Soul and Spirit
In this section the difference
between soul and spirit is addressed at length. My normal style is
concentrated, using few words. I am suspicious of many words. They can cloak
meaning rather than convey it. One thinks of party political broadcasts,
advertisements and sermons. In this section I intend to spray words out as from
a hose, reckless as to their number, with a view to communicating every last
drop of meaning. Although this subject has been covered, perhaps a longer
treatment might suit some for whom the earlier one was too brief. St Teresa
found that people liked her material dished up in different ways.(1)
Some quotations from early Quakers express the matter with absolute precision, and also reveal how vibrant their experience was, and how firmly in the mystical tradition. They also demonstrate that mystical experience of the highest quality is available to men and women who live in the world at large, and that for the early Quakers, it was not only available, but normal. That from George Fox made above (2) contains the whole truth with its continuation. “Now was I come up in spirit through the flaming sword into the paradise of God. All things were new, and all the creation gave another smell unto me than before, beyond what words can utter. I knew nothing but pureness, and innocency, and righteousness, being renewed up into the image of God by Christ Jesus, so that I say I was come up to the state of Adam which he was in before he fell. The creation was opened to me, and it was showed me how all things had their names given them, according to their nature and virtue. And I was at a stand in my mind, whether I should practise physic for the good of mankind, seeing the nature and virtues of things were so opened to me by the Lord. But I was immediately taken up in Spirit, to see into another or more steadfast state than Adam’s in innocency, even into a state in Christ Jesus, that should never fall. And the Lord showed me that such as were faithful to him in the power and light of Christ, should come up into the state in which Adam was before he fell; in which the admirable works of creation, and the virtues thereof, may be known, through the openings of that divine Word of wisdom and power by which they were made. Great things did the Lord lead me into, and wonderful depths were opened unto me, beyond what can by words be declared; but as people come into subjection to the Spirit of God, and grow up in the image and power of the Almighty, they may receive the Word of wisdom, that opens all things, and come to know the hidden unity in the Eternal Being”.
The state of Adam is soul at its best. The hidden unity in the Eternal Being, or the more steadfast state is Spirit. Spirit was diluted in several stages to make the levels in creation including matter, so that I say that everything is Spirit. I have not had the experience of seeing into the properties of plants, but I have seen that every plant, every leaf, every twig was full of information concerning its source. One could say then that there is no difference between Spirit and the various levels in which soul resides. This is nevertheless a trivial answer. From now on I use the term Spirit to refer to the hidden unity as it “was”, “before” it was diluted to create the various levels, or more precisely to mean a Form that participates in it.
Soul consists of various well known faculties such as the five senses, memory, will, intellect, aesthetic sense, sense of meaning, ability to love, sense of individuality, and speech. Ego is also a soul faculty, but resides at the lowest level of soul and has no function at higher levels. There are also inner senses whose existence may not necessarily be known to their possessor. They become apparent when experience is sought at the higher levels, and relinquishing of unhelpful attitudes and consistent dwelling in appropriate attitudes is necessary for their discovery, and for the apprehension of what they can sense.
It is clear that Adam stands for humanity. He wouldn’t have been much use without Eve. He belongs to levels below that of the unity therefore. All experiences of soul partake of this duality or multiplicity, for the one who experiences and that which is experienced are two different things.
“Not in that poor lowly stable
With the oxen standing by
We shall see him; but in heaven,
Set at God’s right hand on high;
When like stars his children crowned
All in white shall wait around”.(3)
There are at least five entities here: us, which is two at least, God, Jesus on his right hand, and the experience. I have to say I should find it somewhat tedious to wait around for a protracted period. Even if “wait” is given its meaning of “serve” and there is meaningful employment, this is still only an experience of soul. Clearly God here is not the unity. Nor is there any such word as “God’s” because there is nothing other than himself for him to possess, and you don’t possess yourself. You are yourself.
It is plainly obvious that it is impossible to experience the hidden unity in this manner, and that the one who experiences must be one with that experienced, and also with the experience, otherwise there would be more than one entity and so it could not be an experience of the unity.
“Well I know thy trouble,
O my servant true;
Thou art very weary,
I was weary too;
But that toil shall make thee
Some day all my own,
And the end of sorrow
Shall be near my throne.” (4)
J M Neale’s greatest good is very much like Mrs Alexander’s, and is an experience of soul for soul is anything human, other than body, that partakes of multiplicity and Spirit is the Unity. “Thee” and “Throne” are two. This also sounds like salvation by works, and I might ask Who’s are we now?
“Father of Jesus, love’s reward,
What rapture will it be
Prostrate before thy throne to lie,
And gaze, and gaze on thee.” (5)
Here is a third description of the beatific vision. As well as the discomfort of craning the neck in order to gaze whilst prostrate, it is an experience of soul.
The same hymn says earlier
“O how I fear thee, living God,
With deepest, tenderest fears,
And worship thee with trembling hope
And penitential tears!
Yet may I love thee too, O Lord,
Almighty as thou art,
For thou hast stooped to ask of me
The love of my poor heart”.
No he may not love God and fear him! It is one or the other. But that God has asked us for the love of our hearts is a major insight, precious and valuable, never mind the faults in its surroundings.
“But ye are come unto mount Sion, and unto the living God … to the spirits of just men made perfect” (6)
Clearly the biblical usage is different from mine, to allow more than one spirit. For me “a spirit” is as impossible as “an everything”. That which experiences the beatific vision is a soul at level six. Since I have made my usage absolutely clear, you can translate as you like. Such translation is an ever present need when reading works such as these. Then the spirits of just men made perfect can gaze and gaze on their separate God. But there is a massive realm of experience, infinite rather, which I denote by Spirit, and which these authors do not appear to recognise. They even put the beatific vision in the future. St Teresa does not make this mistake. She calls it the Prayer of Quiet.
“As people come into subjection to the Spirit of God, and grow up in the image and power of the Almighty, they may receive the Word of Wisdom, that opens all things, and come to know the hidden unity in the Eternal Being”. There is an invitation here, in “they may”, together with a good indication of probable preparatory experience. My hackles would once have risen at that word “subjection”, but it means that you are filled with the Spirit. There is only one will. There is no-one above you, bossing you about, and your ego’s bossing from below is well under control.
The author of the Cloud of Unknowing is similarly inviting. “By love may he be gotten and holden, but by thinking never”. (7) We all know that love involves sharp longing, which is this author’s main theme, and ends in union. Thinking is irretrievably at the level of soul, as the thinker is one entity and his thoughts another. It is a logical necessity for the union of love to be in place in order to experience the unity here denoted by “he”, and another logical necessity that thinking cannot achieve this. It is also logically necessary that the “wonderful depths” are “beyond what can by words be declared”.
Where Fox says “even into a state in Christ Jesus, that should never fall” he is saying what I said above about there being no fall, and what Julian of Norwich said, about the godly will that never assented to sin. A fall from Spirit is absolutely impossible, except in our delusions. I doubt that there was a fall from Adam’s state then to what it is now either. Humans have free will; they have a right to exercise it. If I choose to behave in a different manner from some others, that does not give me the right to criticise. If their behaviour causes pain to themselves and others, if it limits their vision to a tiny part of what it could be, it is available to them to act differently. Even if I allow that there was a lesser fall, never mind the enormous one from Spirit to Soul which nobody turns a hair at, I deny that it is damnable and that a sacrifice of blood was necessary in order to retrieve it, because the fall clouds the unity, but cannot take it away. Not to mention that there is no damner.
So what is to be said about the “state in Christ Jesus that should never fall”, which is “to know the hidden unity in the Eternal Being”? Nothing! Anything said about it is necessarily at soul level, at the level of Adam. It is plainly obvious that “Christ Jesus” here refers to the hidden unity. I am reluctant to use the term myself, as it comes with so much baggage. In particular if Christ participates in the hidden unity, at the level of Spirit, Jesus was a man among others, and so was necessarily at the level of soul.
When others say “Jesus” I am sure that they sometimes mean “Christ” and when they say “Christ”, they sometimes mean “Jesus”. Sometimes they mean a mish-mash of the two: “Jesus Christ”. Sometimes I think they do not know what they mean.
“He was little, weak and helpless,
Tears and smiles like us he knew” (8)
He was one of us. It is impossible for an individual human being to convey the fullness of the unity to any others, because the unity does not reside at this level, where there are others. When he says “I am the way, the truth and the life, no man cometh unto the Father but by me” (9) he is clearly speaking of the eternal Son. There is only one one, so the Christians do not need to think that they have the only valid religion, which some of them unfortunately do. The problem is not with their Christology, saying that “in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead, bodily” (10), but in failing to realise that it dwells in everybody else as well.
Isaac Penington in his leisurely style expresses this with total precision:
“Now the Scriptures do expressly distinguish between Christ and the garment which he wore; between him that came, and the body in which he came; between the substance which was veiled, and the veil which veiled it. ‘Lo! I come; a body hast thou prepared me’.(11) There is plainly he, and the body in which he came. There was the outward vessel, and the inward life. This we certainly know, and can never call the bodily garment Christ, but that which appeared and dwelt in the body. Now if ye indeed know the Christ of God, tell us plainly what that is which appeared in the body – whether that was not the Christ before it took up the body, after it took up the body, and for ever.
And then their confining of Christ to that body, plainly manifesteth that they want the knowledge of him in Spirit. For Christ is the Son of the Father; he is the infinite eternal Being, one with the Father, and with the Spirit, and cannot be divided from either; cannot be anywhere where they are not, nor can be excluded from any place where they are. He may take up a body, and appear in it; but cannot be confined to be nowhere else but there; no not at the very time while he is there. Christ, while he was here on earth, yet was not excluded from being in heaven with the Father at the very same time; as he himself said concerning himself, ‘The Son of man which is in heaven’.(12) Nor was the Father excluded from being with him in the body; but the Father was in him, and he in the Father: whereupon he said to Philip, ‘He that hath seen me hath seen the Father’.(13)
What! Did every one that saw that body, see the Father also? Nay, not so; but he that saw Christ, the Son of the living God, whom flesh and blood revealed not, but the Father only,(14) he saw the Father also.” (15)
It is odd that he doesn’t see the irrelevance of any supposed offering of the body, but goes on to say “Nothing can save but the knowledge of Christ, even of that very Christ, and no other, who took upon him the prepared body, and offered it up at Jerusalem”. Translating “save” as “make well, lead into fullness of life” and not “avert damnation”, and “Christ” as “The indwelling Son”, what is left is both true and beautiful.
George Herbert struggled over this issue of the body of Jesus with good reason as he was a priest and it is so central a concept in the eucharist. One of his famous last lines gives the whole matter in six words:
“This gift of all gifts is the best,
Thy flesh the least that I request;
Thou took’st that pledge from mee:
Give mee not that I had before,
Or give mee that so I have more;
My God, give mee all Thee”.(16)
“Moreover, the Lord God let me see, when I was brought up into his image in righteousness and holiness, and into the paradise of God, the state how Adam was made a living soul, and also the stature of Christ, the mystery, that had been hid from ages and generations, which things are hard to be uttered and cannot be bourne by many. For of all the sects in Christendom (so called) that I discoursed withal, I found none that could bear to be told that any should come to Adam’s perfection, into that image of God and righteousness and holiness that Adam was in before he fell, to be so clear and pure without sin, as he was. Therefore how should they be able to bear being told that any should grow up to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ, when they cannot bear to hear that any should come, whilst upon earth, into the same power and Spirit that the prophets and apostles were in?” (17)
So what is this “stature of Christ, the mystery, that had been hid from ages and generations”? Is it an unverifiable special revelation of Jesus’origin, and of how he differs from the rest of us? Not at all. It is not even a mystery. It is simply participation in the unity. “The measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ” is from Ephesians 4:13. Note that the state of Adam in the paradise of God is quite different from the stature of Christ, the mystery.
The difference between soul and Spirit is treated just as clearly in the following, which also mentions some of the faculties of soul that are not necessarily met with every day:
“We do not hereby understand any of these ways following as of necessary continuance [i.e. from Biblical times]. 1. Not any outward audible voice, framed by the Lord immediately in the air, and presented by the outward ear. 2. Nor any outward visible appearance presented to the outward eye, neither by the ministry of angels, nor by the ministry of Christ, in the outward. 3. Nor dreams and visions upon the imagination in the night season, nor yet by trances so called, which is by a cessation of the exercise of all the outward senses. 4. Nor any outward miracles…. So that all these ways of God’s appearing and revealing himself, in, by or under outward appearences; or in dreams or night visions, were but very shadowy and remote, and rather mediate than immediate: this alone appearance and revelation of God in his own Seed and birth in man, is the most near, and most immediate; and giveth unto man the most intuitive and clear and open and satisfactory knowledge of God, that he is capable of in his highest supernatural elevation. (18)
Fox was questioned about this by Derby magistrates in 1650. “At last they asked me whether I was sanctified. I said, ‘Sanctified? yes’ for I was in the Paradise of God. They said, had I no sin? ‘Sin?’ said I, ‘Christ my Saviour hath taken away my sin and in him there is no sin.’ They asked how we knew that Christ did abide in us. I said, ‘By his Spirit that he has given us.’ They temptingly asked if any of us were Christ. I answered, ‘Nay, we are nothing, Christ is all.’” (19)
The answer is impeccable, for there were several people present: George Fox, his companion John Fretwell, the magistrates, and all the court. In no way was this at the level of the unity, so “Nay”. It didn’t stop them being sent to prison for six months for “uttering and broaching of divers blasphemous opinions contrary to a late Act of Parliament”.
Another group, called Ranters, illustrate the misappropriation of the unity, holding it to be at the level of soul, where it is not found. Fox was prepared for this meeting in Coventry prison with a classic words and feeling locution: “The word of the Lord came to me saying, ‘My love was always to thee, and thou art in my love.’ And I was ravished with the sense of the love of God, and greatly strengthened in my inward man. But when I came into the gaol, where those prisoners were, a great power of darkness struck at me, and I sat still, having my spirit gathered into the love of God. At last these prisoners began to rant and vapour and blaspheme, at which my soul was greatly grieved. They said they were God, but another of them said, ‘we could not bear such things.’ So when they were calm, I stood up and asked them whether they did such things by motion, or from Scripture; and they said, ‘From Scripture.’ Then, a Bible lying by, I asked them for that Scripture; and they showed me that place where the sheet was let down to Peter, and it was said to him, what was sanctified he should not call common or unclean. Now when I had showed them that that Scripture made nothing for their purpose, they brought another Scripture which spoke of God’s reconciling all things to himself, things in heaven and things in earth. I told them I owned that Scripture also, but showed them that that was nothing to their purpose neither. Then seeing that they said they were God, I asked them, if they knew whether it would rain tomorrow. They said they could not tell. I told them God could tell. Again I asked them if they thought they should be always in that condition, or should change, and they answered they could not tell. Then said I unto them, ‘God can tell, and God doth not change. You say you are God, and yet you cannot tell whether you shall change or no.’ So they were confounded and quite brought down for the time”. (20)
I value the Ranters’ saying that nothing is unclean, but their error is displayed in their saying they were God and that we could not bear it. There is no “they” at the level of the unity, let alone “we” and “they”. Apparently in their thinking to link heaven and earth, they held heaven at far too low an estimate:
“And the next day I passed to Cleveland amongst those people that had tasted of the power of God, but were all shattered to pieces and the heads of them turned Ranters. Now they had had great meetings, so I told them after that they had had such meetings they did not wait upon God to feel his power to gather their minds together to feel his presence and power and therein to sit to wait upon him, for they had spoken themselves dry and had spent their portions and not lived in that which they spake, and now they were dry. They had some kinds of meetings but took tobacco and drank ale in them and so grew light and loose”. (21)
Nevertheless, in the quiet of the study, out of the realm of polemical debate, and with the warning before us of the Ranters’ misunderstanding, this answer wants to be reveiwed. I have a very fierce sense of identity. Whether this is because of my childhood experience, and that of the slave girl, or whether it is a particularly masculine characteristic, I do not know. I suspect that many people feel this. I am not talking here about overblown egos. We all know about them. I expressed something of this vehement sense of identity in “Abraham and Isaac” as well as demolishing the idea of sacrifice. When I read about identity being dissolved in the infinite, or indeed of Christ being everything and myself nothing, I cannot accept it. What is the good of losing your identity? It is like the slick of foam on the sea in Anderson’s story of the Mermaid. What is more, how can you lose it? Christ is everything and I am nothing. Good for him! But what has it to do with me? I won’t be there.
So you have kept your ego in its place, you have enjoyed the world and everything in it, you have taken care to act in accordance with your truth, consistently, for a long period, respecting yourself, but implacably opposed to all the deceits that you find you are practising. You have forgiven everybody everything. You may have had an experience of utter aloneness. You are convinced that the unity resides in you. Indeed when this is plainly obvious to you, that is itself an experience of the unity. Perhaps you have contemplated the last Form, and that too has been plainly obvious. When you were not looking for it, an experience softer than a breath has come over you, and you have felt infinity, with a feeling that cannot begin to be expressed in words. In a short time you are as you were, in your individual consciousness, but forever changed, that is, knowing who you are, with potentiality made actual, with the hazy outline filled in and coloured.
Who experienced this? This is looked at in “Chalcedon revisited.” You certainly did not watch yourself experiencing it. Is it not plainly obvious that you must be infinite in order to have experienced it? Is it not plainly obvious that your own identity was that infinite, and is? Is it going to rain tomorrow? I haven’t the faintest idea. What does the forecast say?
As there is only one one, it follows that you are me. I am the alcoholic who caused me such problems in “Screwtape”, but I shall not share his bodily degradation, nor his mental clouding. That which you so much feared, loss of identity, turns out to be a huge increase in knowledge of identity. And your fierce individuality is on your side, essential to you, not needing to be done away with.
Am I you? Perhaps I shall draw your salary, and you shall drive away in my car. Perhaps I shall go and live in Buckingham Palace. Perhaps I am on Death Row. Perhaps I am your wife’s husband, or your wife come to that. Perhaps I see with your eyes. Too absurd! It is plainly obvious that you are not me. But you are me as well. And that is the difference between Soul and Spirit.
1. Interior Castle, Second Mansions
2. Chapter 3, note 2
3. Hymn: Once in Royal David’s City: Mrs C F Alexander
4. Hymn: Christian, dost thou see them: J M Neale
5. Hymn: My God, how wonderful (terrible) thou art: F W Faber
6. Hebrews 12:23
7. The Cloud of Unknowing, chapter 6.
8. See note 3
9. John 14:6
10. Colossians 2:9
11. Hebrews 10:5
12. John 3:13
13. John 14:9
14. Matthew 16:17
15. A Question to the Professors of Christianity (1667) III.49-50 in “Knowing the Mystery of Life Within” Selected writings of Isaac Pennington in their Historical and Theological Context, selected and introduced by R. Melvin Keiser and Rosemary Moore. Quaker Books, 2005.
16. “The Holy Communion” in The Works of George Herbert, Wordsworth Poetry Library 1994.
17. George Fox: Journal ed Nickalls, p 32
18. George Keith, Immediate Revelation (1676) quoted in George Fox’s ‘Book of Miracles’ ed Cadbury, 2000 edition, p 26.
19. George Fox: Journal, p 51
20. George Fox: Journal, p 46
21. George Fox: Journal, p 79
Some quotations from early Quakers express the matter with absolute precision, and also reveal how vibrant their experience was, and how firmly in the mystical tradition. They also demonstrate that mystical experience of the highest quality is available to men and women who live in the world at large, and that for the early Quakers, it was not only available, but normal. That from George Fox made above (2) contains the whole truth with its continuation. “Now was I come up in spirit through the flaming sword into the paradise of God. All things were new, and all the creation gave another smell unto me than before, beyond what words can utter. I knew nothing but pureness, and innocency, and righteousness, being renewed up into the image of God by Christ Jesus, so that I say I was come up to the state of Adam which he was in before he fell. The creation was opened to me, and it was showed me how all things had their names given them, according to their nature and virtue. And I was at a stand in my mind, whether I should practise physic for the good of mankind, seeing the nature and virtues of things were so opened to me by the Lord. But I was immediately taken up in Spirit, to see into another or more steadfast state than Adam’s in innocency, even into a state in Christ Jesus, that should never fall. And the Lord showed me that such as were faithful to him in the power and light of Christ, should come up into the state in which Adam was before he fell; in which the admirable works of creation, and the virtues thereof, may be known, through the openings of that divine Word of wisdom and power by which they were made. Great things did the Lord lead me into, and wonderful depths were opened unto me, beyond what can by words be declared; but as people come into subjection to the Spirit of God, and grow up in the image and power of the Almighty, they may receive the Word of wisdom, that opens all things, and come to know the hidden unity in the Eternal Being”.
The state of Adam is soul at its best. The hidden unity in the Eternal Being, or the more steadfast state is Spirit. Spirit was diluted in several stages to make the levels in creation including matter, so that I say that everything is Spirit. I have not had the experience of seeing into the properties of plants, but I have seen that every plant, every leaf, every twig was full of information concerning its source. One could say then that there is no difference between Spirit and the various levels in which soul resides. This is nevertheless a trivial answer. From now on I use the term Spirit to refer to the hidden unity as it “was”, “before” it was diluted to create the various levels, or more precisely to mean a Form that participates in it.
Soul consists of various well known faculties such as the five senses, memory, will, intellect, aesthetic sense, sense of meaning, ability to love, sense of individuality, and speech. Ego is also a soul faculty, but resides at the lowest level of soul and has no function at higher levels. There are also inner senses whose existence may not necessarily be known to their possessor. They become apparent when experience is sought at the higher levels, and relinquishing of unhelpful attitudes and consistent dwelling in appropriate attitudes is necessary for their discovery, and for the apprehension of what they can sense.
It is clear that Adam stands for humanity. He wouldn’t have been much use without Eve. He belongs to levels below that of the unity therefore. All experiences of soul partake of this duality or multiplicity, for the one who experiences and that which is experienced are two different things.
“Not in that poor lowly stable
With the oxen standing by
We shall see him; but in heaven,
Set at God’s right hand on high;
When like stars his children crowned
All in white shall wait around”.(3)
There are at least five entities here: us, which is two at least, God, Jesus on his right hand, and the experience. I have to say I should find it somewhat tedious to wait around for a protracted period. Even if “wait” is given its meaning of “serve” and there is meaningful employment, this is still only an experience of soul. Clearly God here is not the unity. Nor is there any such word as “God’s” because there is nothing other than himself for him to possess, and you don’t possess yourself. You are yourself.
It is plainly obvious that it is impossible to experience the hidden unity in this manner, and that the one who experiences must be one with that experienced, and also with the experience, otherwise there would be more than one entity and so it could not be an experience of the unity.
“Well I know thy trouble,
O my servant true;
Thou art very weary,
I was weary too;
But that toil shall make thee
Some day all my own,
And the end of sorrow
Shall be near my throne.” (4)
J M Neale’s greatest good is very much like Mrs Alexander’s, and is an experience of soul for soul is anything human, other than body, that partakes of multiplicity and Spirit is the Unity. “Thee” and “Throne” are two. This also sounds like salvation by works, and I might ask Who’s are we now?
“Father of Jesus, love’s reward,
What rapture will it be
Prostrate before thy throne to lie,
And gaze, and gaze on thee.” (5)
Here is a third description of the beatific vision. As well as the discomfort of craning the neck in order to gaze whilst prostrate, it is an experience of soul.
The same hymn says earlier
“O how I fear thee, living God,
With deepest, tenderest fears,
And worship thee with trembling hope
And penitential tears!
Yet may I love thee too, O Lord,
Almighty as thou art,
For thou hast stooped to ask of me
The love of my poor heart”.
No he may not love God and fear him! It is one or the other. But that God has asked us for the love of our hearts is a major insight, precious and valuable, never mind the faults in its surroundings.
“But ye are come unto mount Sion, and unto the living God … to the spirits of just men made perfect” (6)
Clearly the biblical usage is different from mine, to allow more than one spirit. For me “a spirit” is as impossible as “an everything”. That which experiences the beatific vision is a soul at level six. Since I have made my usage absolutely clear, you can translate as you like. Such translation is an ever present need when reading works such as these. Then the spirits of just men made perfect can gaze and gaze on their separate God. But there is a massive realm of experience, infinite rather, which I denote by Spirit, and which these authors do not appear to recognise. They even put the beatific vision in the future. St Teresa does not make this mistake. She calls it the Prayer of Quiet.
“As people come into subjection to the Spirit of God, and grow up in the image and power of the Almighty, they may receive the Word of Wisdom, that opens all things, and come to know the hidden unity in the Eternal Being”. There is an invitation here, in “they may”, together with a good indication of probable preparatory experience. My hackles would once have risen at that word “subjection”, but it means that you are filled with the Spirit. There is only one will. There is no-one above you, bossing you about, and your ego’s bossing from below is well under control.
The author of the Cloud of Unknowing is similarly inviting. “By love may he be gotten and holden, but by thinking never”. (7) We all know that love involves sharp longing, which is this author’s main theme, and ends in union. Thinking is irretrievably at the level of soul, as the thinker is one entity and his thoughts another. It is a logical necessity for the union of love to be in place in order to experience the unity here denoted by “he”, and another logical necessity that thinking cannot achieve this. It is also logically necessary that the “wonderful depths” are “beyond what can by words be declared”.
Where Fox says “even into a state in Christ Jesus, that should never fall” he is saying what I said above about there being no fall, and what Julian of Norwich said, about the godly will that never assented to sin. A fall from Spirit is absolutely impossible, except in our delusions. I doubt that there was a fall from Adam’s state then to what it is now either. Humans have free will; they have a right to exercise it. If I choose to behave in a different manner from some others, that does not give me the right to criticise. If their behaviour causes pain to themselves and others, if it limits their vision to a tiny part of what it could be, it is available to them to act differently. Even if I allow that there was a lesser fall, never mind the enormous one from Spirit to Soul which nobody turns a hair at, I deny that it is damnable and that a sacrifice of blood was necessary in order to retrieve it, because the fall clouds the unity, but cannot take it away. Not to mention that there is no damner.
So what is to be said about the “state in Christ Jesus that should never fall”, which is “to know the hidden unity in the Eternal Being”? Nothing! Anything said about it is necessarily at soul level, at the level of Adam. It is plainly obvious that “Christ Jesus” here refers to the hidden unity. I am reluctant to use the term myself, as it comes with so much baggage. In particular if Christ participates in the hidden unity, at the level of Spirit, Jesus was a man among others, and so was necessarily at the level of soul.
When others say “Jesus” I am sure that they sometimes mean “Christ” and when they say “Christ”, they sometimes mean “Jesus”. Sometimes they mean a mish-mash of the two: “Jesus Christ”. Sometimes I think they do not know what they mean.
“He was little, weak and helpless,
Tears and smiles like us he knew” (8)
He was one of us. It is impossible for an individual human being to convey the fullness of the unity to any others, because the unity does not reside at this level, where there are others. When he says “I am the way, the truth and the life, no man cometh unto the Father but by me” (9) he is clearly speaking of the eternal Son. There is only one one, so the Christians do not need to think that they have the only valid religion, which some of them unfortunately do. The problem is not with their Christology, saying that “in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead, bodily” (10), but in failing to realise that it dwells in everybody else as well.
Isaac Penington in his leisurely style expresses this with total precision:
“Now the Scriptures do expressly distinguish between Christ and the garment which he wore; between him that came, and the body in which he came; between the substance which was veiled, and the veil which veiled it. ‘Lo! I come; a body hast thou prepared me’.(11) There is plainly he, and the body in which he came. There was the outward vessel, and the inward life. This we certainly know, and can never call the bodily garment Christ, but that which appeared and dwelt in the body. Now if ye indeed know the Christ of God, tell us plainly what that is which appeared in the body – whether that was not the Christ before it took up the body, after it took up the body, and for ever.
And then their confining of Christ to that body, plainly manifesteth that they want the knowledge of him in Spirit. For Christ is the Son of the Father; he is the infinite eternal Being, one with the Father, and with the Spirit, and cannot be divided from either; cannot be anywhere where they are not, nor can be excluded from any place where they are. He may take up a body, and appear in it; but cannot be confined to be nowhere else but there; no not at the very time while he is there. Christ, while he was here on earth, yet was not excluded from being in heaven with the Father at the very same time; as he himself said concerning himself, ‘The Son of man which is in heaven’.(12) Nor was the Father excluded from being with him in the body; but the Father was in him, and he in the Father: whereupon he said to Philip, ‘He that hath seen me hath seen the Father’.(13)
What! Did every one that saw that body, see the Father also? Nay, not so; but he that saw Christ, the Son of the living God, whom flesh and blood revealed not, but the Father only,(14) he saw the Father also.” (15)
It is odd that he doesn’t see the irrelevance of any supposed offering of the body, but goes on to say “Nothing can save but the knowledge of Christ, even of that very Christ, and no other, who took upon him the prepared body, and offered it up at Jerusalem”. Translating “save” as “make well, lead into fullness of life” and not “avert damnation”, and “Christ” as “The indwelling Son”, what is left is both true and beautiful.
George Herbert struggled over this issue of the body of Jesus with good reason as he was a priest and it is so central a concept in the eucharist. One of his famous last lines gives the whole matter in six words:
“This gift of all gifts is the best,
Thy flesh the least that I request;
Thou took’st that pledge from mee:
Give mee not that I had before,
Or give mee that so I have more;
My God, give mee all Thee”.(16)
“Moreover, the Lord God let me see, when I was brought up into his image in righteousness and holiness, and into the paradise of God, the state how Adam was made a living soul, and also the stature of Christ, the mystery, that had been hid from ages and generations, which things are hard to be uttered and cannot be bourne by many. For of all the sects in Christendom (so called) that I discoursed withal, I found none that could bear to be told that any should come to Adam’s perfection, into that image of God and righteousness and holiness that Adam was in before he fell, to be so clear and pure without sin, as he was. Therefore how should they be able to bear being told that any should grow up to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ, when they cannot bear to hear that any should come, whilst upon earth, into the same power and Spirit that the prophets and apostles were in?” (17)
So what is this “stature of Christ, the mystery, that had been hid from ages and generations”? Is it an unverifiable special revelation of Jesus’origin, and of how he differs from the rest of us? Not at all. It is not even a mystery. It is simply participation in the unity. “The measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ” is from Ephesians 4:13. Note that the state of Adam in the paradise of God is quite different from the stature of Christ, the mystery.
The difference between soul and Spirit is treated just as clearly in the following, which also mentions some of the faculties of soul that are not necessarily met with every day:
“We do not hereby understand any of these ways following as of necessary continuance [i.e. from Biblical times]. 1. Not any outward audible voice, framed by the Lord immediately in the air, and presented by the outward ear. 2. Nor any outward visible appearance presented to the outward eye, neither by the ministry of angels, nor by the ministry of Christ, in the outward. 3. Nor dreams and visions upon the imagination in the night season, nor yet by trances so called, which is by a cessation of the exercise of all the outward senses. 4. Nor any outward miracles…. So that all these ways of God’s appearing and revealing himself, in, by or under outward appearences; or in dreams or night visions, were but very shadowy and remote, and rather mediate than immediate: this alone appearance and revelation of God in his own Seed and birth in man, is the most near, and most immediate; and giveth unto man the most intuitive and clear and open and satisfactory knowledge of God, that he is capable of in his highest supernatural elevation. (18)
Fox was questioned about this by Derby magistrates in 1650. “At last they asked me whether I was sanctified. I said, ‘Sanctified? yes’ for I was in the Paradise of God. They said, had I no sin? ‘Sin?’ said I, ‘Christ my Saviour hath taken away my sin and in him there is no sin.’ They asked how we knew that Christ did abide in us. I said, ‘By his Spirit that he has given us.’ They temptingly asked if any of us were Christ. I answered, ‘Nay, we are nothing, Christ is all.’” (19)
The answer is impeccable, for there were several people present: George Fox, his companion John Fretwell, the magistrates, and all the court. In no way was this at the level of the unity, so “Nay”. It didn’t stop them being sent to prison for six months for “uttering and broaching of divers blasphemous opinions contrary to a late Act of Parliament”.
Another group, called Ranters, illustrate the misappropriation of the unity, holding it to be at the level of soul, where it is not found. Fox was prepared for this meeting in Coventry prison with a classic words and feeling locution: “The word of the Lord came to me saying, ‘My love was always to thee, and thou art in my love.’ And I was ravished with the sense of the love of God, and greatly strengthened in my inward man. But when I came into the gaol, where those prisoners were, a great power of darkness struck at me, and I sat still, having my spirit gathered into the love of God. At last these prisoners began to rant and vapour and blaspheme, at which my soul was greatly grieved. They said they were God, but another of them said, ‘we could not bear such things.’ So when they were calm, I stood up and asked them whether they did such things by motion, or from Scripture; and they said, ‘From Scripture.’ Then, a Bible lying by, I asked them for that Scripture; and they showed me that place where the sheet was let down to Peter, and it was said to him, what was sanctified he should not call common or unclean. Now when I had showed them that that Scripture made nothing for their purpose, they brought another Scripture which spoke of God’s reconciling all things to himself, things in heaven and things in earth. I told them I owned that Scripture also, but showed them that that was nothing to their purpose neither. Then seeing that they said they were God, I asked them, if they knew whether it would rain tomorrow. They said they could not tell. I told them God could tell. Again I asked them if they thought they should be always in that condition, or should change, and they answered they could not tell. Then said I unto them, ‘God can tell, and God doth not change. You say you are God, and yet you cannot tell whether you shall change or no.’ So they were confounded and quite brought down for the time”. (20)
I value the Ranters’ saying that nothing is unclean, but their error is displayed in their saying they were God and that we could not bear it. There is no “they” at the level of the unity, let alone “we” and “they”. Apparently in their thinking to link heaven and earth, they held heaven at far too low an estimate:
“And the next day I passed to Cleveland amongst those people that had tasted of the power of God, but were all shattered to pieces and the heads of them turned Ranters. Now they had had great meetings, so I told them after that they had had such meetings they did not wait upon God to feel his power to gather their minds together to feel his presence and power and therein to sit to wait upon him, for they had spoken themselves dry and had spent their portions and not lived in that which they spake, and now they were dry. They had some kinds of meetings but took tobacco and drank ale in them and so grew light and loose”. (21)
Nevertheless, in the quiet of the study, out of the realm of polemical debate, and with the warning before us of the Ranters’ misunderstanding, this answer wants to be reveiwed. I have a very fierce sense of identity. Whether this is because of my childhood experience, and that of the slave girl, or whether it is a particularly masculine characteristic, I do not know. I suspect that many people feel this. I am not talking here about overblown egos. We all know about them. I expressed something of this vehement sense of identity in “Abraham and Isaac” as well as demolishing the idea of sacrifice. When I read about identity being dissolved in the infinite, or indeed of Christ being everything and myself nothing, I cannot accept it. What is the good of losing your identity? It is like the slick of foam on the sea in Anderson’s story of the Mermaid. What is more, how can you lose it? Christ is everything and I am nothing. Good for him! But what has it to do with me? I won’t be there.
So you have kept your ego in its place, you have enjoyed the world and everything in it, you have taken care to act in accordance with your truth, consistently, for a long period, respecting yourself, but implacably opposed to all the deceits that you find you are practising. You have forgiven everybody everything. You may have had an experience of utter aloneness. You are convinced that the unity resides in you. Indeed when this is plainly obvious to you, that is itself an experience of the unity. Perhaps you have contemplated the last Form, and that too has been plainly obvious. When you were not looking for it, an experience softer than a breath has come over you, and you have felt infinity, with a feeling that cannot begin to be expressed in words. In a short time you are as you were, in your individual consciousness, but forever changed, that is, knowing who you are, with potentiality made actual, with the hazy outline filled in and coloured.
Who experienced this? This is looked at in “Chalcedon revisited.” You certainly did not watch yourself experiencing it. Is it not plainly obvious that you must be infinite in order to have experienced it? Is it not plainly obvious that your own identity was that infinite, and is? Is it going to rain tomorrow? I haven’t the faintest idea. What does the forecast say?
As there is only one one, it follows that you are me. I am the alcoholic who caused me such problems in “Screwtape”, but I shall not share his bodily degradation, nor his mental clouding. That which you so much feared, loss of identity, turns out to be a huge increase in knowledge of identity. And your fierce individuality is on your side, essential to you, not needing to be done away with.
Am I you? Perhaps I shall draw your salary, and you shall drive away in my car. Perhaps I shall go and live in Buckingham Palace. Perhaps I am on Death Row. Perhaps I am your wife’s husband, or your wife come to that. Perhaps I see with your eyes. Too absurd! It is plainly obvious that you are not me. But you are me as well. And that is the difference between Soul and Spirit.
1. Interior Castle, Second Mansions
2. Chapter 3, note 2
3. Hymn: Once in Royal David’s City: Mrs C F Alexander
4. Hymn: Christian, dost thou see them: J M Neale
5. Hymn: My God, how wonderful (terrible) thou art: F W Faber
6. Hebrews 12:23
7. The Cloud of Unknowing, chapter 6.
8. See note 3
9. John 14:6
10. Colossians 2:9
11. Hebrews 10:5
12. John 3:13
13. John 14:9
14. Matthew 16:17
15. A Question to the Professors of Christianity (1667) III.49-50 in “Knowing the Mystery of Life Within” Selected writings of Isaac Pennington in their Historical and Theological Context, selected and introduced by R. Melvin Keiser and Rosemary Moore. Quaker Books, 2005.
16. “The Holy Communion” in The Works of George Herbert, Wordsworth Poetry Library 1994.
17. George Fox: Journal ed Nickalls, p 32
18. George Keith, Immediate Revelation (1676) quoted in George Fox’s ‘Book of Miracles’ ed Cadbury, 2000 edition, p 26.
19. George Fox: Journal, p 51
20. George Fox: Journal, p 46
21. George Fox: Journal, p 79