Forest Poetry

It is currently common for biblical scholars to study the “historical Jesus”.^1,2 This interest is paralleled, and to a small extent influential on general interest in the topic among the public. In Christians, some of this takes the form of interest in details of Jesus’ “personality”, or even his physical appearance, as religious accessories.^3,4,5

“Souls which have come to a unitive knowledge of God, are, to use Benet Canfield’s phrase, “almost nothing in themselves and all in God.” This vanishing residue of selfness persists because, in some slight measure, they still identify their being with some innate psycho-physical idiosyncrasy, some acquired habit of thought or feeling, some contention or analyzed prejudice current in the social environment. Jesus was almost wholly absorbed in the essential will of God; but in spite of this , he may have retained some elements of selfness. To what extent there was any “I” associated with the more-than-personal, divine “Not-I,” it is very difficult, on the basis of the existing evidence, to judge.

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The moral of all this is plain. The quantity and quality of the surviving biographical documents are such that we have no means of knowing what the residual personality of Jesus was really like. But if the Gospels tells us very little about the “I” which was Jesus, they make up for this deficiency by telling us inferentially, in the parables and discourses, a good deal about the spiritual “not-I,” whose manifest presence in the mortal man was the reason why his disciple called him the Christ and identified him with the eternal Logos.”

-Aldous Huxley, The Perrenial Philosophy, p.48-49

This focus on what Huxley calls the “selfness” or “I” of Jesus is irrelevant to the purpose of religion. That is, if the goal of metaphysical study is to know what is True (and what is true is eternal, immanent, and therefore a-historical), then a focus on the historical Jesus cannot aid our understanding of God, and in the worst cases can fetishize the individualistic aspects of humanity that the prophet condemns.

But Christians are not the only group which engages in this obsession with corporeal reality. Ironically, atheists also often cite historical studies, but to disprove the occurrence of events described in scripture, in order to to discredit religion in general. The result is often unintentionally comedic:

“Disproving the Bible in Under One Minute”

Both these parties miss the point. Whatever the historical facts of a religious event or person, its significance lies far above and before such a limited historical view. Rather, its significance lies in what is a-historical to it. We should always have an eye to what is supra-situational. Whatsoever emerges as consistent, through the transitory effects of historical frames, is the Ground, and to engage in historical speculation on spiritual topics is like trying to stand by jumping.

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¹Meier, John P. A Marginal Jew Rethinking the Historical Jesus. New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 2009.

²Sanders, E. P. Jesus and Judaism. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985.

³ http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/real-face-jesus-christ/story?id=10235129

⁴http://users.skynet.be/sky50779/jesus.htm

⁵Day, Elizabeth. “Jesus Might Have Been Homosexual, Says the First Openly Gay Bishop – Telegraph.” Telegraph.co.uk. 3 Apr. 2005. Web. <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1487002/Jesus-might-have-been-homosexual-says-the-first-openly-gay-bishop.html>.

Moderns excitedly point out that the holidays marking the birth and resurrection of Christ occur at times of the year that are of spiritual and ritual significance to many other traditions, particularly those that predate Christianity. Apparently it follows from this that if pre-Christian Europe held festivals during the winter solstice and the advent of spring, then Christian holidays are held at those times because of older traditions, not because they reflect the true timeline of the savior’s life.¹’² This in turn suggests that the origins of Christianity are mundane rather than divine.

But this is circular reasoning, because it makes a big assumption at the outset: that Christ is not the son of God. If Christ is the son of God, then it would make the most sense that his birth and resurrection did occur at spiritually and metaphysically significant times of the year. If anything, the fact that these times of the year are significant to other traditions is an argument in favor of the divine origin of Christianity. All truth is God’s truth, and all authentic traditions have their origins in Him. When a tradition has grown decadent and is replaced by a healthier tradition with stronger divine contact, syncretism occurs because there are symbols in both traditions that have the same metaphysical orientation. The incarnation and the winter solstice point to the same metaphysical truths, as do the resurrection and the advent of spring.

Also of importance is the consideration that Easter does not fall on the same date each year. This could imply that even if the resurrection did occur in the spring, by only celebrating it on a Sunday, Easter would likely not fall on exactly the same day as the event itself. This overlooks the fact that the date of the resurrection has double significance, in both the time of the year and the time of the week in which it took place. The divisions of both the year and the week have spiritual significance. The resurrection occurred during the spring, the time when the natural world enjoys new life, and also occurred on the sabbath, obviously the holiest day of the week for the Christian tradition. Celebrating it on a sunday at around the same time of year best captures and preserves this double significance.

The material world is one of time and change, change that often appears to us to be chaotic. But at a higher level, all material existence and change is bound by divinely ordained cycles. These cycles are many and are of varying degree, from a single day to the life of a man or the life of the cosmos. Within the cycles there are natural points of demarcation and division. That God’s manifestation on earth coincided with these points should not cause any difficulty.

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¹McDougall, Heather. “The Pagan Roots of Easter.” TheGuardian.uk. 3 Apr. 2010. Web. 04 Apr. 2010. <http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/apr/03/easter-pagan-symbolism>.

²Carlson, Royce. “The Pagan Origins of Easter.” Zenzibar.com. 1 Apr. 2001. Web. 4 Apr. 2010. <http://www.zenzibar.com/articles/easter.asp)>.