Chapter 4
Existence and Significance:
History and Discontinuity
Our discussion of pagan redemption has shown that the pagan themes bear a measure of resemblance to those of Christianity. The devotees of the various cults experienced a sense of renewal through articipation in the rites prescribed by those cults. Into this milieu came a new theme of redemption, namely, Christianity. Its claim to be the true way of redemption finally triumphed over the older formations. Across the ages those who have shared in the Christian faith have found renewal and assurance. If, however, the assurance of salvation, which pagan redemption afforded, does not guarantee truth and validity, does it not therefore follow that Christian assurance is likewise but problematical?
Today many scholars answer this question by asserting that the ideas constituting the conceptual content of Christianity are themselves mythical. While they embody substantially those elements of an older mythos, they are tempered and refined to suit a more developed taste. But they are essentially mythical. Their significance consists in precisely that in which the older mythos consisted, namely they bring meaning in this life and a measure of confidence for the future. Their value is a pragmatic value.
What this means as regards Christianity, then, is that its conceptual formulations cannot be certified as true. Their problematic is essentially that of all myth.
In our day, what has reinforced this negative view of Christian truth is the belief that it is only science that has significance and truth. Its procedures of observation and testing are capable of validating the truthclaim of scientific propositions and theories. These are the only procedures that can yield verifiable truth. Since they are lacking as regards religion, and thus for Christianity, the claim as to the truth and validity of Christianity cannot be certified. From the standpoint of felt experience, Christianity does, indeed, it is asserted, have a meaning, but from the standpoint of the intellect its objective significance and claim is a problematic——a problematic to be held onto in the “fear and trembling” of faith.
The Christian symbols, then, it is claimed, have but an experiential import. They cannot signify anything beyond their function in experience. Only ideas and propositions that are grounded in sense experience, those of empirical science, have objective significance and truth. That, so many today argue, is the present predicament in which we find ourselves. Truth can be achieved in science, but not in religion. Religion is the passion of a faith without intellectual support.
Some measure of resolution, as regards this antimony, is achieved when it is realized that science itself is a form of symbolism. As a symbolic form, it differs from the form of religious symbolism. But it is still a form of symbolism. It does not, accordingly, achieve “literal” knowledge, if by “literal” is meant an understanding of reality that is unconditioned by the terms and procedures of scientific formulation. The “real world” of science is always the “world” as constructed withing the formation of symbolism. The “truth” of science is thus confined to the context of subjective form.
May it not be, then, that the truth of the Christian religion is likewise legitimatized and certified within the community of its own subjective form? If we are allowed to establish scientific truth in terms of its type of subjective form, why are we not allowed to certify Christian truth in terms of its own subjective form? In any event, an appeal to the presumed literal truth of science on false grounds is not a legitimate reason for
denying the truth value of Christian symbols.
It is advisable to consider the question of truth and the procedure in terms of which truth is certified. It is assumed, of course, that genuine
knowledge must be marked by the property of truth.
It is customary to distinguish between formal and empirical truth.
Formal truth has to do with a set, or system, of abstract notations. The
system may be a logical or a mathematical one. One set of elements comprise
the underived assumptions, or postulates. There is the view that the truth of
the postulates is self-evident. However, this view, which seeks to establish
truth in terms of a subjective feeling of self-evidence, encounters serious
difficulties. For example, there are many mathematical theorems that even
specialists have difficulty in establishing and which, therefore, do not
appear as self-evident.
Once the postulates of a formal system have been laid down, it is
necessary to establish logical rules of deduction or inference, which,
combined with the basic postulates, permit deductions from the postulates.
The truth of the system consists in the consistency of the system, i. e., that
no derived propositions are inconsistent with the postulates or with each
other.
The Austrian mathematician and logician Kurt Gödel showed that it is
impossible to prove the consistency of a logical system from within that
system, i.e., by using only the terms and symbols of that system. It is
possible, therefore, that, despite all care, contradictions may occur in a
logical system.
The German mathematician Adolph Fraenkel described this state of affairs
in a graphic metaphor:
The fence of axiomatics, to speak with Poincaré, preserves the legitimate
sheep of an unexceptionable theory of sets from an incursion of the
In Ernst Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, III:368. 1
paradox-tainted wolves. As to the enduring quality of the fence no doubt
is possible. But who can be certain that some wolves have not been left
inadvertently inside the fence, and that, though today they still pass
unnoticed, they will not one day burst in upon the flock and devastate
the fenced-in field as they did at the beginning of the century? In
other words, how shall we safeguard ourselves against the possibility
that the axioms bear within themselves germs which, once set in motion by
inferences, will produce still unknown contradictions.1
It now quite evident that formal knowledge cannot be absolutely
certified as formally true. There is no decisive proof of consistency. It
would be a grievous error if anyone were to assume the absoluteness of formal
knowledge and, on that basis, attempt to denigrate religious knowledge because
of any problematic that attaches to that form of symbolism. Such a contrast
is unacceptable.
Propositions asserting matters of fact must, to be sure, be as free as
possible from any self-contradiction or contradiction with already-accepted
factual propositions. But beyond the consistency of the body of scientific
knowledge, there is the added element of verification in terms of sense
experience. A theory about the physical world must pass the test of repeated
observation and verification. This process does not, and cannot, decisively
yield final and absolute truth. Empirical knowledge is always tentative and
problematical. The very circumstance that the test procedure knows no limit,
that it can be repeated endlessly, that in the future a negative result may
obtain, shows that this is the case. All that can be hoped for is that, as
scientific knowledge develops, the tests thus far obtained will be, and
continue to be, positive, and that the propositions constituting the body of
knowledge will not contradict each other. To attain to this standard,
revisions are always necessary and on-going, as regards particular
propositions. And if and when the contradictions become so numerous, or the
test procedures do not yield the desired results, the entire theory, or body
of knowledge, may have to be discarded.
When we say that a scientific proposition or theory is certified as
2Charles Sanders Peirce, “How to Make Our Ideas Clear,” Popular Science Monthly
12 (January, 1878), pp. 286-302. In Charles Hartshorne & Paul Weiss, eds., Collected
Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, 8 vols., (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard
University Press, 1960-66), 5:268.
probably true in terms of sense experience, it is not meant that the
proposition or theory is verified via an immediate and direct reference to
some given sense item of experience. Instead, verification refers to the
sensory items indirectly, via reference to those propositions and theories
that have already been established in terms of sense experience. Reference is
never to the mere givenness of perception, but is to the system of thought in
which the data of experience are structured. While, to be sure, a given
theory must be referred to a relevant test procedure in terms of sense, that
reference is also, and necessarily, embedded in the systematic context of
theoretical thought. The appeal is, ultimately, to the unity of experience.
Verification is not a process of checking the proposition or theory against
the inner nature of physical reality. That we do not know. Verification is
wholly an intra-experiential process, confined to the subjective form of
experience. To quote from Charles Sanders Peirce, who makes this point:
. . . all the followers of science are fully persuaded that the processes
of investigation, if only pushed far enough, will give one certain
solution to every question to which they can be applied. . . . This
activity of thought by which we are carried, not where we wish, but to a
foreordained goal, is like the operation of destiny. . . . This great
law is embodied in the conception of truth and reality. The opinion
which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate, is what
we mean by truth, and the object represented in this opinion is the real.
That is the way I would explain reality.2
We have observed in the above that formal knowledge and truth are marked
by probability. The claim that the abstract notations, which are symbolic
constructs, are literally true of reality cannot be legitimately established.
The same considerations hold with respect to empirical knowledge and truth.
Here also, probability, not certainty, is all that can be claimed.
Further, the claim that empirical truth is the truth about reality in its
inner nature, as it is in itself, likewise cannot be established. Truth is
immanent in the body of scientific procedure and discourse.
Harald Höffding, The Philosophy of Religion, tr. B. E. Meyer (London: Macmillan 3
& Co., Ltd., 1914), p. 201.
All-too-often, it is said that empirical knowledge and truth are
decisive and absolute and that they disclose the real. Against this, then,
that the language of religion pales in significance and import, indeed, has
but an heuristic or emotive value. It does not yield a valid form of
knowledge. Against this argument, what can be said at this point in the
discussion is that empirical knowledge is itself a form of discourse and can
be assessed only in the terms of that discourse. It is a particular symbolic
formation, and its cognitive significance lies wholly within that formation.
And within that formation, it is judged to have cognitive import and truth
value. May not the same thing be said of the discourse of religion? It, too,
is a particular kind of symbolic formation. Should not its claim of cognitive
import and truth value likewise be assessed, and certified, in terms of the
uniqueness of its symbolic form? For it may be that analysis here will
indicate that the form of religious symbolism bears, in its context, its own
form of knowledge and truth. In any event, we have no grounds upon which to
restrict knowledge and truth to but one symbolic form, namely, the symbolism
of empirical science.
In the previous chapters on myth and science, it has become clear that
mythic accounts of the inner experience of redemption and the outer experience
of the world restrict their constructs to the givenness of perceptual content.
That is, the constructs are anchored in existence. They therefore lack
signification beyond the perceived givenness of existence. They cannot
function symbolically, since it is the nature of the symbol to employ the
perceived content of experience as indicators of the super-sensible. We have
earlier noted the statement by Hoffding:
In all symbolization, ideas taken from narrow although more intuitible
relations are used as expressions for relations which, on account of
their exaltedness and ideality, cannot be directly expressed3
On the basis of this contrast between myth and symbol, or between
existence and significance, certain observations may justifiably be made
concerning the difference between pagan and Christian accounts of redemption.
There is a marked contrast between paganism and Christianity with regard
to the reference to blood and the use of wine and bread. It is a contrast
between existence and significance.
The rite of Dionysus involved the feast of raw flesh. The thought was
that the flesh, dripping with blood, actually contained the divine life. It
was eaten quickly, before the divine life should escape, to ensure that the
devotee might assimilate that life and experience rebirth and immortality.
The feast of raw flesh was also a feature of Orphism, and for essentially the
same purpose as that found in the rite of Dionysus. The taurobolium, or
sacrifice of a bull, which is found in the cult of the Great Mother, is of
substantially the same nature as those just previously described. Here,
however, the initiate stood in the pit under the sacrificed animal and
received the blood on his person and even drank the flowing blood. By this
means, it was claimed, the devotee was born again to a divine life. In all of
these rites, the blood is the actual and existing blood that brings
regeneration and salvation. There is a bonding to existence: thus the lack of
any and all symbolism.
In our discussion of the symbol blood, we pointed out that the New
Testament never asserts, or even infers, that salvation is obtained, in a
literal sense, through the blood of Jesus. The significance of the blood is
in relation to the death of Jesus. The interest is not in the His material
blood, but in His shed blood as the life offered for the redemption of a lost
humanity. It is a fact, to be sure, that Jesus shed His blood that long-ago
day on Golgotha. But the significance of that reality lies not in the
physicality of blood, but in its place in the occurrence of death and His
offering Himself for the redemption of others. For the offering was “through
the eternal Spirit.” There is here release from bondage to existence and the
Willoughby, op. cit., p. 60. 4
assumption of spiritual significance.
The same bonding to existence is found in the rites involving liquid and
solid food. In the Dionysian rite, it was believed that the quintessence of
divine life was actually in the wine. When the devotee drank the wine and
became physically intoxicated, he believed that he experienced a spiritual
ecstasy. He felt a strange, new life within himself. He was filled and
possessed by the god. During the epopteia, the highest grade of Eleusinian
initiation, the initiate drank a barley drink, by means of which the devotee
participated in the experience of the goddess Demeter and realized saving
fellowship with her. Taking the sacred food, a cereal, from a chest, and
eating it brought union with the Demeter, the goddess of grain. In
consequence of this union, the divine substance was incorporated in the
individual. “Already emotionally united with Demeter through participation in
her passion, the initiates now became realistically one with her by the
assimilation of food and drink.”4
There is a marked contrast between pagan and Christian sacraments.
Whereas pagan sacrament is bonded to the physical, Christian sacrament breaks
loose from that alliance and achieves a true symbolism that touches upon
spiritual reality.
Matt. 26:26-28 records the institution of The Lord’s Supper:
And as they were eating,
Jesus took bread, and blessed
it, and brake it, and gave it to the
disciples, and said, Take, eat;
this is my body.
And he took the cup, and
gave thanks, and gave it to
them, saying, Drink ye all of it;
For this is my blood of the
new testament, which is shed
for many for the remission of
sins.
The language in which Jesus spoke was probably Aramaic. This language,
like the Hebrew, has no term to express mean, signify, denote. When the
Hebrews used a figure, they wrote it is for it signifies. Writing his Gospel
in the Koine Greek, Matthew followed the Aramaic and Hebraic usage and
retained it is as it signifies. Thus the statements, this is my body and this
is my blood, mean that the bread and wine signify, or represent, Jesus’s body
and blood. There is here, then, a breaking away from bondage to the existent
and the development of a true symbolism.
The Christian sacrament is thus set in sharp contrast to the pagan
sacrament. The Dionysian devotee drank the wine to excess, became
intoxicated, and attributed to the wine the power of the divine life. In the
Lord’s Supper there is nothing of this: the wine points beyond itself, to
Jesus’ death for the redemption of humankind. The ancient Semites drank the
blood. In the Hebrew rites, the blood was sprinkled upon the people. Now
Jesus and His disciples drink, but they drink of the fruit of the vine. The
wine is now the blood of a different, vegetable, kind. It is now the bloodbond
of a new and higher order. It does, indeed, signify the near-coming of
the shed blood and the death that is to bring remission of sins. But here the
wine also indicates something else, namely, that the age of blood-shedding is
soon to come to a close. No longer is Abel’s sacrifice to prevail. The
sacrifice that will prevail is now Cain’s sacrifice of the garden, transformed
into the spiritual and made acceptable. This death, the death of the Savior,
brings the end of the shedding of blood. And this because in that out-pouring
of blood, in that death, the covenant of saving fellowship has been finally
and forever ratified. It need not, and cannot, be repeated. The writer of
Hebrews says of Jesus:
Nor yet that he should offer
himself often, as the high priest
entereth into the holy place
every year with blood of others;
For then must he often have
suffered since the foundation of
the world: but now once in the
end of the world hath he appeared
to put away sin by the
Heb. 9:25-26. 5
Adam Clarke, The Holy Bible, 6 vols. (New York: Carlton & Porter, 1857), V:250. 6
Quaestiones Romanae, Tr. Professor Frank C. Babbitt, Loeb Classical Library, 7
No. 305 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1936), 109, p. 161. .
sacrifice of himself.5
The contrast between Christian symbolism and pagan myth is also evident
with respect to the meal. In the Eleusinian sacrament, the initiate ate the
grain in order to achieve union with the goddess. The capacity for this
result is within the grain itself. There is here the bondage to the existent
that contradicts symbolism. But the situation is otherwise as regards the
Christian sacrament. Here true symbolism occurs. The bread is the symbol of
the body of Jesus; it represents His body. It may be noted, parenthetically,
that the symbolism is complex, i.e., there are many facets of the symbol.
Adam Clarke notes this. Commenting on the fact that the bread was unleavened,
he writes:
Now, if any respect should be paid to the primitive institution,
in the celebration of this Divine ordinance, then, unleavened, unyeasted,
bread should be used. In every sign, or type, the thing signifying or
pointing out that which is beyond itself should have certain properties,
or be accompanied with certain circumstances, as expressive as possible
of the thing signified. Bread, simply considered in itself, may be an
emblem apt enough of the body of our Lord Jesus, which was given for us;
but the design of God was evidently that it should not only point out
this, but also the disposition and the type; and this the apostle
explains to be sincerity and truth, the reverse of malice and
wickedness.6
Unleavened bread is a symbol of purity of the heart, leaven being a
symbol of corruption. Plutarch, for example, says:
Yeast is itself also the product of corruption, and produces
corruption in the dough with which it is mixed; for the dough becomes
flabby and inert, and altogether the process of leavening seems to be one
of putrefaction . . . . 7
For this reason, the Israelites were required to eat only unleavened bread
when the Passover was instituted. When Jesus celebrated the Passover and made
it the occasion for the institution of the Lord’s Supper, he observed the
ancient prescription of unleavened bread. The bread, then, which symbolizes
His body, is pure, signifying His purity and sinlessness. Further, Jesus
Luke 22:19. 8
1 Cor. 11:24. 9
1 Pet. 1:19. 10
1 Cor. 10:16. 11
broke the bread. The breaking of the bread furnishes a second nuance to the
symbolism. Thus Luke adds this nuance to his account of the event: “This is
my body which is given for you.” Paul describes the event in terms more 8
explicitly consonant with Jesus’ breaking the bread: “And when he had given
thanks, he brake it, and said, Take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for
you . . . .”9
The grain that is eaten by the pagan devotee is literally identified
with the substance and life of the goddess. The unleavened and broken bread
of the Lord’s Supper can in no sense be regarded as the physical body of
Jesus. When He broke the unleavened bread and uttered the words, “this is my
body,” what he had in His hands and broke surely was not His physical body.
It is a symbol: a symbol of the purity of Him who is “without blemish and
without spot,” of Him “who through the eternal spirit offered himself 10
without spot to God,” of the purity of those who enjoy, spiritually, “the
communion of the body of Christ.”11
Myth takes its existing material as actually endowed with spirituality.
Religion, on the other hand, takes the material of its constructs as
signifying the spiritual. The distinction is between existence and
significance. It is a valid distinction. Yet there is that about the
relationship between the two, existence and significance, with particular
respect to Christianity, that requires qualification.
This subject may perhaps best be approached from the standpoint of myth.
The Homeric Hymn to Demeter tells of Demeter’s search for her daughter,
Persephone, and the final, triumphant, recovery of the daughter-goddess from
death in the underworld. The myth became the basis of the festival at
Eleusis. In the passion drama, the climax of the festival, the initiates
enacted the events of the myth. They accompanied the priestess, who
represented the grieving Demeter, in the search for the lost child goddess.
The mimesis closed with the reunion of the two goddesses. Sharing in that
reunion, the initiates shared in the triumph over death.
The theme of resurrection and eternal life is similarly presented in the
Egyptian cult of Osiris and Isis. Isis, the wife of Osiris, searches for her
murdered husband. After a long wandering, she finds his corpse and performs
certain rites, which revived him. Osiris is thus a dying and reviving deity,
providing assurance that life continues beyond the ravage of death.
Now the theme is the theme of resurrection. Admittedly, the theme here
is the theme of myth. Now, the resurrection-theme is also found in
Christianity. The account tells of a divine son who dies and is resurrected.
Is this also myth? There are those, as we have earlier noted, who call this a
“Christian myth.” According to this view, the material is employed precisely
as those earlier, pagan, stories. It is a tale, a story, devised to afford
assurance to a sorrowing and suffering humanity. In the present age, the
context has changed, but the material is the same. It is a mythos that for
many today provides substantially the same hope that older, pagan, myths
provided. Its value is purely subjective. Like all myth, it cannot be given
an objective import. Resurrection is a mythos; it is not a reality.
It is at this point that a more discriminating consideration of the
question of existence and of the relation of existence to significance is
required. It may very well be that, as regards exclusively the Christian
claim, existence cannot be completely divorced from significance. The
generalization that myth is wedded to existence while symbolism breaks that
binding absolutely, may not be true for Christianity and its forms of
symbolism.
Christianity is an historical religion. It centers in an historical
figure, Jesus of Nazareth, who was born circa 4 B.C. and crucified circa A.D.
Tacitus Annals tr. John Jackson, Loeb Classical Library, No. 322 (Cambridge: 12
Harvard University Press, 1962), 15:44, p. 283.
13Flavius Josephus The Antiquities of the Jews, in William Whiston, tr., The
Life and Works of Flavius Josephus (Philadelphia: The John C. Winston Co., n.d.), p.
535.
14See supra, p. 7.
27. That Jesus did live and was crucified is recorded, not only in scripture,
but in secular writings. The Roman historian, Tacitus, for example, refers to
this: “Christus, the founder of the name, had undergone the death penalty in
the reign of Tiberius, by sentence of the procurator Pontius Pilate . . . .” 12
The Jewish historian Josephus writes:
Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful
to call him a man; for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of
such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both
many Jews and many of the Gentiles. He was [the] Christ. And when
Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned
him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him;
for he appeared to them alive again the third day . . . .13
The Synoptic Gospels record the birth of Jesus and the events
surrounding His birth. And, as we have just observed, there are secular
accounts attesting the fact that He did live. Here there is a vast difference
between Jesus’s historicity and, for example, the unhistorical “holy child” of
Eleusinian drama. As we noted in Chapter 1, there probably was a feature of
the telestçrion that portrayed dramatically a sacred marriage and the birth of
a holy child. The marriage was probably a ceremonial, a liturgical fiction.
The marriage having been mimetically consummated, the hierophant announced the
birth of the holy child. It represented the birth of a progenitor of new race
of those who are now translated from the earthly sphere to the heavenly. 14
But in all of this drama there lacked historical reality.
Contrast this with the historical factor in the Christian account.
There was, indeed, one born who was destined to be the “prince of life,” the
pioneer of a new race, an heavenly. “And she shall bring forth a son,” it was
announced, “and thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people
Matt. 1:21. 15
Isa. 9:6. 16
from their sins.” Of this Isaiah had earlier spoken: 15
For unto us a child is born, unto
us a son is given: and the government
shall be upon his shoulder:
and his name shall be called Wonderful,
Counsellor, The mighty
God, the everlasting Father, the
Prince of Peace.16
In no sense can a mythic “holy child” bring a new age, a new humanity, into
being. And this because it lacks historical actuality. It is the existencequotient
that makes effective, for history and eternity, a new, a redeemed,
humanity. This the Christian account provides. It is incorrect to relegate
the account to the status of myth, to argue that it is of the same character
as the mythic “holy child.” For here, in Christianity, it is not a mimetic
enactment of the birth of a new humanity; it is the actual birth of an
historical figure, the man Jesus, who is to become the redeemer. That is the
Christian claim and the Christian reality.
Demeter and Isis are mythical figures, lacking historical reality, and
in no sense may they possess authority and power to revive the lost.
Persephone and Osiris are likewise but mythical personages; they can never
experience the reality of resurrection. In contrast to the myth, the
Christian account of resurrection functions on a different plane.
Now, there can be no question but that the man Jesus did actually die.
Death is here an historical event. But what of his resurrection? If this is
on the plane of mythos, does it not also lack the authority and power to bring
salvation and assurance for the future beyond the curtain of death? Must not
resurrection be marked by some reference to existence if it is to gain the
element of significance that is essential to its authority and power? Thus,
it is evident that the significance and truth of Christianity centers in the
reality-value of the Resurrection.
Sören Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments tr. David F. Swenson (Princeton: 17
Princeton University Press, c1936, 1962.
Ibid., pp. 137-38. 18
It can, and must, be said, then, that Christianity possesses
significance via reference to existence. While its symbols do, indeed,
reflect the spiritual only as they break away from bondage to the materiality
of existence, nevertheless their significance and validity center, ultimately,
in an existential, historical reality. There appears at this point, then, a
qualitative dialectic.
The Danish philosopher-theologian Sören Kierkegaard addresses this issue
in the title page of his book Philosophical Fragments:
Is an historical point of departure possible for an eternal
consciousness; how can such a point of departure have any other than a
merely historical interest; is it possible to base an eternal happiness
upon historical knowledge?17
In the closing pages of the work, he states the matter even more
forcefully:
It is well known that Christianity is the only historical phenomenon
which in spite of the historical, nay precisely by means of the
historical, has intended itself to be for the single individual the point
of departure for his eternal consciousness, has intended to interest him
otherwise than merely historical, has intended to base his eternal
happiness on something historical. No system of philosophy, addressing
itself only to thought, no mythology, addressing itself solely to the
imagination, no historical knowledge, addressing itself to the memory,
has ever had this idea: of which it may be said with all possible
ambiguity in this connection, that it did not arise in the heart of any
man.18
Kierkegaard’s most “systematic” work, Concluding Unscientific
Postscript, addresses the problem raised by the Fragments. The argument of
the postscript is that Christian truth cannot be certified either by means of
historical investigation or by means of philosophical speculation. Christian
truth is not an objective truth. Its truth—that eternal happiness depends
upon an event in time—is the paradox that is appropriated through the
inwardness of faith. The Christological event is appropriated only by the
passion of faith, a passion that is the anxiety of “fear and trembling.”
Sören Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, tr. David F. Swenson 19
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1944), p. 171.
Ibid., p. 178. 20
Ibid., pp. 178-79. 21
In the chapter, “Truth as Subjectivity,” Kierkegaard posits two
alternatives as regards the question of truth:
For an objective reflection the truth becomes an object, something
objective, and thought must be pointed away from the subject. For a
subjective reflection the truth becomes a matter of appropriation, of
inwardness, of subjectivity, and thought must probe more and more deeply
into the subject and his subjectivity.19
Thus the truth that eternal happiness is effected via the event in time,
which to objective thought is unresolvable paradox, consists in the inward
appropriation of that paradox by the believing subject. What is involved in
this distinction is, perhaps, no better stated than in the following passage:
When the question of truth is raised in an objective manner,
reflection is directed objectively to the truth, as an object to which
the knower is related. Reflection is not focused on the relationship,
however, but upon the question of whether it is the truth to which the
knower is related. If only the object to which he is related is the
truth, the subject is accounted to be in the truth. When the question of
truth is raised subjectively, reflection is directed subjectively to the
nature of the individual’s relationship; if only the mode of this
relationship is in the truth, the individual is in the truth even if he
should happen to be thus related to what is not true.20
Immediately following this passage, Kierkegaard provides an
example of his meaning. It concerns the question of the nature of the “Godrelationship”:
Let us take as an example the knowledge of God. Objectively, reflection
is directed to the problem of whether this object is the true God;
subjectively, reflection is directed to the question whether the
individual is related to a something in such a manner that his
relationship is in truth a God-relationship. . . .
The existing individual who chooses to pursue the objective way
enters upon the entire approximation-process by which it is proposed to
bring God to light objectively. But this is in all eternity impossible,
because God is a subject, and therefore exists only for subjectivity in
inwardness. The existing individual who chooses the subjective way
apprehends instantly the entire dialectical difficulty involved in having
to use some time, perhaps a long time, in finding God objectively; and he
feels this dialectical difficulty in all its painfulness, because every
moment is wasted in which he does not have God. That very instant he has
God, not by virtue of any objective deliberation, but by virtue of the
infinite passion of inwardness.21
Referring Kierkegaard’s analysis to the problem of this work, he would
agree that mythic representations, based solely upon imagination, cannot
suffice to effect eternal happiness. For they have no reference to any event
in time. That is, he is saying, the event in time, the Christological event,
is the necessary condition of eternal happiness. This event becomes
effective, however, only in the inward appropriation of faith. This means, in
short, that the question of one’s salvation remains, for thought, but
problematical. The felt assurance that Christianity affords, like the
assurance of the rites of pagan redemption, cannot yield any objective
certification. But there is in Kierkegaard a significant advance, for
salvation does require an enactment in time. But, as we have seen, the
availability of that enactment for redemption is forthcoming only in the
inwardness of faith. It remains, finally, but an objective probability.
Kierkegaard (1813-55) lived and wrote during a time in the nineteenth
century in which western thought was in bondage to two influences. The first
was empirical science. Science, it was believed, secured literal truth and
was the instrument of knowledge. The second was Hegelian philosophy.
According to this form of idealist philosophy, it was possible to know truly
the systematic nature of ultimate reality. Kierkegaard’s animadversions
rebutted both of those claims. He was correct in dethroning both empirical
science and systematic philosophy. He showed that they cannot be the avenues
to the God-relationship, that they cannot disclose the way of eternal
happiness.
But since his time, there have been developments in the culture of
thought of which he was not, and could not be, aware. It is now held by
reflective scientists that science does not disclose the inner nature of
reality. Rather, it is a paradigm of symbolism. As a general rule, the
idealistic system of philosophy that identifies the Real with thought and its
regulative forms is subject to serious criticism or even disavowed. In
consequence of these changes in intellectual culture, Kierkegaard’s rejection
of science and philosophy as avenues to salvation, although regarded as
1 Cor. 15:17. 22
extremely significant for his time and still of some considerable
significance, loses something of its former cutting edge. Nevertheless, his
concept of inward appropriation of truth as subjective continues to appeal to
many who struggle to find meaning in Christianity.
To return to the question of the historical factor in Christianity. In
contrast to the imaginations of myth, Christianity asserts that redemption,
eternal happiness, is grounded in an event in time. That is our argument thus
far.
Now, there is no question but that the man Jesus did live and was
crucified by the Romans. Both scriptural and secular sources testify to this.
While Jesus’ death is an indispensable factor in the drama of redemption,
redemption is finally secured and guaranteed by the Resurrection. The New
Testament is clear as to this. Thus Paul writes: “And if Christ be not
raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins.” Elsewhere Paul 22
removes the problematic and writes categorically:
Concerning his Son Jesus
Christ our Lord, which was made
of the Seed of David according
to the flesh;
And declared to be the Son of
God with power, according to
the spirit of holiness, by the
resurrection from the dead:
By whom we have received
grace and apostleship, for obedience
to the faith among all
nations, for his name.
Thus the Resurrection is part of the history of Jesus, is part of the
situation in time that procures, in Kierkegaard’s language, eternal happiness.
But now the question occurs as to just how, in what respect, Resurrection is
continuous with existence. That Jesus did exist, we have said, is beyond
cavil. His existence provides the element that imaginative resurrections of
mythic figures do not have. At least, that is the Christian claim. But is
Jesus’s resurrection a real factor in His existence? Do we not have, instead,
Supra, pp.85-87. 23
Schillebeeckx, op. cit., pp. 269-70. 24
but another myth, namely, a “Christian myth”?
The Resurrection is real only on the condition that there is a quality
of the existing individual, Jesus, that is capable of supporting it. That
quality is a special relation to God. Further, it must be something that
Jesus Himself sensed and one that others also detected.
We have earlier remarked that in His earthly life Jesus brought the full
meaning of the divine fatherhood to view. His “Abba experience” was the 23
experience of His unique relation to the Father. It was His sense of oneness
with the Father. His saying “I and my Father are one” affirms that special
relation of deep intimacy with God.
How are we to view this fact of Jesus’ sense of oneness with the Father?
We could, of course, say that here we have someone who is afflicted with
megalomania. But that is hardly credible. It is difficult, if not
impossible, to reconcile that theory with the whole of Jesus’ life and
activity. Schillebeeckx has stated the case for the veracity of Jesus’
consciousness of sonship:
. . . we have been examining the fundamental and constitutive elements of
Jesus’ message and praxis. He proclaimed, ‘for God’, the approach of
salvation for man, he appeared and acted as the eschatological prophet
bringing God’s ‘glad tidings for the poor’, news of salvation . . . .
The source of this message and praxis, demolishing an oppressive
notion of God, was his Abba experience, without which the picture of the
historical Jesus is drastically marred, his message emasculated and his
concrete praxis (though still meaningful and inspiring) is robbed of the
meaning he himself gave to it.
Over against all this one could say: this very Abba experience was
the grand illusion of Jesus’ life. Such a reaction is certainly possible
on our side. But then one is bound to draw from that the inevitable
conclusion, namely, that the hope of which Jesus spoke is likewise an
illusion.
. . . On purely historical grounds this cannot be verified, since
such an Abba experience may be disqualified as an illusion. On the other
hand for someone who acknowledges and in faith confesses this
trustworthiness of Jesus as grounded in truth and reality, the
trustworthiness acquires visible contours in the actual life of Jesus of
Nazareth; his faith then perceives Jesus’ trustworthiness in the
material, the biographical data, which the historian can put before him
regarding Jesus of Nazareth.24
John 1:14. 25
Mark 15:39. 26
That is the crucial distinction between myth and Christianity. There
are “visible contours in the actual life of Jesus.” That is lacking in the
mythic figures who promise redemption.
Others, too, witnessed something unique about Jesus of Nazareth. Of Him
who had dwelt among them, John wrote in his Gospel: “we beheld his glory, the
glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” And 25
the centurion, hearing Jesus’ pathetic death-cry, was constrained, perhaps
against all of his Roman prejudices, to say: “Truly this man was the Son of
God.”26
There is, then, a marked discontinuity of Jesus’s history with that
about Him which was meta-historical. This His Abba experience discloses. Yet
the meta-historical cannot be absolutely disassociated from His history. Some
such association is a necessary condition of the reality of the redemption
that Christianity offers. This association is, perhaps, most crucial with
respect to the Resurrection. That is, the Resurrection must in some sense be
continuous with existence, must itself be part of Jesus’s history, of the
event that He constitutes, if the redemption He offers is to be truly
significant and valid. If Resurrection is an illusion, along with the Abba
consciousness, Christian redemption stands along side pagan redemption: a
myth.
The Gospel narratives agree that no one actually witnessed the
resurrection of Jesus. The biblical accounts of the Resurrection are of
resurrection appearances. It might be thought that, therefore, the
appearances are but private hallucinations. Against this supposition is the
circumstance that these appearances, with some exception, were to groups of
people rather than to individuals confined in isolation. In the mimetic
rituals of pagan myths, there are no such experiences as those of the early
1 Cor. 15:3. Italics mine. 27
Christians. There are but mimetic actions imitating the mythic material.
These can in nowise bring personal salvation. Against this, stands uniquely
distinctive and supreme Christian redemption, which finds in the resurrection
appearances the raison for its claim of truth and validity.
Here, too, “visible contours” are acquired. They are acquired in a new
dimension of history. The early belief in the Resurrection was such that it
transformed the human reality of those long-ago individuals and, through them,
the reality of human history. The only explanation that explains this is
their assurance that He is risen. It was this belief in a new reality, an
abiding Presence, that became the power in their venture of faith and deed.
These are the incontrovertible facts, in consequence of which the resurrection
experience can never be consigned to the dust-bin of illusion. The
resurrection appearances were veridical perceptions–not self-induced
hallucinations–and the resurrection effects were actual and real. Of this it
is certain: Christianity did not originate and grow in nonsense. In these
respects, at least, there is reality in the Resurrection. And in these
respects, Christian redemption is on a uniquely higher level than was ever
attained by pagan redemption.
We have employed the terms “history” and “meta-history.” That Jesus was
crucified and buried is a matter of history. But His death assumes a
dimension that in nowise merely emerges out of its historicity. In this
regard, Paul writes, not that “Christ died,” but that “Christ died for our
sins.” The phrase, “for our sins,” states the significance of that death. 27
And this significance is meta-historical. It is discontinuous with history
but yet bound up with history. There is here both continuity and
discontinuity with existence. This is the paradox of which Kierkegaard
writes, that our eternal happiness depends upon an event in time. Eternal
happiness is conditioned by Resurrection, which stands both beyond and yet
Harald Höffding, The Philosophy of Religion, tr. B. E. Meyer (London: 28
Macmillan & Co., Ltd., 1914), p. 201.
Ibid. 29
within history.
Now, symbolism itself contains the contrasting duality of existence and
significance that, we have just argued, holds for Resurrection in its
historical and meta-historical, or spiritual, respects. If we explore the
structure of this duality, we may come to see more fully and adequately the
grounds upon which the truth claim of Christian redemption rests.
Religious symbols, specifically those of Christianity, differ markedly
from other symbols. They share, to be sure, in the generic characters of all
symbolism. Höffding, we earlier pointed out, succinctly defines the generic
nature of the symbol:
In all symbolization, ideas taken from narrow although more intuitible
relations are used as expressions for relations which, on account of
their exaltedness and ideality, cannot be directly expressed28
Nevertheless, there is a fundamental difference between religious symbols and
other symbols. In the first place, religious symbols are drawn from regions
of intuition that markedly differ from the regions form which other symbols
are drawn. These regions, Höffding writes, are “. . . the great fundamental
relations of nature and of human life——light and darkness, power and weakness,
life and death, spirit and matter, good and evil . . . . Second, the more 29
important feature of religious symbols consists in their unique reference.
The reference is to the infinite. The religious symbol, therefore, shines
with a distinctive luminous quality. It is extremely rich in color and
extremely toned with emotion. These two features of religious symbolism are
found par excellence in Christian symbolism.
We have also earlier referred to Otto’s characterization of the
experience of the infinite. He describes the consciousness of the infinite as
a numinous state of mind, a state that includes certain elements. This has
See Supra., pp. 53-54. 30
been discussed in the foregoing and need not be repeated here.30
What is important at this point in the argument is that the unique
referent of the religious symbol, shining through, as it does, in the
experience of the numinous, may, and is, given a measure of determination by
the reason. That is, the numinous of experience is determined in idea as the
Absolute, the Infinite. There is no doubt but that the numinous of experience
has for its referend the “Wholly Other,” the Infinite, or God. Yet from
within the circle of numinous experience, no evidence is forthcoming that the
referend of that experience is real. This matter may be stated from the
standpoint of symbolism. The Christian symbols are bathed with numinous
quality. We have come to see this in the preceding chapter. They yield
insight into the God who is beyond conceptual determination. Is the insight a
true insight? Does the God to whom the symbols refer really exist? Or, are
the symbols, with their purported insight, unanchored, free-floating, without
support in reality? Are they, after all, illusory, albeit with some intraexperiential
import? Can these questions be answered in terms of the
ideational equivalent of the numinous of experience? For, if they can be
answered, they are answered only at the level of reflective thought.
In our modern era, we have somehow been led to the conclusion that the
objects of scientific formulation exist, and exist beyond a reasonable doubt.
In contrast, it is a prevailing view that the idea of God is problematic, that
is, that it carries no evidential weight as to the real existence of its
presumed referent. In the chapter on the symbolism of science, however, we
have come to the conclusion that the presumed realities of scientific symbolformation
are never certifiable as to an existence beyond the reach of the
symbolic formations. They exist within the construct of symbolization. We do
not know the physical world in its inner nature. We do, indeed, presume that
there is an inner nature to the physical world. But that nature, that world,
Edmund Husserl, Ideas, tr. W. R. Boyce Gibson (London: George Allen & Unwin, 31
Ltd., 1931), p. 178.
is beyond our reach, beyond the reach even of our scientific symbols.
In 1913 the German philosopher Edmund Husserl published his most
significant work, Ideen zu einer Phänomenologie und phäomenologischen
Philosophie (Ideas of a pure Phenomenology and phenomenological Philosophy).
The work was later translated in English by W. R. Boyce Gibson, under the
title Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology.
An important thesis of the work is set forth under the rubric
phenomenological reduction. Briefly stated, the term means that the objects
given as data of experience are such that it is necessary to suspend the
question of the actual existence of those phenomena. The reduction does not
signify that they do not exist; it signifies that we do not know that they
exist, or, that the givenness of the data is incapable of showing forth extramental
existence. Husserl states this thesis in the following language:
Thus in its immanence it must admit no positing of such essences
in the form of Being, no statements touching their validity or nonvalidity,
or concerning the ideal possibility of objectivities that shall
correspond to them nor may it establish any laws bearing on their
essential nature.31
Husserl extends the phenomenological reduction to the idea of God. That
the idea of God is entertained in the mind is no evidence that God exists.
Husserl’s argument here is based on the assumption that the idea of God is of
the same logical character as all other ideas, including ideas of physical
objects. However, if it should turn out that the idea of God is unique and
therefore different in logical character from other ideas, Husserl’s
contention would not hold.
Now, we are led to the subject of what is known as the ontological
argument. It is the significant argument for the existence of God. A recent
proponent of the argument makes this point:
The reasons men have given for believing in God have been
formulated in what are called the ‘proofs’ for the existence of God, or,
briefly, the theistic argument. Of these proofs the Platonic or
W. M. Urban, Humanity and Deity, p. 165. 32
St. Anselm, Proslogium, chap. ii, in St. Anselm, tr. Sidney Norton Deane (La 33
Salle, Ill.: The Open Court Publishing Co., 1951), pp. 7-8.
ontological argument is in a sense the most significant, for it
constitutes what, in a dialectical or logical age, men believed to be the
‘logical witness for God.’32
The historically classic formulation of the ontological argument is
found in Anselm of Canterbury’s Proslogium. He “defines” God as “being than
which nothing greater can be conceived.” The conception of God in those
terms, he claims, requires and shows forth the objective reality of God. He
writes:
And, indeed, we believe that thou art a being than which nothing greater
can be conceived. Or is there no such nature, since the fool hath said
in his heart, there is no God? (Psalms xiv. 1).
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Hence, even the fool is convinced that something exists in the
understanding, at least, than which nothing greater can be conceived.
For, when he hears of this, he understands it. And whatever is
understood, exists in the understanding. “And assuredly that, than which
nothing greater can be conceived, cannot exist in the understanding
alone. For, suppose it exists in the understanding: then it can be
conceived to exist in reality; which is greater.
Therefore, if that, than which nothing greater can be conceived,
exists in the understanding alone. the very being, than which nothing
greater can be conceived, is one, than which a greater can be conceived.
But obviously this is impossible. Hence, there is no doubt that there
exists a being, than which nothing greater can be conceived, and it
exists both in the understanding and in reality.33
Anselm’s argument was immediately challenged. Gaunilo, a monk of
Marmoutier, replied, in effect, that the idea of God as perfection no more
entails His existence than does the idea of a perfect island entail its
existence. He gave the example of a “lost island,” which comprises the sum of
all excellencies. This does not mean, he argues, that because the perfect
island is an idea in the mind that, therefore, the island exists. Therefore,
mutatis mutandis, the idea of God does not entail the existence of God.
Anslem replied, in effect, that if Guanilo can find the perfect island,
he will give it to him:
Now I promise confidently that if any man shall devise anything
existing either in reality or in concept alone (except that than which a
greater cannot be conceived) to which he can adapt the sequence of my
reasoning, I will discover that thing, and will give him his lost island,
Anselm’s Apologetic, in Ibid., p. 158. 34
not to be lost again.34
The point that Anselm makes here is that only the idea of God implies
the necessary existence of the referent of the idea. All other concepts do
not. “The sequence of my reasoning,” he correctly says, cannot be adapted to
them. Further, he is certain that, if Gaunilo can find the lost island, it
will be readily given to him. Why is this? The answer is that the concept of
a perfect island is a dependent, conditioned, meaning. It depends on other
conceptual elements: the concepts of water, land, and the relationship between
the former two concepts. It is, therefore, a contradiction to attach
perfection to the concept of island. That which depends on something other
than itself cannot be perfect. There is no such self-consistent meaning,
perfect island. It is not even a possible object of thought. Since it is
conceptually impossible, it is therefore actually impossible. Its existence
is really impossible. In nowise, then, can its existence be implied by its
presumed, but illusory, conceptual status.
There is, however, a factor that vitiates Anselm’s formulation of the
ontological argument. He assumes that existence is part of the meaning of the
idea of God. That is, existence, along with other attributes, is an
intensional property of the idea of God. When we think God as perfection, we
must assert His existence, as we must assert the other attributes that
constitute His nature.
Indeed, it is true that in thinking God as perfection, we must think of
Him as existing. But not for the reason that Anselm proposes. For existence
is not part of the intensional meaning of the idea of God. In technical
language, existence is not a predicate.
The German philosopher Kant make this point.
‘Being’ is obviously not a real predicate; that is, it is not a
concept of something which could be added to the concept of a thing. . .
. By whatever and by however many predicates we may think a thing——even
if we completely determine it——we do not make the least addition to the
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, tr. Norman Kemp Smith (New York: The 35
Humanities Press, 1950), pp. 505-05.
thing when we further declare that this thing is.35
Kant is correct here. Existence is not a predicate and therefore cannot
be included in the idea of God, so as to evince His existence. But this does
not mean that the ontological argument, if properly construed, lacks formal
validity and real significance.
There is a difference between an idea and a concept. As the term from
which concept derives, concipere, take together, hold together, indicates, a
concept is a collection of meanings. With respect to our knowledge of the
space-time world, concepts are generalizations from particular instances.
Now it is clear that we do not have a concept of God. We do not hold in
our minds the qualities of the Divine being. We do not know God as He is in
Himself. And we certainly do not form a concept of God as a generalization
from many instances of God.
But we do, without question, possess an idea of God. The idea connotes,
not a plurality of meanings, but a unique singularity of meaning. And it
contains no reference to a plurality of instances, but only to a single
Individual, or Being. The idea of God is the idea of the transcendent
Individual.
The ontological argument is really not an argument at all. It is not a
deduction from premises. It is an insight. When that insight is properly
explicated reflectively, it becomes evident that in order to think God
consistently it is necessary to think God as necessarily existing.
We have pointed out that the ontological argument is a Platonic
argument. That is, indeed, the case. The merit of the Platonic argument is
that it formulates the argument in exceedingly abstract terms, i.e, it takes
the idea of God as a purely formal idea. Some attention must be given to the
Platonic formulation, in order to bring the question of God’s existence to a
Plato Phaedo 75d, tr. Harold North Fowler (Cambridge: Harvard University 36
Press, 1953), p. 263.
Plato Republic vi. 511b, pp. 113-15. 37
Ibid., vii.533c, p. 203, 38
profitable conclusion.
Plato’s analysis is found in the sixth and seventh books of the
Republic. The argument is developed in the context of the theory of Ideas.
The Ideas are the intellectual instruments employed in the organization of
experience. In the Phaedo he listed the various Ideas: equality, beauty, good
(moral), justice, and holiness. In the Republic he considers them in the 36
context of the analogy of the divided line. It is there that he formulates
the ontological argument.
In one passage he writes:
. . . that which reason itself lays hold of by the power of dialectics,
treating its assumptions not as absolute beginnings but literally as
hypotheses, underpinnings, footings, and springboards so to speak, to
enable it to rise to that which requires no assumption and is the
starting point of all. . . .37
The other passage is this:
Is not dialectics the only process of inquiry that advances in this
manner, doing away with hypotheses, up to the first principle itself in
order to find confirmation there?38
The various individual ideas are the hypotheses. Their extra-mental
status is problematic. But they are show a dependency upon the ultimate value
principle and serve, accordingly, as “springboards so to speak” for the
disclosure of “the first principle.” The first principle is viewed in the
manner of “doing away with hypotheses.” It is “that which requires no
assumption.” Its reality, then, is certain, beyond all assumption.
But how do we know that our awareness of this first principle is an
awareness of its reality? That is the crucial question. The question is
answered in terms of the meaning, in the Greek, of the English phrase, “that
which requires no assumption.” For that phrase the Greek has a single word,
with the definite article. The Greek expression is ôïØ íõðïèÝôïõ, the
See my article “The Ontological Argument in Plato,” The Personalist, 44:1 39
(Winter, 1963), pp. 24-34. See also Charles Hartshorne, Anselm’s Discovery (LaSalle,
Ill.: Open Court, c1965), pp. 139-41, which is a discussion of the article.
genitive of ôÎ íõðüèåôïí (to anhypotheton, the unhypothesized). The noun is
used but three times in the Greek language, and exclusively by Plato in the
Republic. Its meaning is essentially negative, since it is a compound of the
privative particle á (not) and the noun ßðÎèåóéò (a placing under). It means
“independence of conditions.”
Since it means, in a formal respect, independence of conditions, the
anhypotheton must be thought of as independent of the conditions of thought.
To entertain it in the mind as but a mental construct, as dependent upon the
conditions of thought, is a self-contradiction. To think it, then, is to
think it as self-existent. That, precisely, is the germ of the so-called
ontological argument. It is the reflective insight that, as entertained in
the mind, the anhypotheton must be entertained as existing extra-mentally.
Plato does not explicitly identify the anhypotheton with the Good.
However, his discussion of the Good, the ultimate reality, makes it clear that
he regarded the two as identical. The anhypotheton, the Good, is the Father
of all else, streaming into the world but yet remaining in its inviolable
reality beyond all worlds.39
If we transpose the Platonic reasoning over into the Christian idea of
God, the result is precisely the same. We do, without question, entertain the
idea of God as “the unconditioned transcendent.” While not directly given, it
is nevertheless given as a co-implicate of the awareness of our finitude.
This idea connotes the “formal principle of Deity.” It yields minimal
knowledge of God, the only form of literal knowledge of God that we possess.
To think God, then, it is necessary to think God as independent of the
conditions of thought, as self-existent.
The distinction between concept and idea is an important and decisive
one. Husserl has shown that all finite concepts can be bracketed with respect
to the existence of their referents. He is correct here. But he is incorrect
in supposing that the idea of Deity also requires, even permits, bracketing.
For here we do not have the concept, but rather the idea. The idea of God is
unique, formally signifying the unconditioned Absolute, and therefore cannot
consistently undergo bracketing. In short, insofar, and as long as, we think
God, we must think Him as real. Of this we are assured beyond all cavil. If
we wish to remove from ourselves the idea of God——if that were indeed
possible——, we face the consequence of depriving ourselves of the potential of
our humanity. And this means that we have to deny our own selfhood and
reality. And that is too great a price to pay! If we excise God from our
intellectual experience, we renounce our humanity!
We are now in a position to bring this discussion to a close by
reference to the question that has lurked within the work from the beginning.
It is the question of the validity of the symbolism of grace. We have earlier
seen that, despite the feeling of salvation from the vicissitudes of finitude,
even victory over death, that the myth purported to offer, no certitude of
redemption is available via myth. We have asked the question, does this
insecurity also plague the Christian claim of redemption?
Certain tentative positions have been secured. There are certain
significant differences between the mythic formations and the formations of
Christian symbolism. One such mark is the mark of historicity. The redeemers
who tread the path of myth are not historic personages, but conjectures of the
imagination. No redemption from these can be achieved. But, with respect to
Christianity, the case is different. The Redeemer did actually live and die.
In the tissue of Christian faith, His resurrection is a datum in the
consciousness of those early Christians who, in teaching and practice,
transformed the culture of the world–their world and now, even, our world
today. The only explanation that explains this is their assurance that He is
risen. In some profound sense, the Resurrection is the resurrection within
history. Without this, redemption is an illusion.
Yet, beyond the continuity of history, there is a second factor. It is
the factor of significance purchased through discontinuity. Myth is fastened
to existence, while symbolism, though first anchored in existence, transcends
existence and, in that discontinuity, gives voice to higher levels of
ideality. The Christian symbols carry this thrust further, showing forth the
numinous, the Holy. We have come to see this, par excellence, in the symbol
of the father. And the other symbols of grace, as the Lamb, the Bride and the
bridegroom, likewise trench upon the numinous, giving voice to the glory of
redemption. All this we have seen in the previous chapters. But we have not
yet come to adequate terms with the very question that confronts myth: are we
assured that the Christian symbols do, indeed, yield truth so as to signify
that there is the reality and power of the referent, the Holy, to bring
redemption?
Now, we have, to be sure, answered this question to some considerable
extent. We have pointed out that the mythic constructs do not evince the
numinous. They do not have that significance, and this because they are
embedded in and confined to material existence. They do not take on the
character of signification. The Christian symbols, in contrast, do assume
spiritual significance, although they are drawn from the natural sphere. But
they use the natural in the service of the transcendent and the spiritual.
We have also observed, as another factor in the area of the
discontinuous, that, in terms of the Kierkegaardian analysis, there is
discontinuity between existential event and eternal happiness. Christianity
makes the remarkable claim that eternal happiness is dependent on an event in
time, the Jesus event. In the passion of faith in this paradox, we reach a
subjectivity in which we dare the God-relationship. But there is no
evidence, outside this subjectivity, that we have in truth reached the Godrelationship.
We must thus suspend reason and affirm a faith that has no
foundations. We cannot, as Peter says, give “a reason of the hope that is in
1 Pet. 3:15. 40
you.” 40
But are we, as Christians, really left without any anchor? Are we but
on a tempest sea, agitated with the waves of insecurity, tempest-tossed
without a lighthouse to illume our sea-borne quest? May it not be, after all,
that there is a measure of assurance?
Now, we have insisted all along that in symbolism, not only the
symbolism of science but the symbolism of grace, we gain knowledge only
through the medium of the symbol. What we know of the world, what we know of
God—-even with the aid of revelation-—is confined to the formations of
symbolism. We cannot get beyond those formations. Specifically, for the
present purposes, we do not know God as He is in Himself. We approach Him in
and through symbol.
But there is a dimension here that is significant. For the Christian
symbol signifies the numinous. There opens to our spiritual understanding the
vista of the supernatural, in the landscape of which are the virtues of saving
efficacy. Along beside this experience of the numinous, via the symbol, we
do, without question, form the idea of the numinous. And, as we have argued,
this idea, and this idea alone, yields the assurance, to the reason, that the
reality to which it refers does indeed exist.
What consequence does this assurance from the side of reason have with
respect to the deliverances of symbolism? It cannot yield a further knowledge
beyond that afforded in the structures of symbolism. But what it can do, and
does do, is to add a measure of weight to the claims of the symbol. To the
extent that we know that the numinous is certified to our thought as selfexistent,
we may rest in an appreciable measure of assurance that the symbol
functions veridically. From the other side, were we not to know that the God
whom we entertain in thought exists, or that even His but possible existence
is an impossibility, we could not rest in the felt radiance of the symbol. In
Wordsworth, Elegiac Stanza VI. 41
sum, the Christian symbol, anchored in the life of reason as it is, achieves
what no myth can purchase. That is the superiority of Christianity, of the
Christian symbol.
Yet, when all is said and done, it is in the light of the symbol that we
walk the pathway of faith. As in science and our knowledge of the physical
world, so is it in the religious: we cannot leave or go beyond the glory of
the symbol. It is “The light that never was, on sea or land.” It is the 41
beacon-light streaming from the eternal world.