Why also should I speak of one (whose name we had rather not mention as he is still alive), who for a long while received a devil in the brightness of an angelic form, and was often deceived by countless revelations from him and believed that he was a messenger of righteousness: for when these were granted, every night he provided a light in his cell without the need of any lamp. At last he was ordered by the devil to offer up to God his own son who was living with him in the monastery, in order that his merits might by this sacrifice be made equal to those of the patriarch Abraham. And he was so far seduced by his persuasion that he would really have committed the murder unless his son had seen him getting ready the knife and sharpening it with unusual care, and looking for the chains with which he meant to tie him up for the sacrifice when he was going to offer him up; and had fled away in terror with a presentiment of the coming crime. (Conferences 2.7)

This reminds me of the comments of Kierkegaard in his work Fear and Trembling, a lengthy meditation on Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac:

The ethical expression for what Abraham did is that he meant to murder Isaac; the religious expression is that he meant to sacrifice Isaac—but precisely in this contradiction is the anxiety that can make a person sleepless, and yet without this anxiety Abraham is not who he is. (Fear and Trembling, 30)

What distinguishes Abraham from Cassian’s deceived monk? For Kierkegaard, the difference between Abraham and a murderer is faith. For Cassian, the difference between Abraham and the monk is discernment–or more properly, obedience to the discernment of the elders. But how would Cassian have counseled Abraham? Surely he would have counseled him that he had not heard God properly, that his act could only be murder, that such a sacrifice would not be in faith. For Kierkegaard, the counsel of others is impossible; it must be avoided because it cannot be undertaken:

But the distress and the anxiety in the paradox is that he, humanly speaking, is thoroughly incapable of making himself understandable. (Fear and Trembling, 74)

Perhaps there is something to both analyses. On the one hand, by the time God’s command comes to Abraham (Gen. 22:1), he had already had revelations from God on several occasions (Gen. 12:1-3, 7; 13:14-17; 15:1-19; 17:1-22; 18:1-33). We could say that he was accustomed to discerning the voice of God; he had developed a habit and virtue of discernment. So then when God comes to him with the demand to sacrifice his only son Isaac, Abraham recognises the voice of God and obeys.

On the other hand, Abraham has faith in the voice of the true God. Cassian’s monk, on the other hand, is deceived by a demon masquerading as an angel of light. In the grammar of Scripture, one can only have “faith” in the true God; to believe in false gods is not to have faith at all. In the case of Cassian’s monk, he fails to discern the voice of the true God, and so fails to have faith; thus his act is “murder” and not “sacrifice,” on Kierkegaard’s distinction.

Nevertheless, this leaves open the difficult question of discernment by individuals in the midst of the community. What happens when a single individual believes they hear the voice of God on a matter, and the “elders” of the community–the wise, and not simply the elderly (see Conferences 2.13)–disagree in their collective discernment? Kierkegaard has no space for yielding to the latter; Cassian, no space to yield to the former. What is the solution when an individual needs to adhere to the guidance of the community? Obedience. What is the solution when the community needs an individual to correct its discernment? Prophecy.

In light of my dissertation topic, however, I’m particularly interested in how Barth treats how individuals relate to God. One of the questions I tackled (briefly) was whether one or more “faculties” are central to this relation. Is there a decision of the will which is central? A passionate attachment? Does our intellect drive us inevitably to God? Do we have an appetite, a desire for God? Barth gives this answer:

But the possibility given us by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit is the possibility of a direct confrontation of the whole man by God. Man is confronted in the totality of his own possibilities, and therefore in all possible conditions and attitudes. In revelation, the whole man is addressed and challenged, judged and pardoned by God. In view of this totality of revelation to us we must not refer the revealedness in us to some obscure or even luminous place apart from our own experience and activity. We must not refer it to a place where we can exempt ourselves from all responsibility. We must not refer it to a place which enables us to count on the fact that God or “it” believes in us, from which we are therefore onlookers both of ourselves and God. In the presence of God there is no such back room. There is only the one well-known place for our physico-psychical existence, although it does include within it many alternative possibilities. It is in this totality that our existence participates in the divine possibility, or else we have no part in it. The point is that the whole area of our possibilities is again enclosed by the divine possibility. That is what we have to reckon with if we would understand our participation in this possibility… Again, we can and must know that all our experience and activity is involved in this standing before God. But we can never say how far this or that impression is our calling, this or that discovery our awakening, this or that decision our conversion, this or that conviction our faith, this or that emotion our love, this or that expectation our hope, and this or that attitude our responsibility and justification before God. For as participators in God’s possibility, all that we see and find is simply ourselves, and all the very selfish, very human states and conditions and attitudes in which we actually find ourselves. We never can and never will comprehend how far the concretion of our situation and our attitude is the concretion of our participation in God’s possibility. (CD I/2, 267-68)

Barth is making a polemic here against various certainties we might have. We cannot claim that an experience, a feeling, a decision guarantees our right standing before God–though these things may be signs of it. Sure. But I’m more interested in the way that Barth says God’s revelation claims all of us, the whole person: all our thought, feeling, emotion, attitude, habit, memory and desires. This means, though I’m not sure if Barth says this himself, that our salvation reforms all the pieces of who we are. But I wonder if saying this means we cannot also say, as would a Kierkegaard or a Blondel, that the will or action plays a central role in our relationship to God in a way that, say, memory does not. Our relation to God certainly does not exclude these other areas, but might there not be a kind of tiered relation, where the will or desire plays a key role?

When the intellect practices the virtues correctly, it advances in moral understanding. When it practices contemplation, it advances in spiritual knowledge… Finally, the intellect is granted the grace of theology when, carried on wings of love beyond these two former stages, it is taken up into God and with the help of the Holy Spirit discerns—as far as this is possible for the human intellect—the qualities of God.

If you are about to enter the realm of theology, do not seek to descry God’s inmost nature, for neither the human intellect nor that of any other being under God can experience this; but try to discern, as far as possible, the qualities that appertain to His nature—qualities of eternity, infinity, indeterminateness, goodness, wisdom, and the power of creating, preserving and judging creatures, and so on. For he who discovers these qualities, to however small an extent, is a great theologian.

— Maximus the Confessor, Four Centuries on Love 2.25-26, in The Philokalia, vol. 2, 69.

Many may find the form of this “exposition” strange; it may seem to them too rigorous to be upbuilding and too upbuilding to be rigorously scholarly.

Any guesses which work this is? No peeking!

In a way, we’ve already dealt with the first side, the side ready to believe that if you get your math straight, you can pinpoint when Jesus is going to return, because the Bible is after all an elaborate code book. This side should take some time to meditate on Matt. 24-25. But the other side, the side which is all too ready to ridicule the first side–I have to include myself here–should be careful not to fall into an opposite error, an error more pernicious because it is more respectable: going about life as if Jesus certainly won’t return on May 21st, 2011. (Even though as I write this it’s already May 22nd in Britain.) This may just be a failure of readiness.

If there’s a lesson we should take from this, it’s what is contained in the first word of Jesus’ address in Matt. 24-25, “Watch!” (Although the verb is just that for “look!” or “see!” Blepō. Maybe “keep your eyes open!” would do.) This idea shows up all over this discourse: “Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come” (24:42; here “keep watch” is a different verb which means just that). “So you also must be ready” (24:44). “Therefore keep watch” (25:13).

The question that interests me is whether we are a people who are “ready,” a people who “watch.” And further, whether the kinds of lives we live disable our readiness. Let’s take a detour. A few chapters earlier, Jesus tells his disciples that “others have renounced marriage because of the kingdom of heaven” (19:12). How does someone remain single–“celibacy” is the fancy term–“because” of the kingdom of heaven? Because it is a sign, an image of what that kingdom will be like. In Luke’s gospel, Jesus says, “The people of this age marry and are given in marriage. But those who are considered worthy of taking part in the age to come and in the resurrection from the dead will neither marry nor be given in marriage” (20:34-35). Those few God calls to celibacy now look odd just because they’re ahead of their time: they are living how we all will when the kingdom comes.

In the same way, voluntary poverty is a sign of the kingdom of God. Paul writes, “What I mean, brothers and sisters, is that the time is short. From now on those who… buy something, should live as if it were not theirs to keep; those who use the things of the world, as if not engrossed in them. For this world in its present form is passing away” (1 Cor. 7:29-31). For this reason, Paul could consider it all “crap” in comparison to knowing Jesus and his resurrection power (Phil. 3:8; a gentle translation of the word here). Because living in poverty is a sign of what the kingdom will be like, as odd as it looks now. What need will there be to buy and sell when we will already possess Everything we desire?

I fear that a Church which cannot be poor, a Church which shares the same affections as the world cannot see that this world is being gotten rid of in order for a new world to be born. Isn’t this half the point of the parable Jesus uses to close his discourse in Matt. 24-25? “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’ The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’” 

What is the practical payoff of this dense theological reflection? There are many aspects that could be developed, such as the claims that “mission makes the church” and that the gospel is intrinsically translatable. I want to focus on the nature of Christian unity. If it is indeed the case that our unity in Christ is inseparable from our being bound up in a pneumatic event of cultural translation, then this has rather dramatic implications for what it means to be part of the body of Christ. We are not dealing with a stable, static body whose limbs are all clearly identifiable as part of a single historical organism. We are instead dealing with a diasporic body whose limbs and parts are scattered and broken in every corner of the earth. It is the very confusion of Babel that is sanctified by the Spirit, because the infinitely translatable Christ is present and active in the midst of this confusion as the one who binds all the scattered remains together in his singular person—but not in a way that could be made phenomenally observable or dogmatically objectifiable. The post-pentecostal Christ cannot be definitively located; he cannot be tied down to any particular church or creed. His future cannot be directly identified with the future of any worldly institution or historical entity.

I’m afraid that all I can say to this is: Nein!

For just as a song is made by a multitude of united voices in a certain proportion and sweet harmony, so too out of the affection of many comes a spiritual harmony, pleasing to the Most High.

Sicut enim ex multitudine vocum unitarum secundum quandam proportionem et harmonium dulcedo cantus fit; sic ex multorum affectione harmonia spiritualis, placens Altissimo. (St. Bonaventure, Collationes in Hexaëmeron 1.5).