CHAPTER 1

The Early Church

Jewish Antecedents

The spirituality of Judaism in the centuries prior to Christ was largelykataphatic and speculative. It was grounded in synagogal worship, whichconsisted principally of the reading and interpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures(our Old Testament) and the reciting of the prayers nourished by thoseScriptures, particularly the blessing/thanksgiving (called the Berakah).

These images dominate: d'ath or knowledge (hokmah or wisdom), the Shekinah ofJewish mysticism, and poverty.

1. D'ath is the kind of knowing that is not just about something, but that takespossession of the person known. It is the knowledge which gives birth toconfidence. It is to accept mystery, not deny it. It is to discern the designsof God. The Jewish sage—as in Proverbs, Job, Ecclesiastes, Ecclesiasticus, theWisdom of Solomon, etc.—is one who possess d'ath or hokmah. It comes from alifetime of reading the Hebrew Scriptures, praying them, and reflecting uponthem.

2. Shekinah means the dwelling of God with his people perceived, not in idolsbut as one would see the sun's rays coming from behind a dark cloud. It is themanifestation of God. It is the provisional presence of God, not the God presentin the Day of Yahweh or at the consummation of all things. It is the presence ofGod in the Holy of Holies of the Temple or where two or three meet to meditateupon the Torah, or where a righteous judge makes a decision. (The Torah at thistime meant more than the first five books of the Old Testament. It also meantinterpretation and tradition.) As the psalmist writes, "In thy light do we seelight" (36:9). The notion of the Shekinah and d'ath is a theme that will recurin Christian mysticism as mystery and gnosis.

The Shekinah is the presence of the holy in the midst of the profane. But themetaphor is that the Shekinah is like the sun; it is everywhere. Yahweh ispresent in the totality of his creation. He can appear in a burning bush as muchas in the Holy of Holies. The Shekinah is particularly present in thecharismatic person. While protecting the strict monotheism of Judaism, aparallel had to be noted between the Christian notion of the Holy Spirit and the"spirit of the Shekinah."

It is interesting that in the twelfth- and thirteenth-century Kabbalah, a Jewishmystical sect, the Shekinah becomes the feminine principle in the ten emanationsof God, known as the Sefiret. This form of Judaism was directly influenced byNeo-Platonism, which shall be discussed later.

The idea of mystery in Judaism has its roots in the Persian and Greek influencesupon the Jews during the intertestamental period. There is a fringe ofrabbinical Judaism, known as the haaminim, who were concerned for mystery. TheEssenes, a sect within Palestinian Judaism before and after the time of Jesus,were influenced by these Persian and Greek speculations. From the second centuryB.C., there were closed mystical sects within Judaism. There also was an innerdynamic within the Pharisees toward mysticism. It has been argued that withinthe Diaspora there was a symbolic understanding of the Hebrew Scriptures, morelike that of the Christians of the third century than of the Palestinian andBabylonian rabbinic tradition.

3. In the days of the patriarchs wealth was a sign of God's pleasure. This isnot true of later Judaism. When there seems to be no reasonable hope in thisworld, an intentionally religious people may develop an apocalypticism: thebelief that God is breaking into the world to bring everything to a conclusion.It is often associated with the anticipation of Messiah and/or millennialism(i.e., the end of a thousand years). Apocalypticism is characteristic ofoppressed people, the "have nots." Their expectations are not cluttered with thethings of this world. The Jews under the Chaldeans, the Persians, the Seleucids,the Ptolomies, and the Romans—all before the time of Christ—were such anoppressed people. Poverty became an ascetical virtue. The psalmist says, "I knowthat the Lord maintains the cause of the afflicted, and executes justice for theneedy" (140:12). The notion of poverty, sometimes in an exaggerated form, was tooccur in Christianity as well.

One concluding note needs to be made. A Jewish Hellenistic philosopher, Philo(c. 20 B.C.–C. A. D. 50) will influence the Christian ascetical traditionparticularly in two ways: First, he may well have been the father of both paganand Christian mysticism in his theory that the Spirit of God takes the place inhumanity of our spirit, as finds expression in the mind, or nous; Second, in histeaching that the allegorical method of biblical interpretation gives access tothe hidden, true meaning of the Scriptures.

There will be frequent references to Philo as this study unfolds. His methods,as well as his categories, become a bridge, not only between the HebrewScriptures and the Hellenistic culture but also between Greek Christians andtheir Jewish roots. This is a time of apology, translation, and syncretism.There is no "pure strain" of any culture—Jewish, Greek, Persian, Roman—and theintellectual of the age sought to express his experience of God in such a waythat he could identify, clarify, and share it so that it was understandable tothe greatest number of people. Philo was a skillful and imaginative thinker anddid just this preeminently.

Instrumental Images

Poverty

Allegorical method of interpretation

Terminal Images

Shekinah

Wisdom

New Testament

The people of the New Testament are, in the main, Jewish. The spirituality ofthe New Testament, particularly the Synoptics, is Jewish. It is kataphatic.Since it is not the religion of the Jewish intelligentsia, it is more affectivethan speculative.

In the Synoptics three images are introduced: metanoia, the desert, and purityof heart. Christian spirituality, building upon its Jewish roots—includinggnosis or wisdom, the Shekinah, and poverty—will develop these synoptic images.

Metanoia is translated as "repentance." "John the baptizer appeared in thewilderness, preaching a baptism of repentance (metanoia) for the forgiveness ofsins" (Mark 1:4). Metanoia means literally to change one's mind. It is relatedto gnosis and will later be appropriated in a new way as the church builds onPhilo's Hellenistic notion of the Spirit of God in the mind of humanity. Evenhere it does not mean just being sorry for your sins. It is to welcome thejudgment of God and his transforming power into whatever we are—andfundamentally we are what we think!

The desert or wilderness, in both John the Baptist and Jesus as in the OldTestament, is a place of encounter. It is there that we wrestle with the demonsand the angels, because that is...