A History Of God Part 6

In the West Christians were slower to develop a mystical tradition. They had fallen behind the monotheists in the Byzantine and Islamic empires and were perhaps not ready for this new development. During the fourteenth century, however, there was a veritable explosion of mystical religion, especially in Northern Europe. Germany in particular produced a flock of mystics: Meister Eckhart (1260-1327), John Tauler (1300-61), Gertrude the Great (1256-1302), and Henry Suso (1295-1306). England also made a significant contribution to this Western development and produced four great mystics who quickly attracted a following on the continent as well as in their own country: Richard Rolle of Hampole (1290-1349), the unknown author of The Cloud of Unknowing, Walter Hilton (d.1346) and Dame Julian of Norwich (c. 1342-1416). Some of these mystics were more advanced than others. Richard Rolle, for example, seems to have got trapped in the cultivation of exotic sensations and his spirituality was sometimes characterised by a certain egotism. But the greatest of them discovered for themselves many of the insights already achieved by the Greeks, Sufis and Kabbalists.

Meister Eckhart, for example, who greatly influenced Tauler and Suso, was himself influenced by Denys the Areopagite and Maimonides. A Dominican friar, he was a brilliant intellectual and lectured on Aristotelian philosophy at the University of Paris. In 1325, however, his mystical teaching brought him into conflict with his bishop, the Archbishop of Cologne, who arraigned him for heresy: he was charged with denying the goodness of G.o.d, with claiming that G.o.d himself was born in the soul and of preaching the eternity of the world. Yet even some of Eckhart's severest critics believed that he was orthodox: the mistake lay in interpreting some of his remarks literally instead of symbolically, as intended. Eckhart was a poet, who thoroughly enjoyed paradox and metaphor. While he believed that it was rational to believe in G.o.d, he denied that reason alone could form any adequate conception of the divine nature: 'The proof of a knowable thing is made either to the senses or the intellect,' he argued, 'but as regards the knowledge of G.o.d there can be neither a demonstration from sensory perception, since He is incorporeal, nor from the intellect, since He lacks any form known to us.' {59} G.o.d was not another being whose existence could be proved like any normal object of thought.

G.o.d, Eckhart declared, was Nothing. {60} This did not mean that he was an illusion but that G.o.d enjoyed a richer, fuller type of existence than that known to us. He also called G.o.d 'darkness', not to denote the absence of light but to indicate the presence of something brighter. Eckhart also distinguished between the 'G.o.dhead', which was best described in negative terms, such as 'desert', 'wilderness', 'darkness' and 'nothing', and the G.o.d who is known to us as Father, Son and Spirit. {61} As a Westerner, Eckhart liked to use Augustine's a.n.a.logy of the Trinity in the human mind and implied that even though the doctrine of the Trinity could not be known by reason, it was only the intellect which perceived G.o.d as Three persons: once the mystic had achieved union with G.o.d, he or she saw him as One. The Greeks would not have liked this idea but Eckhart would have agreed with them that the Trinity was essentially a mystical doctrine. He liked to talk about the Father engendering the Son in the soul, rather as Mary had conceived Christ in the womb. Rumi had also seen the Virgin Birth of the Prophet Jesus as a symbol for the birth of the soul in the heart of the mystic. It was, Eckhart insisted, an allegory of the cooperation of the soul with G.o.d.

G.o.d could only be known by mystical experience. It was better to speak of him in negative terminology, as Maimonides had suggested. Indeed, we had to purify our conception of G.o.d, getting rid of our ridiculous preconceptions and anthropomorphic imagery. We should even avoid using the term 'G.o.d' itself. This is what he meant when he said: 'Man's last and highest parting is when, for G.o.d's sake, he takes leave of G.o.d.' {62} It would be a painful process. Since G.o.d was Nothing, we had to be prepared to be no-thing too in order to become one with him. In a process similar to that 'fana described by the Sufis, Eckhart spoke of 'detachment' or, rather, 'separateness' (Abgeschieden) {63} In much the same way as a Muslim considers the veneration of anything other than G.o.d himself as idolatry (shirk), Eckhart taught that the mystic must refuse to be enslaved by any finite ideas about the divine. Only thus would he achieve ident.i.ty with G.o.d, whereby 'G.o.d's existence must be my existence and G.o.d's Is-ness (Istigkeit) is my is-ness'. {64} Since G.o.d was the ground of being, there was no need to seek him 'out there' or envisage an ascent to something beyond the world we knew.

Al-Hallaj had antagonised the ulema by crying: 'I am the Truth' and Eckhart's mystical doctrine shocked the bishops of Germany: what did it mean to say that a mere man or woman could become one with G.o.d? During the fourteenth century, Greek theologians debated this question furiously. Since G.o.d was essentially inaccessible, how could he communicate himself to mankind? If there was a distinction between G.o.d's essence and his 'activities' or 'energies', as the Fathers had taught, surely it was blasphemous to compare the 'G.o.d' that a Christian encountered in prayer with G.o.d himself? Gregory Palamas, Archbishop of Saloniki, taught that, paradoxical as it might seem, any Christian could enjoy such a direct knowledge of G.o.d himself. True, G.o.d's essence is always beyond our comprehension, but his 'energies' were not distinct from G.o.d and should not be considered as a mere divine afterglow. A Jewish mystic would have agreed: G.o.d En Sof would always remain shrouded in impenetrable darkness but his sefiroth (which corresponded to the Greeks' 'energies') were themselves divine, flowing eternally from the heart of the G.o.dhead. Sometimes men and women could see or experience these 'energies' directly, as when the Bible said that G.o.d's 'glory' had appeared. n.o.body had ever seen G.o.d's essence, but that did not mean that a direct experience of G.o.d himself was impossible. The fact that this a.s.sertion was paradoxical did not distress Palamas in the least. It had long been agreed by the Greeks that any statement about G.o.d had to be a paradox. Only thus could people retain a sense of his mystery and ineffability. Palamas put it this way: We attain to partic.i.p.ation in the divine nature, and yet at the same time it remains totally inaccessible. We need to affirm both at the same time and to preserve the antimony as a criterion for right doctrine. {65} {65} There was nothing new in Palamas's doctrine: it had been outlined during the eleventh century by Symeon the New Theologian. But Palamas was challenged by Barlaam the Calabrian, who had studied in Italy and been strongly influenced by the rationalistic Aristotelianism of Thomas Aquinas. He opposed the traditional Greek distinction between G.o.d's 'essence' and his 'energies', accusing Palamas of splitting G.o.d into two separate parts. Barlaam proposed a definition of G.o.d that went back to the ancient Greek rationalists and emphasised his absolute simplicity. Greek philosophers like Aristotle who, Barlaam claimed, had been specially enlightened by G.o.d, taught that G.o.d was unknowable and remote from the world. It was not possible, therefore, for men and women to 'see' G.o.d: human beings could only sense his influence indirectly in scripture or the wonders of creation. Barlaam was condemned by a Council of the Orthodox Church in 1341 but was supported by other monks who had also been influenced by Aquinas. Basically this had become a conflict between the G.o.d of the mystics and the G.o.d of the philosophers. Barlaam and his supporters Gregory Akindynos (who liked to quote the Greek version of the Summa Theologiae), Nicephoras Gregoras and the Thomist Prochoros Cydones had all become alienated from the apophatic theology of Byzantium with its stress on silence, paradox and mystery. They preferred the more positive theology of Western Europe, which defined G.o.d as Being rather than as Nothing. Against the mysterious deity of Denys, Symeon and Palamas, they set up a G.o.d about which it was possible to make statements.

The Greeks had always distrusted this tendency in Western thought and, in the face of this infiltration of rationalistic Latin ideas, Palamas rea.s.serted the paradoxical theology of Eastern Orthodoxy. G.o.d must not be reduced to a concept that could be expressed by a human word. He agreed with Barlaam that G.o.d was unknowable but insisted that he had nonetheless been experienced by men and women. The light that had transfigured the humanity of Jesus on Mount Tabor was not G.o.d's essence, which no Tian had seen, but was in some mysterious way G.o.d himself. The liturgy which, according to Greek theology, enshrined orthodox opinion, proclaimed that on Tabor: 'We have seen the Father as light and the Spirit as light.' It had been a revelation of 'what we once were and what we are to be' when, like Christ, we become deified. {66} Again, what we 'saw' when we contemplated G.o.d in this life was not a subst.i.tute for G.o.d but was somehow G.o.d himself. Of course this was a contradiction but the Christian G.o.d was a paradox: antimony and silence represented the only correct posture before the mystery that we called 'G.o.d' - not a philosophical hubris which tried to iron out the difficulties.

Barlaam had tried to make the concept of G.o.d too consistent: in his view, either G.o.d was to be identified with his essence or he was not. He had tried, as it were, to confine G.o.d to his essence and say that it was impossible for him to be present outside it in his 'energies'. But that was to think about G.o.d as though he were any other phenomenon and was based on purely human notions of what was or was not possible. Palamas insisted that the vision of G.o.d was a mutual ecstasy: men and women transcend themselves but G.o.d also underwent the ecstasy of transcendence by going beyond 'himself in order to make himself known to his creatures: 'G.o.d also comes out of himself and becomes united with our minds by condescension.' {67} The victory of Palamas, whose theology remained normative in Orthodox Christianity, over the Greek rationalists of the fourteenth century represents a wider triumph for mysticism in all three monotheistic religions. Since the eleventh century, Muslim philosophers had come to the conclusion that reason - which was indispensable for such studies as medicine or science - was quite inadequate when it came to the study of G.o.d. To rely on reason alone was like attempting to eat soup with a fork.

The G.o.d of the Sufis had gained ascendancy over the G.o.d of the philosophers in most parts of the Islamic empire. In the next chapter we shall see that the G.o.d of the Kabbalists became dominant in Jewish spirituality during the sixteenth century. Mysticism was able to penetrate the mind more deeply than the more cerebral or legalistic types of religion. Its G.o.d could address more primitive hopes, fears and anxieties before which the remote G.o.d of the philosophers was impotent. By the fourteenth century the West had launched its own mystical religion and made a very promising start. But mysticism in the West would never become as widespread as in the other traditions. In England, Germany and the Lowlands, which had produced such distinguished mystics, the Protestant Reformers of the sixteenth century decried this unbiblical spirituality. In the Roman Catholic Church, leading mystics like St Teresa of Avila were often threatened by the Inquisition of the Counter-Reformation. As a result of the Reformation, Europe began to see G.o.d in still more rationalistic terms.

8 - A G.o.d for Reformers.

The fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were decisive for all the people of G.o.d. It was a particularly crucial period for the Christian West, which had not only succeeded in catching up with the other cultures of the Oik.u.mene but was about to overtake them. These centuries saw the Italian Renaissance, which quickly spread to Northern Europe, the discovery of the New World and the beginning of the scientific revolution which would have fateful consequences for the rest of the world. By the end of the sixteenth century, the West was about to create an entirely different kind of culture. It was, therefore, a time of transition and, as such, characterised by anxiety as well as achievement. This was evident in the Western conception of G.o.d at this time. Despite their secular success, people in Europe were more concerned about their faith than ever before. The laity were especially dissatisfied with the medieval forms of religion that no longer answered their needs in the brave new world. Great reformers gave voice to this disquiet and discovered new ways of considering G.o.d and salvation. This split Europe into two warring camps - Catholic and Protestant -which have never entirely lost their hatred and suspicion of one another. During the Reformation, Catholic and Protestant reformers urged the faithful to rid themselves of peripheral devotion to saints and angels and to concentrate on G.o.d alone. Indeed, Europe seemed obsessed by G.o.d. Yet by the beginning of the seventeenth century, some were fantasising about 'atheism'. Did this mean that they were ready to get rid of G.o.d?

It was also a period of crisis for Greeks, Jews and Muslims. In 1453 the Ottoman Turks conquered the Christian capital of Constantinople and destroyed the empire of Byzantium. Henceforth the Christians of Russia would continue the traditions and spirituality developed by the Greeks. In January 1492, the year of Christopher Columbus's discovery of the New World, Ferdinand and Isabella conquered Granada in Spain, the last Muslim stronghold in Europe: later Muslims would be expelled from the Iberian peninsula which had been their home for 800 years. The destruction of Muslim Spain was fatal for the Jews. In March 1492, a few weeks after the conquest of Granada, the Christian monarchs gave Spanish Jews the choice of baptism or expulsion. Many of the Spanish Jews were so attached to their home that they became Christians, though some continued to practise their faith in secret: like the Moriscos, the converts from Islam, these Jewish converts were then hounded by the Inquisition because they were suspected of heresy. Some 150,000 Jews refused baptism, however, and were forcibly deported from Spain: they took refuge in Turkey, the Balkans and North Africa. The Muslims of Spain had given Jews the best home they had ever had in the diaspora, so the annihilation of Spanish Jewry was mourned by Jews throughout the world as the greatest disaster to have befallen their people since the destruction of the Temple in CE 70. The experience of exile entered more deeply into the Jewish religious consciousness than ever before: it led to a new form of Kabbalah and the evolution of a new conception of G.o.d.

These were also complex years for Muslims in other parts of the world. The centuries which had succeeded the Mongol invasions led -perhaps inevitably - to a new conservatism, as people tried to recover what had been lost. In the fifteenth century, the Sunni ulema of the Madrasas, the schools of Islamic studies, decreed that 'the gates of ijtihad (independent reasoning) had been closed'. Henceforth Muslims should practise 'emulation' (taqlid) of the great luminaries of the past, especially in the study of Shariah, the Holy Law. It was unlikely that there would be innovative ideas about G.o.d in this conservative climate or, indeed, anything else. Yet it would be mistaken to date this period as the beginning of a decadence in Islam, as Western Europeans have often suggested. As Marshall G. S. Hodgson points out in The Venture of Islam, Conscience and History in a World Civilisation, we simply do not know enough about this period to make such sweeping generalisations. It would be wrong, for example, to a.s.sume that there was a slackening in Muslim science at this time, as we have insufficient evidence, one way or the other.

The conservative tendency had surfaced during the fourteenth century in champions of the Shariah like Ahmad ibn Taymiyah of Damascus (d.1327) and his pupil Ibn al-Qayin al-Jawziyah. Ibn Taymiyah, who was dearly loved by the people, wanted to extend the Shariah to enable it to apply to all the circ.u.mstances in which Muslims were likely to find themselves. This was not meant to be a repressive discipline: he wanted to shed obsolete rules to make the Shariah more relevant and to a.s.suage the anxiety of Muslims during these difficult times. The Shariah should provide them with a clear, logical answer to their practical religious problems. But in his zeal for Shariah, Ibn Taymiyah attacked Kalam, Falsafah and even Asherism. Like any reformer, he wanted to go back to the sources - to the Koran and the hadith (on which the Shariah had been based) - and to shed all later accretions: 'I have examined all the theological and philosophical methods and found them incapable of curing any ills or of quenching any thirst. For me the best method is that of the Koran.' {1} His pupil al-Jawziyah added Sufism to this list of innovations, advocating a literalist interpretation of scripture and condemning the cult of Sufi saints in a spirit that was not entirely dissimilar to that of the later Protestant Reformers in Europe. Like Luther and Calvin, Ibn Taymiyah and al-Jawziyah were not regarded by their contemporaries as backward-looking: they were seen as progressives, who wanted to lighten the burden of their people. Hodgson warns us not to dismiss the so-called conservatism of this period as 'stagnation'. He points out that no society before our own could either afford or envisage progress on the scale that we now enjoy. {2} Western scholars have often chided the Muslims of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries for failing to take account of the Italian Renaissance. True, this was one of the great cultural florescences of history but it did not exceed or differ much from that of the Sung dynasty in China, for example, which had been an inspiration to Muslims during the twelfth century. The Renaissance was crucial to the West but n.o.body could have foreseen the birth of the modern-technical age, which, with hindsight, we can see that it foreshadowed. If Muslims were under-whelmed by this Western Renaissance, this did not necessarily reveal an irredeemable cultural inadequacy. Muslims were, not surprisingly, more concerned with their own not inconsiderable achievements during the fifteenth century.

In fact Islam was still the greatest world power during this period and the West was fearfully aware that it was now on the very threshold of Europe. During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, three new Muslim empires were founded: by the Ottoman Turks in Asia Minor and Eastern Europe, by the Safavids in Iran and by the Moghuls in India. These new ventures show that the Islamic spirit was by no means moribund but could still provide Muslims with the inspiration to rise again to new success after catastrophe and disintegration. Each of the empires achieved its own remarkable cultural florescence: the Safavid renaissance in Iran and central Asia was interestingly similar to the Italian Renaissance: both expressed themselves pre-eminently in painting and felt that they were returning creatively to the pagan roots of their culture. Despite the power and magnificence of these three empires, however, what has been called the conservative spirit still prevailed. Where earlier mystics and philosophers like al-Farabi and Ibn al-Arabi had been conscious of breaking new ground, this period saw a subtle and delicate restatement of old themes. This makes it more difficult for Westerners to appreciate, because our own scholars have ignored these more modern Islamic ventures for too long and also because the philosophers and poets expect the minds of their readers to be stocked with the images and ideas of the past.

There were parallels with contemporary Western developments, however. A new type of Twelver Shiism had become the state religion m Iran under the Safavids and this marks the beginning of a hostility between the Shiah and the Sunnah which was unprecedented. Hitherto Shiis had had much in common with the more intellectual or mystical Sunnis. But during the sixteenth century, the two formed rival camps that were unhappily similar to the sectarian wars in Europe at this time. Shah Ismail, the founder of the Safavid dynasty, had come to power in Azerbaijan in 1503 and had extended his power into western Iran and Iraq. He was determined to wipe out Sunnism and forced the Shiah on his subjects with a ruthlessness rarely attempted before. He saw himself as the Imam of his generation. This movement had similarities with the Protestant reformation in Europe: both had their roots in traditions of protest, both were against the aristocracy and a.s.sociated with the establishment of royal governments. The reformed Shiis abolished the Sufi tariqas in their territories in a way that recalls the Protestant dissolution of the monasteries. Not surprisingly, they inspired a similar intransigence among the Sunnis of the Ottoman Empire, who suppressed the Shiah in their territories. Seeing themselves on the front line of the latest holy war against the crusading West, the Ottomans also cultivated a new intransigence towards their Christian subjects. It would, however, be a mistake to see the whole of the Iranian establishment as fanatical. The Shii ulema of Iran looked askance at this reformed Shiah: unlike their Sunni counterparts, they refused to 'close the gates of ijtihad' and insisted on their right to interpret Islam independently of the Shahs. They refused to accept the Safavi - and later the Qajar - dynasty as the successor of the Imams. Instead they allied themselves with the people against the rulers and became the champions of the ummah against royal oppression in Isfahan and, later, Teheran. They developed a tradition of upholding the rights of the merchants and of the poor against the encroachments of the Shahs and it was this that enabled them to mobilise the people against Shah Muhammad Reza Pahlavi's corrupt regime in 1979.

The Shiis of Iran also developed their own Falsafah, which continued the mystical traditions of Suhrawardi. Mir Dimad (d.i631), the founder of this Shii Falsafah, was a scientist as well as a theologian. He identified the divine Light with the enlightenment of such symbolic figures as Muhammad and the Imams. Like Suhra- wardi, he emphasised the unconscious, psychological element of religious experience. The supreme exponent of this Iranian school, however, was Mir Dimad's disciple Sadr al-Din Shirazi, who is usually known as Mulla Sadra (1571-1640). Many Muslims today regard him as the most profound of all the Islamic thinkers, claiming that his work epitomises the fusion of metaphysics and spirituality that had come to characterise Muslim philosophy. He is only just becoming known in the West, however, and at the time of writing only one of his many treatises has been translated into English.

Like Suhrawardi, Mulla Sadra believed that knowledge was not simply a matter of acquiring information but a process of transformation. The olam al-mithal described by Suhrawardi was crucial to his thought: he himself saw dreams and visions as the highest form of truth. Iranian Shiism was, therefore, still continuing to see mysticism as the most appropriate tool for the discovery of G.o.d rather than pure science and metaphysics. Mulla Sadra taught that the imitatio dei, the approximation of G.o.d, was the goal of philosophy and could not be confined to any one creed or faith. As Ibn Sina had demonstrated, G.o.d, the supreme reality, alone had true existence (wujud) and this single reality informs the whole chain of being from the divine realm to the dust. Mulla Sadra was not a pantheist. He simply saw G.o.d as the source of all things that exist: the beings that we see and experience are only vessels that contain the divine Light in a limited form. Yet G.o.d also transcends mundane reality. The unity of all being does not mean that G.o.d alone exists but is similar to the unity of the sun with the beams of light that radiate from it. Like Ibn al-Arabi, Mulla Sadra distinguished between G.o.d's essence or 'the Blindness' and its various manifestations. His vision is not dissimilar to that of the Greek hesychasts and the Kabbalists. He saw the whole cosmos radiating from the Blindness to form a 'single jewel' with many layers which can also be said to correspond to the gradations of G.o.d's unfolding self-revelation in his attributes or 'signs' (ayat). They also represent the stages of humanity's return to the Source of being.

Union with G.o.d was not reserved for the next world. Like some of the hesychasts, Mulla Sadra believed that it could be realised in this life by means of knowledge. Needless to say, he did not mean cerebral, rational knowledge alone: in his ascent to G.o.d the mystic had to travel through the dam al-mithal, the realm of vision and imagination. G.o.d is not a reality that can be known objectively but will be found within the image-making faculty of each individual Muslim. When the Koran or the hadith speak of Paradise, h.e.l.l or the throne of G.o.d, they are not referring to a reality that was in a separate location but to an inner world, hidden beneath the veils of sensible phenomena: Everything to which man aspires, everything he desires, is instantaneously present to him, or rather one should say: to picture his desire is itself to experience the real presence of its object. But the sweetness and delight are the expression of Paradise and h.e.l.l, good and evil, all that can reach man of what const.i.tutes his retribution in the world beyond, have no other source than the essential 'P of man himself, formed as it is by his intentions and projects, his innermost beliefs, his conduct. {3} {3} Like Ibn al-Arabi, whom he greatly revered, Mulla Sadra did not envisage G.o.d sitting in another world, an external, objective heaven to which all the faithful would repair after death. Heaven and the divine sphere were to be discovered within the self, in the personal alam al-mithal which was the inalienable possession of every single human being. No two people would have exactly the same heaven or the same G.o.d.

Mulla Sadra, who venerated Sunni, Sufi and Greek philosophers as well as the Shiite Imams, reminds us that Iranian Shiism was not always exclusive and fanatical. In India, many of the Muslims had cultivated a similar tolerance towards other traditions. Although Islam predominated culturally in Moghul India, Hinduism remained vital and creative and some Muslims and Hindus co-operated in the arts and in intellectual projects. The subcontinent had long been free of religious intolerance and during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the most creative forms of Hinduism stressed the unity of religious aspiration: all paths were valid, provided that they stressed an interior love for the One G.o.d. This clearly resonated with both Sufism and Falsafah, which were the most dominant Islamic moods in India. Some Muslims and Hindus formed inter-faith societies, the most important of which became Sikhism, founded by Guru Namak during the fifteenth century. This new form of monotheism believed that al-Lah was identical with the G.o.d of Hinduism. On the Muslim side, the Iranian scholar Mir Abu al-Qasim Findiriski (d.1641), the contemporary of Mir Dimad and Mulla Sadra, taught the works of Ibn Sina in Isfahan but also spent a good deal of time in India studying Hinduism and Yoga. It would be difficult to imagine a Roman Catholic expert on Thomas Aquinas at this time showing a similar enthusiasm for a religion that was not even in the Abrahamic tradition.

This spirit of tolerance and co-operation was strikingly demonstrated in the policies of Akbar, the third Moghul emperor, who reigned from 1560 to 1605 and who respected all faiths. Out of sensitivity to the Hindus, he became a vegetarian, gave up hunting - a sport he greatly enjoyed - and forbade the sacrifice of animals on his birthday or in the Hindu holy places. In 1575 he founded a House of Worship, where scholars from all religions could meet to discuss G.o.d. Here, apparently, the Jesuit missionaries from Europe were the most aggressive. He founded his own Sufi order, dedicated to 'divine monotheism' (tawhid-e-ilahi), which proclaimed a radical belief in the one G.o.d who could reveal himself in any rightly-guided religion. Akbar's own life was eulogised by Abulfazl Allami (1551-1602) in his Akbar-Namah (The Book of Akbar), which attempted to apply the principles of Sufism to the history of civilisation. Allami saw Akbar as the ideal ruler of Falsafah and the Perfect Man of his time. Civilisation could lead to universal peace when a generous, liberal society was created by a ruler like Akbar who made bigotry impossible. Islam in its original sense of 'surrender' to G.o.d could be achieved by any faith: what he certainly called 'Muhammad's religion' did not have the monopoly of G.o.d. Not all Muslims shared the vision of Akbar, however, and many saw him as a danger to the faith. His tolerant policy could only be sustained while the Moghuls were in a position of strength. When their power began to decline and various groups began to revolt against the Moghul rulers, religious conflicts escalated between Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs.

The emperor Aurengzebe (1618-1707) may have believed that unity could be restored by greater discipline within the Muslim camp: he enacted legislation to put a stop to various laxities like wine-drinking, made co-operation with Hindus impossible, reduced the number of Hindu festivals and doubled the taxes of Hindu merchants. The most spectacular expression of his communalist policies was the widespread destruction of Hindu temples. These policies, which had completely reversed the tolerant approach of Akbar, were abandoned after Aurengzebe's death but the Moghul empire never recovered from the destructive bigotry he had unleashed and sanctified in the name of G.o.d.

One of Akbar's most vigorous opponents during his lifetime had been the outstanding scholar Sheikh Ahmad Sirhindi (1563-1625) who was also a Sufi and, like Akbar, was venerated as the Perfect Man by his own disciples. Sirhindi stood out against the mystical tradition of Ibn al-Arabi, whose disciples had come to see G.o.d as the only reality. As we have seen, Mulla Sadra had a.s.serted this perception of the Oneness of Existence (wahdat al-wujud). It was a mystical restatement of the Shahadah: there was no reality but al-Lah. Like mystics in other religions, the Sufis had experienced a unity and felt one with the whole of existence. Sirhindi, however, dismissed this perception as purely subjective. While the mystic was concentrating on G.o.d alone, everything else tended to fade from his consciousness but this did not correspond to an objective reality. Indeed, to speak of any unity or ident.i.ty between G.o.d and the world was an awful misconception. In fact, there was no possibility of a direct experience of G.o.d, who was entirely beyond the reach of mankind: 'He is the Holy One, beyond the Beyond, again beyond the Beyond, again beyond the Beyond.' {4} There could be no relation between G.o.d and the world, except indirectly through the contemplation of the 'signs' of nature. Sirhindi claimed that he himself had pa.s.sed beyond the ecstatic condition of mystics like Ibn al-Arabi to a higher and more sober state of consciousness. He used mysticism and religious experience to reaffirm belief in the distant G.o.d of the philosophers, who was an objective but inaccessible reality. His views were ardently embraced by his disciples but not by the majority of Muslims who remained true to the immanent, subjective G.o.d of the mystics.

While Muslims like Findiriski and Akbar were seeking understanding with people of other faiths, the Christian West had demonstrated in 1492 that it could not even tolerate proximity with the two other religions of Abraham. During the fifteenth century, anti-Semitism had increased throughout Europe and Jews were expelled from one city after another: from Linz and Vienna in 1421, from Cologne in 1424, Augsburg in 1439, Bavaria in 1442 (and again in 1450) and from Moravia in 1454. They were driven out of Perugia in 1485, Vicenza in 1486, Parma in 1488, Lucca and Milan in 1489 and from Tuscany in 1494. The expulsion of the Sephardi jews of Spain must be seen in the context of this larger European trend. The Spanish Jews who had settled in the Ottoman empire continued to suffer from a sense of dislocation coupled with the irrational but indelible guilt of the survivor. It is, perhaps, not dissimilar to the guilt experienced by those who managed to survive the n.a.z.i Holocaust and it is significant, therefore, that today some Jews feel drawn to the spirituality that the Sephardi Jews evolved during the sixteenth century to help them to come to terms with their exile.

This new form of Kabbalism probably originated in the Balkan provinces of the Ottoman empire, where many of the Sephardim had established communities. The tragedy of 1492 seems to have caused a widespread yearning for the redemption of Israel foretold by the prophets. Some Jews led by Joseph Karo and Solomon Alkabaz migrated from Greece to Palestine, the homeland of Israel. Their spirituality sought to heal the humiliation that the expulsion had inflicted upon the Jews and their G.o.d. They wanted, they said, 'to raise the Shekinah from the dust'. But they were not seeking a political solution nor did they envisage a more widespread return of the Jews to the Promised Land. They settled in Safed in Galilee and initiated a remarkable mystical revival which discovered a profound significance in their experience of homelessness. Hitherto Kabbalah had appealed only to an elite but after the disaster Jews all over the world turned eagerly to a more mystical spirituality. The consolations of philosophy now seemed hollow: Aristotle sounded arid and his G.o.d distant and inaccessible. Indeed, many blamed Falsafah for the catastrophe, claiming that it had weakened Judaism and diluted the sense of Israel's special vocation. Its universality and accommodation of Gentile philosophy had persuaded too many Jews to accept baptism. Never again would Falsafah be an important spirituality within Judaism.

People longed for a more direct experience of G.o.d. In Safed this yearning acquired an almost erotic intensity. Kabbalists used to wander through the hills of Palestine and lie on the graves of the great Talmudists, seeking, as it were, to absorb their vision into their own troubled lives. They used to stay awake all night, sleepless as frustrated lovers, singing love songs to G.o.d and calling him fond names. They found that the mythology and disciplines of Kabbalah broke down their reserves and touched the pain in their souls in a way that metaphysics or the study of Talmud no longer could. But because their condition was so different from that of Moses of Leon, the author of The Zohar, the Spanish exiles needed to adapt his vision so that it could speak to their particular circ.u.mstances. They came up with an extraordinarily imaginative solution which equated absolute homelessness with absolute G.o.dliness. The exile of the Jews symbolised the radical dislocation at the heart of all existence. Not only was the whole of creation no longer in its proper place but G.o.d was in exile from himself. The new Kabbalah of Safed achieved almost overnight popularity and became a ma.s.s-movement that not only inspired the Sephardim but also gave new hope to the Ashken.a.z.im of Europe who had discovered that they had no abiding city in Christendom. This extraordinary success shows that the strange and - to an outsider -bewildering myths of Safed had the power to speak to the condition of the Jews. It was the last Jewish movement to be accepted by almost everybody and wrought a profound change in the religious consciousness of world Jewry. The special disciplines of Kabbalah were only for an initiated elite but its ideas - and its conception of G.o.d - became a standard expression of Jewish piety.

In order to do justice to this new vision of G.o.d, we must understand that these myths were not intended to be taken literally. The Safed Kabbalists were aware that the imagery they used was very daring and constantly hedged round it with such expressions as 'as it were' or 'one might suppose'. But any talk about G.o.d was problematic, not least the biblical doctrine of the creation of the universe. The Kabbalists found this as difficult in their own way as had the Faylasufs. Both accepted the Platonic metaphor of emanation, which involves G.o.d with the world that eternally flows from him. The prophets had stressed G.o.d's holiness and separation from the world but The Zohar had suggested that the world of G.o.d's sefiroth comprised the whole of reality. How could he be separate from the world if he was all-in-all? Moses ben Jacob Cordovero of Safed (1522-1570) saw the paradox clearly and attempted to deal with it. In his theology, G.o.d En Sof was no longer the incomprehensible G.o.dhead but the thought of the world: he was one with all created things in their ideal Platonic state but separate from their flawed embodiment below: 'Insofar as everything that exists is contained in his existence, [G.o.d] encompa.s.ses all existence,' he explained, 'his substance is present in his sefiroth and He Himself is everything and nothing exists outside him.' {5} He was very close to the monism of Ibn al-Arabi and Mulla Sadra.

But Isaac Luria (1534-1572), the hero and saint of the Kabbalism of Safed, tried to explain the paradox of the divine transcendence and immanence more fully with one of the most astonishing ideas ever formulated about G.o.d. Most Jewish mystics were very reticent about their experience of the divine. It is one of the contradictions of this type of spirituality that mystics claim that their experiences are ineffable but are yet quite ready to write it all down. Kabbalists were wary of this, however. Luria was one of the first Zaddiks or holy men who attracted disciples to his brand of mysticism by his personal charisma. He was not a writer and our knowledge of his Kabbalistic system is based on the conversations recorded by his disciples Hayim Vital (1553-1620) in his treatise Ets Hayim (The Tree of Life) and Joseph ibn Tabul, whose ma.n.u.script was not published until 1921.

Luria confronted the question that had troubled monotheists for centuries: how could a perfect and infinite G.o.d have created a finite world riddled with evil? Where had evil come from? Luria found his answer by imagining what had happened before the emanation of the sefiroth, when En Sof had been turned in upon itself in sublime introspection. In order to make room for the world, Luria taught, En Sof had, as it were, vacated a region within himself. In this act of 'shrinking' or 'withdrawal' (tsimtsum), G.o.d had thus created a place where he was not, an empty s.p.a.ce that he could fill by the simultaneous process of self-revelation and creation. It was a daring attempt to ill.u.s.trate the difficult doctrine of creation out of nothing: the very first act of En Sof was a self-imposed exile from a part of himself. He had, as it were, descended more deeply into his own being and put a limit upon himself. It is an idea that is not dissimilar to the primordial kenosis that Christians have imagined in the Trinity, whereby G.o.d emptied himself into his Son in an act of self-expression. For sixteenth-century Kabbalists, tsimtsum was primarily a symbol of exile, which underlay the structure of all created existence and had been experienced by En Sof himself.

The 'empty s.p.a.ce' created by G.o.d's withdrawal was conceived as a circle, which was surrounded on all sides by En Sof. This was tohu bohu, the formless waste mentioned in Genesis. Before the recoil of tsimtsum, all G.o.d's various 'powers' (later to become the sefiroth) mingled harmoniously together. They were not differentiated from one another. In particular, G.o.d's Hesed (Mercy) and Din (Stern Judgement) existed within G.o.d in perfect harmony. But during the process of tsimtsum, En Sof separated Din from the rest of his attributes and thrust it into the empty s.p.a.ce that he had abandoned. Thus tsimtsum was not simply an act of self-emptying love but could be seen as a sort of divine purge: G.o.d had eliminated his Wrath or Judgement (which The Zohar had seen as the root of evil) from his inmost being. His primal act, therefore, showed a harshness and ruthlessness towards himself. Now that Din was separate from Hesed and the rest of G.o.d's attributes, it was potentially destructive. Yet En Sof did not abandon the empty s.p.a.ce entirely. A 'thin line' of the divine light penetrated this circle, which took the form of what The Zohar had called Adam Kadmon, Primordial Man.

Then came the emanation of the sefiroth, though not as this is said to have occurred in The Zohar. Luria taught that the sefiroth had formed in Adam Kadmon: the three highest sefiroth - Kether (The Crown), Hokhmah (Wisdom) and Binah (Intelligence) - radiated from his 'nose', 'ears' and 'mouth' respectively. But then a catastrophe occurred, which Luria called 'the Breaking of the Vessels' (Shevirath Ha-Kelim). The sefiroth needed to be contained in special coverings or 'vessels' to distinguish and separate them from one another and to prevent them from merging again into their former unity. These 'vessels' or 'pipes' were not material, of course, but were composed of a sort of thicker light that served as 'sh.e.l.ls' (kelipot) for the purer light of the sefiroth. When the three highest sefiroth had radiated from Adam Kadmon, their vessels had functioned perfectly. But when the next six sefiroth issued from his 'eyes', their vessels were not strong enough to contain the divine light and they smashed. Consequently the light was scattered. Some of it rose upward and returned to the G.o.dhead but some divine 'sparks' fell into the empty waste and remained trapped in chaos. Thenceforth nothing was in its proper place. Even the three highest sefiroth had fallen to a lower sphere as a result of the catastrophe. The original harmony had been ruined and the divine sparks were lost in the formless waste of tohu bohu, in exile from the G.o.dhead.

This strange myth is reminiscent of the earlier Gnostic myths of a primordial dislocation. It expresses the tension involved in the whole creative process, which is far closer to the Big Bang envisaged by scientists today than the more peaceful orderly sequence described by Genesis. It was not easy for En Sof to emerge from his hidden state: he could only do so - as it were - in a sort of trial and error. In the Talmud, the Rabbis had had a similar idea. They had said that G.o.d had made other worlds and had destroyed them before he created this one. But all was not lost. Some Kabbalists compared this 'Breaking' (Shevirath) to the breakthrough of birth or the bursting of a seed pod. The destruction had simply been a prelude to a new creation. Although everything was in disarray, En Sof would bring new life out of this apparent chaos by means of the process of Tikkun or re-integration.

After the catastrophe, a new stream of light issued from En Sof and broke through the 'forehead' of Adam Kadmon. This time the sefiroth were reorganised into new configurations: they were no longer to be generalised aspects of G.o.d. Each one became a 'Countenance' (parzuf) in which the entire personality of G.o.d was revealed, with - as it were - distinctive features, in rather the same way as in the three personae of the Trinity. Luria was trying to find a new way of expressing the old Kabbalistic idea of the inscrutable G.o.d giving birth to himself as a person. In the process of Tikkun, Luria used the symbolism of the conception, birth and development of a human personality to suggest a similar evolution in G.o.d. It is complicated and perhaps best explained in diagrammatic form. In the reintegration of Tikkun, G.o.d restored order by regrouping the ten sefiroth into five 'Countenances' (parzufim) in the following stages: 1. Kether (The Crown), the highest sefirah, which The Zohar had called 'Nothing', becomes the first parzuf, called 'Arik' Anpin: the Forebearing One.

2. Hokhmah (Wisdom) becomes the second parzuf, called Abba: Father.

3. Binah (Intelligence) becomes the third parzuf, called Ima: Mother.

4. Din (Judgement); Hesed (Mercy); Rahamin (Compa.s.sion); Netsah (Patience); Hod (Majesty); Yesod (Foundation) all become the fourth parzuf, called Zeir Anpin: the Impatient One. His consort is: 5. The last sefirah called Malkuth (Kingdom) or the Shekinah: it becomes the fifth parzuf, which is called Nuqrah de Zeir: Zeir's Woman.

The s.e.xual symbolism is a bold attempt to depict the reunification of the sefiroth, which will heal the rupture that occurred when the vessels were broken and restore the original harmony. The two 'couples' - Abba and Ima, Zeir and Nuqrah - engage in ziwwug (copulation) and this mating of the male and female elements within G.o.d symbolise the restored order. The Kabbalists constantly warn their readers not to take this literally. It is a fiction designed to hint at a process of integration that cannot be described in clear, rational terms and to neutralise the overwhelmingly masculine imagery of G.o.d. The salvation envisaged by the mystics did not depend upon historical events like the coming of the Messiah but was a process that G.o.d himself must undergo. G.o.d's first plan had been to make humanity his helpmate in the process of redeeming those divine sparks that had been scattered and trapped in chaos at the Breaking of the Vessels. But Adam had sinned in the Garden of Eden. Had he not done so, the original harmony would have been restored and the divine exile ended on the first Sabbath. But Adam's fall repeated the primal catastrophe of the Breaking of the Vessels.

The created order fell and the divine light in his soul was scattered abroad and imprisoned in broken matter. Consequently, G.o.d evolved yet another plan. He had chosen Israel to be his helpmate in the struggle for sovereignty and control. Even though Israel, like the divine sparks themselves, is scattered throughout the cruel and G.o.dless realm of the diaspora, Jews have a special mission. As long as the divine sparks are separated and lost in matter, G.o.d is incomplete. By careful observance of Torah and the discipline of prayer, each Jew could help to restore the sparks to their divine source and so redeem the world. In this vision of salvation, G.o.d is not gazing down on humanity condescendingly but, as Jews had always insisted, is actually dependent on mankind. Jews have the unique privilege of helping to re-form G.o.d and create him anew.

Luria gave a new meaning to the original image of the exile of the Shekinah. It will be recalled that in the Talmud, the Rabbis had seen the Shekinah voluntarily going into exile with the Jews after the destruction of the Temple. The Zohar had identified the Shekinah with the last sefirah and made it the female aspect of divinity. In Luria's myth, the Shekinah fell with the other sefiroth when the Vessels were shattered. In the first stage of Tikkun, she had become Nuqrah and by mating with Zeir (the six 'Middle' sefiroth) had almost been reintegrated into the divine world. But when Adam sinned, the Shekinah fell once more and went into exile from the rest of the G.o.dhead. Luria was most unlikely to have encountered the writings of those Christian Gnostics who had developed a very similar mythology. He had spontaneously reproduced the old myths of exile and fall to meet the tragic conditions of the sixteenth century. Tales of divine copulation and the exiled G.o.ddess had been rejected by the Jews during the biblical period, when they were evolving their doctrine of the One G.o.d. Their connection with paganism and idolatry should logically have revolted the Sephardim. Instead, Luria's mythology was embraced eagerly by Jews from Persia to England, Germany to Poland, Italy to North Africa, Holland to the Yemen; recast in Jewish terms, it was able to touch a buried chord and give new hope in the midst of despair. It enabled the Jews to believe that despite the appalling circ.u.mstances in which so many of them lived, there was an ultimate meaning and significance.

The Jews could end the exile of the Shekinah. By the observance of the mitzvot, they could rebuild their G.o.d again. It is interesting to compare this myth with the Protestant theology that Luther and Calvin were creating in Europe at about the same time. The Protestant reformers both preached the absolute sovereignty of G.o.d: in their theology, as we shall see, there is absolutely nothing that men and women could contribute to their own salvation. Luria, however, preached a doctrine of works: G.o.d needed human beings and would remain somehow incomplete without their prayer and good deeds. Despite the tragedy that had befallen the Jewish people in Europe, they were able to be more optimistic about humanity than the Protestants. Luria saw the mission of Tikkun in contemplative terms. Where the Christians of Europe - Catholic and Protestant alike -were formulating more and more dogmas, Luria revived the mystical techniques of Abraham Abulafia to help Jews transcend this kind of intellectual activity and to cultivate a more intuitive awareness. Rearranging the letters of the Divine Name, in Abulafia's spirituality, had reminded the Kabbalist that the meaning of 'G.o.d' could not adequately be conveyed by human language. In Luria's mythology, it also symbolised the restructuring and re-formation of the divine. Hayim Vital described the immensely emotional effect of Luria's disciplines: by separating himself from his normal, everyday experience - by keeping vigil when everybody else was asleep, fasting when others were eating, withdrawing into seclusion for a while - a Kabbalist could concentrate on the strange 'words' that bore no relation to ordinary speech. He felt that he was in another world, would find himself shaking and trembling as though possessed by a force outside himself.

But there was no anxiety. Luria insisted that before he began his spiritual exercises, the Kabbalist must achieve peace of mind. Happiness and joy were essential: there was to be no breast-beating or remorse, no guilt or anxiety about one's performance. Vital insisted that the Shekinah cannot live in a place of sorrow and pain - an idea that we have seen to be rooted in the Talmud. Sadness springs from the forces of evil in the world, whereas happiness enables the Kabbalist to love G.o.d and cleave to him. There should be no anger or aggression in the Kabbalist's heart for anybody whatsoever - even the goyim. Luria identified anger with idolatry, since an angry person is possessed by a 'strange G.o.d'. It is easy to criticise Lurianic mysticism. As Gershom Scholem points out, the mystery of G.o.d En Sof, which was so strong in The Zohar, tends to get lost in the drama of tsimtsum, the Breaking of the Vessels and Tikkun? In the next chapter, we shall see that it contributed to a disastrous and embarra.s.sing episode in Jewish history. Yet Luria's conception of G.o.d was able to help Jews to cultivate a spirit of joy and kindness, together with a positive view of humanity at a time when the guilt and anger of the Jews could have caused many to despair and to lose faith in life altogether.

The Christians of Europe were not able to produce such a positive spirituality. They too had endured historical disasters that could not be a.s.suaged by the philosophical religion of the scholastics. The Black Death of 1348, the fall of Constantinople in 1453, and the ecclesiastical scandals of the Avignon Captivity (1334-42) and the Great Schism (1378-1417) had thrown the impotence of the human condition into vivid relief and brought the Church into disrepute. Humanity seemed unable to extricate itself from its fearful predicament without G.o.d's help. During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, therefore, theologians like Duns Scotus of Oxford (1265-1308) - not to be confused with Duns Scotus Erigena - and the French theologian John Gerson (1363-1429) both emphasised the sovereignty of G.o.d, who controlled human affairs as stringently as an absolute ruler. Men and women could contribute nothing to their salvation; good deeds were not meritorious in themselves but only because G.o.d had graciously decreed that they were good. But during these centuries, there was also a shift in emphasis. Gerson himself was a mystic, who believed that it was better to 'hold primarily to the love of G.o.d without lofty enquiry' rather than to 'seek through reasons based on the true faith, to understand the nature of G.o.d'. {7} There had been an upsurge of mysticism in Europe during the fourteenth century, as we have seen, and the people were beginning to appreciate that reason was inadequate to explain the mystery they called 'G.o.d'. As Thomas a Kempis said in The Imitation of Christ: Of what use is it to discourse learnedly on the Trinity, if you lack humility and therefore displease the Trinity ... I would far rather feel contrition than be able to define it. If you knew the whole Bible by heart, and all the teachings of the philosophers, how would this help you without the grace and love of G.o.d? {8} {8} The Imitation of Christ, with its rather dour, gloomy religiosity, became one of the most popular of all Western spiritual cla.s.sics. During these centuries, piety centered increasingly on Jesus the man. The practice of making the stations of the cross dwelt in particular detail on Jesus's physical pain and sorrow. Some fourteenth-century meditations written by an anonymous author tell the reader that when he wakes up in the morning after spending most of the night meditating on the Last Supper and the Agony in the Garden, his eyes should still be red with weeping. Immediately he should begin to contemplate Jesus's trial and follow his progress to Calvary, hour by hour. The reader is urged to imagine himself pleading with the authorities to save Christ's life, to sit beside him in prison and to kiss his chained hands and feet. {9} In this dismal programme, there is little emphasis on the resurrection. Instead the stress is on the vulnerable humanity of Jesus. A violence of emotion and what strikes the modern reader as morbid curiosity characterises many of these descriptions. Even the great mystics Bridget of Sweden or Julian of Norwich speculate in lurid detail about Jesus's physical state: I saw his dear face, dry, bloodless, and pallid with death. It became more pale, deathly and lifeless. Then, dead, it turned a blue colour, gradually changing to a browny blue, as the flesh continued to die. For me his pa.s.sion was shown primarily through his blessed face, and particularly by his lips. There too I saw these same four colours, though previously they had been, as I had seen, fresh, red, and lovely. It was a sorry business to see him change as he progressively died. His nostrils too shriveled and dried before my eyes, and his dear body became black and brown as it dried up in death. {10} {10} This reminds us of the German crucifixes of the fourteenth century with their grotesquely twisted figures and gushing blood, which, of course, reached a climax in the work of Matthias Grunewald (1480-1528). Julian was capable of great insight into the nature of G.o.d: she depicts the Trinity living within the soul and not as an external reality 'out there', like a true mystic. But the strength of Western concentration on the human Christ seemed too powerful to resist. Increasingly, during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, men and women in Europe were making other human beings the centre of their spiritual life rather than G.o.d. The medieval cult of Mary and of the saints increased alongside the growing devotion to Jesus the man. Enthusiasm for relics and holy places also distracted Western Christians from the one thing necessary. People seemed to be concentrating on anything but G.o.d.

The dark side of the Western spirit was even manifest during the Renaissance. The philosophers and humanists of the Renaissance were highly critical of much medieval piety. They disliked the scholastics intensely, feeling that their abstruse speculations made G.o.d sound alien and boring. Instead, they wanted to return to the sources of the faith, particularly to St Augustine. The medievals had revered Augustine as a theologian, but the humanists rediscovered the Confessions and saw him as a fellow man on a personal quest. Christianity, they argued, was not a body of doctrines but an experience. Lorenzo Valla (1405-59) stressed the futility of mixing sacred dogma with 'tricks of dialectics' and 'metaphysical quibbles': {11} these 'futilities' had been condemned by St Paul himself. Francesco Petrarch (1304-74) had suggested that 'theology is actually poetry, poetry concerning G.o.d', effective not because it 'proved' anything but because it penetrated the heart. {12} The humanists had rediscovered the dignity of humanity but this did not cause them to reject G.o.d: instead, as true men of their age, they stressed the humanity of G.o.d who had become man. But the old insecurities remained. The Renaissance men were deeply aware of the fragility of our knowledge and could also sympathise with Augustine's acute sense of sin. As Petrarch said: How many times I have pondered over my own misery and over death; with what floods of tears I have sought to wash away my stains so that I can scarce speak of it without weeping, yet hitherto all is vain. G.o.d indeed is the best: and I am the worst.' {13} {13} Hence there was a vast distance between man and G.o.d: Coluccio Salutati (1331-1406) and Leonardo Bruni (1369-1444) both saw G.o.d as utterly transcendent and inaccessible to the human mind. Yet the German philosopher and churchman Nicholas of Cusa (1400-64) was more confident about our ability to understand G.o.d. He was extremely interested in the new science, which he thought could help us to comprehend the mystery of the Trinity. Mathematics, for example, which dealt only with pure abstractions, could supply a certainty that was impossible in other disciplines. Thus the mathematical idea of 'the maximum' and 'the minimum' were apparently opposites but in fact could logically be seen as identical. This 'coincidence of opposites' contained the idea of G.o.d: the idea of 'the maximum' includes everything; it implies notions of unity and necessity which point directly to G.o.d. Further, the maximum line was not a triangle, a circle or a sphere, but all three combined: the unity of opposites was also a Trinity. Yet Nicholas's clever demonstration has little religious meaning. It seems to reduce the idea of G.o.d to a logical conundrum. But his conviction that 'G.o.d embraces everything, even contradictions" {14} was close to the Greek Orthodox perception that all true theology must be paradoxical. When he was writing as a spiritual teacher, rather than as a philosopher and mathematician, Nicholas was aware that the Christian must 'leave everything behind' when he sought to approach G.o.d, and 'even transcend one's intellect' going beyond all sense and reason. The face of G.o.d will remain shrouded in 'a secret and mystic silence'. {15} The new insights of the Renaissance could not address deeper fears that, like G.o.d, lay beyond the reach of reason. Not long after Nicholas's death, a particularly noxious phobia erupted in his native Germany and spread throughout northern Europe. In 1484 Pope Innocent VIII published the Bull Summa Desiderantes which marked the beginning of the great witch craze that raged sporadically throughout Europe during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, afflicting Protestant and Catholic communities equally. It revealed the dark underside of the Western spirit. During this hideous persecution, thousands of men and women were cruelly tortured until they confessed to astonishing crimes. They said that they had had s.e.xual intercourse with demons, had flown hundreds of miles through the air to take part in orgies where Satan was worshipped instead of G.o.d in an obscene Ma.s.s. We now know that there were no witches but that the craze represented a vast collective fantasy, shared by the learned Inquisitors and many of their victims, who had dreamed these things and were easily persuaded that they actually happened. The fantasy was linked with anti-Semitism and a deep s.e.xual fear. Satan had emerged as the shadow of an impossibly good and powerful G.o.d. This had not happened in the other G.o.d-religions. The Koran, for example, makes it clear that Satan will be forgiven on the Last Day.

Some of the Sufis claimed that he had fallen from grace because he had loved G.o.d more than any of the other angels. G.o.d had commanded him to bow down before Adam on the day of creation but Satan had refused because he believed that such obeisance should be offered to G.o.d alone. In the West, however, Satan became a figure of ungovernable evil. He was increasingly represented as a vast animal with a priapic s.e.xual appet.i.te and huge genitals. As Norman Cohn has suggested in his book Europe's Inner Demons, this portrait of Satan was not only a projection of buried fear and anxiety. The witch craze also represented an unconscious but compulsive revolt against a repressive religion and an apparently inexorable G.o.d. In their torture chambers, Inquisitors and 'witches' together created a fantasy which was an inversion of Christianity. The Black Ma.s.s became a horrifying but perversely satisfying ceremony that worshipped the Devil instead of a G.o.d who seemed harsh and too frightening to deal with.' {16} Martin Luther (1483-1546) was a firm believer in witchcraft and saw the Christian life as a battle against Satan. The Reformation can be seen as an attempt to address this anxiety even though most of the Reformers did not promote any new conception of G.o.d. It is, of course, simplistic to call the immense cycle of religious change that took place in Europe during the sixteenth century 'the Reformation'. The term suggests a more deliberate and unified movement than actually occurred. The various reformers - Catholic as well as Protestant - were all trying to articulate a new religious awareness that was strongly felt but had not been conceptualised or consciously thought out. We do not know exactly why 'the Reformation' happened: today scholars warn us against the old textbook accounts. The changes were not wholly due to the corruption of the Church, as is often supposed, nor to a decline in religious fervour. Indeed, there seems to have been a religious enthusiasm in Europe which led people to criticise abuses which they had previously taken for granted. The actual ideas of the reformers all sprang from medieval, Catholic theologies. The rise of nationalism and of the cities in Germany and Switzerland also played a part as did the new piety and theological awareness of the laity during the sixteenth century. There was also a heightened sense of individualism in Europe and this always entailed a radical revision of current religious att.i.tudes. Instead of expressing their faith in external, collective ways, the people of Europe were beginning to explore the more interior consequences of religion. All these factors contributed to the painful and frequently violent changes that propelled the West towards modernity.

Before his conversion, Luther had almost despaired of the possibility of pleasing a G.o.d he had come to hate: Although I lived a blameless life as a monk, I felt that I was a sinner with an uneasy conscience before G.o.d. I also could not believe that I had pleased him with my works. Far from loving that righteous G.o.d who punished sinners, I actually loathed him. I was a good monk, and kept my order so strictly that if ever a monk could get to heaven by monastic discipline, I was that monk. All my companions in the monastery would confirm this ... And yet my conscience would not give me certainty, but I always doubted and said, 'You didn't do that right. You weren't contrite enough. You left that out of your confession.' {17} {17} Many Christians today - Protestant as well as Catholic - will recognise this syndrome, which the Reformation could not entirely abolish. Luther's G.o.d was characterised by his wrath. None of the saints, prophets or psalmists had been able to endure this divine anger. It was no good simply trying 'to do one's best'. Because G.o.d was eternal and omnipotent, 'his fury or wrath towards self-satisfied sinners is also immeasurable and infinite'. {18} His will was past finding out. Observance of the Law of G.o.d or the rules of a religious order could not save us. Indeed, the Law