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Some words from the Camaldolese monk, Bruno Barnhart, from Second Simplicity: The Inner Shape of Christianity, serve to introduce the topic of the writing today:
The body of Christ must be body and matter openly and universally, and therefore beyond denominational bounds. It must be, in some way, inclusive of all humanity and the cosmos. … It must correspond to the sacramental organism of the church (the community of baptized believers in Jesus Christ) and it must be coextensive with all humanity and all of creation.
Some Christianity seems very close to Gnosticism. Generally, Gnosticism prioritizes “spirit” over so-called inferior “matter.” Likewise, some Christianity seems to fail to appreciate the materiality of Jesus Christ. However, other Christians seem to go in the opposite direction, reducing Jesus Christ to just a specially, maybe even the most special, called prophet of God and, thereby, enacting another reductionism. One position elevates and the other reduces. One position flies into the airy sky of transcendance, while another gets mired in earthy immanence. One position rejoices in formlessness, another admires form. Yet, what we are seeking is a wholism, a Whole, not a reductionism. This Whole will include all parts, indeed, will be as much the parts as the sum of the parts. The Whole will be a unified, unifying, universal, universalizing, being, becoming, transcending, immanencing Totality.
The method of logic applied by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, the leading German Idealist (1770-1831), utilized dialectic. He assumed that we come to unification of opposite ideas through starting with a thesis, which evokes an antithesis, which resolves in a synthesis. For example, considering Being, one engenders the idea of Nonbeing, which leads to the synthesis of Becoming. Likewise, theism evokes its opposite atheism, in turn leading to the unification in nontheism—Here many Christians and Buddhists share the same error: Christians often assume nontheism is the opposite of theism and is, really, atheism, thereby thinking Buddhists to be godless and nonreligious, even nonspiritual, and many Buddhists reifiy the meaning of nontheism and declare it the opposite of theism, thus assuming all theists cling to a personalistic image of the Absolute. Anyway, any thesis leads to the opposite, which brings forth integration into a single Whole. And, as long as we just dance on the peripheries, rather than, also, dancing in the Center, we will continue to misinterpret and misjudge the faith and practices of our brothers and sisters in different Paths.
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Contemplative practice has proven over time to be a synthesizing Practice. This is one reason it is not admitted into the mainstream of much religion. Those who get validation out of extremism and claiming superiority to their tradition are threated by synthesis.
By the way, do you ever read Jesus urging any of the Jews to give up their native faith? That would have been an extreme, a polar opposite. No, rather, you see him urging them to be faithful to their tradition. And, when he called the disciples to follow him, he never indicated, then or later, that he was seeking to draw his brother or sister Jews from their Path into another Path. And, actually, Christianty evolved out of an effort to be a sect within Judaism, even as there were diverse sects in the over-all Path. Therefore, the early Jesus movement, or Nazarenes, was a movement of synthesis. Fragmentation occurred, not because Jesus taught it, but because Judaism and the followers of Jesus did not find a means to live and worship together peacefully and lovingly.
As a Christian I assume the most important event in history occurred in the birth of Jesus. Here, history has a hinge, and all history before and after moves from this pivotal, dynamic, eternal, and eternalizing Event. The Word, or Logos, which is before and beyond time, meets in the Jew named Jesus, who is in and of time. And, the best, most convincing, articulation of this that I have read is found in a recent book by the Camaldolese monk, Bruno Barnhart (Second Simplicity). He does more than quote Scripture or theologians, he quotes history itself as demonstrating this Fact, this ongoing “Christ-mystery,” to use Barnhart’s term. History has, before, during, and after Jesus' earthly tenure, according to Barnhardt, taken on what can be called a “Christo-form.”
To speak of this Mystery, the Early Church utilized Greek philosophy, chiefly among them Aristotle (384-322 BCE). His four causes is helpful in grasping this Mystery. Aristotle proposed a material cause, or the basic stuff from which something is made. The formal cause is the pattern or essence for the assembling of the materials. So, a house has wood, glass, brick, …, and the house is put together to fit a basic, prior pattern. The efficient cause is the agent or force immediately responsible for bringing matter and form together in the formation of the thing. In the case of the house, this can be everyone who helped build the house or a foreman who directed the process. Lastly, the final cause is the purpose for which a thing exists. Here, the house is built for persons to live in. Therefore, form and formlessness, creator and purpose, are a unity-in-diversity.
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