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CHAPTER V

THE HALLMARK OF IDOLATRY: A HARD HEART

Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. - 2 Corinthians 3:17

        Because man is free, he necessarily has as his “god” some criterion of decision independent of himself. This raises the problem of how to determine which of all the possible gods are only pretenders and which is the true One. The Bible applies a rigorous test. A false god can be detected by the fact that, having once become the repository of a man’s allegiance, it straightway proceeds to destroy his freedom. Conversely, the true God preserves and enhances it.

THE PHILOSOPHER’S COMPLAINT AGAINST RELATEDNESS

       Here again the Bible is at variance with the wisdom of the world. Most thinkers have contended that no god could pass this biblical test; that every “external reference” necessarily enslaves the individual; and that the only true freedom would consist in the absence of all relations to anything outside oneself. The burden of their argument is that a relation which fulfills freedom is a contradiction in terms. Is it not true, the philosopher asks, that one does feel every external relation as a limit, an actual or potential obstacle to one’s will? Is not the only perfectly blessed state one of complete, unrelated self-sufficiency, void of any external relation whatever? Any point of reference external to oneself, he argues, automatically puts the self in subjection to an alien master. Any relationship in which one stands is, or may become, a ball and chain.

       This refrain occurs again and again throughout the history of philosophy. Plato expresses it in these words: “The being who possesses good . . . has the most perfect sufficiency, and is never in need of anything else.”¹ His follower Plotinus describes the mystical experience as one in which the soul leaves behind the chains which bind it to other things and attains to a state in which “she needs nothing more.”² Aristotle concurs: “Happiness does not lack anything, but

¹Plato, Philebus, paragraph 60.

²Plotinus, Enneads, VI, Chapter 9, paragraph 9.

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is self-sufficient.”³ The same thought underlies the Stoic ideal of imperturbability, whose practical import is indicated by the famous words of Epictetus, “If you kiss your child or your wife, say to yourself that you are kissing a human being, for then if death strikes it, you will not be disturbed..”⁴ The Epicurean ideal of complete tranquility is simply another version of the same thing, as Epicurus himself testifies: “Self-sufficiency is the greatest of all riches.”⁵

       So dear to the philosopher’s heart is this ideal that he often appears to regard it as cheating to derive any bit of information, any aspect of his philosophical system, from a source outside himself. The following quotation from the philosopher Fichte illustrates the point beautifully:

The philosopher must deduce from his adopted principles all possible phenomena of experience . . . In the fulfillment of this purpose, he does not require the aid of experience; he proceeds purely as a philosopher, paying no respect whatever to experience; rather, he describes time as a whole in all its possible epochs, absolutely a priori.⁶

        The inner logic of this drive to transcend all external relations is pressed to its relentless conclusion by the mystic. Since freedom necessarily relates a man to some criterion of judgment outside himself, the mystic concludes that the kind of freedom which men experience in everyday life is a counterfeit. It fools men into seeking their fulfillment outside themselves, whereas actually they are thereby taken prisoner.⁷ True freedom must therefore be something quite different from the exercise of choice, decision, and purpose. It is, declares the mystic, simply a state of utter oneness. He will not even tolerate the question, “To what (or whom) shall I give my allegiance?” for any answer will involve the self in a hateful relation to the not-self. He attempts instead to transpose the question into the form, “How can I get rid of the tormenting freedom which binds me inexorably to some criterion outside myself, thereby permitting me only the mock liberty of choosing my own tyrant?” Though not widely known to an incredulous public, his answer has been ruthlessly consistent. He has

³Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book X, Chapter 6, paragraph 1176b, line 6.

⁴The Manual of Epictetus, aphorism 3.

⁵Epicurus, Fragments, aphorism 70.

⁶Quoted by F. M. Cornford, The Unwritten Philosophy and Other Essays (Cambridge University Press, 1950), p. 31. My italics.

⁷An eloquent statement of this position is contained in the article by Paul Tillich entitled “Two Types of Philosophy of Religion,” Union Theological Seminary Quarterly Review, March 1946.

The Hallmark of Idolatry: A Hard Heart 47

quite frankly admitted as his highest aspiration the annihilation of human freedom as we know it and consequently even of the human self. As the German mystic Tauler declares, “There remains to a man the fathomless annihilation of himself-of all aims, of all will, heart, purpose, or way.”⁸ The close kinship between contemporary existentialism and mystical philosophy is revealed by the famous comment of the existentialist jean Paul Sartre, “Man is condemned to be free.” The same sentiment is expressed more poetically by George Sand: “If I had found a man capable of dominating me, I should have been saved, for liberty is eating my life away and killing me . . . .”⁹ The only difference between these two authors and a mystic like Plotinus is that they no longer believe in the possibility of the mystical ecstasy, in which one “ceases to be himself, he retains nothing of himself.”¹⁰

       This spite against one’s own existence, so utterly contrary to the spirit of the Bible, has infiltrated Christian writings by way of the so-called Christian mystics. In the words of Meister Eckhart, “He alone hath true spiritual poverty [Eckhart’s ideal] who wills nothing, knows nothing, desires nothing.”¹¹ Biblical Christianity at least has within itself a solid point of leverage from which to attack such doctrines. The rest of the world, without defense against their sophisticated infection, has to an alarming degree succumbed. If the humanist finds Christianity antihuman, it is largely because it has uncritically absorbed an alien world view.

       Although this philosophy splits into a thousand inconsistencies under close logical scrutiny, it nevertheless exerts a powerful emotional appeal. The sincere layman all too readily takes at face value the mystic’s claim to have plumbed the depths of man’s inner experience. In actual fact, however, instead of really discovering such sentiments in the human heart, he is far more apt to have planted them there himself. The mystic is a past master at sowing seeds of discontent with the everyday world where none existed before. His entire case is not really based upon an accurate description of human

⁸Mary F. Robinson, The End of the Middle Ages (London: P. Fisher Unwin, n.d.), p. 83.

⁹André Maurois, Lélia, The Life of George Sand, translated by Gerard M. Hopkins (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1953), p. 156.

¹⁰The Philosophy of Plotinus, edited by Joseph Katz (New York: Appleton-Crofts, Inc., 1950), p. 156.

¹¹Cited by D. T. Suzuki, Essays in Zen Buddhism, first series (London: Luzac and Company, 1927), p. 364.

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consciousness but upon the entirely preconceived notion that any relation beyond oneself must necessarily be felt as intolerable. The minds of those who are under his spell are closed in advance to the possibility that one very special kind of relation, instead of inhibiting or oppressing freedom, might actually fulfill it.

THE ONE RELATION WHICH LIBERATES

       The actuality of such a unique relation is precisely what the Bible proclaimed. In view of the almost unanimous judgment of the Gentile world that such a relation is impossible, its claim was bound to sound like “foolishness to the Greeks.” A measure of the extent to which our own generation is far more Greek than Christian is the fact that the biblical word for this unique relation is certain to be misunderstood. The Greek word which the New Testament uses, agape, has become impossible to translate into English. If rendered as “charity,” it suggests almsgiving or the community chest; if as “love,” one thinks of Hollywood or true-story magazines. In order to prevent such misunderstanding, the Greek word will be frequently used in the following pages.

       The way in which agape actually does liberate the free agent instead of cramping his style can be illustrated by an experience common to most people. In any stimulating conversation, especially spirited dialogue between persons in love, each suddenly finds himself exercising unsuspected gifts of wit and insight which neither could generate by himself. The stimulus of creative interchange evokes resources which would otherwise have remained dormant. Although a remark by one party does indeed “condition” the other’s reply, the effect of this “conditioning” is not negative but positive. Instead of circumscribing one’s freedom, it provides the occasion for his own creative response. Instead of tyrannizing, it liberates.

       This fact of experience confounds the preconceived notion that only in splendid isolation is one truly free. Such a “freedom,” definable only in terms of what it is free from, obliterates the very structure of real freedom. The biblical alternative, on the contrary, preserves and accentuates it. One cannot talk meaningfully about the fulfillment of human freedom without preserving its relational character. While so many philosophies have therefore not talked about it meaningfully at all, the Bible proclaims that to live truly is to live in a relation of agape with one’s fellows.

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        Against this the world brings three important objections. First, protests the realist, one must grant in all honesty that not a soul alive really does love his neighbor as himself. If taken seriously, this Christian precept is therefore irrelevant. At best it can be retained only as a frankly unattainable ideal which might serve nevertheless to moderate the ingrained selfishness of men.

       Secondly, cries the voice of experience, if Christianity insists that human freedom can be fulfilled only in a particular kind of relation, why does it have to choose the one which has historically been the most disastrous of all, the relation of man to man? The testimony of the ages is one long chronicle of conflict and violence. It is matched at the personal level by the psychoanalyst’s discovery that declarations of love may camouflage emotions of hostility which the individual has successfully hidden from himself. Beneath the surface even the most ostensibly affectionate family may conceal a state of undeclared warfare between its members. To go about practicing Christian love in such a world is therefore simply to invite people to take advantage of one. He who loves is vulnerable, whereas the secret of living is to become invulnerable. As for the claim that spirited conversation is an illustration of love, what more eloquent rebuttal than the recent satires of Stephen Potter? With an effect as devastating as it is humorous, his Gamesmanship and Lifemanship reveal that the art of conversation is in reality nothing but the technique for subtly squelching one’s fellows. The only practical course is not to offer one’s neighbor a target. Hence the advice of so many of the world’s philosophies and religions is to fly from the persecution and contamination of society to the solitary life of the hermit.¹² Even many of history’s most gregarious figures, like Byron or Casanova, have privately admitted a contempt for the men (and women) whose company they cultivated. They agreed with the recluse that the last place to look for personal fulfillment is the society of one’s fellow man. In the words of Sartre’s epigram, “Hell is other people.”

       Finally, according to the wisdom of the world, since love is a matter of the emotions, it is not subject to control by the exercise of will power. You cannot like somebody simply by concentrating on it.

       What could be more quixotic, therefore, than to lay down as a uni-

¹²So-called Christian mystics have often repeated this wholly unbiblical advice. The classic example is the contention of St. John of the Cross that love toward the neighbor impedes one’s love for God. See E. Allison Peers, The Complete Works of St. John of the Cross edited by P. Silverio De SantaTeresa (Westminster, Maryland: The Newman Press, 1953), Vol. 1, pp. 24, 43.

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versal goal something that men could not achieve by their own efforts?¹³

THE DEARTH OF LOVE

        To these objections the “biblical philosopher” makes the following reply. To the first, the complaint that men do not in fact love their neighbor as themselves, he reacts with a mixture of surprise and satisfaction. Surprise, because he is accustomed to the opposite charge: namely, that Christianity takes too dim a view of human nature to appreciate the extent of actual good will in the world. Satisfaction, because here at least is a point on which both he and his disputant can agree: the woeful absence of love from a world bent upon self- destruction. A nice symbol of this is the fact that agape, one of the most frequent words in the New Testament, occurs only about half a dozen times outside the Bible. Its sudden emergence in the gospels, and epistles symbolizes the new reality which they proclaim, in contrast to the loveless “normalcy” to which the world has learned to accommodate itself.

        This is precisely the situation which leads the psalmist to exclaim, “There is none that doeth good, no, not one” (Psalm 14:3). It has also prompted Christian theologians to coin the phrase at which his antagonist probably takes offense: “original sin.” Even if this is not an entirely happy expression, on its best interpretation it simply stands for the very situation to which the critic himself has called attention.

       The Christian, in short, is the last person who needs to be reminded, whether by psychiatrist or cynic, of man’s inhumanity to man. On the contrary, he is in a position to chide the wisdom of the world with not going far enough. The fate which the world metes out to perfect agape could hardly be more poignantly symbolized than by a religion whose emblem is the cross. The self-styled realist has no stomach for so thoroughgoing a realism. As he silently takes his leave, the Christian is at least justified in one parting request:

¹³In an abortive attempt to answer this complaint some Christians are currently saying that, while one cannot like everybody, one can love everybody, because Christian love does not concern the emotions. In addition to being unbiblical, this position succeeds only in making the kingdom of heaven a rather grim and unattractive place. Although this misunderstanding is fairly common, its most powerful impetus has come from the celebrated book by Anders Nygren, Agape and Eros, translated by Philip F. Watson (London: S.P.C.K., 1953).

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that he never again be accused of wishful thinking or sentimental illusions.

THE VULNERABILITY OF LOVE

       The second objection was that, of all conceivable relations, none can become more intolerable than that between man and man, and that anyone naïve enough to put love into practice would simply invite the world to abuse him. The counsel of prudence is therefore to withdraw from society into the perfect invulnerability of solitude. The Christian replies that, although there is indeed nothing more crippling and destructive than negative human relations, this in itself suggests that they possess a unique potency. It is a matter of common experience that the things which can do the most harm, whether knowledge, or money, or atomic energy, can also exert the highest potency for good. It is therefore not unreasonable to expect that, like the energy of the atom, human relations too, under the right conditions, might be the greatest constructive force there is. This expectation is emphatically corroborated by the results of contemporary psychotherapy, which finds, on the one hand, that a hostile human environment is the principal cause of neurosis and, on the other hand, that being treated with respect and dignity is indispensable to the patient’s cure.

       Psychotherapy also corroborates with clinical evidence the contention that human speech can do every bit as much damage to personality as physical torture. It can be subtly used to annihilate a person without actually breaking the rules of decorum. Who has not heard the word “darling” used as a poisoned dart? From the analyst’s couch come endless variations on this theme. Small wonder that men fly from human company and seek refuge in the wilderness, for nature cannot talk back. Nevertheless, the same psychiatrists also make human speech the very cornerstone of the therapeutic process. It is precisely through a positive “conversational relation” with the analyst that the patient is progressively healed. According to a recent book on the subject, nothing is more important for maintaining or regaining mental health than being able to converse freely with someone who can be trusted not to take advantage of one’s vulnerability. It is not just a useful doctor’s device but a prerequisite of continuing sanity.^l4

¹⁴Harry and Bonaro Overstreet, The Mind Alive (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., Inc., 1954), Chapter 2.

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       Thus human intercourse generally, and speech specifically, can be used with deadly effect but can also become the most potent force for good. Although one can appreciate the hermit’s conclusion that to save himself he must abandon society and live a life of silence, his logic is fallacious.¹⁵ What is most disastrous when wrongly used, like a knife in the hand of an assassin, might still be the only thing that would save a man - in the hand of a surgeon. The fateful power of words, as the primary medium of human relationships, has not been more decisively stated than this:

Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh. The good man out of his good treasure bringeth forth good things, and the evil man out of his evil treasure bringeth forth evil things . . . For by thy words shalt thou be justified, and by thy words shaft thou be condemned. (Matthew 12:34-37.)

       The objection also contains another misunderstanding, the notion that each man is an isolated unit whose salvation would have to be entirely independent of his fellows and what they might do. Such a conception is incompatible with agape. It is not a unilateral relation but a reciprocal one; not something which I radiate in sublime independence of my neighbor but rather a relation of a certain quality between myself and him. Where there is only one person there can be no agape.

       It may be objected that the love of God himself is completely unilateral, remaining the same regardless of whether or not it is returned. This is to forget that the Old Testament is the history of God’s unrequited and therefore disappointed faithfulness to an idolatrous people. “All the day long have I stretched out my hand unto a rebellious people . . . a people that provoketh me to anger continually to my face” (Isaiah 65:2,3). Exactly the same point is made by the New Testament parables of the one lost sheep and of the lost coin, whose owner is grieved until he recovers them. The Bible is quite clear from beginning to end that its God is one whose love does not reach fulfillment until it is reciprocated.

       Since love is a multilateral relation, the Bible’s primary concern is not with the individual in isolated meditation, nor even with the sacrifice of oneself to the human beast of prey, but with men in community and the mutual relations between them. Two or three must be gathered before the Lord is present in their midst. This is reflected

¹⁵It is difficult to see how the vow of silence taken by certain Christian monks can be reconciled with the biblical outlook.

The Hallmark of Idolatry: A Hard Heart 53

in the practice of churches like the Protestant Episcopal, Eastern Orthodox, and Roman Catholic, in which the priest may not say a mass if no one else is present. For the sake of emphasis, one might make the risky generalization that it is impossible to be either a Christian or a Jew by oneself. Even without the necessary qualifications this statement is still more true than its opposite. It confutes the definition of religion formulated by A. N. Whitehead and others that “Religion is what the individual does with his own solitariness.” The trouble with this definition is that it does not include biblical religion. The pity is that so many Christians have been persuaded that it does.

       The key to the reply to the objection under consideration is the Church. With the possible exception of “love,” no word has undergone a greater change in meaning, or been subject to more misunderstanding, than this. Originally it referred to those between whom the relation of agape had been created. The New Testament word for it, ecclesia, derives from the verb “to call out” and means “the community of those who have been called out”- that is, called out of a loveless world into a re-created, redemptive company whose members are united by the bond of agape. A partial answer to the complaint that to practice love in a hostile world is suicidal is therefore this: The Christian is not called in the first instance to walk the plank for the amusement of a sadistic world but to enter a new kind of community, one which man cannot create by himself alone. St. Paul describes it in words borrowed from the Old Testament: “Come ye out from among them, and be ye separate . . . and I will receive you and be to you a Father, and ye shall be to me as sons and daughters, said the Lord Almighty” (2 Corinthians 6:17,18). Lest this separateness be misinterpreted as a parochial exclusiveness (as it has been construed by some sectarian groups), it should be added, first, that it is simply a description of experienced fact - the fact which caused the word agape to be retrieved from the bone yard and placed at the heart of the New Testament; and, second, that this same “datum” of experience is offered as a free gift to all who will accept it. The Church is in fact bound to impart it as widely as possible. Granted that it has often done so clumsily or not at all, nevertheless it is the world which rejects the Church more often than vice versa.

        But the rest of the answer to this objection grants its grain of truth. In a sense the Christian will suffer at the hands of a non-Christian world. Rather than offering escape from the world, however, his re-

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ligion impels him into it. Precisely because he knows the redemptive power of agape, he is all the more sensitive to its absence. Because his God is one who takes the world’s tragedies upon himself, he too can enjoy no complacent luxuriating in salvation as long as the sins of men (pre-eminently his own) continue to write the history of the human race in blood. In contrast to the Stoic ideal of detached imperturbability, he does not seek immunity to the heartbreaks of the world. Rather, he is empowered to bear it by One stronger than he who has already triumphed over it. The fruit of this victory is a present reality in the redemptive community, the assurance of ultimate triumph beyond the ruin of any personal disaster. Martyrdom, though not often spectacular, and never cultivated for its own sake, is therefore not simply a phenomenon of the early Church, but something for which the Christian is ready at any time. If it comes, he is able by the grace of God to meet it without regret but rather in accordance with the apostolic injunction: “Inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ’s suffering, rejoice” (I Peter 4:13) , an exhortation which is indeed “foolishness” apart from the words of Christ, “In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). This is the basis of the apostle’s exalted assurance:

Who shall separate us from the agape of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the agape of God, which is in Christ Jesus, our Lord (Romans 8:35-39).

THE IMPROBABILITY OF LOVE

        The realist’s third objection, that love is not something which cam be engendered simply by the exertion of will power, can be answered in a single word: “Amen!” If human fulfillment were simply a matter of practicing a prescribed set of regulations, there would be no problem. Anyone, if he sets his mind to it, can fulfill the requirements of a legalistic code of conduct. As St. Paul says, in effect: Judged by the righteousness which is in the law, I was found blameless ( see Philippians 3:6 ). To perform acts of benevolence from the right motive, however, is quite another thing. A plausible external facsimile of agape might be motivated instead by prudence, prestige,

The Hallmark of Idolatry: A Hard Heart 55

or self-righteousness. Although the power of self-control can accomplish great things, it frequently cannot govern motives. In short, the human situation has got too badly out of hand to be overcome by tugging at one’s bootstraps. As Christ might well have said, “Which of you by taking thought can love his neighbor as himself?”

        If any proof of God is to be found in the Bible it is the one implied by this question. He would be God indeed who could do the one thing man most desperately needs but cannot accomplish by himself. He can transform hardened hearts by evoking in them the power to love. On learning that the God of the Bible is willing to be accepted or rejected by this test, the skeptic blinks incredulously. And well he might, for he knows only too well that the ways of the world are not the ways of love. Both his amazement and his unbelief are precisely what one would expect, as St. Paul understood when he cited the Old Testament prophecy: “Behold, ye despisers, and wonder, and perish. For I work a work in your days, a work which ye shall in no wise believe, even though a man declare it unto you” (Acts 1 3:41). The mighty work of God which Paul declares to the skeptic is simply this: “The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit which is given unto us” (Romans 5:5).

        In the world at large, the wellsprings of agape are so nearly dry that its flickering appearance is continually at the mercy of the forces of fear and hostility in everyone. At a particular point in time, however, this situation was overcome by the agency of God himself. Although the fact that he has done this is one of the greatest mysteries, the way in which he does it is quite understandable. In ordinary human experience one loves as a result of having first been loved. The followers of Jesus were transformed into the Church because precisely this had happened to them. Once men had been loved unconditionally from beyond themselves, the vicious circle of hardheartedness was broken. To enter into this new and unique kind of community was to experience the liberating power of agape among its members.

       Christianity stakes its claim, not upon the moral perfection of its members, but upon a concrete, down-to-earth datum. Its God is neither a vague abstraction nor a sublime ideal, but rather is known concretely as he who transforms hard hearts into a community of redemption. What was impossible for man by himself becomes a given fact by virtue of the prior love of God for all who will respond to it. Hence the declaration of St. John: “Herein is love, not that we

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loved God, but that he first loved us. We love, because he first loved us” (1 John 4:10,19).

HARDNESS OF HEART

The proof of Christianity is thus not to be captured in flights of speculative theory but is rooted in stubborn fact - the kind of fact which no amount of wishful thinking can either conjure up or exorcise, namely, the quality of man’s relation with his neighbor. If it is governed by devotion to the impersonal ideal of “service” or “doing good,” it is still a far cry from agape. And if it is informed by suspicion, envy, exploitation, resentment, vindictiveness, or emulation, this can indeed be camouflaged, not only from oneself, but from the neighbor. But, however effective the disguise, it cannot alter the reality. On the psychiatrist’s couch the truth will out - often with greater violence than in the days when men regularly confessed their sins to God. Though one may not be proud of these emotions, they are nevertheless concrete, intractable data. The attempt to banish them by an act of will only drives them further underground, where they continue to operate silently toward one’s own undoing. The psychiatrist finds daily corroboration of this. As one has recently written, “Many people, of course, for reasons of expediency, fear, or conscience, manage to hold a reciprocal rage in check - and to pay for the effort later in the coin of headache, and fatigue. . .”¹⁶

        These stubborn facts drive the hermit to seek salvation through the severance of all personal ties, to insure against hostile emotions by cultivating a state of neutrality. For that very reason they likewise provide the raw material for Christianity’s strongest proof. Whereas with man it is impossible to convert neutral and negative emotions into the concrete fact of agape, with God all things, even this most improbable miracle, are possible. If a man should encounter someone who could actually do this, who could transform a hardened heart, he would know that he was dealing with the Almighty God. Hence the constant biblical emphasis on the radical difference between “before” and “after,” a difference so great that Saul, no longer able to regard himself as wholly the same person, changed his name to Paul. The Bible’s meaning is terribly literal when it speaks of it as the difference between death and life. How correct it is can be substantiated by the following thumbnail proof.

¹⁶H. and B. Overstreet, op. cit., p. 248.

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       If man is a free agent, then to annihilate his freedom, as the mystic would do, is obviously death to the individual. Likewise, if his freedom always puts him in relation to a criterion beyond himself, which in turn puts his freedom in bondage, the result is the gradual extinction of the self. Hence to worship a false god is literally a living death. And conversely, if there is any true life at all, it could only consist in a relation to Someone who, however unexpectedly, fulfills a man’s freedom instead of destroying it. These are the considerations, indeed the facts, from which is derived the formula: either suicide or God.

       How utterly antithetical this biblical answer is to most philosophical and religious speculation is beautifully illustrated by the following quotation, which expresses the ultimate issue of mysticism:

Do not get yourselves entangled with any object, but stand above, pass on, and be free .... Do not be deceived by others . . . if you encounter any obstacles, lay them low right away. If you encounter the Buddha, slay him; if you encounter the Patriarch, slay him; . . . slay them all without hesitation: for this is the only way to deliverance.¹⁷

       The contrast with the following biblical proclamation speaks for itself: “We know that we have been brought from death unto life because we love the brethren.” ( 1 John 3:14. My italics.)

       The Christian doctrine of sin can therefore be given a precise formulation in terms of its opposite. When man’s freedom is oriented toward the true God, he no longer seeks fulfillment by taking advantage of his neighbor, nor by fleeing from him, nor by becoming impervious to him, nor by becoming his psychological slave. The true God is he whose power to evoke agape binds men together in a redemptive community. Conversely, pseudo gods, instead of fulfilling man’s freedom, actually put him in bondage. The unmistakable mark with which they brand their victims is hardness of heart.

NOTE

The distinction made in this and the following chapters between motive and act could be misleading if it suggested that the two were completely separable. According to the Christian understanding of the unity of the personality, the motive always colors the act, how-

¹⁷These quotations from the famous Buddhist teacher Rinzai are quoted by D. T. Suzuki, Essays in Zen Buddhism, First Series (London: Luzac and Company, 1927). p. 332.

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ever imperceptibly. Although an act of agape could be copied, it could never be exactly duplicated. The eye of the camera might fail to detect the imitation, but subtle differences in tone of voice, quality of gesture, and facial expression would give it away. This view is borne out both by psychiatric data and by everyday experience.

Part II

Partial Eclipse of the
Biblical Understanding of Sin

in which it is shown how the specifically biblical conception of sin has often been partly obscured by the intrusion into Christian thinking of the two pagan versions.

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