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WHY CHRIST'S MALENESS IS ESSENTIAL TO FAITH. Peter Kreeft, Why is Christ's maleness essential? Because he is the revelation of the Father and the Father's masculinity is essential. To understand this second proposition, we must distinguish 'male' from 'masculine'. Male and female are biological genders. Masculine and feminine, or yang and yin are universal cosmic principles extending to all reality including spirit. All pre-modern civilizations knew this. English is almost the only language that does not have masculine and feminine nouns. So it is easy for us who speak English to believe that the ancients merely projected their own biological gender out onto nature in calling heaven masculine and earth feminine, day masculine and night feminine, sun masculine and moon feminine, land masculine and sea feminine. In the Hindu marriage ceremony the bridegroom says to the bride: "I am heaven, you are earth." The bride replies: "I am earth, you are heaven." Not only is cosmic sexuality universal, its patterns are suspiciously consistent. Most cultures saw the sun, day, land, light, and sky as male; moon, night, sea, darkness, and earth as female. Is it not incredibly provincial and culturally arrogant for us to assume, without a shred of proof, that this universal and fairly consistent human instinct is mere projection myth, fantasy and illusion rather than insight into a cosmic principle that is really there? Once we look, we find abundant analogical evidence for it from the bottom of the cosmic hierarchy to the top, from the electromagnetic attraction between electrons and protons to the circumincession of divine Persons in the Trinity. Male and female are only the biological version of cosmic masculine and feminine. God is masculine to everything, from angels to prime matter. That is the ultimate reason why priests' who represent God to us, must be male. There is striking historical evidence for this in the Jews, God's chosen people, the people to whom God revealed himself (and if we do not believe that, we do not believe in that God, for that is the only place we find that God). The Jews, and the Christians and the Muslims and the philosophical theists who learned from them, were radically different from all the others in their concept of God in five related ways: - First, they worshipped no goddesses, and no bisexual or neuter gods. The Jews only God was always He, never She or It. - Second, they had no priestesses - - Third, the Jewish God was utterly transcendent to the universe, for he created it out of nothing. There is even a word in Hebrew that is not in any other ancient language: 'bara', 'to create'. Only God can do it, not man. This God was not a part of the universe, as in polytheism, or the whole or the soul of the universe, as in pantheism. - Fourth, God spoke. He revealed himself in prophetic words and miraculous deeds. He came out of hiding and acted. All other religions were man's search for God - Judaism (and Christianity; its fulfillment) was God's search for man. Therefore, religious experience for a Jew was fundamentally response not initiative. There were no yoga method, no ways to push God's buttons. God initiated man responded - Fifth, the Law was the primary link with God, who revealed his will in Thou Shalts and Thou Shalt Nots. The god of pantheism may have a consciousness, but not a will; and the gods of polytheism have conflicting and sometimes evil wills. Only in Judaism is there a full union of religion and morality. Only the Jews united mankind's two primary spiritual instincts - the instinct to Worship and the instinct of conscience. Only the Jews identified the object and end of worship with the Author of conscience and morality. These five remarkably distinct futures of ancient Judaism are clearly connected. As a man comes into a woman's body from without to impregnate her; God creates the universe from without and performs miracles in it from without, He also calls to man, reveals himself and his law to man from without. He is not The Force but The Face; not Earthspirit rising but Heavenly Father descending. To speak of 'religion' as 'man's search for God' is like speaking of the mouse's search for the cat. This issue is absolutely central, and therefore I beg your indulgence while I quote a long paragraph from C S. Lewis, which I believe is the best single paragraph ever written on the difference between Christianity and manmade religions: "Men are reluctant to pass over from the notion of an abstract deity to the living God - I do not wonder. Here lies the deepest tap-root of Pantheism and of the objection to traditional imagery. The Pantheist's God does nothing, demands nothing. He is there if you wish for Him, like a book on a shelf. 'He' will not pursue you. There is no danger that at any time say that all the Christian images of kingship were a historical accident of which our religion heaven and earth should flee away at 'His' glance. If 'He' were the truth, then we could really ought to be cleansed. It is with a shock that we discover them to be indispensable. You have had a shock like that before, in connection with smaller matters - when the fishing line pulls at your hand, when something breathes beside you in the darkness. So here - the shock comes at the precise moment when the thrill of life is communicated to us along the clue we have been following. It is always shocking to meet life where we thought we were alone. Look out!' we cry 'it's alive'! And therefore this is the very point at which so many draw back and proceed no further with Christianity. An 'impersonal God' - well and good. A subjective God of beauty; truth and goodness, inside our own heads - better still. A formless life-force surging through us, a vast power which we can tap - best of all. But God Himself - alive, pulling at the other end of the cord, perhaps approaching at an infinite speed, the hunter, king, husband - that is quite another matter. There comes a moment when the children hush suddenly: was that a real footstep in the hall? There comes a moment when people who have been dabbling in religion (Man's search for God'!) suddenly draw back Supposing we really found Him? We never meant it to come to that! Worse still, supposing He had found us." Circumincession
- Cir`cum`in`ces´sion Theists
Polytheism
ARCHBISHOP FULTON J. SHEEN: It is a characteristic of any decaying civilization that the great masses of the people are unaware of the tragedy. Humanity in a crisis is generally insensitive to the gravity of the times in which it lives. Men do not want to believe their own times are wicked, partly because they have no standard outside of themselves by which to measure their times. If there is no fixed concept of justice, how shall men know it is violated? Only those who live by faith really know what is happening in the world; the great masses without faith are unconscious of the destructive processes going on, because they have lost the vision of the heights from which they have fallen. |