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As the intermediary between Heaven and Earth, Man was destined to be the universal Messiah who should save the world from chaos by uniting it to God and incarnating the eternal Wisdom in created forms. This mission involved Man in a threefold ministry; he was to be priest of God, king of the lower world, and prophet of their absolute union: priest of God in sacrificing to Him his own arbitrariness, the egoism of humanity; king of the lower world of Nature in subjecting it to divine law; prophet of the union of the two in aspiring to the absolute totality of existence and in realizing it progressively by the continuous cooperation of grace and freedom, in regenerating and reforming Nature outside the Godhead until its universal and perfect integration is achieved (ή αποκατάστασις των παντων). Submission to God, and the domination of Nature for its own salvation: these two phrases sum up the Messianic Law. Man rejected it because he preferred to achieve the goal directly, by himself, in violation of the order laid down by the divine reason. He wished to unite himself arbitrarily to the lower world of Nature, in virtue of his own desire, thinking by this means to possess himself of an unconditional sovereignty, an absolute autonomy equal to that of God. He would not subordinate his kingship to his priesthood; and consequently he became incapable of satisfying his true aspirations and of fulfilling his prophetic mission.
His inordinate desire to unite himself to Nature was bound to result in his subjection to it; and as an inevitable consequence he could not escape contracting the distinctive features of the material world apart from the Godhead, and being transformed to its image and likeness. Now, we know that the essential character of Nature outside God is expressed first by indeterminate plurality in space, or the infinite division of parts; secondly, by indeterminate change in time, or the infinite disjunction of moments; and thirdly, as the result of this double division, by the transformation of all causality into mechanism. It is true that this potentiality of infinite disintegration and universal discord, which is the essential characteristic of Chaos, is limited in creation by the action of the unifying Word which on this chaotic foundation constructed the cosmos. But in the lower Nature (before the appearance of Man) the foundation of Chaos is not suppressed; it persists like fire beneath the ashes, a prevailing tendency ready to awaken at every opportunity. It is in this potential form that fallen Man has contracted the disorder, becoming thereby what is wrongly called natural humanity, but is in fact chaotic humanity. In this human mass we distinguish clearly the three fundamental characteristics of Nature apart from God. The infinite disintegration of material parts in space is translated into human terms by the indeterminate and anarchic plurality of coexisting individuals; to the infinite disjunction of moments in time corresponds, in the life of mankind, the indeterminate succession of generations which vie with one another for actual existence and in turn supplant one another; and finally the material mechanism of the physical world is transferred to mankind under the form of that heteronomy or rule of fate which subjects the will of Man to the force of circumstances and his inner being to the dominating influence of external environment and temporal conditions.
We know, however, that the Fall of Man could only postpone and not annul his vocation. The salutary obstacles of Space, Time and Mechanical Causality, while separating him from his supreme end, at the same time saved him from absolute and final frustration. (1) The indeterminate plurality of individuals — which is, considered in itself, a declension — is the prime condition of human salvation; for although a part of this great number may by fresh crimes aggravate original sin and propagate it more widely, there always remain some righteous ones to mitigate the effects of evil and to prepare the means of future salvation. Thanks to this indeterminate multiplication, Abel is replaced by Seth and Saul makes room for David. (2) The indefinite succession of generations is a second condition of salvation; none disappears without leaving something to facilitate the work of its successors and to elaborate some more perfect historic form which may better satisfy the true aspirations of the human soul. Thus what could not be revealed in Eve or Tamar or Rahab or Ruth or Bathsheba, was one day revealed in Mary. (3) Finally, the heteronomy of our existence is a third condition of salvation, no less indispensable than the former two. For if the will of Man, both good and bad, was immediately efficacious, there would be an end of Mankind and of Creation. The fratricide Cain would in that case be plunged immediately into the depths of Hell before he had built a town and founded ancient civilization; the good Seth would have ascended to Heaven or at least to Paradise with his brother Abel before he had begotten the ancestors of Jesus Christ; and the lower world, the Earth, robbed of its center of unity and action, would have reverted to the sad condition of tohu va bohu in which it was before the Creation. And there would have been no one to give joy and delight to the eternal Wisdom.
If, then, our subjection to the conditions of the material world is a consequence of the Fall and a penalty of sin, we see that this penalty is a blessing and this necessary consequence of evil is a necessary means of absolute good.
As the chaotic Earth could not escape the cosmogonic action of the Word, which transformed it into a balanced, enlightened and living world, so the chaos of mankind, created by the Fall of Eden, had to be subjected to the theogonic operation of the same Word, which aims at regenerating it into a spiritual humanity really unified, enlightened by divine truth, and living with an eternal life. The form of the Messianic Man, rejected by the first Adam, was not entirely destroyed in natural humanity, but simply reduced to the state of latent potentiality; thus it remained as a living seed — semen mulieris (id est Sophiæ) — realizing itself partially and progressively, and finally incarnate in the second Adam. This theogonic process, the creation of trinitary Man, Messianic Man or God-Man, through Whom the divine Wisdom becomes incarnate throughout the whole universe, presents, in the order of time, three main stages: (1) the series of Messianic anticipations in “natural humanity” or in the human chaos — before Christianity; (2) the appearance of the individual Messiah in the person of Jesus Christ; (3) the Messianic transformation of the whole of mankind, or the development of Christendom.
Before Jesus Christ, mankind, lacking a real center, was simply a potential organism; in fact, there were only separate organs: tribes, states and nations, some of whom aimed at universal domination. This was already an anticipation of future unity. But in each of these disjointed parts of mankind, whether or no it aspired to supplant the whole under the form of a universal monarchy, there had been from the beginning a certain realization in the social sphere of the Messianic or trinitary form tending to represent in more or less restricted limits the totality of human existence.
This trinitary form has a broad foundation in the being of Man. All human existence is made up of three principal terms: the accomplished facts preserved by the tradition of the past, the actions and tasks imposed by the needs of the present, and the aspirations towards a better state determined by a more or less perfect ideal of the future.
There is an obvious analogy, but also an essential difference, between these constituent modes of human existence and the corresponding modes of Divine existence (to say nothing of the hypostatic character of the latter). The broad reason for this difference is that in God, as absolute Being, the first mode determines the second completely, and the two together completely determine the third, in which the Divine Being finally possesses itself and completely enjoys itself. Man, on the other hand (to mention here only the third mode of his subjective existence), cannot actually possess the totality of existence, which is for him only a more or less distant future. This future ideally anticipated cannot be the object of a proper enjoyment, but only of an aspiration.
In our material or animal life, this trinitary form already exists, but it is there a natural symbol rather than a reality. The accomplished fact is here represented by the past generation, the fathers or ancestors; the actuality is the present generation, the men of today; finally, the natural aspirations towards the future are incarnate in the children, the future generation. It is clear that the trinitary form has here a purely relative and fundamentally illusory character: natural life strives to give permanence to the relationship, but never succeeds in doing so, and each generation in turn passes through the state of Future, Present and Past, to disappear into nothingness and oblivion. Each generation desires to possess complete actuality, but since each has an equal right to this possession none can obtain it effectively; and after vain attempts to stem the torrent of temporal existence, all are in turn engulfed in it. But this continual succession of generations does not exhaust all human existence; this is only animal humanity. Besides this there is social humanity, which has never been confined to material actuality or content merely to pursue and maintain the actual fact of existence. Human society, even at the lowest stages of its development, has always coupled facts with principles, realities with ideas.
The actuality of the present moment is never for human society a purely mechanical sequence in time, a mere postea to its past, or a purely mechanical and temporal antecedent, a mere antea to its future. This actuality is always linked to the two other terms by an inner spiritual bond which fixes the past and the future and which, if it does not stem the torrent of material existence, at least confines it to a definite channel and transforms the Evil Infinity of natural time into a system of historical development. In every human society, however barbarous it may be, above and beyond the material interests of the moment, there is a religious tradition and a prophetic ideal. The past, instead of being ruthlessly supplanted in the manner of those savages who kill and eat their aged parents, is preserved with a filial piety as the basis and abiding sanction of the present; and the future, instead of being conceived as a pitiless fate or sacrificed to the flames of egoism like the children that were consumed in the blazing statue of Moloch, is appealed to and invoked as the true end and rationale of the present, its joy and crown. Thus at the head of every human society we see a trinity, more or less differentiated, of governing classes partly linked, but never identified, with the threefold natural relationship of the successive generations. There are in the first place the priests or sacrificers, corresponding to the fathers, the older generation; indeed, originally in the life of tribes and scattered clans, priestly functions were performed by the fathers of families and the domestic hearth was the principal altar.
Nevertheless even in this primitive state the father stood for more than the particular fact of natural fatherhood; he was linked by his priestly dignity to the absolute fact of the Divine Fatherhood, to that eternal Past which precedes and conditions all existence. In contrast to the animals, material generation had in the person of human fathers become a social institution and an act of religion. And if the living father was a priest, the mediator between the present and the past, the dead ancestor, re-entering the invisible world, became merged in the absolute past itself, the eternal Godhead, and became an object of worship. Ancestor-worship is in fact a universal element in religion.1
Thus the ministry of the immediate past, of the living fathers, the priests, linked the present existence of mankind to a vaguer and more remote past, to the mysterious facts preceding our existence and determining it with an absolute necessity. In the second place, we see the class of warriors who by their strength and daring guaranteed to society its actual means of existence and met the pressing needs of the given moment. This class was naturally drawn mainly from the sons of families, the present generation. And although the older generation also took part in military enterprises, it was not Priam or Nestor, but rather Hector and Achilles who commanded the warriors, while duly yielding place to the older men whenever it was necessary to obtain the favor of the gods by sacrifices. Thus the relation between these two main classes of Society roughly corresponds to the relation between the two generations, the present and the past, of natural life. But if this analogy were extended, if the future of the social organism were also to find itself solely or mainly represented by the future generation, the children who supplant their forebears, to be themselves supplanted by their offspring, and so on, then the existence of Society would be confused with the Evil Infinity of natural life, there would be no history, no progress, but simply a continuous and fruitless change. This is not so in fact. In every society there has been from the earliest times, besides the priests and the warriors, a class made up of every age, sex and condition, who anticipated the future of man and satisfied the ideal aspirations of the society in which they lived. In the life of nature the third term, instead of being the true unity of the first and second, is fundamentally a mere repetition of them.
The future generation represents the future only in an illusory and ephemeral manner, as one member of an indeterminate series is worth no more than another. In the order of natural succession the new generation supervening upon the older is not in itself more advanced or nearer the ideal of perfection. It is on this account that true social progress, independently of the infinite succession of generations, demands that there be real representatives of the future, men who are in fact more advanced in the spiritual life, capable of satisfying the aspirations of their contemporaries and of confronting a given society with its ideal in the degree to which it can grasp it and they themselves can realize it. To these men of the ideal future I give the general name of prophets. The word is commonly understood to signify one who foretells the future.
Between the fortune-teller and the true prophet there is much the same difference as there is between the chief of a gang of robbers and the lawful sovereign of a great state, or between the father of a primitive family sacrificing to the shades of his ancestors and the Pope bestowing his blessing urbi et orbi and opening Heaven to the souls in Purgatory. But apart from this difference, which concerns the extent of their respective jurisdiction, there is also another distinction to be drawn. The future may be foretold not merely in words but also in action by a partial anticipation of states and relationships which do not form part of the present condition of humanity. This is prophecy in the proper sense, which moreover presents undefined modifications and gradations. The African witch-doctor, for example, has or claims to have the power of bringing rain or fine weather at his good pleasure. This superior power of the human will over the forces and phenomena of material nature is an attribute of humanity in so far as it is perfectly united to the creative and omnipotent Godhead. Such a union, which is, generally speaking, foreign to our present condition, is simply the ideal goal, the remote future, to which we aspire; and the exercise of a power proper to this future state is an anticipation of the future, or a prophetic act. But true prophecy is not that of the sorcerer. He does not possess, and is not even aware of, the religious and moral conditions of supernatural power; if, in fact, he exercises this power, it is only in a purely empirical manner.
But even in the case where his magical power is nothing but a fraudulent pretence, it is nonetheless an anticipation, though only in desire and aspiration, of a higher state, an ideal future reserved for Man. And if we turn from the African witch-doctor to a true Christian wonder-worker such as St. Francis of Assisi, we find in his miracles the same power of the human will over the forces of external nature which the magician of a savage tribe possesses or claims to possess. In both cases the power is limited; for the miraculous power of even the greatest saints has never been constant in its duration or universal in its application. But the great difference is that the saint is aware and in possession of that which is for Man the supreme inner condition of supernatural power, namely, moral union with the Godhead. Thus his power, based on his moral superiority, is a faithful and direct, even though feeble and limited, reproduction of the divine Omnipotence which is no blind force, but the logical consequence of the intrinsic and essential perfection of Absolute Being. In so far as the saint shares in this perfection, he shares also in the divine power and affords us an anticipation of our final state, which is not only real but internally true, perfect in itself, though externally incomplete.
Let us now compare, in quite another sphere of prophecy, the great sage of Greece with a Hebrew nabi. Plato in his Republic gives us the ideal of human society organized on the principles of justice and reason. It is the anticipation of a future which was partly realized by the society of medieval Europe.2 Plato was therefore a prophet, but in the sense in which the African witch-doctor is a wonderworker; he did not possess, and was not even aware of, the true conditions under which his ideal must be realized. He did not understand that for the equitable and rational organization of social life human justice and reason are not sufficient; nor that the ideal of a just and wise society conceived by a philosopher still has to be made fruitful by a corresponding moral action on the part of society itself. Society is, in fact, dominated by evil; if it is to be organized in accordance with the ideal of the good, it must be saved and regenerated. But abstract meditation will not save it.
For all its anticipation of social truth, the Platonic idealism did not possess the way to its realization and could not give life to the conception of it. That is the great difference between the philosophic prophecy of the Greeks and the religious prophecy of the Hebrews. The Israelite nabi to whom the truth was revealed by a personal relationship to the living God of history anticipated the ideal future not by abstract thought, but with his heart and soul. He cleared the way, he awakened the life. In his prophecies there was, as in Plato, an ideal of a perfect society; but this ideal was never dissociated from the inner condition which determined its realization, the free and active reunion of mankind with God. The true nebiïm knew well that this union was only to be accomplished by means of a long and complicated divine-human process, a process of mutual action and concurrence between God and Man; and not only did they know this as a general principle, but they knew and proclaimed at each given moment what mankind in its provisional central organ, the Jewish nation, must do in order to co-operate effectively in furthering the divine-human work. Their action was complete, since on the one hand they pointed to the absolute goal in the distant future, and on the other they indicated the effectual means of leading mankind towards that goal at the present moment. Thus, in uniting all human anticipations of the ideal future under the general name of prophecy, we are not ignoring the vast and essential difference which separates not merely wizards and sorcerers, but also the loftiest intellects of uninspired humanity from the true prophets of the living God.
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1. This thesis has been expounded in our own time with a certain degree of exaggeration by M. Fustel de Coulanges in his Cité antique, and in a much more exaggerated form by Mr. Herbert Spencer in Sociology. It is not difficult to separate the important element of truth in their ideas from the mistaken conclusions which, especially in the English thinker, are the product of a too narrow and limited point of view.
2. On the analogy between the Platonic and the Christian Republics, see among others Ranke in his Universal History.
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