Words Fail
With hindsight, we can look back at the early Christological and Trinitarian debates, and see how confused and confusing the different sides and positions were. Everyone agreed there was something special about Jesus, and they all wanted to be his true follower. Somewhere along the line, following Jesus became more of an issue of being right in one’s conventions for talking about Jesus than it was by following the path of charity that he encouraged his followers. Understanding the person of Jesus became more important than doing the work of Jesus. He had told his followers if they loved him, they would follow his commandments. While he did ask people to identify him, he also remained, in his own teaching, very enigmatic about himself. He knew that whatever he said could be easily misinterpreted. The conventions used for the messiah were right, if understood and used properly, but wrong in how they were understood by most. Thus, he took those conventions and he turned them upside-down. He knew one of the most popular convention is that the messiah would be a political ruler who would come into power by force – and so he had to tell his followers not to use the sword, especially if they want to help him bring about the messianic kingdom.[1]
When we look at those who did come to an understanding of Jesus, it is quite telling that Jesus tells them to be silent. Once they have come to know who he is he tells them to go back into the world, to live and interact in it, but also to tell no one about Jesus himself.[2] Was this because Jesus did not want people to know who he was? Certainly not. It was because if they talked, they would be misunderstood. The fullness of his revelation had yet to be achieved. But there is something about this silence which we should continue to contemplate as we seek to describe him today. Whatever is said about him is still liable to bring someone or another to an erroneous understanding of who he is. The conventions we want to impute on him are nothing in comparison to the full reality of who he actually is. He does not reject conventions, he knows them well enough that he can and did use them to fit his purposes. But he wants to remind us that there is something deeper, beyond all conventions. Only by knowing that all conventions fail can we engage in the world of experience, of true experience beyond conceptions and imputations, and then return back to the normal, everyday existence, and fill it with what we have gained from our transcendent experience. Only then can we interact with others, and see, if they fail to understand one sequence of conventions, how another sequence (as long as they are used properly, and point to the same reality) can lead them to Christ.
Asanga said that all dharmas are at their root, inexpressible. But he also said, “Now, since all dharmas have thus inexpressible essential nature, why is expression at all applicable? Verily, because without expression, the inexpressible true nature could not be told to others, nor heard by others.”[3] Our faith rests upon what is inexpressible, it rests upon that which is silent, but this silence is not enough – we must point to that inexpressible truth; as St Francis of Assisi told us, we are to show it to others by our deeds, but if necessary, we will use words. It is only after experiencing the truth in silence that we understand that the words we use can only be pointers to the truth. They are not the truth in themselves. After his silence, Jesus did speak – and told us to speak out as well.[4] In this way, we can understand that Christology is itself not a vain subject, but rather, we must understand its root and purpose—we must get to the spirit of the message and not be caught up with a literalistic interpretation of the words which have been used to describe him. Only then will the words we use to describe him be of value.
Footnotes
[1]See for example Matthew 26:52;Luke 22:49-51; John 18:10-11.
[2] See for example Matthew 8:4; Matthew 9:30; Luke 9:21.
[3] Janice Dean Willis, On Knowing Reality: The Tattvärtha Chapter of Asanga’s Bodhisattvabhümi (New York: Columbia University Press, 1979), 166.
[4] Thus we have the “Great Commission” after the resurrection – see for example Matthew 28:16-20; Mark 16:14-18; Luke 24:45-49.
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Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel suggests we cannot know God intellectually. “All concepts are second thoughts,” he says. “Conceptualization is symbolization.”
“Who do you say that I am?” Jesus asks, according to the synoptic gospels. I believe this is a call to engagement, a wrestling as with Jacob, but we fool ourselves if we think we can answer.
It is human to want to put God in box, to domesticate God, to control God, but our answers are futile and filled with self-boasting.
Seems that whenever we speak of God we need to do so with humility and the knowledge that we are saying more than we really know and that sometimes we ought to be quiet and trust the silence.
I especially appreciate this: “Somewhere along the line, following Jesus became more of an issue of being right in one’s conventions for talking about Jesus than it was by following the path of charity that he encouraged his followers.” The issue you identify here, seems to me, underlies much of the conflict within contemporary Christianity and is certainly true – though not the whole or only truth – for the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion.
How then do we begin to address this issue? I am not really sure but what I keep coming back to is (1) recovery of the mystical/contemplative tradition; (2) an understanding of theology not so much as an intellectual matter but as a spiritual discipline grounded in and co-terminus with prayer as per Evagrius; and (3) to see ourselves as the Body of Christ and not as a body of Christians.
Thank you for your writing. I appreciate your insight and thoughtfulness. Peace, Mike
Mike
I think you are right about the need for the recovery of mysticism, and with it, I think more emphasis of apophatic theology with it (though of course, with Dionysius’ own caveats to it). If one reads the Fathers on how the words themselves don’t work, don’t match, with the reality, one begins to understand the point more than if one just reads lists of doctrines which one assumes are logically derived from methodologies established by Descartes onward.
Henry,
The person is unique. It cannot be conceptualized. What differentiates the “failure of words” relative to a human person and Jesus?
Likewise the act of existing stands outside conceptualization. It is arrived at through the negative judgment of separation. It cannot be known except in terms of what it is not.
The principle of cause and effect is rooted in an intuition of being where the subject and predicate of the principle are grasped directly and immediately without any logical movement.
Do all these examples proceed from the same fountainhead? Do they all denote the same limitations? If so, how is the example of Jesus different?
Gerald,
I think the answer lies in the anaologia entis. Of course there is the mysterious side of us, which is hidden, even to ourselves, but can be and is revealed in and by God (and through others). It is in part because of the analogy between being and God this hidden nature is possible to keep even the person a mystery. Plus, since the person is always meant to be self-transcending, that constant self-transcendence and development adds to the constant mystery in a fashion of becoming, while for God as pure act, it is an eternal event. For Jesus, it is both.
“It is time that Christians were judged more by their likeness to Christ than their notions of Christ.” — Lucretia Mott, Quaker abolitionist and women’s rights advocate (1793-1880)