The Fall

And the four living creatures, each one of them having six wings, are full of eyes around and within; and day and night they do not cease to say,

“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God, the Almighty, who was and who is and who is to come.”  Revelation 4:8  NASB

Was/is/is to come – “Once I was not, that I was, and now I am no more: what more is there to be said.”[1]  The struggle of Man is the struggle of meaning in a dying world.  No question vexes the mind of Man more than this one:  Why is there death?  What is the purpose of my life if all ends in death, obliteration, destruction?  Belief in the immortality of the soul arises from a need to extend life beyond the grave, to find some sort of eternal justice, some recompense for the sorrows of living, the abuse of power, the plight of the righteous.  This belief is very old, far older than the Greek philosophers and poets.  Its entry into Western thought most likely occurred as early as the 8^th century BC.  It appears to have migrated to Greece from the Middle East through the Cult of Souls associated with the intoxicating rituals of the worship of Dionysus.

Edwin Rohde’s classic work on this subject was written in 1921, nearly 100 years ago.  Rohde concludes his work with a sweeping view of the impact of the Greeks on Western civilization.  It is worth reading in full.  As you read this, reflect on our circumstances nine decades later.  Notice as the vital energy of the Greek world declined, something else came into its place to fill the vacuum.  Reflect for a moment on the apparent loss of the greatest musicians, artists and craftsmen like those of the Renaissance.  Ask yourself if you see our world along this curve.  Consider the implications for power, empire and control.

“In the West the old order vanished more swiftly and submitted more completely to the new forces than in the Hellenized East.  It was not that the old civilization was any less rotten in the East than in the West.  The enfeebled hand and the failing mind betray themselves in every utterance—in the last spasms of vital energy that inspired the art and literature of moribund Greece.  The impoverishment of the vital forces out of which Greece had once brought forth the flower of it, special and characteristic spirit makes itself felt in the altered relation of the individual to the whole, and of the totality of visible life to the shadowy power of the unseen world.  Individualism has had its day.  No longer is the emancipation of the individual the object of man’s endeavor; no longer is he required to arm himself against all that is not himself, that is outside the region of his free will and choice.  He is not strong enough, and should not feel himself strong enough, to trust to the self-conscious strength of his own intelligence.  Authority—an authority that is the same for all—must be his guide.  Rationalism is dead.  In the last years of the second century a religious reaction begins to assert itself and makes itself felt more and more in the period that follows.  Philosophy itself becomes at last a religion, drawing its nourishment from surmise and revelation.  The invisible world wins the day over the meager present, so grievously bound down by the limitation of mere experience.  No longer does the soul await with courage and calmness whatever may be hidden behind the dark curtain of death.  Life seemed to need something to complete it.  And how faded and grey life had become—a rejuvenation upon this earth seemed to be out of the question.  All the more complete, in consequence, is the submission that throws itself with closed eyes and eager yearning upon another world, situated now far beyond the limits of the known or knowable world of the living.  Hopes and a vague longing, a shrinking before the mysterious terrors of the unknown, fill the soul.  Never in the history of the ancient world is the belief in an immortal life of the soul after death a matter of such burning and exacerbated ardour as in these last days when the antique civilization was preparing to breathe its last.”[2]

Now consider this.  Paul was a missionary in this declining culture.  What message would he have considered most vital?  How would he wish to turn the direction of the culture?  Would he proclaim forgiveness for something called “sin”?  Would the Gentile world respond to that?  Would he demand submission to the authority of an organization, a “church,” an infallible hierarchy?  What would he say to those who were ready to give up reality in this world for a guaranteed place in the beyond?

And what would he tell us today?

Topical Index:  Revelation 4:8, Edwin Rohde, immortality, Psyche, Greece

[1] epitaph of gravestone of ancient Greece, see Edwin Rohde, Psyche, Vol 2, p. 544, fn. 167.

[2] Edwin Rohde, Psyche, Vol 2., p. 545.