Greater Things

Posted: July 26, 2024 | Author: David | Filed under: Art & Healing, consciousness | Tags: consciousness, rational mind, spirituality |2 Comments

As a child, raised Roman Catholic, I went to church every Sunday, and to confession on the Holy Week high holidays, plus a few times each year.  My sins at most then were venial, not mortal, certainly never cardinal, and, as I stammered for words to describe my offense, at my earthly Father’s instruction, I would take to my knee and ask forgiveness for my sins. 

As a University student, I read the New Testament in Koine Greek.  My interest in the bible is as literature, not as dogma; I do not read the Bible, but it is important to know, if only as the lingua franca among the 2.4 billion Christians of this world.  

My Mother quoted Matthew 22:37-38 as the pillar of the faith, which she paraphrased as “Love and you have fulfilled the law.”  A fine path, indeed, and I am thankful for that guidance.  To my mind, and in my experience, however, John 14:12 speaks to the core:

“Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father.”

Greater works than these?  

As a Federalist approaches the law, let us read this sentence literally, as the Founding Father (sic) meant by his own words.  Given that the Gospel of John opens “In the beginning was the word…” we do well to begin with the grammar.  

Yeshua, the street preacher, spoke either koine (marketplace Greek) or Aramaic; his name is a late form of the Biblical Hebrew “Joshua,” which is spelled Iesous in Greek and Jesus in Latin.   The gospels were written in the Koine because that was more popular than Aramaic, thus reaching a wider audience and so approximately 100-years after his death Matthew, Mark, Luke and John wrote Yeshua’s story in Greek, later translated into Latin, known as The Vulgate; in 1522 William Tyndale translated the work into English (for which in 1536 he was strangled and then burned at the stake) but his work informed the translators of the King James Bible, a masterpiece of writing, published in 1611.  It is this version from which I here quote.  

The street preacher begins with the hortative clause “Verily, verily, I say unto you,” a teacher’s exclamation, for emphasis, to his listeners.  

The subject is “he,” the object is “the works,” and “do” is the verb, in the subjunctive mood.  Rarely used in contemporary English, the subjunctive is critical here; the indicative mood states facts, certainty, while the subjunctive mood – “shall do” – expresses potential.  In other words, the avatar has opened the prospect of free will, the freedom to choose, challenging the listener to what we could do, rather than what we will do.

The sentence has three subordinate clauses, the first of which – “that believeth on me” – expands the subject phrase.  “That I do” refines the direct object, while the third – “because I go” – is causative.  Grammatical subordination is not necessarily logical subordination; were his going to the Father the sole cause of our salvation, then our acts would be secondary, almost like a “get out of jail free” card.  Faith must be active, not passive, and emphasis here is upon doing; the fact of the matter remains the cause is subordinate to the acts, the doings, to the potential of the believer.  

“Greater works than these” is an independent clause expanding that which is done – the miracles, from the Latin word miraculum, meaning “object of wonder” – which every parochial school child knows to include (but are not limited to) walking on water, feeding the 5,000, raising Lazarus from the dead.  

The sentence is complex, written in hyperbaton, a rhetorical figure that inverts the normal order of words for added emphasis.  But if we focus upon the subject, verb and object – like bowling pins lined up for a strike – it makes plain “He that believeth…shall do…the works, and greater works than these.”  

Judge next, as an activist might rule from the bench, interpreting the text in a contemporary context.  Carl Jung pertains here, and the subordinate clause of causation “because I go unto my Father” must then refer not to an anthropomorphic God, but to the wise old man, the archetypal male of the collective unconscious, a universal archetype of wisdom and insight.  Jung believed every male psyche has a female aspect (anima) and every female psyche a male aspect (animus); so then “go unto my Father” is a personification of the wise masculine spirit within the balanced whole of higher consciousness, which is, to my mind, the “Christ” consciousness, the “anointed” one.

As children we learned English grammar.  As adults can we learn to expand our consciousness?  Who among us shall be so meek as to act upon, rather than merely to believe in, the miracles?  

To speak of walking on water, of healing the sick, or raising the dead is to confront the laws of classical physics, to confound the rational mind, to go beyond the prosaic, to enter the realm of poetry.  

Hard pressed to imagine such a state of enlightened being, we do well to ponder the words of the God-intoxicated Persian, the poet Hafiz, who wrote, circa 1350, “I Have Learned So Much”:

I

Have

Learned

So much from God

That I can no longer

Call Myself

A Christian, a Hindu, a Muslim, 

A Buddhist, a Jew.

The Truth has shared so much of Itself

With me

That I can no longer call myself

A man, a woman, an angel

Or even pure

Soul.

Love has

Befriended Hafiz so completely

It has turned to ash

And freed 

Me

Of every concept and image

My mind has ever known.

[NOTE: My grammatical exegesis here has been refined with the help of my dear friend, Bob Ultimo.  A classmate in Latin, we read together in the dark dinghy basement of Kresge Hall, Northwestern University 1983-85.  He stayed the course, gained a Masters in Latin, taught for many years the Trivium (grammar, dialectic, rhetoric), currently teaches and writes on grammar and writing.  A man in his prime, Magister Ultimo is a master of his craft.  Given there is “a mysterious link between grammar and the mind” his clarity of verbal construction, keenness of thought, and deft wording are well worth following at writingsmartly.com.  Thank you, Bob.  Thank you, very much.]  

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In late July, the fruits ripen and the harvest has begun.

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