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• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Each one breaks what all are breaking, Good and bad their bliss are meeting None a lessened body leaves. Or their doom herein they seal." 4. The doctrine of transubstantiation has always been regarded by Protestants as one of the fundamental errors and grossest superstitions of Romanism. But we must not forget the underlying truth which gives tenacity to error. A doctrine cannot be wholly false, which has been believed for centuries not only by the Greek and Latin churches alike, but as regards the chief point, namely, the real presence of the very body and blood of Christ—also by the Lutheran and a considerable portion of the Anglican communions, and which still nourishes the piety of innumerable guests at the Lord’s table. The mysterious discourse of our Saviour in the synagogue of Capernaum after the miraculous feeding of the multitude, expresses the great truth which is materialized and carnalized in transubstantiation. Christ is in the deepest spiritual sense the bread of life from heaven which gives nourishment to believers, and in the holy communion we receive the actual benefit of his broken body and shed blood, which are truly present in their power; for his sacrifice, though offered but once, is of perpetual force to all who accept it in faith. The literal miracle of the feeding of the five thousand is spiritually carried on in the vital union of Christ and the believer, and culminates in the sacramental feast. Our Lord thus explains the symbolic significance of that miracle in the strongest language; but he expressly excludes the carnal, Capernaitic conception, and furnishes the key for the true understanding, in the sentence: "It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I have spoken unto you are spirit, and are life" (John 6:63). CHAPTER XII.HERETICAL SECTS.§ 131. The Paulicians. I. Petrus Siculus (imperial commissioner in Armenia, about 870): Historia Manichaeorum, qui Pauliciani dicuntur ( JIstoriva peri; th'" kenh'" kai; mataiva" aiJrevsew" tw'n Maniccaivwn tw'n kai; Paulikianw'n legomevnwn). Gr. Lat. ed. Matth. Raderus. Ingolst., 1604. Newly ed. by J. C. L. Gieseler. Göttingen, 1846, with an appendix, 1849. Photius (d. 891): Adv. recentiors Manichaeos, lib. IV. Ed. by J. Chr. Wolf. Hamburg, 1722; in Gallandii "Bibl. PP." XIII. 603 sq., and in Photii Opera ed. Migne, Tom. II., col. 9–264 (reprint of Wolf). For the history of the sect after A.D. 870 we must depend on the Byzantine historians, Constantine Porphyrogenitus and Cedrenus.

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  Parmenides, a native of Elea, who was slightly younger than Heraclitus, experienced his bleak philosophy as a divine revelation. He had traveled to heaven in a fiery chariot, he said, far beyond the Milky Way, where he met a goddess who took him by the hand and gave him this reassurance: “No ill fate has sent you to travel this road—far indeed does it lie from the steps of men—but right and justice. It is proper that you should learn all things.” 81 Parmenides believed that by freeing humanity from delusion, he was performing a valuable spiritual service. Because nothing was as it appeared, human reason must rise above common sense, prejudice, and unverified opinion; only then could it grasp true reality. 82 But many of his contemporaries felt that he made it impossible to think constructively about anything at all. 83 Parmenides argued that the world could not have developed in the way the Milesians had described, because all change was an illusion. Reality consisted of one, simple, complete, and eternal Being. He insisted that we could say nothing sensible about phenomena that did not exist. Thus, because Being was eternal and not subject to alteration, there was no such thing as change. We could, therefore, never say that something was born, because that implied that previously it had not existed, nor, for the same reason, could we say that it died or ceased to be. It appeared that creatures came into being and passed away, but this was an illusion, because reality was beyond time and change. Again, nothing could “move,” in the sense that at a given moment an object shifted from one place to another. We could never say that something had “developed,” that it had been one way once but become something different. So the universe was not in flux, as Heraclitus claimed; nor did it evolve, as the Milesians had argued. The universe was the same at all times and in all places. It was unchanging, uncreated, and immortal. The Milesians had based their philosophy on their observation of such phenomena as water and air. But Parmenides did not trust the evidence of the senses, and relied, with remarkable, ruthless consistency, on a purely reasoned argument. He cultivated the habit of “second-order thinking,” reflection upon the thought processes themselves. Like many of the Axial sages, he had arrived at a new, critical awareness of the limitations of human knowledge. Parmenides had also embarked on the philosophical quest for pure existence. Instead of contemplating individual creatures, he was trying to put his finger on quintessential being. But in the process, he created a world in which it was impossible to live. Why would anybody undertake any course of action, if change and movement were illusory? His disciple Melissus was a naval commander: How was he supposed to guide his moving ship? How should we evaluate the physical changes that we note within ourselves? Were human beings really phantoms?

• From Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (2014)

  40 We know very little about the motivation that lay behind this reform movement. According to one scholar, it sprang from the insoluble conundrum that the sacrificial ritual, which was designed to give life, actually involved death and destruction. The rishis could not eliminate military violence from society, but they could strip it of religious legitimacy. 41 There was also a new concern about cruelty to animals. In one of the later poems of the Rig Veda, a rishi tenderly soothes the horse about to be slaughtered in the ashvameda: Let not thy dear soul burn thee as thou comest, let not the hatchet linger in thy body Let not a greedy, clumsy immolator, missing the joints, mangle thy limbs unduly. No, here thou diest not, thou art not injured: by easy paths unto the Gods thou goest. 42 The Brahmanas described animal sacrifice as cruel, recommending that the beast be spared and given as a gift to an officiating priest. 43 If it had to be killed, the animal should be dispatched as painlessly as possible. In the old days the victim’s decapitation had been the dramatic climax of the sacrifice; now the animal was suffocated in a shed at a distance from the sacrificial area. 44 Some scholars, however, contend that the reform was driven not by a revulsion from violence per se; rather, violence was now experienced as polluting, and anxious to avoid defilement, priests preferred to delegate the task to assistants who killed the victim outside the sacred ground. 45 Whatever their motivation, the reformers were beginning to create a climate of opinion that looked askance at violence. They also directed the patron’s attention toward his inner world. Instead of inflicting death on the hapless animal, he was now instructed to assimilate death, experiencing it internally in a symbolic rite. 46 During the ceremony, his death was enacted ritually and enabled him for a time to enter the world of the immortal gods. A more internal spirituality was beginning to emerge, one closer to what we call “religion”; and it was rooted in a desire to avoid violence. Instead of mindlessly going through the motions of external rituals, participants were required to become aware of the hidden significance of the rites, making themselves conscious of the connections that, in the logic of the perennial philosophy, linked every single action, liturgical utensil, and mantra to a divine reality. Gods were assimilated with humans, humans with animals and plants, the transcendent with the immanent, and the visible with the invisible. 47 This was not simply self-indulgent make-believe but part of the endless human endeavor to endow the smallest details of life with meaning. Ritual, it has been said, creates a controlled environment in which, for a while, we lay aside the inescapable flaws of our mundane existence. Yet by so doing we paradoxically become acutely aware of them.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  The central current and ultimate aim of universal history is the Kingdom of God established by Jesus Christ. This is the grandest and most comprehensive institution in the world, as vast as humanity and as enduring as eternity. All other institutions are made subservient to it, and in its interest the whole world is governed. It is no after-thought of God, no subsequent emendation of the plan of creation, but it is the eternal forethought, the controlling idea, the beginning, the middle, and the end of all his ways and works. The first Adam is a type of the second Adam; creation looks to redemption as the solution of its problems. Secular history, far from controlling sacred history, is controlled by it, must directly or indirectly subserve its ends, and can only be fully understood in the central light of Christian truth and the plan of salvation. The Father, who directs the history of the world, "draws to the Son," who rules the history of the church, and the Son leads back to the Father, that "God may be all in all." "All things," says St. Paul, "were created through Christ and unto Christ: and He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. And He is the head of the body, the Church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things He may have the pre-eminence." Col. 1:16–18. "The Gospel," says John von Müller, summing up the final result of his lifelong studies in history, "is the fulfilment of all hopes, the perfection of all philosophy, the interpreter of all revolutions, the key of all seeming contradictions of the physical and moral worlds; it is life—it is immortality."

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  83 The phrase “he who knows” beats insistently through the Brahmana texts. The priests could not do all the work. The kshatriya and vaishya sacrificer also had to be proficient in liturgical lore, because knowledge alone could unlock the powers of the rites. The liturgy created by the reformers must have been spiritually satisfying, or the Brahmins never could have persuaded the warriors to give up their war games. It is difficult for us to appreciate the aesthetic, transformative power of these rites, because we have only the flat statements of the Brahmanas . Before the rite, the sacrificer made a retreat that isolated him from the pressing concerns of his ordinary life; the fasting, meditation, and asceticism, the intoxication of the soma drink, and the beauty of the chant would all have given emotional resonance to the dry, abstract instructions of the ritualists. To read the Brahmanas without the experience of the liturgy is like reading the libretto of an opera without hearing the music. The “knowledge” of ritual science was not a notional acceptance of the metaphysical speculations of the Brahmins, but was like the insights derived from art, achieved by the compelling drama of the cult. But the most important effect of the ritual reform was the discovery of the interior world. By placing such emphasis on the sacrificer’s mental state, the ritualists had directed his attention within. In antiquity, religion was usually directed outward, to external reality. The old rites had focused on the gods, and their goal had been the achievement of material goods—cattle, wealth, and status. There was little or no self-conscious introspection. The ritual reformers were pioneers. They redirected sacrifice from its original orientation, and focused instead on the creation of the atman, the self. But what exactly was the atman? The priests who were immersed in the ritual science of the Brahmanas began to speculate on the nature of the self, and gradually the word “atman” came to refer to the essential and eternal core of the human person, which made him or her unique. The atman was not what we in the West would call the soul, because it was not wholly spiritual. In the early stages of this speculation, some of the Brahmins believed that the self was physical: the trunk of the body, as opposed to the limbs. Others began to look deeper.

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  Thus knowledge of the self was an experience of pure bliss, an ekstasis. This knowledge lay beyond concepts and did not depend upon logical deduction. It was rather an awareness of an “inner light within the heart,” a direct and immediate intuition, beyond any ordinary joy. This “knowledge” transformed the individual. It could be attained only after a long training in inwardness, which the aspirants could achieve by practicing Yajnavalkya’s dialectical method: systematically dismantling normal habits of thought; cultivating an awareness of their interior world, their dreams, and subconscious states; and by constantly reminding themselves that the knowledge they sought was beyond words and of an entirely different order from their secular thoughts and experiences. Yajnavalkya could not impart this knowledge, as if it were ordinary, factual information. He could only teach the method that enabled his disciples to arrive at this state. Yajnavalkya believed that a person who knows thus—who had realized his or her identity with brahman—would go to brahman at death, taking their “knowledge” with them. In the traditional Vedic ritual, a person constructed the self that would survive in the world of the gods by means of his liturgical action (karma). But for Yajnavalkya, the creation of an immortal self was not achieved by external rites, but by this carefully acquired knowledge. The ritualists had believed that the self was built by accumulating a stock of perfectly executed sacrifices, but Yajnavalkya was convinced that the eternal self was conditioned by all our actions and experiences. “What a man turns out to be depends on how he acts and on how he conducts himself. If his actions are good, he will turn into something good. If his actions are bad, he turns into something bad.” Yajnavalkya was not simply talking about our external deeds. Our mental activities, such as our impulses of desire and feelings of attachment, were also crucial. After his death, a man whose desires were fixed on the things of this world would return to earth, after a brief stay in heaven. His mind and character still clung to the mundane, and so he would be born again to endure a new life here below, “back to this world, back to action.” But a man who sought only his immortal self, and was not attached to this world, belonged to the brahman: “A man who does not desire—who is without desires, who is freed from desires, whose desires are fulfilled, whose only desire is his self—his vital functions do not depart. Brahman he is, and to brahman he goes.”19 He would never again return to this life of pain and mortality.

• From Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (2014)

  Paleolithic hunters may have had a similar understanding.18 The cave paintings in northern Spain and southwestern France are among the earliest extant documents of our species. These decorated caves almost certainly had a liturgical function, so from the very beginning art and ritual were inseparable. Our neocortex makes us intensely aware of the tragedy and perplexity of our existence, and in art, as in some forms of religious expression, we find a means of letting go and encouraging the softer, limbic emotions to predominate. The frescoes and engravings in the labyrinth of Lascaux in the Dordogne, the earliest of which are seventeen thousand years old, still evoke awe in visitors. In their numinous depiction of the animals, the artists have captured the hunters’ essential ambivalence. Intent as they were to acquire food, their ferocity was tempered by respectful sympathy for the beasts they were obliged to kill, whose blood and fat they mixed with their paints. Ritual and art helped hunters express their empathy with and reverence (religio) for their fellow creatures—just as Mencius would describe some seventeen millennia later—and helped them live with their need to kill them. In Lascaux there are no pictures of the reindeer that featured so largely in the diet of these hunters.19 But not far away, in Montastruc, a small sculpture has been found, carved from a mammoth tusk in about 11,000 BCE, at about the same time as the later Lascaux paintings. Now lodged in the British Museum, it depicts two swimming reindeer.20 The artist must have watched his prey intently as they swam across lakes and rivers in search of new pastures, making themselves particularly vulnerable to the hunters. He also felt a tenderness toward his victims, conveying the unmistakable poignancy of their facial expressions without a hint of sentimentality. As Neil MacGregor, director of the British Museum, has noted, the anatomical accuracy of this sculpture shows that it “was clearly made not just with the knowledge of a hunter but also with the insight of a butcher, someone who had not only looked at his animals but had cut them up.” Rowan Williams, the former archbishop of Canterbury, has also reflected insightfully on the “huge and imaginative generosity” of these Paleolithic artists: “In the art of this period, you see human beings trying to enter fully into the flow of life, so that they become part of the whole process of animal life that’s going on all around them … and this is actually a very religious impulse.”21 From the first, then, one of the major preoccupations of both religion and art (the two being inseparable) was to cultivate a sense of community—with nature, the animal world, and our fellow humans.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  II. The founder of the sect is Constantine a Syrian from a Gnostic (Marcionite) congregation in Mananalis near Samosata. Inspired by the epistles of St. Paul and pretending to be his genuine disciple, he propagated under the name of Sylvanus dualistic doctrines in Kibossa in Armenia and in the regions of Pontus and Cappadocia, with great success for twenty-seven years, until the Emperor Constantine Pogonatus (668–685) sent an officer, Symeon, for his arrest and execution. He was stoned to death in 684, and his congregation scattered. But Symeon was struck and converted by the serene courage of Constantine-Sylvanus, revived the congregation, and ruled it under the name of Titus. When Justinian II. heard of it, he condemned him and the other leaders to death by fire (690), according to the laws against the Manichaeans. But in spite of repeated persecution and inner dissensions, the sect spread throughout Asia Minor. When it decayed, a zealous reformer rose in the person of Sergius, called Tychieus, the second founder of the sect (801–835). He had been converted by a woman, visited the old congregations and founded new ones, preached and wrote epistles, opposed the antinomian practices of Baanes, called "the Filthy" (oJ rJuparov"), and introduced strict discipline. His followers were called Sergiotes in distinction from the Baanites. The fate of the sect varied with the policy of the Greek emperors. The iconoclastic Leo the Isaurian did not disturb them, and gave the leader of the sect, Gegnaesius, after a satisfactory examination by the patriarch, a letter of protection against persecution; but the wily heretic had answered the questions in a way that deceived the patriarch. Leo the Armenian (813–820) organized an expedition for their conversion, pardoning the apostates and executing the constant. Theodora, who restored the worship of images, cruelly persecuted them, and under her short reign one hundred thousand Paulicians were put to death by the sword, the gibbet, or the flames (844). Perhaps this large number included many iconoclasts. Provoked by these cruelties, the Paulicians raised the standard of revolt under the lead of Karbeas. He fled with five thousand to the Saracens, built a strong fort, Tephrica,757 on the Arab frontier, and in alliance with the Moslems made successful military invasions into the Byzantine territory. His son-in-law, Chrysocheres, proceeded as far as Ephesus, and turned the cathedral into a stable (867), but was killed by the Greeks in 871, and the sect had to submit to the Emperor Basil the Macedonian. He sent among them the monk Petrus Siculus, who thus became acquainted with their doctrines and collected the materials for his work. After this the sect lost its political significance, and gradually disappeared from history. Many were transferred to Philippopolis in Thrace about 970, as guards of the frontier, and enjoyed toleration. Alexius Comnenus (1081–1118) disputed with their leaders, rewarded the converts, and punished the obstinate. The Crusaders found some remains in 1204, when they captured Constantinople.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  In the West the writings of Pseudo-Dionysius were first noticed about 590 by Pope Gregory I., who probably became acquainted with them while ambassador at Constantinople. Pope Hadrian I. mentions them in a letter to Charlemagne. The Emperor Michael II. the Stammerer, sent a copy to Louis the Pious, 827. Their arrival at St. Denis on the eve of the feast of the saint who reposed there, was followed by no less than nineteen miraculous cures in the neighborhood. They naturally recalled the memory of the patron-saint of France, and were traced to his authorship. The emperor instructed Hilduin, the abbot of St. Denis, to translate them into Latin; but his scholarship was not equal to the task. John Scotus Erigena, the best Greek scholar in the West, at the request of Charles the Bald, prepared a literal translation with comments, about 850, and praised the author as "venerable alike for his antiquity and for the sublimity of the heavenly mysteries" with which he dealt.780 Pope Nicolas I. complained that the work had not been sent to him for approval," according to the custom of the church" (861); but a few years later Anastasius, the papal librarian, highly commended it (c. 865). The Areopagitica stimulated an intuitive and speculative bent of mind, and became an important factor in the development of scholastic and mystic theology. Hugo of St. Victor, Peter the Lombard, Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, Robert Grosseteste, and Dionysius Carthusianus wrote commentaries on them, and drew from them inspiration for their own writings.781 The Platonists of the Italian renaissance likewise were influenced by them. Dante places Dionysius among the theologians in the heaven of the sun: "Thou seest next the lustre of that taper, Which in the flesh below looked most within The angelic nature and its ministry."782 Luther called him a dreamer, and this was one of his heretical views which the Sorbonne of Paris condemned. The Several Writings. The Dionysian writings, as far as preserved, are four treatises addressed to Timothy, his "fellow-presbyter," namely: 1) On the Celestial Hierarchy (peri; th'" oujraniva" iJerarciva"). 2) On the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy (peri; th'" ejkklhsiastikh'" iJerarciva"). 3) On the Divine Names (peri; qeivwn ojnomavtwn). 4) On Mystic Theology (peri; mustikh'" qeologiva"). To these are added ten letters addressed to various persons of the apostolic age.783 The System of Dionysius.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  With Conrad III. the powerful family of the Hohenstaufen ascended the imperial throne and occupied it from 1138 till 1254. They derive the name from the family castle Hohenstaufen, on a hill in the Rough Alp near Göppingen in Swabia.129 They were descended from a knight, Friedrich von Büren, in the eleventh century, and his son Friedrich von Staufen, a faithful adherent of Emperor Henry IV., who made him duke of Swabia (1079), and gave him his daughter Agnes in marriage. They were thus connected by blood with the antagonist of Pope Hildebrand, and identified with the cause of the Ghibellines against the Guelphs in their bloody feuds in Germany and Italy. Henry VI., 1190–1197, acquired by marriage the kingdom of Naples and Sicily. His son, Frederick II., raised his house to the top of its prosperity, but was in his culture and taste more an Italian than German prince, and spent most of his time in Italy. The Hohenstaufen or Swabian emperors maintained the principle of imperialism, that is, the dignity and independence of the monarchy, as a divine institution, against papal sacerdotalism on the one hand, and against popular liberty on the other. They made common cause with the popes, and served their purposes in the crusades: three of them, Conrad III., Frederick I., and Frederick II., undertook crusades against the Saracens; Conrad III. engaged in the second, which was a failure; Frederick I. perished in Syria; Frederick II. captured Jerusalem. The Hohenstaufen made also common cause with the popes against political and doctrinal dissent: Barbarossa sacrificed and punished by death Arnold of Brescia as a dangerous demagogue; and Frederick II., though probably himself an unbeliever, persecuted heretics. But on the question of supremacy of power, the Hohenstaufen were always in secret or open war with the popes, and in the end were defeated. The conflict broke out under Frederick Barbarossa, who after long years of contention died at peace with the Church. It was continued by his grandson Frederick II. who died excommunicated and deposed from his throne by the papacy. The dynasty went out in tragic weakness in Conradin, the last male representative, who was beheaded on the charge of high treason, 1268. This conflict of the imperial house of the Hohenstaufen was more imposing than the conflict waged by Henry IV. with Gregory and his successors because of the higher plane on which it was fought and the greater ability of the secular antagonists engaged. Lasting more than one hundred years, it forms one of the most august spectacles of the Middle Ages, and furnishes some of the most dramatic scenes in which kings have ever figured. The historian Gregorovius has felt justified in saying that "this Titanic war of the Middle Ages filled and connected the centuries and formed the greatest spectacle of all ages."

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Paschasius Radbertus (from 800 to about 865), a learned, devout and superstitious monk, and afterwards abbot of Corbie or Corvey in France705 is the first who clearly taught the doctrine of transubstantiation as then believed by many, and afterwards adopted by the Roman Catholic church. He wrote a book "on the Body and Blood of the Lord," composed for his disciple Placidus of New Corbie in the year 831, and afterwards reedited it in a more popular form, and dedicated it to the Emperor Charles the Bald, as a Christmas gift (844). He did not employ the term transubstantiation, which came not into use till two centuries later; but he taught the thing, namely, that "the substance of bread and wine is effectually changed (efficaciter interius commutatur) into the flesh and blood of Christ," so that after the priestly consecration there is "nothing else in the eucharist but the flesh and blood of Christ," although "the figure of bread and wine remain" to the senses of sight, touch, and taste. The change is brought about by a miracle of the Holy Spirit, who created the body of Christ in the womb of the Virgin without cohabitation, and who by the same almighty power creates from day to day, wherever the mass is celebrated, the same body and blood out of the substance of bread and wine. He emphasizes the identity of the eucharistic body with the body which was born of the Virgin, suffered on the cross, rose from the dead, and ascended to heaven; yet on the other hand he represents the sacramental eating and drinking as a spiritual process by faith.706 He therefore combines the sensuous and spiritual conceptions.707 He assumes that the soul of the believer communes with Christ, and that his body receives an imperishable principle of life which culminates at last in the resurrection. He thus understood, like several of the ancient fathers, the words of our Saviour: "He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day" (John 6:54). He supports his doctrine by the words of institution in their literal sense, and by the sixth chapter of John. He appealed also to marvellous stories of the visible appearances of the body and blood of Christ for the removal of doubts or the satisfaction of the pious desire of saints. The bread on the altar, he reports, was often seen in the shape of a lamb or a little child, and when the priest stretched out his hand to break the bread, an angel descended from heaven with a knife, slaughtered the lamb or the child, and let his blood run into a cup!708 Such stories were readily believed by the people, and helped to strengthen the doctrine of transubstantiation; as the stories of the appearances of departed souls from purgatory confirmed the belief in purgatory.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  The promise given to Abraham and the patriarchs is prior to the law, and not set aside by the law; it contained the germ and the pledge of salvation, and Abraham stands out as the father of the faithful, who was justified by faith even before he received circumcision as a sign and seal. The law came in besides, or between the promise and the gospel in order to develop the disease of sin, to reveal its true character as a transgression of the divine will, and thus to excite the sense of the need of salvation. The law is in itself holy and good, but cannot give life; it commands and threatens, but gives no power to fulfil; it cannot renew the flesh, that is, the depraved, sinful nature of man; it can neither justify nor sanctify, but it brings the knowledge of sin, and by its discipline it prepares men for the freedom of Christ, as a schoolmaster prepares children for independent manhood.784 (2.) The Salvation itself is comprehended in the person and work of Christ. It was accomplished in the fulness of the time by the sinless life, the atoning death, and the glorious resurrection and exaltation of Christ, the eternal Son of God, who appeared in the likeness of the flesh of sin and as an offering for sin, and thus procured for us pardon, peace, and reconciliation. "God spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all." This is the greatest gift of the eternal love of the Father for his creatures. The Son of God, prompted by the same infinite love, laid aside his divine glory and mode of existence, emptied himself exchanged the form of God for the form of a servant, humbled himself and became obedient, even unto the death of the cross. Though he was rich, being equal with God, yet for our sakes he became poor, that we through his poverty might become rich. In reward for his active and passive obedience God exalted him and gave him a name above every name, that in the name of Jesus every knee should bow and every tongue confess that he is Lord.785 Formerly the cross of Christ had been to the carnal Messianic expectations and self-righteousness of Paul, as well as of other Jews, the greatest stumbling- block, as it was the height of folly to the worldly wisdom of the heathen mind.786 But the heavenly vision of the glory of Jesus at Damascus unlocked the key for the understanding of this mystery, and it was confirmed by the primitive apostolic tradition,787 and by his personal experience of the failure of the law and the power of the gospel to give peace to his troubled conscience. The death of Christ appeared to him now as the divinely appointed means for procuring righteousness.

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  The brahmacarya (“holy life”) was an initiation into Vedic life. The student had to be chaste and commit no act of violence. He could not eat meat, practiced the austerities of tapas, sitting by the fire, sweating, and controlling his breathing. He memorized the Rig Veda, and learned the correct sacrificial procedures, but far more crucial was the knowledge (vidya) he acquired that could not be put into words. In India, education was never simply a matter of acquiring factual information. A pupil learned by doing things—chanting mantras, performing tasks, rituals, or ascetical exercises—that were just as important as textual study, and that, over time, transformed him, so that he saw the world differently. Living in a limbo between the sacred and profane worlds, the brahmacarin was revered as a holy figure. His teacher was indispensable. By the eighth century, the Brahmin priest was considered a “visible deity.”113 Because he was one who knew Vedic science, he was filled with the power of the brahman that became manifest during the rituals. Constantly disciplining his senses, speaking the truth at all times, practicing nonviolence, and behaving with detached equanimity to all, the Brahmin teacher embodied the “holy life.” By imitating his teacher in the smallest details of the daily round, the student became one with him, and learned the inner meaning of the Vedic knowledge. The teacher was thus a midwife, laboring, day by day, to bring to birth his pupil’s new self (atman), which could move mountains.114 His initiation complete, the fully fledged Brahmin could return to the world, take a wife, light his sacred fire, perform the duties of his class, and start a family. But at some point during the eighth century, mature Brahmins whose apprenticeship was long behind them felt compelled to undertake a solitary brahmacarya without a teacher; this, they believed, would make their ritual practice more effective.115 Once again, they retired to the forest to live the holy life. Some did this only for a limited period, but others became lifelong brahmacarins. During the Vedic rites, the sacrificer and priests had made a mystical ascent to heaven but could remain there only for a short time. The divine and profane worlds were incompatible. If the sacrificer descended immediately to earth after his sojourn in heaven, it was thought, he would die instantly. Special rites were designed to desacralize him, so that he could return safely to profane time. But the renouncer did not want to make this reentry; he wanted to remain in the realm of brahman all the time, and that meant that he could not live in the world anymore. The sacrificer turned his back on society simply for the duration of the ritual, but the renouncer rejected it forever.116

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  He made a newborn infant indicate its true father, and vindicate the innocence of a presbyter who had been charged by the mother with the crime of violation; he caused leeks and herbs to grow in the garden before their season; he subdued with his staff the winds and the waves of the sea; and even his relics cured the sick, cleansed the lepers, and terrified the wicked, "by all which things," says Ailred, his biographer, "the faith of believers is confirmed to the praise and glory of Christ." St. Kentigern (d. Nov. 13, 603), also called St. Mungo (the gracious one),75 the first bishop of Glasgow, labored in the sixth century for the conversion of the people in Cumberland, Wales, and on the Clyde, and re-converted the Picts, who had apostatized from the faith. He was the grandson of a heathen king

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  By the tenth century some rishis started to create a new theological discourse. The traditional devas were beginning to seem crude and unsatisfactory; they must point to something beyond themselves. Some of the late hymns of the Rig Veda sought a god who was more worthy of worship. “What god shall we adore with our offering?” asked one of the rishis in Hymn 121 of the tenth book of the Rig Veda. Who was the true lord of men and cattle? Who owned the snowcapped mountains and the mighty ocean? Which of the gods was capable of supporting the heavens? In this hymn, the poet found an answer that would become one of the seminal myths of the Indian Axial Age. He had a vision of a creator god emerging from primal chaos, a personalized version of the brahman. His name was Prajapati: “the All.” Prajapati was identical with the universe; he was the life force that sustained it, the seed of consciousness, and the light that emerged from the waters of unconscious matter. But Prajapati was also a spirit outside the universe, who could order the laws of nature. Immanent and transcendent, he alone was “God of gods and none beside him.” But this seemed far too explicit to another rishi. 63 In the beginning, he maintained, there was nothing. There was neither existence nor nonexistence, neither death nor immortality, but only “indiscriminate chaos.” How could this confusion become ordered and viable? The poet decided that there could be no answer to this question: Who verily knows and who can here declare it, whence it wasborn and whence comes this creation? The Gods are later than this world’s production. Who knows then whence it first came into being? He, the first origin of this creation, whether he formed it all or did not form it, Whose eye controls this world in highest heaven, he verily knows it—or perhaps he knows not. 64 The poem was a brahmodya. The rishi asked one unfathomable question after another, until both he and his audience were reduced to the silence of unknowing. Finally, in the famous Purusha Hymn, a rishi meditated on the ancient creation story of the Aryans, and laid the foundation for India’s Axial Age. 65 He recalled that the sacrifice of the first man had brought the human race into being. Now he described this primordial Person (Purusha), walking of his own free will into the sacrificial ground, lying down on the freshly strewn grass, and allowing the gods to kill him. This act of self-surrender had set the cosmos in motion. The Purusha was himself the universe. Everything was generated from his corpse: birds, animals, horses, cattle, the classes of human society, heaven and earth, sun and moon.

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  When Joshua was near Jericho, he raised his eyes and saw a man standing there before him, grasping a naked sword. Joshua walked towards him and said to him, “Are you with us or with our enemies?” He answered, “No, I am captain of the army of Yahweh.” . . . Joshua fell on his face to the ground and worshipped him and said, “What are my Lord’s commands to his servant?” The captain of the army of Yahweh answered Joshua, “Take your sandals off your feet, for the place you are standing on is holy.” And Joshua obeyed. 111 The festival of pesach had been a preparation for the holy war for the Promised Land that began with an assault on Jericho. The walls came miraculously tumbling down, and the Israelites stormed the city. “They enforced the herem on everything in the town: men and women, young and old, even the oxen and sheep and donkeys, massacring them all.” 112 Yahweh was a god of war. The festival of Gilgal took place at the time of the spring harvest, but there were no prayers for a good crop, but simply the commemoration of a military campaign. Israel’s deity was called Yahweh Sabaoth, god “of armies”; he was accompanied by his heavenly host, and his captain led the Israelites into battle. War was a sanctified activity. The people purified themselves before the battle as for a religious rite, and the battleground, where Joshua had his vision, was a holy place. Many peoples in the Middle East reenacted cosmic battles, but Israel was beginning to do something different. Instead of commemorating a victory achieved in sacred time in the primordial world of myth, the Israelites celebrated a triumph that, they believed, had taken place in human time in the not-so-distant past. This shift from myth to history is clear in one of the very earliest poems of the Bible. It was probably chanted during the Gilgal festival, and could be as old as the tenth century. 113 In the final biblical text, the Song of the Sea 114 was included in the story of the exodus, just after the crossing of the Sea of Reeds, and put on the lips of Miriam, the sister of Moses. But the Song of the Sea makes it clear that originally the enemies of Israel were not drowned in the Sea of Reeds but in the river Jordan. The people who witnessed the miracle were not the people of Egypt or Sinai, but the inhabitants of Canaan and the kingdoms on the east bank of the Jordan: Pangs seize on the inhabitants of Philistia, Edom’s chieftains are now dismayed, The princes of Moab fall to trembling, Canaan’s inhabitants are all unmanned.

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  Animal sacrifice was a universal religious practice in the ancient world. This was a way of recycling the depleted forces that kept the world in being. There was a strong conviction that life and death, creativity and destruction were inextricably entwined. People realized that they survived only because other creatures laid down their lives for their sake, so the animal victim was honored for its self-sacrifice.3 Because there could be no life without such death, some imagined that the world had come into being as a result of a sacrifice at the beginning of time. Others told stories of a creator god slaying a dragon—a common symbol of the formless and undifferentiated—to bring order out of chaos. When they reenacted these mythical events in their ceremonial liturgy, worshipers felt that they had been projected into sacred time. They would often begin a new project by performing a ritual that re-presented the original cosmogony, to give their fragile mortal activity an infusion of divine strength. Nothing could endure if it were not “animated,” or endowed with a “soul,” in this way.4 Ancient religion depended upon what has been called the perennial philosophy, because it was present, in some form, in most premodern cultures. Every single person, object, or experience on earth was a replica—a pale shadow—of a reality in the divine world.5 The sacred world was, therefore, the prototype of human existence, and because it was richer, stronger, and more enduring than anything on earth, men and women wanted desperately to participate in it. The perennial philosophy is still a key factor today in the lives of some indigenous tribes. The Australian aborigines, for example, experience the sacred realm of Dreamtime as far more real than the material world. They have brief glimpses of Dreamtime in sleep or in moments of vision; it is timeless and “everywhen.” It forms a stable backdrop to ordinary life, which is constantly enervated by death, flux, and ceaseless change. When an Australian goes hunting, he models his behavior so closely on that of the First Hunter that he feels totally united with him, caught up in his more potent reality. Afterward, when he falls away from that primal richness, he fears that the domain of time will absorb him, and reduce him and everything that he does to nothingness.6 This was also the experience of the people of antiquity. It was only when they imitated the gods in ritual and gave up the lonely, frail individuality of their secular lives that they truly existed. They fulfilled their humanity when they ceased to be simply themselves and repeated the gestures of others.7

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  Yet where others believed that this insight could not be achieved by ratiocination, Plato believed that it could. But his insistence that knowledge was essentially recollection shows that this rigorous dialectic was not coldly analytic but intuitive; the recovery of this innate knowledge seemed to take the mind itself by surprise. It is true that in some of the dialogues Plato simply made use of the forms to investigate a concept or get to the root of a problem. 84 But it is also true that Plato’s rational quest was passionate and romantic. In ancient Greece, reason was not “cold” but “hot,” a spiritual quest for meaning and value. 85 It helped the psyche to identify its goals and harness its desires in order to attain them. Hitherto, as far as we can tell from the fragmentary texts that have survived, Greek philosophers had often confined themselves to a notional, cerebral interpretation of experience. In the Academy, Greek education became more spiritual. Frequently Plato used the imagery and vocabulary of the Eleusinian and Dionysian mysteries to describe the process of illumination and recollection. Instead of achieving insight through rituals and dramatic representations, however, his disciples reached their vision of the forms through the exercise of a dialectic that was so rigorous and exacting that it seems to have pushed them into an alternative state of consciousness. The process was described as a mystical ascent to a higher state of being, an initiation that was not wholly unlike that experienced by the mystai at Eleusis, which had introduced the aspirant to a blessed state. In the Symposium, Plato made Socrates describe the quest as a love affair that grasped the seeker’s entire being, until he achieved an ekstasis that took him beyond normal perception. Socrates explained that he had received this information from a priestess called Diotima, who showed her mystai how their love of a beautiful body could be purified and transformed into an ecstatic contemplation (theoria) of ideal beauty. At first the philosophical initiate was simply enraptured by the physical perfection of his beloved; then he began to see that this person was just one manifestation of a beauty that existed in other beings too. In the next stage of his initiation, he realized that beauty of body was of a lesser order than the more elusive beauty of soul that could exist even in a physically ugly person. Finally, Diotima explained, “As he approaches the end of the initiation, there bursts upon him that wondrous vision, which is the very soul of the beauty he has toiled so long to find.”

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  From an early day Jerusalem was the goal of Christian pilgrimage. The mother of Constantine, Helena, according to the legend, found the cross and certainly built the church over the supposed site of the tomb in which the Lord lay. Jerome spent the last period of his life in Bethlehem, translating the Scriptures and preparing for eternity. The effect of such examples was equal to the station and fame of the pious empress and the Christian scholar. In vain did such Fathers as Gregory of Nyssa,319 Augustine, and even Jerome himself, emphasize the nearness of God to believers wherever they may be and the failure of those whose hearts are not imbued with His spirit to find Him even at Jerusalem. The movement steadily grew. The Holy Land became to the imagination a land of wonders, filled with the divine presence of Christ. To have visited it, to have seen Jerusalem, to have bathed in the Jordan, was for a man to have about him a halo of sanctity. The accounts of returning pilgrims were listened to in convent and on the street with open-mouthed curiosity. To surmount the dangers of such a journey in a pious frame of mind was a means of expiation for sins.320 Special laws were enacted in the pilgrim’s behalf. Hospitals and other beneficent institutions were erected for their comfort along the main route and in Jerusalem. Other circumstances gave additional impulse to the movement, such as the hope of securing relics of which Palestine and Constantinople were the chief storehouses; and the opportunity of starting a profitable trade in silk, paper, spices, and other products of the East.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  With all its simplicity and gravity, the Mohammedan worship has also its frantic excitement of the Dervishes. On the celebration of the birthday of their prophet and other festivals, they work themselves, by the constant repetition of "Allah, Allah," into a state of unconscious ecstacy, "in which they plant swords in their breasts, tear live serpents with their teeth, eat bottles of glass, and finally lie prostrate on the ground for the chief of their order to ride on horseback over their bodies."203 I will add a brief description of the ascetic exercises of the "Dancing" and "Howling" Dervishes which I witnessed in their convents at Constantinople and Cairo in 1877. The Dancing or Turning Dervishes in Pera, thirteen in number, some looking ignorant and stupid, others devout and intensely fanatical, went first through prayers and prostrations, then threw off their outer garments, and in white flowing gowns, with high hats of stiff woolen stuff, they began to dance to the sound of strange music, whirling gracefully and skilfully on their toes, ring within ring, without touching each other or moving out of their circle, performing, in four different acts, from forty to fifty turnings in one minute, their arms stretched out or raised to heaven their eyes half shut, their mind apparently lost in a sort of Nirwana or pantheistic absorption in Allah. A few hours afterward I witnessed the rare spectacle of one of these very Dervishes reeling to and fro in a state of intoxication on the street and the lower bridge of the Golden Horn. The Howling Dervishes in Scutari present a still more extraordinary sight, and a higher degree of ascetic exertion, but destitute of all grace and beauty. The performance took place in a small, plain, square room, and lasted nearly two hours. As the monks came in, they kissed the hand of their leader and repeated with him long prayers from the Koran. One recited with melodious voice an Arabic song in praise of Mohammed. Then, standing in a row, bowing, and raising their heads, they continued to howl the fundamental dogma of Mohammedanism, Lâ ilâha ill’ Allâh for nearly an hour. Some were utterly exhausted and wet with perspiration. The exercises I saw in Cairo were less protracted, but more dramatic, as the Dervishes had long hair and stood in a circle, swinging their bodies backward and forward in constant succession, and nearly touching the ground with their flowing hair. In astounding feats of asceticism the Moslems are fully equal to the ancient Christian anchorites and the fakirs of India. § 47. Christian Polemics against Mohammedanism. Note on Mormonism. See the modern Lit. in § 38. For a list of earlier works against Mohammedanism, see J. Alb. Fabricius: Delectus argumentorum et syllabus scriptorum, qui veritatem Christ. Adv. Atheos, ... Judaeos et Muhammedanos ... asseruerunt. Hamb., 1725, pp. 119 sqq., 735 sqq. J. G. Walch: Bibliotheca Theolog. Selecta (Jenae, 1757), Tom. I. 611 sqq. Appendix to Prideaux’s Life of Mahomet. Theod.