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VIII. Jesus (1954) <<Previous | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 Jesus knew all of this, and many of his sayings speak about the coming destruction of the Temple which is also why he refused to become the Jewish Messiah, because he knew better than anybody else that if the Jews had revolted the Romans would have been victorious, and then the Temple would have been destroyed, and with the destruction of the Temple would come the destruction of the Jews as a holy people, and he wanted them to be the holy people. He wanted them really to become it, and so through this transpolitical position, which is a creation of political genius, he had hoped to bring the Jews to the place where they could be the first Church in an inner sense, a society that has risen above politics, an international society of people who are not concerned about anything other than the direct relation of every man to God. That's what he wanted, and he failed. His fear, that the Jews with this tremendous tradition of religious experience, would be destroyed by the Romans with the Temple was fortunately not justified. The Jews survived, but their Temple was destroyed, and they had lost their chance. That is why when he goes to the cross and the women weep he says to them: (Luke.23: 28-31)
Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for Because he knew that the Temple would be destroyed, and afterwards, when the Zealots came, and the revolution was made, the Temple was destroyed. He was a prophet in a historical sense, and he knew exactly what he was talking about, which is why so many of his prophecies were fulfilled. He wanted the Kingdom of God on earth. Why and how? He said of himself, "I am the Son of man". The "Son of man" is a very funny expression for us. Originally (in Hebrew) it meant the son of Adam. So he really said "I am the son of Adam" which merely means "I am a human being". I am a human being, nothing more. But then, in his teachings, he redesigns it, and the Son of man still stays the son of Adam but now Adam really becomes "man", and the son of Adam becomes the new man, the new man who has gotten rid of the old Adam, that is, the original human condition which involves sin in the sense of death, and he is now the new man, the Son of man in general. This Son of man everybody can be as well as Jesus of Nazareth. Here again, we see an indication of his good tidings, for when this naked babe came into the world and was later crucified as a simple carpenter's son he had already laid the foundation for the principle that "whenever, wherever, and however you have been born, you are of infinite value" so it is man himself that counts, nothing else. He even shows that you are of more value, because this inherent possibility of decision within the human heart means that every man is Adam, every man is the son of man, because with his birth every man came into the world. The birth of Jesus of Nazareth was the birth of every man which is what he taught and lived. We can either stay Adam (namely man), or become the Son of man by doing exactly what Jesus of Nazareth did by destroying hatred. This does not mean unselfishness. Psychologists are all right when they say that Christ must have been the most selfish human being in the world. Yes, but what a Self! The real question is only a distinction between self and Self, the distinction between one's "self" and The Self one can be. No human being is born a human being. It can only become a human being. The late German writer, Karl Kraus, once said: The concept of the superman
as in Nietzsche is a little pre-mature. Yes, that is exactly what Jesus of Nazareth was saying. Man doesn't exist yet, because man is only the son of man, he is just Adam, but not the new man he can become by shedding Adam and by becoming the true Son of man. How is this done? That is the meaning of rebirth, the rebirth that we all can achieve. Birth and rebirth. Not eternal life in some hereafter, not a life of immortality, but a life here and now. Everything he says relates to here and now, so it is with the Kingdom of God, everything is here and now. If we make the decision and live according to it then we can shed Adam, we can become the Son of man. The more that make it, then the more the Kingdom of God, which is always there, will finally prevail. He says "The Son of man will return to sit at the right hand of the Father". Yes, obviously. If we could come to handle our politics and all of our creative activities in a more humane way by putting ourselves above them, then the Son of man might prevail here on earth. He might return, because we would have destroyed power for power's sake which means we would have destroyed hatred, because hatred is only power for power's sake and nothing else. So it is quite possible that even that one beautiful day will be fulfilled, but one thing is sure. It cannot be fulfilled until we fulfill it, and that is what he meant. It is our decision. Our power is already so great that power for power's sake we do not need. We have to control the instances of power within ourselves, we must use power but not fall prey to it, because only then will we be really powerful -- not before. We may think we are powerful today but we are not. Today, we are only hysterical. We said before that Jesus of Nazareth was the discoverer of inwardness, of the possibility of eternal personal relations, relations which are placed above all other things and which can only take place among free persons. This was, so to speak, the flower of the tree we were talking about, the tree that grew out of three roots: faith, freedom, and truth, and which I have called the human trinity. Out of these three roots the tree of human creative capabilities in all of our nine thinkers has grown. After the tree had grown, and developed its crown in Socrates, the tree seemed perfect, and it was perfect. It had only to bring forth a flower, and with the flower, a fruit. This flower was Jesus, and the flower and the fruit are what make the tree eternal, because they can reproduce the tree. So the rediscovery and the use of that tree can best be achieved by using the fruit, and that means by starting with the insights of Jesus of Nazareth. It can be argued that Socrates and philosophical man will always be at the center of all human creative capabilities including this, the personal one, and that only philosophy can explain them. But it is also true that all of them, including philosophy, can only be really practiced and done through passion and love so in the end, the flower and fruit are what really count, and if we use them we can re-establish the tree. That exactly is what we called the "quest of our time" and the goal of this course. To find a way of re-establishing the tree, so we have come full circle. Philosophy can and must play the role of bringing forth anew, of making possible anew, the real peace of mind and fruitfulness of mind that can make this come true --- not the peace of mind we are longing for today which is the peace of "dumb heads", but the peace of mind in which all of the human creative faculties which we have discovered do not work against each other, but with and for each other. Philosophy has the task to do that, but philosophy will never be able to do that until it has made its peace; first, with religious thinking, and second, with the purest religious thinking there ever has been. The thinking of Jesus of Nazareth. Everyone who has ever in his life established a loving human relationship is a follower of Jesus of Nazareth regardless of whether or not he ever has heard of him, because this is a personal religion (a religion of persons). Jesus of Nazareth was religious man, because he discovered what we all can be inside or outside of any established religion. The Catholics have always believed in the invisible Church --- something unfortunately which Protestantism has forgotten, and Protestantism has rotted because of it. The Catholic Church has always knew, as Jesus knew, and as the Jews had known before anybody else, that at any moment there might be only seven just men alive unknown to anyone else on earth and that is the only reason why God does not destroy the world. There is always the hidden Church which Jesus established when he said "Wherever there are two or three of you gathered together in my name, I am in your midst", and in this spirit, with these words, the hidden Kingdom of God might finally be made to prevail on earth. This is his promise, and if we as philosophers do not come to know his mind then we will never be able to go on with our central task which is, in the final analysis, the practice of reason and faith as mutual conditions of our lives. This then, is a sketch of the task that is before us today. To make the decision for freedom in ourselves. To reject death in ourselves. And to become life in order to make life. To mobilize our creative faculties and to order them but again, only for one purpose, and that is to bear fruit so the tree can grow again in the next generation. We can achieve that, to bear the fruit, and every generation will have to be concerned with that tree so long as a free humanity should live. |
