Christian Faith, Jesus the Christ, And History · PDF fileChristian Faith, Jesus the Christ, ... Jesus the Christ, And History 45 ... literalized into stories about gods who engage

Christian Faith, Jesus the Christ,And History

en Eric Voegelin published The New Science of Politics andOrder and History: I-III in the 1950's, Christian political

theorists acclaimed him their champion. However, when Voegelinpresented Order and History: IV, The Ecumenic Age in 1974, mostof these admirers were disappointed by his treatment of their faith,which they judged erroneous. In 1983, I published an article,"Voegelin and Christian Faith."' I attempted to analyze the issues inthe controversy, and framed some questions that I hoped Voegelinhimself would answer, with a view toward clarifying, if not alsoreconciling, the disagreements. Although I had no claim on hisattention, Voegelin surprised me with a telephone call, promising toreply to my essay, and hinting at one critique of it particularly.Unfortunately, Voegelin did not live long enough to finish Orderand History and keep all his other commitments. When he passedaway, he left his readers to seek out the answers to their ownquestions. I am very grateful that, by arranging the present sympo-sium, Michael Franz has provided an opportunity to begin thatwork. This review will renew my earlier effort to comprehend whatThe Ecumenic Age suggests about faith in Jesus the Christ, and tothink through the single most important theological problem thatdisturbed Voegelin's Christian critics.

My task is beset with logistical and theoretical difficulties. Thelogistical obstacle is a lack of space sufficient to explain all thephilosophic insights that Voegelin elaborated during his career andbuilt into the foundation of The Ecumenic Age. I shall be forced topresuppose the reader's familiarity with Voegelin's major writingsand technical vocabulary prior to 1974, and with the secondaryliterature that expounds them. 2 The first theoretical impediment isthat The Ecumenic Age is not about Christian faith or christology.

Christian Faith, Jesus the Christ, And History 45

Rather, as Manfred Henningsen will show elsewhere in this vol-ume, it offers prolegomena to a new theory of history that envisagesa "humanly universal process," 3 and that Voegelin intended as abreak from the previous thesis ofOrder and History. What Voegelinthought about the New Testament experience of Jesus and a properresponse to it will have to be inferred from arguments that he madein the course of his philosophic meditation on history. It will be seenthat, in the perspective of Voegelin's new theory of history, theproblems of his Christian adversaries appear illusory. Thus, it willbe hard to restate my questions in forms that both Voegelin and hiscritics would have regarded as legitimate, and harder yet to findwidely satisfactory answers. The second theoretical difficulty isimplicit in the first. When Voegelin called about my 1983 article, heinquired ominously: "What is Christian faith?" When he raised thatquestion, I gathered from a number of earlier experiences that hedoubted that the words "Christian faith" name a reality. Thisjudgment is supported by Voegelin's flat statement in an interview:"I have my doubts as to whether Christianity exists at all. "4 It also isdocumented by the fact that, here and there in The Ecumenic Age,Voegelin put the words "Christian faith" and "Christianity" inquotation marks, having declared earlier that this usage indicated"that the respective terms have moved from their original state ofbona fide mythical, philosophical, or revelatory symbols to the stateof degraded symbols."5 So, together with Voegelin's Christianopposition, I stood accused of writing on his opinion of a fiction thatwas the residue of debased symbols. Accordingly, before re-exam-ining the theological problem that dismayed the Christians, I mustexplore the sense in which Voegelin held Christian faith to benonexistent, and establish whether there is, nevertheless, somereality represented by that term.

Voegelin's doubts about the existence of Christian faith andChristianity have to do with his concept of "the deformation ofsymbols into doctrine. To grasp this point, one must know some-thing of Voegelin's theory of symbolic forms, which cannot be

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explained at length here. Essentially, the theory maintains thataccounts of divine reality, of the vital center of human consciousness,and of the presence of divine reality to our consciousness aremythical symbols of experiences rather than factual statementsabout objects like those of the material world. Hence, the word"god" mythically symbolizes a living experience of pervasion by, ornearness of, mysterious divine being, not a known thing. The term"soul" mythically represents experience of the noetic inwardnessthat can be divinely pervaded, not an entity that can be investigatedlike an organic body and broken down into its component parts.Symbols are debased when people lose real contact with theexperiences that generated them, and assume that the words pertainto things. Such literalism "splits the symbol from the experience byhypostatizing the symbol as a proposition on objects" (EA, 37). Thedamage thus wrought is extremely serious. It "carries with it thedanger of literalizing every myth and, as the myth is the onlysymbolism man has to express his experience of divine reality, thefurther danger of deadening the formation of man's humanitythrough man's opening to divine presence" (EA 37). Surveying thewreckage that litters the contemporary scene, Voegelin argues that:"In our time, the inherited symbolisms of ecumenic humanity aredisintegrating, because the deforming doctrinalization has becomesocially stronger than the experienced insights.... The return fromsymbols which have lost their meaning to the experiences whichconstitute meaning is...generally recognizable as the problem of thepresent" (EA, 58).

In Voegelin's reckoning, there are three significant varieties ofhuman consciousness: myth, philosophy, and revelation. None hasescaped deformation. The first to be affected was myth. In Plato'sera, "[T]he epic myth of the gods has lost its meaning together withthe experiences that have engendered it. The myth has beenliteralized into stories about gods who engage in such immoralactions as adultery, incest, war, and infliction of war upon men. Thisliteralism as a social force endangers the humanity of the young,because it converts the real truth which the symbols of the myth haveas the real expression of a real experience of real divine presence into


the fictitious truth of human propositions about gods who are objectsof cognition" (EA, 37).

After Plato and Aristotle, the plague of deformation strikesphilosophy. The Stoics undertake "the abolition of Plato's criticaldistinction between the dialectical movement of thought in theMetaxy and the mythopoetic symbolization of the divine ambiance."They do this because they vaguely perceive the truth of divinepresence and hope to save it from ignoramuses who destroy it byscorning myths. However, they are "lesser thinkers" who "aresensitive to the truth in a measure but are not able to reactivate theengendering experience fully." Among other things, this means thatthey fail to comprehend mankind's need to symbolize truth in myths.They try to rescue truth by reading myths as allegories on factualverities. Therefore, they "no longer acknowledge mythopoetic cre -

ation as such, but treat the symbols as if they were concepts referringto objects on which the philosopher has to advance propositions."The result is that they "literalize mythopoetic symbols" and "deformphilosophy into concepts and propositions concerning imaginaryobjects" (EA, 38-39, 43-44).

In revelation, the pathology of deformation is basically the sameas, but historically more tangled than, that of the other forms.Revelation, like myth and philosophy, consists in "theophanic eventsof differentiating consciousness." Therefore, it may be said that:"The fact of revelation is its content" (EA, 56, 233). Now, there arisesout of the theophanic events a "language of truth concerning man'sexistence in the divine-human In-Between," which is simulta-neously a speech of the god and human beings. This language doesnot reach to the heart of the revelatory experience, for "the In-Between of experience has a dead point from which the symbolsemerge as the exegesis of its truth, but which cannot become itselfan object of propositional knowledge" (EA, 56). So, the words thatflow out of the dead point do not define the divine presence that isexperienced; but name it and clarify its implications for right order,and depend on it for their truth. Revelation is deformed whenpeople suppose that its content is different from the fact of theexperienced divine presence, i.e., when they presume that the


symbols define the divine reality as an objective entity, and that theassociated language of right order expresses independently know-able truths. It is a very complex variant of this illness that overtakesthe Jewish and Christian traditions.

The disease begins with Jewish writers who create the idea of"Scripture" because they have the same relationship to revelatorytruth that the Stoics subsequently will have toward philosophictruth: "The same desire to protect a treasure of insight against lossin adverse political circumstances appears to have moved the priestlyand scribal circles of Israel when they superimposed the word ofScripture over the word of god, heard and spoken by the prophets....`Scripture' is a layer of meaning, superimposed on a body of oraltraditions and literary documents for the purpose of preserving itunder the adverse conditions of the ecumenic imperial society" (EA,49, 55). Once "Scripture" is invented, it hardens into books said tohave been handed to prophets and their successors by God: "Ac-cording to. the traditional interpretation as Scripture, the Torah isnot the monumental mythopoem created bypost-exilic Judaism, buta literary document of divine-human origin, transmitted from thetime of Moses through an unbroken line of intermediaries to thethinkers of the Ecumenic Age." The upshot is that: "In the protectivestratum of Scripture, the original symbols suffer the same kind ofdeformation into doctrine as the Platonic mythopoesis through theStoic hypostases" (EA, 54, 55). As in the cases of myth and philoso-phy, the destruction is severe: "If the metaleptic symbol which is theword of both god and man is hypostatized into a doctrinal Word ofGod, the device can protect the insight gained against disintegrationin society, but it also can impair the sensitivity for the source of truthin the flux of divine presence in time which constitutes history." If"precautions of meditative practice" are not taken to guard againstsuch impairment, "the doctrinization of symbols is liable to interruptthe process of experiential reactivation and linguistic renewal. Whenthe symbol separates from its source in the experiential Metaxy, theWord of God can degenerate into a word of man that one can believeor not" (EA, 56).

The sickness with which the creators of "Scripture" infect


revelation is intensified by Philo, who applies the Stoic method of"allegoresis"6 to the already deformed biblical sources. Philo isanimated by the now familiar motive: he wants to protect a truth thathe imperfectly senses from being obliterated by those who areopaque to it. However, he wrecks it in his misguided effort to saveit. For example, attempting to make Scripture respectable in thesame way that the Stoics hoped to salvage mythical truth, heinterprets the thornbush episode in a manner that transforms Mosesinto a philosopher. He insists that Moses did not see a thornbushburning, but wondered about the universal becoming and perishingrepresented by the lifecycle of the bush, and that Moses drewappropriate metaphysical conclusions. Philo thus "ignores the expe-rience expressed by the Thornbush Episode, fragmentizes its sym-bolism, and interprets the fragments as allegories of a differentexperience" (EA, 31-32). Owing to the decline of philosophiccompetence that had become general by Philo's time, his "fusion ofpneumatic and noetic insights through the literary. device of aphilosophical commentary on Scripture set the pattern of methodsand problems later to be followed by the Patres in their fusion ofChristianity and philosophy.... Philo has laid the foundations forseventeen centuries of religious philosophy in Judaism, Christianity,and Islam." Hence, "the technique of deformation developed by theStoic thinkers has been continued through Philo into Christianity"(EA, 29, 38).

A further complication of the deformation of revelation is causedby Cicero as he strives to protect the truth of both myth andphilosophy against "the forces of disintegration." Searching for a wayto stem the destructive tide, Cicero "developed the older Latin termreligio into the symbol that comprehends protectively both the truthof existence and its expression through cultic observance anddoctrine."' For Cicero, "religion" consists in those doctrines thatsustain the order of man's existence in society: "The philosopher'snoetic illumination of consciousness is accepted, but converted intoa doctrinal absolute to be symbolized by the older Roman virtues ofpietas, sanctitas, and religio; and the types of theology have becomedoctrines, floating around in the ecumenic society, whose acceptability


is to be measured by the effect they would have on the experientialabsolute." With this, Cicero converts reflection on the truth "fromthe fervor of experiential analysis to...argument about true doc-trine." Next, the Ciceronian idea of religion "was taken over by theLatin Patres for reference to their own doctrine" and "transmittedby the Latin Church to the modern West." In "the fracas of doctrinaldebate," the Fathers failed to notice that "religion is not an analyticalconcept of anything." Instead, they perpetuated "the general defor-mation of experiential symbols into doctrines." In an illuminatingaside, Voegelin comments further that: "Within theology, the pres-tige of the deformation is the source of the constant tension betweendogmatic and mystic theology" (EA, 44-47).

What Voegelin considers real and imaginary now is evident. Heproclaims as real a "flux of divine presence in time. For themoment, we may assume that he recognizes this "theophanic event"in Jesus. In connection with every experience of divine presence, healso celebrates: the authenticity of an ensuing "metaleptic symbolwhich is the word of both god and man." Thus, when certain Jewishand Christian biblical texts are seen as "the real expression of a realexperience of real divine presence," he admits them into the class of"bona fide mythical, philosophical, or revelatory symbols." Whenthe "metaleptic symbol which is the word of both god and man" istransformed into doctrine, for the purpose of protecting the truth,Voegelin readily grants that the dogma is worthy of respect as longas it still is "transparent for the truth it means to stabilize" (EA, 44).However, he is uneasy about this concession, for the symbols indoctrines invariably get detached from the experiences that engen-dered them, and "hypostatized as propositions on imaginary ob-jects." This has happened in our age, "because the deformingdoctrinalization has become socially stronger than the experiencedinsights it was originally meant to protect" (EA, 58). So, in Voegelin'sview of "Christian faith," people suppose that there is a "Scripture"which is not a divine-human mythopoem on the flux of divine realityin time, but a text literally written by God and stuffed with divinelyguaranteed facts. Some think further that there is a divinely certifiedbody of "dogmas" about God, Christ, souls, and other spiritual


objects of cognition. They conceive of "Christian faith" and "Chris-tianity" as belief in this package of "Scripture" and "true doctrines."But a "Scripture" defined as a text literally inspired by God andcrammed with divinely dispensed facts and a "religion" of divinelyvouchsafed "dogmas" about God, Christ, souls, and other spiritualobjects of cognition do not, in Voegelin's opinion, exist. WhenVoegelin asked me what "Christian faith" is, he suspected that I wasmeasuring his thought against a set of imaginary propositionaltruths.

There surely are Christians who assume that the content ofrevelation is other than mystical experience of a divine presence.These believers suppose that their faith consists in intellectualassent to facts stated in a Scripture literally authored by God(Catholics and Protestants) and in the divinely guaranteed teachingsof the Church Magisterium (Catholics only). They would argue that,by denying the existence of divinely revealed propositions aboutspiritual objects of cognition, Voegelin has rejected the words ofGod. One wonders whether such Christians have understood theclaims of their tradition correctly and, if so, how to settle the disputebetween Christian dogmatic theology and Voegelin's mysticism.The questions are too profound for a short analysis. Here, I shallattempt only to chart the directions in which a serious examinationof the problems would go.

The query about the traditional Christian view of revelationrequires a study ofhow revelation is presented to us in the primarysources and, in the Catholic case, how it officially is proposed to usby the Church. New Testament texts pertinent to the inquiryinclude, but are not limited to, Galatians 1, 1Corinthians 2, 2Corin-thians 3, Matthew 16, lJohn 1, and John 20. Catholic views ofrevelation have been expressed most recently in the Catechism ofthe Catholic Church, the relevant portions of which quote exten-sively from the Second Vatican Council document, Dogmatic Con-stitution on Divine Revelation (Dei Verbum).

Paul is the Apostle who did not know Jesus personally. Hence,it seems likely that his faith would have to be the model for that ofall later Christians. Paul stresses to the Galatians that he neither has


received nor transmitted a teaching from the other Apostles. Whathe preaches to them is not a human message, but "something I learntonly through a revelation of Jesus Christ" (Ga 1:11-21). 8 Presum-ably, what subsequent Christians receive from Paul is not a humanmessage either, but the same revelation. It is crucially important tounderstand the character of that revelation, and how it is communi-cated.

The nature of the revelation is symbolized. not only in Acts 9,with its account of a blinding light followed by Jesus' audiblereproach, self-identification, and command to go to Damascus, butalso in the first epistle to the Corinthians. There, Paul says: "Weteach what scripture calls the things that no eye has seen and no earhas heard, things beyond the mind of man, all that God has preparedfor those, who love him." Explaining his meaning, he continues:"These are the very things that God has revealed to us through theSpirit, for the Spirit reaches the depths of everything, ?even thedepths of God.... Therefore, we teach, not in the way in whichhuman wisdom9 is taught, but in the way that the Spirit teaches us.We teach spiritual things spiritually." Having received a revelationthrough the Spirit who reaches the depths of everything, even thoseof God, and having taught spiritual things spiritually, Paul canconclude that "we are those who have the mind of Christ" (1Co 2:8-16). In his second epistle to the Corinthians, Paul elucidates oneconsequence of having the mind of Christ. Denigrating his ownwritings in favor of the impact that his preaching has had on souls,he asserts: "[Y]ou are yourselves our letter, written in our hearts, thatanybody can see. and read, and it is plain that you are a letter fromChrist, drawn up by us, and written not with ink but with the Spiritof the living God, not on stone tablets but on the tablets of your livinghearts." Speaking of Christ, he adds: "He is the one who has givenus the qualifications to be the administrators of this new covenant,which is not a covenant of written letters but of the Spirit: the writtenletters bring death, but the Spirit gives life" (2Co 3:2-7). It would beinappropriate to make definitive pronouncements about the natureof Paul's pneumatic revelation without careful argument. However,on a prima facie basis, it appears permissible to maintain that one


possible, and perhaps even probable, interpretation of a revelationthat comes initially as light, that depends on no teaching by theApostles who knew Jesus personally, that involves nothing ever seenor heard, that is received through the Spirit who reaches the depthsof God, that is written on living hearts with the Spirit (not with lettersthat bring death), and that culminates in possession of the mind(nous) of Christ, is this: Paul has experienced a divine pervasion ofhis soul, and lets that in-dwelling of the Christ jump from soul to soulnot by communicating propositional information, but by allowingthe Spirit to flow from himself to others. 10 On this reading, one couldinfer that Voegelin's understanding of revelation is much closer toPaul's than that of the partisans of propositional dogma.

If Paul is preaching the same Jesus whom the other Apostlesknew, his concept of revelation should tally with that of the Gospels.Does it? One Gospel incident that bears on this question is theepisode on the road to Caesarea Philippi. Jesus asks his followerswhat they think of him. Peter answers: "You are the Christ, the Sonof the living God." In reply, Jesus calls Peter blessed: "Because it wasnot flesh and blood that revealed this to you but my Father inheaven" (Matt 16: 13-18). As in the Pauline case, it seems possible,and perhaps probable, that the revelation of Jesus to Peter consistsin a divine pervasion of the Apostle's soul. This is the constructionthat Voegelin places on the passage. In his essay, "The Gospel andCulture," he remarks: "The Matthean Jesus, thus, agrees with theJohannine (John 6:44)

11that nobody can recognize the movement of

divine presence in the Son unless he is prepared for such recognitionby the presence of the divine Father in himself. The divine Sonshipis not revealed through. an information tendered by Jesus, butthrough a man's response to the full presence in Jesus of the sameUnknown God by whose presence he is inchoatively moved in hisown existence." If it be objected that the statement: "You are theChrist, the Son of the living God," is nevertheless a piece ofinformation, one imparted by the Father, Voegelin has a rejoinder:"In order to draw the distinction between revelation and informa-tion, as well as to avoid the derailment from one to the other, theepisode closes with the charge of Jesus to the disciples `to tell no one

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that he was the Christ."' 12 Voegelin means that the Messianicformula is not a proposition about a divine nature in Jesus that is anobject of cognition, as if someone could hear the news that Jesus isthe Christ, the Son of God, and promptly comprehend the defini-tion of such a being. Rather, it is a symbol of the divine movementin Peter's soul that is touched off by the manifestation of the samedivine movement in Jesus. The Christ sternly forbids his disciplesto proclaim his status because he does not wish his theophany to bebandied about in the deceptive guise of information. In the light ofthis argument, it appears that Voegelin's account of revelationmakes good sense of both the Pauline and Gospel texts.

Justly giving this much due credit to Voegelin, a serious consid-eration of Christian primary sources still will proceed to look at textsthat complicate the inquiry greatly. For instance, the opening of1John, which is cited by the Second Vatican Council as its guidinglight in the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation," reads asfollows: "Something which has existed from the beginning, that wehave heard, and we have seen with our own eyes; that we havewatched and touched with our hands: the Word, who is life 14-Thatlife was made visible: we saw it and are giving our testimony, tellingyou of the eternal life which was with the Father and has been madevisible to us" (1Jn 1:1-2). In the same vein, the first conclusion of theGospel of John, which follows immediately upon the stories of theempty tomb and the apparition to the doubting Thomas, declaresthat: "There were many other signs that Jesus worked and thedisciples saw, but they are not recorded in this book. These arerecorded so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son ofGod, and that believing this you may have life through his name" (Jn20: 30-31). It seems that, while remaining mystical, some NewTestament revelations insistently present themselves as mysteri-ously unmythical and factual. ls

The puzzling mixture of mystical and mysteriously literal speechin New Testament revelation suggests that, to be true to the first-hand reports of the theophany of Jesus, one might have to go beyondVoegelin and characterize these testimonies with a paradoxical termsuch as the phrase just used, "mystical mysteriously literal." In this

Christian Faith; Jesus the Christ, And History 55

new exegesis, it would be impermissible to forget that revelationconsists primarily in the experience of the divine presence, andequally impermissible to interpret the symbols of that experience aspropositions on spiritual objects of cognition, but it still would beright to understand the symbols as somehow legitimately proposi-tional in form. A real Christian faith would be a loving openness tothe divine movement in the soul, an awareness that this divinepresence is the being of truth in the soul, and an attachment to thepropositions that receive their validation from the divine movement.It would hold the mystical and dogmatic theologies in balance. Onecould not imagine what to make of this paradox prior to an ad-equately insightful meditation, if ever. Of course, another explana-tion of the Scriptural claims to literal reporting is possible. The Biblemight contain passages in which the deformation of symbols intodoctrine already has begun. Much to the consternation of theChristians who regard the whole Bible as the word of God, Voegelinsometimes attributes error to parts of it, not only with regard toscientific topics (e.g., the age of the world), but in matters thoughtcentral to the faith.'6 Those who aspire to be philosophers are opento anything. However, my sense of the integrity of the sourcesinclines me to a pursuit of the "mystical mysteriously literal" option.

Turning to the Catholic Catechism, one finds these statementsat the head of the article on revelation: "It pleased God, in hisgoodness and wisdom, to reveal himself and to make known themystery of his will...that men should have access to the Father,through Christ, in the Holy Spirit, and thus become sharers in thedivine nature. God, who `dwells in unapproachable light,'

17wants to

communicate his own divine life to the men he freely created, inorder to adopt them as sons in his only-begotten Son." 18 Earlier, ina discussion of how we can speak of God, the Catechism teaches that:"God transcends all creatures. We must therefore continually purifyour language of everything in it that is limited, image-bound orimperfect, if we are not to confuse our image of God-`the inex -

pressible, the incomprehensible, the invisible, the ungraspable'-with our human representations. Our human words always fall shortof the mystery of God." 19 This talk of a revelation that grants access


to the Father through Christ in the Holy Spirit, that involves sharingin the life of the God who dwells in unapproachable light, thatculminates in sonship in the only-begotten Son, and that tries toexpress the inexpressible by using words that always fall short soundslike an echo of the Pauline preaching conveyed not by humanmessages, but by means of the Spirit, such that we have the mind ofChrist. It also supports Voegelin's warning that the speech issuingfrom revelatory experiences does not concern spiritual objects ofcognition like those of the material world, insofar as it names anddoes not define (i.e., comprehend, grasp) the divine.

To be sure, the Catechism also informs us that our languagenevertheless "really does attain to God himself." It insists upon theChurch's power to define propositional dogmas. It declares that"God is the author of Sacred Scripture," 20 and acknowledges "thatthe books of Scripture firmly, faithfully, and without error teach thattruth which God, for the sake of our salvation, wished to see confidedto the Sacred Scriptures." Perhaps this would strike Voegelin as adeplorable example of the fundamentalism against which he sovehemently protests. However, considering that doctrines like thesemust be read in the context of the mystical, spiritual view ofrevelation articulated just above, and considering that these instruc-tions are hedged with admonitions to the effect that our words attainto God only in the sense that they help us grasp what God is not, thatthe words of Scripture actually speak "only one single Word" (theChrist), and that "the Christian faith is not a `religion of the book,' butone of the 'Word...incarnate and living,' it seems that the CatholicChurch is trying to hold in balance the mystical and mysteriouslyliteral aspects of revelation to which I have pointed. Perhaps one canconclude that Voegelin compels Christians to understand theirtradition better, especially those who forget the mystical dimensionof their theology, and that Scripture and the teaching Church act asa salutary brake on those whom Voegelin might inspire to plungehead over heels into mysticism and empty their faith of mystical-propositional truths. For the time being, this much will suffice on thequestion of the senses in which Christian faith is and is not real.


II ,

The singlemost important theological problem that disturbedVoegelin's Christian critics concerns his position on the nature of theGod-man Jesus Christ. This is ironic, for Voegelin professes not tohave such a position, and steadfastly denies the existence of an issuethat anybody could discuss. In the chapter ofThe Ecumenic Age thattouched off the explosion of antipathy toward him, he writes: "Theproblems of theophany are so badly obscured today by theological,metaphysical, and ideological overlayings that a remark to ward offconventional misunderstandings will not be superfluous. Statedflatly, therefore: The present. concern is not with points ofchristological dogma.... Hence, there can arise no question ofàccepting' or `rejecting' a theological doctrine" (EA, 242). Voegelinmeans that he will not debate imaginary propositional truths aboutnonexistent knowable spiritual things. He gladly analyzes experi-ences of "the flux of divine presence in time which constituteshistory," but christological dogmas have nothing to do with thoseevents, being deformed symbols, i.e., representations of imaginaryspiritual objects of cognition. Thus, Voegelin regards the complaintsof his adversaries as illusory.

Having read these rebukes, Voegelin's critics still thought thatthere was a problem, so one must try to get to the bottom of thequarrel. The ground of the altercation is easy enough to identify. Theadversaries were unwilling to accept the Christ to whom Voegelinaccords the greatest reverence, and they believed in the existence ofthe Christ declared by Voegelin to be nonexistent. To clarify andperhaps resolve this dispute, it is necessary to go deeper into whatVoegelin takes for real and unreal. We must inquire what his "fluxof divine presence in time which constitutes history " is, and why itis incompatible with the reality of a Christ about whom his Christianopponents wish to speak. The "flux of divine presence" has to do withthe central thesis of Voegelin's philosophy of history, which isencapsulated in his statement: "Eternal being realizes itself intime."

22

As mentioned previously, Manfred Henningsen will explain


Voegelin's new account of history more fully elsewhere in thissymposium. Here, I need only to highlight the strands of his generaltheory that frame the christological problem, or pseudoproblem, asthe case may be. Voegelin's mature work begins with a decision toelaborate a "process theology." In his essay "On the Theory ofConsciousness" in Anamnesis, Voegelin defines a "process theol-ogy" as "a matter of developing a symbolic system that seeks toexpress the relations between consciousness, the transcendingintraworldly classes of being, and the world-transcending ground ofbeing, in the language of a process constructed as an immanent one."Then he declares that: "I incline to believe that the process-theological attempt and its expansion, a metaphysics that interpretsthe transcendence system of the world as the immanent process ofa divine substance, is the only meaningful systematic philosophy."

23

Voegelin spends the rest of his life working out this "processtheology" which is "the only meaningful systematic philosophy."'

Together with some preparatory essays of the 1960's, TheEcumenic Age is the first full flowering of Voegelin's "process-theological attempt." By 1974, the "transcendence system of theworld" that needs to be seen as "the immanent process of a divinesubstance" has become "the flux of divine presence in time whichconstitutes history." It also has become a "process of reality" that "is,from the divine side, the history of incarnation in the realm ofthings." As a relationship of "the world-transcending ground ofbeing" to "consciousness," or as "incarnation," or as what I havecalled a "divine pervasion of souls," this "reality of history is metaleptic;it is the In-Between where man responds to the divine presence andthe divine presence evokes the response of man." Therefore, the"process of reality" or the "history of incarnation in the realm ofthings" is a series of "theophanic events of differentiating conscious-ness." As far as Voegelin can tell, this metaleptic history is the onlyform that the realization of eternal being in time takes. Therefore,it is true that: "There is no history other than the history constitutedin the Metaxy of differentiating consciousness." This entails anacknowledgment of "the process of differentiation" as "the exclusivesource of our knowledge" of such affairs. Now, "differentiating


events are experienced as immortalizing movements." Thus, "his-tory is discovered as the process in which reality becomes luminousfor the movement beyond its own structure; the structure of historyis eschatological." This implies that: "History...reveals itself as thehorizon of divine mystery when the process of differentiation isdiscovered to be the process of transfiguration." Further, membersof different societies at different times respond to the divine pres-ence in their souls, so they are "discovered to be one mankind withone history, by virtue of participation in the same flux of divinepresence." Hence, the "process of transfiguration... can be symbol-ized as a humanly universal process." 25

Within the context of this theory of a "humanly universalprocess," which I have had to compress to the most extremeconceivable degree, the theophany of Jesus appears as one memberof a series-a fact that escapes the notice of the Apostle Paul. Thereis a "history of theophanic incarnation" in which the Word becomesflesh in different human beings who precede and follow Jesus.Voegelin argues that: "The Ì am' that speaks in Jesus...is the sameÌ am' that has formed the humanity of man in the past by evoking theresponse of faith." He contends further that: "Transfiguring incar-nation, in particular, does not begin with Christ, as Paul assumed,but becomes conscious through Christ and Paul's vision as theeschatological telos of the transfiguring process that goes on inhistory before and after Christ and constitutes its meaning." If thereis any sense in which Jesus is a unique figure in the series, it is that:"In Jesus, the participation of his humanity in the divine word hasreached the intensity of his absorption into the word. "26 As Voegelinputs this in "The Gospel and Culture," Jesus has "the whole fullnessof divine reality," whereas others have "no more than their ordinaryshare of this fullness," so that "the `secret' of the Gospel is neither themystery of divine presence in existence, nor its articulation throughnew symbols, but the event of its full comprehension and enactmentthrough the life and death of Jesus."27

It now is clear that the Jesus whom Voegelin reveres is one whocan be imitated. Even on Paul's account, "man is destined to rise toimmortality, if he opens himself to the divine pneuma as Jesus did,"


and "the proclamation of Jesus as the Son of God" can be "extendedto everyman: `For all who are moved by the Spirit of God, are sonsof God- (EA, 242). An Apostle's calling is to move everyman toattempt the imitation of Christ by awakening in him the experienceof the divine presence. Insofar as speech has anything to do with thiscommunication, the Apostle must do what the poets and thephilosophers did: resort to the myth which is "the only symbolismman has to express his experience of divine reality." Paul and theevangelists do so. Voegelin asserts bluntly that "the tale of death andresurrection is a myth" (EA, 249). Therefore, he is unwilling toentertain theological debate on an unmythical, factual, "historical"incarnation and resurrection of Jesus that fictitiously happens out-side the Metaxy, the only real site of history; he will talk only of "thePauline vision of the resurrected," utilizing this symbol as a synonymfor Paul's experience of the divine presence.

As Voegelin sees the record, the mythical symbols of the Christwho opens himself to the divine pneuma, thus attaining to absorp-tion into the divine word, actually do begin their decline intodeformation in the New Testament itself, in the writings of Paul. TheApostle "was obsessed with the expectation that men living in Christ,himself included, would not die at all but, in the wake of theParousia, be transfigured in their lifetimes." This led to an error inwhich "the Pauline `time' is ambiguous inasmuch as it lets the timeof existence blend into the Time of the Tale" (EA, 249). Despite hisshortcomings on this score, Paul still manages to move "in an openfield of theophany." Even under the early Church, "the openness ofthe theophanic field...could be substantially preserved for almostthree centuries." In their laudable openness, the Patres use "one orthe other subordinationist construction" to express "the relation ofthe Son to the Father-God." Origen, for example, refers to Jesus as"a second God. Up to Nicaea, "Christianity was substantiallyditheistic" (EA, 249). It is significant that Voegelin often spoke ofhimself as a "pre-Nicaean Christian:"28

Unfortunately, the openness of the Patres does not survivethem. Voegelin declares that: "The history of the Patres puts itbeyond a doubt that the symbol `Christ' changes its meaning in the


transition from the open field of theophany to the realm of dogmaticconstruction. If the. question of the `historicity' of Christ is raisedwith the `Christ' of the dogma in mind, difficulties inevitably willarise. For the `Christ' of Nicaea and Chalcedon is not the reality oftheophanic history that confronts us in the Pauline vision of theResurrected" (EA, 259-260). In "The Gospel and Culture," Voegelinstates this even more strongly: "In the historical drama of revelation,the Unknown God ultimately becomes the God known through hispresence in Christ. This drama, though it has been alive in theconsciousness of the New Testament writers, is far from alive in theChristianity of the churches today, for the history of Christianity ischaracterized by what is commonly called the separation of schooltheology from mystical or experiential theology...The UnknownGod whose theotes was present in the existence of Jesus has beeneclipsed by the revealed God of Christian doctrine." 29

This summary of Voegelin's philosophy of history and its impli-cations for the theophany of Jesus makes it plain that, althoughVoegelin wishes to avoid taking a christological position, he inevita-bly will be perceived as having taken one. The Jesus whom hedescribes is a man who is absorbed into the divine word. As such, thisJesus unavoidablywill be understood as the Christ of the adoptionists,as even Voegelin's staunch supporter, Morrissey, concedes in hisexceptionally fine analysis. 30 Voegelin's Christian adversaries abjurethis Christ. It also is obvious, as Morrissey says, that "Voegelin rejectsthe orthodox interpretation of Christ as the eternally preexistent Sonof God incarnated only in Jesus."" This is the Jesus whom Voegelin'scritics adore. Once again, my present contribution to a resolution ofthis controversy will have to be confined to brief indications of thedirections in which a sober inquiry into the problems would go.

The first topic in such an investigation would be Voegelin'ssuggestion that it is possible in principle for any human being tobecome a Christ. Thee New Testament texts quoted by Voegelinundeniably teach that, in some sense, it is indeed open to everyperson to become a son of God, or a Christ.3 2 If one takes seriouslythe doctrines of the Catholic Church, to the effect that it was God'swill "that men should have access to the Father, through Christ, in


the Holy Spirit, and thus become sharers in the divine nature," andthat God "wants to communicate his own divine life to the men hefreely created, in order to adopt them as sons in his only-begottenSon," one again is confirmed in Voegelin's view that, in some sense,it is indeed open to every person to become a son of God, or a Christ.Not only is it possible to become a Christ, it is the entire point ofChristian life. As Meister Eckhart says in his sublimely beautifulChristmas sermon, Dum medium silentium: "Here in time, we arecelebrating the eternal birth which God the Father bore and bearsunceasingly in eternity, because this same birth is now born in time,in human nature. St. Augustine says: `What does it avail me that thisbirth is always happening, if it does not happen in me? That it shouldhappen in me is what matters. "'3a

The Church's admonitions that God is inexpressible, and thatour words always fall short of the divine mystery, imply that the sensein which all human beings can become Christs, or the sense in whichthe divine life can be communicated to them, cannot be an object ofcognition or adequate propositional doctrines. However, it can besymbolized. Eckhart does this well in Dum medium silentium.Eckhart's report of the experience greatly resembles Voegelin's.Eckhart takes as the text of his sermon a verse from Wisdom (18:14,which he handles rather loosely, adapting it to his purposes): "In themidst of silence there was spoken within me a secret word." He askshimself: "Where is the silence and where is the place where the wordis spoken?" He replies: "It is in the purest thing that the soul iscapable of, in the noblest part, the ground-indeed, in the veryessence of the soul which is the soul's most secret part. There is thesilent `middle,' for no creature ever entered there and no image, norhas the soul there either activity or understanding." 34 Here we havesymbolic equivalents of Voegelin's Metaxy, or In-Between, and ofhis "dead point" from which revelatory symbols emerge, "but whichcannot becdme itself an object of propositional knowledge." Eckhartcontinues by arguing of the silent middle that: "God the Father mayspeak his word there, for this part is by nature receptive to nothingsave only the divine essence, without mediation. Here God entersthe soul with his all, not merely with a part." Eckhart goes so far as


to maintain that the identification of the word spoken in the soul withChrist is complete: "God the Father gives birth to his Son in the trueunity of the divine nature. See, it is like this and in no other way thatGod the Father gives birth to the Son in the ground and essence ofthe soul, and thus unites himself with her." Perhaps this pictureadequately interprets the Church's formula that God wants to"adopt" us as "sons in his only-begotten Son." However, it does notcapture the reality, which remains incomprehensible. Eckhart ad-mits this, silently invoking Plato's Republic (510d11-e4) as heresponds to the question of what God does in the ground of the soul:"That I cannot know...This not-knowing makes her wonder andleads her to eager pursuit, for she [the soul] perceives clearly that itis, but does not know how or what it is."

35

If we confess that Voegelin is right about the possibility of ahistory of theophanic incarnation, in which all of us can becomeChrists in some full but ineffable sense, and if we agree that theincarnations in question can occur only in the Metaxy, we still mustrecur to New Testament sources that, as in the previous section onrevelation, complicate the investigation. I am thinking of five versesin the Johannine literature that can be represented by these two:"Yes, God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son" (Jn3:16). "God's love for us was revealed when God sent into the worldMs only Son" (lJn 4:9). As in our study of revelation, we haveencountered paradox: All of us can become sons of God, or Christs,in some complete but incomprehensible sense, and yet Jesus isGod's "only Son." We all can become identified with Jesus fully, butyet Jesus differs from the rest of us in some essential, qualitative, andnot merely quantitative way. If we wish to reactivate New Testamentexperience instead of calling some of the sources genuine and somedeformed, we must respect and meditate on these Johanninesymbolisms too. Further, we must recall that the Gospels and lJohn1 clearly intend to present themselves as factual. It may be that theMetaxy is not the only site of meaningful history, and that the storyof the incarnation and resurrection of Jesus is not primarily mythical,or mythical alone. If so, it still would be the case that Christiantheology must not forget its mystical dimensions, but that it also must


embrace mystical, mysteriously literal truths that legitimately comein the shape of propositions. The serious philosopher cannot be-come so excited by mystical experience as to lose sight of thepossibility of divine pervasions of what Voegelin has called prag-matic experience, a possibility to which the paradoxically mystically-literal propositions would correspond. Let us meditate on this infuture works.

James RhodesMarquette University

NOTES1. Center Journal (2:3, Summer 1983), 55-105. This essay will

build upon the argument of that one, without repeating it.2. For the theological purposes of this paper, my own previously

cited piece, "Voegelin and Christian Faith," might furnish anadequate short summary of the relevant assumptions. Michael P.Morrissey, Consciousness and Transcendence: The Theology ofEric Voegelin (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994)is a fine book-length synopsis. However, there are no substitutes forthe primary sources.

3. Eric Voegelin, Order and History: IV, The Ecumenic Age(Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1974), 314. Citedhereafter as EA.

4. Quoted in Morrissey, Consciousness and Transcendence,309, n. 3.

5. EA, 310, 311, 269, 254.6. See EA, 29.7. EA, 44. Actually, the technique of stabilizing experienced

truth through cultic observance and doctrine is well-attested in theBible, not least in the precept ordering the annual celebration of thePassover and in the ceremonial readings of the Law organized byJoshua. In the Roman context, Cicero probably found his model ofcultic observance in the ordinances of the early king Numa. WhatCicero contributes to the mix is the notion of "religion" defined asa body of dogma.


8. In this paper, translations of the New Testament are takenfrom the Jerusalem Bible. I shall correct some of these translations,as noted below.

9. The Jerusalem Bible version has not "human wisdom," but"philosophy." This is a mistranslation. The editors of the JerusalemBible assume that, when Paul says "human wisdom," he meansphilosophy, and translate accordingly. However, there is no evi-dence that Paul knows Plato and Aristotle, or even the Stoics. It ismuch more likely that Paul is thinking of the Jewish "wisdom"literature, and that he regards it as entirely human. The Jewishwisdom writings are not philosophy.

10. One could speculate that, if Paul's conversion was anexperience of divine pervasion by the Spirit, it resembled theconversion of the Christians who experienced Pentecost.

11.In the verses cited, Jesus declares: "No one can come to meunless he is drawn by the Father who sent me."

12. Voegelin, "The Gospel and Culture," in The CollectedWorks of Eric Voegelin, vol. 12, Published Essays: 1966-1985, ed.Ellis Sandoz (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1990),202.

13. See the preface, any version of Dei Verbum.14. Here, in order to achieve good English syntax, the Jerusalem

translators interpolate a phrase into the English that is not in theGreek text. I omit it.

15. Voegelin well might disagree with this exegesis of John 20:30-31. He treats these verses as an extension of the purely mysticalportions of the Gospel, assimilates them to his own theory ofrevelation, and adds a surprisingly autobiographical exclamation:"One can imagine how a young student of philosophy, who wantedto work himself out of the various doctrinal impasses into which theschool philosophers of the time had maneuvered themselves, couldbe fascinated by the brilliance of these succinct statements that musthave appeared to him as the perfection of the Socratic-Platonicmovement in the In-Between of existence," "The Gospel andCulture," 190. I am not sure that I grasp how Voegelin sees the citedverses as the perfection of the Platonic movement.


16. E.g., the critique of Paul in EA, 246-249, 266-271.17. Actually, the text of 1Tim 6:16 seems to refer to the Christ

rather than God as the one who dwells in unapproachable light, butthis is a minor semantic distinction in Catholic theology.

18. Catechism of the Catholic Church (San Francisco: IgnatiusPress, 1994), 51, 52. The Catechism is quoted by paragraphnumbers.

19. Catechism, 42.20. Catechism, 453, 88, 107.21. Catechism, 43, 65, 102, 108.22.Voegelin, "Eternal Being in Time," in Anamnesis, trans. and

ed. Gerhart Niemeyer (Notre Dame: University of Notre DamePress, 1978), 116.

23. Anamnesis, 26-27. Cf. the German version, "Zur Theoriedes Bewusstseins," in Anamnesis: Zur Theorie der Geschichte andPolitik (Munchen: Piper, 1966), 50-51. The Niemeyer translationthat I have quoted is absolutely accurate.

24. Morrissey, Consciousness and Transcendence, objects to myuse of the symbol "process theology" to characterize Voegelin'sthought, 264, n. 64. I see no ground for rejecting the term thatVoegelin himself employed, in the precise sense that he meant it.Moreover, I would point out that, in his summary of his results in TheEcumenic Age, 314-315, Voegelin calls his subject a "process" nofewer than seventeen times. This is not exactly a random occurrenceof the concept. However, I concede M orrissey's point that Voegelin'sphilosophy was no mere extension of Whitehead's. never meant toimply this. If my earlier essay, "Voegelin and Christian Faith,"convinced Morrissey otherwise, I was culpably unclear, and I hastento retract the error, with thanks to Morrissey for the correction.What I actually think is that Voegelin got the idea of a processtheology from Whitehead and transformed it into something en-tirely unique.

25. EA, 226, 242, 56, 243, 304, 314, 305, 304, 314.26. EA, 233, 17, 270, 17.27, Voegelin, "The Gospel and Culture," 192-193, 204.28. Gerhart Niemeyer, "Christian Faith, and Religion, in Eric


Voegelin's Work," in Within and Above Ourselves: Essays inPolitical Analysis (Wilmington, Delaware: Intercollegiate StudiesInstitute, 1996), 138.

29. Voegelin, "The Gospel and Culture," 199.30. Morrissey, Consciousness and Transcendence, 244. There

is little or nothing with which I disagree in Morrissey's treatment ofthe christological implications of Voegelin's philosophy.

31. Morrissey, Consciousness and Transcendence, 242.32. Of course, a "Christ" originally is an anointed one. The kings

and the sons of the kings of Israel and Judah were anointed andcalled Emmanuel. The term applies to Jesus as the son of God; hebecomes Emmanuel. From Jesus, the symbol extends to us when webecome sons of God.

33. Meister Eckhart, Sermon One, in Sermons and Treatises,vol. 1(trans. and ed. M. O'C Walshe (Longmead, England: ElementBooks, 1987), 1.

34. Eckhart, Sermon One, 3.35. Eckhart, Sermon One, 3, 5, 6-7.

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