Stories qua stories are soteriologically inert or didactic at best and often harmful. Stories in scriptures are soteriologically active, beneficial, and often harsh. The measuring rod, obviously, is the quality of soteriological beneficence imparted by a story, yes or no. Once — 1973 — I explored this phenomenon under the title of Tincture.
The more a story’s soteriological beneficence, the more it approximates to scriptures. The less a story’s soteriological beneficence, the less it approximates to scriptures.
What makes an aggregate of stories called scripture in fact scripture? Commonly, it is said that scripture is scripture and not a mere collection of stories because it is scripted by God, directly or indirectly, and/or, because God has somehow inspired the stories which comprise scripture. The implication is that if God inspired the stories comprising scripture, the stories are soteriologically both effective and beneficial, including when harsh.
Endless discussions ensue over the manner in which this arrival of scriptures has happened and might continue to happen. But despite agreements and disagreements over particulars of the inspiration or just the arrival of scriptures, the common thread of such discussions is that the stories comprising scripture, being in some way from God, are beneficial for a man’s brief career in this breathing world.
Beneficial is assumed to mean peaceful and happy,
or at least, bearable and satisfactory.
Scriptures help men live properly.
What specifically makes stories comprising scripture soteriologically beneficial — if not also auto-puissant — and mere stories at best merely didactic? It is the degree to which they face a reader with reality as forms and functions of God. We could say, realistic, but we would need to add the notation that realistic means God. Ob sie Christum triben is how Luther puts it. That is most beneficial to man which leads towards, drives towards, runs towards, and realizes God in Christ Jesus of Nazareth and as — in the language of St. Paul and Jesus The Christ — all in all (omnia in omnibus, I Corinthians 15:28) and all these things (tauta panta / omnia ista, Mark 13:30). That which most benefits man is reality, the plain, simple, everyday, unexceptional totality of reality, because it is divine.
Stories comprising Scripture face their auditor or reader with God as reality. Stories qua stories face their auditor or reader with, at best, moral lessons or intelligent counsel, and at worst, mental and spiritual deformation, called deconstruction by some, of more or lesser extent.
Truth to tell, where scriptures are concerned, inspiration runs more from the scriptures to men, than to the scriptures from God. Scriptures inspire men more than God inspires scriptures. What God inspires in scriptures — and how — is a trivial concern. What scriptures inspire in men — and how — is a non-trivial concern.
For example, compare intentions of a typical story from The Bible with intentions of a typical story from Hollywood. The Bible story — say, Elijah at Mount Carmel (I Kings 18) or Jesus at Golgotha (John 19:17) — wants attention on God. The Hollywood story — say, Ben Hur, The Sound Of Music, or Star Wars — at best wants attention on a hero, an idea, a code, a relationship contrived to be heart-warming or instructively odious, and at worst, the Hollywood story wants attention on conjugations of degeneracy.
Hollywood is a business. They find ways to sell anything that sells. Scriptures are a harbor. They have nothing to sell but something to offer. This is the difference between stories and scriptures.
Wherein Hollywood — and fiction and non-fiction writers generally — sell stories that encourage good character and noble ideals, well and good. But these have no soteriological value, no power ob sie Christum trieben. They will not, can not draw God closer to one. They can draw one closer to abstracts, to pale approximations of the truth, but not closer to full-color, bright and vivid reality. Only God is real and can make that fact obvious.
Vedic philosophical discourse employs two linguistically felicitous terms of art to conduct the foregoing discussion. They are vidyamaya and avidyamaya. Vidyamaya is illusion (maya) that conduces to one’s acquiring clarity and the truth (vidya). Avidyamaya is illusion (maya) that conduces to one’s acquiring confusion and falsehood (avidya). All stories are illusion, maya. Most stories are avidyamaya. Some stories are vidyamaya. Revered are collections of stories all of which are vidyamaya. These are scriptures.
The German Cardinal and Mystic Nicholas of Cusa developed a related awareness, for which he coined a term of art, Docta Ignorantia. During the decade between the late 1980s and the late 1990s, I produced eighty six meditations under the title Docta Ignorantia.
Cusanus observed that truth expressed as doctrine, by virtue of being expressed, distorts the truth necessarily and also unavoidably. For, one cannot not express the truth. One simply should be aware that expressing the truth distorts it. It does this by implying distinctions between the expression of truth (the sight), the truth expressed (the seen), and the receptor of truth’s expression (the seer).
This phenomenon is unavoidable whenever, wherever truth is expressed, meaning, whenever, wherever truth is thrown into time, space, causality, and substance, aka existence.
That being so, it is also true that truth itself has power to give itself directly to one, bypassing the triple thread (seer-seen-sight) of mediated experience altogether. This is because one is the truth.
I compose these lines during segmented viewing of a truly great achievement in Russian Soviet-era motion picture artistry, Sergei Bondarchuk’s film adaptation of Leo Tolstoy’s War And Peace. The movie formed between 1961 and 1966. Four installments were released between 1966 and 1967. Total running time is in the neighborhood of seven hours.
The film evokes in me memories of Bronston’s El Cid and The Fall Of The Roman Empire, Mankiewicz’s Cleopatra, and Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia and Dr. Zhivago. It is grander even than these beloved achievements, especially as regards scenics and scenery, building interiors, war-fighting, and costumes. They make you feel it.
Soviet-era Russians made this masterpiece to correct misrepresentations of themselves made by Hollywood’s King Vidor through his War and Peace of 1956, having Mel Ferrer as Andrei and Audrey Hepburn as Natasha. The Russians succeeded.
The much-loved grand ballroom scene — Andrei (Vyacheslav Tikhonov) approaches Natasha (Ludmila Savelyeva) to dance with him — includes what I suspect is the long, straight stairway with multiple landings and a continuous red carpet appearing near the start of this video:
Principle I
Principle II
Principle III
By Artists M and F Graham
At Puttaparthi, Andhra Pradesh, India
