The creation of a human starts in the mother's womb; it proceeds through childhood and adolescence when it appears to have its fulfilment at the time of "coming of age". The individual is now an adult and can use the power within him, refined by education, to do the work set in front of him. The results of this potency we have already considered: abuse of nature, internecine strife and death. Natural man has unlimited powers of creativity but something always seems to go wrong. It is here that the biblical narrative casts illumination on the mundane scene.
The history of God's ancient people the Jews falls into three well-defined epochs. First there is the deliverance from Egyptian slavery under the prophetic leadership of Moses. For the first time in their experience the chosen people taste freedom and a limited degree of power. Despite their frequent back-slidings, which tempt Moses himself to some obscure denial of God's supremacy and his ultimate demotion by the Almighty to merely seeing the promised land from afar, they reach their destination under the leadership of Moses' adjutant Joshua. There they are installed through the favour of God. Almost at once they apostatize, and experience repeated periods of slavery to the local tribes until delivered by various judges appointed by God. The pattern of enslavement, deliverance, apostasy, and further defeat and slavery persists until the time of the prophet Samuel and the beneficent King David. Under him there is a union of the two kingdoms of Israel and Judah, and the people do seem to have attained a semblance of national identity. Indeed, the conclusion of the Second Book of Samuel and the beginning of the First Book of Kings, which recounts the wisdom of David's son Solomon, is the high point of ancient Hebrew history.
The later backsliding of Solomon under the influence of his numerous foreign wives and concubines sees the separation of the two kingdoms, and, with occasional periods of genuine reform and religious fervour, there is a gradual descent to a much more radical defeat by the Assyrians, who deport the people of the northern kingdom of Israel so that they disappear from the pages of history, while the southern kingdom of Judah is miraculously saved. However, its preservation is only temporary, for the degeneracy of most of its kings ensures that it too is destroyed, this time by the Babylonians, who carry most of the population into exile. Fortunately the Babylonians prove to be much more benign captors, and under them the exiles thrive and grow in spirituality. The Persian prophet Zoroaster whom we have already mentioned probably played some part in this awakening. And then, miraculously once more, the Persian conqueror of the Babylonians, Cyrus, is inspired to send the exiles back to Palestine to rebuild their temple and start their lives afresh under their ancient law. And so the brash potency of the original people of Israel is tempered by experience and civilized by suffering as a precious remnant returns to rebuild on a life restored and humbled by the divine grace.
The Jews, as they may now justly be called especially after the teaching work of Ezra, who dissolves all foreign marriages in order to ensure the purity of the religion (thereby reversing the trend to apostasy witnessed especially by Solomon), grow slowly in spiritual obedience to God, but, until our own time, are not to know political independence again. The Persians are followed by the Greeks, who also leave their impress on Judaism, and then come the Romans. On the whole, the people are left alone to continue their own tradition (the Hellenizing intolerance of Antiochus Epiphanes and the necessary reaction of the Jews is an exception, and fully recounted in the two Books of Maccabees). In their mind looms the figure of the Messiah who is to set them free, long ago prophesied by Isaiah, Micah and Zechariah.
The initial period of liberation is thus followed by the second period of restoration. And then comes the third period. The Messiah does indeed come, but he is unrecognized by his compatriots. They looked for a national redeemer, but instead the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53 makes his appearance. The Prince of Peace is no help to the Zealots, while his effortless integrity puts the traditional doctors of the law to shame, but his spiritual gifts place him in a category of excellence far beyond that of any person, let alone religious party. They know inwardly that he is the one sent and yet they refuse to believe it, because the inner revolution such an admission would entail is beyond human imagination. The words of John 1:10-12 ring eternally true, "He was in the world; but the world, though it owed its being to him, did not recognize him. He entered his own realm, and his own would not receive him. But to all who did receive him, to those who have yielded him their allegiance, he gave the right to become children of God." This is the test; it does not depend on historical claims or theological disputation (for how, logically, can God become human! Or, as John says in 1:14, "the Word became flesh; he came to dwell among us, and we saw his glory, such glory as befits the Father's only Son, full of grace and truth"). In the Word we come to the full knowledge of God, attaining the state of deification as far as mortal human can rise to the divine being. And as we ascend the ladder of spiritual perfection, which is an intimate knowledge of God, so the mysteries of the Incarnation become clearer to our minds. In other words, we know by participation rather than by distant analysis. The third period, preceded as we remember by liberation and restoration, is glorification.
Jesus is the proper man, or as St Irenaeus says, "The glory of God is a man fully alive." Neither the Jews as people nor humanity at large have attained this stage of development. This includes those who have accepted the messiahship of Jesus and his deity, and call themselves Christians. While the Jews have erred in not accepting Jesus, the Christians have erred just as grievously in not following his example. The shameful record of the Christian Church cannot be denied; its cruelty both to non-believers and to deviant members within its own ranks is a black mark of history. And yet it has been the principal agent of civilizing the world and redressing social injustice (by contrast, the religions of India and China have been so concerned with ultimate states of being that they scandalously neglected the material needs of large masses of their people until the time of Western penetration some centuries ago). In fact, a more mature consideration of the history of the Christian faith makes the dark episodes more comprehensible. Under the vision of God nothing can remain concealed. To fall into the hands of the Living God is a terrible experience, for all secrets lie revealed in their naked loathsomeness. But once they are acknowledged in honest humility, the means of their healing are ensured. It is this lack of honesty and refusal to give ourselves freely in our moral baseness to God that prevents our ascent to the realm of Christ's stature. We are, as St Paul says, saved by God's grace, through trusting him, and not by our own efforts. It is God's gift, and not a reward for work done. There is nothing for anyone to boast of (Ephesians 2:8-9).
With this model in mind we can trace the creation of a full person. The youth with his vigour and education leaves home to make his way in the world. If he follows his natural bent, he will probably, in one way or another, follow the footsteps of the Prodigal Son, ending up in some sort of plight. Indeed, if he were to stay the course in a life of pure self-gratification, though he might outwardly appear enviable to those who never seem to have made the grade, he would be a most unfortunate individual. Though filled with outer riches, he would find increasingly with the advent of ageing that he had nothing permanent to call his own. All there would be were sad memories of a youthful past, tantalizingly unattainable in his present circumstances. Let it be insisted at once that this picture of the heedless materialist does not decry the importance of worldly success or belittle the value of pleasure in the growth of a person; those who sneer at life's good things usually have been unable personally to attain them, just as those who suspect the motives of altruistic people are usually those of poor achievement in their own careers. Until an individual has received some recognition of his own unique place in society, he has hardly begun to value himself. This substantiation should come from his own family, but often this is not forthcoming, and a piece of good fortune or unexpected pleasure may act as a source of inner illumination.
Nevertheless, self-affirmation that depends on material success and good fortune is like the house Jesus describes at the end of the Sermon on the Mount: built on sand and therefore vulnerable to the assaults of the weather. In due course tragedy will strike the comfortable edifice of the materialist, and this is his moment of growth into an expanded consciousness of reality. The liberation of the young person from the tutelage of his elders has at some time to progress to a restoration of security but under the aegis of God rather than material circumstances.
And yet God himself can become a type of idol preventing the individual's full development. Some people have a intuitive awareness of God that gives them great strength, but if they depend too heavily on the relationship they may not grow into full maturity. An essential part of their spiritual journey may entail forfeiting that assurance so that they are able to stand on their own without any additional support. However, if the relationship is real it will stay the course in dark faith both in the glare of worldly scepticism and the gloom of personal tragedy. The relationship is real when it seeks no recompense or looks for anything outside itself. It is, as it were, a union of the frail individual with the weakness of God that Bonhoeffer wrote about as part of our true coming of age, not as striplings full of our own prowess but as responsible people deeply involved in the suffering world. This is the way of approach of the seeker who has voluntarily or by force of events come to God in his eternal mode as the ground of being, in whom we live and move and have our existence (Acts 17:28). He is never far from us, but we have to grow into his presence before we can do the great work ahead of us. This is the attainment of full personhood.
This same critique of God is true of revivalistic techniques that play on the emotions of sick people, stressing the punitive nature of God, but assuring free pardon once they make their submission to him (and the evangelistic team whose zeal makes them automatically partners in the divine exercise). This type of God can be freely manipulated, while at the same time he manipulates us by offering us good things while we are obedient to him and his helpers, but threatening us with dire punishment if we fail to do what he commands, as interpreted by a particular approach to scripture or the verbal inspiration of a person claiming prophetic status.
Another great prophet of our century, Martin Buber, in his classic I and Thou has come close to the essence of the self. He writes, "When Thou is spoken, the speaker has no thing for his object. For where there is a thing there is another thing. Every It is bounded by others: It exists only through being bounded by others. But when Thou is spoken, there is no thing. Thou has no bounds. When Thou is spoken, the speaker has no thing; he is indeed nothing. But he takes his stand in relation." He also writes, "As experience, the world belongs to the primary word I-It. The primary word I-Thou establishes the world of relation." Penetrating the deepest mysteries of creation may bring a mastery with it, but it excludes the relationship which is true knowledge, like the knowledge of husband and wife that precedes the conception of a great soul in the biblical narrative. In the same way, an obsessive straining after the gifts of the Holy Spirit can prevent us coming close to God; the more we seek to please him, the more does the ego separate us from him. The conception of chosen souls in the Bible is the presage of a creation that goes beyond personal desire to communal service, beyond sectarian loyalty to universal compassion, beyond utilitarian concern to a burning love for all that exists. This is the creativity of a spiritually mature person as compared with the facile virtuosity of the brash youngster recently come of age.
The making of a person is intimately related to his apprehension of the deep things of existence. His approach to his Creator determines his own place in the scheme of reality. In the early phase of liberation he may have to lose the God whose beneficent presence had formerly supported him, who could be manipulated under the guise of prayer and worship. Such a God is an It, whom we know at best in terms of the results of prayer and worship. It is with deepening self-knowledge that we come closer to the true God, who is a Thou closer to our essence than our own awareness of him may be.
How then do we come to this deepened self-knowledge? The more it is sought, the more surely does it elude one. Personal acquisitiveness separates us from true relationship, converting a Thou to an It. In the beautiful Wisdom poem of Job 28, we are told that only right living and an awe of the Creator can lead us to true wisdom as opposed to specialized knowledge. This right living is not a formula, nor can it be learned in secret schools devoted to the occult dimension. We remember Buber's distinction between the experience of It and the relationship inherent in Thou. He writes, "I experience something. If we add "secret" to "open" experiences, nothing in the situation is changed. How self-confident is that wisdom which perceives a closed compartment in things, reserved for the initiate and manipulated only with the key. O secrecy without a secret! O accumulation of information! It, always It!"
The authentic spring of self-knowledge comes from a crisis in which the customary supports have been stripped away from the individual; these include not only the superficial appurtenances of wealth and possessions but frequently also health, friends and even religious convictions. The Job story is typical, and indeed this particular writing can never fade into obscurity while the human remains as he is. All that remains is a silence that overwhelms by its finality. Bonhoeffer rightly insists that we should find God in the totality of life, not only during the periods of pain. However, until we are brought low, we have no time to listen and to hear amid the din of worldly distractions, which can easily include ritual religious observances performed as an insurance against future misfortune (the spectre of Job before his calamities comes to mind here). In the lives of most people suffering renders the mind more open to wisdom from sources both within itself (from the unconscious realms where the intuition dwells) and from outside (from the teachings of others who have experienced the authentic Spirit of God in various adverse circumstances). The lack of awareness so typical of the human condition requires an inner jolt for the individual to awaken and hear the One who knocks unceasingly at the door of the soul. He is usually kept waiting because we have "better" things to do.
The type of God who is a punishing It has to be eclipsed before the embracing Thou of reality is fully known. A profound knowledge of God may follow the descent of a heedless person into "a valley dark as death" (Psalm 23:4) as he battles for life in the intensive therapy unit of a hospital. Apart from the rather special near-death experience we have already mentioned in considering the relationship between the mind and the brain, the previously selfish man of the world, whose life revolved around money, food and sex, may come to a deeper appreciation of reality as he witnesses the unceasing concern for his survival of a life-support team. The selfless service of the medical personnel throws the indulgence of his past way of life into sharp relief, just as his present helplessness brings with it a sober appraisal of his situation as he now has to face it. What indeed does it profit one whose life is in peril even if one has attained a pinnacle of worldly success? At first the battle for survival will occupy his attention, but as he gets better, so may a more chastened view of reality appear. For the first time in his life he may feel gratitude, primarily to those who attended him but more distantly to the nameless presence who stood by him as in the wings of a theatre. This presence slowly moves the centre of his existence from the ego as an end in itself to its place as servant, the same servant who washed the feet of his disciples the night he was betrayed into the power of sinful people. This slow relation to the embracing Thou is a much more profound knowledge of God than the unsure experience of a judgmental It, as may be encountered in a state of religious enthusiasm. The embracing God neither demands or expects and nor does the person, because the relationship is the gift and the presence the proof of eternity.
At last we have a knowledge of God as the source of life, the ground of being, who is also the lover who leaves his beloved to work out his own salvation in awe and responsibility, so that in the end the two may meet in a friendship that far outdistances any human tie in its constancy and eternity. As Buber puts it, "All real living is meeting." In this relationship the springs of human creativity have been fully tapped. It is the creative contact with the Deity that sets in motion the power of imagining and the concentration of thought that starts a new cycle of human endeavour. No longer is the human in control - indeed, the very notion of control or domination is out of place - but instead he is the servant who brings joy to his fellows and healing to the entire created order. As he grows in the life of silent communion which we call prayer, so he can tap into a reservoir of inspiration as infinite as God himself. It is, in fact, the Holy Spirit that is met, the person of the Godhead who infuses life into all that exists by virtue of his ceaseless love.
"Remember your Creator in the days of your youth, before the time of trouble comes and the years draw near when you will say, "I see no purpose in them". Remember him before the sun and the light of day give place to darkness" (Ecclesiastes 12:1-2). This seems to be the heart of the matter. The writer of Ecclesiastes has no illusions about the transience of happiness, the vagaries of fortune, the vanity of human achievement and the finality of death. He has no certainty of personal survival to comfort him, and his honesty is chilling though peculiarly refreshing. But he does seem to be saying that God, though obscure to human understanding, is a real companion in a dark course. He alone can illuminate the dark stretches of existence, for he is constant when everything else fails. He is not a God who fills in the gaps of our ignorance; he is the source of all that exists. Though he does not invade our privacy, he is always at hand to share our burdens and clear the portals of our perception and understanding so that we may proceed better with our life's work. In the action of prayer we draw close to him, his Spirit infuses our own spirit, and we approach more closely the image in which we were created.
The process is prolonged, in my opinion going far beyond any mortal lifetime. A dramatic religious conversion is sometimes an important landmark on the way, and those committed to evangelization do the Lord's work provided they learn to trust God in his transactions with those whom they have brought to him. The problem with revivalistic groups is that they do not trust God fully. Therefore they are psychologically bound to the forces of destruction even when they affirm the victory of God over the devil. We have to learn to let go, not only of the things of this world but also of the people closest to us. The model of the father of the Prodigal Son is important here. He believed in his heart that the Holy Spirit would eventually lead his headstrong son home, and meanwhile he remembered him. This is the basis of intercessory prayer, not so much asking as never ceasing to remember in love.
Jesus himself had to depart before the full power of the Holy Spirit could come to action in his disciples John 16:7). While he remained with them, they would simply have rested in his authority and done nothing themselves. Only during their bereavement did they begin to know themselves in their naked wretchedness, and the period of their restoration followed the forgiveness of their resurrected Master. They were at last growing into full personhood, and their understanding of God matured from an It that could be relied on for favours to a Thou with whom they had a constant relationship. This Thou was the risen Christ whom they knew as a person and also God the Son who showed them the full measure of the Father.
Every experience on the path helps us on the way provided we stay awake and learn from each moment as it passes us by. To be a realized person is to create in the shadow of God.