Literally

Is it really the case that literal events in scripture are “simpler” or somehow more accessible than a figurative understanding of them. Sometimes the figurative is considered more lofty and the literal is seen as the “poor man’s theology” but as I attempt to understand the mysteries of the faith I find this to be reversed.

As a spiritually poor man, as in “For he shall stand at the right hand of the poor, to save him from those that condemn his soul.” (Ps 109), my door to faith seems to be made of types and figures. I strain toward the Real light behind them but it is the types and figures that are within reach.

At Nativity the Lord is born in our hearts.  On Tabor He gives us a foretaste of the blessed eternal future state of going from glory to glory and seeing Him as He Is.  He opens our eyes as He opened the eyes of the blind, and He heals our spiritual diseases as He healed the lepers.

On Holy Saturday He descends into Hades, breaking down the gates of hell and freeing us from darkness.  On Pascha He rises, bringing us up into the light to share in sonship and glory.  

And as the Nativity hymn says…

“The angels offer Thee a hymn; the heavens a star; the Magi, gifts; the shepherds, their wonder; the earth, its cave; the wilderness, the manger: and we offer Thee a Virgin Mother” - Synaxis of the Mother of God

The Theotokos, humanity raised up to the highest possible level of piety, purity and obedience is the gate through which Grace flows.

The list goes on and on with these figurative understandings which one may straightforwardly apply, like salve, to one’s heart.  As analogies they can be both powerful, and general enough to apply to ourselves.

But all of these things actually happened, and if we ignore that fact we immediately cut off their power for us.  If we were to reduce them to a pretty story, a teaching tale to be applied therapeutically (and this is exactly the swamp into which modernism has wandered) we fall from the level of actual truth to subjective truth.  By reducing them from truths to fables they are cast from the clearly visible altar, seen by all, down into a sort of labyrinthine library, an infinite, downward sloping puzzle castle with no exit.

The literal must be remembered to be true in order to illumine the figurative.  But the literal truth, in addition to being the power source, as it were, of the more easily digestible ‘milk’ of metaphor, also represents a higher understanding.  This distinction is comparable to the difference between reading the words of Jesus in scripture and hearing Him speak them in person.

So, in addition to experiencing Christ being born in our hearts at Nativity, we ought to powerfully recall that He did actually take birth, that God did actually become Man.  One can only go so far in this recollection before encountering challenging slopes; after all, God’s nature is unplumbable.  But we may take heart, and increase our faith, because God has literally, not figuratively come to us, offering not figurative but literal sonship.  Even though the full ramifications disappear far beyond the horizon, like a ladder ascending to heaven it is a narrow but navigable path, not a chasm.

At a figurative level I understand and experience His immanence ‘through a glass darkly’, and even if I can’t make a full step past this rather fleeting, tantalizing and often frustrating degree of faith, I can certainly aspire and strive toward that ideal of ‘literalism’, that lofty plateau of theosis in which I know, or rather am filled to overflowing with the knowledge, that He is Incarnate.

None of us, I hope, only seek to metaphorically gaze upon the Face of God.

In ‘materialistic theology’, one often hears the word “literalism” interpreted as magical thinking in which a fairy tale is superimposed onto mundane events.  But what really “literally” happened is so far from mundane, so far beyond our comprehension that we will be working well nigh unto eternity to sort it all out and properly internalize our understanding of it.

Cast off the shackles of popular impiety and the recent centuries of malfeasant speculation!  The truth ‘which has been believed everywhere, always, by all’ is unchanged!  Ours is a living God, into Whose True Analogies we have been adopted.

Nativity, 2021