Letter to Susanna 27: a Greek convert

INNER LIFE David Torkington
pvroEASE DON'T get me ng: far from having any prejudice against classical Greek culture or the Renaissance that re-introduced it into European civilisation, I revelled in it as a schoolboy. In fact it was in many ways the makings of me. My dyslexia had made learning anything extremely difficult and I think I would have thrown in the towel for good if it hadn't been for the ancient Greeks.
It happened in the history class. I was just about to fall asleep when I heard the teacher say: "They were the best soldiers the world has ever known." I was fully awake in a matter of seconds listening to him telling the story of how the Spartans had fought at Thermopylae and Plataea. It was the beginning of my bye affair with the ancient world of Greece that has continued throughout my life. I deserted from Sparta to Athens sometime during the Peloponnesian war, where my education really began in earnest.
It was the first time I had a genuine interest in the arts and sciences, and then later in philosophy, in Plato and in Socrates, who became my heroes. Down came my picture of Elvis and up went Socrates.
When we studied the Renaissance in the sixth form I was delighted to see just how much our European culture depended on the culture that I had already revelled in. I am proud of that cultural heritage, of its literary, architectural and artistic masterpieces. I am proud too of all that has been achieved and all we have gained through the rise of the natural sciences and of the technology that followed in its wake. It's quite evident to me that all this would not have been possible without the endeavour of human beings who received their inspiration from the classical world of Greece and Rome. However not even the greatest geniuses who have achieved so much that we admire have ever achieved the impossible.
Yet this is precisely what is asked of us by the gospels. They don't just ask us to achieve what is humanly possible but what is patently impossible; what has only been perfectly achieved by a man who was bom by, and penetrated through and through with the divine. Only by being penetrated by this self-same life can any human being ever hope to do what can never be done without it. In their enthusiasm to renew the Church with the same principles that had enabled them to renew secular culture many of the first humanists did irreparable damage to the orthodox Christian spirituality, and their legacy is with us still. You see, people who have had the benefit of a classical education tend to read the gospel with Greek-tinted spectacles and so misread them as I had done.
Like so many others, I'd substituted Jesus for Socrates, assuming that he too was primarily a great moral teacher. He had come, like Socrates, to educate peoples' moral sensibilities and to teach them the true moral principles and the virtues on which to base their lives. I was wrong. Jesus was not firstly a philosopher or a great moral teacher, but a mystic, whose experience of the divine life enabled him to live a perfect human life. Those who followed him would only be able to do the same if they opened themselves to receive and experience the same divine life that he had experienced. This is why he said: "I have come that you may have life and that you may have it ever more fully." In other words, he came as a mystic, not as a moralist He came firstly, not so much to detail the way in which we should love God and serve our neighbours but to give us the power to do it. As that power is given through the Holy Spirit, so is the insight that enables a person to see with ever-greater clarity what they must do to become perfect Christ-like people. Once again it was at the Last Supper that Jesus made this quite clear when he said: "I have still many things to say to you. But when the Spirit of Truth comes he will lead you to the complete truth."
Of course there is moral teaching of the highest order in the gospels, as I've explained to you before, but nobody will have the strength to put it into practice without being given the power to do so. Jesus came precisely to give us that power.
Whoever chooses to receive the love that radiates from him will also be made into a perfect human being, and then perfect human behaviour will follow as a matter of course.
Yet again I say to you, Christianity is a mysticism not a moralism. Jesus is firstly a mystic not a moral philosopher. When we understand this not just with our minds and hearts but with our whole being, and begin to do something about it, we will have put aside the Christian humanism with which all too many of us were brought up. Then at last we will be on our way back to living the Gospel that was lived and preached by the first Christians in imitation of the man they lived and died for.
Love, David.