Autor: Walsh, David

Buch: The Third Millenium

Titel: The Third Millenium

Stichwort: Christentum - gnostische Alternative (Gnosis); Rebellion gegen die Struktur der Transzendenz

Kurzinhalt: The additional element is revolt. It is resentment at the limitations imposed on us as the price of our mysterious participation in transcendence.

Textausschnitt: 194a Contrast with Christianity's great imbalancing opponent provides the most convincing demonstration of this equilibrating force it provides. Acceptance of limits and the readiness to strive unceasingly against them is a fine line to walk, and it is not surprising that it is more often missed than found. But, whatever the difficulty, it is the one avenue toward the fullest realization of the possibilities of existence. On it depends the progressive movement of the human race, which must simultaneously avoid the overreaching ambition that destroys itself. There are many ways, as Aristotle remarked, that the mark can be missed, but only one in which it can be hit. Yet the multiplicity of distortions all derive from the same root in their unwillingness to submit to the discipline required to reach the goal. Indiscipline has its source, not primarily in the unruliness of temper that will not accept a master, but in the prior disposition of revolt that sets its own will above all others, including the will of the whole. St. Augustine refers to it as pride, the assertion of human primacy before all other reality. Even God cannot supplant the self-will at the center of the soul that has chosen its own way irrespective of the consequences. Persistence in revolt is the great imbalancing force of human existence because it cannot be deflected by a rational consideration of the costs. Revolt and irrationality go together, and the symbolic elaboration of its thrust is the great alternative to the Christian redemption of disorder. (Fs) (notabene)

195a This symbolism has for two millennia been known as Gnosticism. It has been so closely related to Christianity that it can, with considerable justification, be regarded as the quintessential Christian heresy. Features of Gnosticism are certainly discernible in most of the great heretical movements over the two millennia of Christian history. Some have even gone so far as to suggest that Christianity spawns Gnosticism as its inescapable double. While there is a certain plausibility to this perspective, it should not allow us to overlook two other decisive factors. First, the advent of Gnosticism as a syncretic, mytho-speculative movement of escape from the cosmos antedates the time of Christ and the early Church. Second, and of more crucial import, Christianity itself is the great antidote to Gnosticism because it teaches us how to live fully in the world while fully acknowledging our home beyond it. Christianity represents the definitive elimination of the spirit of revolt because it is the most complete expression of submission to the will of God mysteriously present in existence. God himself has submitted to the same imperative of order, definitively establishing it and revealing it within the unfolding of reality. Balance has been perfectly achieved in Christ between the movement toward transcendent Being and the condition of immanent existence that is the only possibility known to us. Yet the sentiment of revolt has not been eliminated. We find it present within ourselves, in the impatience with the necessity of enduring the imperfection intervening before its abolition in the blinding return of perfection.1 (Fs)

196a The propensity to run toward the final consummation is almost inevitable in any movement of spiritual illumination. Eschatological, apocalyptic, and millennarian expectations are a feature of the spiritual outbursts in which revelation is received and perennially renewed. The glimpse of Being that illuminates existence in every moment tempts us to overleap the distance that separates us from the enchanting goal. But something more is needed to make us persist in the project of consummation, even if it means jeopardizing the only condition in which the momentary glimpse of transfiguration obtains. The additional element is revolt. It is resentment at the limitations imposed on us as the price of our mysterious participation in transcendence. Irrationality erupts in the abyss of revolt that will not endure the condition of being a man and insists on jumping immediately into the state of divine being. The outbreak of irrationality, which is itself the mystery of iniquity, cannot be rendered intelligible. That is its character. It defies all reason because the futility of its aspiration remains impervious to dissuasion. This is why spiritual revolt is the great disturbing factor within human history, destroying not only our hold on spiritual life, but ultimately even the very possibility of life in this world as well. Only the healing touch of transcendent Love, pouring itself out for us, is capable of breaking through the blindness that robs us of the capacity to see through reason. (Fs) (notabene)

196b The deadliness of the Gnostic leap into perfection is seen in its evacuation of the possibility of human life. What would it mean to have realized our complete and total fulfillment right now? This is the prospect that has opened up the post-Hegelian speculations on the end of history. It is, of course, the promise contained in all of the ideological movements of immanent transfiguration. But it is only when we contemplate the end point toward which they and, by extension, the modern world is directed that we apprehend the full blankness of what they contain. The end of history, as Alexandre Kojeve most profoundly delineated for us, spells the end of human life as we know it.1 All that we are is constituted by the restless striving toward goals that, as soon as they are reached, turn out to fall short of the satisfaction envisioned. We move restlessly and ceaselessly from one achievement to the next, the former turning out to be only the means toward the latter, which in turn reveals its own provisionality towards a further impetus, and so on. Infinite progress driven by unfillable longing turns out to be the mystery that guards human life. It preserves our openness toward the transcendent Being that alone can answer our insatiable hunger and, at the same time, ensures against the attainment of any entombing resting place within this life. The restlessness of the spirit driving toward eternity is simultaneously the preservation of our earthly vitality as well. Nothing can be more oppressive than perfection, as the Utopias of our imagination forever attest. (Fs) (notabene)

197a It is one of the curious ironies of our secular civilization that the preservation of its most impressive accomplishments is crucially dependent on their inconclusiveness. Nothing is more damaging to science than the suggestion that we are entering an era in which all of the fundamental questions have been resolved. This may have been the holy grail that drew the great efforts of discovery forward, but its attainment would spell the end of all scientific life. No more would boundless curiosity set us out in search of an ever more comprehensive understanding of the world in which we live. Inquisitiveness and the thrill of discovery would disappear. Without a boundless field of inquiry to stir our imaginations and provoke our pursuit, there would be nothing to preserve even the capacity to extend our scientific reach. If all knowledge is known, then, in a certain sense, knowledge is no more. It cannot be activated as a movement of discovery; it is routinized as the transmission of what is incapable of progression. Life-not only intellectually, but in all its other dimensions-would no longer resemble the thrusting, striving, and enticing vitality we recognize as the core of human existence. If ever our satisfaction were achieved, we would be no more. Instead, we would be compelled to revert, as Kojeve so preceptively observed, to a purely animal level in which thinking has no place, since all has been reduced to the mechanical. We might go through the motions, as he explained, in preserving a kind of snob formalism, but this would be merely be an external cover for the hollowness at our core. We shudder at the suffocating finality of all Utopian dreams and are grateful that we have not been blessed with such perfection. (Fs) (notabene)

198a The most militant recent expressions of the perfectionist impulse in totalitarian ideologies may have passed, but the temptation remains a permanent possibility. What could be more plausible than the extrapolation from perfection glimpsed to its consummation? Only the definitive differentiation of the transcendent distance can guard us against the possibility. We must be able to apprehend the gulf between immanent existence and its transcendent fulfillment. The impossibility of finite being adequately embodying infinite Being must remain inescapably clear, if only to guarantee against the possibility of confusion between them. Then we recognize the incapacity of the human to become the receptacle of the divine. Only through the free gift from the divine side is a bridging of the distance conceivable. In its own terms, this world and all that is in it is clearly incapable of the transcending perfection of Being, and there is no danger of confusing the two. Far from devaluing existence in this world, such a differentiation grounds the value of immanent reality at its deepest level. Now it is free to unfold its own dynamic, secure in the knowledge that there is no possibility of exhausting its innermost nature as an image of eternity within time. Since there is no possibility of time encompassing the transcendence of eternity, the endless fecundity of finite existence rolls forth as the analog of true infinity. Existence in this world is fully accepted on its own terms and yet recognized in terms of its highest aspiration. That is, mundane reality points toward the Being it reflects, but is ever incapable of attaining. Transparence toward the infinite is the highest realization of finite existence. (Fs)

198a The most militant recent expressions of the perfectionist impulse in totalitarian ideologies may have passed, but the temptation remains a permanent possibility. What could be more plausible than the extrapolation from perfection glimpsed to its consummation? Only the definitive differentiation of the transcendent distance can guard us against the possibility. We must be able to apprehend the gulf between immanent existence and its transcendent fulfillment. The impossibility of finite being adequately embodying infinite Being must remain inescapably clear, if only to guarantee against the possibility of confusion between them. Then we recognize the incapacity of the human to become the receptacle of the divine. Only through the free gift from the divine side is a bridging of the distance conceivable. In its own terms, this world and all that is in it is clearly incapable of the transcending perfection of Being, and there is no danger of confusing the two. Far from devaluing existence in this world, such a differentiation grounds the value of immanent reality at its deepest level. Now it is free to unfold its own dynamic, secure in the knowledge that there is no possibility of exhausting its innermost nature as an image of eternity within time. Since there is no possibility of time encompassing the transcendence of eternity, the endless fecundity of finite existence rolls forth as the analog of true infinity. Existence in this world is fully accepted on its own terms and yet recognized in terms of its highest aspiration. That is, mundane reality points toward the Being it reflects, but is ever incapable of attaining. Transparence toward the infinite is the highest realization of finite existence. (Fs)