Tuesday, December 25, 2018

The Counterfactualists: A Christmas Nightmare

            The night of Christmas Eve had fallen at last, and all that remained was to sleep until Christmas morning. As I slept, I dreamt. It has haunted me since, the terrible nightmare of that night, the very image of death placed before my mind’s eye. Here is something like that vision in sleep:
            I looked before me into a dark prison cell, poorly furnished, dimly lit by a torch on the wall. Several people sat there, their clothes torn and ragged. One of them, I noticed, was a priest. He was conversing with those around him.
“Father,” said one young woman sitting on the floor, “do you think it will be long before they come for us?”
“No. They never take long. It has already been some time since they took Nicolas and the others up before that crowd,” he replied.
“Let’s hear more, then, of the good news that might have been. If we are about to die for this lie then let us listen to it, as beautiful and terrible as it is.”
“I cannot say ‘do not despair’, for that would be false hope indeed. You would have me retell our story, our fantasy. This little angelic lie of ours, upon which we have built all our false hope. Before we find ourselves helpless before the judgement seat of God, you want a rehearsal of the lie we plan to tell him. The present sent from God that was more of a bad joke, though one still surpassing all the joys of the world. Alright, one last time, I will present the story.
            God did create the world, making it beautiful and good. He then made Man, and from him Woman to dwell in Eden with him. He gave them one command, not to eat of the Fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. One day, the serpent came, tempting them to eat of the tree. This serpent was Satan himself, the first great rebel, who had been the highest of the angels of heaven before he, though seeing as with sight God himself, choose to try to elevate himself above even God, choose to rebel. By this choice of his, evil had entered the world. He used that freedom of will that God had given him as an instrument of Love as an instrument of destruction. And when he entered the garden he taught our first parents to do the same. And so Eve first and then Adam ate of the tree, and the whole human race descended from them has been corrupted by the corrupted will inherited from them. And yet, God promised that from the seed of Eve would arise one who would crush the serpent’s head, a savior for the world.
            Several generations later, to preserve the full humanity of the savior who was to come so that he might be human enough to provide salvation for those who were human, God sent a flood upon the earth to remove the attempt by angels to set up a false gospel in their own flesh, to stop the blood of angels from tainting mankind. God preserved the human race, renewing the promise that had been given to Eve of a descendent who would crush the serpent and save us.
            Later, to Abraham, he gave the promise that the blessing of the world would arrive through his own progeny. Such was Abraham’s faith upon mount Moriah that he was willing to sacrifice the child through whom this salvation was to be brought when it was commanded by God, knowing by faith that God would fulfill his promise and not require Isaac. God preserved Isaac. How great a trust Abraham had, that he would trust a promise so much that he would even obey the maker of that promise when he was commanded to destroy it.
            Later, a promise was made to King David that the long-promised savior would be among his descendants. Thus a line from Jesse was never destroyed, despite the centuries of rebellion against God by the kings of Israel and Judah, despite even the exile to Babylon. One of David’s descendents would be the one to crush the serpent.
            In an even later age, it was revealed to a man named Simeon that he would not see death before the long promised salvation would appear. It was the prepared time, immovable, in which God’s promise to our first parents, to Noah, to Abraham, to David, and to Simeon would be brought into the world, or else not at all.
            An angel was sent to a woman whose name is now accursed, a descendent of David, to tell her that she was to be the mother of the one who would save the people from their sins. The revelation that has since been revealed to us by the testimony of angels tells us what would have happened. She would have given birth to the child, to be named Jesus, one fully God and fully Man. He would have lived a life without sin, freely choosing by his will to obey God in all he did. The people would have taken him, brought him before the authorities with false accusations, and had him crucified. He would have risen on the third day, bringing salvation to the world, defeating sin and death. He would have given all men a new choice: an offer of salvation that could have brought men before the judgement of God freed from their sin. The Spirit of God would have been sent, to guide the followers of the God-Man into all truth, to bring a visible community through the centuries back to God, with a holy priesthood that would perform a holy meal of remembrance, in which the very Body and Blood of the savior, as present in bread and wine, was to be eaten, bringing salvation to his followers.
            This is the great might-have-been in which we place all our hope. It is what God promised from the beginning. We place our trust in the One who might have been, but for her choice.
            For the angel came to her, and announced this salvation by which she and the world might be saved. How beautiful and wonderful a thing it would have been had she said “Let these things be.” How wonderful it would have been had she freely willed to share in the divine plan of salvation, as Eve, Noah, Abraham, and David had before her. Then we might all have been happy.
            Instead, she rejected it. She cursed the angel, saying ‘May this thing never come to pass, I will do what I will rather than what is willed for me.’ The angel departed, mourning the destruction of the world. She departed from that house, prostituted herself to a Roman soldier, and shortly thereafter was stoned to death when Joseph brought this to the attention of the authorities. O unnamable one, full of damnation, you denied the Lord. Cursed are you among all women, and through you he who would have saved the world was withheld. This is the curse we pray against her constantly.
            We are left, given this second great fall, more terrible by infinite magnitudes than the fall of Eve, without the resurrection of the Savior, without which our faith is in vain. We are named the Counterfactualists, for we trust in what might have happened, in the salvation that would have been offered through the savior. Not that there is any real hope, not really. That which has not happened simply has not happened. God was so insistent upon the freedom of the will needed for Love that he has allowed the damnation of the world. We will stand before him, trusting in his promise, despite its failure. And if then we perish, we perish.”
            He, concluding his story, began to serve the mass. He took bread and wine, and blessed them. They would have been the Body and Blood of Christ, if Christ had either Body or Blood. He had heard their confessions earlier, offering what would have been a pardon for sin had any sin been pardonable. And then they sat, waiting in silence, for their death.
            The guards came, taking them from the cell up into the light of the arena above. There they were tied to crosses, in terrible imitation of what they wished would have happened. The crowd, looking on, laughed at them, shouting “Let your fairy tale save you now, which you yourselves admit to be a lie.” They, upon their crosses, dying slowly, sang a hymn cursing she who had committed the great apostasy. And then at last they gave up their spirits, descending where they must in the absence of a savior.
            At this, I awoke, trembling at the horror of the world I had just witnessed. I remembered the truth, rather than the dark nightmare. Mary had indeed said unto the angel “Let these things be.” Christ had been born, and this new day was the very celebration of that affirmation.
            For on that day, long ago, in Bethlehem, Christ had been born of the holy Virgin Mary. In fulfillment of the promises of God from the time of the fall of man, it had happened, at the time when God had orchestrated it to happen. He died and rose again, keeping our faith from being in vain. He established his Church, in the power of the Holy Spirit.
            But then I remembered the terrible existence of those in hell. Here are those who, despite the reality of the offer of salvation, deny it through the corrupted use of their will, doing to themselves what Mary might have done to the whole human race. Blessed are the Counterfactualists compared with them, for the Counterfactualists’ hope was still in Christ, even though there wasn’t any Christ to have hope in. How terrible is the freedom required for Love, that it can even contradict the desire of God himself that all should be saved.
            Christ was born, and all will be well: that was the simple truth of the matter. The truth of salvation, celebrated on this day, was beautiful, more beautiful than anything else in the world. I prayed and sang, celebrating the Amen that had been given to the angel’s proclamation.

“Hail, Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee;
Blessed art thou among women,
And blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
Holy Mary, Mother of God,
Pray for us sinners
Now and at the hour of our death.
Amen.”

Saturday, September 1, 2018

The Spirit of Negation


            A man walked down the street. The smell of corpses filled the air. He walked past a woman half-decomposed, almost a skeleton already. Flies swarmed in the warm air, slightly dimming the light of the sun. Some, not yet dead, lay on the sides of the street, unresponsive to the world. No one had the energy to dispose of the dead, for they themselves were dying. No command, divine or human, would move them. Thus it was, across the whole of the world, since the great fast had begun.
            Spontaneously, in the weeks prior, people from across the globe had simply stopped eating. “What was the point, anyway?” they thought to themselves, “we will all die eventually. We have such little time. And this is such a small planet, compared to the universe. Is it not apparent that none of it matters? Ozymandias has been lost to time, except for his vain boast. Shall we strive, day in and day out, to achieve pleasures that will be forgotten in a week, and forgotten totally at our death? And what pleasure doesn’t come at the cost of others? Should we be cruel to our fellow men, just for a moment’s respite from pain? For what is pleasure but a break from the pain of boredom? That is the great evil, boredom, which is merely another way of saying the pain of consciousness. We may set it to rest for a little while, but it swings back all the stronger after it has been held at bay. End pain altogether, and permanently, by the mere recognition that continuing to desire is the very root and cause of our misery. Even the pleasure of sex, unless held at bay, yields the beginning of another lifetime of suffering. For we are born in suffering, and continue in it. We must, therefore, end the pain of consciousness, end the pain of boredom and the pleasure-seeking that merely strengthens it. And yet, what a great act of desire suicide is. All the desire for the end of pain must be summoned, set at fever-pitch, and by this force of desire one plunges the knife into one’s own heart. Far better is this: just stop trying. Take no interest in doing anything. Just lie there, taking no interest in oneself or others, gradually letting the needs of the body turn on themselves, bringing death, not through strong desire, but through no desire at all. Quench the flame. We must solve all the problems of the world this way: by making ourselves less than we are.”
            This was not the thought of all of them. It was chiefly the thought of those who believed that there was no God. Another portion, those who still, in this present age, held onto belief in a God, proclaimed the following: “We affirm the infinite goodness of God. He is to be desired above all things. Nothing is of value, when compared with the goodness of God. Everything is defiled and evil in comparison with God. He is the only thing that it is worth striving after. And, if he is the only thing worth striving after, is it not most terrible sin to desire anything but God, indeed a form of idolatry. Let us, therefore, renounce utterly the world. For the world hides the face of God from us. Is not death true gain, for in it we shall see God, freed from the shell of our bodies? Are not funerals the occasions for greatest joy, knowing that the one dead has gone to God? Is this not, indeed, why we cremate the bodies of the dead, treating the now empty shell with all the respect it deserves: with all the respect given to garbage sent to the incinerator? There is still the commandment of God that forbids suicide. It is indeed the idolatry of worshiping freedom from pain. Freedom from pain is nothing compared to the absolute desirability of God. But, there is great value in the fast. In this do we not teach the body its place, subservient to the soul? Let us, therefore, join in this great fast, holding God as the only thing worthy of our desire, mortifying the flesh, denying the world, and bringing us, in death, away from these mortal shells that are our bodies and into the very presence of God.”
            And so it had begun, the Great Renunciation. Stores where food could be bought closed for lack of customers, plentiful food lining the shelves. And very soon people began dying. Communication ceased across the world, people drawing into themselves, unresponsive on account of their hunger. Thus a great quiet came upon the world. No music filled the air, for what was music but the most disembodied of desires. The lights went out, for there was nothing to power them. Wild beasts began to rove the cities, devouring those they came across with no resistance.
            The man continued down the street. He found a table at an abandoned café, and sat down. He took from his bag a small loaf of bread, and began to eat. Growing thirsty, he drew from his bag a bottle, filled with wine. Pouring it into a glass, he began to drink. Soon, a woman walked up to the table, and joined him in this small feast. This man and woman were engaged to be married. Soon another man, a priest at a nearby parish, joined them. Last of all, a young student joined the party. These four, alone among human beings, were eating. Soon they began talking, and laughter was heard among them. The student expressed great philosophies. The priest talked of God. The couple talked of their plans to be married and have a family. The man took from his bag a small instrument, and began to play a tune upon it. Its sound filled the air, a lively dance tune.
            A swarm of flies arose several feet away, and then dispersed. Where it had been a person now stood, seemingly having arisen from the swarm. He had a cheerful face. A smile stood wide on his lips. I say “smile”, though “sneer” is probably the better term.
            The priest arose from the table, and asked the smiling apparition who he was.
“I have been called by many names. Some have called me Mephistopheles. Some have called me Sloth. Others have named me “the blowing out”, as of a candle or a lamp, and have sought me under that name. I am the Spirit of Negation. I am the dominion of this age. I seek the destruction of the world. I seek the abolition of knowledge. Life is my enemy. I laugh ironically at creators, including the Creator, who only make what will fall to nothing in the end. I laugh at those who desire to know, for they can never have true knowledge. They are ever left only with their own vain imagining. I am the one who shouts an almighty ‘NO’ to the world, whistling in derision. I am the spirit of mockery, denying simple unironic pleasure to men.”
“Away from us, you spirit of evil,” said the priest, making the sign of the cross as protection against the demon before them.
“I will go, but I will tempt you first. If then you still wish me to depart, I will. When the Creator came to this earth, before he began to teach, he fasted for forty days in the desert, alone among men in keeping from bread and drink. There he was met by a dread and intelligent spirit, who tempted him with food and miracle and power. You alone among men have spent these forty days eating, while all others have fasted. Thus I, a laughing and ironic spirit, have come to tempt you with famine and disbelief and renunciation.”
“If it is God’s will, we will endure these tests. But we shall be faithful unto Christ, even to the end,” the four of them said.
            The Spirit of Negation then arose, and placed his hand upon the priest. At that moment the priest knew he had the power to transform objects into whatever form he desired, through the power of this laughing Spirit.
“You are a priest. You will have heard the arguments from those of human beings who still believe in God. How indeed can you stand there, knowing that your allegiance is to God alone, and still partake in these pleasures which you have here before you, bread and wine. How can you so value something that is not of absolute value? Take then, this bread and wine, and with the power I have given you transform them into stones and water. By this you will show the greatest love for the Creator, for indeed, man does not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.”
“I will not, for Christ’s sake. For though he was God himself, he loved the world enough to become a human being, die, and rise again for its sake. We must indeed have God as our sole object of desire. We must indeed rightly order the soul so that we desire God above all others. However, even so, God has given us the world, the goodness of matter and the body, making it truly good in his resurrection. The body shall be resurrected, as we affirm when we say the Apostle’s Creed. The body is no mere shell, as is evidenced by the reverence given to the body by the fact that God himself took on a body, and when he rose, rose in that very body. In that body, in that flesh and blood, we live. I will transform this bread and wine, but not by the power you have given me and not in the manner you desire. ‘For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, ye do shew the Lord’s death till he come.’ I shall therefore, here and now, perform a Mass, by the power granted me by the laying on of hands from the apostles and given them by Christ, not from your subtle magic, making this bread and wine the body and blood of Christ. God has here given us back the world through our love for him, for he himself becomes the substance of bread and wine, the core of community, which ever has its root in the sharing of common meals at a common table with other people. By this means do we the Church become the Body of Christ. And water I also can transform into the very means of salvation, the very river of Death through which we walk with Christ, in Baptism.”
            Then, facing east, he took the bread and the wine, and blessed them. The engaged couple and the student knelt, facing the same direction, as the priest brought the blessed Eucharist to them, placing the bread on their tongues and guiding the cup of wine to each of their lips.
            The Spirit of Negation then brought them in an instant to the height of a tall cliff. Jutting out from the edge of the cliff was a thin sliver of rock, just wide enough to walk upon. Engraved on a stone next to this sliver of rock were these words, in a script more beautiful than any penman among humans, jinn, or angels could have written: “Submit your images here, dare to step out, and they will be made real. Thus promises the Spirit of Truth.”
            “You, Student, see the writing upon the stone. You have devoted your life to seeking after and desiring knowledge. And what do you have to show for it? You have mere images, representations, partial languages that will be ever supplanted by better ones. You have no final vocabulary to describe the world. You will never have knowledge. How could you? The purpose you have built your life around is, in the end, hopeless. You long for certainty, yet none is given. Indeed, God may, in heaven, provide you with the right answers, but for now, you are left with the imaginations of your mind. There is nothing that can bridge that gap between your mind and the world. You see this outcropping before you. It does not exist. It is too long and thin to be supportable from the side of this cliff, as you well know from your study of physics. It is an illusion, and the promise on the stone is a lie. Nothing can make mere representations real. You will be left ever with opinions.”
            “But I, as Spirit of Negation, have another conflict with you. You claim that it is worth it to continue living, and you ground this in some philosophy. You say that, deep down things, there is a purpose and final aim of all that is. One of my philosophers has pondered the question of why anything at all should exist, rather than merely nothing. You have dared to answer that there are things rather than nothing because it is Good that there should be something. How terrible an answer that is. You believe that there is some Good, even beyond Being (and thus out of any possible direct knowledge), that is the very purpose of all that is. Prove it! Show me this Goodness beyond all Being, and I shall believe. Show me that not all desire is ultimately temporary and unfulfilled, and I shall desire this Highest of all Goods. But no, you cannot. For life is merely pain, either of boredom in not having pleasures or boredom in having them. Your optimism is groundless, without root. It is the dream of a child, unwilling to face the dark face of reality face to face. So this much is said: all is purposeless, and you are left without either Knowledge or Goodness. How have you tortured others, constraining them by your dogmatism. I know the secret that you hide in yourself: all you want is power, and insist upon these delusions of ‘knowledge’ and ‘goodness’ as a mere means to control others. How base. How truly evil. And in your mind you have this great imaginary friend whom you call God, and you have made him the very font of “knowledge” and “goodness”. You have imagined an almighty tyrant in your own image, and this you call a ‘Spirit of Truth’.”
            “Cast aside this evil, cast aside yourself. Throw yourself from this cliff in recognition of the meaninglessness of the world, in repudiation of these hateful doctrines of “knowledge” and “the highest good”. You know in your heart of hearts that these words written on this stone lie, for this outcropping of stone is impossible, and there is no Spirit of Truth.”
            The student stood there, trembling at these pronouncements, fearing indeed that she had been wrong her whole life. And then she spoke:
            “I cannot contradict you. It is impossible, by all that is humanly known, that images should be made real, that knowledge should be possible, that desire should have some final resting place. You say that it is the dream of a child. So be it, then.  However, nevertheless, I will stand by the child’s dream against all the ‘adult’ realities you offer me. I will stand with the Spirit of Truth even if there is no Truth. Such a dream world would be far better than the real one you offer. I turn your own power against you, O Spirit of Negation. For you would negate the world, bring it to nothing. Well then, I shall negate your nothing-world; I shall negate the negation. I laugh at you, and pity you and the world you think you have brought the real one to. I hunger, and there is bread. I thirst, and there is drink. My soul cries for Goodness and Knowledge, the realization of images, and there is Goodness and Knowledge, and the realization of images. These desires are the very promises of the Spirit of Truth, of whom Christ promised that ‘when he, the Spirit of Truth is come, he will guide you into all truth’. This promise I trust. This stone bids me to dare to lay my images before God, and he will give to them the fire of reality. I will so dare. I will thus do what you have asked, stepping out beyond the cliff, but not in the in the manner you desired. For I will walk out on the outcropping, trusting that it exists.”
            And so the student, still trembling, still fearing lest she be wrong, stepped out onto the outcropping. Though all the thoughts of her mind pictured the outcropping breaking off, leaving her to fall to the rocks below, she continued. It was truly there, it did not break. As she reached its end, a peace filled her mind. She knew that she would not jump. She had believed, even though she had seen. She knew the very love and presence of he who is the Good himself, for the Spirit of Truth entered her, bridging her mind with the world. For the world dwelled in the Spirit of Truth, and the Spirit of Truth dwelled in her, and thus she knew the world, having given it up for the sake of Christ.
            She walked back, and was greeted by the other three. The sneer on the face of the Spirit of Negation had diminished, but he had one more temptation to offer. In an instant they stood at the top of a high mountain. From here the Spirit of Negation showed them all the kingdoms of the world. He then turned to the engaged couple, and spoke.
            “Here are all of the kingdoms of the world. These your parents Adam and Eve gave to the devil when they fell, and yet they were regained by mankind in the sacrifice of Christ. These are yours, and more besides, for you are now the very judges and kings even of angels. All of these kingdoms, at present, are populated by those under my command. Soon, therefore, there shall be no human life upon this earth, for the fast is continuing. You two alone have the ability to continue the human race. But, I will ask you as I have asked the other two, is the suffering worth it? Is life worth the suffering that it contains? Look at these kingdoms, the pain, misery, suffering, death, tyranny, torture, war, and all other evils that have arisen from the continuation of human beings. Is this a world to bring a child into? You plan to marry, and to have children. Do you really choose to continue life itself, despite all the evils that will be present in any society of human beings? And did not Saint Paul himself argue in favor of remaining unmarried, for by that means one could give one’s focus truly and properly to God, without the distractions of spouse and children. Do you really love your potential children, by condemning them to this suffering, by condemning them to existence? How tyrannical of you to wish it so. Or if you do, do you really want the inconvenience of a child to what you desire to do? Such needy creatures, infants and children. Separate, and set up lives for yourselves of devotion and prayer to God, and cast these abominable kingdoms of the world into the abyss from which they came.”
            So spoke the Spirit of Negation, tempting the couple to the destruction of all of the kingdoms of the world. Then the couple, engaged to be married, answered:
            “We will indeed, set up a life of devotion and prayer to God. As the priest and student have already done, we will submit our desires unto God, that he might give back a hundredfold. But we shall not do so in the manner you desire. Saint Paul did not condemn marriage for those who are called to it. And indeed, our Lord worked his first miracle upon this earth for the joy and celebration of a wedding. Even though it may be impossible that the continuation of life, and the continuation of will at its root, should lead to anything but suffering, we say, along with Christ, an almighty ‘YES’ to marriage and to life. For in this we form the foundational community of the world, the family. For in this we serve the God who is life. And this life is indeed one of devotion and prayer to God. And so we say this: we have seen the pain of the world, and we know our desires, and we offer them up to God, he who created the world in the overflow of his love: he knows the desire for children. God will, though it be impossible, make all of this right. We ask, therefore, for the Priest to guide us even now in joining in marriage, which is the image of Christ and his Church, in which we will have knowledge of each other as united by the power of of God, and in which we shall serve the Lord of Life by not bringing the destruction of the human race.
            And there and then the marriage ceremony took place. Crowns were brought forth, and they were made the King and Queen of this new society that was there produced, the new family, from which all humanity thereafter would continue. Though the flies still buzzed around the corpses of those who had negated the world, here there was the affirmation of God and his goodness. And after, such music was played in celebration of the new community there formed.
            At this sight, The Spirit of Negation let forth a mighty scream, knowing that his plan for the destruction of the world had truly been destroyed. He then fled, vanishing into the shadows.
            Several months later, these four alone remained alive of all human beings. They did what they could for the proper burial of those dead around them. They tended and named the animals, grew food from the earth, learned of the world that God had made for them, and continued the two great societies of the world, the Church and the Family. In this time the season of Lent arrived, and in it they fasted, not unto death and not of all food, but a partial fast unto the right ordering of the soul. And then Easter arrived, in which was celebrated the victory of life over death, and then they had a great Feast, all the more sweet for their having fasted.
The time came for the son of the new King and Queen of the world to be born, the young Prince of the human family. Here, at least, did life continue. He was baptized by the Priest with the transformed waters, bringing him into the body of the Church. Indeed, by this water, and by the bread and wine made Divine Flesh and Blood, had the Extinguisher been extinguished.