(137) Perseverance
…to believe in the wide-awake real, through all the stupefying, enervating, distorting dream; to will to wake, when the very being seems athirst for a godless repose;–these are the broken steps up to the high fields where repose is but a form of strength, strength but a form of joy, joy but a form of love.
As found in MacDonald’s unspoken sermon: “Life ”.
Thanks. I am curious if you have some insight into this…
The godless dream gives way to real waking…but the repose can be akin to joy?
I am going to have to read a bit more
The only insight I can offer up from having read further in his sermon text around the thought above is that MacDonald is distinguishing between a real rest (what one might call a blessed ‘sabbath’ rest that any healthy and flourishing person will enjoy for the purpose of returning to equally blessed labors of life refreshed; as opposed to a ‘weariness of life in general’ which MacDonald sees as something entirely different from any kind of ‘good rest’. (An obvious observation - but one that just goes to show that not all cessation of activity means that any true rest is actually happening.)
(138) The Lower Forms
I have been speaking as if life and the consciousness of it were one; but the consciousness of life is not life; it is only the outcome of life. The real life is that which is of and by itself–is life because it wills itself–which is, in the active, not the passive sense: this can only be God. But in us there ought to be a life correspondent to the life that is God’s; in us also must be the life that wills itself–a life in so far resembling the self-existent life and partaking of its image, that it has a share in its own being. There is an original act possible to the man, which must initiate the reality of his existence. He must live in and by willing to live. A tree lives; I hardly doubt it has some vague consciousness, known by but not to itself, only to the God who made it; I trust that life in its lowest forms is on the way to thought and blessedness, is in the process of that separation, so to speak, from God, in which consists the creation of living souls; but the life of these lower forms is not life in the high sense–in the sense in which the word is used in the Bible: true life knows and rules itself; the eternal life is life come awake.
As found in MacDonald’s unspoken sermon: “Life ” except that the added bold emphasis was mine. See below.
What is bolded above was all Lewis included in his excerpt; and I think the extended inclusion I’m giving here still begs for yet more context and explanation! It does draw one into looking up and reading yet more from the sermons themselves to try to understand!
Looks like MacDonald was dabbling in the philosophical currents of his time. I can’t unravel the passage, but I marvel at what they, the philosophers, were capable of saying without realizing what it is they were saying.
No doubt! And yet before “we” presume to blithely stand in judgment over them, I also recall Lewis’ commendation to all ages to read books written during prior ages; because - Lewis insists - those of other ages probably don’t share in all your same blind spots, and therefore still have much of value that the contemporary reader needs to hear. So it is fascinating to me that Lewis considered MacDonald (of a prior generation to Lewis) “his master”. And I think even from a few more generations hence, that deference is yet powerful for me too. If he insists on something - I want to know why. That he is wallowing in ignorance which has since been illumined - all of that is not my first presumption; or at least not here anyway. And certainly not of MacDonald.
Who said anything about judgment, let us have a jovial dialogue with the philosophers that gave us a Sartre, but let us also be careful with that thing they spoke about but did not understand.
One of my all time favorite quotes:
“He who fights too long against dragons becomes a dragon himself; and if you gaze too long into the abyss, the abyss will gaze into you.”
The only hope for the virtuous knight, is to have the gaze of his or her heart firmly fixed on the glorious king. Going at it alone, and the abyss will have its way through and through.
Edit: And I must add, if you should find yourself in the abyss, devoid of light, and I wish I could place the quote, “call out to Jesus and he will come to you, and make your hell like heaven.”
Indeed.
I suspect that MacDonald is still ahead of me in quite a bit of understanding though - enough that I’m finding precious ore by mining through his sermons. In regard to our mysterious bit from today …
After reading more of the originating sermon, it seems that M sees Life as a much higher thing indeed than mere continuation of consciousness (which he mocks as a small, even hellish thing indeed even - or especially when such a endlessly continued state is mistaken for eternal life.) He very much ties life to an active will (in our case: willing obedience). And that it must be so. I think he sees that as an essential component of our “image of God” that we can rule ourselves, and thus come to God as a responsive act of Love. M sees both Life and Love as undefinable things (so far above mere biology, he sees it even as beyond mere consciousness which itself already defies our complete understanding.) Those (Life, and Love) are the things that define and order all parts of any true Life, the fountainheads of all that is true and good.
At least that is my best shot at trying to channel M here - and risking that I misread him.
(139) Life
It consists in a love as deep as it is universal, as conscious as it is unspeakable; a love that can no more be reasoned about than life itself–a love whose presence is its all-sufficing proof and justification, whose absence is an annihilating defect: he who has it not cannot believe in it: how should death believe in life, though all the birds of God are singing jubilant over the empty tomb!
As found in MacDonald’s unspoken sermon: “Life ”.
the process of that separation, so to speak, from God, in which consists the creation of living souls
Something about this (process theology?) drew my attention reading it again, and I found an interesting footnote in an article on MacDonald’s theology:
Therefore an attack on MacDonald’s universalism then must come as an attack, not on the conclusion, but on the constellation of premises that bring about the conclusion. Simple dismissal of Universal salvation on popularly accepted biblical grounds cannot get at the heart of his argument, since he is rooting himself in what he understands to be a deeply biblical theology that is impervious to simple proof-texting. Instead, to understand his argument for universal salvation, we must understand his image of God, Father and Son, and the role of the creature in that relationship.
The lengthy footnote continues to consider the views of Origen and Gregory of Nyssa.
Thanks for sharing that link - which appears to be a very thoughtful criticism of MacDonald - though at first glance it seems to be more supportive of him than critical. I haven’t finished reading it yet - will see how the day goes.
Thanks for this paper–I’m really looking forward to finishing it.
His view of the atonement isn’t in this paper, but there’s a lot else. He does note that Macdonald seems to reason towards salvation from the incarnation, and that God must be a lot like Christ, only better.
I’ve just listened to Randal Rauser’s interview with the Anglican priest, Robin Parry–who deals with a lot of objections to this view of justification (he calls it universalism, but while I’m not sure it’s truly that, it’s certainly not pluralism). The view is much like Macdonald’s.
The Case for Christian Universalism with Robin Parry - Randal Rauser
He could even have said “love can no more be reasoned to than life can be be reasoned into being”. We do not create love out of obedience or by considering the pros and cons. It is a gift already there or something went wrong and one has wondered down the wrong path. We only lose it by not embracing it; we cannot manufacture it as it predates us.
I’m glad the article was liked. The journal it’s from is dedicated to the academic study of MacDonald. Something which I totally stumbled upon while doing a search on GM and process theology.
The statement has grabbed my attention, “the process of that separation… in which consists the creation of living souls.”
Some universalists believe since all came from God, all will eventually return, even the fallen angels.
(140) The Eternal Round
Obedience is the joining of the links of the eternal round. Obedience is but the other side of the creative will. Will is God’s will, obedience is man’s will; the two make one. The root-life, knowing well the thousand troubles it would bring upon him, has created, and goes on creating other lives, that, though incapable of self-being, they may, by willed obedience, share in the bliss of his essential self-ordained being. If we do the will of God, eternal life is ours–no mere continuity of existence, for that in itself is worthless as hell, but a being that is one with the essential Life, and so within his reach to fill with the abundant and endless out-goings of his love.
As found in MacDonald’s unspoken sermon: “Life ”.
Here is another bit I really liked from Wise’s paper (which I still haven’t finished reading). But this bit (echoes of Balthasar) speaks of something being most known in its wholeness (think a flower in full spring blossom) rather than in its dissected parts (think analytical science). I’m finding Wise’s summary of MacDonald’s ideas both consistent with what I know of MacDonald, and also illuminating.
The truth of the flower is the ideal of flower in the mind of God. The truth
of the human being is Jesus Christ who is transparent to the love of God.
The true creature is the creature that reveals God most fully. As the flower
is a revelation, not in its parts, but in its whole, so too is the human being in
its highest form a revelation of God. This revelation gives MacDonald the
ground for his understanding of human nature as different than that observed
in the fallen world around him. In essence, Jesus reveals not only God, but
humanity to itself.
Why can it not be both/and rather than either/or? Going to something we looked at in Chesterton, why must the love of God be set in opposition to his justice?
And I’d like to really focus in on where MacDonald viewed the origin of the human soul. If it is a slice of God, eternal in nature, and not contingent, then I am willing to let him be, much like a nontheist who is content with contradicting his or her self.
Oh – it very much isn’t! MacDonald is very clear on that and any move to see God’s love as somehow not of one whole piece with God’s justice provokes strong opposition from him.
But on the contrast between knowing the mechanics of something vs. knowing the living thing itself on its own living terms is a distinction that I think MacDonald is willing to or has made. If I was your doctor, perhaps you would be most concerned that I knew your biology and the mechanics of your body thoroughly. But if I had no acquaintance with you at all otherwise (as a person in your usual life haunts), then I think it would be hard to claim I really knew you in any significant sense like a close friend of your does. It can be both/and to be sure. Doctors have social lives too - and good ones probably even know their patients at least in some cursory manner necessary to be a good doctor for them. But pity the man who thinks that biological/mechanical knowedge is the equal of close friendship. The latter is the superior knowledge to be pursued in 99% of our life and social circumstances.
Knowing oneself to be clay in the potter’s hand or a slice of God is about as important a thing to know as anything there is. It is incredibly consequential I suppose even for one’s eschatology.
This recent turn in the discussion got me interested to see what Berkhof writes about it,
“We should not confuse the present subject of study with general Anthropology or the science of mankind, which includes all those sciences which have men as the object of study. These sciences concern themselves with the origin and history of mankind, with the physiological structure and the psychical characteristics of man in general and of the various races of mankind in particular, with their ethnological, linguistic, cultural and religious development, and so on. Theological Anthropology is concerned only with what the Bible says respecting man and the relation in which he stands and should stand to God. It recognizes Scripture only as its source, and reads the teachings of human experience in the light of God’s Word.”
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6
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