A History Of God Part 4

He also had an effect on Judaism. The Spanish philosopher Joseph ibn Saddiq (d. 1143) used Ibn Sina's proof of the existence of G.o.d but was careful to make the point that G.o.d was not simply another being -one of the things that 'exist' in our usual sense of the word. If we claimed to understand G.o.d that would mean that he was finite and imperfect. The most exact statement that we can make about G.o.d is that he is incomprehensible, utterly transcending our natural intellectual powers. We can speak about G.o.d's activity in the world in positive terms but not about G.o.d's essence (al-Dhat) which will always elude us. The Toledan physician Judah Halevi (1085-1141) followed al-Ghazzali closely. G.o.d could not be proven rationally; that did not mean that faith in G.o.d was irrational but simply that a logical demonstration of his existence had no religious value. It could tell us very little: there was no way of establishing beyond reasonable doubt how such a remote and impersonal G.o.d could have created this imperfect material world or whether he related to the world in any meaningful way. When the philosophers claim that they became united to the divine Intelligence that informs the cosmos through the exercise of reason, they are deluding themselves. The only people who had any direct knowledge of G.o.d were the prophets, who had had nothing to do with Falsafah.

Halevi did not understand philosophy as well as al-Ghazzali but he agreed that the only reliable knowledge of G.o.d was by religious experience. Like al-Ghazzali, he also postulated a special religious faculty but claimed that it was the prerogative of the Jews alone. He tried to soften this by suggesting that the goyim could come to a knowledge of G.o.d through the natural law, but the purpose of The Kuzari, his great philosophical work, was to justify the unique position of Israel among the nations. Like the Rabbis of the Talmud, Halevi believed that any Jew could acquire the prophetic spirit by careful observance of the mitzvot. The G.o.d he would encounter was not an objective fact whose existence could be demonstrated scientifically but an essentially subjective experience. He could even be seen as an extension of the Jew's 'natural' self: This Divine principle waits, as it were, for him to whom it is meet that it should attach itself, so that it should become his G.o.d, as was the case with the prophets and saints ... It is just as the soul which waits for its entry into the foetus until the latter's vital powers are sufficiently completed to enable it to receive this higher state of things. It is in just the same way as Nature itself waits for a temperate climate, in order that she might exert her effort upon the soil and produce vegetation.' {6} {6} G.o.d is not an alien, intrusive reality, therefore, nor is the Jew an autonomous being sealed off from the divine. G.o.d can be seen - yet again - as the completion of humanity, the fulfilment of a man or woman's potential; furthermore, the 'G.o.d' he encounters is uniquely his own, an idea that we shall explore in more depth in the following chapter. Halevi is careful to distinguish the G.o.d that Jews are able to experience from the essence of G.o.d himself. When prophets and saints claim to have experienced 'G.o.d', they have not known him as he is in himself but only in the divine activities within him that are a sort of afterglow of the transcendent, inaccessible reality.

Falsafah was not entirely dead as a result of al-Ghazzali's polemic, however. In Cordova a distinguished Muslim philosopher attempted to revive it and to argue that it was the highest form of religion. Abu al-Walid ibn Ahmad ibn Rushd (1126-1198), known in Europe as Averroes, became an authority in the West among both Jews and Christians. During the thirteenth century he was translated into Hebrew and Latin and his commentaries on Aristotle had an immense influence on such distinguished theologians as Maimonides, Thomas Aquinas and Albert the Great. In the nineteenth century, Ernest Renan would hail him as a free spirit, the champion of rationalism against blind faith. In the Islamic world, however, Ibn Rushd was a more marginal figure. In his career and his posthumous effect, we can see a parting of the ways between East and West in their approach to and conception of G.o.d. Ibn Rushd pa.s.sionately disapproved of al-Ghazzali's condemnation of Falsafah and the way he had discussed these esoteric matters openly.

Unlike his predecessors al-Farabi and Ibn Sina, he was a Qadi, a jurist of the Shariah law, as well as a philosopher. The ulema had always been suspicious of Falsafah and its fundamentally different G.o.d but Ibn Rushd had managed to unite Aristotle with a more traditional Islamic piety. He was convinced that there was no contradiction whatsoever between religion and rationalism. Both expressed the same truth in different ways; both looked towards the same G.o.d. Not everybody was capable of philosophical thought, however, so Falsafah was only for an intellectual elite. It would confuse the ma.s.ses and lead them into an error that imperiled their eternal salvation. Hence the importance of the esoteric tradition, which kept these dangerous doctrines from those unfitted to receive them. It was just the same with Sufism and the batini studies of the Ismailis; if unsuitable people attempted these mental disciplines they could become seriously ill and develop all kinds of psychological disorders. Kalam was equally dangerous. It fell short of true Falsafah and gave people the misleading idea that they were engaged in a proper rational discussion when they were not. Consequently it merely stirred up fruitless doctrinal disputes, which could only weaken the faith of uneducated people and make them anxious.

Ibn Rushd believed that the acceptance of certain truths was essential to salvation - a novel view in the Islamic world. The Faylasufs were the chief authorities on doctrine: they alone were capable of interpreting the scriptures and were the people described in the Koran as 'deeply rooted in knowledge.' {7} Everybody else should take the Koran at face value and read it literally but the Faylasuf could attempt a symbolic exegesis. But even the Faylasufs had to subscribe to the 'creed' of obligatory doctrines, which Ibn Rushd listed as follows: - 1. The existence of G.o.d as Creator and Sustainer of the world.

- 2. The Unity of G.o.d.

- 3. The attributes of knowledge, power, will, hearing, seeing and speech, which are given to G.o.d throughout the Koran.

- 4. The uniqueness and incomparability of G.o.d, clearly a.s.serted in Koran 42:9: 'There is nothing like unto him.'

- 5. The creation of the world by G.o.d.

- 6. The validity of prophecy.

- 7. The justice of G.o.d.

- 8. The resurrection of the body on the Last Day.' {18} These doctrines about G.o.d must be accepted in toto, as the Koran is quite unambiguous about them. Falsafah had not always subscribed to belief in the creation of the world, for example, so it is not clear how such Koranic doctrines should be understood. Although the Koran says unequivocally that G.o.d has created the world, it does not say how he did this or whether the world was created at a particular moment in time. This left the Faylasuf free to adopt the belief of the rationalists. Again, the Koran says that G.o.d has such attributes as knowledge but we do not know exactly what this means because our concept of knowledge is necessarily human and inadequate. The Koran does not necessarily contradict the philosophers, therefore, when it says that G.o.d knows everything that we do.

In the Islamic world, mysticism was so important that Ibn Rushd's conception of G.o.d, based as it was on a strictly rationalist theology, had little influence. Ibn Rushd was a revered but secondary figure in Islam but he became very important indeed in the West, which discovered Aristotle through him and developed a more rationalistic conception of G.o.d. Most Western Christians had a very limited knowledge of Islamic culture and were ignorant of philosophical developments after Ibn Rushd. Hence it is often a.s.sumed that the career of Ibn Rushd marked the end of Islamic philosophy. In fact during Ibn Rushd's lifetime, two distinguished philosophers who would both be extremely influential in the Islamic world were writing in Iraq and Iran. Yahya Suhrawardi and Muid ad-Din ibn al-Arabi followed in the footsteps of Ibn Sina rather than Ibn Rushd and attempted to fuse philosophy with mystical spirituality. We shall consider their work in the next chapter.

Ibn Rushd's great disciple in the Jewish world was the great Talmudist and philosopher Rabbi Moses ibn Maimon (i 135-1204), who is usually known as Maimonides. Like Ibn Rushd, Maimonides was a native of Cordova, the capital of Muslim Spain, where there was a growing consensus that some kind of philosophy was essential for a deeper understanding of G.o.d. Maimonides was forced to flee Spain, however, when it fell prey to the fanatical Berber sect of the Almoravids which persecuted the Jewish community. This painful collision with medieval fundamentalism did not make Maimonides hostile to Islam as a whole. He and his parents settled in Egypt, where he held high office in the government and even became the physician of the sultan. There, too, he wrote his famous treatise The Guide for the Perplexed, which argued that the Jewish faith was not an arbitrary set of doctrines but was based on sound rational principles. Like Ibn Rushd, Maimonides believed that Falsafah was the most advanced form of religious knowledge and the royal road to G.o.d, which must not be revealed to the ma.s.ses but should remain the preserve of a philosophical elite. Unlike Ibn Rushd, however, he did believe that the ordinary people could be taught to interpret the scriptures symbolically, so as not to acquire an anthropomorphic view of G.o.d. He also believed that certain doctrines were necessary for salvation and published a creed of thirteen articles that was markedly similar to Ibn Rushd's: - 1. The existence of G.o.d.

- 2. The unity of G.o.d.

- 3. The incorporeality of G.o.d.

- 4. The eternity of G.o.d.

- 5. The prohibition of idolatry.

- 6. The validity of prophecy.

- 7. Moses was the greatest of the prophets.

- 8. The divine origin of truth.

- 9. The eternal validity of the Torah.

- 10. G.o.d knows the deeds of men.

- 11. He judges them accordingly.

- 12. He will send a Messiah.

- 13. The resurrection of the dead. {19}

This was an innovation in Judaism and never became entirely accepted. As in Islam, the notion of orthodoxy (as opposed to orthopraxy) was alien to the Jewish religious experience. The creeds of Ibn Rushd and Maimonides suggest that a rationalistic and intellectualist approach to religion leads to dogmatism and to an identification of 'faith' with 'correct belief.

Yet Maimonides was careful to maintain that G.o.d was essentially incomprehensible and inaccessible to human reason. He proves G.o.d's existence by means of the arguments of Aristotle and Ibn Sina but insisted that G.o.d remains ineffable and indescribable because of his absolute simplicity. The prophets themselves had used parables and taught us that it was only possible to talk about G.o.d in any meaningful or extensive way in symbolic, allusive language. We know that G.o.d cannot be compared to any of the things that exist. It is better, therefore, to use negative terminology when we attempt to describe him. Instead of saying that 'he exists', we should deny his non-existence and so on. As with the Ismailis, the use of the negative language was a discipline that would enhance our appreciation of G.o.d's transcendence, reminding us that the reality was quite distinct from any idea that we poor humans can conceive of him. We cannot even say that G.o.d is 'good' because he is far more than anything that we can mean by 'goodness'. This is a way of excluding our imperfections from G.o.d, preventing us from projecting our hopes and desires on to him. That would create a G.o.d in our own image and likeness. We can, however, use the Via Negativa to form some positive notions of G.o.d. Thus, when we say that G.o.d is 'not impotent' (instead of saying that he is powerful), it follows logically that G.o.d must be able to act. Since G.o.d is 'not imperfect' his actions must also be perfect. When we say that G.o.d is 'not ignorant' (meaning that he is wise), we can deduce that he is perfectly wise and fully informed. This kind of deduction can only be made about G.o.d's activities, not about his essence which remains beyond the reach of our intellect.

When it came to a choice between the G.o.d of the Bible and the G.o.d of the philosophers, Maimonides always chose the former. Even though the doctrine of the creation ex nihilo was philosophically unorthodox, Maimonides adhered to the traditional biblical doctrine and jettisoned the philosophic idea of emanation. As he pointed out, neither creation ex nihilo nor emanation could be proven definitively by reason alone. Again, he considered prophecy to be superior to philosophy. Both the prophet and the philosopher spoke about the same G.o.d but the prophet had to be imaginatively as well as intellectually gifted. He had a direct, intuitive knowledge of G.o.d which was higher than the knowledge achieved by discursive reasoning. Maimonides seems to have been something of a mystic himself. He speaks of the trembling excitement that accompanied this kind of intuitive experience of G.o.d, an emotion 'consequent upon the perfection of the imaginative faculties'. {20} Despite Maimonides's emphasis on rationality, he maintained that the highest knowledge of G.o.d derived more from the imagination than from the intellect alone.

His ideas spread among the Jews of Southern France and Spain, so that by the beginning of the fourteenth century, there was what amounted to a Jewish philosophical enlightenment in the area. Some of these Jewish Faylasufs were more vigorously rationalistic than Maimonides. Thus Levi ben Gerson (1288-1344) of Bagnols in Southern France denied that G.o.d had knowledge of mundane affairs. His was the G.o.d of the philosophers not the G.o.d of the Bible. Inevitably a reaction set in. Some Jews turned to mysticism and developed the esoteric discipline of Kabbalah, as we shall see. Others recoiled from philosophy when tragedy struck, finding that the remote G.o.d of Falsafah was unable to console them. During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the Christian Wars of Reconquest began to push back the frontiers of Islam in Spain and brought the anti-Semitism of Western Europe to the peninsula. Eventually this would culminate in the destruction of Spanish Jewry and during the sixteenth century the Jews turned away from Falsafah and developed an entirely new conception of G.o.d that was inspired by mythology rather than scientific logic.

The crusading religion of Western Christendom had separated it from the other monotheistic traditions. The First Crusade of 1096-99 had been the first co-operative act of the new West, a sign that Europe was beginning to recover from the long period of barbarism known as the Dark Ages. The new Rome, backed by the Christian nations of Northern Europe, was fighting its way back on to the international scene. But the Christianity of the Angles, the Saxons and the Franks was rudimentary. They were aggressive and martial people and they wanted an aggressive religion. During the eleventh century, the Benedictine monks of the Abbey of Cluny and its affiliated houses had tried to tether their martial spirit to the church and teach them true Christian values by means of such devotional practices as the pilgrimage.

The first crusaders had seen their expedition to the Near East as a pilgrimage to the Holy Land but they still had a very primitive conception of G.o.d and of religion. Soldier saints like St George, St Mercury and St Demetrius figured more than G.o.d in their piety and, in practice, differed little from pagan deities. Jesus was seen as the feudal lord of the crusaders rather than as the incarnate Logos: he had summoned his knights to recover his patrimony - the Holy Land -from the infidel. As they began their journey, some of the crusaders resolved to avenge his death by slaughtering the Jewish communities along the Rhine Valley. This had not been part of Pope Urban II's original idea when he had summoned the crusade, but it seemed simply perverse to many of the crusaders to march three thousand miles to fight the Muslims, about whom they knew next to nothing, when the people who had - or so they thought - actually killed Christ were alive and well on their very doorsteps. During the long terrible march to Jerusalem, when the crusaders narrowly escaped extinction, they could only account for their survival by a.s.suming that they must be G.o.d's Chosen People who enjoyed his special protection. He was leading them to the Holy Land as he had once led the ancient Israelites. In practical terms, their G.o.d was still the primitive tribal deity of the early books of the Bible. When they finally conquered Jerusalem in the summer of 1099, they fell on the Jewish and Muslim inhabitants of the city with the zeal of Joshua and ma.s.sacred them with a brutality that shocked even their own contemporaries.

Thenceforth Christians in Europe regarded Jews and Muslims as the enemies of G.o.d; for a long time they had also felt a deep antagonism towards the Greek Orthodox Christians of Byzantium, who made them feel barbarous and inferior. {21} This had not always been the case. During the ninth century, some of the more educated Christians of the West had been inspired by Greek theology. Thus the Celtic philosopher Duns Scotus Erigena (810-877), who left his native Ireland to work in the court of Charles the Bold, King of the West Franks, had translated many of the Greek fathers of the Church into Latin for the benefit of Western Christians, in particular the works of Denys the Areopagite. He pa.s.sionately believed that faith and reason were not mutually exclusive. Like the Jewish and Muslim Faylasufs, he saw philosophy as the royal road to G.o.d. Plato and Aristotle were the masters of those who demanded a rational account of the Christian religion. Scripture and the writings of the Fathers could be illuminated by the disciplines of logic and rational inquiry but that did not mean a literal interpretation: some pa.s.sages of scripture had to be interpreted symbolically because, as he explained in his Exposition of Denys's Celestial Hierarchy, theology was 'a kind of poetry'. {22} Erigena used the dialectical method of Denys in his own discussion of G.o.d, who could only be explained by a paradox that reminded us of the limitations of our human understanding. Both the positive and the negative approaches to G.o.d were valid. G.o.d was incomprehensible: even the angels do not know or understand his essential nature but it was acceptable to make a positive statement, such as 'G.o.d is wise', because when we refer it to G.o.d we know that we are not using the word 'wise' in the usual way. We remind ourselves of this by going on to make a negative statement, saying 'G.o.d is not wise'. The paradox forces us to move on to Denys's third way of talking about G.o.d, when we conclude: 'G.o.d is more than wise.' This was what the Greeks called an apophatic statement because we do not understand what 'more than wise' can possibly mean. Again, this was not simply a verbal trick but a discipline that by juxtaposing two mutually exclusive statements helps us to cultivate a sense of the mystery that our word 'G.o.d' represents, since it can never be confined to a merely human concept.

When he applied this method to the statement 'G.o.d exists', Erigena arrived, as usual, at the synthesis: 'G.o.d is more than existence.' G.o.d does not exist like the things he has created and is not just an-other being existing alongside them, as Denys had pointed out. Again, this was an incomprehensible statement, because, Erigena comments, 'what that is which is more than "being" it does not reveal. For it says that G.o.d is not one of the things that are, but that he is more than the things that are, but what that "is" is, it in no way defines'. {23} In fact, G.o.d is 'Nothing'. Erigena knew that this sounded shocking and he warned his reader not to be afraid. His method was devised to remind us that G.o.d is not an object; he does not possess 'being' in any sense that we can comprehend. G.o.d is 'He who is more than being' (aliquo modo superesse). {24} His mode of existence is as different from ours as our being is from an animal's and an animal's from a rock. But if G.o.d is 'Nothing' he is also 'Everything': because this 'super-existence' means that G.o.d alone has true being, he is the essence of everything that partakes of this. Every one of his creatures, therefore, is a theophany, a sign of G.o.d's presence. Erigena's Celtic piety - encapsulated in St Patrick's famous prayer: 'G.o.d be in my head and in my understanding' - led him to emphasise the immanence of G.o.d. Man, who in the Neoplatonic scheme sums up the whole of creation in himself, is the most complete of these theophanies and, like Augustine, Erigena taught that we can discover a trinity within ourselves, albeit in a gla.s.s darkly.

In Erigena's paradoxical theology, G.o.d is both Everything and Nothing, the two terms balance one another and are held in a creative tension to suggest the mystery which our word 'G.o.d' can only symbolise. Thus when he replies to a student who had asked him what Denys had meant when he had called G.o.d Nothing, Erigena replies that the divine Goodness was incomprehensible because it was 'super essential' - that is, more than Goodness itself- and 'supernatural'. So while it is contemplated in itself [it] neither is, nor was, nor shall be, for it is understood to be none of the things that exist because it surpa.s.ses all things but when by a certain ineffable descent into the things that are, it is beheld by the mind's eye, it alone is found to be in all things, and it is and was and shall be. {25} {25} When, therefore, we consider the divine reality in itself, 'it is not unreasonably called "Nothing" ', but when this divine Void decides to proceed 'out of Nothing into Something', every single creature it informs 'can be called a theophany, that is, a divine apparition'. {26} We cannot see G.o.d as he is in himself since this G.o.d to all intents and Purposes does not exist. We only see the G.o.d which animates the created world and reveals himself in flowers, birds, trees and other human beings. There are problems in this approach. What about evil?

Is this, as Hindus maintain, also a manifestation of G.o.d in the world? Erigena does not attempt to deal with the problem of evil in sufficient depth but Jewish Kabbalists would later attempt to locate evil within G.o.d: they also developed a theology that described G.o.d proceeding from Nothingness to become Something in a way that is remarkably similar to Erigena's account, though it is highly unlikely that any of the Kabbalists had read him.

Erigena showed that the Latins had much to learn from the Greeks but in 1054 Eastern and Western Churches broke off relations in a schism which has turned out to be permanent - though at the time n.o.body had intended this. The conflict had a political dimension, which I shall not discuss, but it also centered on a dispute about the Trinity. In 796 a synod of Western bishops had met at Frejus in southern France and had inserted an extra clause into the Nicene Creed. This stated that the Holy Spirit proceeded not only from the Father but also from the Son (filioque). The Latin bishops wanted to emphasise the equality of the Father and the Son, since some of their flock harboured Arian views. Making the Spirit proceed from both the Father and the Son, they thought, would stress their equal status. Even though Charlemagne, soon to become Emperor of the West, had absolutely no understanding of the theological issues, he approved the new clause. The Greeks, however, condemned it. Yet the Latins held firm and insisted that their own Fathers had taught this doctrine. Thus St Augustine had seen the Holy Spirit as the principle of unity in the Trinity, maintaining that he was the love between Father and Son. It was, therefore, correct to say that the Spirit had proceeded from them both and the new clause stressed the essential unity of the three persons.

But the Greeks had always distrusted Augustine's Trinitarian theology, because it was too anthropomorphic. Where the West began with the notion of G.o.d's unity and then considered the three persons within that unity, the Greeks had always started with the three Hypostases and declared that G.o.d's unity - his essence - was beyond our ken. They thought that the Latins made the Trinity too comprehensible and they also suspected that the Latin language was not able to express these Trinitarian ideas with sufficient precision.

The filioque clause over-emphasised the unity of the three persons and, the Greeks argued, instead of hinting at the essential incomprehensibility of G.o.d, the addition made the Trinity too rational. It made G.o.d one with three aspects or modes of being. In fact there was nothing heretical about the Latin a.s.sertion, even though it did not suit the Greeks' apophatic spirituality. The conflict could have been patched up if there had been a will for peace but tension between East and West escalated during the crusades, especially when the fourth crusaders sacked the Byzantine capital of Constantinople in 1204 and fatally wounded the Greek empire. What the filioque rift had revealed was that the Greeks and Latins were evolving quite different conceptions of G.o.d. The Trinity had never been as central to Western spirituality as it has remained for the Greeks. The Greeks felt that by emphasising the unity of G.o.d in this way, the West was identifying G.o.d himself with a 'simple essence' that could be defined and discussed, like the G.o.d of the philosophers. {27} In later chapters we shall see that Western Christians were frequently uneasy about the doctrine of the Trinity and that, during the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, many would drop it altogether. To all intents and purposes, many Western Christians are not really Trinitarians. They complain that the doctrine of Three Persons in One G.o.d is incomprehensible, not realising that for the Greeks that was the whole point.

After the schism, Greeks and Latins took divergent paths. In Greek Orthodoxy, theologia, the study of G.o.d, remained precisely that. It was confined to the contemplation of G.o.d in the essentially mystical doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation. They would find the idea of a 'theology of grace' or a 'theology of the family' contradictions in terms: they were not particularly interested in theoretical discussions and definitions of secondary issues. The West, however, was increasingly concerned to define these questions and to form a correct opinion that was binding on everybody.

The Reformation, for example, divided Christendom into yet more warring camps because Catholics and Protestants could not agree on the mechanics of how salvation happened and exactly what the Eucharist was. Western Christians continually challenged the Greeks to give their opinion on these contentious issues but the Greeks lagged behind and, if they did reply, their answer frequently sounded rather cobbled together. They had become distrustful of rationalism, finding it an inappropriate tool for the discussion of a G.o.d who must elude concepts and logic. Metaphysics was acceptable in secular studies but increasingly Greeks felt that it could endanger the faith. It appealed to the more talkative, busy part of the mind, whereas their theoria was not an intellectual opinion but a disciplined silence before the G.o.d who could only be known by means of religious and mystical experience. In 1082, the philosopher and humanist John halos was tried for heresy because of his excessive use of philosophy and his Neoplatonic conception of creation. This deliberate withdrawal from philosophy happened shortly before al-Ghazzali had his breakdown in Baghdad and quit Kalam in order to become a Sufi.

It is, therefore, rather poignant and ironic that Western Christians should have begun to get down to Falsafah at the precise moment when Greeks and Muslims were starting to lose faith in it. Plato and Aristotle had not been available in Latin during the Dark Ages, so inevitably the West had been left behind. The discovery of philosophy was stimulating and exciting. The eleventh century theologian Anselm of Canterbury, whose views on the Incarnation we discussed in Chapter Four, seemed to think that it was possible to prove anything. His G.o.d was not Nothing but the highest being of all. Even the unbeliever could form an idea of a supreme being, which was 'one nature, highest of all the things that are, alone sufficient unto itself in eternal beat.i.tude'. {28} Yet he also insisted that G.o.d could only be known in faith. This is not as paradoxical as it might appear. In his famous prayer, Anselm reflected on the words of Isaiah: 'Unless you have faith, you will not understand.': I yearn to understand some measure of thy truth which my heart believes and loves. For I do not seek to understand in order to have faith but I have faith in order to understand (credo ut intellegam). For I believe even this: I shall not understand unless I have faith. {29} {29} The oft-quoted credo ut intellegam is not an intellectual abdication. Anselm was not claiming to embrace the creed blindly in the hope of it making sense some day. His a.s.sertion should really be translated: 'I commit myself in order that I may understand.' At this time, the word credo still did not have the intellectual bias of the word 'belief today but meant an att.i.tude of trust and loyalty. It is important to note that even in the first flush of Western rationalism, the religious experience of G.o.d remained primary, coming before discussion or logical understanding.

Nevertheless, like the Muslim and Jewish Faylasufs, Anselm believed that the existence of G.o.d could be argued rationally and he devised his own proof, which is usually called the 'ontological' argument. Anselm defined G.o.d as 'something than which nothing greater can be thought' (aliquid quo nihil mains cogitari possti). {30} Since this implied that G.o.d could be an object of thought, the implication was that he could be conceived and comprehended by the human mind. Anselm argued that this Something must exist. Since existence is more 'perfect' or complete than non-existence, the perfect being that we imagine must have existence or it would be imperfect. Anselm's proof was ingenious and effective in a world dominated by Platonic thought, where ideas were believed to point to eternal archetypes. It is unlikely to convince a sceptic today. As the Jesuit theologian John Macquarrie has remarked, you may imagine that you have 100 but unfortunately that will not make the money a reality in your pocket. {31} Anselm's G.o.d was Being, therefore, not the Nothing described by Denys and Erigena. He was willing to speak about G.o.d in far more positive terms than most of the previous Faylasufs. He did not propose the discipline of a Via Negativa but seemed to think it possible to arrive at a fairly adequate idea of G.o.d by means of natural reason, which was precisely what had always troubled the Greeks about the Western theology. Once he had proved G.o.d's existence to his satisfaction, Anselm set out to demonstrate the doctrines of the Incarnation and the Trinity which the Greeks had always insisted defied reason and conceptualisation. In his treatise Why G.o.d Became Man, which we considered in Chapter Four, he relies on logic and rational thought more than revelation - his quotations from the Bible and the Fathers seem purely incidental to the thrust of his argument which, as we saw, ascribed essentially human motivation to G.o.d. He was not the only Western Christian to try to explain the mystery of G.o.d in rational terms. His contemporary Peter Abelard (1079-1147), the charismatic philosopher of Paris, had also evolved an explanation of the Trinity which emphasised the divine unity somewhat at the expense of the distinction of the Three Persons. He also developed a sophisticated and moving rationale for the mystery of the atonement: Christ had been crucified to awaken compa.s.sion in us and by doing so he became our Saviour.

Abelard was primarily a philosopher, however, and his theology was usually rather conventional. He had become a leading figure in the intellectual revival in Europe during the twelfth century and had acquired a huge following. This had brought him into conflict with Bernard, the charismatic Abbot of the Cistercian Abbey of Clairvaux in Burgundy, who was arguably the most powerful man in Europe. Pope Eugene II and King Louis VII of France were both in his pocket and his eloquence had inspired a monastic revolution in Europe: scores of young men had left their homes to follow him into the Cistercian order, which sought to reform the old Cluniac form of Benedictine religious life. When Bernard preached the Second Crusade in 1146, the people of France and Germany - who had previously been somewhat apathetic about the expedition - almost tore him to pieces in their enthusiasm, flocking to join the army in such numbers that, Bernard complacently wrote to the Pope, the countryside seemed deserted.

Bernard was an intelligent man, who had given the rather external piety of Western Europe a new interior dimension. Cistercian piety seems to have influenced the legend of the Holy Grail which describes a spiritual journey to a symbolic city that is not of this world but which represents the vision of G.o.d. Bernard heartily distrusted the intellectualism of scholars like Abelard, however, and vowed to silence him. He accused Abelard of 'attempting to bring the merit of the Christian faith to naught because he supposes that by human reason he can comprehend all that is G.o.d'. {32} Referring to St Paul's hymn to charity, Bernard claimed that the philosopher was lacking in Christian love: 'he sees nothing as an enigma, nothing as in a mirror, but looks on everything face to face.' {33} Love and the exercise of reason, therefore, were incompatible. In 1141 he summoned Abelard to appear before the Council of Sens, which he packed with his own supporters, some of whom stood outside to intimidate Abelard when he arrived. That was not difficult to do since, by this time, Abelard had probably developed Parkinson's Disease. Bernard attacked him with such eloquence that he simply collapsed and died the following year.

It was a symbolic moment, which marked a split between mind and heart. In the Trinitarianism of Augustine, heart and mind had been inseparable. Muslim Faylasufs such as Ibn Sina and al-Ghazzali may have decided that the intellect alone could not find G.o.d but they had both eventually envisaged a philosophy which was informed by the ideal of love and by the disciplines of mysticism. We shall see that during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the major thinkers of the Islamic world attempted to fuse mind and heart and saw philosophy as inseparable from the spirituality of love and imagination promoted by the Sufis. Bernard, however, seemed afraid of the intellect and wanted to keep it separate from the more emotional, intuitive parts of the mind. This was dangerous: it could lead to an unhealthy dissociation of sensibility that was in its own way just as worrying as an arid rationalism. The crusade preached by Bernard was a disaster partly because it relied on an idealism untempered by common sense and which was in flagrant denial of the Christian ethos of compa.s.sion. {34} Thus Bernard's treatment of Abelard was conspicuously lacking in charity and he had urged the crusaders to show their love for Christ by killing the infidel and driving them out of the Holy Land. Bernard was right to fear a rationalism that attempted to explain the mystery of G.o.d and threatened to dilute the religious sense of awe and wonder, but unbridled subjectivity that fails to examine its prejudice critically can lead to the worst excesses of religion. What was required was an informed and intelligent subjectivity not an emotionalism of 'love' which represses the intellect violently and abandons the compa.s.sion which was supposed to be the hallmark of the religion of G.o.d.

Few thinkers have made such a lasting contribution to Western Christianity as Thomas Aquinas (1225-74) who attempted a synthesis of Augustine and the Greek philosophy which had recently been made available in the West. During the twelfth century, European scholars had flocked to Spain, where they encountered Muslim scholarship. With the help of Muslim and Jewish intellectuals they undertook a vast translation project to bring this intellectual wealth to the West. Arabic translations of Plato, Aristotle and the other philosophers of the ancient world were now translated into Latin and became available to the people of Northern Europe for the first time. The translators also worked on more recent Muslim scholarship, including the work of Ibn Rushd as well as the discoveries of Arab scientists and physicians. At the same time as some European Christians were bent on the destruction of Islam in the Near East, Muslims in Spain were helping the West to build up its own civilisation.

The Summa Theologiae of Thomas Aquinas was an attempt to integrate the new philosophy with the Western Christian tradition. Aquinas had been particularly impressed by Ibn Rushd's explication of Aristotle. Yet unlike Anselm and Abelard he did not believe that such mysteries as the Trinity could be proved by reason and distinguished carefully between the ineffable reality of G.o.d and human doctrines about him. He agreed with Denys that G.o.d's real nature was inaccessible to the human mind: 'Hence in the last resort all that man knows of G.o.d is to know that he does not know him, since he knows that what G.o.d is surpa.s.ses all that we can understand of him.' {35} There is a story that when he had dictated the last sentence of the Summa, Aquinas had laid his head sadly into his arms. When the scribe asked him what was the matter, he replied that everything that he had written was straw compared with what he had seen.

Aquinas's attempt to set his religious experience in the context of the new philosophy was necessary in order to articulate faith with other reality and not relegate it to an isolated sphere of its own. Excessive intellectualism is damaging to the faith but if G.o.d is not to become an indulgent endors.e.m.e.nt of our own egotism, religious experience must be informed by an accurate a.s.sessment of its content. Aquinas defined G.o.d by returning to G.o.d's own definition of himself to Moses: 'I am What I Am.' Aristotle had said that G.o.d was Necessary Being; Aquinas accordingly linked the G.o.d of the philosophers with the G.o.d of the Bible by calling G.o.d 'He Who Is' (Qui est). {36} He made it absolutely clear that G.o.d was not simply an-other being like ourselves, however. The definition of G.o.d as Being Itself was appropriate 'because it does not signify any particular form [of being] but rather being itself (esse seipsum)'. {31} It would be incorrect to blame Aquinas for the rationalistic view of G.o.d that later prevailed in the West.

Unfortunately, however, Aquinas gives the impression that G.o.d can be discussed in the same way as other philosophical ideas or natural phenomena by prefacing his discussion of G.o.d with a demonstration of his existence from natural philosophy. This suggests that we can get to know G.o.d in much the same way as other mundane realities. He lists five 'proofs' for G.o.d's existence that would become immensely important in the Catholic world and would also be used by Protestants: 1. Aristotle's argument for a Prime Mover.

2. A similar 'proof which maintains that there cannot be an infinite series of causes: there must have been a beginning.

3. The argument from contingency, propounded by Ibn Sina, which demands the existence of a 'Necessary Being'.

4. Aristotle's argument from the Philosophy that the hierarchy of excellence in this world implies a Perfection that is the best of all.

5. The argument from design, which maintains that the order and purpose that we see in the universe cannot simply be the result of chance.

These proofs do not hold water today. Even from a religious point of view, they are rather dubious, since, with the possible exception of the argument from design, each proof tacitly implies that 'G.o.d' is simply an-other being, one more link in the chain of existence. He is the Supreme Being, the Necessary Being, the Most Perfect Being. Now it is true that the use of such terms as 'First Cause' or 'Necessary Being' implies that G.o.d cannot be anything like the beings we know but rather their ground or the condition for their existence. This was certainly Aquinas's intention. Nevertheless readers of the Summa have not always made this important distinction and have talked about G.o.d as if he were simply the Highest Being of all. This is reductive and can make tins Super Being an idol, created in our own image and easily turned into a celestial Super Ego. It is probably not inaccurate to suggest that many people in the West regard G.o.d as a Being in this way.

It was important to try to link G.o.d with the new vogue for Aristotelianism in Europe. The Faylasufs had also been anxious that the idea of G.o.d should keep abreast of the times and not be relegated to an archaic ghetto. In each generation, the idea and experience of G.o.d would have to be created anew. Most Muslims, however, had - so to speak - voted with their feet and decided that Aristotle did not have much to contribute to the study of G.o.d, though he was immensely useful in other spheres, such as natural science. We have seen that Aristotle's discussion of the nature of G.o.d had been dubbed meta ta physica ('After the Physics') by the editor of his work: his G.o.d had simply been a continuation of physical reality rather than a reality of a totally different order. In the Muslim world, therefore, most future discussion of G.o.d blended philosophy with mysticism. Reason alone could not reach a religious understanding of the reality we call 'G.o.d' but religious experience needed to be informed by the critical intelligence and discipline of philosophy if it were not to become messy, indulgent - or even dangerous - emotion.

Aquinas's Franciscan contemporary Bonaventure (1221-74) had much the same vision. He also tried to articulate philosophy with religious experience to the mutual enrichment of both spheres. In The Threefold Way, he had followed Augustine in seeing 'trinities' everywhere in creation and took this 'natural trinitarianism' as his starting point in The Journey of the Mind to G.o.d. He genuinely believed that the Trinity could be proved by unaided natural reason but avoided the dangers of rationalist chauvinism by stressing the importance of spiritual experience as an essential component of the idea of G.o.d. He took Francis of a.s.sisi, the founder of his order, as the great exemplar of the Christian life. By looking at the events of his life, a theologian such as himself could find evidence for the doctrines of the Church. The Tuscan poet Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) would also find that a fellow human being - in Dante's case the Florentine woman Beatrice Portinari - could be an epiphany of the divine. This personalistic approach to G.o.d looked back to St Augustine.

Bonaventure also applied Anselm's Ontological Proof for the existence of G.o.d to his discussion of Francis as an epiphany. He argued that Francis had achieved an excellence in this life that seemed more than human, so it was possible for us, while still living here below, to 'see and understand that the "best" is ... that than which nothing better can be imagined'. {38} The very fact that we could form such a concept as 'the best' proved that it must exist in the Supreme Perfection of G.o.d. If we entered into ourselves, as Plato and Augustine had both advised, we would find G.o.d's image reflected 'in our own inner world'. {39} This introspection was essential. It was, of course, important to take part in the liturgy of the Church but the Christian must first descend into the depths of his own self, where he would be 'transported in ecstasy above the intellect' and find a vision of G.o.d that transcended our limited human notions. {40} Both Bonaventure and Aquinas had seen the religious experience as primary. They had been faithful to the tradition of Falsafah, since in both Judaism and Islam, philosophers had often been mystics who were acutely conscious of the limitations of the intellect in theological matters. They had evolved rational proofs of G.o.d's existence to articulate their religious faith with their scientific studies and to link it with other more ordinary experiences. They did not personally doubt G.o.d's existence and many were well aware of the limitations of their achievement. These proofs were not designed to convince unbelievers, since there were as yet no atheists in our modern sense. This natural theology was, therefore, not a prelude to religious experience but an accompaniment: the Faylasufs did not believe that you had to convince yourself of G.o.d's existence rationally before you could have a mystical experience. If anything, it was the other way round. In the Jewish, Muslim and Greek Orthodox worlds, the G.o.d of the philosophers was being rapidly overtaken by the G.o.d of the mystics.

7 - The G.o.d of the Mystics.

Judaism, Christianity and - to a lesser extent - Islam have all developed the idea of a personal G.o.d, so we tend to think that this ideal represents religion at its best. The personal G.o.d has helped monotheists to value the sacred and inalienable rights of the individual and to cultivate an appreciation of human personality. The Judaeo-Christian tradition has thus helped the West to acquire the liberal humanism it values so highly. These values were originally enshrined in a personal G.o.d who does everything that a human being does: he loves, judges, punishes, sees, hears, creates and destroys as we do. Yahweh began as a highly personalised deity with pa.s.sionate human likes and dislikes. Later he became a symbol of transcendence, whose thoughts were not our thoughts and whose ways soared above our own as the heavens tower above the earth. The personal G.o.d reflects an important religious insight: that no supreme value can be less than human. Thus personalism has been an important and - for many - an indispensable stage of religious and moral development. The prophets of Israel attributed their own emotions and pa.s.sions to G.o.d; Buddhists and Hindus had to include a personal devotion to avatars of the supreme reality. Christianity made a human person the centre of the religious life in a way that was unique in the history of religion: it took the personalism inherent in Judaism to an extreme. It may be that without some degree of this kind of identification and empathy, religion cannot take root.

Yet a personal G.o.d can become a grave liability. He can be a mere idol carved in our own image, a projection of our limited needs, fears and desires. We can a.s.sume that he loves what we love and hates what we hate, endorsing our prejudices instead of compelling us to transcend them. When he seems to fail to prevent a catastrophe or even to desire a tragedy, he can seem callous and cruel. A facile belief that a disaster is the will of G.o.d can make us accept things that are fundamentally unacceptable. The very fact that, as a person, G.o.d has a gender is also limiting: it means that the s.e.xuality of half the human race is sacralised at the expense of the female and can lead to a neurotic and inadequate imbalance in human s.e.xual mores. A personal G.o.d can be dangerous, therefore. Instead of pulling us beyond our limitations, 'he' can encourage us to remain complacently within them; 'he' can make us as cruel, callous, self-satisfied and partial as 'he' seems to be. Instead of inspiring the compa.s.sion that should characterise all advanced religion, 'he' can encourage us to judge, condemn and marginalise. It seems, therefore, that the idea of a personal G.o.d can only be a stage in our religious development. The world religions all seem to have recognised this danger and have sought to transcend the personal conception of supreme reality.

It is possible to read the Jewish scriptures as the story of the refinement and, later, of the abandonment of the tribal and personalised Yahweh who became YHWH. Christianity, arguably the most personalised religion of the three monotheistic faiths, tried to quality the cult of G.o.d incarnate by introducing the doctrine of the transpersonal Trinity. Muslims very soon had problems with those pa.s.sages in the Koran which implied that G.o.d 'sees', 'hears' and 'judges' like human beings. All three of the monotheistic religions developed a mystical tradition, which made their G.o.d transcend the personal category and become more similar to the impersonal realities of nirvana and Brahman-Atman. Only a few people are capable of true mysticism, but in all three faiths (with the exception of Western Christianity) it was the G.o.d experienced by the mystics which eventually became normative among the faithful, until relatively recently.

Historical monotheism was not originally mystical. We have noted the difference between the experience of a contemplative such as the Buddha and the prophets. Judaism, Christianity and Islam are all essentially active faiths, devoted to ensuring that G.o.d's will is done on earth as it is in heaven. The central motif of these prophetic religions is confrontation or a personal meeting between G.o.d and humanity. This G.o.d is experienced as an imperative to action; he calls us to himself; gives us the choice of rejecting or accepting his love and concern. This G.o.d relates to human beings by means of a dialogue rather than silent contemplation. He utters a Word, which becomes the chief focus of devotion and which has to be painfully incarnated in the flawed and tragic conditions of earthly life. In Christianity, the most personalised of the three, the relationship with G.o.d is characterised by love. But the point of love is that the ego has, in some sense, to be annihilated. In either dialogue or love, egotism is a perpetual possibility. Language itself can be a limiting faculty since it embeds us in the concepts of our mundane experience.

The prophets had declared war on mythology: their G.o.d was active in history and in current political events rather than in the primordial, sacred time of myth. When monotheists turned to mysticism, however, mythology rea.s.serted itself as the chief vehicle of religious experience. There is a linguistic connection between the three words 'myth', 'mysticism' and 'mystery'. All are derived from the Greek verb musteion: to close the eyes or the mouth. All three words, therefore, are rooted in an experience of darkness and silence.' They are not popular words in the West today. The word 'myth', for example, is often used as a synonym for a lie: in popular parlance, a myth is something that is not true. A politician or a film star will dismiss scurrilous reports of their activities by saying that they are 'myths' and scholars will refer to mistaken views of the past as 'mythical'. Since the Enlightenment, a 'mystery' has been seen as something that needs to be cleared up. It is frequently a.s.sociated with muddled thinking. In the United States, a detective story is called a 'mystery' and it is of the essence of this genre that the problem be solved satisfactorily. We shall see that even religious people came to regard 'mystery' as a bad word during the Enlightenment. Similarly 'mysticism' is frequently a.s.sociated with cranks, charlatans or indulgent hippies. Since the West has never been very enthusiastic about mysticism, even during its heyday in other parts of the world, there is little understanding of the intelligence and discipline that is essential to this type of spirituality.

Yet there are signs that the tide may be turning. Since the 1960s Western people have been discovering the benefits of certain types of Yoga and religions such as Buddhism, which have the advantage of being uncontaminated by an inadequate theism, have enjoyed a great flowering in Europe and the United States. The work of the late American scholar Joseph Campbell on mythology has enjoyed a recent vogue. The current enthusiasm for psychoa.n.a.lysis in the West can be seen as a desire for some kind of mysticism, for we shall find arresting similarities between the two disciplines. Mythology has often been an attempt to explain the inner world of the psyche and both Freud and Jung turned instinctively to ancient myths, such as the Greek story of Oedipus, to explain their new science. It may be that people in the West are feeling the need for an alternative to a purely scientific view of the world.

Mystical religion is more immediate and tends to be more help in time of trouble than a predominantly cerebral faith. The disciplines of mysticism help the adept to return to the One, the primordial beginning, and to cultivate a constant sense of presence. Yet the early Jewish mysticism that developed during the second and third centuries, which was very difficult for Jews, seemed to emphasise the gulf between G.o.d and man. Jews wanted to turn away from a world in which they were persecuted and marginalised to a more powerful divine realm. They imagined G.o.d as a mighty king who could only be approached in a perilous journey through the seven heavens. Instead of expressing themselves in the simple direct style of the Rabbis, the mystics used sonorous, grandiloquent language. The Rabbis hated this spirituality and the mystics were anxious not to antagonise them. Yet this 'Throne Mysticism', as it was called, must have fulfilled an important need since it continued to flourish alongside the great rabbinic academies until it was finally incorporated into Kabbalah, the new Jewish mysticism, during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The cla.s.sic texts of Throne Mysticism, which were edited in Babylon in the fifth and sixth centuries, suggest that the mystics, who were reticent about their experiences, felt a strong affinity with rabbinic tradition, since they make such great tannaim as Rabbi Akiva, Rabbi Ishmael and Rabbi Yohannan the heroes of this spirituality. They revealed a new extremity in the Jewish spirit, as they blazed a new trail to G.o.d on behalf of their people.

The Rabbis had had some remarkable religious experiences, as we have seen. On the occasion when the Holy Spirit descended upon Rabbi Yohannan and his disciples in the form of fire from heaven, they had apparently been discussing the meaning of Ezekiel's strange vision of G.o.d's chariot. The chariot and the mysterious figure that Ezekiel had glimpsed sitting upon its throne seem to have been the subject of early esoteric speculation. The Study of the Chariot (Ma'aseh Merkavah) was often linked to speculation about the meaning of the creation story (Ma'aseh Beres.h.i.t). The earliest account we have of the mystical ascent to G.o.d's throne in the highest heavens emphasised the immense perils of this spiritual journey: Our Rabbis taught: Four entered an orchard and these are they: Ben Azzai, Ben Zoma, Aher and Rabbi Akiva. Rabbi Akiva said to them: 'When you reach the stones of pure marble, do not say "Water! water!" For it is said: "He that speaketh falsehood shall not be established before mine eyes" ' Ben Azzai gazed and died. Of him, Scripture says: 'Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints.' Ben Zoma gazed and was stricken. Of him Scripture says: 'Hast thou found honey? Eat as much as is sufficient for thee, lest thou be filled therewith, and vomit it.' Aher cut the roots [that is, became a heretic]. Rabbi Akiva departed in peace. {2} {2} Only Rabbi Akiva was mature enough to survive the mystical way unscathed. A journey to the depths of the mind involves great personal risks because we may not be able to endure what we find there. That is why all religions have insisted that the mystical journey can only be undertaken under the guidance of an expert, who can monitor the experience, guide the novice past the perilous places and make sure that he is not exceeding his strength, like poor Ben Azzai who died and Ben Zoma, who went mad. All mystics stress the need for intelligence and mental stability. Zen masters say that it is useless for a neurotic person to seek a cure in meditation for that will only make him sicker. The strange and outlandish behaviour of some European Catholic saints who were revered as mystics must be regarded as aberrations. This cryptic story of the Talmudic sages shows that Jews had been aware of the dangers from the very beginning: later, they would not let young people become initiated into the disciplines of Kabbalah until they were fully mature. A mystic also had to be married, to ensure that he was in good s.e.xual health.

The mystic had to journey to the Throne of G.o.d through the mythological realm of the seven heavens. Yet this was only an imaginary flight. It was never taken literally but always seen as a symbolic ascent through the mysterious regions of the mind. Rabbi Akiva's strange warning about the 'stones of pure marble' may refer to the pa.s.sword that the mystic had to utter at various crucial points in his imaginary journey. These images were visualised as part of an elaborate discipline. Today we know that the unconscious is a teeming ma.s.s of imagery that surfaces in dreams, in hallucinations and in aberrant psychic or neurological conditions such as epilepsy or schizophrenia. Jewish mystics did not imagine that they were 'really' flying through the sky or entering G.o.d's palace but were marshalling the religious images that filled their minds in a controlled and ordered way. This demanded great skill and a certain disposition and training. It required the same kind of concentration as the disciplines of Zen or Yoga, which also help the adept to find his way through the labyrinthine paths of the psyche. The Babylonian sage Hai Gaon (939-1038) explained the story of the four sages by means of contemporary mystical practice. The 'orchard' refers to the mystical ascent of the soul to the 'Heavenly Halls' (hekhalot) of G.o.d's palace. A man who wishes to make this imaginary, interior journey must be 'worthy' and 'blessed with certain qualities' if he wishes 'to gaze at the heavenly chariot and the halls of the angels on high'. It will not happen spontaneously. He has to perform certain exercises that are similar to those practised by Yogis and contemplatives all the world over: He must fast for a specified number of days, he must place his head between his knees whispering softly to himself the while certain praises of G.o.d with his face towards the ground. As a result he will gaze in the innermost recesses of his heart and it will seem as if he saw the seven halls with his own eyes, moving from hall to hall to observe that which is therein to be found. {3} {3} Although the earliest texts of this Throne Mysticism only date back to the second or third centuries, this kind of contemplation was probably older. Thus St Paul refers to a friend 'who belonged to the Messiah' who had been caught up to the third heaven some fourteen years earlier. Paul was not sure how to interpret this vision but believed that the man 'was caught up into paradise and heard things which must not and cannot be put into human language'. {4} The visions are not ends in themselves but means to an ineffable religious experience that exceeds normal concepts. They will be conditioned by the particular religious tradition of the mystic. A Jewish visionary will see visions of the seven heavens because his religious imagination is stocked with these particular symbols. Buddhists see various images of Buddhas and bodhisattvas; Christians visualise the Virgin Mary. It is a mistake for the visionary to see these mental apparitions as objective or as anything more than a symbol of transcendence. Since hallucination is often a pathological state, considerable skill and mental balance is required to handle and interpret the symbols that emerge during the course of concentrated meditation and inner reflection.

One of the strangest and most controversial of these early Jewish visions is found in the Shiur Qomah (The Measurement of the Height), a fifth-century text which describes the figure that Ezekiel had seen on G.o.d's throne. The Shiur Qomah calls this being Yozrenu, the Creator. Its peculiar description of this vision of G.o.d is probably based on a pa.s.sage from the Song of Songs, which was Rabbi Akiva's favourite biblical text. The Bride describes her Lover: My beloved is fresh and ruddy, to be known among ten thousand.

His head is golden, purest gold, his locks are palm fronds and black as the raven.

His eyes are doves at a pool of water, bathed in milk, at rest on a pool; his cheeks are beds of spices, banks sweetly scented.

His lips are lilies, distilling pure myrrh, His hands are golden, rounded, set with jewels of Tarshish.

His belly a block of ivory covered with sapphires.

His legs are alabaster columns. {5} {5} Some saw this as a description of G.o.d: to the consternation of generations of Jews, the Shiur Qomah proceeded to measure each one of G.o.d's limbs listed here. In this strange text, the measurements of G.o.d are baffling. The mind cannot cope. The 'parasang' - the basic unit - is equivalent to 180 billion 'fingers' and each 'finger' stretches from one end of the earth to the other. These ma.s.sive dimensions boggle the mind, which gives up trying to follow them or even to conceive a figure of such size. That is the point. The Shiur is trying to tell us that it is impossible to measure G.o.d or contain him in human terms. The mere attempt to do so demonstrates the impossibility of the project and gives us a new experience of G.o.d's transcendence. Not surprisingly many Jews have found this odd attempt to measure the wholly spiritual G.o.d blasphemous. That is why an esoteric text such as the Shiur was kept hidden from the unwary. Seen in context, the Shiur Qomah would give to those adepts who were prepared to approach it in the right way, under the guidance of their spiritual director, a new insight into the transcendence of a G.o.d which exceeds all human categories. It is certainly not meant to be taken literally; it certainly conveys no secret information. It is a deliberate evocation of a mood that created a sense of wonder and awe.

The Shiur introduces us to two essential ingredients in the mystical portrait of G.o.d, which are common in all three faiths. First, it is essentially imaginative; secondly, it is ineffable. The figure described in the Shiur is the image of G.o.d whom the mystics see sitting enthroned at the end of their ascent. There is absolutely nothing tender, loving or personal about this G.o.d; indeed his holiness seems alienating. When they see him, however, the mystical heroes burst into songs which give very little information about G.o.d but which leave an immense impression: A quality of holiness, a quality of power, a fearful quality, a dreaded quality, a quality of awe, a quality of dismay, a quality of terror -Such is the quality of the garment of the Creator, Adonai, G.o.d of Israel, who, crowned, comes to the thone of his glory; His garment is engraved inside and outside and entirely covered with YHWH, YHWH. No eyes are able to behold it, neither the eyes of flesh and blood, nor the eyes of his servants. {6} {6} If we cannot imagine what Yahweh's cloak is like, how can we think to behold G.o.d himself?

Perhaps the most famous of the early Jewish mystical texts is the fifth-century Sefer Yezirah (The Book of Creation). There is no attempt to describe the creative process realistically; the account is unashamedly symbolic and shows G.o.d creating the world by means of language as though he were writing a book. But language has been entirely transformed and the message of creation is no longer clear. Each letter of the Hebrew alphabet is given a numerical value; by combining the letters with the sacred numbers, rearranging them in endless configurations, the mystic weaned his mind away from the normal connotations of words. The purpose was to bypa.s.s the intellect and remind Jews that no words or concepts could represent the reality to which the Name pointed. Again, the experience of pushing language to its limits and making it yield a non-linguistic significance, created a sense of the otherness of G.o.d. Mystics did not want a straightforward dialogue with a G.o.d whom they experienced as an overwhelming holiness rather than a sympathetic friend and father.

Throne Mysticism was not un