3. THE BASIC FIGURE
The more a man reveals his uniqueness as an individual and the greater the
influence he exerts on history, the more significant becomes the question:
What is the basic figure on which his personality and his life are modeled?
For over a thousand years the West has seen in the person of Jesus purely
and simply the sole canon of perfection; and for a great part of mankind
today that is still the situation. Even where this meaning is denied, the
denial itself is affected by it. If we examine the attitude of Friedrich
Nietzsche, for example--to cite only one of the most typical cases--we see
that both the general scheme and special features of the picture of man
which he paints are a contradiction of the conventional picture of Christ:
"Zarathustra" is, in fact, an anti-Gospel figure. The same thing holds true
of the war against Christian values in most sectors. Indeed, we might well
ask if any view of man could be possible in Europe for a very long time
yet, which was not colored in some way by Christ. And so our question
becomes all the more pertinent. To understand it better and to focus our
thoughts on what is essential, let us first of all consider some lives
which have come to be accepted as exemplary.
We shall begin with the man who has had more influence on determining the
Western image of the "spiritual man" than almost any other person--
Socrates.
Neither birth nor wealth was responsible for his fame. Intellectually, he
was a product of self-training and of the most remarkable cultural milieu
ever assembled in so small a space--the Athens of the fifth century B.C. He
was spurred on by an irrestrainable longing for the truth; he had a
powerful intellect and an extraordinarily keen critical faculty. In
addition, he had a great influence on younger men, which was felt by his
followers to be something uncanny. He was a religious man, with an
unquestioning consciousness of being led by God. While he tried to replace
traditional mythical notions by a system of contemplation enlightened by
philosophy, he nevertheless retained such a profound feeling for the
mystery of things that he did not openly rebel against his environment, but
remained faithful to its beliefs.
In this way, he lived a long life devoted to philosophical research and
inquiry, a life spent in awakening and training men's intellects. This
activity sprang from his own inner nature; it also took on the consecration
of a divine commission, for, as he acknowledged at the end of his life
before the supreme court, he knew that he had been called to such a life by
Apollo, the god of light and mind. Moreover, this mission bore fruit. He
could see its good effects all around him. In the constant struggle with
his adversaries he displayed his own superiority and he could rest assured
that the future would belong to him. He was surrounded by a host of
disciples, one of whom was Plato, a man of genius, to whom he had imparted
the best of his knowledge over a period of ten years. Finally, the inner
logic of his vocation led him to take his ultimate decision. At the age of
seventy, surrounded by his close friends, he died; and the manner of his
death set round his being and his work a final halo of unsullied light.
The figure of Socrates can be compared with that of another personality,
also from Greece, who belongs, not to history, but to legend. Nonetheless,
he expresses very clearly that elemental zest for life that is so typical
not only of the Greek but of universal man. The figure we have in mind is
Achilles.
Achilles was no thinker; he was a man of action--handsome, fearless,
passionate, skilled in all warlike pursuits and filled with a consuming
desire for glory.
He had once been asked whether he would prefer a long, but uneventful life,
or a short life which would make him the greatest in the hall of fame. He
chose the latter. His life was thus a blazing flame soon extinguished; but
for that very reason it was glorious, a symbol of that beauty which comes
to flower, not through plodding enterprise and care, not through labor and
endurance, not in any wide-stretching, fully traced arcs of life, but all
in the extravagance and transience of youth. As Homer depicts him--the poet
whom the Greeks regarded as more than a mere poet, rather as a teacher of
things divine and human--Achilles was the very expression and
personification of this zest for life.
The life of a Socrates or an Achilles proceeds directly from its own deep
point of origin and fulfills itself with a necessity which is at the same
time freedom, according to the law of its own nature. Everything that
influences it from without has to serve the creative purpose dictated by
the inner image. In contrast to this pattern we must cite another type of
existence belonging to the antipodes, as it were, of ancient life--
Epictetus, or, more precisely, the man whom Epictetus regards as a model,
that is, the Stoic.
Both Socrates and Achilles experienced existence as something bound up with
their own inner nature as something familiar. And so events and influences
which affected them neither introduced any alien elements nor distorted the
shape of their personalities as they unfolded. With the Stoic, on the other
hand, things are radically different. He is neither venturesome nor an
extrovert, neither borne along by a powerful urge nor protected by a hard
shell. He tends to be a contemplative, and certainly has a sensitive and
vulnerable nature. The processes of history, his fate, strike him as alien,
even hostile, and he has the greatest difficulty in coming to terms with
them. And so he retreats within the shell of his own nature, there to
become master of his fate, or at least to learn how to put up with it.
He does this, indeed, by saying that fundamentally nothing affects him at
all. This results in his thrusting his deepest self so far into the
background that not only outward events but even his own individual nature,
which is subject to change and decay, appear as something alien. He says
not only to fate, to possessions, family, power and honor, but even to
health, state of mind and basic endowments: "I am none of these . . ." What
remains as his ultimate true nature can scarcely be called an "image"; it
is more like a mathematical point, the focal center of his being, a
completely colorless self, invulnerable and indestructible. Everything that
happens to it is regarded as mere occurrence, as something completely
alien, something emerging from the realm of the unknown, uninvited and
meaningless, and with which one's true nature must not be allowed to come
in contact. For the Stoic, the basic process of human life is not
unfolding, but affirmation and conservation. It is true that,
involuntarily, a genuine figure is produced by this very process; a grim
and solitary form, outwardly calm, but ablaze inside with hidden passion,
desperately courageous and virile to the point of madness.
Between the extremes of pure self-development in a context of related
contingencies on the one hand, and sheer self-assertion in the face of a
hostile world on the other, we have the attitude which Virgil describes so
well in his picture of Aeneas. Here, fate is what determines the content
and meaning of personal existence.
Aeneas' ancestral home, Troy, was destroyed, a frightful disaster of which
he felt all the horror and pain. But at the same time he received the
assurance that, in spite of, or rather out of, this misfortune, he was
being called to found a new city and inaugurate a new glorious period in
history. And so he set out to face dangers and trials of every kind; not--
like Odysseus--to roam the world and taste its marvels, but to find the
spot where, according to divine decree, the new race was to be founded. His
life was that of a warrior, but his aim was not, like Achilles, to win a
warrior's renown, but to reach the place where his destined task was to be
fulfilled and the foundations laid for the future.
His personality had neither the creative power of a genius, nor the
brilliance of a hero's swiftly consumed flame, nor the grim courage of the
man who stands alone. It was narrow and restricted, but it was capable of
feeling, kindly and brave, and had an inflexible power of perseverance and
doggedness. What made up the life of Aeneas was not the self-expression of
his inner nature or the challenge of the world's glory, in the form of
discoveries or great deeds, but a divine vocation--fate, in the true sense
of the word. That is why he was called "pious"; because he was capable of
understanding and accepting the contingent as a divine command. Aeneas was
the mythical ancestor of the most realistic power in the ancient world, the
Roman empire. The consummation of this was reached in Augustus, the first
"emperor of the world".
Finally, to these figures from the Graeco-Roman world, we can add another
from the Far East, a religious figure--perhaps the greatest of all time,
and the only one who can seriously be mentioned along with Christ--namely
Buddha.
Buddha is curiously impersonal. His being is marked neither by a creative,
self-expressing urge, nor by daring deeds and the kind of activity which
makes history. He was dominated by an inexorable logic. We might almost say
that he was a law of being assumed into an inflexible will. If we
disregard, for the moment, the question of the truth of his message, we get
the impression that in his life the world reached transparency, not in the
positive sense that the world's totality was being revealed, as in a
microcosm, in a single human life, as in Shakespeare's plays for example,
or--in a different manner--in Goethe's genius, but in the form of a
discovery, a lifting of the veil. It became apparent that the world was
pain, guilt and illusion. Its deepest law was uncovered so that it could be
overcome--even abolished.
Buddha grew up as a king's son in a privileged position. His education was
such as to make him the perfect prince: he did and enjoyed all that makes
life worth living. Then one day he came upon those things that make a man
think: old age, suffering and death. These made him realize how meaningless
his former life had been. He therefore withdrew from everything and
embarked upon the search for reality. He went through the whole course of
ancient Indian yoga exercises, including this domain also in his universal
quest, and found that these things, too, did not lead to freedom. Finally,
he arrived at the knowledge that all existence is but an illusion arising
out of the will to live, and thought that he had found a way by which to
abolish or annihilate existence itself. This knowledge did not come to him
from some encounter with external things, nor yet as a grace from on high,
but was the final consequence of the fact that he is as he is and has done
what he has done; that means that his present life is the result of
countless previous incarnations. Thus Buddha closed the circle of
knowledge. He gathered a group of disciples about him, taught them so that
they would be able in their turn to hand on his doctrine, and organized
their communal life. Then, when he had had time to regulate everything, he
died at a ripe old age surrounded by his followers, a death that appeared
as the perfect consummation of his life.
The essence of his being cannot, perhaps, be better characterized than in
the three names constantly given him in the texts: the Vigilant, the
Perfect, the Teacher of Gods and Men.
The personalities we have been describing are quite different from each
other, but they have one thing in common: greatness. Where we are dealing
with this category, terrible things may indeed befall a man--one has but to
think of Atreus or Oedipus--but, nonetheless, his whole life is on the
princely scale and shines bright, no matter what the horror. He may suffer
humiliation like Hercules, but he will still wrestle his way through to
triumph while still in this life. The stature of his life is measured by
the standards of worth. He does not have to face everything possible, but
only what is fitting. And if, as in the case of the Stoic, "everything
possible" can befall him, then it is regarded simply as non-existent and is
pushed aside by the inner core of self. Even when things are at their worst
the rule of congruity still applies. Only one who is no true man, who is at
the mercy of the commonplace, a mere slave, has to suffer anything
incongruous.
But what about Jesus? We note simply that he himself claimed unquestionably
to be the one who was sent, the bringer of salvation, the exemplar of the
true life; that Paul declared him to be the manifestation of God (2 Cor. 4.
4; Col. 1. 15; Heb. 1. 3), and John described him as the Word made flesh,
both meaning thereby that his was the most meaningful and purposeful life
that ever was.
If ever a life was normative in character it was his. What was the pattern
of his life?
As we have said, Jesus was born the latter-day descendant of a once royal
line. His birth, however, brought him no privilege, power, property or
education. It served only to emphasize the more his social status as that
of an impecunious artisan. In particular, it was of no positive value to
him later in life. He neither relied upon it as a pretext to claim
anything, nor did he seek to restore its ancient power. Furthermore, it did
not in any sense form a background to give greater relief to a life of
self-abnegation. And yet his royal lineage was significant in the sense
that because of it Jesus is most intimately bound up with antecedent sacred
history; and its stored-up heritage of attitudes and reactions were
expressed in his life, chiefly, by making his position ambiguous and
causing his true character to be mistaken.
The first thirty years of his life were spent in complete obscurity. All
that we hear about them is the short episode of the pilgrimage to Jerusalem
at the age of twelve, when he became for the first time subject to this
obligation. The whole period is marked neither by deep study, significant
encounters, nor great deeds. We hear nothing about any great religious
events. The only historical event recorded is the pilgrimage; all the rest
that we find in apocryphal sources is mere legend. All we can say is that
he led the life everyone else in similar circumstances led.
Then his public ministry began. He preached that the kingdom of God had
arrived and was clamouring for admittance. He preached the renewal of life
in the Spirit; that a revolution in history through God's creative power
was at hand, a revolution whose nature had been foreshadowed by the oracles
of the prophets; but that everything depended upon acceptance of the
message by the Chosen People. At first he was successful: the people,
including many who were influential, turned to him. A band of disciples
began to follow him, men who, humanly speaking, had nothing at all
extraordinary about them. Soon, however, a serious crisis arose. His
various opponents, formerly at loggerheads with each other, began to unite
in a common front. He was accused on the basis of a complete
misrepresentation of the whole tenor of his teaching. The self-
contradictory charge was made, on the one hand, that he was blasphemous;
and, on the other, that he was preparing a revolt against Caesar. The trial
was conducted in utter disregard of legal forms and ended in his
condemnation. Certainly no more than three, possibly less than two, years
after the start of his public ministry, he suffered death, an agonizing
death, and of a kind to discredit him for all time.
The catastrophe was so complete that the crowd whom he had helped and who
had shown such enthusiasm for him earlier, abandoned him, as did also a
great many of his disciples. It was actually a member of the closer circle
of the Twelve who betrayed him. At his arrest they all fled. The disciple
whom he himself had called "the Rock" and regarded as the first of his
followers, denied him--before a despised slave-girl of a portress,
moreover, and even confirmed his denial by an oath.
After the death of Jesus, there occurred the event that broke all
precedents, namely Easter. Humanly speaking, however, it in no wise made
good the destruction of all his work. Though he had won through to glory
and power, he did not seek to avenge himself on his adversaries, or crush
those who had opposed him; nor did he triumph over those elements which had
rejected him. The event simply served as a great turning-point in history:
it was the starting-point for a whole new historical process which was to
be set in operation at Pentecost.
Then at length, in the name of this figure and by the power of the Spirit,
the final conquest of the whole world for God was set in motion.
How, now, can we characterize this life?
Was it the kind we have described as the unfolding of some great figure?
Quite obviously it was not. What happened had nothing to do with any
"unfolding": the concept is not appropriate. Nor did any "figure" emerge,
to use the term in its proper sense. This concept is equally inappropriate.
Nothing happened which in any sense opened up vistas of final
"accomplishment". We witness, rather, a movement towards disintegration.
We have only to imagine what it would have been like had Jesus lived
longer--fifty, seventy, or even ninety years! As things were, after the
peaceful period of childhood, youth and early manhood, there were left to
him only three years or perhaps a little more than one year of activity and
self-witness.
Was his death the climax of a life of heroic deeds? No; it had neither the
character of a mighty assault against an overwhelmingly powerful foe, nor
of a fire which consumes by its ardor a man's very substance. Still less
was it a case of an over-generous spirit dashing itself in vain against the
triviality of its environment. Christ knew and declared that the
fulfillment of his goal was possible--but only through a free response on
the part of those who were called: and the latter withdrew or even opposed
him, not because he was asking more than the times could comprehend, but
because they were unwilling to make a definite religious and moral
commitment.
Can his life perhaps be regarded as an example of self-assertion amidst a
storm of opposition? No, because what happened to him was totally at
variance with the nature of the Son of God; many things, such as the story
of the fish and the didrachma (Mat. 17. 23, 24-26), illustrate this. It was
distressing, unworthy and incomprehensible. The issue must not be allowed
to become clouded as a result of the later significance which his life
acquired. The cross has been placed upon the crowns of kings, but it was
once a sign of death and ignominy. There were motives enough for adopting a
stoic attitude; he did not do so. Jesus never made the slightest gesture of
detaching himself from a hostile, degrading, senseless world; of repelling
what he could not avoid, as having no part in him, or of retreating within
himself. What he had to contend with was wrong in every way, but he
accepted it and, indeed, took it to heart, we might even say.
His attitude is one that had never been seen before, and one that cannot
exist except where the norm of his person is accepted.
Aware that he had been sent by the Father, and filled with a desire to obey
the Father's will in all things, he accepted everything that happened to
him. We see in action a union with the will of God that drew everything
that happened into the deepest intimacy of the love of God. By the very
fact that everything became an expression--or, more precisely, an
instrument--of this love, earthly things acquired for God himself a meaning
of which no myth had ever dreamt.
What of the kind of life exemplified by a man like Aeneas, who felt that a
divine commission was being fulfilled in a long life of patient suffering
and struggle, and that life was a blend of adventure and action determined
by that mission? This type is not that of our picture either. From the
point of view of the ultimate goal to be reached, the events in the life of
Jesus were not in the least necessary. His goal could have been achieved
equally well--and from the viewpoint of worldly considerations, much more
logically--by other means. True, Jesus was charged with a mission of utmost
importance, but what were its terms of reference? In the last analysis, all
we can say is that he was to come among men and enter our historical world
as the One sent from God, to take upon himself the burden not only of his
personal existence, but of existence itself, and live it out with a
transparency of knowledge and a depth of feeling which could have no other
source than this mission received from his Father. He was to set reality in
motion and thus release all the potentialities inherent in it. He was to
bear the consequences of his incarnation and thereby create a new starting-
point for existence. In the final analysis, it would not be of great
importance what actually did happen, so long as it was the proper thing
required by the situation at that precise moment.
We could turn the statement round and say that, no matter how much blame
attaches to those who caused Jesus to suffer what he did, for Jesus himself
it was the right thing, ordained by God and, therefore, eternally right.
Jesus himself expressed the matter in this way: Woe to them by whom
offenses come! Woe to those who create the conditions which lead to the
misrepresentation! But for Jesus himself, "offense" is the very situation
in which he must fulfill the Father's will. He expressed this idea by
referring to his "hour". Jesus' life was not the expressing of a
"personage"; he did not live according to some divinely constructed plan
spread out before his eyes, but by the will of the Father as he encountered
it at every step he took in going to meet his "hour". Those steps were not
taken following a definite program, but were, in each case, the result that
followed from what had gone before and from the attitude taken up by the
various people involved. Thus, union was achieved, at each stage, between
the directing will of the Father and his own obedient will, and from this
union his own actions followed.
As soon as Jesus' nature becomes clearer to us, we see that the category of
"personality" does not fit him at all. Personality is a figure, in the
sense of a man "modeled in the round" both as regards the basic structure
of his nature and the actual course of his life: it is both the foundation
and limitation of existence. Modern interpretations of Jesus have tended to
turn him into a "personality", with the result that they completely lose
sight of his most characteristic feature. He was something quite different.
That is not to say that Jesus was a disintegrated person without either law
of being or place in existence. This is not to say that he was a mere piece
of flotsam to which anything could happen because his life had no distinct
bearing of its own; mere human rubbish at the disposal of any power that
tried to use it for its own purposes. It means, rather, that Jesus was
clearly above and beyond any "figure". The various patterns of human life
begin only on the hither side of his pattern of life.[1]
Granted that there is a logical thread running through the life of Jesus,
it is one that is at variance with all accepted norms; one that makes
manifest what is wholly "other"; one that reveals the mind and outlook of a
religious reality so different from all worldly values that it proclaims
itself precisely in its exploding of all worldly standards. The reality
which it stands for is represented by the Beatitudes, or by the joy which
Jesus felt when the apostles returned (Luke 10. 21 f.). To say this is, in
the last analysis, only to repeat what has already been said, that the
nature of Jesus was no ordinary "figure", in the accepted sense of the
word.
Following the same line of thought, we may say that the life of Jesus is
"Truth"; it is pure life without reservation or subterfuge; it is absolute
harmony with the living reality of God. This identification with Truth was
also an identification with the power of Truth and compelled those who
encountered him to reveal their thoughts without reserve, to "disclose the
secrets of the heart", as Simeon said at the presentation in the temple.
What can happen, then, in a human life which is determined by all this? The
answer must be: Anything and everything. The question as to what can or
cannot happen can never be answered by asking in turn what would be
intrinsically great or small, proper or improper, constructive or
destructive, fulfilling or frustrating. Everything can happen, even that
which at first sight seems to be utterly inconsistent with holiness or
divinity.
The reality of Jesus is of the kind which orders existence, literally
conditions it, to reveal all its potentialities. For this reason it is not
confined to one special form of existence, but is capable of appealing to
every form, of entering every form, of transforming every form of
existence.
ENDNOTES
1. One might well ask if we have not in him, purely and simply,
an example of the tragic figure of the prophet. This must be
denied categorically. His figure was not like one of theirs. To
begin with, it is striking that, unlike the Old Testament
prophets, Jesus did not establish his authority by appealing to
his calling. It is even more significant that he boldly claimed,
unlike any of the prophets, to be the one model, rule standard
and way. Hence his mighty: "But I say unto you . . ." instead of
the typically prophetic: "Thus saith the Lord."
