[p.73] WE have said that the appearance of Christianity marks the discovery by man, or the revelation to man — opposite poles of the same substantial fact — of a genuinely new form of life. Already discerned by certain spirits behind veils, and known in part, it is now exhibited in its wholeness; establishing itself upon heights which — since they reach, and unite with, Reality — lay claim to the great title "divine."
Jesus of Nazareth, the historical Christ, was, says the Church, "divine and human" — fully and completely human, "of reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting." The working, then, of that strange principle in Him which religious speculation calls "divine," which marks His profound and unsullied participation in Reality, will be conditioned by the ways and limitations of that normal body and soul which we call "human." Here is a commonplace of modern theology; the root idea which lies at the bottom of its doctrine of "Kenosis"; one of the thin places in the dogmatic fence, through which it is accustomed to escape in haste from untenable positions.
The discussion of the "divine nature" of Christ belongs, of course, to theology and metaphysics: though even here it is possible that the most intense experiences of those mystics who have attained to the Unitive — or, as they persistently call it, the Deified — state, can give us hints as to the way in which such an identity with the Transcendent Order is likely to express itself within the [p.74] limitations of human consciousness. But the discussion of His human nature, of the "reasonable soul " in which that consciousness of divine sonship developed, is in part at least the business of psychology.
"If," says Prof. Gardner, "we began by making assumptions as to what the divine nature must be, instead of inquiring how it is revealed to us, we enter on a fruitless task." [1] It is plain that if the psychic life, the human nature, through which that revelation reached us were human at all, it must have been deeply and completely so. "Not as not being man, but as being from men, He was beyond men," says Dionysius the Areopagite; [2] and in the same spirit a very different theologian has observed that the expression "Son of Man " means "one who completely fulfilled the idea of man, and as such was in specially close relationship to the Father." [3] The study, then, of such a truly human nature, which accepts and does not escape the machinery and the limitations which have been developed by the evolution of the race whilst "exercising for us a certain new God-incarnate energy," [4] cannot be undertaken apart from the general study of human consciousness. The personality of Christ, whilst itself unique, yet touches the normal personality of man at every point. The reverent process of insulation, to which it is too often subjected, entirely destroys its meaning for life.
The existing material, then, must be re-examined in the light of psychological science; and in the light of the reports of those who declare that they experienced in some measure that which Jesus claimed in full measure — the union of the Human and the Real. That existing material is of four kinds.
(1) The scantily reported acts of Jesus [p.75] as preserved in the Synoptic gospels.
(2) Such of His words and teachings as have survived in these same collections.
(3) The attitude and tradition of the early Church, which, founded on experience and on the teachings of two supreme mystics, St. Paul and the writer of the Fourth Gospel, largely conditioned the selection of acts and teachings which have been preserved for us, the development of the rites in which those teachings took dramatic form.
(4) The lives of the Christian mystics, and the subsequent history of the Church; the direction of its secret life — conscious only at rare intervals, and in the personalities of its greatest mystics and saints through the change that marks its steady onward sweep.
If these materials are to be of use to us, it is imperative that we learn to look at them with "innocence of eye ": that the concepts of popular religion or the equally distorting imaginations of "higher critics" be not allowed to intrude themselves between our vision and the statements made by a Mark or a Paul, the evidence afforded by the experience of a Francis or a Teresa. Seen with such incorrupt perceptions, such artistic freshness, they begin once more to live ; and the quality and power of growth comes home to us, as a primal element of the revelation they contain.
[Effectively here, EU is stating that Jesus, Paul and John were not simply spiritual stenographers through which God transmitted/dictated a fully developed theological exposition. They developed as mystics and they developed in their capacity to take in, comprehend and express the messages they were receiving within. We only ever see John at a late and very developed stage of his mystical growth, but both of the others in the reports we have of them and in their own writing demonstrate a progression of mystical development. In fact, the stages of growth demonstrated by the events in the life of Jesus have been taken as a model for the Mystic Way. Knowing this we pay attention to the teachings of their later life in quite a different fashion from their earlier teachings - they arise from a different quality of mystical experience. DCW]
If we look at the acts of any great man, we invariably find that they exhibit development; though this development may be of very various kinds. The creative genius disclosed by those acts may be spiritual, ethical, artistic, mechanical — what you will; but whatever it be, it grows, gradually invading and subduing more and more of the elements of conscious life to its dominion. Such a growth is an essential attribute of life: and its absence makes, not for divinity, but for unreality. Now the character of Jesus, taken alone as it stands revealed in the canonical gospels, and without any theological presuppositions, certainly represents, at the very least, a personality of transcendent [p.76] spiritual genius; towering in its wholeness high above even the loftiest levels of "normal" sanctity or power. This much the reverent agnostic is always willing to allow. But this human nature, this personality, is placed in Time: is immersed in the stream of Becoming. If, then, it be really human, really alive, it will share — and share in the most intense way possible — the regnant characteristic of all living things. It will move and grow. "To live is to change; and to be perfect is to have changed often " [5]
Since we know nothing of life apart from movement, from its ceaseless sweeping curve from birth to death, theology itself cannot afford to conceive Christ's life as emancipated from the law of growth. This would make it the miraculous emergence of the ready-made into a world of which creative effort is the soul; a static freak, absolved from that obligation of enduring through incessant change which is implicit in all life. Rather should we see in it the elan vital "energising enthusiastically "; raised, in the language of the vitalists, to the highest possible tension, but none the less retaining its specific character, obeying the imperative need of all life, divine and human alike, to push on, to spread, to create — the passion for perfection, the instinct for transcendence. Perhaps, when we have learned to see it thus, "miracle will no longer be a term reserved for a series of facts choicely isolated from organic connection with nature or life; but will be best seen in the wonder and awe felt for all nature, and perhaps specially for growth." [6]
[The explicit link with vitalist philosophy is one EU became less comfortable with as time went on. Nevertheless she has a powerful point even without this link in emphasising the human characteristic of continuous growth change and development and emphasising the implications are if we assume a Christ or Paul who does not exhibit them. DCW].
"The essence of life lies in the movement by which it is transmitted." What, then, was the movement by which this "more abundant life " was transmitted to the race ? The answer which appears to result from a careful study of the Synoptics is this: that the life of Jesus exhibits in [p.77] absolute perfection — in a classic example ever to be aimed at, never to be passed — that psychological growth towards God, that movement and direction, which is found in varying degrees of perfection in the lives of the great mystics.
[In other words, Jesus did not emerge in the stable at Bethlehem, or anywhere else, with his divine stature fully formed and developed. His perfection lies in his immaculate growth into this stature. DCW]
All the characteristic experiences of a Paul, a Suso, a Teresa, are found in a heightened form in the life of their Master. They realise this fact; and, one and all, constantly appeal to that life as a witness to the reality and naturalness of their own adventures. The life of Christ, in fact, exhibits the Independent Spiritual Life being lived in perfection by the use of machinery which we all possess; in a way, then, in which we can live it, not in some miraculous unnatural way in which we cannot live it.
[The point of Jesus' life is lost if it is lived outside of the natural limits which constrain the rest of us. DCW]
His self-chosen title of Son of Man suggests that this, and not theological doctrine or ethical rule, forms the heart of His revelation.
" Apparve in questa forma
Per dare a noi la norma."
The few points on which we can rely, the few episodes which did certainly occur in a determined order, in the historical life of Jesus, are just those which indicate the kind of growth, and kind of experience, most characteristic of the mystic life. Religious self-suggestion, which the amateur psychologist will at once advance as the cause of this phenomenon, is excluded by the fact that mystics who have hardly known the name of Christ grow in this same way, conform to this pattern: and "Neoplatonic influence," so often claimed as the sole origin of the mystic element in Christianity, fails to explain how it is that each of the Synoptic gospels, written long before the Mystic Way had been codified or described — long before the diagrams of Neoplatonism had elucidated the difficult path of the Cross — preserve intact amidst many variations and inconsistencies the record of this process of transcendence. [p.78]
It may be true, as many critics have declared, that adequate materials for a biography of Jesus do not exist. But materials for a history of His psychological development do undoubtedly exist; preserved and set in order by the best of all witnesses, those who did not know the bearing of the facts which they have reported, or the significance of the sequence in which they are placed.
Since the Gospel literature was formed after the Church, and not the Church after the Gospel literature — since the Synoptics are, as they stand, post-Pauline books, written to supply the immediate needs of Paul's spiritual families — we may expect to find in them interpretation as well as history; perhaps, on the whole, more interpretation than history, since their aim is to prepare the mind for Life's amazing future, rather than to preserve the record of the equally amazing past. In the language of modern criticism, they are "eschatological books." They look forwards, not backwards; and imply in every line the Parousia which shall complete the revelation that they begin. Moreover, they are written by those who have actually, practically, experienced, not merely a "belief" in a Messiah, a Saviour, or an institution, but that amazing inflow of new life, that "New Birth" which Christianity initiated, in the thoroughness and violence with which it appears to have been experienced in apostolic times. We may expect, then, that the love and enthusiasm of the convert will blaze in their words, and illuminate the events of which they treat : and as a result, that the finished production will tend to be a great work of art — a musical revelation of reality — rather than an exact work of science, an analysis of "observed phenomena."
The three Synoptic gospels are at bottom three such works of art: in each we see the Christian "revelation" , and the life which expressed it, "through a temperament." Of these three temperaments that of the author of [p.79] Matthew seems to be of the historical and traditionalist type, with the unconscious tendency of this kind of character to select and value events with an eye to their causal relations with the past; to the fulfilment of prophecies, the satisfaction of national ideals. Mark's document, as we now have it, is like the work of a practical missionary, whose whole experience has led him to appreciate the value of the sensational and miraculous. "Luke's" character is more interesting;[7] and its result upon his work in some respects more valuable. His peculiar insight has led him to bring out certain deeply significant sides of the primitive revelation which the other Synoptics hardly touch. This does not mean that we find special value in incidents for which Luke is the only witness. All the essential facts are found in either the "double" or the "triple" tradition; the great events in all three gospels, the great teachings in Matthew and in Luke. But many of these facts and sayings are shown by Luke alone in a light which reveals their true import: not as isolated maxims or marvels, but as proclamations of the conditions of New Life. Those who accept the traditional authorship of the Third Gospel or the document which underlies it, will naturally connect this quality in Luke partly with his Greek nationality and possible Hellenistic education, but chiefly with the fact that he was the friend and pupil of the deeply mystical Paul, and had learned to understand Christianity as Paul understood and lived it — as an actual and new kind of life; just as the low ebb of the mystic element in Mark may be related [p.80] to his rupture with Paul, and his long connection with the practical but rather limited mind of Peter.[8]
Amongst the things upon which Luke lays deliberate stress, are all the ascetic and "other-worldly " elements in the teaching of Christ. He it is who has preserved the commendation of Mary, type of the contemplative soul.[9] Had his gospel alone survived, many incidents, it is true, would have been known to us only in a twisted and poetic form. But the rules of the real Christian life, the primal laws which govern the emergence of the spiritual consciousness, and the sequence of states which mark its establishment, would have been preserved intact. Poverty, Asceticism, Detachment, Vocation, mystical Charity — these watchwords of the mystics are all found in his work, stated with far greater emphasis than in either of the other Synoptics. The term "grace," regnant in the works of St. Paul, is found eight times in this gospel; though never used by Matthew and Mark. " We are struck," says Julicher, "by the unworldliness of his tone, by his aversion to property and enjoyment, by his glorification of poverty, his accentuation of the duty of self-sacrifice and especially of almsgiving. One need merely read Luke xiv. 26-32 beside Matthew x. 37 in order to feel the sternness of Luke's demands; one almost has the impression that the boundless charity towards sinners shown by this gospel was to be compensated for by the equally exalted character of the demands made on the disciple." [10]. Yet this austere moralist, this counsellor of [p.81] perfection, is in a high degree an artist and a poet. From him come the matchless scenes of the Annunciation and Nativity. He is the composer of that exquisite cento of Old Testament phrases, the Magnificat; and with him "imaginative wonder" first takes its place side by side with historic belief.
True, the essence of these things — the austerity and the romance — underlies the descriptions of Matthew and Mark. They have of necessity a place in every gospel, and cannot be eliminated in the interests of "ethical" or "healthy-minded " Christianity. But Matthew and Mark do not perceive their essential character with such clearness as this Evangelist: a clearness we might naturally expect from the companion and pupil of St. Paul. One gives us the Messiah who is a bridge between the prophets and the Church; the other gives us the marvellous Divine Man. Luke, reviewing the material in the light of a richer experience — perhaps his own, perhaps that of Paul — accepts both; but he gives us chiefly the Revealer of a New Life, who "saves" men by Himself living that life, and so putting them upon the road by which it may be obtained: exhibiting "that mysterious evolution of the divine out of the human to which we give the name of redemption." [11] The three gospels, then, represent the temperamental tendencies of ecclesiastic, missionary, ascetic : and the effect of their cumulative testimony is to establish the fact that the new life which informed all these aspects of the Church's energies was primarily and fundamentally Mystic.
We may probably accept the conclusion of Julicher [12] as broadly true, that the life of Jesus did, in its general outline, unfold itself in the order given by Mark. The first significant moment of His life was an experience of profound personal illumination; followed by a withdrawal [p.82] into solitude — the "cell of self-knowledge" of the mystics — where the divine elements of His human nature were harmonised and adjusted to His supreme destiny. Then the public appearance; the preaching, "as one who had authority," the announcement of that apocalyptic coming of "new things" of which He felt Himself to be the pioneer. At first an object of wonder, He gradually provoked the opposition of the world — and particularly of the prosperous, orthodox, and self-satisfied — by His successful preaching of an uncompromising moral transcendence. Having provoked the enmity of the upper classes — and, we might add, having proved the impossibility of communicating His message of new life to humanity as a whole — He withdrew, and limited His teachings to the "little flock" destined to be the thoroughfare through which that life should pass. When the "time was accomplished," the human frame spent by the violence of the spiritual life which it expressed, the forces of destruction had their way. The bitter mental accompaniments of the Passion — the Agony in the Garden, the Eloi, eloi of the Cross — testify to the presence of that darkness through which the soul of every mystic must pass to the condition of complete identification with the Transcendental Order which they so often call the "Resurrection-life." Mark the least mystical of evangelists; yet preserves intact the story of this psychological development, beneath the series of marvellous and astonishing minor incidents which were to him the earnest of its existence and truth.
Notes
1. Exploratio Evangelica, p.37.
2. Fourth Letter to Gaius Therapeutes.
3. Prof. Driver, in Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible, Vol. IV. p.581
4. Dionysius the Areopagite, op cit
5. J.H. Newman Essay on the Development of Human Doctrine
6.Stanley Hall, Adolescence, Vol. II. p 127.
7. The authorship of the Third Gospel is still a matter of controversy. Harnack, Sir W. Ramsay, and other recent critics ascribe its substance to St. Luke himself. Cf. Harnack, Lukas der Arzt ; Ramsay, Luke the Physician. Against this must be placed the fact that the most fearless and acute of living scholars, Loisy, Les Evangiles synoptiques, is strongly opposed to the traditional view. No final settlement of the problem is yet in sight, and all who base arguments on the peculiarities of this gospel are bound to take into consideration the uncertamties surrounding it.
8. The so-called " Pauline " elements in Mark, detected by Loisy (op. cit.), appear to rest on very slender foundations, and refer rather to the Paul of theological imagination than to the living genius who speaks in the epistles.
9. Luke x. 42
10. Introduction to the New Testament, p. 335. Liberal Protestant theology has tried to discredit this ascetic tendency, so dificult to reconcile with its favourite theories, by detecting "Ebionite influence' in Luke, but has not yet produced any valid evidence in support of this hypothesis
11. E.A. Abott, The Son of Man, p. xii
12. Introduction to the New Testament, p.318
