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Student introduction: (Philosophy 58, May 11 --)

[Opening remarks missing]

... the father of the monks lives from 250 to 350 -- supposedly. That means, you want to say that he's said to have become a hundred years old. { } poor source of the information. The main date for his action is 285, gentlemen. It's terribly important. That's the year of the Diocletian persecution of the Christians' {faith}. Take -- take this down, because if you want to understand history, gentlemen, then you must understand that one man acting freely -- I have told you this before -- like Moses taking the Jews out of Egypt, is worth more than 100,000 people acting now, because McCarthy wants it so. One man turning against Communism in 1930 in this country is more important -- or the only important thing. All the people like you, who say, "Well, I -- now I won't say a word, because they may hold it against me 20 years from now," you aren't worth a damn. But that is the error of -- people go by mass movement, and they think that the people who now suddenly go conservative are conservative in this country. You are just accidentally conservative. Next day, you are something else, according to the fashion. But Anthony, you see, became a monk sensing the success of Christianity in the world, without any external com- -- compulsion, and so he becomes the father of all monks, just as Nietzsche in our time, because he went out of Europe in his heart and mind 20 years before the World War I happened, is today still an important man. And all the -- his contemporaries are forgotten. And so you will be treated if you don't do in your life something voluntarily, from the compunction of your own heart, by saying, "This isn't good enough. I have to prepare something better." And this is Anthony. And the important thing is, gentlemen, he is the only man whom we remember as having come before Constantine, before Christianity bec- -- became fashionable. He did not jump on the bandwagon, but he delayed the bandwagon, and that's what you all have to do, gentlemen: despise yourself when you jump on the bandwagon, and respect yourself when you delay the bandwagon, because the bandwagon has to be delayed. Otherwise you go around the next curve in hundred -- at 100-mile speed. And all the girls from Smith in the car are killed.

So Anthony is such an important figure today, because you and I -- we have a hard time to understand monasticism, to evaluate it, to do justice to it. It's so far away, the hour in which it was introduced into the Western world, that for you it is very difficult to understand. Monasticism is the consecration of the desert. It is the consecration of that part of the earth which God has created, and which for man has no use. Now God is always greater than geography of man, or than

thinking of man, or philosophy of man. And Anthony said, "Since the desert is created, is a part of the earth, it's good enough for me. If it isn't then good enough for the Roman emperor, that's just too bad for the emperor."

You must understand, gentlemen -- you remember what we said about settlement, that all the empires of old settled in the fruitlands where they could have agriculture, and where the calendar could apply. The desert has no calendar. It's the desert all the year around. The great decision then of the first of these four fathers of the -- of the recognized Church, is the great- -- his great act is to accept man's role as wider than the role of -- in any civilization. It's written -- Mr. Antonius acted against Toynbee and the idea that we should be interested in civilization. No decent person {is} interested in civilization. You have to be interested in the salvation of mankind, or something better than sal- -- civilization is a by-product. If you are ashamed, that's the history of your soul. Then you go to a tailor and have your loin-cloth made. Is the loin-cloth important? The experience that one should be ashamed is important. That's not civilization. That's an act of faith. You are all damned, because you -- hear all the time around your ears that -- civilizations come and go. Of course, they go like fashions. Civilization is nothing better than a -- a bathtub. Now Walter Crane in America makes all the bathtubs; before, they made the -- in the village -- the -- the carpenter made them out of wood. What's the difference?

Now the second man, gentlemen. Anthony -- take this down, fruitland and desert, in Antonius are brought together as one earth, under the great sentence: "The earth is the Lord's, and everything that is in it." Whereas an Egyptian, a Roman, an American says, "Hah! Where -- I have the land of the white man and I have the reservations. And the reservations are definitely no good. That's why I give them the Indians -- to the Indians." That's, by and large, the morality in this country between desert and fruitland. If you go to these reservations, you are ashamed of yourself. We have given these red men -- people a piece of land on which they can neither live or die. Now, strangely enough, they have found oil, which is their end -- final corruption, in these reservations, because now they live on money. They have nothing to do.

The story, gentlemen, here, of the desert is a very important story. You know the overgrazing of the cattle in the desert in the West, you see, another lack of respect for the character of the desert. Or take the dustbowl. You are all so frivolous that you don't know -- know what it means to ruin a part of God's earth forever. Just ask the people in Texas what they have done in the last two years, or in the last 10 years. I have a friend who invested all his money in a Texan farm. He was a soldier. He made a -- lot of money in his -- on his flight pay of war, but he's broke of course, because there's no water. And that's not arbitrarily done. That could have been avoided.

Athanasius, the second man, gentlemen, does not go out of the empire, but he imposes on the bishops of the Christian Church and on the flock a condition for the compromise with the emperor. And again, gentlemen, I insist that this is of very practical importance for you and me today, because it means that the whole body of the Christians says to the emperor, "If you become a Christian, you have to stop to be an emperor of the old type." You read so many -- or you used to read; you don't read anything. But your forefathers, and grandfathers read very strange stories about the baptism of Constantine. Many Protestants have dated the downfall of the Christian Church on the fact that the emperor of the -- the Roman emperor said one day, "I'm a sinner, like all other Christians, and I have to be christened."

Gentlemen, the Church cannot turn down even the greatest sinner. So the Church couldn't turn down the greatest sinner of his time, the emperor. The emperor was the greatest sinner because he said that he was God. That's blasphemy. All this you do not understand. You read the story all with perverted eyes. Gentlemen, think that in a group of people who have come to the knowledge of the true faith, as it is -- the true Israel, there comes a man and says, "So far, I have -- the people have paid me homage and respect with regard to my divine office, because I connected the Heaven and the earth. And I -- in my priesthood, I could predict the weather and the fruitfulness. And I took an oath as an emperor," as any modern king still does, where there are kings, "swinging my sword to the four cardinal points of the globe, of the compass, that I will provide good harvests, as far as is in my power." Just what you expect from Mr. Eisenhower, to provide good harvests, to provide the busi- -- prosperity. You are very near again to the Constaninian and the pharaonic empire. And if you go on like this, this country is out for a new Egypt- -- Egypt -- Egyptian darkness, because you really think that your political leader can make prosperity, which is fantastic, which is ridiculous. And it is certainly not in the Constitution of the United States. The United States say that the president of the United States is to -- there to provide peace externally and justice internally. And he certainly has nothing to do with jobs, or any such economic things. It's not the business of the president of the United States. But in this holy confusion, in which you leave today -- live today, we today watch the transition from -- we shall see at the -- in the second half of this period today -- the transition from a free Greek city-state called the United States of America, to the worship of the golden calf, on which you all depend for your jobs, and for what reason you all of a sudden are no longer interested in civil rights, but only in civil pensions.

Now Athanasius is exactly in the position of the year 1954. He says to Mr. Eisenhower, Constantine, "You'd better join the Presbyterian Church. That is, you recognize that there is an authority that is higher than your office in this country." Gentlemen, I'm quite serious. Everything depends that you understand

that the separation of Church and state means that the man who is in the state recognizes that he himself is also in the Church. You cannot have a separation of Church and state, of which you talk so glibly, if not everybody is at the same time Church and state. Otherwise the separation makes no sense. If anybody can be just state, then you get a pre-Christian community. Then you get Diocletian, who says, "I am the state. You bishops are the Church. Down with you." That's the separation of Church and state in a pagan world, gentlemen. In the -- world of America, and you have never been taught this, it means that you -- every one of us is at one time a citizen of the United States and at the other time, a citizen of Heaven. You, the same person. And Athanasius, who was just a deacon, he was -- that is, he was not even a college professor, went to the Council of -- Nicaea, opposite Byzantium. You know it by the -- Nicaea lies on the Asiatic shore opposite Constantinople. And that's the great council in which the Trinity was for the first time formulated, 325.

And he said, "I'm sorry, but now something has happened which, to the Jews, and Greeks, and slaves who became Christians, never happened. We have now a man in our church who has declared himself to be God for the last 300 years, as far as he was a ruler. He was in touch with the universe in a mysterious way as no other mortal. He was emperor. He was pharaoh. Therefore at this moment, we have to assert that the only God on earth is Christ. Because otherwise we get many gods again. Every king will say he is god."

And I tried to show you that the Trinity, which you do not understand, is the first Magna Carta of your liberty, because it said to the emperor, "You too have a membership in a church which has a higher head than you. You are just a very little member of a unity," you see, "which is not the empire. The Church. You have an organic place. You are the greatest sinner whom we are now willing to forgive and to receive on hope into the bosom of the Christian Church, or on the body of Christ."

Now you can understand, gentlemen, how difficult it is. You are so proud in your own brain, that your brain cells do not come down like emperor Constantine and say that they have to be christened. You know that the brain cells cannot be regenerated, in your brain. It's the only part of the -- your -- yourselves that is dead for good. All the other cells every seven years are renewed. But not those of the brain. Now the -- your mind however still thinks that it is better than the other parts of the world -- your body, stands higher and is more clever. I think the opposite. I think the mind is the most earthly part of our existence. It has constantly to be called to -- to order by the heart, and by the other organs who are constantly keeping us in touch with real life. The brain is always behind the times. But you think the opposite. The emperor Constantine said, "I, as ruler of the universe, have to use all my brain. I'm on top. I'm the brain trust," you see.

"And I have to say that this brain is second-rate. At the heart of the world, which is Jesus, that the heart of the world has been -- has to be good enough to pro- -- graft me upon it, despite my cleverness, despite my high reason, and despite my rationality." Because reason is boring. Reason is just logical. It is uncreative. It can never understand any new event. Because logic -- by logical conclusion, you can always prove that the future cannot happen. You can see it in the papers all the time. Everything that has happened in the last 30 years was proven by philosophers that it could never happen. John Dewey spoke, to sat- -- his satisfaction that neither Stalin nor Hitler could win. Or come to power.

The brain, gentlemen, is dead. And to rule is, of course, the exercise of reason to the highest degree. And the Church is the discovery that to rule is not enough, or to conquer. And as -- as the first sentence of the history of the Church is, "Let us be more than conquerors." And this means that your reason has to take orders from the heart, from the destiny of mankind. And if your reason says, "We cannot fly," you still cannot burn Mr. Orville Wright at stake because he's a witch. You have to allow him to try. And he can disprove your reasoning. We have learned this by bitter experience, that you have to allow a man to prove what logic, you see, has disproved.

All the Christians, gentlemen, are a people of whose lives it has been said beforehand that it couldn't live -- Jesus, Paul, Peter, Athanasius, Anthony -- are people of whom it was -- could be read in the books that they couldn't exist. The same has been said of the Puritans at home in England. "Oh, they'll perish in the wilderness." Nearly they did. Not all. That is, gentlemen, the man of our era is a man who cannot be predicted. He is the uncalculable. Take this down, gentlemen. In a play by Galsworthy -- I'm stealing this from Mr. Galsworthy -- Escape, this is the -- the end of the play, that man, the real man since our era is incalculable. You can also say unpredictable. Inasfar as you and I are unpredictable, we are Christians. Inasfar as you and I are logical, you are heathen. Rational people are not interesting because they can be pre-calculated. You can predict their actions. And you can buy them. You can corrupt them.

Now Athanasius, gentlemen, said just that much on the Council of Nicaea. He said, "Now we have this God-man, the emperor ..." or man-god, I should say, "... this man-god. Therefore, we must now put the God-man on the throne." This is literally true that they played with this cult of man-god, and God-man. Constantine, you see, is a man declared God. And Jesus is God becoming man. The direction is from above-down, and in Constantine, it's the lifting up by your own bootstraps.

Now, that is the meaning, gentlemen, of the Trinity. To this day, nobody has been able to devise a better expression of this. And I take it to be a scientific

statement. Has nothing to do with any belief, really. You can't live without the Trinity, because the next time you will land in a concentration camp. If you don't believe in the Trinity, there's absolutely no reason why the Communist Party shouldn't have the right over death and life over you. If you cannot invoke your membership in the body of the real God against the men -- powers that be, then the powers that be say that they are more divine than you. In a sense Mr. Eisenhower is undoubtedly more divine than you, because he has been elected by a landslide of votes, by 32 million people, and you have not. So by the 32 million people who voted for him, he's in power. And yet can he not take your life. Why? Because you have a membership that is much better than the membership of the United States of America. And that's the reason that you can trust a man in government, as long as he admits that he and you are members of this other body. If he denies it, you are in danger.

It's so simple, gentlemen, that I'm always ashamed that I have to apologize for my reactionary attitude that I think that the Trinity is a scientific fact. And I cannot understand you people who think that you can live without such a definition, which is the historical background of your and my freedoms. If you do not recognize this, gentlemen, I'm sorry. I think you are the most stupid people in the world. Because if you cannot to every new power -- McCarthy, or Huey Long, or Eisenhower, or Hitler, or Malenkov, or anybody, or here -- Mr. Mao, or what's this hero in Viet Minh? If you cannot say, "Very nice, we meet on the political field, but we also meet elsewhere, and the membership in the second realm has quite a different order of merit than the order in the political field," if you cannot say this to these people, you are lost. They shut your mouth. They execute you. They exile you. And they have every right to do it, because you have given the advantage and say, "Of course, there's only the order I see. Only the order to which I pay taxes. Only the order in geography." As soon as you say this, gentlemen, you find yourself in this unholy spirit of yours, which is no spirit whatsoever, except one of job-hunting, and getting married, and forgetting the world at large. You no longer are members of anything, neither of the world nor of the Church. You are just members of your little household in Wigwam Circle. And how long will that last? As long as they are good enough to feed you. You are just cattle. Are you -- any longer at this moment -- I don't see very few citizens of the United States at this moment. Very few. The people who go to lectures certainly are not the citizens of this country. It's very serious, gentlemen, because for hundred years as you know, rational, reasonable, proud, philosophical, scientific man has said, "The Trinity is ridiculous. I'm not dogmatic." Gentlemen, how can you base your rights -- if you aren't anything if you are -- have not a dogma? Do you wish to wait for human laws, which can be altered every day by some coarse majority, which is against you, which says every -- people with colored hair are to be deported? If you believe in majority rule, where will -- where would this country be? This country is based on the domination of a free

Church over the majority rule. That is, that there are sacred rites of members of the free churches in this country, that the worshipers of -- of God, of the eternal God against the majorities of the moment.

Now, Athanasius said that much. And that's why he said, "The second person of the div- -- deity must be called equal to the Father." Gentlemen, I have repeated this whole story, because I had to underline one thing: that in Athanasius, the Church, in answer to the emperor, the man-god of Egypt becoming Christian, was good enough to condescend and to take upon themselves to use one nonBiblical term: the word "homoousious," or God -- equal to God -- to God, which played a great part of the discussions of the following centuries, and which, as you may know, the -- the Unitarians of Boston threw out and thereby abolished Christianity victoriously. At this word, "homoousious," which means equal or the same as the Father, being equal, it means -- that this word cost Athanasius a piece of his life, and he has written time and again, "Did I write to introduce into the Christian Church a worldly term? Because there is nowhere in the Bible the term." But in order to stem the tide of Roman, Greek, pharaonic, Persian, Arabi- -- Babylonian lore he had to invent a word which the pagan mind would also understand.

And so, perhaps you put down this paradox, because it is very interesting, it always so happens: when we love the world, as God loves the world, in order to redeem it, you always have to accept an element of the world. We have to get down to brass tacks. You have to get earthly. You have to get your hand -- fingers dirty. And in response, you can then save a part of this world and graft it upon the Tree of Life everlasting. When the emperor accepted to become a member of the Church, the Christians had to pay one price: that they talked in one term, at least, the language of the world. It's the Greek, philosophical term, "homoousious," of the same substance, or of the same being. And "being" and "substance" are not books -- words for which the Bible cares at all, because they are words of comparison. And the Bible is concrete and names everybody by his name. But the Greek school, you remember, always compare, because they lived in the wide world, and they always have many cities, and many people. And they always said, "Oh, that's like this," you see. They always compare. Comparative religion, comparative law, comparative comparative. And so -- on competition -- all these principles of the Greek life -- and so the word of the Church used by -- by Athanasius has become really the turning point of world history, because it was the word which opened the flood of philosophical terms, like "existentialism," which you today are using so freely, or "idealism," which were all forbidden to Christians before 325. You could not bec- -- be a Christian and speak Greek or take philosophy. But when the Greek philosophers, and the Roman emperors, and the lawyers, and the generals became Christians, you see, the Christian Church had to begin to speak their language, too. That's a long process

and it isn't yet quite finished. But you ought to know, gentlemen, that when when Mr. Tillich today speaks of existentialism, for example, that this is a story, that in the year 1954, the Christian can use, instead of the word "sinner," the word "existentialist." The Greek -- so far, for 2,000 years, the Christians called a man who just existed, without a connection with God and the Church, a "sinner." And now we very politely call them exis- -- existing. It's the same thing, from the Greek point of view.

Very important, gentlemen, because it's a similar problem as in Nicaea. In Nicaea, it began that one man, Christ, who started us -- as a body of living divine history escaped existence, mere existence, and became the carrier of the future life. And as you know, the existentialist today says, "Let me throw myself into the future, if I can only find it." They are all -- the sinners who are {hungering} for the future. And as much as Constantine understood, when he had to confess that Jesus was like God, it -- because it meant that Constantine was not like God, you see, it meant that the emperor could not say of himself "homoousious."

So in the same sense, gentlemen, now you people with the natural reason and the natural mind have now found, finally, the same way as Constantine, because it is now possible to say of every man that he exists. So that's an experience you can make without relation to the dogma of the Church. But that's -- that still doesn't mean that it's anything different from sinning, that is, from being {asunder}, or as Mr. Tillich calls it, from being "self-centered." That's a very polite expression for the sinner.

Who was -- who listened to him on Sunday? Well, you remember. These are all good theological terms, but they are adapted to the stupidity of the living generations. But it doesn't alter the fact that "homoousious," gentlemen, is true, although it is a Greek word spoken to the Greeks with the full faith from the inside, "Yes, Constantine, we can allow you to become a Christian. And we will talk to you in a language which you can understand."

So I only wanted to vivify to you the life of Athanasius, you see. "Forty years," he wrote, ""I have sacrificed of peace, and of bishop -- being a bishop and ruling in peace in Alexandria, for my daring to introduce this new, one term." Now you can say of Mr. Kirkegaard, that he also sacrificed a whole life for introducing the word "existentialism," "existence," into the language, you see, to save it from the Hegelians and the scholastics, the existence of the sinners. Who has -- who knows a little bit about existentialism? Anybody? Not one! Well, good. You will know that this is all very connected, you see, because Kirkegaard said against Hegel, "Hegel, you think because you are a philosopher, you are God," you see. "But there's only one God, and you are just an -- in existence," you see. That's the whole -- same issue between idealist and existentialist. The idealists, you see, are

the Constantines before their baptism. And the existentialists are the people who have discovered that they exist, regardless of their so-called ideals, you see. And that is their poor -- poverty, and -- and their -- their limitation, and their mortality, and their short-livedness, you see. This is Kirkegaard-Hegel, is exactly the same relation as Constantine -- as Constantine and Athanasius, or as in this country Royce and -- Josiah Royce, for example, here, the great Harvard idealist, and -- whom we -- shall we take? Thornton Wilder, as an existentialist.

Why do you make such a face? Do you understand -- do you know Thornton Wilder? Huh? Do you know him? Do you know his play? Wie? Well, how is it called -- by -- on Mr. {Anthropus}. By the Nick of Our Teeth, isn't it?.

(The Skin of Our Teeth.)

The Skin of Our Teeth. Ja. Skin of Our Teeth. Ja. That's -- that's existentialism against Josiah Royce and his idealization of every man a god.

You see, gentlemen, this story of Constantine and Athanasius is -- the story of Anton- -- Antonius and Diocletian is left in every generation. If you have made wealth as under Diocletian for the Christians, Antonius said, "It's high time that he clear out, and go into the desert." Then you have man's pride, you can -- you must say, that if this man wants to join us in the same club, or in the same fraternity, or in the same -- in the same outfit or profession, then it's high time that he put down clearly that he is not God Almighty. Otherwise we can't live with him. He becomes too dangerous. We can't empower -- it's high time that we tell the doctors that they are creatures, and that they are not sorcerers, and butchers, and chemists." Today we have to say a doctor is God, in this country. Yesterday, you had the orator, Mr. Daniel Webster, as God. And then read what Whittier wrote about him in "Ichabod," the poem, you see, what a star had fallen, what a blasphemer Mr. Daniel Webster had become. In every generation, gentlemen, the Antonius situation and that the Athanasius situation exists. And now I'm going to show you that the two other situations always always exist.

The third man is not Ambrosius, Sir, I'm sorry to say, but St. Augustine, St. Augustine. And St. Augustine lives from 354 to 430. And I told you that he takes the people not out of the fruitland into the desert, and he does not build resistance up in Rome or Byzantium against the governing body of the emperor and his ministers and his soldiers. But he is a third type of emancipator, of the ways of life into -- he creates a wider era beyond the Roman era, because he writes The City of God and he says, "When the era of Rome ends, that doesn't mean that God's era ends, at all, because there are two cities, and we are citizens of two. And man's real story is as a citizen of the city in Heaven. And that's only a perfunctory story, his membership on the -- on the -- in the city of Rome, or in

the Roman Empire." And The City of God, gentlemen, written in 416, is really -- should not be translated with this title City of God. It should be translated with the title, The Citizenry. That's what civitas Dei means at that time. That is, the united people, the united group of people. And you hear "city," you -- you think of the walls. That is not in the word "civitas." "Civitas" is the citizenry -- that comes nearest to the literal translation. And some -- one German translator a few years ago made this point very clear by calling it the -- The Citizenry of the City of God. So whatever you hear in Humanity 11 and 12 is wrong. It is not the city of God, but it is the citizenry of God, which brings it home that you are not somebody who is some place, but that you are only able to live in history if you are not just a citizen of the ter- -- terrestrial -- terrestrian community. Nobody can go to Heaven with {Grover Vail}.

This is of practical importance again, as you can see, because today again, America has no future, because you have absolutely identified your existence with the history of America. Now a city has only a future inasfar as their -- its citizenry have a larger timespan to live than the political existence of the United States. The -- you have to instill historical existence into the body politic on this earth. You can't borrow it from it. The people who founded the United States thought they were children of God. They were creatures of the God Almighty. They were Christians sent into the wilderness. They were missionaries, pilgrims, crusaders, whatever you want. But certainly they were just now founding the United States of America, because that was the will of God. And the will of God they knew, because they had it in their hearts. And the {walls} and the roads of America they built because they had legs and hands. But the legs and hands were in the services of the human heart, which this in -- building these roads, and these states, and these capitols, and these constitutions acted out what their membership in their free churches had told them. So gentlemen, will you take this down? Atha- -- the Church is older than the state in any human heart. And as long as this is the case, this country will be renewed and regenerated. And as soon as you think you are first Americans, and then you have a nice chapel, or an ugly chapel like {Lawrence} Chapel, in addition, you cannot preserve the existence of your country. A country is saved by the people who are not at home in this country, but who make it their home, and who know that a home on earth is in the image of our home in Heaven, and who have in their hearts such a vision that they can populate this earth with the right rooms, walls, houses, streets, as in the Jerusalem upstairs. If you have no such vision in your heart, how can you do right?

So gentlemen, the story of the City of God and the City of Man is a very practical one. Any city of man has a short-lived existence of, by and large, 120 years, 150 years, 300 years. That's the maximum. There is no -- no government on earth that ever lasts longer than a hundred years by itself. It can only last if the citizens

under this government recognize a higher government, by which they can take their government to task and demand from their government to change, to improve, to reform. Any wish for reform in a new election can only come when the electorate knows better, when they have a firm conviction that man can do better. You all believe this still. You have heard, at least, fairy tales of your ancestors who came to this country and for 300 years believed in every election that they could do better. Gentlemen, that can be lost if you say, "This, my environment, makes me. I'm just a behaviorist. I'm just adjusting myself," as you all are told by these psychologists today. To what do you adjust? You adjust to corruption. You adjust to stupidity. You adjust to laziness. You adjust to the standard of living. You adjust to all the vices that surround you. You don't even see them, because you are obsessed with the idea, "I have to adjust myself."

Here always you people come to me after class and say, "Well, you understand in a coun- -- in a society as of today, I just can't do as I want to." That is, they have the impertinence to tell me that we live in a special society today which differs from any other society in the history of the world. Gentlemen, a Quaker who was burned in Massachusetts, could much -- with much greater right have said, "I'm sorry, I can't be a Quaker, because in this society, there's just no place for a Quaker." Now you all live on the Quakers, are proud of them, and say, "They are the very best part of America." It took 300 years for learning this, because no Quaker ever said -- used your excuse, "You understand, today one cannot do this."

As long as this word "today" comes out of your mouth, you have not come under the influence of St. Augustine, because St. Augustine has made it clear that every today is under judgment of the real time. But "today" doesn't count in the history of man, will be forgotten. Tomorrow you will not understand yourself that you paid any attention to today. Augustine has a wonderful sentence in this book, in another book, "How many of our todays have passed through the needle of -- the eye of your needle, O Lord?" "How many todays of ours have passed through the ear of the needle -- of Thy needle, O Lord?" I hope you cannot understand this, because it's a very great phrase. But take it down, just the same, because I hope that in 40 years, you'll learn what it means.

"How many todays of ours have passed through the eye of Thy needle, O Lord?" That's Augus- -- Augustine, gentlemen. It gives -- he gives you the power to understand that the timespan of your expectations of life transcends any visible form of government. It gives you the power, for example, to emigrate from one country to another. I could not stand here before you if I was not an Augustinian, because if you -- you cannot emigrate. You have to eat ice cream in the midst of Berlin or Moscow. And if they have no ice cream, you say, "Well, I can't live here." So the Army has to provide it for all the boys. You are completely

dependent on little America wherever you go. Otherwise you aren't satisfied. So you are slaves of your environment, indeed. Or you are not, gentlemen, but then you know that you are not just Americans. And everyone who has the right spirit knows that he doesn't carry America with him, but he carries with him the creative spirit which founded America. That is, the very best of America, of course, is the hearts of those men who came into this country when there was no America. Isn't that simple? Who -- put it into -- into -- into reality, you see, out of their connection with the infinite, with the unconditional, with the unlimited.

This is the story, gentlemen, of St. Augustine, that he {tells} everybody, "A course in American history cannot save your soul, because there was a story of God with man before 1620, and there must be a story of God with man after 1960, and the cobalt bomb."

The last man is Jerome. Hieronymous, whose dates you have not given us, Sir, whose dates you have not given me -- is the translator of the Bible from the Greek into the Latin. And he makes sure to this day that the Word of God is neither in the language of the living generation, nor in the language of the founders, of the first generation, that God's Word is spirit, and not letter, that the letter killeth, and the spirit vivifies. Gentlemen, you take this again far too unctuously. This is a very practical, scientific rule, that when you get any text, you only have absorbed the text when you can translate it. That is -- you will learn this in later life -- the only person who knows anything is a teacher. You begin to learn, but only if what I tell you here has become so much your property that you can teach it to others, do you know what it means to know this. You have no idea of what you are learning at this moment. This is just the beginning of wisdom. Only he who has to make a choice and say -- and select the fact that he has to teach, and has to remember everything he has learned, and has to discard everything he thinks is false, and has to emphasize everything he thinks he has learned is important, only he actually is -- has the full presence of mind to be really certain that this is so. You can repeat what I say, but it doesn't mean that you know it.

You begin to learn, gentlemen, the end, the finality, the destiny of learning is teaching, gentlemen. The end of learning is teaching, because if my truth is great, you are responsible that everybody comes to know it. If you really learn, at this moment, you cannot limit learning to your examination. That's why I despise examinations. And I despise you, because you forget everything which you have learned after the examination is over. You cannot learn, because you actually think that it is important to spit out what I have put into you -- like this -- like a -- puke. I don't teach for your puking. But that's what you understand by learning in this country: 120 hours' credit, 1.8 average, and then good-bye.

Now that is what Jerome has tried to avoid. Gentlemen, in the word "translation," there is a much greater importance than you think. Translation is nothing special. It's "transport," "transport" in the old sense of the word "transport." You are transported. You are transported out of the flesh into the spirit. The flesh is the language. And would you take this down, gentlemen? Time and again, Christians have forgotten that the word "flesh" did not mean the skin, or the bowels, or the stomach, or the genitals, or sens- -- the senses. That's only misunderstood Puritanism. Today, the people hold this against the Puritans, as though they ever taught such nonsense. Gentlemen, the Puritans meant by "flesh" your way of taking examinations. That is the flesh in the sense of the New Testament. The flesh is when you think that by repeating the words, you have done everything that's needed. I'm very serious, gentlemen. Reconquer the sense of carnality. Grandmother Called It Carnal, is a very nice novel in New England. Has anybody read it? Grandmother Called It Carnal. Well, the book is around this -- what is carnal, c-a-r-n-a-l? Well, that's the flesh. And what is the flesh, gentlemen? The flesh is that which is just the sheath of the spirit, and which by you is taken to be the sword.

And {you know} the language, I told you last time is the sheath of the spirit. And that is what Jerome has tried to remind you of constantly. Ev- -- the -- the Bible cannot be read in English, and the Bible cannot be read in Aramaic. The great story of Jerome is only the finishing touch on the history of the Gospel, gentlemen. St. Matthew wrote his first Gospel in Aramaic, and it is lost. And the greatness of the revelation perhaps doesn't stand out more clearly than in this fact that we only have the first Gospel in its Greek translation, because it means that we are free. We don't depend on the original wording of any text today. Imagine what this means, that at the -- just as the Crucifixion, the failure of Christ stands on the beginning of the Church, so the failure of a Gospel to survive stands on the beginning of the sacred texts of this same church. The first Gospel is lost. Matthew wrote in the -- in the language of his people, in Jerusalem, and in Judah, and they didn't recognize it. He left them. The text was just lost. And that's a great Christian pride that it doesn't matter when the text is lost. The spirit lives on. Just as -- John Brown's body could die in the sea, and his soul is marching on, in exactly the same sense, you and I have the Gospel, although we don't have the original text. Can you understand this? That is flesh.

And please, contradict all the idiots who talk of Christianity as though it was against the flesh. God has loved the 10 toes and the 10 fingers of your hand and the breasts of your women; and the womb, certainly of Mary. Hasn't He blessed it? And the whole body is beautiful. Sinful is your mind, and that is flesh. And that is dead. And that had to be brought under control. And that is the expression of the -- your idea of translation. In every generation ...

[tape interruption]

... perhaps can see now, gentlemen, that these four people have taught us to live. Jesus, Peter, Paul, the martyrs have taught us -- St. Stephen, the first martyr, have taught us to die. Christianity begins with a lesson in dying. And then Anthony, Athanasius, and St. Augustine, and Jerome give you a lesson in living. And that is the difference, gentlemen, between a Christianity in the catacombs, and a Christianity in power. That it is very difficult for a Christian in power to live, if he doesn't see the importance of monasticism, of dogma, of translation, and of an historical horizon of history. This -- would you take this down, gentlemen? -- dogma, asceticism, a doctrine of the eons, or of history, of the epochs, and a power to translate are the four pillars of the Christian life. If you don't understand this, you can go to 20 churches a day and you are not a Christian. Doesn't help you that the pope says you are a good Christian. You are not. That has been consecrated by these four saints. And they are therefore still salutary. And that is the meaning of "saint," a man who brings us this sanity. We can't say today "salvation." It's just a question of sanity. And the people today, gentlemen, who have not these four saints around them, are insane.

Go to Washington and you find a city of a million people where the majority is insane, because they have neither a desert, or asceticism, in which they are indifferent to the prosperity. They are all frightened to death by the depression. Second, they are all believing that the history of mankind is identical with the history of the -- of America. Third, they all believe that there is no dogma which unites mankind against the Devil and tyr- -- tyranny. Just a question of labels. They are all given to the devil of propaganda. And what is the devil of propaganda? That I can say to others what I do not believe myself. That is propaganda, that I can say to others what I do not believe myself. Dogma is that I must stick to certain terms and prefer to be burned at stake, before I shall give them up. If you don't -- but you don't have that, so you are like the leaf in the wind. But the Quaker who went to the stake in Massachusetts just had it. And the fourth thing, gentlemen, is when you go to Washington, they do not know that they must speak to the Russians not like a governess in an American school. They cannot translate. We irritate the whole rest of the world because we behave, wherever we go, just as the lady on the Orozco fresco, teaching the schoolchildren there in the nice little schoolhouse, to be good. And the answer of the whole world is, "You don't have us to tell us what's good. Good-bye."

So gentlemen, Washington is today a godless city, regardless of the fact that there very nice -- many nice people. That is not the question today, gentlemen, you understand. But as a city of 100 -- of a million officials, who live on these four premises: there is no dogma, there is no retreat for me in which I live quite indifferently from the prosperity and the business cycle, and live the good life

whether there is a depression or prosperity. And I'm not frightened with the end of the world, because there are 10 million people unemployed. Or better still, we cannot pay the interest on the government bonds. The third, that we have to translate the human language away from the flesh of our own morality, of our own sour morality, of our {moraline,} alkaline, or whatever you call it. And the fourth, that the history of God is much longer than the history of America. And that the history of America can only be saved when we put it into the history of -- God's; that is, as a chapter in the history of universal history, American history can always be saved. Now I have to make a -- have promised a break, so here it is.

You don't need it now? You should have reminded me. Can you stand it, if I go on? We are so pressed for time, I would be very grateful. Ja? Am I permitted?

Gentlemen, now I turn therefore to this fact that the American history is a chapter in the universal history. Of this all Americans have been convinced before 19- -- 1898. In 1898, when America went into the Spanish-American War, this great place of America for the first time was badly shaken. It was a purely gingoistic, imperialistic war. And so we are saddled with Puerto Rico. We made -- this was nonsense. But before and after, there has always been the American tradition that this is a chapter in the universal history of the world.

And I suggest to you that I -- you now take down the fact: there are three histories of America. That is, three ways in which the history of America can be told. You remember history has to be told. Now you can tell the history of your own country in three different ways. You can say that Governor Bradford landed in 1620 on the "Mayflower," there and there on Plymouth Rock. And half of the people died in the first winter. And now, new people arrive for unknown reasons, from somewhere in the world, call it England, later Holland, and other parts of the world -- of the European continent, and you begin your story with the landing of people on these shores. That's how you read it in your books. And that is a naturalistic history of America. That is, you tell the history of this country, regard -- of the -- in a carnal way, in the way in which the people became visible on these shores, as flesh. And you only tell it in his- -- in terms of the present of such an occasion: landing, battles. Then you can have a somewhat Greek -- that is a naturalistic -- the chronicle of the tribe, or the chronicle of that city. And that's how the city of Boston will write their story, or New England people will write their story or -- if you are from Kansas, they even now have a historical society in Kansas. And that is a naturalistic approach, which you can have --a dentist in Kansas City. I know a dentist in Kansas City. And he made history when he left Kansas City and went to Egypt as a missionary, in 1874, and was a great -- the greatest man of Kansas City, but he doesn't appear in a naturalistic history of Kansas, because since he left, the Kansas people haven't found a

way of saying that these are the fine people which Kansas City produce. They only think of the people who are lying there on an expensive cemetery in Kansas. And they think these are the people of Kansas.

The naturalistic history, gentlemen, has no antecedents, and no future for the facts that happen. And it ends today, in this poor today of which Aug- -- St. Augustine has spoken resentfully, because gentlemen, naturalistic history isolates a past from the future. And it says, "I know the American history of the past, and I can write it, regardless of my expectations which I have for the future of America." That is nat- -- nature, gentlemen, which has no speech, and which has no future. The natural scientist deals always with things dead, never with the living. It tries -- he tries to reduce life to death. He tries to reduce reality experienced to experiment. He tries to reduce the believed-in to the known. And always kills the future. Things under natural science have no future. They can just go on forever under natural law the same way.

So gentlemen, that's naturalistic history. That's what you call here American history. This poor country America under your treatment has no future. It is just -- it has a history from 1620 to 1954, and television is the answer, is the end of the world, of the American world. It is, of course, not true.

Gentlemen, there is a second story already, which is a little better. That's the comparative history. You can tell the settlement. That's Greek. What you are learning is pagan, just pagan, tribal or Egyptian. It's just a -- a review of your ancestors, of your pedigree, all description of your country, in its eternal cycles. But gentlemen, the Greek story is comparative. That is, you can say, as the people in 57 heard -- who was in 57? Ja. You remember what we said about the emancipation of the slaves? That in the same year in Russia, they were also emancipated, the serfs, you see, and that therefore obviously the event in this country must be compared with the event in Russia. And this would be a comparative history of America, and very useful. Railroads are here and railroads are there. We have summer time, but you know who invented summer time? Well, it's Winston Churchill, in the first World War. It's not an American invention. But you see, you believe that many things are American, when in fact they are just in one edition American and in the others, they are quite international. Most things are not American, which you think are American. And a comparative history just tells you so, that the things originated parallel, or equally well in other parts of the world. You have a strange picture of what America all did. For example, in a comparative history, you would learn that Thomas Elva -- Alva Edison is not a scientist, but an inventor, and that he needed 300 years of science in order to make his invention, and that invention depends on a very slow, and patient, sacrificial, unremunerated life of scientists far away from the glories of the day. You worship Thomas Alva Edison without comparing his one-generation

achievement with 250 years of careful preparation in Europe. So you cannot understand your modern, technical world, gentlemen. The atom bomb is not an American fruit. It's the fruit of 300 years of European science and applied by some transported Greek slaves to this country, to this new Rome. And you bought it for money. And now you have it and don't know what to do with it. But the bomb is not an American invention. And it is not a Russian invention, as you well know. They -- they stole the -- the other half of the German scientists who made it.

But that's not pleasant hearing, because gentlemen, in a comparative history, we go beyond the hero-worship. Now you recall, gentlemen, that heroes are the coverup points of the pedigree of the human race. A hero is a man who opens the new way, order, community, and you forget where he learned his trade. You remember that we said of the tribes that they do not explain where the first -- the founder of the tribe came from, where he learned that he had to create a new language, and a new ritual, and a new custom. The modern sects are like that. The Mormons say that -- that Brigham Young did it. But any sect, of course, borrows from Christianity, and has a hard time to explain what happened between the coming of Jesus and the beginning of the sect. The Catholics say, rightly to the Protestants, "You are funny people. You say Luther began the right faith, or Calvin began the right faith. What happened in the meantime? Where did they get their Bible from? Wasn't that the monks who copied faithfully for 1800 years, so that you could still have it?" The Church can always ridicule the sects as being hero-worshipers. There is Mr. Fox -- George Fox, the first Quaker. And there is, {as I said}, Mr. {Schwiegfeld}, the first -- he is the first -- then Menno, Simons Menno, the first Mennonite. There's Mr. Amman, the first Amish man, and so on it goes. And these are all the tribal forms of the tribal Virgin Birth. And that is why the dogma of the Virgin Birth was inserted, to -- to make up for the hero-worship of the pagan. But that's a long story. I am glad to talk to you of this privately, when I have finished this course. But it's very interesting, you see.

The whole dogma of the Christian Church takes sides with the errors of the pre-Christian world. And all tribes believe in the -- Virgin Birth of their tribe, and so you do. You actually believe that they are Americans. Now gentlemen, that's of course not true. In 1620, there was not one American. And if you don't remember this, then you are hero-worshipers of a purely American naturalistic history, where the story begins with the first American, or -- who's the man who crossed the Alleghenies?

(Boone.)

Wie?

[unintelligible]

David Boone, isn't it? And that would be the hero of this country, without ancestors, without tradition. Or Thomas Alva Edison, is a case in point, too, you see. He invented the electric bulb, because he just stole it three months before they did it in -- in Europe. And you believe it. You believe that these three months are the true story. That is, with naturalistic history and -- this can already be cured by a comparative history, gentlemen. But it doesn't land us in universal history. There's more than a Greek story, gentlemen. There's more than a pharaoh --- Egyptian story. There's more than a -- than a tribal paean of self-praise. There is the true story, the Biblical story of America. America also belongs into the Bible. How is this done, then?

I propose to you that the sketch, which I can only deliver, but is so -- you know the facts, and I only have to give you the suggestion that would -- might also comfort you in your present-day troubles. {I'm quite comforted} -- I'm proud of being an American citizen now, and I think I am in the real American history, but I reject the natural history of an America. No newcomer to the United States can be satisfied of being just a naturalized citizen, gentlemen. I am a creature of God. You are, and God didn't begin my life when I landed on these shores. And He didn't begin your life when your parents landed on these shores. Mankind's history is much more connected. It's much more one. And we should be proud that we continue the great struggle of the humanity accidentally on these -- on this beach of America.

And that's why you have to have immigration, gentlemen, because the first generation in this country is the only one that is -- has always kept the America in the universal history of the human race. That's why the McCarran law is a wicked law, because it has made me a citizen, second-class. And that's wicked. I can't go where I like. I am prevented by this law. I -- you don't even know this, that Mr. McCarran has canceled out the religious background of America. The religious background of America is that in every generation, the newcomers remind the people who are here that they are more than Americans. That's a great thing, a great division of labor. You didn't need universities here. You didn't need sciences, and philosophers, and poets to remind you of this. The newcomers, whom you had to welcome in this country, reminded you of this fact, and that was much better than all the wisdom of the Germans, and the French, and the Ox- -- people in Oxford, where this was just expressed in so many words. You had to form a welcome club and make the people at home through Tammany Hall in New York, and they learned how to vote. Don't say anything against Tammany Hall. That is just the most primitive form of making the next generation at home in this country. Very cheap today to scan- -- to be scandalized about Tammany Hall. But they had to do something. Because

500,000 people landed every year in New York. And they had to tell them, "We treat you as brothers, although you are not Americans." And by this fact, whether they were Rome -- Roman Catholics, or Jews, or Greek Orthodox, gentlemen, makes no -- they were Christians, because they recognized that any -- the man who wanted to be mayor of New York had to prove that he was a member of the Church of God and a member of the United States of -- of America. He had to be in Church and state, because to the newcomer, he had to be human, regardless of color, race, and creed, and nationality, long before this man would ever be an American citizen. He had already to be treated as a potential citizen. And I have tried to show you that you are at home in the Church before you are at home in the city, of this earth. And so this has all been enacted here in the greatest possible manner, not with denominations, where people go to church in a stone building, gentlemen. That isn't the church. But the Church is the fact that you and I belong to two worlds.

Have I told you the story of my friend and the Armenians? I think I have. And St. Peter? Have I not?

(No.)

I have a friend, a wonderful person. She has six children, and -- and she was -- studied architecture herself at MIT. She was young -- is now a grandmother. But in 1918 -- '17, there happened the atrocities in Turkey against the Armenians. And most of them were slaughtered. But some 10,000 survived, escaped the massacre. And she got interested in saving them and bringing them to this country. And she went to the State Department and she said, "You have to give these people passports." And they said, "We cannot do this. They haven't applied, and they haven't a letter of conduct. And they have not -- they have no recommendation from their embassy," and so on.

And she said, "How can they? They are massacred in Turkey. They are at war with Turkey. Are you crazy? They have to come."

They said, "No."

She said, "But they have to come."

The official got nervous, of course, and irritated. And said, "But they can't, Madam. And what are you going to do, anyway?"

"Oh," she said. "It's very simple. You are going to die."

The man was very {smart}, and had to admit it.

And she said, "And I will be there when you come to see St. Peter about your -- about your entrance into a certain place. And I'll tell him, `Don't let him into Heaven. He hasn't let the Armenians in, either.'"

And they got in, the Armenians.

And so, 30 years ago, this country still had for an official in the government this double passport in Heaven and on earth. Don't laugh, gentlemen, because you have lost that. I cannot appeal to you in this same manner. You won't give me a passport for the Armenians. You will say the FBI forbids it. And you have been impoverished. You are all monists. That is, you live in one world only. Nobody can live in one world only, gentlemen. What is the other world? The other world is the world -- or the other way, the other way, the Christian way is perfectly indifferent to the failure or success of the -- of the secular way. The official felt that at that moment if he was fired for giving the passport, that was an honor. That was an honor! For- -- before, he had said, "I'm afraid. They might fire me," you see. And she made him see that it was a great honor to be fired for such a -- at such an occasion. And that is the story of failure as victory. And that is the only reason why you have to be at home in state and Church. If you cannot from your heart suddenly see that what the country calls defeat is your greatest success, you have ceased to be -- live in the Christian era. You live on the clannish, or on the Egyptian, or the Jewish, or the Greek road. And you have no longer the right to say that you are a modern person of our era.

Gentlemen, the -- the United States began with an errand in the wilderness, as the fine fleur, as we say in cooking, as the quintessence, the finest perfection of Christianity in the Old World. America's history begins in Europe, and it begins in the history of the Christian Church. And it has absolutely nothing to do with geography, and has very little to do with the discovery of America by Christoph Columbus. And that's therefore rightly so that we do not date the history of America into the year 1492, but in 1620. That is, the "Mayflower" is actually more important than Christoph Columbus. Why, gentlemen? Because the future rewrites the past. I have tried to show you that the past is that part of the future which has already been achieved. Nothing else. The rest is dead. It's natural history. Who cares for the diluvium? That's dead, that's gone. But we -- you and I -- must know those facts of the past which have begun that which is our own destiny. Obviously we couldn't continue if you do not learn English, and writing, and prayer, and building cities. Then we cannot continue and do better. Gentlemen, history is that part of the past which has started the future. Your and my future, understand. Therefore, nobody could found America who had no future. The Pilgrim fathers were one of the earliest who had a future in their heart. They came here, remember, the people -- you in 57 -- they came to America to teach the people in Europe how to live the good life. That is, gentle-

men, they were a hothouse for the final life in Europe. That was called their errand in the wilderness. You remember, in 57, when we read "The Errand in the Wilderness." Ja?

Will you take down, gentlemen, that the 17th century has Christians reform the Christian Church in Europe on the soil of America. That is the first chapter in American history as a universal history. Now you get this tremendous contrast, gentlemen. The wilderness, physically, or in the -- and spiritually, let us use the term that has later rightly been used. Every man came to this country in the 17th century -- not every man, but most -- were latter-day saints. I expressedly use this term, which good American, regardless of the Mormons. It includes all the people who came here. They were the latter-day saints. They built on the first church a new -- new perfection. You have to raise the term "latter-day saints" to a much more comprehensive meaning than these people in Utah. The whole American attitude was latter -- to be latter-day saints. And the -- Brigham Young just, so to speak, narrowed it down, to his ladies from Sweden and Denmark whom he got there for polygamy.

This isn't the story. If you understand me right, let me put it in -- in -- in brackets. But you -- perhaps you understand that I want you just to sit -- take stock what America really stands for. America is latter-day sanity, latter-day saintliness. Latter-day. That is, based on the disappointments with Church and state in Europe, and {with} the saying that this is a New World -- but not a new world of prairies -- but a world in which every man would be a member of a church and of a state. The word "world" is a very unfortunate word, gentlemen. And I'll come back to this next time. Latter-day saints, gentlemen, in a new world. That's the 17th century. And make it clear, gentlemen, by your writing it down in your notes that the word "world" is so ambiguous. I'll explain to you the -- the horrid consequences of your no longer understanding what the word "world" mean -- means in the na- -- in the -- in the mouth of a Puritan, in the mouth of a pioneer. Something quite different from what you call -- call "world."

So my time is up. And you -- I have only tried to show you, gentlemen, that the universal history of America begins in Europe. Naturalistic history begins with the bodies of the people thrown into the sea, because they fell seasick. And the comparative history in between is indecisive. It can be this way or the other. It is neither naturalistic nor universal.