The connection is so vital between the individual person and his act that another person cannot suddenly be made the agent of such a particular action. The causal efficacy of the person—experienced in activity itself—leads to a greater efficacy manifest in self-determination. Self-determination denotes the originating movement of the will in causing the act and, at the same time, the fact that such a movement of the will not only has an outward effect but an inward one as well.[5] By acting the person determines himself. It is in light of self-determination that two other properties of freedom, self-possession and self-governance, come into play as well. In freely acting, the action “returns” to the person and is taken up into the person, hence affecting the person. In this free action, the person possesses himself as the subject of his free action which is also self-determinative. As self-governing, the person experiences the task of bringing together or integrating the various dynamisms of his person in order to become as thoroughly human as possible.[6] In all of this, the significance of a person’s action in shaping one’s self is paramount. Moreover, this shaping takes place in and through human freedom. By the unique subjectivity of the human person, a human act is much more than an extrinsic performance or occurrence. A properly human act involves the entire person, originating from the person and also forming that person.

The determinative nature of action is very much related to the development of virtue (or vice on the negative side). Through good moral acts, a person can begin to be habitually disposed to doing good. I think we see this in particular acts especially. For example, take a simple act like making the bed for one’s spouse. If I begin to make a concentrated effort on making the bed out of love for my wife and actually fulfill that effort over a number of consecutive days, I am more disposed towards doing that good act without as much inner tension (involving the decision process). Each act of making the bed comes back to me and forms my will in the good; in other words, this is habituation in virtue. However, let’s say that I have a resolution of making the bed every day out of love for my wife. The first day is a success. The second day, on the other hand, I find myself a little busy with other things. There is still a good bit of inner tension in my decision. “I just have too much studying to do”, etc. Even though I know the good act is a sign of love and will only take a couple minutes, I choose to forego making the bed, letting my wife do it when she gets home from work. This choice comes back to me and affects my will. The good choice I made on the first day has now become somewhat undone in that my will has now become weakened. If I continue to make excuses, it will be harder for me to reform my will and choose the good. In addition, when attempting to will the good, I will have more inner tension with regard to making a decision. “I have given in before to the excuses…why not one more time?” Bad choices and actions have a deformative effect upon the will. This is a simple example, but it illustrates well the experience that every person has with regard to the formative nature of action.

In light of the determinative aspect of action, Wojtyła makes clear that the moral task is one of perfectionism. Living a moral life means that one is on the road to perfection. Every human act has the possibility of contributing to one’s fulfillment, if good, or of contributing to one’s lack of fulfillment, if evil. In the development of the human person, a two-fold task presents itself. The first aspect is integration. As the human being develops, the different “somatic and rudimentary psychic dimensions of humanity” are to be submitted to the spiritual elements of the person.[7] This means nothing else than learning to act as a person while also not ignoring all the unique aspects that make up the human self. The person is body and soul. For instance, certain physical happenings in the body are largely involuntary and out of the person’s control (e.g., we cannot do much about our beating heart). However, certain urges—for example, the sexual urge—may come about largely unexpectedly at times but are still to be integrated within the person as a whole, i.e., as a rational, spiritual being (cf. Wojtyła’s Love and Responsibility). To immediately act upon an urge is to become an animal. Regarding sexual urges in particular, the person must learn to integrate such urges within an overall framework that respects the gift of sexuality and the dignity of the human person.

The second aspect of moral development is transcendence. Through his conscience, a person is called to “go out beyond” himself towards the true good.[8] In fact, it is only in this going beyond oneself towards truth that one remains truly free to act in a morally good way. In the end, human development hinges upon moral development. Wojtyła emphasizes that the nature of the human act is such that it plays a profound role in furthering or hindering the development of the human person.

As seen above, not only is morality the most characteristic aspect of the human person but it is also the most definitive aspect of the person. Through morality, a human being actualizes his personhood through subjectivity. While the human is always a suppositum humanum from conception to death, the human self on the other hand—the personal suppositum—is developed throughout one’s life in free, responsible action. True development is founded upon the good. Only a good act truly completes the person. Wojtyła himself continues into his pontificate as John Paul II to be very alert to the significance of morality with regard to every person—so much so, in fact, that he can say: “[I]t is precisely on the path of the moral life that the way of salvation is open to all” (Veritatis splendor 3).

[1] “Human Nature as the Basis of Ethical Formation,” 98 (Again, all article citations are taken from KW's Person and Community: Selected Essays, trans. and ed. Theresa Sandok [NY: Peter Lang, 1993].)
[2] Ibid., 99.
[3] “The Separation of Experience from the Act in Ethics,” 24.
[4] “The Person: Subject and Community,” 228f.
[5] Ibid., 229.
[6] Dr. Kenneth Schmitz, class notes, 4/13/04.
[7] “The Person: Subject and Community,” 225.
[8] Ibid., 234.