is and was and is to come

 

Some philosophy, for World Philosophy Day.

Revelation1.4-8 and John 18.33-37.

This coming Sunday is the Feast of Christ the King, the culmination of the Church year.

The Lectionary texts are two extracts from the writing of John, who had been apprenticed to rabbi Jesus. The first is from a vision he has as an elderly man, in which God is twice referred to as the one who is and who was and who is to come. This speaks to identity. A similar construction is employed by the author of the Letter to the Hebrews in relation to Jesus – Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and for ever – where the same is best understood as referring to self as opposed to suggesting unchanging: he is the same Jesus, whom we are told, by the biographer Luke, grew in stature and understand and in favour with God and people.

The other extract is an account of the questioning of Jesus by Pontius Pilate, fifth governor of the Roman province of Judea, in which Pilate asks Jesus if he believes himself to be the king of the Jews, and Jesus responds that he was born to testify to the truth. This also speaks to identity, to the way in which others perceived Jesus (and perceived how still others perceived Jesus) and how Jesus understood himself.

When we speak of the self, we are speaking of three distinct but related Selfs.

Self 1 refers to first-person self-awareness in the present moment. We develop this within the first year of our life, and never lose it, regardless of mental impairment. Self 1 has agency, to turn against itself or to be compassionate towards itself. But it has no access to the past (unlike Self 2, Self 1 is not touched by historic trauma, nor historic love) or the future: it exists in the present moment only. We possess Self 1 because we are made in the likeness of God who is.

Self 2 pertains to our characteristics and attributes, and refers to our perception of these, of ourselves. We are not necessarily reliable witnesses to our own identity: though John records that Jesus is the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead. Self 2 changes through time, changes many times over our lives: Alpha and Omega, the one who sets out on a Way, and walks it to completion. We construct Self 2 through stories that we tell ourselves (and perhaps, though not necessarily, others) to make sense of our values and regrets, and we may deconstruct these stories when they no longer serve us, and construct a new Self 2 (birth after death).

Self 3 refers to social personae. Unlike the other two, Self 3 can only exist in relation to, and only be constructed through interactions with, other people. You cannot be a witness without someone to bear witness before. You cannot be a king without subjects. You cannot be a priest without a deity.

We possess Self 2 and Self 3 because we are made in the likeness of God who was and who is to come.

To say that God is, is to say that God knows godself in the present moment, regardless of whether God is acknowledged by the world or not.

To say that God was, is to say that God has revealed his character to us in ways that have unfolded, and that this character is faith-fully revealed in the person of Jesus, the divine human, who shared our common life, rooted in a particular society in a particular moment. As we have noted, this is to say that God is not a static Self, but, rather, God is faithful in loving us and in freeing us from our sins, from whatever holds us in captivity, whether personal or systemic, throughout history and across culture.

Just as to say God was, so also to say that God is to come, is a socially constructed statement: Look! He is coming with the clouds; every eye will see him. A king and his kingdom (that is, subjects) also acknowledged by other kings and kingdoms.

What, then, does it mean to say that God (and Jesus in union with God) is and was and is to come, in the context of the Roman Empire, or in the context of a twenty first century world teetering on global war?

Ultimately, it is to unite ourselves to him: our first-person self-awareness rooted in the first-person self-awareness of God; our self-perception being illuminated (our illusions disillusioned) by Jesus the faithful witness; and our lives, primarily understood as citizens of the kingdom of heaven, being handed over to the kings of the earth as instruments attuned to the truth.

This, it seems to me at least, is often and in many ways far from what we see in the Church. Which is why we must be brought back to him who is and was and is to come, again and again.