The Wild Tears Fall

But this sibyl, whether she is the Erythræan, or, as some rather believe, the Cumæan, in her whole poem, of which this is a very small portion, not only has nothing that can relate to the worship of the false or feigned gods, but rather speaks against them and their worshippers in such a way that we might even think she ought to be reckoned among those who belong to the city of God.... 


 Judgment shall moisten the earth with the sweat of its standard,
 Ever enduring, behold the King shall come through the ages,
    Sent to be here in the flesh, and Judge at the last of the world...

Did he who penned the blessed hymn draw inspiration from the prophecy of the Erythræan Sybil? How uncanny is both their mention of the dew, which lay so long of the grass this month, before silvering into frost.

When blessed Simeon took the Christ Child in his arms, he lifted up his face and cried: 



Now thou dost dismiss thy servant, O Lord, according to thy word in peace; Because my eyes have seen thy salvation, Which thou hast prepared in the sight of every people: A light to the revelation of the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel. Luke II: 29-32


There are so many ways to read, 'in the sight of every people', but when one contemplates the Gentile forerunners of the Messiah, one cannot help but think that here the priest was at least in part acknowledging the universal preparation the world had received for the coming of its Saviour.


Such a catholic expectation in the world is for many proof of this anticipation's validity. Yet, the objection of the naysayer assails this bastion as it does all others. The gauntlet hurled here is that the universal wish recorded of so many peoples was merely one of wishful thinking. The Messiah was just the name given by Hebrews to a man who would draw humanity from the miserable depths into which it had fallen, and the certainty that he would be in part a god was a necessary conjecture for the remedy of such a sad state. Concerning the details so eerily resembling the birth, life, and death of Jesus Christ, this pat dismissal is often proferred:


The Christ idea is older than the story of Jesus, and the latter was edited and re-edited until it incorporated all the features of the former and so met the requirements of the age. 



Now such an assertion carries the burden of proof, but the creativity of modern historians does not often never restrict its assertions to those based on positive evidence when it may opine scenarios that confirm the bias of the thinker. As to believers, it is not the inclination of a lover to merely ignore accusations hurled against the beloved, but to eviscerate them. And a true member of Christ's Church is--first and last--His lover.


The first kink in Carus's armour in particular is his inconsistency. On the one hand, he says that the true story of Christ (to which he is somehow privy) has been schewed. Yet, earlier in his work, he not only objected to Christian appropriation of pagan Messianic prophecies, but Judaic ones as well with the claim: 'The Christian interpretation has been superimposed and does violence to the message.' (ibid., 1) Which has been altered then? The prophecy or the fulfillment? On the one hand, the scholar finds the Gospel revelations of Christ's life compelling enough to uphold the catholic Messiah's mantle, and on the other hand he doesn't. 


However, the above point is merely a barb slung against this work in particular, and not the larger argument. Any skeptic may choose one position (violence has been done to the prophecies in applying the Gospels) or the other (violence has been done to the Gospels in applying them to the prophecies) and remain internally consistent.

Carus's first real argument is that rampant warring and weak economies were spread far enough over the ancient world to create a universal longing for a strong leader to save mankind from himself. No inspiration from the Holy Spirit would be required to instill such a wish in the hearts of man. Certain aspects of this Saviour, e.g., that he be divine in some way or even subjected to adversity follow reasonably enough from that. Thus, these aspects of Virgil's Fourth Eclogue, the Sybil's prophecy, or the many fore-tellings of the Old Testament are not sufficient to convince one of their credibility or even to link them to the tale of Jesus Christ.


A fellow student of mine once said in school that if he were to prophesy and give as a token to the people the following sign for his veracity: 'Tomorrow the sun shall rise!' then even the most gullible zealot would lift an eyebrow. For a cult to spring from the seed of prophecy, there must be some sign to indicate that it has been fulfilled. For a cult to achieve the immense success accorded to the might Roman Catholic Church, this sign or signs must have been above reproach in the eyes of many--fierce and dynamic and able to possess the hearts of the fierce and dynamic.


Yet, Carus (and many with him) contest that the Faith which brought forth all the martyrs, crusaders, poets, thinkers, and artists who have etched the mark of Christ into the face of the world forever, need not have come from a very earth-shattering force. This Church was going to happen at that particular phase in history, and it need not have been a Christian one:


Christianity, or a religion such as Christianity, would have originated even if Jesus had never existed...in all essentials, in doctrine as well as in moral ideas, we would have had the same religion. (27)


The ability of a modern to thinker to form such bold projections is staggering. By what rational means could anyone justify saying that the church founded by a Buddha or a 'Brahman Avatar' or a madman from Mecca would be exactly the same in its identity, even down to its moral code? Where is the positive proof of this? Alas, Carus has shown himself again to be rather creative, but not exactly reasonable.


So having erected chimerical, alternate Vaticans alongside the real one, using nothing but the sand of conjecture and imagination, Carus proceeds to dismiss the evidence he does have: human nature and the testimony of the first Christians.

He posits that Jesus of Nazareth was honoured with the laurels of the Christ, where emperors and warriors failed miserably, because he appealed to the sick in His poor life and death, as well as to fanatics like Saul of Tarsus. Human nature would take issue with the first point. The downtrodden do not habitually idolize their fellow downtrodden members simply for sharing their lot. They  either pity them or take advantage of them. Nor do the oppressed do not fall in line with revolutionaries until they are desperate, and if their revolution fails, with the leaders hung ignominiously on gibbets, the effect would be disillusionment, not encouragement.


It would be surprising then that a man who merely comforted the sick and the weak with words should become the leader of the religion 'of women and slaves' unless He had worked miracles amongst them, had indeed cured the blind, sick and, lame brought unto Him. Do Carus, et al., submit that this is a later appendage to the Gospels? How on earth could Jesus Christ have gained enough prominence to be considered for the Messianic role without these signs?


As to the manipulation of zealots who seized upon Christ's story, the moderns here must here accuse them of being deliberately disingenuous. Carus attempts to dismiss without defaming St. Paul in saying that he was honestly self-deluded:


Paul's converion consisted simply in the idea that came upon him like a flash of lightning, that all of his conceptions of Christ could be applied to Jesus, that the majesty of his divine nature was well set forth in his deepest humiliation, his death on the cross... (25)


Carus is ungenerous to St. Luke, in completely dismissing not only the miracle of St. Paul's conversion on the road to Damascus, but also the evangelist's account of St. Paul's beliefs and characters before his conversion, namely that he had persecuted the faithful, and had even held the coats of St. Stephen's murderers.


Secondly, Carus does great injustice to St. Paul's own account of how he came to believe and to the rationality of every Christian alive. While we have come to adore and even to be sentimental about the kenosis of the Christ--His low birth and dolorous passion--we have not forgotten that it is a paradox:

But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews indeed a stumbling block, and unto the Gentiles foolishness: But unto them that are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men. 


   ...O God, the believing and faithless alike shall behold You
   Uplifted with saints, when at last the ages are ended...
   

Aristotle proclaimed that friendship with God was impossible, because friendship filled a need, and God by definition would have no needs. He was also the man that had asserted there were 'final ends' for everything that existed, and destinies which those things could achieve. Everything that 'is' is able to realize the purpose for which it was intended, because that is how it was made. It would seem to suggest a defect on God's part to have designed a creature that had no hope of achieving its most intense desires. Worse than a defect of judgement, it would be sadism to create a being that could thirst, but could not bring itself to water or even stand the substance when imbibed.

While the terror of eternity has subsided, it having been shown it is not an infinite line of time stretching our being ever more thinly, the soul still wonders how she will take it all in. When beautiful things give us pain, true things blind our sight, and good things reduce us to tears, we are all too aware of how small our capacity is for the great and noble. Like the shining Dawnstar, we love the Sun, but as He draws near to kiss us, we expire and dissolve in His light. Ourselves are too weak for Himself.

As the Angelic Doctor observes:

But man's perfect Happiness...consists in the vision of the Divine Essence. Now the vision of God's Essence surpasses the nature not only of man, but also of every creature...For the natural knowledge of every creature is in keeping with the mode of its substance: thus it is said of the intelligence that 'it knows things that are above it, and things that are below it, according to the mode of its substance.' But every knowledge that is according to the mode of created substance, falls short of the vision of the Divine Essence, which infinitely surpasses all created substance. Consequently neither man, nor any creature, can attain final Happiness by his natural powers. (Summa Theologiae: Prima Secundae Partis, Question V, Article v)

Perhaps then, God will only unveil some of Himself in eternity. There is a certain beatitude man is entitled to by his nature, which is the vision of God in the context of creation, i.e., seeing Him as through a mirror. It is an analogous beholding, just as all of man's knowledge is here on earth: facts drawn up by sense impressions, signs, and measurements. So we would not have a Beatific Vision in the true sense, but in a diluted sense of the idea. (Hontheim, Joseph: The Catholic Encyclopaedia; Volume VII, "Heaven")

Such a proposition is reasonable and our just deserts--assuming we have not so damaged our natures by sin that we do not merit the fellowship of man, much less that of God. However when someone is in love, and after the rigours of good judgement and virtue have had their say about the object of his love, the lover no longer concerns himself with what his beloved deserves, but things that she would like. The more stunned and overwhelmed she is, the better. To invest as much of himself in his giving as possible is his intent, not to meter out according to justice with no thought for mercy.

God, after the judgements which Holiness requires (I ought not to have the same vision as Mother Teresa), is the most generous of all lovers. After Cophetua has won the beggar maid's affection in the guise of a poor man, he will not keep her in her lowly state, but will elevate her to the status of queen. Would this contradict all the rules of his state? Yes, but he is the king, and it is also a law of his that he can make exceptions to the rules. If God can create man, He can create in man the capacity for Himself, though still proper to the mode of man's existence:

For God loveth mercy and truth: the Lord will give grace and truth. (Psalm 83:12)

Just as the human body may be brought to perfect health by medicine, so it is through His assistance that we shall obtain the enjoyment of Himself. It is true that we will not infinitely comprehend Him with our finite intellects, but we may yet possess Him in an act which eternity shall not exhaust. The is the lumen gloriae, the light that allows our intellect to look on God directly, not reflected, and receive Him to the extent our being allows.

Man's more supernatural end has been explained thus:

'Comprehension is twofold: in one sense it is taken strictly and properly...and this in no way is God comprehended either by intellect, or in any other way forasmuch as He is infinite, and cannot be included in any way by the finite being...in the degree of His own Infinity.

But in another sense 'comprehension' is taken more largely as opposed to 'non-attainment'; for he who attains to anyone is said to comprehend him when he attains to him. And in this sense God is comprehended by the blessed, according to the words, 'I held him, and I will not let him go.' (Canticles 3:4)...in this way 'comprehension' is one of the three prerogatives of the soul, responding to hope, as vision responds to faith, and fruition responds to charity. (Summa Theologiae: Prima Pars, Question XII, Article vii)

As Christians, we are told not to emulate the saints or the angels, but God Himself. We have been promised that we shall see His face. How? It is simply a mystery. And so one comes round, after the toild of frenzied, intimidated reason back to these simple words:

When He shall appear, we shall be like to Him; because we shall see Him as He is. (I John 3:2)

The Problem of Infinity: Let Us Be Made for It! by Rachel Rudd is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at foolishnessntears.blogspot.com.