Arjuna’s Vision of Krishna: On the Edge of Transcendence

In reading the Bhagavad-Gita from chapter four on, it may be tempting to collapse all of Hinduism into a monotheism in which Lord Krishna is God. Even in the context of bhukti being directed exclusively to Krishna, other deities are alluded to in the text. To claim that those other deities came out of Krishna, and even that Krishna surpasses even Brahman, which is infinite being that is imperishable awareness, thought (but not mind), power, and bliss, in terms of ultimacy does not mean that the Gita is a monotheist scriptural faith-narrative. Not even Krishna’s unmanifest form by which the deity’s creative energy gives rise to the cosmos transcends form itself, and thus reaches the unmanifest and formless brahman. To be sure, that Krishna, as the Supreme Person metaphysically and ontologically, is ultimately Self renders the deity identical to brahman, but this does not mean that Krishna transcends brahman. Regardless of where the Krishna-Brahman debate lands, and there are admittedly shlokas in the Gita that support the ultimacy of Krishna and shlokas that favor the ultimacy of Brahman, Krishna need not be more ultimate than brahman for a devotee of the deity to be able to experience a lot of transcendence from ordinary experience. In fact, because either referent that is the Absolute lies beyond the limits of human cognition, perception, and sensibility (emotion), according to the Christian theologian Pseudo-Dionysius, the human experience of distinctly religious transcendence is where our attention can fruitfully be directed. This is not to say that a referent (i.e., a divine, transcendent object) is thereby relegated or even discarded in favor of the quality of experience as its own referent. Rather, it is to say that we can know a lot more than we do about distinctly religious, and thus transcending, experience, and that such knowledge is part of the human condition—part of being human as homo religios as distinct from being a political, economic, and social species. First I investigate the question of whether the Gita is monotheist, after which I argue that Arjuna’s vision of Krishna in chapter 11 of the Gita is can be viewed as the “event horizon” of sorts in terms of how much we can transcend as we approach the limits of our faculties.

One scholar argues that even though Krishna “is manifold in his appearances,” his form “is the one and only” in “relationship to the manifold character of the cosmos.”[1] In his “cosmic form all beings, including the Vedic gods, reside and find their place.”[2] This is not, however, to say that Krishna is the only deity referenced in the Gita, and, moreover, that Krishna is synonymous with brahman even though Krishna’s unmanifest form of fullness “is a product of the god’s yogic [creative] power and . . . expresses sovereignty” and is thus “not his highest state of being as the transcendent ‘self’ beyond the cosmos,” the latter being how brahman too is described.[3]  Krishna, unlike Brahman, is not just the transcendent “self,” and even a king is described, in The Law of Manu (7.4ff), as “consisting of and uniting different gods” and therefore should “be regarded as a ‘universal form’.”[4] Being the protector of a social, economic, and political order (i.e., a kingdom), a king embodies “the divine powers of the gods who contribute to his sovereignty,” hence “he is called ‘a mighty godhead that lives in the form (body) of a man.”[5] Indeed Krishna’s cosmic body, within which Arjuna sees the created realm, is explicitly related to human kingship in that the “cosmic and royal aspects of Krsna’s form converge not only at the moment of creation, but also in times of destruction, which serve the double purpose of punishment and purification, as well as re-establishing order and legitimate kings.”[6] Krishna’s relation to royal sovereignty and thus functionality inhibits the deity being synonymous with Brahman, and thus ultimately ultimate even though Arjuna needs “divine eyes” to see Krishna’s infinite overwhelming and terrifying form. Transcendence, like a Hindu temple, has more than one layer, and human “sight,” even with “divine eyes,” can only go so far. This is the idea.

In short, even if, as one scholar claims, Krishna “is the one and only encompassing cosmic god,”[7] and is thus the creator and destroyer of worlds in being the protector of the cosmic order, Brahman transcends cosmic functions because Brahman is not a doer, just as an individual atman is immutable (i.e., unchanging) too. My point is that not even Krishna as depicted as his cosmic form in the Gita can be regarded as the Absolute or Ultimate metaphysically, ontologically, and even theologically.

Even as a deity, Krishna is not exclusively so. In Gita 11.21, “Yonder, these hosts of deities enter into You. Some, terrified, praise (You) . . . ,” the very existence of those other deities is presupposed, for it would make no sense to claim that things that don’t exist enter into Krishna.[8] Also, Gita 11.54 states that the other deities would like to see the vision of Krishna. These two slokas are enough to refute the view that the other deities are merely imaginary and thus Krishna alone is God. That is, shlokas 11.21 and 11.54 are polytheist rather than monotheist statements.

Even so, Malinar claims that Gita, chapter 9, “and the subsequent chapters present the theological basis for Krsna’s revelation as the highest, the one and only god.”[9] That Krishna can be both the highest and yet the only deity is itself problematic unless the other gods are illusory, an interpretation that the two shlokas in Gita 11 contradict. To be sure, the other deities, in being formed, are not ultimate; unlike Krishna, they do not have an unmanifest form, but not even that form is ultimate ontologically. As manifested to Arjuna, Krishna’s “flaming many-colored, (with) gaping mouths and flaming vast eyes” is said to touch “the world-sky.”[10] Even though brahman creates space, Ramanuja identifies that sky “with the transcendental ‘space’ of the Ultimate Being beyond the world-ground.”[11] Feuerstein, however, objects to this interpretation by noting that the “transcendental Reality is formless and ‘beyond-the-three-primary-qualities’ (nirguna).”[12] The reality that is Brahman transcends even Krishna’s unmanifest form by which Krishna’s creative energy creates the cosmos. Hence the errancy of positing Krishna as more ultimate than Brahman. Even so, the extent of transcendence that Arjuna experiences when he beholds the vision of Krishna that that deity enables Arjuna to see “with divine eyes” is such that Arjuna’s cognitive, perceptual, and emotive capacities are reached as they start to buckle even though the Absolute or Ultimate transcends even that point. It is the buckling, or warping, of Arjuna’s faculties that is so indicative of what it is like to push oneself to one’s limits in transcendence. Whether Krishna or Brahman is the Absolute (i.e., personal or impersonal), the yearning to transcend more and more is itself significant and thus worthy of study and praxis.

As described both by Samjaya and Arjuna, the vision of Krishna is admittedly nothing short of inspiring of awe in its wholistic totality. Narrating the past event of the vision of Krishna to King Dhritarashtra, Samjaya describes Krishna as “infinite (and) omnipresent,” as the “Great Self” of greater “splendor” than were “a thousand suns were to arise at once in the sky,” as “the God of gods,” with “the whole universe . . . abiding in the One, there in [Krishna’s] body.”[13] Referring to that body, Arjuna says, “I behold the gods and all the (various) kinds of beings” enter. Moreover, Arjuna characterizes Krishna as being “of endless form,” even “All-Form!”[14]  Overwhelmed, Arjuna states his conviction as a devotee to Krishna: “You ought to be known as the supreme Imperishable. You are the supreme receptacle of all this. You are the Immutable, the Guardian of the eternal law. You are the everlasting Spirit.”[15] By the latter is mean purusha, which is Brahman’s creative energy, which brahman itself transcends.[16]

Even though bhukti to Krishna is all-encompassing for a devotee, the perception of Krishna as the Absolute and other deities as within Krishna’s body or illusory doesn’t necessarily translate into an ontological claim that those deities do not really exist whereas Krishna transcends. Moreover, the contention that since “it is Krsna’s body in which the whole world resides, he is not only the supreme lord of the universe (visva-isvara), but also its universal, encompassing form (visvarupa)”[17] actually situates Krishna behind brahman, which as inherently unmanifest transcends form itself and every conceivable form, even Krishna’s unmanifest cosmic form that contains the created realm and even the other deities, including Brahma.

Yet in terms of transcendental experience, Arjuna’s vision of Krishna pushes the envelope up to the limits of human cognition, perception, and emotion. This is not to infer an ontological or metaphysical claim regarding Krishna; rather, I contend that the vision in this case comes up so close to the rim beyond which human thought, perception, and emotion cannot go that warping of their respective contours is evident.

In the Christian Gospels, the disciples’ vision of Jesus’s transformed resurrected body is perhaps not as close to the limits. To be sure, the nature of that body eclipses our understanding, at least so far, but it cannot be said, as Krishna tells Arjuna: “Very-difficult-to-see is this My form which you have seen. Even the gods are forever hankering after a glimpse of this form.”[18] Even the gods! Of course, in Christian theology, there are no other deities than the trinitarian deity, but unlike Arjuna, Jesus’s disciples have no difficulty in seeing the resurrected body. Whereas the vision of Krishna departs from that deity’s human form substantially, Jesus’s resurrected body does not. The greater anthropomorphism comes at the cost of not being able to approach the boundaries of the human faculties in terms of transcendence. This is the idea.

In short, in having to be given “divine eyes” to see Krishna as that deity really is, which other deities can only wish to see, and in seeing an infinite number of arms and heads, the vision warps the cognitive and perceptual framework that operates nonstop as the paradigmatic contours of our ordinary waking experience in life. We are not used to thinking that we can see what is refused to deities, and seeing the entire created realm in a deity’s body, which in turn is distended in heads and arms, in a golden radiance that is brighter than a thousand suns in the sky is not something we see in our daily lives.

In fact, not only is space warped in the world being shown in Krishna’s body, but time too is warped when Krishna, “in his appearance as time, shows those [warriors] whom Arjuna should kill as having been killed already.”[19] This warping of time is “based on a suspension of the otherwise chronological sequence of past, present, and future. . . . The future is presented as already past; conversely, the present appears as the moment in which this future is disclosed as an actual fact.”[20] The Kantian a priori impact of reason itself on the paradigmatic framework that structures and organizes our cognitions and perceptions of the empirical realm is thus warped, and the warping of the time-space fabric by gravity that Einstein theorized and has since been empirically verified (e.g., gravity waves in space; time differences between sea-level and Mt Washington in North America) can be thought of analogically in which gravity is like Krishna in that both are capable of warping space and time. To be sure, whereas gravity is an impersonal warping of time-space, it is the Supreme Person as Krishna really is that is presented “as time,” which “is regarded as a form of the cosmic god as sovereign who brings about a necessary and purifying destruction in order to re-establish order.”[21] In other words, “Arjuna’s task is to recognize Krsna as the agent in the form of time. Conversely, time has been given a form and even an agent.”[22] Being presented with time in a distinctly theological sense stretches Arjuna’s cognitive faculty to its limit.

The situs of the vision of Krishna being at the “event horizon” is evident too in Arjuna’s emotional reaction, for he is, as it were, at the end of his tether. As one scholar describes this, “After confirming that Arjuna has indeed seen the whole world in the one body of Krsna (11.13) . . . , Samjaya describes the reaction: ‘Filled with amazement (awe) with his hair standing on end, and bowing his head and folding his hands to pay reverence, Arjuna spoke.’”[23]  Arjuna’s emotional condition is thus “highlighted” in the text.[24] Seeing Krishna’s “many formidable fangs,” Arjuna states that he, as well as the “worlds,” shudder” and that he can “find no shelter,” presumably from his fright.[25] Arjuna’s “inmost self quakes,” and he can “find no fortitude or tranquility.”[26] It is no wonder that he is suddenly petrified, for he sees his army’s leading warriors “swiftly enter [Krishna’s] mouths with formidable fear-instilling fangs. Some [of the warriors] are seen with pulverized heads sticking in between [Krishna’s] teeth.”[27] Arjuna is “trembling,” and “with stammering (voice), very frightened.”[28] Arjuna’s trembling “underscores the amazement and awe caused by the vision.”[29] In such a state, Arjuna’s praise of Krishna can be interpreted as being “indicative of Arjuna’s position as the composer of hymnic praise”, which is associated in the Rigveda with “poetic creativity,” which is an expression of “vibrant excitement.”[30] In other words, Arjuna’s praise is expressive of the extreme emotion of his “poetic-ecstatic state,”[31] rather than constituting religious belief-claims that reality is ultimately a Supreme Person rather than brahman and that the other deities are imaginary whereas Krishna is ontologically and metaphysically existent.

Out of incredible angst, Arjuna cannot say enough about Krishna, declaring that deity to be the unsurpassable Ultimate, “greater even than Brahman, the primordial creator,” “the Imperishable, existence and nonexistence and what is beyond that,” “the Primordial God, the ancient Spirit (purusha),” and again of being of all-consuming “infinite form.”[32] Because Arjuna is emotionally overwhelmed, these laudatory statements can be interpreted as being emotionally expressive rather than ontologically or metaphysical statements.

I totally disagree with the assertion that in Arjuna addressing Krishna as being the “all” (sarvah), rather than merely as being powerful in “bringing together ‘all’ as the cosmic ruler, a “monotheistic framework” applies.[33] For one thing, logically it does not follow from Arjuna’s praises of Krishna as being “of infinite strength, and immeasurable prowess,” such that Krishna has “brought together the all (sarvam),” that “therefore you are all (sarvo).”[34] Likewise, it does not follow logically that a king who brings together all of his kingdom is that kingdom, even if one were to exclaim, l’état est moi! Even if Krishna were “all,” it would still need to be argued how that is a monotheist claim, but Arjuna is not really asserting claims.

Rather, because his emotions are so intense that they, like the vision itself, are all-consuming, his over-the-top praises of Krishna can be reckoned as emotive expressions in “poetic and ritual language.”[35] To impose rationality on such language is to incur a category mistake. Reflecting the overwhelming vision, Arjuna’s praises are indicative of the warping effect of the sheer intensity of heightened emotions, as could be expected given the overwhelming tremendum (i.e., terror) that Arjuna feels as a reaction to seeing the bodies of his teachers, fellow warriors, and relatives in Krishna’s sharp, gnawing fangs. Therefore, in an emotive sense too, the vision can be reckoned as lying on the rim, or “event horizon,” of human faculties, beyond which they shut down or are otherwise incapable of experiencing in a coherent fashion. I submit that it is precisely because Arjuna is up against the rim of what he is capable of feeling without passing out that he experiences the flood of emotions as “all,” and his praises are expressions of emotion that project the all-consuming sense he has of his emotions and the vision itself.

My basic point is that the warping, or blurring, of each of the basic contours of cognition, perception, and emotion indicates that Arjuna is on the cusp of the boundary beyond which is like a black hole in outer space. Unlike Jesus’s resurrected body being visible to the disciples, the vision of Krishna is at the event-horizon, where the normal parameters for cognition, perception and emotion warp similar to how the intense gravity of a dense black hole warps the fabric of space-time at the rim beyond which not even light can escape.  Of course, this analogy breaks down in that revelation “gets out” of the theological “black hole,” albeit through a window darkened by centuries of candle-smoke as revelation passes through our human, all too human atmosphere. 

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1. Angelika Malinar, The Bhagavadgita: Doctrines and Contexts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 166.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid., p. 170.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid., p. 171.
6. Ibid., p. 172.
7. Ibid.
8. Georg and Brenda Feuerstein, The Bhagavad-Gita: A New Translation (Boston: Shambhala, 2011), p. 227.
9. Angelika Malinar, The Bhagavadgita: Doctrines and Contexts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 144.
10. Gita 11.24 in Feuerstein, The Bhagavad-Gita, p. 229.
11. Feuerstein, The Bhagavad-Gita, p. 229.
12. Ibid.
13. Gita 11.11-13, in Feuerstein, The Bhagavad-Gita, p. 223.
14. Gita 11.15-16, in Feuerstein, The Bhagavad-Gita, p. 225.
15. Gita 11.18, in Feuerstein, The Bhagavad-Gita, p. 225.
16. Similarly, in Christian theology, God transcends the Logos (Word), by which God creates the world.  No theologian would state that God is a manifestation of Logos, and yet Krishna as the Supreme Person is said to be more ultimate than is brahman. David Hume would doubtlessly bring in the problem of anthropomorphism.
17. Malinar, The Bhagavadgita, p. 169.
18. Gita 11.52 in Feuerstein, The Bhagavad-Gita, p. 245.
19. Malinar, The Bhagavadgita: Doctrines and Contexts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 175.
20. Malinar, The Bhagavadgita, p. 175.
21. Malinar, The Bhagavadgita, p. 178.
22. Ibid.
23. Ibid., p. 168.
24. Ibid.
25. Gita 11.24-25 in Feuerstein, The Bhagavad-Gita, p. 229.
26. Gita 11.24 in Feuerstein, The Bhagavad-Gita, p. 229.
27. Gita 11.27 in Feuerstein, The Bhagavad-Gita, p. 231.
28. Gita 11.35 in Feuerstein, The Bhagavad-Gita, p. 235.
29. Malinar, The Bhagavadgita, p. 180.
30. Ibid.
31. Ibid.
32. Gita 11.37-38 in Feuerstein, The Bhagavad-Gita, p. 237.
33. Malinar, The Bhagavadgita, p. 183.
34. Gita 11.40, in Angelika Malinar, The Bhagavadgita, p. 183.
35. Malinar, The Bhagavadgita, p. 181. The Gita “is similar to the original poetic situation described in Vedic texts, in which the hymns are said to have been composed in reaction to a vision, and then handed down and used by sacrificial priests as ritual liturgy.” Indeed, “poetic skill and expression remained part and parcel of the encounter (darsana) with the beloved god or goddess in many bhakti traditions” (Ibid., p. 182).

Interpreting Scriptures: On Referential Realities beyond the Text

In Christianity, Paul wrote that if the resurrection of Christ Jesus didn’t really take place, then faith is for naught, but he also wrote that faith without love is for naught. The assumption that if Jesus was killed and raised historically speaking, why be a Christian, has had much greater currency than the assumption that if a person is not kind and compassion in heart and deed to people who have been insulting or have damaged the person, that person is not really a Christian. In short, the value of the religious meaning in the New Testament has typically been assumed to depend on the extratextual (i.e., beyond the text of the Bible) existence of Jesus. Using Vedanta hermeneutics (i.e., method of interpreting a text) in Hinduism, I argue that the assumption is incorrect. This is not to make a historical claim one way or the other regarding Jesus or Krishna; rather, I want to claim that the religious meaning in a scriptural text does not depend on making the assumption that the reality described therein exists beyond the text. Although hermeneutically based, this argument may sway attention back to religious meaning itself as primary, including in regard to engaging in pious actions.

In Hinduism, Mimamsa and Vedanta commentators “’restain’ extra-textual reference within the overarching frame of the text, which is not replaced by knowledge, even if the object of knowledge remains ‘outside the text.’”[1] To be sure, the Brahma-sutras “could lend itself to the idea that the Upanisads communicate various authors’ intentions and point to a reality beyond the text.”[2] This is problematic because “external reference to impermanent realities threatened ultimately to undercut the posited eternity and permanence of the sacred text itself. The system had to be nonreferential, meaningful in itself, and expressive in that meaning, in order to be protected from a changing and unpredictable world.”[3]

What about positing of imperishable, and thus permanent realities as existing outside the text? Doing so would not undercut the posited eternity and permanence of a sacred text itself, but it would mean that such a text is referential and thus not meaningful as a system within itself. Also, is not such a positing of something existent outside of the text necessary for the extra-textual component of the hermeneutic (or else the meditation is just on abstract knowledge)?  Both the Mimamsa and Vedanta schools presuppose that “text and performance—meditational or sacrificial—imply, reflect, and instigate one another.”[4] Perhaps it can be said that the meaning in the text is primary in the textual hermeneutic, whereas the extra-textuality reality is primary in the extratextual portion of the Vedanta hermeneutic. Hans Frei, who wrote in his Eclipse of the Biblical Narrative that neither form nor historical criticism should eclipse the religious meaning of a religious text. In other words, Frei holds that asking about “the historical Jesus” and whether different authors, each having their own agenda, contributed to a text gets in the way of giving the meaning of a religious story enough air to breath in a reader’s heart and mind.

 I wonder if questions concerning reality beyond a text and being referred to textually should also be bracketed so not to eclipse the meaning that is in the text. And yet, the Vedanta project “is permanently about the reading and use of texts, and about brahman as an extratextual reality communicated through texts, without either the text or the reality being thereby rendered superfluous.”[v] Perhaps the question is whether a text alone (bracketing extratextual praxis) can only allow for the nominalist rather than a realist assumption as regards the reality being described or discussed textually.

It may be that making the realist assumption—that the reality described in a text really exists outside the text—makes sense, for why would an author claim writing a text that a reality has meaning if that reality doesn’t really exist outside of the text. On the other hand, making a nominalist assumption keeps the focus on the text itself, whose religious meaning is primary in a hermeneutic. Put another way, even if brahman or Krishna do not exist beyond the meaning in a text, the textual religious meaning can still have value. As Victor Frankl discovered, the human need for meaning can be felt in even very dire circumstances. Distinctly theological or religious meaning can sooth a troubled heart or mind even if God doesn’t exist beyond the text. The textual meaning is real in that it is hardly illusory and can have an effect on people without having to approach a text as a realist rather than as a nominalist. This is not to say that the realist assumption is never the correct assumption to make; rather, it is to say that the validity and usefulness of religious meaning in a scriptural text does not depend on making that assumption. If so, and because we mere mortals cannot be certain whether an extratextual reality exists as it extends beyond the limits of our thoughts, perceptions, and emotions, religious meaning gleamed from a religious text ought to be primary in interpreting one and the basis upon which a religious practitioner acts, whether in worship or interpersonally in daily life.

In Christianity, for example, being compassionate to people whom the Christian doesn’t like or who don’t like the Christian should not depend on whether the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus occurred historically and even metaphysically. Even as a textual illustration, the Passion Narrative has meaning and thus value, which can be put into practice regardless of historical and metaphysical questions. Selfless love as to a detractor or even a hated or hateful enemy as a means to entering a different spiritual condition (e.g., the kingdom of God) has its own meaningfulness and value both in itself and as put into practice. Both Paul and Augustine wrote that God is such love. In Vedanta Hinduism, brahman itself can be grasped as identical to an person's self (atman) in experientially meditation, which, though extra-textual, is based on concentrating on the meaning of a scriptural passage. 

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1. Francis X. Clooney, “Binding the Text: Vedanta as Philosophy and Commentary,” in Texts in Context: Traditional Hermeneutics in South Asia, ed., Jeffrey R. Timm (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press), p. 56.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid., p. 58.
5. Ibid., p. 61.

The Resurrected Body of Jesus: A Viable Launching Pad for Mysticism

Gertrud of Helfta (1256-1301) was a Christian nun whose sensitivity to mystical experience can be characterized as a bridal mysticism within a Christ mysticism. Think of Christ; turn yourself over to Christ. She brings in the related theme of light, which is salient in the Gospel of John, with Christ saying, I am the light of the word. Yet her mystical sensitivity was such that she could transcend even Christ’s resurrected body, which can be said to have been her favorite mask of eternity through which love, which, as Paul and Augustine had claimed, is God. This does not mean that the mask is finally tossed aside as somehow erroneous; rather, it is to say more generally that people who have an enhanced sensitivity to the mystical in a religious, or transcendent, sense, are oriented to going beyond God in our likeness to experience God as wholly other—as radically transcendent—and thus leave oneself behind.

Gertrud's guide to monastic prayer includes the following in the imperative form, “pray to the Lord to lead you into the school of love where you may learn further to recognize and love Jesus.”[1] Sight is implicit, if recognizing Jesus includes seeing his body. The theme of Gertrud’s third spiritual exercise (spiritual dedication) is “spiritual matrimony, wherein the nun is the bride and Jesus Christ is the bridegroom.  Eros is not excluded, the love being of caritas rather than agape for the nun even though “Christ’s desire is as great as the bride’s” and “this marriage of love” is rendered an “inseparable union” of “chaste love” by a “kiss of love.”[2] Clearly, Descartes’ mind-body dichotomy does not apply, as Christ’s resurrected body is transformed from being an earthly body.

In short, Gertrud’s language, which can be likened to Augustine’s erotic pining for God’s scent in The Confessions, includes even if as an illusion, sexuality and thus bodies rather than just souls.  Although Gertrud likens the “bond of love between the two spouses”—the nun and Jesus—to “the glue that unites the Father to the Son,” the “true spouse and wife, made fertile, brings forth the fruits of life.”[3] The sexual imagery, in which bodies are salient, simply cannot be ignored.

The likeness to the relation between the Father and the Son in the Trinity, however, should be taken with a grain of salt, given Augustine’s claim that likening the relation between the Father and the Son to that of a human father and son (or daughter) is an instance of idolatry. Augustine acknowledges that human weakness “can only think of what it has been accustomed to do or hear.”[4] And yet he warns that “no carnal thought creep up” when we think of Jesus’ line, “As the Father has taught me,” such as in thinking of how a human father teaches his son.[5] Thinking of the relationship in the Trinity as being akin to a human relationship is to “fashion idols.”[6] But then is not thinking of approaching Jesus by incorporating sexual language also idolatrous? Fortunately, Gertrud’s goal goes beyond such imagery, and, moreover, even Jesus’ resurrected body. Her attitude toward human bodies, no doubt informed from living in a monastery from the age of 5, would argue against her resting for eternity with even a transformed yet still corporeal (rather than gnostic) body (of Jesus).

Even though Gertrud “focuses on Christ’s glorified human nature, she does not emphasize the belief that human nature in general is restored through the incarnation of Christ.”[7] For example, distinguishing the “rotten body” from the spirit (e.g., Spiritual Exercises, VI, 612f) is consistent with mortification, “dying to oneself in order to live for God alone (III, 149), which is implied in the “process of inner liberation.”[8] This is also consistent with Gertrud’s leitmotif of death of the corporeal body in its earthly state constituting “a beginning rather than an end, a paradoxical reversal of death and life, which . . . goes back to the mystery of the Cross.”[9] Yet Gertrud holds that Christ’s “human nature” is retained “in his heavenly state.”[10] Moreover, her mysticism is “typically Christ-centered,” with “Christ in his humanity” forming “the basis and focus of all of Gertrud’s writing.”[11] Put another way, It is the “human nature of Christ as one with the Spirit and as part of the Trinity, while still, Gertrud writes, ‘in the substance of my flesh,’” that “represents the pivotal point of Gertrud’s mystical life.”[12] I submit that the likeness of “my flesh” involves, on the devotee’s part, a “rotten body,” and furthermore that it would be difficult for Gertrud to stay with the bridal language to characterize her goal of blissful union with God, which for her includes being in God.

Fortunately, Gertrud transcends the mind-body dichotomy altogether in writing of God as Goodness (bonitas), Love (caritas), Cherishing-love (dilectio), Compassion (misericordia), Peace (pax), and Loving-kindness (pietas).[13] These words for divinity obviate the pitfall from anthropomorphism in rendering the transcendent as human, all too human. This is avoided to an extent by “employing simultaneously both male and female attributes for God.”[14]

The same is done in Hinduism, in depicting the deity, Shiva, as both male and female—as conjoined bodily with his consort, Devi, as in (in Christian terms of marriage) made one flesh. Ganesha, the Hindu god that has an elephant head, goes even further in upsetting the convenient assumption that a deity resembles our human form externally.

Put in simpler theological terms, Christ’s transformed (rather than earthly) resurrected body is Gertrud’s centering pole that she grasps as though with one arm as she leans out yearning for mysterium divinum; “the mystical experience” being “per se ineffable.”[15] In Spiritual Exercises, the “desire to reach God sine impedimente (without any hindrance) is reiterated throughout as direct contact with the Divine remains her goal,” and of course her summum bonum, which Plato describes merely as eternal moral verities (truths).[16] “Ah! O love, may your cherishing-love consummated in me be my end and consummation.”[17] Although she adds her hope that she “may appear worthy in the presence of the immortal spouse, in a wedding dress and with a spousal dowry,” I contend that being in the divine that is love transcends even a bridal union with Christ’s resurrected body.[18] So here Gertrud can be interpreted as describing the means (i.e., being married with Jesus in his resurrected condition, including bodily) after having depicted the end, or consummation, with divine love itself. There is a danger, therefore, that devotees following Gertrud’s spiritual exercises in praxis may focus on the means too much, without even pondering what divine love is in itself as a distinct type of love. As distinct, illusions to sexuality and even bodies can only go so far on the way to divine love saturating the devotee from within in the end.

Gender, and even anthropomorphism are hindrances from the perspective of experiencing union with the source of the divine, which transcends the limits of human thought and perception, as Dionysius suggests. Relatedly, in Hinduism, the part of Purusa’s primordial body that extends beyond most of that body—that which becomes the world—is transcendent in that it lies beyond our realm. Only once even such basic obstacles as gender-identification and the tendency of the human brain to render radically “other” thoughts into familiar terms are transcended can a person like Gertrud of Helfta have “inner freedom” (Libertas cordis), which is Gertrud’s most “unique characteristic and her most important theme in general.”[19] According to Gertrud, a “mystical rebirth in God” entails “integrity of faith, triumph over the enemy, unyielding perseverance, and freedom of spirit.”[20] Such freedom is needed to see “God face to face for eternity.”[21] Ironically, the light showing God’s true face transcends the light of the world.

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1, Gertrud of Helfta, Spiritual Exercises, Gertrud Jaron Lewis and Jack Lewis, trans. Cistercian Fathers Series, No. 49 (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publication, 1989): V. verses 311-12, p. 84, italics added.
2, Ibid., p. 14.
3, Ibid., p. 14.
4, Augustine, Tractates on John: Books 28-54, 40.4, trans. John W. Rettig, Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 88 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1993), 126.
5, Ibid.
6, Ibid.
7, Gertrud of Helfta, Spiritual Exercises, Gertrud Jaron Lewis and Jack Lewis, trans. Cistercian Fathers Series, No. 49 (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publication, 1989), p. 8.
8. Ibid., p.9.
9, Ibid., p. 10.
10. Ibid., p. 7.
11. Ibid.
12. Ibid.
13. Ibid. The use of the Latin word, caritas, rather than the Greek word, agape, is, I submit, misplaced in being an appellation for God. For Augustine, caritas is not selfless love, but is infused with, and thus not cut off from, garden-variety eros, albeit sublimated to the summum bonum. For the basis of this idea, see Plato’s Symposium. Calvin was more idealistic concerning the potential of human love in applying agape, which is divine selfless love, as evinced in God the Father allowing his Logos to be incarnated as His Son and even to suffer an excruciating death. Therefore, I contend that the sort of love that is divine is more accurately rendered as selfless (agape) rather than including human instinct (caritas).
14. Ibid.
15. Ibid.
16. “Gertrud’s text unequivocally defines the summum bonum in terms of the biblical ‘seeing God face to face.’” Introduction of Gertrud of Helfta, Spiritual Exercises, Gertrud Jaron Lewis and Jack Lewis, trans. Cistercian Fathers Series, No. 49 (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publication, 1989), p. 8.
17. Gertrud of Helfta, Spiritual Exercises, Gertrud Jaron Lewis and Jack Lewis, trans. Cistercian Fathers Series, No. 49 (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publication, 1989): V. verses 216-17, p. 81.
18. Ibid., verses 226-28, p. 81.
19. Ibid., p. 10.
20. Ibid., p.12, italics added.
21. Ibid.

Living Ritual

I contend that for a religious ritual to be “alive” is for it to be responsive to spiritual truths as they are played out by or among the people who have gathered even just as spectators rather than participants. In liturgy, the readings and the ritual itself can stimulate a spiritual state of mind (un état de l’esprit—this last word alone signifying the connection), which in turn can even unconsciously prompt conduct that can be observed to be religious (or spiritual) in nature. For a ritual to be alive is for it to incorporate such conduct in order to draw attention to the underlying religious truth manifesting in one or more persons. The antagonist in this drama is the strict literalist who goes inflexibly by the letter of the ritual’s laws rather than the spirit thereof, ignoring that only the spirit rises and thus is capable of lifting humans in general and in a liturgical context in particular.

The full essay is at "Living Ritual."

Miracles as a Literary Device

The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965) is known for being the first Hollywood movie in which the face of Jesus is shown. From the standpoint of the next century, the scandal in showing Jesus could only seem antiquated, if not outright silly. Rarely can such perspective on a scandal exist as it is occurring. In its own time, a scandal seems all-important and critically in need of being addressed lest life as we know it would otherwise come to an end. Ten years earlier, Nikos Kazantzakis' novel, The Last Temptation of Christ, had also been controversial, as was the 1988 film of the same name (and based on the novel) because Jesus imagines himself in the sexual act and he may struggle with mental illness. This scandal was more serious than was that which greeted The Greatest Story Ever Told even though the Jesus of Last Temptation ends up rejecting the temptation to avoid the cross and is thus faithful to his Father in the end. The viewer is left, however, without a decisive answer as to whether the film's Jesus suffers from mental fits because the film ends with Jesus dying on the cross. The theological validation of Jesus is made in Greatest Story, though curiously not chiefly in the usual way this is done in narratives about him. I submit that this deviation makes the film highly significant in that it emphasizes religious experience as a reaction. 

The full essay is at "The Greatest Story Ever Told."

The Case for Christ: On the Problem of Extracting History from Faith Narratives

A film narrative oriented to an investigation of Christianity is tailor-made to illustrate the potential of film as a medium to convey abstract ideas and theories. In The Case for Christ (2017), a skeptical journalist—Lee Strobel—takes on the contention that Jesus’ resurrection in the Gospels was also a historical event (i.e., happened historically). Lee states the proposition that he will investigate as follows: “The entire Christian faith hinges on the resurrection of Jesus. If it didn’t happen, it’s a house of cards. He’s reduced to a misunderstood rabbi at best; at worst, he was a lunatic who was martyred.” The journalist’s initial position is that the resurrection didn’t happen historically; it is just part of a faith narrative (i.e., the Gospels). Lee wants to test the proposition by interviewing experts. The dialogues between the journalist unschooled in theology and the scholars of religion provide a way in which complex ideas and arguments can be broken down for the viewer and digested. The journalist stands as a translator of sorts similar to a teacher’s function in breaking down knowledge new to students so they can grasp and digest it.

The full essay is at "Case for Christ."

Christianity as Distinctly Religious: A New Species?

The human mind naturally tends to make (and remake) religion into familiar terms, while resisting the wholly other as such. As David Hume explains, the human mind is naturally drawn to what is familiar to itself; considerably more effort is required to hold onto the notion of pure divine simplicity without adding ornaments. Sociological phenomena such as father-son relationships and the role of a son are more familiar than the Son as Logos and agape.[1] The resurrection is typically thought of in supernatural physiological and historical terms, rather than as whose meaning is distinctly religious and, furthermore, is part of a religious narrative. The Trinity as existing in reality metaphysically is easier to understand than the Trinity as transcending reality, as it’s source rather than its substance. God as the first cause of the Big Bang is easier to grasp than God as the source or condition of Creation. These all-too-easy category mistakes are particularly problematic in that they obscure religion as distinctly religious.

Who thinks of the Son of God as the Logos, or Word—that aspect of God that plays an active role in the creation story as well as the Incarnation? It is much easier to conceptualize the Son from father-son relationships even though Augustine warns against doing so. Who thinks of resurrection as whose historicity is within a faith narrative rather than from a historical account, and is thus conditioned on a distinctly religious meaning and basis of validity? If I'm right, none of us has thought much about what remains after the precipitates of other domains have been extracted such that the remaining liquid is distinctly religious.

That the resurrected Jesus walks through a door and yet is hungry and eats a fish suggests that the concept of resurrection is not at bottom physiological. At the very least, the linguistic device seems to be oriented to obstructing such easy likenesses from other domains. A body transformed spiritually is a distinctly religious phenomenon; it is no accident that it is ensconced in a faith narrative, rather than in a historical account, a book on human biology, or even a text whose body is on supernatural, hocus pocus magic.

That the Passion story is ritually and festively acted out each year means that in “mythic time” Jesus is risen each Easter. Hence Christians rejoice, as if announcing breaking news, "He is risen!" The experience of religious presence that can take place in mythic rather than chronological/historical time has great value and meaning. Yet such distinctly religious meaning and its own sort of validators are overlooked simply in asking whether Jesus was really resurrected from the dead.  "Was" connotes time to a historian, and “really” is taken to mean empirically (i.e., as an observable fact), as if such time and factuality trump mythic time and distinctly religious validation stemming from religious meaning.

Religion itself, moreover, is undercut even if Jesus rose from the dead historically. Whether persons or events in a faith narrative happen to be historical outright or mythic-historical, accepting empirical historical claims as the litmus test undercuts religion itself because it is made subject to the criteria of another domain, namely history. In his book, Eclipse of the Biblical Narrative, Hans Frei points out that just asking whether some event in the story really took place gets in the way of the story’s meaning coming through unimpeded.

On a morning after Easter when I was at a grocery store looking at half-priced, tempting chocolate eggs, I conversed with an evangelical Christian woman about the holiday. She told me she had read the Bible thirteen times. "You have to read it all the way through to get its full meaning," she explained, "because the meaning of one chapter is connected to the meanings of other chapters." Thinking of Frei, who had retired from Yale unfortunately before my studies there, I replied that interrupting the reading to ask whether something "really" happened would get in the way of the coherence of the meaning of the Bible as a whole; it would be like stepping out to get popcorn in the middle of a movie. The suspension of disbelief, and hence "getting into" the story-world itself, is eclipsed by the interruption. The woman agreed, though she was visibly uncomfortable with the mere possibility that I might have been suggesting that Jesus did not really (i.e., as a historical occurrence) rise from the dead. Frei would say: Don't even ask the question! Get out of the way, "for Christ's sake," and let the story tell its story. Instead of spoiling for a brawl, this policy not to eclipse the story's own meaning treats religion as sui generis, as worthy in itself instead of needing to defer to the criteria of another domain for some sense of validity.

We are so used to thinking of religion using concepts borrowed from other domains that we would scarcely even recognize something that is distinctly religious if it came up and slapped us in the face and said, "Here I AM!" Elijah found the Lord on the mountain not in the high winds, the ensuing earthquake, or the fire, but in a gentle breeze.[2]

What is the Logos, for instance, and how can “Son” be thought of as such rather than in terms of the characteristics of human sons? Augustine warns that “no carnal thought creep up” in interpreting Jesus’s expression, “As the Father has taught me” in terms of a human father teaching his son. To liken the Trinitarian relationship to a (merely) human one would be, Augustine writes, to “fashion idols” in one’s heart.[3] We are so conditioned to think of the Son of God in terms of being a son of a father that we, Christian or not, have scarcely any idea what "Son" means in a distinctively religious sense; and yet, it is precisely such a sense that can minimize the risk of self-idolatry that comes with anthropomorphism (i.e., applying human characteristics to non-human entities).

We are so used to assuming that overgrown vines from other gardens are native to religion that we have no clue, I suspect, as to what religion’s own garden would look like if regularly weeded.  In fact, I would not be surprised to find that we have been pulling the native plants as weeds! For religion to regain or perhaps achieve its native health for the first time, without the convenient and alluring stain of anthropomorphism, the category-mistakes that come with blurring boundaries must first be recognized and corrected and then attention must be directed to the question of just what is distinctly religious.[4] Perhaps the defining question is whether religion need necessarily be human, all too human; can the domain as distinctively drawn transcend the limits of human cognition, sentience, and perception to have as its referent point the Wholly Other? Can we get out of the way?
 

1. For more on this point and that of David Hume, see ch. 12 of God’s Gold: Beneath the Shifting Sands of Christian Thought on Profit-Seeking and Wealth.

2. 1 Kings 19:11-12.
3. Augustine, "Tractate 40" in Tractates on John: Books 28-54, trans. John W. Rettig, Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 88 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1993), 126.
4. See ch. 12 of God’s Gold: Beneath the Shifting Sands of Christian Thought on Profit-Seeking and Wealth.

The Eucharist as Transcendent Experience

Taking a swipe at a core tenet of Catholicism, Bill Keller of the New York Times writes, “Every faith has its baggage, and every faith holds beliefs that will seem bizarre to outsiders. I grew up believing that a priest could turn a bread wafer into the actual flesh of Christ.” I contend that the editor’s characterization of consecration represents a misunderstanding of the Eucharist. Such misunderstandings have been worse; in the early years of the Church, some pagans were under the impression that the Christians were meeting on Sundays to eat babies. Indeed, phrases such as “eat my body” may in fact be inherently prone to being misunderstood.

Generally speaking, religion may have a tendency to flirt with the literal, or empirical, even at the expense of that which is distinctly religious in nature. Hence Keller’s point that every institutional religion has baggage may be correct even if his interpretation of the Eucharist is erroneous. It should be of no surprise that religion is hardly immune to the vaunted pretentions of the human mind even to that which is beyond the limits of its cognition and perception. Under the circumstances, we would be well-advised to be relatively circumspect in how firmly we impose our religious beliefs as if they were established knowledge.

Regarding the Eucharist, Keller’s use of “actual flesh” is misleading, for both actual and flesh point to an empirical basis or connotation. When we moderns typically say actual, we mean that something actually exists, which is to say that it is the case empirically in the world in which we live (i.e., based in the human domain). Keller’s use of flesh confirms his usage of actual, for flesh is indeed found descriptively in the world, as in, The wolf ate the lamb’s flesh. In German, the word for meat is Fleisch. To be blunt, a priest does not turn a wafer into meat. I’m not sure whether changing something from one food group to another would constitute a miracle anyway. This allusion to food groups is apt, for my approach stresses the utility of delimiting categories. I assume that the various realms, such empirical, metaphysical, and theological, are qualitatively different and distinct.

I contend that the Eucharist involves the application of a theological concept through social contract as pertaining to an empirical object. This is not to say that the empirical realm is that of theology.  Van Rad makes this point in his text, History of Israel. A faith narrative, such as the covenantal relationship between Jehovah and the Hebrews is not comprised of bare historical facts, even if Biblical allusions to history are used for theological purposes and given a theological meaning. The meaning gleaned from the faith narrative does not establish or confirm historical facts. Nor are theological meanings scientific concepts; the two domains are distinct, and thus have their own respective criteria. Whereas history and science are confined within the empirical domain, which is in principle within the limits of human cognition and perception, theological meaning is transcendent in nature, meaning that our ideas and sensual impressions fail inherently to go the distance with respect to religion.

Neither is theology essentially metaphysics, for otherwise, religion would be none other than philosophy. Put another way, meaning is not reality itself. People who characterize the Trinity as real are making a metaphysical rather than a religious claim. The latter has to do with the unfathomable mystery behind the notion of a triune god, rather than any metaphysical claim that the three persons exist in reality itself. Put another way, if God is the condition or source of existence, then God cannot be existence itself—much less some empirical object existing. Neither does God as conceived theologically reduce to Kant’s “things in themselves.” God is not “the Real.” Yet neither is the transcendent limited to Kant’s phenomenal realm of appearances. Religious meaning is of its own, distinct, realm—yet how elusive it must truly be, for all the rush to cover it over with leaves from other fields. If I am indeed on to something here, we would hardly recognize the distinctly religious terrain for all we have interlarded on top of it. Put another way, our theological gardens tend to end up looking a lot like ourselves.

In terms of the Eucharist, Catholics maintain that the body and blood of Christ are really present theologically under the empirical “species” of bread and wine. In Catholicism, the real presence is a theological concept called transubstantiation. That it is applied to empirical objects—bread and wine—does not mean that the religious meaning is empirical in nature. The religious term refers to another theological concept—that of resurrected body—rather than to the empirical concept of “actual flesh.”

In a nutshell, Bill Keller has Jesus’ earthly body rather than his resurrected body in mind. To think of a resurrected body on the basis of a physical body is to reduce theology to physiology or biology. The resurrected Jesus walking through a door and asking for something to eat anticipates the tendency to liken what we don’t understand to things that are familiar. Theological meaning is distinct, rather than reducing to any of the empirical sciences, yet for centuries Christians insisted on being buried so their physical bones would be available to be resurrected.

Augustine writes that the relation between the Father and the Son should not be thought of in terms of the relationship between dads and sons. By implication, the Son as a theological concept is qualitatively different—meaning not just in degree—from what we know of what it means to be a son from our observations of sons in our midst. Christians forget Jesus’s reminder, “no one knows the Son except the Father” (Mt 11:27). It is all too natural to reduce begotten to made by clothing the transcendent in familiar clothes.

Resurrected body does not apply empirically; rather, it is a theological meaning that is situated in a faith narrative rather than a historical account. This is the point that Keller so vitally misses in his essay. The real presence of Christ in the Eucharist is not actual flesh. Nor is the real presence metaphysical in nature. The empirical species of bread and wine as like posts around which the Catholic believer can swing around, as it were, in the transition from the empirical realm of the everyday to a distinctly transcendental experience that transcends even the posts themselves. A major pitfall to watch out for is slighting the experience in favor of holding onto the posts. There is even a risk that some of the unsatisfied religious meaning gets transferred onto the empirical signs themselves, thus making them into idols without realizing it. The mistaken assumption is then that a sustained, intense focus on the empirical objects enhances rather than takes away from religious experience. In actuality, the religious domain, which is inherently transcendental, has been confiscated with more familiar experience within the limits of human cognition and perception. All the while, the Kingdom of God is within, as though smiling at these artificial edifices we create to edify and bemuse ourselves.

I contend that the bottom line on the real presence is the theologically-felt experience of transformation or sanctification that can be induced by applying the theological concept to the bread and wine via ritual. The religious experience is not exhausted by the symbols on the surface; religionists merely use them, and the associated ritual, as prep. Crassly put, they put people in the mood. Sustained, concentrated transcending as an experience that is really present (though not reality!) does not just happen after a person steps into a church from a busy day, hence the rites and posts to follow along the way. The point is the experience, felt as really present (and thus eternal rather than of time and space)—the artifices along the way are just so, rather than religious objects to be held as though they were ends in themselves, which is to say, idols.

Source:

Bill Keller, “Asking Candidates Tougher Questions About Faith,” New York Times, August 25, 2011.