When and why would we turn away from the vertical inbreaking of Christ and contain him in the modern constructs of truth and reality that rob us of the miracle and promise of his self-emptying love? Why do we emphasize the horizontal over the vertical? Can't we have both?
Have we forgotten the Christ hymn?
Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death-- even death on a cross. Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Philippians 2:5-11
The key lies in kenotic theosis, the interruption of the horizontal by the vertical.
Dostoevsky in The Idiot writes:
He remembered among other things that he always had one minute just before the epileptic fit (if it came on while he was awake), when suddenly in the midst of sadness, spiritual darkness and oppression, there seemed at moments a flash of light in his brain, and with extraordinary impetus all his vital forces suddenly began working at their highest sensation. The sense of life, the consciousness of self, were multiplied ten times at these moments which passed like a flash of lightning. His mind and his heart were flooded with extraordinary light; all his uneasiness, all his doubts, all his anxieties were relieved at once; they were all merged in a lofty calm, full of serene, harmonious joy and hope. But these moments, these flashes, were only the prelude of that final second (it was never more than a second) with which the fit began. That second was, of course, unendurable. Thinking of that moment later, when he was all right again, he often said to himself that all these gleams and flashes of the highest sensation of life and self-consciousness, and therefore also of the highest form of existence, were nothing but disease, the interruption of the normal conditions; and if so , it was not at all the highest form of being, but on the contrary must be reckoned the lowest. And yet he came at last to an extremely paradoxical conclusion. ‘What if it is disease?’ he decided at last. ‘What does it matter that it is an abnormal intensity, if the result, if the minute of sensation, remembered and analysed afterwards in health, turns out to be the acme of harmony and beauty, and gives a feeling unknown and undivined till then, of completeness, of proportion, of reconciliation, and of ecstatic devotional merging in the highest synthesis of life? Myshkin describing his epileptic fits, Dostoevsky, The Idiot.
Kenotic theosis is “the interruption of normal conditions,” which is “spiritual darkness and oppression,” with “flashes of light” that bring “paradoxical” “harmony” and “reconciliation”. At the moment of the onset of the epileptic fit or at the moment of kenotic theosis, there is an eschatological apocalyptic interruption of the horizontal normalcy of life by the vertical light of God. This interruption in terms of the normal is absurd because it does not fit the spatial and temporal categories of typical reality. The possibility that a human being can be joined with God and to other humans in a perfect love of the other through the loss of themselves is claimed in the moment of kenotic theosis. This is the annihilation of the “I” Dostoevsky speaks about in his diary when his wife Masha dies, where a person can love another as one’s self. The moment of light filled selfless love is only temporary; it cannot last but an instant and the epileptic, like all humanity, is plunged again into chaotic spiritual darkness.
The question becomes then can we live in the intersections of horizontal and vertical? Can we stand the light and all its challenges and promises, or do we prefer the safety of our horizontal constructs?
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