Transcript
{ } = word or expression can't be understood
{word} = hard to understand, might be this
(Philosophy 58, May 12th, 1949.)
...to build up what you have inherited as a natural fact. Put it down, gentlemen: in 0, in the year 0 of our era, the -- every human being lives in a monistic -- universe. The tribe, in his tribe, the imperialist in an empire, the Jew in Israel. By the year 1000, everybody lives in Church and state. That is, in the year 1000, two swords {crept} into the heart of man. Jesus said, "I have gone to bring a sword." That's literally true. He has cut the unified monotony, and monoform, or mono-{ } of political environment. Once a tribesman, always a tribesman; once a Roman, always a Roman; once a Jew, always a Jew. In the year -- say it more carefully 1054, or 1074--of course the years are rather arbitrary--every human being finds himself in at least two orders: Church and state. The creation of the first thousand years of our era is the dualism that a man's not either an imperial -- in an empire, or in a tribe, or in Israel. But that he is -- in Israel and in Rome. In -- in Iceland and in the Church.
In 999, the last Germanic group, the Icelandic heathen became Christian. This meant that they, from now on, belong to the Icela- -- Icelandic political unit, and to the Christian Church. Now you remem- -- you have forgotten that there was a time, only 900 years ago, where this was not so, where people could just belong to one order of things. You see, all this is lost on you. You are again in this monolith of Mr. Truman's empire. Read the Hoover Report, and then you know in what monolith you are in. It is terrifying. Egypt is upon us. If you don't do something about it, gentlemen, you will have buried the Christian era. That's just the -- the meaning of Hitler, and Com- -- the Communist revolution, that the achievements of the last 2,000 years, can be canceled out.
It's the idea of most people who live today in this country: one city, one civilization, one world government. That's why these people terrify me so much, these {Cord Meyers}, and {Strikes}, and all these -- and -- {Judge Roberts}. They are tyrants in their mind. They wish to -- abolish what has been -- bought by the blood of Christ and the martyrs. Christ died so that {Cord Meyer} may not have his say. He died so that there might be no world government. Have you never understood that Christ came into the world to prevent Caesar from being the only governor of the world? What's world government other than a new Caesarism?
It's fantastic, the naivet‚ of the -- of the modern world. Everything is forgotten, everything is dumped. But you can't dump everything, of course. That is, every man can destroy, gentlemen, the Church. Every man can destroy the achievements of the last 2,000 years.
The -- in during the last 2,000 years, gentlemen, the -- fate of mankind has been put to an extent unheard before, into the hands of a {brave,} mortal man. You all {can be} God. The man who destroys this era is called the anti-Christ, and everybody has the power to become the anti-Christ. "Anti-Christ" means "substitute for God." That is the man who knows the road to salvation himself. "Anti-Christ" is not "against Christ." Don't think it for a minute. "Anti-" means in Greek "instead." And many people are anti-Christs, and anti-Christians who don't ki- -- bother even to mention Christ. I mean, they are superior to Him. Why should they mention this Jewish -- this Jewish carpenter in -- in Palestine? Mr. Stalin or Mr. Hitler had no -- just no use for Him. They are not anti-Christs, they are instead-Christs.
That is to say, gentlemen, any man in the Christian era can of course say, "I begin from scratch." The Christian era is a -- the common enterprise of mankind. Christ is the first who began -- He is the beginning, the alpha, and He's all right -- in His own right the pinnacle, achievement of the Christian era. That is, if all men were like Him, we would have one mankind. His attempt was to create one humanity, one human race. The famous "brotherhood of man," which today is used as an empty phrase, was to Him the achievement of His life. If you wish to learn the creative -- the "brotherhood of man," the -- all He could do was only to be the first brother of all men, you see. More, He couldn't do. This He is. He -- Christ is the first brother in this brotherhood of man. This perhaps you will admit. {And it was} not difficult for you to admit, I think. Otherwise the "brotherhood of man" would be an empty phrase.
Now every anti-Christ denies that the brotherhood of man has already started. The -- anti-Christ is the man who says, "Let's get together and do --" yesterday, I { } to this horrid Rotarian song, "Let's Get Together and Do Everything Together." Do you know this song? Wie? It's a lie. Because no human being wants to do everything together. Jesus never said such nonsense. But the Rotarians think that they really realize the brotherhood of man. Because they -- you see, it's just pious lies. All these free-enterprise men, with competition, you see, filling their whole brain; that is, how to knock out the brother next door. They say, "Let's all -- do everything together." And they tolerate this. The Christian says, "I'm a secret, and I wish I could -- be {revealed as one}."
({ }?)
No, no. I don't think so. { } the world is that what's outside of you. You have to choose. You cannot, if you have the whole world one, you have ration cards, and { }. -- That's the truth, {I mean}. You either have the family of man, or you have the atom bomb. But if you have the atom bomb, my dear man, it's not very -- much { } of the brotherhood. I try to teach you that tribe is one approach to humanity, and empire is another, and Israel is a third. You have either, gentlemen.
[tape interruption]
{ } Jews, but you don't { } a Jew. That's why he has become tyrannous -- goes tyrannical. Family, world, God. Or { }. Now this was organized by the tribes: family. This was organized by the empire: food, things, you see. These children and parents; that's something quite different. How can you compare food -- food, and stone, and pyramids with children? Just something utterly different. But you say that's all the same. You -- you see -- are all worldly. You actually subordinate man by saying he's a part of the world. World is that, gentlemen, what is outside of you. That's what we call "world," or "nature." That's the thing you can use, you can administer, you can economize, or you can produce, you can manufacture, you can transport, you can import and export.
We live today in a world at the end of 150 years of world trade. Therefore now we begin to export and import whole populations -- from the Armenians, beginning, then Jews -- continuing, and Germans following suit, we now transport millions of people, as though they were -- they were horseflesh, from one country to another. And there is the achievement of this millennium of world trade, and natural science.
Now if you want to have one world, Sir, you can't have one family, because a family obviously is a group in which everybody has { }, in which the father is very glad that the son should get his own economy, and should marry somebody, and have a house of his own. And he -- she will not interfere with his son's destiny. But if you look at modern world trade, and the modern tendencies of the Marshall Plan, and of Soviet Communism, and of the modern red tape in the state department--I told you this -- we had no passport, you see. And I told you that -- that there are the -- the Ozarks are not very welcome in California. But this looked as though man { } country. You have to choose. As soon as you make { }, the world { }.
(But -- but in general, the brotherhood of man, don't you { } tear down any barriers, that you have these worldly barriers that are stopping the brotherhood of man? In other words, you've got spaces stopping brotherhood of man. And to get the brotherhood, to get -- give man this freedom, because man is more important? You have to tear down the boundaries.)
Well, I live in a house; my neighbor lives in a house. I am very pleased that we can be brothers because we have a fence. Brotherhood is not -- does not include that { } you're speaking: he has something and I have something. If we -- had all -- we live in common, we would be pigs, but not brothers. It is nonsense to say that the community of -- the community of things makes for brotherhood. It makes just as much for quarreling. "Good {fences} make good neighbors."
(I don't mean fences -- tear down fences so that you have everybody throwing every- -- everything together. I'm talking about tearing down barriers that are stopping --.)
But we are doing the opposite at this moment. We are building up fences, aren't we?
(Oh, I agree with you. But I say you've got to tear down the fences so that you can have a brotherhood of man. Not equalizing everybody else. { }.)
So do not begin with tearing out the stakes. You see, the brotherhood should be so strong that the fences don't matter. Now the question is the method. If you focus -- everybody has fixations. If you focus your attention on boundaries, as they do today in politics, they--against the will of all the statesmen involved--grow to tremendous heights. If you -- if you speak to people, you see, and of people, and with people, these boundaries remain, but they become, so to speak, elusive and indifferent, you see. You would always find, gentlemen, that if you wish to achieve something in life--perhaps you take this down--to achieve anything in life, you must never aim at it. It must always be the by-product of your highest {aim}. You must --.
I had a friend who was an engineer, a great genius, and he wrote a book in which he proved that nothing finite that has ever been achieved if the people who wanted it hadn't aimed at the infinite. The American male--and female, by the way, too--are so terribly unhappy, because they have been told that they can pursue happiness. You have to pursue salvation, so that you can be happy. That is, salvation lies beyond that which can be { }. And then happiness is given to you in the bargain. Never, gentlemen, aim at that which you want. Always aim at that to which you -- are destined. You'll never know if you achieve it, because only at the obituary will it be known you have achieved your destiny. That nobody knows himself. But if you follow your star on this {urge}, these things will all be given to you. That's a very strange story, { } my life day after day, I assure you, gentlemen. I have aimed at one thing with great fervor, directly, and I had to tear it out of my heart like a weed, or like a burning coal. And I will throw it away. But the one moment in my life which I became happy. When I gave up my great ambition, to -- be a great scholar. And feverishly, so to speak. And I -- our { } gave it all up, and did something else, and { } want to become a -- quite a considerable scholar { }. So it doesn't matter. But if you ask for something feverishly, it's your curse, it's your { }, it's your { }.
Nothing man -- can -- man can -- must aim at, {directly}. That's -- makes you all so unhappy. You see, that's why the secular man today is so cursed, and has to go to the psychoanalyst. What does the psychoanalyst? He tells him that this aim { }. It makes no difference, gentlemen. So then we can begin from scratch again.
(Are you saying man will never achieve { } he never knows whether he achieves his destiny? That's found out by other { } obituary. { }. What do you mean by that?)
Exactly what I said. I don't { }. Keep it. It { } escape, Sir. I cannot escape { }. { }.
Jesus did not know, when He died, that He had been anything but a failure. And yet He had certainly fulfilled His destiny. It's a very simple example, Sir. And when Lincoln was shot, he certainly didn't know if he had fulfilled his destiny, because he didn't even know he was going to die. Now the two examples should be enough. But if you had any education, Sir, this would have been taught in -- when you were 6. You are all such -- I mean, everything has -- to be above your {soul and grasp}. This is the foundation and the mental truth of our era, that the man who -- who wants -- doesn't -- wants to have his soul, will lose it; and the man who is ready to lose his soul, will gain it. Have you never heard of this famous sentence? Well, but not one of you believes it. You think you { }, but you are ashamed of it. It's simply true. Anybody who aims at something as his aim in life, as his purpose, is mistaken. Because fortunately you are somebody else's purpose. You aren't your own. Your purposes are ridiculous. I mean, you can say, "I want to have a car; I want to have a house." But gentlemen, you are somebody alive whose little purposes, who here click somewhere in your telephone booth, are not what you are.
A great German poetess who died two years ago Ricarda Huch, has said, "I am purpose, and I am will, and I am thought; and therefore I can will, and I can also have purposes, and I can think." This is a condition. You cannot think. I don't think any one in this class can think, except by the mercy of the tradition of the spirit, that it hits you in part, somehow. But you cannot think, Sir. I cannot think. When I think my best, I'm out of the picture. { } into you, and when you are at your best, you forget yourself. You say, "This is true, although it's against your interest." You can talk to a divor- -- divorced woman about marriage, and she can admit that marriage is a sacrament and divorce { }, then she has understood, because she has thought something which doesn't come out of her, but goes against her own interest. That's the {difficulty}. And the same with you. If you can admit that something is true, it is against everything you are interested in, then the truth will hit you. Then you begin to live.
Therefore gentlemen, we are thought, and we are purpose, and we are aimed at, and we are will; and in reflection we can aim {at} smaller things, dead things, houses, and cars, and { } world history, and so on. You can wish to become president of the United States. But the story of any president of the United States only begins, you see, { } on the other side of his office. He was a man. Was he worthy of his office? { }.
It is so simple, you are not even ashamed, gentlemen, to live today. Because that which has made our era, this one sentence, "He who looks -- seeks his soul will lose it; and he who -- loses his soul will gain it," that's the basis of everything. That's just a transcription of the sentence: Anybody, you see, who aims at a thing can't get it. He can't. He's cursed. The thing begins to grow upon him, and -- and ruin him.
-- Before you do not see that, gentlemen, that these truths are much truer than "2 and 2 is 4," you see, you don't understand our era. When Christ fed the 5,000, He abolished the rule that 2 and 2 is 4. And He created the rule that faith can move mountains.
All this is -- is to be -- the { } truth in the history of the Church { }. Now to give you an example, gentlemen. The Christian era is built on the -- four corners -- -stones. The Church must keep the First Brother alive, or the "brotherhood of man" will never be created. Or in other words, gentlemen, the Christian era knows that you are a temporal being, and therefore the i- -- the idiocy of today, that the 2,000 million-million-million people should form a brotherhood, is horrible and nonsense. The whole problem of mankind is to form a brotherhood between the man from the first day to the last. And this could only be {conveyed} by Christ at the end of { }, when the whole world was inhabited. And you could now begin to say to every habitation in the world: let the people outside this habitation come and join one common enterprise.
In other words, gentlemen, you are all -- cursed with {Cord Meyer} by thinking of the Church of God in terms of space. But Christ thought of it as a continuation through time. And therefore He created not a house, or St. Peter in Rome, or the Vatican. But He created an era. An era. And He { } the Church therefore of the eon of eons, in {the correct} translation, or the "world without end," which is a very wrong translation of the English, and which has made the Anglo-Saxons nearly impenetrable to Christian truth. You know in the -- in the Church services, they have cre- -- they have translated "et in saecula saeculorum," the verse of the glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost. They have translated it in the Anglican and the Congregational hymnbooks with "world without end." Now it really means, gentlemen, cycle of time after cycle of time.
[tape interruption]
...the tribal cycle and superseded it, and it has superseded the imperial cycle. You remember the Great Year of the Egyptians, of 1460 years? It is -- has been based on the assumption that all these cycles exist, and that all these cycles have to be survived.
In "saecula saeculorum," means therefore not the static "world without end": you just have the nice world, and you move with it up and down the {alley} all the time. That's how it sounds, "world without end," a perfectly riskless enterprise. { }. The real story is--as Mr. Hitler has put it--"I wish," he said, "to end one solar constellation."
{ }. I was impressed by the man's insight into his own deviltry. He wanted to end a solar constellation. What would, by and large, equal a sol- -- the Great Year of the Egyptians, you see. Christ came to -- take man into a peace from which he would be able to bury his own cycles. Man who is able to die to his own cycles is a Christian.
Gentlemen, you must -- incorporate into your vocabulary the perfectly un-American phrase of "dying to" something. It's a hard word for you. If you can't die to something, your death isn't real. Better to die to something in time than to die in the flesh. You have to die to your own cycle. Capitalism has -- Americans have to die to their own American cycle if they wish to live on forever. The cycle must not matter. That's why this whole talk of the death of civilization is very dangerous, if it isn't anchored to the Christian era. If the era isn't -- hasn't given man the power to survive one generation and -- one civilization and one myth, and to go on to the other, you see, then the Christian era has never happened. The era is that institution, gentlemen, out of which the Roman empire, and the British empire, and the Turkish empire, and the Chinese empire, and the Japanese empire can be dismissed, and new things be started and man has to recognize himself as being the same man.
To you this is nothing -- important, gentlemen. I told you the story of Scipio, however -- didn't I? Well, to him it was important, this problem of how a man can quote Homer and survive {it}, gentlemen. I knew a Chinese--he's now in Washington, was a friend of mine. I haven't seen him for a good many years. He came to this country after the Chinese empire had toppled. And he gave me a Christmas poem, and it read always as a return, as { }, "There is not even a chance for tears; there is not even a chance for tears. The China of the 4,000 years is gone." He was a Christian, and that gave him the power to compose a poem which was -- impossible for an inner Chinese -- without Christianity. Four thousand years, you see, they have established it big enough so that they thought nothing could happen. Inside 4,000 years, the individual {bee} is pretty safe.
And so every empire has made a big splash--we talked about this--put everybody small into some big time. That is, you have a big time to see around you, you feel secure. The feeling of security. Now the Chinese empire, it never lasted 4,000 years; at best, 2,900, I would say, { }. The figures are wrong. But that doesn't matter. When he became a Christian, it meant for him that he could get out of the 4,000-year cycle, you see, and still recognize himself as a human soul.
That's what the Christian era has -- has enabled you and me. You can -- I have survived the -- the end of Germany. That's something, gentlemen; you don't know what that means. You could not survive the end of the United States. You are utterly unprepared for this, but you should be. You should be able to survive. You should be able to have some home -- some spiritual home in which -- from which you could look on the fall of your own civilization with complete serenity. I have. And this Chinese friend has. And Scipio has. And -- at the moment of victory, he has. But have you? Have you ever even known that this is your -- the -- your purpose in life? Your destiny.
Now if you haven't, gentlemen, you don't know what the separation of Church and state means. It means just this: that man, as long as he belongs to a Church, can survive the end of his state. Of all his states. State of the {family -- father}, state of his {chum}, state of a -- a healthy man, state of {a rich} man, state of his { }, you see. State of the {most} complete sense. A man who belongs to the Church can survive any state of affairs. Can you get this?
That's why the word "state" was -- was introduced to the Church { }. The word "state," gentlemen, is not older than the 15th century. Before, there were only empires and kingdoms. That is, tribes and empires, as we call them here. The word "state" came only into being after the Church was so firmly established that the members of any empire or tribe realized that they had a dual loyalty. A dual -- double allegiance.
Every man in the Christian era has a double allegiance. He has to give God what is God's, and to Caesar what is Caesar's. Caesar is temporal, transient, passing. God is forever. You think of course the other way around. You think that the divine soul is just a part or a moving of -- a bowel movements. That's what the psychologists tol- -- tell you about it. And that the United States are forever.
Now it isn't so. Your soul is eternal and the United States are transient. But you can't imagine it. You think capitalism is eternal, or Communism is eternal, or what -- I don't know. Or technology is eternal; science is eternal. All of these things will go. Aren't you a human being with -- with a car or without a car? Do you really think that civil- -- that you -- the -- the Ford industry will go on and you will die? { }. Lincoln will live, and Mr. Ford will be forgotten. I hope so. { }. As far as I am concerned, I'll do everything to bring about this result.
I mean, you can immortalize Mr. Ford, and you can be buried with him under the Empire State Building. But I prefer to have the cows on the state of -- in the streets of New York -- sidewalks of New York, and to have the memory of Lincoln celebrated. It's much more important to me.
({ } how can you { }?)
How can you? By dying. -- Christ is -- enters -- the Christian era is built on death. And since you are completely immune to an understanding of death, I have to give you today--that's the whole purpose of this meeting today--four examples for which you are not prepared, of how dying in life looks.
I wish to show you the history of Christianity not in the person of the founder, and not through the person of the four Apostl- -- of the { } Apostles, and not through the persons of the four Gospels. I could do this, gentlemen. Christianity is always based on a fourfold death. And I'm going to tell -- show you this by the first four Christians who became so {soon} old, that the deaths which they had to live, had to happen inside their lives. There was no crucifix, there was no torment, there was no martyrdom. But there was death in life.
Christianity says, gentlemen, that death bears fruit. And that life is sterile, if it doesn't spring out of death. Christianity further puts death before life, and says, "The human being is somebody for whom somebody has died." The animal is somebody for whom nobody has died.
You are different, because somebody has died for you. The human nature, gentlemen, is a nature coined by another person's death. That's why we are no natural beings. Four deaths are necessary, gentlemen. Man has to die to his own body in space, the thing in space. Man has to die to his political environment, to the boundaries of his political region. Man has to die to the spirit of his own day, or his own time -- that's the time -- {contemporary}. And man has to die to the end of his own aims, to his own purposes. That's { }.
({ }.)
Man has to die--we've said it before. Let me re-formulate it { }. He must die to the spirit of his own day, here, today. {Most people think the day is} important. He has to die to that. It must become unimportant, gentlemen. And he has to die to his own purposes.
When I wanted to be a great scholar, you see, I had just to be -- to sell my library and all my books, like any rich -- rich young man in the New Testament. When the young man said -- said, "How do I go -- enter the kingdom of Heaven?" Jesus said, "Sell what you have. If you have too much mind, and you are too clever, sell your cleverness. That's of course not just a million dollars { }. And if you { }, sell your books, sell your {ambition}."
Now gentlemen, four deaths. You { } to your body, which is your own space. To the political boundaries, to the body -- boundaries of the body politic, which is your common space. To your -- the spirit of your own time, which is your common time. And to your own aims, which is your own time. Your personal time. You have to die to all four.
Four men, in the fourth, gentlemen, when Christianity wo- -- became respectable. In the year in which Constantine became a Christian, and tolerated Christianity, in 313, Christianity was no longer on probation by God. The martyr -- the last martyr died under Diocletian at the end of the 3rd century, or { } in 305, { } persecuted. And after this tremendous last bloodletting, the -- Christians could say, "{ }, here we are, above the earth. We come out of our cellars, and basements, and underground movement." For 300 years, everybody who said he was a Christian was killed. From 300 on, this is no longer true.
Question mark: how could anybody become a Christian -- { }? { } a very great question. How can people become Christians, if they aren't persecuted? That is, if they aren't forced to divest themselves of their own time, and their own space, their own { }, their own political order, their -- the -- the fashions of the day, and the ambitions of their own mind. { }, as I said, on the death to these { }. It's very serious.
Now in 312, the Christians were in the same terrible position as you are, that nobody cares whether you are Christian or not. If you say you are a Christian, well, nobody thinks anything of it. He knows nothing is going to happen to the man who is a Christian. {You can let the} silver and { }, but that's all you do. But otherwise nobody expects from any Christian to do anything { } is important. So Christianity today is in the same position as in 312; it is absolutely nothing.
Now there are four men, gentlemen, who tried to { }. St. Anthony--take them down--St. Augustine, Athanasi- -- Athanasius, and Jerome -- Hieronymus. And out of the achievement of these four people, you can see what it means to die { }. That's your problem; it's my problem. { }. We { }; we celebrate { }, because { } is a man who died for 80 -- 22 years definitely to all his goings on. That's why he said, "I'm the first Christian, again, in this -- { }." There is no Christian { }.
(It seems like if you die to your political boundary, you're --.)
Oh, wait a minute.
(Oh, excuse me.)
This is just a phrase now. We'll -- we'll see it. I -- we can't discuss it before you have seen these four men, what they did, Sir.
(You said { }.)
{ }.
(Every day { }. It's not something that you die { }.)
Oh no. No, no. Oh no. { } Well, you will see that Anthony became nearly 100 years old. Athanasius, when he died -- had lived 46 years when he died, on persecution. St. Augustine was damned to live in Hanover for the last 40 years of his life. { } Hippo. A perfectly { } un-intellectual place. And Jerome lived as a -- in a -- as a hermit in Palestine, in a cave, { } a bedouin.
These four men, gentlemen, were the first Christians who had to impress their brethren with this dilemma: life is given to you; nobody is out to kill you. But life may kill you, if you don't fight it by death. The mortal quality of mere might, gentlemen, is the -- a { } of Christianity, is the enemy of Christianity. And St. Anthony gives up his own body, all the monks, monasticism. Athanasius -- Athanasius defies the boundaries of the Roman empire as constituting the destiny of man. The values of the empire. Jerome defies the -- language of his own day; he becomes a great translator. That the spirit has to be retranslated in every generation, and in every generation, and every day. Every word that we speak should be trans- -- a fresh translation of the spirit. There you have your { }.
{ } I had to go into this. I had first really wished to { }. St. Augustine freed man from his own { } of history. St. Augustine--to go backward, now--when the Roman empire was -- exposed to the invasions of the Goths, who took Rome, and raped and plundered, as the Russians have raped and plundered Berlin, and Vienna. A similar story. So he wrote beyond the existence of a Roman history.
Jerome wrote when there was great danger that the spirit would be identified with the existing languages, Greek and Hebrew. And he translated and freed, and showed that any language is a sheath for the sword of the spirit, but not the sword itself.
If you wish to understand this performance, gentlemen, just think of this astonishing fact that the Roman clergy reads Mass not in English, not in German, not in Polish, and not in the language of its founder, { } Aramaic, or in the Greek, as in the Apostles had to do. Why does the -- Church speak Latin in Mass? { }? Many people attack it for this. { } said "It's terrible, "You shouldn't."
So what happened to these heretics, these Protestants? I'm a Protestant myself, but I'm -- also know that I'm { }. { }; it's high time for you to admit it. { } Protestant is orthodox. Of course, he has fallen in the trap { }. Luther and Calvin have really taught the laity that the Bible in their own language is sacrosanct. And so you get these poor sects who -- who quibble over the texts of a -- of -- in English, of the Bible, which, of course, is quite valueless, because { } translation { } into many languages, and means something quite different in another language.
So gentlemen, Jerome fixed the Church so that it keeps a middle ground. Neither the original nor the {final} language is Latin. A language in between, a language devoid of all authority. Because you have the Greek New Testament, and you have the Hebrew Old Testament, and you have your own native tongue. { } priest { } the Catholic Church, says it all in Latin to show you the language doesn't matter. There is no authority in Latin, except that it's not apt to be idolized. You cannot possibly say that Jesus spoke Latin. And you cannot possibly, you see, think, "My language is the best { }." Because { } Latin. But in English -- the English-speaking world, that's Winston Churchill. That's jingoism. That's nation- - nationalism. That's terrible. It certainly is un-Christian. You see, they cannot die to their language, these people in an English department, and you can't. But if can speak -- Latin for your prayers, then you can; then you are outside your language. Because your language then is no longer sacrosanct to you. You can see that there is a {growth} which ha- -- must be weeded, which must be pruned, which must be treated like any good {creature}, you see. It mustn't be spoiled.
Language, gentlemen, becomes mortal through Jerome. Roman history becomes mortal through St. -- Augustine. Because he wrote The City of God, he proved that the city of Rome was not the City of God.
Jerome translated the Bible into Latin to prove that God does not speak any one language, but every one in its appointed hour. In other words, that if you have a Latin text, you can retranslate it into Greek, or you can { } translate it into your own tongue, that tran- -- through translation { } -- the Latin is just in abeyance, you see. It ana- -- -biotic, it's in a refrigerator. The written book, the Bible, is nothing if you don't bring it to life.
This is the grandeur of the Latin tradition of the western Church, and nobody seems to understand it. Very strange. Even the defenders don't understand the wisdom of the Latin which is -- is -- is waiting to be translated, and which makes the difference between the Holy Spirit and language. More Protestants--take this down, gentlemen--are pre-Jerome again, because they actually believe that God wrote the Bible in the King James Version.
In other words, gentlemen, King James Version is for you the temptation. Throw it away. Read the Bible in French, and it's better than to read it in the King James Version. Try it. Why? Three hundred years of King James Version has imbued your -- all your language, editorials, and prayers, and -- and poetry, and plays so much that you can no longer hear it. It's impossible for you to read the King James Version as a fresh {book}. So the Bible has just ceased to salt; that is, the salt has done--how does the Bible say? not "done." With the salt it's--? Wie?
("The salt { } salt.")
Yes. "How shall" -- "With what shall one salt?" the Lord said. You cannot salt {your soul} or anybody else's mind with the King James Version. Don't ask your children to read the King James Version. That's sentimentality. Of course, all { } sentimental. That's what they are.
But it is -- the whole church in this country is nothing but sentimentality. An import article from Europe. Nothing to do with salt, and nothing to do with conversion, and nothing to do with death. It's just a nice -- a nice life on { }. That's what it is. That's why Christianity today is so corrupt, gentlemen, perverted. It means for most people the opposite from what it meant to its founder. To most people today, it means life. And to its founder, it meant death.
And therefore most people today blaspheme when they say they are Christians. The most any decent person today may say is, "I hope to believe." Anybody who says, "I am a Christian," you can discount him. He isn't. There is nobody in this world today who has the right to say, "I am a Christian." And that's the reas- -- King James Version is the reason. Because most of our Christian -- so-called Christian practices are before the 4th century. They are not tested by the test of St. Augustine, who says, "The future of the British empire, and the future of the British -- of the United States have nothing to do with the writ of God, and the destiny of man."
Well, ask any Episcopalian, or any Congregationalist, or any Baptist of this country { } so. If he really knows that the disappearance of English, and the disappearance of the United States, you see, {may be} in the plans of God, then you can begin to talk to him. But before, he's just benighted. He certainly cannot know -- doesn't what Christianity means. Because whether you read Matthew, or you read the Revelation, from the first book to the -- last book in the New Testament, the whole story is based on man's power to get out of -- of these cycles, and out of these countries, and out of these times, and out of these languages. Take Matthew, written in Hebrew, translated into Greek, beginning with a genealogy in which is said, "Every 4- -- 14 generations God abolishes the whole order of things, that breaks into the new -- inspiration." The ta- -- so-called genealogical table of Matthew of course is not genealogical table whatsoever. The people are too lazy to read. It means: why did Christ come? Because for another 14 generations, it was high time for a revelation, for new inspirations, because when the Old -- the covenant brought -- brings in a new spirit in every 14 generations, Joseph and Jesus constitute the 14th generation, so don't be surprised if something tremendous has happened.
Now that's a philosophy of history, you see, which breaks every cycle. The first word of the New Testament therefore is the { } that four eons have preceded. "Saecula, saeculorum" means, you see, "cycle of cycles," you see. And that the spirit of God now comes to the fore finally with the man who can survive all cycles, who stands out for unity and continuation forever, who makes {sense} out of the disparity, and incongruity, and these fragmentations, fragments of time on { }. As the Revelation says that all -- that the whore Babylon, that Rome will fall, and that in the future the same cycles as in antiquity will fall. And that in Christ {we shall live them down, all}.
The -- the -- the whole New Testament is a very simple thing. It only says through the whole text one thing, that all the times are today the -- from now on tied together by a power and a spirit that can live, you see, beyond the grave, beyond the grave of all our hope. St. Augustine, gentlemen--take this down--teaches how our faith can survive all our hopes. That is, purpose, my purpose { }, my horizon. The horizon of God is -- survives all the moralities of man. You can { } -- put -- the translation by { }. We talked about this at great length before. Any eon has a horizon, you see, of my hopes. We reach the end of our eon through our hopes, through our expectations, you see.
St. Augustine says, "The vestal virgins have been raped in Rome. All the Romans think the end of Rome means end of the world." It doesn't -- it doesn't -- God's history holds beyond the history of Rome. That's the whole content of The City of God of St. Augustine.
Now we come to Jerome. Jerome says that we survive all the means of our intellectual life. That's our language. We survive all the means. We can never { } of speech. The King James Version is just one version, you see. That doesn't lead -- go -- bring you to Heaven, that you read the King James Version. That's sentimental. Or -- at -- at one time it wasn't. In 1611, I'm sure it was the right thing -- it had a power, you see. But has it this power today? You can never be sure. You can never be sure.
Jerome says, "Nobody who speaks a civilized language shall think that he is a poet, or that he's a priest, or that he's a prophet, or that he's a seer for that reason." Gentlemen, language is { }, and { }. As long as you think that you have -- think everything through--the King James Version, you see--you may miss { }. You may miss out on your real destiny. You have to be free of this loyalty. You remember what we said at the end of last time. You have -- a Christian is a man who can survive any earthly loyalty; it's another word for dying.
Then we come back to St. Athanasius. Athanasius said that the powers that be must not be likened to God's Son, { }. The { } of Athanasius for 46 years was whether Christ was God, or whether he was God-like. This is for you perhaps hard to understand, gentlemen. Most of you will think that Jesus was a good man, but that we shouldn't call Him "God." If you don't call Him "God," He doesn't do you any good. Forget about Him. He's useless for your {faith}, and for your life, and for your sanity. Most people today give up this notation of divinity { }. I don't blame them. It's very difficult to understand.
In order to understand your and my position to this problem, I first go back to 325, gentlemen. In 325, the first emperor of Rome behaved as a Christian, and allowed the bishops of Christianity to come together and debate the Creed. This Caesar had been worshiped as a god. You must never forget this. And you must never forget that by -- ... [tape interruption]
...{ }, you see, although you go on a Fulbright fellowship, and prove that you had no {vows}, and -- and put { } so that they sell you, I mean. In any case, gentlemen, power excludes truth. Because you want this power. You all want power { }.
({ }.)
If you {provoke power}, you can; if you {provoke power, you see}. If you {provoke power}, you can. Now St. Athanasius {had this problem}. St. Athanasius {himself} was up against a man called Arius. And Arius said, "We now have all these nice heathens coming in. They are accustomed to worship Caesar, and to say, 'He -- he's the god.' Now of course he isn't a god, really, { }. But to make the thing understandable we say, "Caesar is god-like, and Jesus is Godlike." And so we get Unitarianism. The Unitarians are all Arian { } 19th century. {Who is a Unitarian?}
Arius is the Unitarian. He says, "Don't -- { } Unitarian { } because he said the qualities of God are unique, no man is God; therefore let us call Jesus 'god-like'."
Now Athanasius put against this two proofs. One: Jesus is true man, and true God. Of course He's a man in His own right. He had a poor digestion probably; He breathed, He had to sleep, He sweat, He had -- He had fear, He had hopes, He loved. He wasn't immortal. And He died, very much so. You may be sure of that. And He was in His mother's womb. And He is { } completely a human being. Don't forget this. Otherwise this whole discussion becomes nasty. I have heard people discuss it, this whole story, in the way as though the people -- Christians said that Jesus was a god. No. He's Perfect Man, and Perfect God.
As to what God has done to Him, he is God. As to what He has lived Himself, He is man. From His death, backwards-looking, it's God who is on the scene, all the time. As from His birth forward-looking, it's man acting out his own human life all the time. That is, gentlemen, True Man and True God means that Jesus' life can only be understood when faced both ways, from His birth to His death, and from the death -- His death to His birth. If you do not make this cross the crucial position of man -- Christ cannot be understood. He is man, in the direction from His -- from birth to His death. He is God in the direction from the Crucifixion to His birth, because then you can say that the God in Him was born, the -- the man who could go to the Cross. If you however { } on from His birth, you can explain how that -- that He finally was crucified. This is very different. So gentlemen, first of all Jesus is True Man and True God. Second, He is not god-like, because if He's only god-like, we cannot use Him to understand God. The whole instrument of God, however, on this earth is Christ, to show what God -- God Himself is like. Therefore, if you say that Jesus is god-like, He's {above you}. He is not able to create a new era. He certainly is not able to take you and me out of this world and allow us to incarnate, as though we came out of God at this moment. This rebirth of yours and mine depends on the fact that He was born, and created, and begotten by the Father. Otherwise, how can He be {the standard}? In order -- other words, gentlemen, Arius says you cannot learn from Jesus anything {preparatory}, anything -- anything--how do you say?--commanding, anything -- well, in this direction. Anything -- I mean {crucial}, so to speak, necessary, you see. { }. Only if Jesus is the Revelation of God to us, that Jesus -- that Christian- -- Christianity becomes necessary and indispensable. The whole problem of Christ, however, is his being indispensable. You abolish Christianity if you say it -- it isn't -- if you can dispense with it. It's just a nice {gadget} in your motor, in your car. It isn't a gadget, Christianity. It's either the indispensable step of humanity into unity, or it is nothing. Anybody who says that Chris- -- Christ is not the Revelation of God deprives you and me of the knowledge of how to proceed. We have no standard of procedure { }. { } absolutely nothing. You are then a Turk, and I am a Mos- -- I am -- as I am -- and I am a German, and somebody else is a Basque, and we are just what we are. We have nothing in common.
The problem, gentlemen, of Christ was to create a common standard for men of all tribes and all empires, and of Jews and Greeks. Now if He did this, it's all right. If He didn't, He is a failure. So by saying that Jesus is god-like, {He} may seem to be very nice; but nice -- politeness, gentlemen, and niceness, and kindness are the curses of creative life. Always distrust today kind {people}. They are the most destructive { }. Because they mistake lubrication for gasoline. You cannot drive {without} a good oil. It's very { } to lubricate your car. But you have to have { }. { }. Everyone in this country thinks if he has only lubrication then he can go. Complete mistake between motor oil and gasoline. Kindness is oil, you see. It isn't gasoline. { }.
And that's why it's so terrible that people today tell you that { } the oil. { }, trying, { } human. And so that's very nice as an add- -- in addition, { } the suburbs. But for Heaven's sake, have some gasoline, and have some explosion.
This is the greatest mistake of our civilization, gentlemen. And it is a serious mistake between Arius and Athanasius. The Christ of Athanasius is horrifying, is terror-striking. He is awful. He is a { } Christ for whom you tremble. God is nothing pleasant, because His death is { }. And death is awful. Nobody wants to die. Because he is something awful. Nothing pleasant. No lubrication. It's a tremendous explosion; the curtain of the temple was rent; the earth did shake. And so ever -- whenever an act of faith is {committed}, the earth is shaken to this day. Believe me this, gentlemen; religion is nothing pleasant. It is death in {life}; that's awful. But you think it's something nice for Sunday. That isn't religion. That's a memory of religion. That's an attempt to smother religion, to suppress it, to buy it off, by the salary you pay to a minister. What has a minister to do with your religion? Pious -- pious words, phrases, the King James Version. That's oil. It's no { }.
Any act of faith, gentlemen, will make an act of {death} explode into your face. And through this, we { }, because life itself { }.
So gentlemen, Athanasius was not { } God. But was overcome by Him. Arius, the Unitarian today--or the philosopher, you can call him today--says, "Jesus was wonderful. { } {goodness} { }. Edifying." Makes Him perfectly harmless. He is very good to be the vice-chairman of the Boy Scouts { }. But -- the Boy Scouts are very nice people, but they just are not the salt of the earth, and they are not the explosive, directing force for the creation of the brotherhood of man. It's something nice about the Boy Scouts. It's an education on { }.
But this {lying} of man, gentlemen, the spirit of God is not education { }. It's creative. That's on a higher order. Nobody has begotten 14 children through education, but through adultery or fornication. I mean, there are sins in life, gentlemen, crimes, great deeds. But don't think that kindness and education beget a new world -- {a new earth}. You can -- you can hang nice paper on the {wall} of your civilization, by kindness. And for Heaven's sake, do it. Even I try to be polite. It's very difficult, however. And sometimes I think I should be much less polite, because you are all killed by politeness. Politeness is nothing that gives life to anybody. But it only gives a { }. It's a -- it's a { }.
So gentlemen, the main point is for Athanasius not to flatter {Christ}. And the main point for Arius is to flatter Jesus, and to say, "Oh god-like. He's wonderful. He's just a real genius." "Genius," "god-like," "wonderful" all abolishes His necessity. Because gentlemen, when we say "God," we admit necessity. Obviously even you in your atheism, gentlemen, can {remember} that the word "God" {deals with} order of this universe, command, authority over you and me, you see. Direction.
So whatever you may be, and may think, and may walk over { } may walk -- when you speak of God, you may say, "I am unnecessary," then you are an atheist. Or you may say, "I'm necessary"; then you believe in God. Because the self -- you say, "The responsibility for my existence is -- on this earth is not in my own hands, and of my own making. I have to find out what I am meant, what I'm purpose, what I'm { }."
The difference between suicide, gentlemen--{take it down}: a man who commits suicide says, "I'm unnecessary." You will admit. That's -- certainly the -- completely certain interpretation of suicide. You see? Suicide always says, "I'm unnecessary," or "It is better for me not to live." There are however--let me correct this--I am -- I know of suicides which have been fruitful. Suicide can be sacrifice. You can sacrifice your life for somebody else. Even in the form of suicide. But I mean suicide from despair, I mean suicide which says, "It isn't worth living." You see, that's a different story. You { }, please make this difference. Not every suicide is { }.
St. Augustine was asked, gentlemen, when the vir- -- vesta- -- vestalian virgins were rapes, they were -- had taken vows of chastity in Ro- - in ancient -- in Rome, like nuns. And they committed suicide when they were raped, because they were undone. And St. Augustine was asked -- asked, "What about Christianity? How do you explain all this?"
"Well," he said, "a nun who was raped did not commit suicide. She may not be able to interpret this, but she knows that her destiny is larger than her { }, and her desires, and her vows. And a nun who is raped is still God's soul, and God's will. Will, thought. And therefore she is not allowed to commit suicide, because she is { }."
Now millions of people in Europe have to live through { }. There isn't a woman in -- the Rus- -- the Russian zone of Germany that hasn't been raped. And many have been raped 17- -- {1800} times. And they lived. And nuns as well, the mothers, and children. And I know of a Dartmouth soldier who raped an American housewife in the presence of her husband and her children. And the case has become known, because -- this rascal was even coarse enough to boast of it in a letter. And the censor, who -- read the letter in New York, told me this story.
Now this poor housewife who surrendered to the pistol of this man, he just threatened that he would shoot her husband if she wouldn't do his { }. But she -- is she going to commit suicide? If her own purposes in life were concerned, she would have to. She -- she is her own making. { }, so to speak. But she { }. She isn't her own purpose. She isn't her own {making}. She -- and { } -- she can live a good life. It is -- only more explosive, such a decision, than to live on, gentlemen. It takes a greater rebirth of your faith than most of you would be capable of, in the case of your own sister. But these are the real processes, gentlemen, which in the 4th and 5th century gave rise to these tremendous Christians like Athanasius, who was for 40 years hated by the emperors, because he exalted the Son of man over the son of Zeus, or Jupiter, on the throne of Rome. God-likeness would have equaled Caesar and Jesus. The divinity of Christ exalted Christ over -- the life of Jesus over the life of the Caesars. And if we didn't exalt it over the life of the caesars, nobody could resist Caesar, you see. Then the government of Caesar would be omnipotent. That would be world government. The majority of {the so-called} -- "covenant of the nations" has decided so-and-so, then you have to bow to it. You have no right of resistance. You couldn't go to any {course} with any effect.
So gentlemen, the divinity of Christ has exalted the Cross over the throne--you may put it in this simple way--of Caesar. And all earthly dominations fall after Athanasius. { }. There is no absolute emperor anymore, because Christ is above Caesar.
Now Mr. { }.