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In verse 26 of Chapter Four of The Gospel of John (τὸ κατὰ Ἰωάννην εὐαγγέλιον) Jesus, speaking to a Samarian woman, is recorded as saying: Ἐγώ εἰμ ιὁ λαλῶν σοι. The first part – Ἐγώ εἰμ – literally means “I am.” Most translations insert ‘he’ – “I am he” – which in my view seems to somewhat lesson the impact of what Jesus says, which is that he just “is”, beyond causality itself and thus beyond any manifestation of Being – on Earth – as “a being”, be such a ‘being’ the mortal Messias or some other mortal. Expressed less philosophically, Jesus says that it is the divinity who is speaking to her: “it is I AM who is speaking to you,” which expression is what I, during my short perambulation as a Catholic monk wrote, near the verse in the margin of my copy of τὸ κατὰ Ἰωάννην εὐαγγέλιον.
Revisiting such marginalia decades later during my translation of and commentary on eight tractates of the Corpus Hermeticum, I began to translate the Gospel itself and which translation and the accompanying commentary given the relevance of the Gospel to particular verses in some of those tractates, for example φῶς καὶ ζωή ἐστιν ὁ θεὸς καὶ πατήρ, ἐξ οὗ ἐγένετο ὁ Ἄνθρωπος (phaos and Life are the theos and the father from whence the human came into being) from the Pœmandres tractate and ἐν αὐτῷ ζωὴ ἦν, καὶ ἡ ζωὴ ἦν τὸ φῶς τῶν ἀνθρώπων καὶ τὸ φῶς ἐν τῇ σκοτίᾳ φαίνει καὶ ἡ σκοτία αὐτὸ οὐ κατέλαβεν (Who was Life and which Life was the Phaos of human beings. And the Phaos illuminates the dark and is not overwhelmed by the dark) from Chapter One of John.
This led to further questions some of which I discuss here.
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Image credit:
Icon of Jesus Pantocrator, Δέησις Mosaic
Hagia Sophia, c. 1260 CE
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Image credit:
Icon of Jesus Pantocrator, Δέησις Mosaic
Hagia Sophia, c. 1260 CE
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Image credit:
Icon of Jesus Pantocrator, Δέησις Mosaic
Hagia Sophia, c. 1260 CE
Would being connected again to the ‘source of grace’ through the Catholic sacrament of confession and Holy Communion provide expiation for past transgressions and be cathartic? Possibly, given that certain passages from the Gospel of John have somewhat resonated with me since I began the task, in 2017, of translating that Gospel.
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Image credit:
Icon of Jesus Pantocrator, Δέησις Mosaic
Hagia Sophia, c. 1260 CE
Tenebrae
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The liturgical season of The Passion is upon us again and I find myself appreciating once more how the numinous allegory of The Passion was presenced in liturgical music from the Graduale Christus Factus Est to Vittoria’s Popule meus, quid feci tibi – Ἅγιος ὁ Θεός, Ἅγιος ἰσχυρός, Ἅγιος ἀθάνατος, ἐλέησον ἡμᾶς – to Scarlatti’s Stabat Mater to JS Bach’s St John and Matthew Passions. And I reminded so movingly of – when a monk – singing Tenebrae amid the flickering then extinguished light of candles…
So much human suffering for so many millennia which the allegory of The Passion of Jesus of Nazareth reminded so many of, century after century; as it reminded me several times in the depths of my decades of extremism. In comparison with such numinous music, liturgical and otherwise, what is my own wordy weltanschauung of pathei-mathos worth?
Very little it now seems to me, if anything at all.
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Image credit: Mosaic Icon of Jesus, Hagia Sophia
The letter written by Pope Francis, dated 1° de enero de 2019 and sent to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, seems to me to encapsulate two of the metaphysical contradictions of the modern Western world in regard to the numinous and the profane.
For in the letter Pope Francis, commenting on what the Media has described as “the scandal of clerical abuse” within the Roman Catholic Church, wrote that
La credibilidad de la Iglesia se ha visto fuertemente cuestionada y debilitada por estos pecados y crímenes, pero especialmente por la voluntad de querer disimularlos y esconderlos. [1]
and also used Biblical quotations in support of his arguments.
The use of the phrase pecados y crímenes – sins and crimes – seems to indicate an acceptance of the metaphysical equality of Church and State: of a sin, as defined by the teachings of the Church, and of a crime as defined in laws made by some State [2].
Sins And Crimes: Sacred And Secular
Pope Francis provides the context for one metaphysical contradiction, for in respect of the response he believes is required regarding such “sins and crimes” he writes
Hoy se nos pide una nueva presencia en el mundo conforme a la Cruz de Cristo, que se cristalice en servicio a los hombres y mujeres de nuestro tiempo [3]
That is, there should be a change, a new presencing, and one that serves the people now; the people of our epoch, of our age, of the ‘times’ in which we now live.
This is the epoch in which the Media, using such expressions as a “culture of abuse” – cultura del abuso – can question the credibility of the Roman Catholic Church, and by repetition of particular instances of abuse and the reporting of other ones, demand not only a response from the hierarchy of the Church but a response that conforms to the popular, or to the Media created, expectations of the epoch. Which expectations are that secular justice – as understood and as implemented by the State – has a higher priority than judicium divinum, the divine justice of God or of the gods.
Which divine justice was, at least according to my fallible understanding and as I noted in part two of my In Defence Of The Roman Catholic Church, “often considered more important than secular recompense and secular punishment” especially as personal confession to a Priest, personal penitence, and undertaking the penance prescribed were, in the Roman Catholic Church, a connexion to the Divine. Hence why many of those who, via the Sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation, confessed to abuse were not “publicly named and shamed” by the Catholic hierarchy, were not brought to the attention of State authorities, but instead given penance and, in some instances, quietly moved and expected to begin a new penitential life in the service of God.
That Pope Francis uses the expression cultura del abuso and writes that la credibilidad de la Iglesia se ha visto fuertemente cuestionada y debilitada por estos pecados y crímenes suggests to me at least two things. First, that the move toward the change he suggests is in part at least placatory, in conformity with our epoch with its powerful secular Media and its powerful modern secular States; and second that the religious, the numinous, the spiritual, balance presenced for millennia by aspects of the Roman Catholic Church [4] – the devotion to the sacred over and above the secular – is continuing to be lost within the Roman Catholic Church, with judicium divinum and the secular justice of some State now apparently considered by the Pope as metaphysically equal. Hence why in a speech to the Roman Curio in December 2018 he said that those who abused children should “hand themselves over to human justice.” [5]
A Revealed Religion
The second metaphysical contradiction, between the sacred and the profane in the modern world, which the Papal letter reveals is the unsurprising and traditional use of Biblical quotations in support of, and to frame, the presented suggestions and argument.
This reliance on written texts and reliance on their exegesis and thus on the varied interpretations that result [6] is an implicit part of all revealed religions from Judaism, to Christianity, to Islam. Since these interpretations can vary and have varied over the centuries the result is schism, reformation and counter-reformation, leading as these did in the past to such things as the suppression of the monasteries, the theft of monastic lands and wealth, and the persecution and martyrdom of Catholics, by a tyrannos named Henry; and leading as they have in more modern times, to the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, and to the proliferation of Christian sects and denominations who have diverse views about such matters as same-gender love and abortion.
Such reliance on such texts, such varying interpretations, are as I have noted elsewhere the fundamental weakness of revealed religions [7] with, in my fallible view, the sacred – the numinous – unable to fully be presenced by such religions.
Thus it does not surprise me that the Roman Catholic Church apparently now considers judicium divinum and the secular justice of some State as metaphysically equal since the conflict between varying interpretations, the apparent desire for placatory reforms – of being “a new presence in the world” – as a consequence of Media attention, and the increasing move away “in this epoch” from a belief in the superiority of judicium divinum (the primacy of the sacred) are necessary consequences of the dialectic of exegesis.
Which is one reason why my personal spiritual belief is now not that of Catholicism even though I sense that Catholicism does still presence some aspects of the numinous.
Instead, I incline toward an apprehension of the divine, the sacred, which is paganus and thus individual, undogmatic, and empathic, since my paganus metaphysics is that of
(i) an (often wordless) awareness of ourselves as a fallible mortal, as a microcosmic connexion to other mortals, to other life, to Nature, and to the Cosmos beyond our world, and (ii) a new civitas, and one not based on some abstractive law but on a spiritual and interior (and thus not political) understanding and appreciation of our own Ancestral Culture and that of others; on our ‘civic’ duty to personally presence καλὸς κἀγαθός and thus to act and to live in a noble way. For the virtues of personal honour and manners, with their responsibilities, presence the fairness, the avoidance of hubris, the natural harmonious balance, the gender equality, the awareness and appreciation of the divine, that is the numinous. [8]
David Myatt
7.i.19
who enquired about a Papal Letter in relation to my text
In Defence Of The Roman Catholic Church
[1] “The credibility of the Church has been seriously questioned and undermined by these sins and crimes but especially by a desire to hide or to disguise them.”
The official Vatican translation is “The Church’s credibility has been seriously undercut and diminished by these sins and crimes, but even more by the efforts made to deny or conceal them.”
[2] By the term State is meant the concept of both (i) organizing and controlling – over a particular and large geographical area – land (and resources); and (ii) organizing and controlling individuals over that same geographical particular and large geographical area.
[3] “Today, what is asked of us is to be a new presence in the world that, in conformity with the Cross of Christ, is made clear in service to the men and women of our epoch.”
The official Vatican translation is “What is being asked of us today is a new presence in the world, conformed to the cross of Christ, one that takes concrete shape in service to the men and women of our time.”
[4] As I noted in part one of my In Defence Of The Roman Catholic Church,
“Listening to Messe De La Nativité: Gaudeamus Hodie; Puer Natus Est Nobis performed by Ensemble Gilles Binchois – I am so reminded how the Roman Catholic Church inspired such numinosity, such beauty, century following century. For it is as if such music presenced the Divine to thus remind us, we fallible error-prone mortals, of another realm beyond the material and beyond our own mortal desires.”
[5] Catholic News Agency, December 21, 2018.
[6] Qv. my Tu Es Diaboli Ianua, and Classical Paganism And The Christian Ethos.
[7] Qv. (i) Questions of Good, Evil, Honour, and God; (ii) Tu Es Diaboli Ianua; (iii) Classical Paganism And The Christian Ethos.
[8] Tu Es Diaboli Ianua.
David Myatt 
In Regard To The Divine
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In regard to Christianity and the Divine in general do we human beings really need anything more than the musical introduction to and the first Chorus of JS Bach’s St John Passion? [1]
Lasting, as it generally does, less than ten minutes it to me at least so expresses, beyond words, beyond theology, beyond doctrine, and beyond all ideations, the allegory of the Passion of Jesus of Nazareth.
We seem to so easily forget, find excuses for, ignoring such a revelation; or more probably in our modern era we have never encountered such an intimation of the divine. Personally, I am not ashamed to admit that I found and still find the opening to be not only the most inspired human expression of Jesus and his life, reducing me as it always does to tears, but also a wordless remembrance of what the Passion, and – sans the theology of whatever religion – of what divinity-presenced personally means and can mean.
David Myatt
Feria sexta in Parasceve
2024 CE
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[1] Chorus:
Herr, unser Herrscher, dessen Ruhm
In allen Landen herrlich ist!
Zeig uns durch deine Passion,
Daß du, der wahre Gottessohn,
Zu aller Zeit,
Auch in der größten Niedrigkeit,
Verherrlicht worden bist!
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Image credit:
Icon of Jesus Pantocrator, Δέησις Mosaic
Hagia Sophia, c. 1260 CE
Filed in Christianity, David Myatt, DW Myatt, τὸ κατὰ Ἰωάννην εὐαγγέλιον, Jesus Of Nazareth, New Testament, Novum Testamentum Graece, Personal Comments, Way of Pathei-Mathos
Tags: Catholic Church, Christianity, David Myatt, Evangel of Jesus of Nazareth, Gospel of John, τὸ κατὰ Ἰωάννην εὐαγγέλιον, Novum Testamentum Graece, Numinous Religion, Way of Pathei-Mathos