The Holy Spirit in the Fourth Gospel – The Gospel According to John

There are five verses in The Gospel According to John that are known as the Paraclete or Advocate verses:

John 14:15 – 17 – If you love me you will obey my commands;  and I will ask the Father, and he will give you another to be your Advocate, who will be with you forever – the Spirit of truth.  The world cannot receive him, because the world neither sees nor knows him; but you know him, because he dwells with you and is (or, shall be) in you.

John 14:25 – 26 – I have told you all this while I am still here with you; but your Advocate, the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send you in my name, will teach you everything, and will call to mind all that I have told you.

John 15:26 – 27 – But when your Advocate has come, whom I will send you from the Father – the Spirit of truth that issues from the father – he will bear witness to me.  And you also are my witnesses, because you have been with me from the first.

John 16:5 – 11 – None of you asks me, “Where are you going?”  Yet you are plunged into grief because of what I have told you.  Nevertheless, I tell you the truth:  it is for your good that I am leaving you.  If I do not go, your Advocate will not come, whereas if I go, I will send him to you.  When he comes, he will confute the world, and show you where wrong and right and judgement lie.  He will convict them of wrong, by their refusal to believe in me; he will convince them that right is on my side, by showing that I go to the Father when I pass from your sight; and he will convince them of divine judgement, by showing that the Prince of this world stands condemned.

John 16:12 – 15 – There is still much that I could say to you, but the burden would be too great for you now.  However, when he comes who is the Spirit of truth, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own authority, but will tell only what he hears; and he will make known to you the things that are coming.  He will glorify me, for everything that he makes known to you he will draw from what is mine.  All that the Father has is mine, and that is why I said, ‘Everything that he makes known to you he will draw from what is mine.’

All five Paraclete or Advocate verses are put on the lips of Jesus by the author of The Gospel According to John.

The exact nature of the Holy Spirit as described in the Gospel of John is amorphous.  The Holy Spirit is not forthrightly described in absolute terms, but comes across as a solution to a well-designed puzzle.  There is no defining explanation of what the Holy Spirit is.  The scholarly criticism focused on the nature of the Holy Spirit is varied, being focused on different aspects of the Holy Spirit.  Biblical scholars battle with each other attempting to explain what the author of John was attempting to accomplish.  Some of the scholars are searching for a definitive, exacting portrayal of the Holy Spirit, which, of course, is not possible.  It is by nature a spiritual and amorphous task.  The Holy Spirit is an ingenious theological creation on the part of the author of John and and yields to broad theological interpretation.  None of the scholars are wrong, some are just grasping at specific theories that attempt to pin down the author to specifics.  Others are quite successful with their general interpretations of purpose.  However, all of the critical material can be combined to create a generalized depiction of the Johanine Holy Spirit.

The word “spirit” has its origin in the nature of wind.  Often within the Bible, “wind” and “spirit” are used interchangeably.  This can be used as a powerful literary device, as in Genesis 1:1 – 2:

In the beginning of creation, when God made heaven and earth, the earth was without form and void, with darkness over the face of the abyss, and a mighty wind that swept over the surface of the waters.

The New English Bible provides a footnote regarding the phrase, “and a mighty wind that swept.”  Besides its obvious meaning, it can also mean, “and the spirit of God hovering.”  This “mighty wind” and “spirit of God” are analogous.  This is a powerful image.  One can sense the image of the wind hovering over the “abyss” of the earth and easily relate it to the spirit of God.  The spirit of God is both a simple and complex concept that is often mysterious, impalpable concept.  Wind is also a simple, yet complex concept while at times mysterious and impalpable.  C. H. Dodd expands this concept of wind and spirit to humanity:

The impression of movement and force which the mind derives from contemplating the effects of wind seems early to have suggested that life and movement in the world are due to the presence of some element  analogous to the breath-soul in man.¹

In the Gospel of John, “Holy Spirit” conveys the concept of a continued relationship between Jesus and his followers.  It is, at times, referred to as “intercessor,” “Advocate,” and most often as “Paraclete.”  I will use the term, “Paraclete.”

Most of the information we have about the Paraclete, and, in turn, the Holy Spirit comes from the five Paraclete verses.  Scholars devote themselves to constructing a picture of the Paraclete through these five verses.  As an aid in discussion and an introduction to Paraclete scholarship, I will present leading arguments and conceptions of the Paraclete.  Afterwards, I will attempt to combine this scholarship into a summary concept of the Paraclete based on the original writings of the author of the Gospel of John.  My attempt is to arrive at some common ground between the views (if only abstractly).

As a starting point:

Hermann Sasse argued that the Paraclete was a human personality, one filled with the Spirit, a prophet who would proclaim Christ and creatively continue his revelation – just what the author of the Fourth Gospel did.  In that case, the evangelist himself would be the Paraclete, even though the final version of the book identifies the Paraclete with the Spirit.²

This scholarly concept is simply, a person filled with the Spirit.

Hans Windisch promotes the idea of a double Paraclete, one in heaven and one on earth:

The role of the Paraclete as a “double” becomes evident directly from John, not only from the expression about the ‘other Paraclete’ in 14:16, but also from the comparison with the intercessory function of Jesus in heaven in 16:26 as well ad from 1 John 2:1 (Jesus is the Paraclete of the Church with the Father).  According to John (the Gospel and the first epistle), the Church has two intercessors, one in heaven and one on earth – the one, the friend at court who stays at the court and intercedes there for his protege, and the other, the friend from court who is sent by the court and appears in the world as mediator, admonitor, teacher, and ambassador.³

The following quotes consider the Paraclete in more general terms and are, I believe, stronger because of that – much less is read into the original texts.  Raymond Brown asserts that Jesus was the first Paraclete and the Holy Spirit was the second Paraclete.  Through parallel comparisons of what John says about Jesus and what Brown believes is the second Paraclete, he elaborates:

Jesus is the truth (14:16), as the Paraclete is the Spirit of truth.  He is the Holy One of God (6:69), as the Paraclete is the Holy Spirit (accepting the reading in 14:26).  Hence the Holy Spirit in John, as in the New Testament generally, is the Spirit of Jesus; it rested on him as he began his ministry (1:32) and he breathed it forth at its close (20:22 and perhaps 19:30)

[Brown’s conclusion is] …as ‘another Paraclete’ the Paraclete is, as it were, another Jesus … and the Paraclete is the presence of Jesus when Jesus is absent.⁴

George Johnston responds:

As paraclete, the spirit is the representative of Jesus and it should not therefore be considered ‘another Jesus’ or ‘ the presence of Jesus when Jesus is absent.’  Rather, this concept directs attention to the evidence in the life of the apostolic church of wisdom, vitality, virtue, and graces that Christians could explain only as the sign of divine power and God’s very presence.

Within the churches the influence  and the gifts of the spirit-paraclete were mediated to certain persons who fulfilled precisely those functions that are ascribed in the Farewell Discourses to the spirit itself.  They are therefore to be identified as the agents of the divine spirit.  John the evangelist must be regarded as one such agent, and it would not be improper to honor him with the title of ‘paraclete of the Christians’ ⁵

Finally, C. K. Barrett provides a summary:

The Spirit’s work is to bear witness to Christ, to make operative what Christ had already effected.  The Spirit is thus the eschatological continuum in which the work of Christ, initiated in his ministry and awaiting its termination at his return, is wrought out.  … How, we may ask, does the Spirit in fact convince the world of sin, righteousness, and judgement?  The answer is, primarily through the witness which the Church bears to Christ, its preaching and sacraments.⁶

In my mind, Barrett’s helps to bring all the discussion of the Paraclete together into a strong argument about the contemporary thinking when the gospels were written.  The Spirit is directly related to the Church’s witness to Christ.  Put another way, the Church is the Spirit incarnate.  It is a “remembering of Jesus.”  The Christ of the Johanine Jesus is the crux of the Church.  This “remembrance” is what nourishes the Church.  Johnston rebukes strongly Brown’s thinking that “the Paraclete is the presence of Jesus while Jesus is absent.”  In his attempt to de-mythologize the Holy Spirit by giving it an early Christian explanation of the divine source of “wisdom, vitality, and graces,” he contradicts himself.  The very existence of the Church had its generation in Jesus’s death (John 12:24).  It is symbolically represented in Jesus’s exhaltation and giving of the Spirit to the disciples.  In John’s view, there would have been no wisdom, vitality and grace if there had been no death.  Bluntly, Christ and therefore, Christianity did not exist prior to Jesus’s death.  The death exalted the things Jesus shared with the disciples to the point of creating the Church – Jesus and his teachings are “resurrected” as Christ and Christianity when he dies.  Jesus is elevated to the role of the Paraclete, the Advocate at his death.  The Paraclete or Advocate is the Holy Spirit and John felt this Spirit was the wisdom, vitality and grace of the Church, which is Christ manifest.  Since the death and exaltation was the basis for the Church, so long as the Church exists, so does the essence of Jesus, which is Christ.  This is what the author of the Gospel of John is attempting to communicate in his conception of the Holy Spirit.  Jesus, in the flesh, is not present, but the mysterious, impalpable presence of Jesus is felt through the Church’s remembrance of, or witness to, him.

The Paraclete’s purpose is to

call to mind all that I have told you.  (John 14:26)

The Spirit will “bear witness” to Jesus (John 15:26).  This “presence through remembering” is the dynamo and Holy Spirit of the Church.  In fact, it is it’s defining attribute.  It is the Spirit of Jesus, the Spirit of truth

I am the truth.  (John 14:6)

and therefore, to the Church, the Holy Spirit.

Johnston does do some service, however, in the he concedes to Hermann Sasse that John could very well be labeled a “paraclete of the Christians.”  As suggested  earlier, the Church and the Holy Spirit are almost inseparable because the Church is made up of Christians possessing the Holy Spirit (John 7:39 and John 20:22).  The supporters of the Church (such as the author of The Gospel of John) perform the tasks associated with the Paraclete.  It is reasonable to assume the the author of The Gospel of John considered himself to be filled with the Spirit.  His conception of the Christian was a person filled with the Spirit.  The Church as a whole embodies the Paraclete idea (Barrett), but the author of The Gospel of John, being a leading force in the Church at this time, and by speaking “… on his own authority … only what he hears” (John 16:13), also personifies the Paraclete idea.

Raymond Brown and Han Windisch both emphasize the “double” existence of Paracletes.  Windisch supports the idea of “two intercessors, one in heaven and one on earth.”  Brown believes that the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Jesus.  There’s some commonality here.  The intercessor in heaven can be seen as Jesus united with God and the intercessor on earth can be seen as the Spirit of Jesus or the Spirit of truth within the Church.  The interpretation by Brown, taken along with Barrett’s continuum, represents what I believe to be the idea closest to the conception of the Johanine author.  Brown’s argument is substantiated by two verses in the Gospel of John.  In John 14:6 Jesus says, “I am the truth ….”  In the Paraclete verse John 15:26. the Paraclete is referred to as the “Spirit of truth which issues from the Father.”  The unity of Christ and the Father (My Father and I are one.  (John 10:30)) clearly supports Windisch’s view – Jesus united with God as the heavenly Paraclete, the Holy Spirit as the earthly Paraclete (the Spirit of Jesus) left behind.

There is also evidence in John which presents the Holy Spirit as being the Spirit of Jesus within the Church.  The author of The Gospel According to John gradually builds on this theme until  Jesus’s exhaltation, when Jesus is made to pass the Holy Spirit onto the disciples.  The author begins with eucharistic imagery, the “bread of life” and “living waters.”

John 12:23 – The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.  In truth, in very truth I tell you, a grain of wheat remains a solitary grain unless it falls into the ground and dies; but if it dies, it bears a rich harvest.

Jesus must die in order to give up his Spirit.

John 16:7 – If I do not go, your Advocate will not come….

In order to have eternal life this Holy Spirit must be received.  The author uses the eating of bread that represents Jesus’s flesh to depict the Christian reception of the Holy Spirit.  The image of eating Jesus’s flesh represents both the death during the Passion and the reception of the Spirit through eating.  As bread is eaten for nourishment, so is the Holy Spirit received for eternal life; Jesus’s flesh is consumed.  The symbol of “living water” is used in similar fashion.

John 7:38 – ‘Streams of water shall flow out from within him.’  He was speaking of the Spirit which believers in him would receive later; for the Spirit had not yet been given, because Jesus had not yet been glorified.

Jesus must die before the Spirit can be given, before the “living water” can be consumed.

What is the nature of the Paraclete?  It is best understood as the unification of the followers of Jesus (the Church).  As Jesus is unified with God and the believers unified with the Spirit, all believers are unified through Jesus’s commandment:

 John 13:34 – 35 – I give you a new commandment:  love one another; as I have loved you, so you are to love one another, then I know that you are my disciples.

The Paraclete is to “confute the world, and show where wrong and right and Judgement lie” (John 16:8).  In John the “world” represents the world of Satan.  A division separates the disciples and the world.

John 14:17 – The world cannot receive him, because the world neither sees not knows him; but you know him, because he dwells with you and is (or shall be) in you.

When Jesus is exalted the Church is formed.  He tells the disciples,

John 20:22 – 23 – Receive the Holy Spirit!  If you forgive any man’s sins, they stand forgiven; if you pronounce them unforgiven, unforgiven they remain.

John is blending his image of the Paraclete with the Church as set apart from the world.  The Church, as the Paraclete, will judge the world.

In the Synoptics, Jesus’s message is “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12:31, Matthews 22:39, Luke 10:27).  Within John, this is an abstraction.  The “love one another” is depicted only within the context of the disciples, the Church.  This commandment is the strongest unifying aspect of the Church.  The Church is set against Satan’s world.  The world is always set against the disciples.  This is a manifestation of the contrast between the light and the dark.

Thus the Paraclete and Holy Spirit are closely related.  The Paraclete is the Church  and its continuing witness to Christ.  The Paraclete derives its power to “confute the world” through the Christian receipt of the Holy Spirit.  Jesus’s sending of the Paraclete is seen as the gift of the Spirit to the disciples at Jesus’s exaltation.  Barrett’s “eschatological continuum” paints a very clear picture.  George Johnston sums up the author of John:

[Jesus] … as the God-man is spirit and the source of spiritual life.  No one in John’s era could see Jesus the Son of God with the eye of the flesh; but they would see the embodiment in the Church of his disciples.⁷

The author of John theologically immortalized Jesus as Christ.  Indeed, Jesus became the exalted Christ in the Fourth Gospel.

______________________

¹Dodd, C.H., The Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel (London: Cambridge University Press, 1953), p.213.
²Reuman, John, Introduction to The Spirit-Paraclete in the Fourth Gospel by Hans Windisch (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1968), p. xi.
³Windisch, Hans, The Spirit-Paraclete in the Fourth Gospel (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1968), p. 20.
⁴Johnston, George, The Spirit-Paraclete in the Fourth Gospel (London: Cambridge University Press, 1970), p. 94.
⁵Johnston, p. 126.
⁶Barrett, C.K., The Gospel According to St. John (London: S.P.C.K., 1965), pp. 76-77.
⁷Johnston, p. 127.

_______________________

Bibliography

C.K. Barrett, The Gospel According to St. John.  London: S.P.C.K., 1965.

C.H. Dodd, The Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel.  London: Cambridge University Press, 1953.

George Johnston, The Spirit-Paraclete in the Fourth Gospel.  London: Cambridge University Press, 1970.

Hans Windisch, The Spirit-Paraclete in the Fourth Gospel.  Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1968.

 

“In Praise of Limestone:” Christian Naivete or Intellectual Abandon?

W.H. Auden gives us a personal insight into his own religious beliefs the impact of Christianity in his poem, “In Praise of Limestone.”  The poem is a successful blending of geological imagery depicting the varying nature of man.  There are two extreme natures represented by two distinct landscapes.  There is the socialized protection of the limestone landscape where the “best and worst” inhabitants escape to.  This is juxtaposed with the granite waste lands.  Auden’s point of view in the poem is clear – he concedes in the end that the limestone landscape best represents

faultless love
Or the life to come.¹

Auden begins his poem by coalescing humanity under the description of “the inconstant ones.”² This first line stresses human fallibility, suggesting the fall from grace in the Garden of Eden.  The terrain of the limestone landscape is a place that all people have known.  It is the place that we, as humans,

Are constantly homesick for.³

Being cast from a utopian existence, such as Eden or childhood, one constantly longs for that which is lost.

There are three parallel themes in this poem.  These three themes embody a loss of innocence or a constant maturing.  The themes are the expulsion paradise or an Eden-like existence, the loss of innocence through maturity, and the naivete of Christian religious concepts.  All three of these themes are experienced by all people in some manner.  The limestone landscape is that which was lost and is now longed for – paradise, childhood, or faith in Christianity.  The poem focuses mainly on the later theme, but the other two themes are inherent in this main theme.

The limestone landscape is described in utopian terms:

…Mark these rounded slopes
With their surface fragrance of thyme and, beneath,
A secret system of caves and conduits; hear the springs
That spurt out everywhere with a chuckle,
Each filling a private pool for its fish and carving
Its own little ravine whose cliffs entertain
The butterfly and the lizard;⁴

The limestone landscape is longed for by humans and represent paradise lost.  This limestone Eden is described in another work by Auden:

Limestone uplands like the Pennines plus a small region of igneous rocks with at least one extinct volcano.  A precipitous and indented sea-coast.⁵

These images correspond closely with the images of “In Praise of Limestone:”  “granite wastes,” “oceanic whisper,” and “blazing crater.”

The Eden-like limestone landscape is a

…region
Of short distances and definite places⁶

These images are completely palpable and offer a calming security.  It is a totally enclosed world – no one can see past its limits.

After the descriptions of paradise, Auden begins the second theme.  The loss of innocence parallels the expulsion from Eden and echoes the relationship between mother and son.  The poem begins to expand in its metaphorical themes.  The landscape is like a mother – it is a protective landscape.  Geoffrey Millard believes the limestone landscape represents the womb and that the granite wastes represent  a created, lost womb.⁷ Although this is true, its seems a simple way of describing the Mother / son relationship.  The formal term, “Mother” does not stand for a mother, but the essence of motherhood.  It has a deeper meaning, especially in the latter part of the poem.  The limestone landscape, the Mother, and son begin to form the structure of the third theme – complete faith in Christianity:

What could be more like Mother or a fitter background
For her son, the flirtatious  male who lounges
Against a rock in the sunlight, never doubting
That for all his faults he is loved; whose works are but
Extensions of his power to charm?⁸

The meaning is clear.  The limestone landscape represents Christian thought and faith.  The Mother / son relationship is also a God / man relationship.  The verses here are brimming with Christian doctrine.  The rock upon which the son lounges echoes Peter, the rock upon which the Christian Church was built.  The verse reveals the boy’s dependence on Christianity.

…Never doubting
That for all his faults his is loved.⁹

directly represents the Christian concept of “forgiveness of sins.”  No matter what a person does they are forgiven by God and still loved.  As Mother loves and loves her son, the limestone landscape (through Christian doctrine) loves and protects its inhabitants.  The rest of this section is filled with Biblical images:  “hill-top temple,” “appearing waters,” and “vineyards.”

After laying the foundation for a Christian interpretation in the beginning of the poem, Auden proceeds to describe the community that lives in the limestone landscape.  The limestone community represents the Christian community.  This is an allegorical poem with concrete meaning in the real world.  In lines 21 through 43, Auden describes the nature of Christianity in its purest, most naive sense.  The Christianity of which he writes is the kind that a person experiences when they are totally immersed in Christian dogma.  Auden’s tone is condescension.

The boys who climb upon the rocks know

…each other too well to think
There are any important secrets.¹⁰

Here Auden begins to draw a picture of the experienced world of the steadfast Christian; it is exactly like the geography of the limestone landscape.  The interior world of the Church is seen as a group of people bound together socially and religiously, thus forming a way to ignore the reality of the world.  The Church is an isolation from the disruption caused by worldly proceedings.  The Church is the utopian landscape of the poem.  Within the social structure of the Church people come to know each other closely and, seemingly, completely.  Thus there is a security formed through this belonging and total knowledge of each other.

The limestone inhabitant’s (the thorough Christian’s) relationship  with God is a one-sided, humanistic one.  Moral and ethical thought evade these people, and God is perceived in their own image.  God is dealt with as if he were another person to be reasoned with on one’s own terms.  God is seen as a person responding to “clever lines”¹¹ and offers of a “good lay.”¹² The inhabitants are

…accustomed to a stone that responds.¹²

This represents the idolatrous or mythological representations of God.

At this point Auden interjects a strange image – that of the volcano.  In his “dream of eden”¹³ description, a dormant volcano was mentioned. People

…have never had to veil their faces in awe
Of a crater whose blazing fury could not be fixed.¹⁴

A dormant volcano represents the potential for an awakening and wrathful God.

The devout Christians that inhabit the limestone landscape are ignorant of the world outside their Christian conceptions.  Every day they see only their own Christian selves.  They can conceive of nothing that is like the real world – the poverty, disease and blight of other human existence.  The devout and dogmatic Christians are, in short, a naive, isolated and highly protected people.

The poem is divided into two equal halves at line 43.  The emphasis shifts to people who have left the limestone landscape, the confines of Christian dogma.  Auden himself is a member of this group.  To the “best and worst”¹⁵ who “sought / Immoderate soils,”¹⁶ life in the limestone landscape is like a “mad camp.”¹⁷ Auden is explaining why he left the dogmatic Christianity of the limestone landscape behind. The granite wastes (knowledge) called to him.

How permanent is death.¹⁸

echoes twentieth-century existentialist thought (Kierkegaard).  In view of modern thought such as existentialism, “Saints-to-be” ¹⁹ have their dreams crushed.  They slip “away sighing.”²⁰ Christian thought can be dissolved within the bounds of existentialist thinking.  (However, the same water that dissolves the limestone also provides protective sinkholes for the fish of the landscape.  “Dissolving” thus has both positive and negative connotations.)

If naivete, isolation and protective existence exemplify the limestone landscape, what comprises the granite wastes of knowledge?  The plains provide “room for armies to drill,”²¹ nature is altered, slaves exist and death without hope awaits.  Wars are fought.

Intendant Caesars rose and
Left, slamming the door.²²

This is the modern, rational world of man.  Here in the granite wastes man causes his own destruction through his desire for belonging through power and his search for purpose through meaning.  In contrast, both the needs of belonging and purpose are met.  To Auden, it is apparent that problems also exist in the granites wastes of knowledge.

The “oceanic whisper”²³ also calls to some. The people who answer this call are the ones assimilated most into the granite wastes of knowledge.  Answering the call are the people who deny completely the limestone landscape of faith.  There can be no such thing as God or “faultless love” or a “life to come” for these people.  They exist within their own “solitude.”²⁴

Auden admits that “all those voices were right.”²⁵ He has a positive attitude toward the voices of knowledge. (After all, Auden did himself leave the limestone landscape.) He does not accept the granite wastes completely, however. This place of knowledge is not all that people make it out to be. The peace that the granite wastes offers is simply through a vision of the world. It offers no concrete point of reference, no God. It “asks and promises nothing.”²⁶ Man simply tries to rebuild through knowledge that which he lost when he left the limestone landscape – faith. (Childhood is seen as a Eden-like existence. Man desires to return to the protected life of the child.) The peace that is offered is simply an explanation of the real world – the world that evades the religious.) Knowledge, then, is reduced to a mythology. It is a “tunnel” that connects the “dilapidated province” to the “big busy world.”²⁷

Auden cannot totally disclaim knowledge either.  He defines his place in the world as Poet and his purpose as Art.  This lies between the two extremes of complete knowledge and complete faith.  The Poet tries to reproduce reality in Art – to call “The sun the sun, his mind Puzzle.”²⁸ The marble statues of the limestone landscape make Auden uneasy in that they

…doubt
His antimythological myth.²⁹

Auden’s poetry is an “antimythological myth” because it rejects the mythology of complete knowledge and complete faith, but in doing so, creates another mythology or representation of reality.  The marble statues make Auden uneasy because they represent a possible truth – a non-myth:  God.  This would cause his own myths to crumble.

On the other side of the spectrum lies the Poet’s feelings toward knowledge.  The purveyors of complete knowledge are simply “scientists” who rebuke the Poet’s

…concern for Nature’s
Remotest aspects.³⁰

Auden expresses his fear of death and his desire for faith in the face of that fear.  He has these fears in common with every other person – these fears are the “Common Prayer.”³¹ The Common Prayer represents everyman’s fear of death:

Not to lose time, not to get caught,
Not to be left behind, not, please!  to resemble
The beasts who repeat themselves, or a thing like water
Or stone whose conduct can be predicted, these
Are our Common Prayer, whose great comfort is music
Which can be made anywhere, is invisible,
And does not smell.³²

These prayers are music declaring hope.  They resonate with everyone.

Auden goes on to write of his attitudes toward the purpose of knowledge and faith.  The purpose of knowledge is to make us aware that death is inevitable and faith is an expression of hope.

In so far as we have to look forward
To death as a fact, no doubt we are right:  But if
Sins can be forgiven, if bodies rise from the dead,
These modifications of matter into
Innocent athletes and gesticulating fountains,
Made solely for pleasure, make a further point: …³³

Auden now comes to the purpose of his poem.  “In Praise of Limestone” is just what the title suggests.  The praise comes in the form of a concession.  After carefully structuring the metaphorical extremes of the limestone landscape and the granite wastes, between which Auden stands as Poet, Auden concedes that only the limestone landscape lends itself to a possible revelation of Truth.  In addition, he praises naive Christians for what they embody.

The blessed will not care what angle they are regarded from,
Having nothing to hide.  Dear, I know nothing of
Either, but when I try to imagine a faultless love
Or the life to come, what I hear is the murmur
Of underground streams, what I see is a limestone landscape.³⁴

“In Praise of Limestone” strikingly parallels the struggles between Gnostic and Christian world views of the first century. This conflict can be seen most clearly in the Gospel of John, where the author tries to unite knowledge in Jesus – the Word become Flesh. W.H. Auden successfully recreates that conflict for modern man in his poem, “In Praise of Limestone.”

¹“In Praise of Limestone,” lines 91-92.
²Ibid, lines
³Ibid, lines
⁴Ibid, lines
⁵Ibid, lines
⁶Ibid, lines
⁷Ibid, lines
⁸Ibid, lines
⁹Ibid, lines
¹⁰Ibid, lines
¹¹Ibid, lines
¹²Ibid, lines
¹³Ibid, lines
¹⁴Ibid, lines
¹⁵Ibid, lines
¹⁶Ibid, lines
¹⁷Ibid, lines
¹⁸Ibid, lines
¹⁹Ibid, lines
²⁰Ibid, lines
²¹Ibid, lines
²²Ibid, lines
²³Ibid, lines
²⁴Ibid, lines
²⁵Ibid, lines
²⁶Ibid, lines
²⁷Ibid, lines
²⁸Ibid, lines
²⁹Ibid, lines
³⁰Ibid, lines
³¹Ibid, lines
³²Ibid, lines
³³Ibid, lines
³⁴Ibid, lines

T.S. Eliot: Christian Martyrdom

I give my life
To the Law of God above the Law of Man.
Those who do not do the same
How should they know what I do?¹

In T.S. Eliot’s later poetry and “Murder in the Cathedral” there is a tendency for the poet to focus on the human condition, especially as it relates to Christianity.  This discussion will begin with the themes of life, death and Christianity in “Murder in the Cathedral” and then the later poems of “Ash Wednesday,” “Burnt Norton” and the “Ariel Poems.  Other, more cynical works, such as “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” “Gerontion,” “The Waste Land” and the satires will also be addressed, but with less emphasis on these themes.

“Murder in the Cathedral”  is a play about the martyrdom of Archbishop Thomas Becket.  Becket returns from France to England after seven years of exile and is confronted by four Tempters.  The temptations take the form of alternatives from which Becket is obligated to choose.  In confronting Becket, the First Tempter tells Becket to recover his favors with King Henry to restore the situation that existed before Becket’s disloyalty.  The Second Tempter tells Becket to regain the Office of Chancellor and use its power for his own glory.  Becket is asked by the Third Tempter to join forces with the barons to overthrow the King for the benefit of both the Church and the barons.  The Fourth Tempter is the most important because he tells us,

“I am only here, Thomas, to tell you what you know.²

The Fourth Tempter tells the reader what is going on in Becket’s mind.  His advice to Becket is to

Fare forward to the end.³

Becket listens to this Tempter because it is his own thoughts that confront him.  The Tempter tells him,

But think, Thomas, think of glory after death.⁴

Becket’s reaction is negative,

I well know that these temptations
Mean present vanity and future torment.⁵

and decides,

The last temptation is the greatest treason:
To do the right deed for the wrong reason.⁶

Becket decides that he must not let the possibility  of receiving glory after his martyrdom affect his receiving that martyrdom.  He must “no longer act or suffer”⁷ but lose “his will in the Will of God.”⁸ Destiny will take its course.  This echoes the Chorus of Women at the beginning of the play:

Destiny waits in the hand of God, shaping the still unshapen…⁹

Becket, faced with the temptation and his own certain death, does the only thing he can do.  He awaits destiny, the Will of God, his certain death, neither acting or suffering.  It is a death with no thoughts of glory, for that would mean damnation.  In his acceptance of death, Becket is free.  It is his submission to the Will of God that sets him free.

A major theme begins when the Fourth Tempter tells Becket:

You hold the skein:  wind, Thomas, wind
The thread of eternal life and death…”¹⁰

This theme is developed into a kind of paradox through which Becket defines his destiny – his martyrdom.  Becket links the Christmas / Birth and Passion / Death together to express the full meaning of martyrdom.  Eliot implies a great deal with the term “martyrdom,” most likely his own view of Christianity, when he has Becket say:

A martyrdom is never the design of man; for the true martyr is he who has become the instrument of God, who has lost his will in the Will of God, not lost it but found it, for he has found freedom in submission to God.  The martyr no longer desires anything for himself, not even the glory of martyrdom.¹¹

Martyrdom becomes a metaphor for Christianity in the play, or how a Christian should respond to God.  Mr. Eliot is defining Christianity.

This martyrdom / Christianity, death / birth, Passion / Christmas theme is consistent in Eliot’s poetry after “The Wasteland.”  It is stressed in the Ariel poems.  In “Journey of the Magi,” the Magi looks upon Jesus’ birth, questioning the significance.  Was it Birth, only?  The Magi had seen birth and death before but had “thought them different.”¹² When he sees the birth of Jesus, he is also aware of Jesus’ Death and that brings forth his awareness of his own death.  His own “martyrdom” is made in his awareness of his death.  When the Magi goes back to his kingdom, his life has changed – he is

…no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.¹³

The “old dispensation” echoes “Murder in the Cathedral.”  The “old dispensation,” this “alien people” are the people Becket preaches about in the “Interlude” of “Murder in the Cathedral.”  This “alien people” is the world which “cannot understand.”¹⁴

In “A Song for Simeon” this death / birth imagery is again prevalent:

Now at this birth season of decease,
Let the Infant, the still unspeaking and unspoken Word,
Grant Israel’s consolation
To one who has eighty years and no to-morrow.¹⁵

Simeon is a very important embodiment of this death / birth  imagery since he is the one who

…would not see death until he had seen the Lord’s Messiah.¹⁶

Thus at one and the same time Simeon dies when he sees Jesus and lives through his acceptance of Jesus.  He asks Jesus to “Grant me my peace.”¹⁷ “Peace” echoes in “Murder in the Cathedral” when Becket comments,

[Jesus] gave to His disciples peace, but not peace as the world gives.”¹⁸

Again the “old dispensation” of the world is echoed.  Simeon gains peace through his martyrdom.  In the Bible Simeon refers to Jesus as his Master.  “A Song for Simeon reads,

Let thy servant depart,
having seen thy salvation.¹⁹

This is from “Animula:”

The heavy burden of the growing soul
Perplexes and offends more, day by day;
…
The pain of living and the drug of dreams
Curl up the small soul in the window seat
Behind the “Encyclopaedia Brittanica.”
…
Fearing the warm reality, the offered good,…²⁰

The innocent child is perched perilously close to the corrupt history of the world, the “Encyclopaedia Brittanica (“…the world that is wholly foul.”²¹)

Eliot ends “Animula,”

Pray for us now and at the hour of our birth.²²

The actual form of this prayer is

Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.

and can be found in this form in “Ash Wednesday.”²³ The prayer of death is turned into the prayer of birth.  Birth becomes something to fear.  Eliot emphasizes the increasing influence of the world upon the child in “Animula.”  The child is slowly, but surely, being thrust into the history and reality of man.  The world will adversely affect the child.

Between birth and death is life – it is the unreal realm of time, the

…limitation
Between un-being and being²⁴

found in “Burnt Norton.”  Life in the later poetry of Eliot is much like the stagnated existence of J. Alfred Prufrock.  Life is

Wavering between the profit and the loss
In this brief transit where the dreams cross
The dreamcrossed twilight between birth and dying
…
This is the time of tension between dying and birth…²⁵

Life is defined by time.  Time is a human invention used to avoid the “still point” – the awareness of the moment.  Consciousness is avoided through time.  Eliot tries to do away with the concept of time in “Burnt Norton.”  Endings precede beginnings.  Contradictions exist side-by-side.  Life becomes “a world of speculation.”²⁶ Eliot sees man as trapped on earth in time:

In the small circle of pain within the skull
You still shall tramp and tread one endless round
Of thought, to justify your action to yourselves,
Weaving a fiction which unravels as you weave,
Pacing forever in the hell of make-believe
Which never is belief:  this is your fate on earth….²⁷

Eliot sees life flowing through man’s mind through time.  But time produces unreality.

To be conscious is not to be in time….²⁸

Escape time, the wheel that constantly turns around and around, continuously returning to the same place, and you escape unreality.

To escape time, you must escape the turning wheel to the “still point.”  The still point is not-time.  It is a moment of consciousness that cannot be defined temporally.

I can only say, there we have been; but I cannot say where.
And I cannot say, how long, for that is to place it in time.²⁹

Eliot’s image of the still-point is directly related to Christianity.  Eliot’s image for time is the wheel.  At the axle of this wheel is the still point – a point which is still and does not move through space.  An analogy can be drawn between this still point and Christianity.  Time is measured BC and AD – in relationship to Jesus Christ.  The still point of time is Jesus’ birth.  However, Eliot refers to the cross of Jesus’ Passion as the “axle-tree.³⁰”  Eliot combines the Birth / Christmas and Death / Passion together into the still point.  Out of this Birth and Death comes Jesus’ martyrdom – and the beginning of Christianity.  Eliot’s still point is Christianity.

Human kind cannot bear very much reality.³¹

Time is an avoidance of reality.  Only by reaching for the still point can a person become conscious.

Only
The fool, fixed in his folly, may think
He can turn the wheel on which he turns.³²

Man cannot avoid the present by looking into the past or future, for the past and future are inventions of man – the concept of time.  The wheel is turning and constantly repeating, but the still point is stable.

Man is trapped in time:

Only a flicker
Over the strained time-ridden faces
Filled with fancies and empty of meaning
Tumid apathy with no concentration
Men and bits of paper, whirled by the cold wind
That blows before and after time,
Wind in and out of unwholesome lungs
Time before and time after.
Eructation of unhealthy souls
Into the faded air, the torpid
Driven on the wind that sweeps the gloomy hills of London
Hampstead and Clerkenwell, Campden and Putney,
Highgate,  Primrose and Ludgate.  Not here
Not here the darkness, in this twittering world.³³

Near the end of Murder in the Cathedral the knights rationalize their reasons for killing the archbishop.  The Second Knight says that they were totally disinterested  in the murder, that they had nothing to gain by it.  The Third Knight says that the state killed him, that everyone in the audience is partly responsible for his death.  And the Fourth Knight maintains that the archbishop committed “Suicide while of Unsound Mind.”  Eliot is using irony by having the Knights explain away the murder absurdly – they are “alien people” who “cannot understand.”  This is their lives, full of dreams, untruths and absurd rationalizations.  Becket’s comments to his Priest’s would fit the Knights just as well:

You argue by results, as this world does,
To settle if an act be good or bad.³⁴

Eliot also describes Hell in “Murder in the Cathedral:”

The white flat face of Death, God’s silent servant,
And behind the face of Death the Judgement
And behind the Judgement, the Void, more horrid than active shapes of hell;
Emptiness, absence, separation from God;
The horror of the effortless journey, to the empty land
Which is no land, only emptiness, absence, the Void,
Where those who were men can no longer turn the mind
To distraction, delusion, escape into dream, pretense,
Where the soul is no longer deceived, for there are no objects, no tones,
No colours, no forms to distract, to divert the soul
From seeing itself, foully united forever, nothing with nothing,
Not what we call death, but what beyond death is not death,
We fear, we fear.³⁵

“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” perhaps depicts Eliot and his cynicism towards life without Christ.  It is a depressingly dreary existence – one that would have been of more worth had it been the life of a crab crawling along the ocean floor.  Time past is present as history in “Gerontion.”  The “cunning passages” of history deceive man.  History is nothing more that a record of man’s corruptions, his multitudinous falls and sins.  Only the past is corrupt in “Gerontion.”  In “Burnt Norton” all time, because it inhibits consciousness of the still point, is corrupt.  Eliot’s dismay at the “True Church” from “The Hippopotamus” still exists in his later poetry.  The “True Church” is the “old dispensation” of Eliot’s later verse.  Even though Eliot is a Christian in his later poetry, he is by no means an ordinary Christian.  He still separates himself  from the “True Church” – his beliefs are unadulturated.

With “The Waste Land” comes what can be said to be Eliot’s martyrdom – his death, his total disgust for time and life.  With “Ash Wednesday” Eliot is born again; he

…constructs something
Upon which to rejoice.”³⁶