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News and Ideas from around the Anglican World |
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May 2006
Exploring the mystery of our communion with God, and with each other, in Friendship, Family, Marriage and the Church
Edith Humphrey
“True mysticism is to discover the extraordinary in the ordinary,” is the insight of the French theologian Olivier Clément. After all, are we not always remarking upon the oddness of our encounters with other persons— “How wise that baby’s eyes look!” “Doesn’t she look strangely like her father?” “It is bizarre, as though we have always known each other...” “ I never knew he had it in him!” Moreover, just when we feel that we have understood someone, or ‘nailed down’ their personality in our mind, we discover some new strength, weakness, endearing quality or frustrating quirk that we never expected. We might have anticipated what the God-seer has discovered, that God’s essence exceeds the bounds of human understanding, yet this Mysterious One calls us to share in communion with him. What we may not have accounted for is the depth of mystery implanted within those who bear his image, with whom we naturally expect to have concourse.
This means that though we share together in the human mode of existence, there is a definite sense in which every human being I know is remarkably and pleasingly “other” to me. Indeed, because I am ultimately God’s creature, and not my own, there is also a sense in which I remain, so to speak, bracingly “other” even to myself. As one who is in the process of becoming, I can hardly understand all that I am to be. As a complex being in which God has brought together spirit, soul and body, I am continually startled to find, within myself, things that bind me to other creatures.
We are not speaking here only about the estrangement between human beings, or the barrier to self-understanding, that comes as a result of the Fall. Certainly prejudice and blindness regarding other human beings, and even within our own psyche, mark our fallen existence. The answer to such human walls comes when we acknowledge those sort of humanitarian truths uttered by, among others, the Latin poet Terence: “I consider nothing human alien to me.” Rather, we are considering here that delightful “otherness,” that intriguing depth in the mate which is an essential ingredient of true human communion –as anyone who has been in love, or had their first baby, or joined a church, or found their “kindred spirit” discovers. There are whole worlds, then, made even more complex by our fallen condition, to discover within any one whom we love, and within ourselves, too. As St. Macarius, spiritual theologian of the fourth century, puts it,
It
is essential to realize that St. (Pseudo-) Macarius is not saying
that the spiritual life is simply “a state of mind,” so that there
is no actual existence of God, angels, and the New Jerusalem: that
would be a concept only possible in our psychologically-oriented and
solipsistic [self-centred] age. [Editor’s
note: Solipsism is the philosophical view
A glance back at Genesis, at the foundational first Act of the human drama, reminds us of this. God creates the world, and then crowns it with his masterpiece: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” We are one, yet we are male and female. We are in the image of God, yet we are corporeal, sexual beings along with the animals. And God blesses this state of affairs, giving the command to both be fruitful and to wisely govern the rest of creation. The sixth day ends on a high note. Not only does God note that it was good: it was very good (1:31). For in the human being, God has made a creature that is, as C.S. Lewis has put it, “amphibious”—at home in the realm of matter and in the realm of spirit. The great act of the Incarnation, in which God assumed humanity, offers the highest confirmation of this wonderful mode of being.
That we are created in God’s image means that we should expect to find, in our fellowship with each other, echoes of God’s own communion. Our human relationships are important in themselves, but remain holy and beautiful exactly in the proportion that they truly mirror the life of the Trinity, and indeed, point us to the One from whom all communion springs. We can, then, look at the mystery of human relationships from two different ends—it is contingent upon the God of Love; and it magnifies our loving God. It is in the latter sense that we can understand rightly ordered human liaisons, true but differing forms of communion, as living icons of the Trinity. That is, when a human being truly communes with another or others, we see not simply a symbol, or metaphor, but a remarkable theological picture, a solid love infused with God’s glory, that directs us through it to the One who is Real Love in Himself.
Some, like Karl Barth, have been nervous of theology that is based upon a presumed “analogy of being,” that is, when we trace a trajectory from the created order to God. They argue that we should never make an easy link between the natural realm and the divine mystery, because revelation of the truth comes from God to us, not because of what we can extrapolate from our human situation. Their caution is salutary, especially for those who speak too glibly of God’s nature, and forget that God remains, as Creator over against creature, totally other. Not only our weak human nature, but also our condition as fallen creatures should make us shy of reasoning from our experience to God. That would be for the tail to wag the dog – or, rather, to try to wag the Maker of dogs and tails!
However, by the Incarnation, God the Son assumed human nature: dogs, tails, and human eyes to love them, have been visited intimately by the One who has all things in his care. So every part of our life is informed by, and indeed, may direct us to, the God of life, light and love, so long as we are in Christ, and remain there. The great spiritual theologians discovered this, as we have seen, when (astonished!) they caught the grandeur of God in the tiny microcosm of an acorn, or the image of God stamped upon even the most debauched human face. Yet it is not by means of the individual, but through human beings in communion, that God’s glory is seen, and that God most characteristically touches his people. Certainly our human fellowships are strained, distorted, and frequently the locale of great pain. Certainly they are in need of healing and nurture from the One who is communion itself. Yet our fragile human liaisons are able, in their feeble way, and in the light of the Christian story, to direct us Godward. Because God’s nature has been, in part, revealed to us, and because we have been caught up into the drama of God’s action, we can understand our various forms of human communion as bound up with God’s own being and action.
Edith Humphrey is professor of New Testament studies at Pittsburg Theological Seminary. This is a section from her most recent book, Ecstacy and Intimacy (see this month's BookReview).
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Copyright The Anglican Planet © 2006 |