What exactly does it mean to be perfect? When it comes to our physical existence, we actually need relatively little and the less that we need the more perfect we are. However, in our relationship with God this is reversed. The more we need God the more perfect we are. Moreover, this is not something we should be ashamed of, but is, in fact, perfection itself. I cannot think of anything sadder in this life than people living all their days without discovering their need for God.
For what is man anyway? And what is his power? What is the highest he is able to will? Is not man most fully realized when he comes to understand that apart from God he is capable of nothing that will stand the test of eternity, nothing at all? Was it not the Christ Himself who stated, "If a man remains in me, and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing" [John 15:5]. There are few more sobering verses in all of Scripture and it took me years to come to an understanding of Jesus' declaration. It is truly rare wisdom -- not rare in that it is only offered to the most highly educated, but rare because it is offered to all.
To look outward it will appear that we can accomplish amazing feats and can draw the enthusiastic accolades of man and there may be some level of satisfaction associated with this. And mankind is almost certainly God's most glorious creation, but its glory is primarily in the external and for the external. Do not our eyes aim its arrows outward every time passion and desire tighten its bowstrings? Do not our hands grasp outward? Are not our arms outstretched? Do we not consider our ingenuity to be all-encompassing? To the levels we do we are deceived!
We must learn to realize that as people we are great and at our highest only when before God we realize that in and of ourselves we are nothing. Even Moses, whom most consider the most powerful man to have ever walked the earth, realized that he was capable of nothing if the Lord did not will. His power was in living a life submitted to the Lord. One of the great struggles of life is to come to this realization, that in and of ourselves we are capable of nothing.
This also applies to our internal worlds. Are any of us capable here either? If capability is to actually be capability there must be some form of opposition. In the internal world of the spirit, our opposition can only come from within. And thus, our struggle is with ourselves. To the extent that we fail to realize this, our understanding is faulty and consequently our lives are imperfect.
Such self-knowledge is not really complicated. But then are we able to overcome ourselves by ourselves? How can we be stronger than ourselves? It takes something or someone else. We need to understand that with will power alone we create in our innermost being temptations of glory, fear, despondency, pride, defiance, and sensuality greater than those we meet in the external world. And for these reasons we struggle with ourselves and victory proves nothing but greater temptation. We must know that deep within ourselves that we are capable of nothing at all.
In one sense, to need God and to know that this is our highest perfection, makes life more difficult. However, in as much as we do not know ourselves, we do not actually become conscious in the deeper sense that God is. When we become conscious that we are capable of nothing, we have every day and every moment to more fully understand that God lives. If we do not experience this often enough it is because our understanding is faulty and we believe that we are, after all, capable of something.
This does not necessarily mean that our lives become easy simply because we learn to know God in this way. On the contrary, it can become far more difficult. But in this difficulty our lives acquire a deeper meaning. Should it mean nothing to us that as we continually keep our eyes on God, knowing that we are capable of nothing, but with the help of God we are indeed more than capable? Should it mean nothing to us that we are learning to die to the world, to esteem less and less the things that are temporal? Lastly, should it not have meaning for us that we come to a broader and fuller understanding that God is love and that God's goodness passes all understanding?
So what does all this mean really? Just as knowing ourselves in our own nothingness is the precondition for knowing God, so knowing God is the precondition for our sanctification, with both His assistance and according to His intention. Wherever God is, there He is always creating. He does not want us to remain spiritually soft and bathing in the contemplation of our own glory. He wants to create a new person. To need God is to become new. And to know God is the most crucial thing in this life. Without this knowledge we become nothing. Without this knowledge, we are scarcely able to grasp that we ourselves are nothing at all, and even less that to need God is our highest perfection.
Sunday, November 27, 2011
Sunday, November 6, 2011
Faith v. Virtue
Kierkegaard once stated that "the ethical dimension of existence has to do with the universal, of doing what is unconditionally right. The ethical applies to everyone and at every moment. It possesses its own validity. That is, it has nothing outside itself as its end or purpose." It has no further to go.
By contrast, each of us finds our purposes in the universal. Our task is always to express ourselves within the confines of our duties and thus limit our personal interests so as to fulfill our universal duties. As soon as we try to assert our individuality, in direct opposition to the universal, we sin. And only by recognizing this can we again reconcile ourselves with the universal ... we can free ourselves only by surrendering to the universal in repentance.
But if this is the highest that can be said of our existence, then what is ethical and what provides us ultimate happiness are identical. And the philosopher is proven right. The ethical is the universal, and thus, is divine. Thus the entirety of human existence is ultimately entirely self-enclosed, and the ethical [the virtuous] becomes the limit and completion of our lives. Us doing our duties becomes sufficient and as a result God becomes an invisible, vanishing point ... an impotent thought unrelated to our lives. His being becomes no more than the ethical itself, which fills all existence.
So where does the question of faith fit in here? Is the ethical, the virtuous, the final reality? I think we realize that it is not. This is where the philosopher goes wrong ... he should protest much more loudly and clearly against the honor and glory given to Abraham as the father of faith. If the ethical really is final ... if it is the ultimate determination of the meaning of life, then Abraham should be stripped of his honor and remanded for trial on charges of attempted murder and aggravated child abuse.
Now faith is just this paradox, that each of us as single individuals, though under the demands of the universal, are higher than the universal. If that is not faith, then Abraham is done for and faith has never existed in the world. If the ethical/virtuous life is the highest and nothing incommensurable is left over, except in the sense of what is evil, then we need no other categories than those of the philosophers. Goodbye Abraham! But faith is just this paradox, that the each individual, though bound by the universal, is higher than the universal. As a single individual we stand in an absolute relation to the Absolute! The ethical/virtue is suspended. This is the paradox of faith!
Abraham's story is the greatest example of such a suspension. That Abraham would even consider slaying his son is absurd. But as a single individual before God he found himself to be above the universal. This paradox cannot otherwise be mediated -- there is no middle ground to explain it. In fact, if Abraham had tried to explain it, he would have been in a state of temptation, and in that case he would have never attempted to sacrifice Isaac. Or if he had done so, he would have had to return as a murderer repentant before the universal.
Nevertheless, in his action Abraham completely overstepped the ethical altogether. He had a higher goal outside of it. What other explanation could ever justify Abraham's action? Who of us would have counseled him to proceed with what he felt God had demanded of him? Would we not say "God would never ask such a thing?" Certainly it was most unethical. It was not to save a nation that Abraham went to sacrifice Isaac, nor to appease angry gods. His whole action stands above and beyond the universal. Ultimately it was a private act, an act purely of personal conscience. Thus, to judge his action according to what was ethical or right -- in the sense of a moral life -- is totally out of the question. So far as the universal was there at all, it was latent in Isaac and it would have cried out, "Don't do it, you are destroying everything, not the least of which is God's plan to create out of you a great nation."
So why does Abraham do it then? For God's sake, and what is exactly the same, for his own. He does it for the sake of God because God demands this proof of his faith. And he does it for his own sake in order to produce the proof.
Abraham's situation is a kind of trial ... a temptation. But what does that really mean? What we typically call a temptation is something that keeps a person from carrying out his duty, but here the temptation is the ethical itself ["Thou shall not kill"] which would keep him from doing God's will. But what then is duty? In Abraham's case, duty is found in doing God's will, which is itself higher than the universal. Abraham's duty transcended the ethical.
If this is the case, how then did Abraham exist? He had faith. He lived by and in faith. That was the paradox that kept him at the summit and which he could not explain or justify to himself or anyone else. His faith was grounded on the paradox that as an individual he was above the universal. He had an absolute relation to the Absolute. Was he justified? Yes, but he was not justified by being virtuous, but by being an individual submitted to God in faith.
Note that this does not mean that the ethical is to be done away with. But it can result in an entirely different expression than what is typically demanded by the ethical ... for example, love of God can cause us to treat our neighbors in a way that could be quite opposite from what ethics would permit. And if this is not how it is, then faith has no place in our existence. In fact, faith can become a temptation.
But faith's paradox is precisely this, that the individual is higher than the universal, that the individual determines his relationship to the universal through his relation to God, not his relationship to God through his relationship to the universal. That is, to live by faith means that one has an absolute duty to God and to God alone.
For this reason, the ethical, for the person of faith, is relegated to the realm of the relative. In fear and trembling, this is faith's paradox -- the suspension of virtue and ethics. Anyway we look at it, Abraham's story contains a suspension of the ethical. He who walks the narrow path of faith no one can ultimately advise as no one can fully understand. Faith is always a miracle ... yet none of us are excluded from it.
By contrast, each of us finds our purposes in the universal. Our task is always to express ourselves within the confines of our duties and thus limit our personal interests so as to fulfill our universal duties. As soon as we try to assert our individuality, in direct opposition to the universal, we sin. And only by recognizing this can we again reconcile ourselves with the universal ... we can free ourselves only by surrendering to the universal in repentance.
But if this is the highest that can be said of our existence, then what is ethical and what provides us ultimate happiness are identical. And the philosopher is proven right. The ethical is the universal, and thus, is divine. Thus the entirety of human existence is ultimately entirely self-enclosed, and the ethical [the virtuous] becomes the limit and completion of our lives. Us doing our duties becomes sufficient and as a result God becomes an invisible, vanishing point ... an impotent thought unrelated to our lives. His being becomes no more than the ethical itself, which fills all existence.
So where does the question of faith fit in here? Is the ethical, the virtuous, the final reality? I think we realize that it is not. This is where the philosopher goes wrong ... he should protest much more loudly and clearly against the honor and glory given to Abraham as the father of faith. If the ethical really is final ... if it is the ultimate determination of the meaning of life, then Abraham should be stripped of his honor and remanded for trial on charges of attempted murder and aggravated child abuse.
Now faith is just this paradox, that each of us as single individuals, though under the demands of the universal, are higher than the universal. If that is not faith, then Abraham is done for and faith has never existed in the world. If the ethical/virtuous life is the highest and nothing incommensurable is left over, except in the sense of what is evil, then we need no other categories than those of the philosophers. Goodbye Abraham! But faith is just this paradox, that the each individual, though bound by the universal, is higher than the universal. As a single individual we stand in an absolute relation to the Absolute! The ethical/virtue is suspended. This is the paradox of faith!
Abraham's story is the greatest example of such a suspension. That Abraham would even consider slaying his son is absurd. But as a single individual before God he found himself to be above the universal. This paradox cannot otherwise be mediated -- there is no middle ground to explain it. In fact, if Abraham had tried to explain it, he would have been in a state of temptation, and in that case he would have never attempted to sacrifice Isaac. Or if he had done so, he would have had to return as a murderer repentant before the universal.
Nevertheless, in his action Abraham completely overstepped the ethical altogether. He had a higher goal outside of it. What other explanation could ever justify Abraham's action? Who of us would have counseled him to proceed with what he felt God had demanded of him? Would we not say "God would never ask such a thing?" Certainly it was most unethical. It was not to save a nation that Abraham went to sacrifice Isaac, nor to appease angry gods. His whole action stands above and beyond the universal. Ultimately it was a private act, an act purely of personal conscience. Thus, to judge his action according to what was ethical or right -- in the sense of a moral life -- is totally out of the question. So far as the universal was there at all, it was latent in Isaac and it would have cried out, "Don't do it, you are destroying everything, not the least of which is God's plan to create out of you a great nation."
So why does Abraham do it then? For God's sake, and what is exactly the same, for his own. He does it for the sake of God because God demands this proof of his faith. And he does it for his own sake in order to produce the proof.
Abraham's situation is a kind of trial ... a temptation. But what does that really mean? What we typically call a temptation is something that keeps a person from carrying out his duty, but here the temptation is the ethical itself ["Thou shall not kill"] which would keep him from doing God's will. But what then is duty? In Abraham's case, duty is found in doing God's will, which is itself higher than the universal. Abraham's duty transcended the ethical.
If this is the case, how then did Abraham exist? He had faith. He lived by and in faith. That was the paradox that kept him at the summit and which he could not explain or justify to himself or anyone else. His faith was grounded on the paradox that as an individual he was above the universal. He had an absolute relation to the Absolute. Was he justified? Yes, but he was not justified by being virtuous, but by being an individual submitted to God in faith.
Note that this does not mean that the ethical is to be done away with. But it can result in an entirely different expression than what is typically demanded by the ethical ... for example, love of God can cause us to treat our neighbors in a way that could be quite opposite from what ethics would permit. And if this is not how it is, then faith has no place in our existence. In fact, faith can become a temptation.
But faith's paradox is precisely this, that the individual is higher than the universal, that the individual determines his relationship to the universal through his relation to God, not his relationship to God through his relationship to the universal. That is, to live by faith means that one has an absolute duty to God and to God alone.
For this reason, the ethical, for the person of faith, is relegated to the realm of the relative. In fear and trembling, this is faith's paradox -- the suspension of virtue and ethics. Anyway we look at it, Abraham's story contains a suspension of the ethical. He who walks the narrow path of faith no one can ultimately advise as no one can fully understand. Faith is always a miracle ... yet none of us are excluded from it.
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