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Llull's speech would have been aimed at the leaders and scholars of
the community, rather than at the general congregation. This is
attested from what we know of his approach to the Muslims on his
missionary trips to north Africa, where he tended to try and find the
local wise men entering into debate with them, in the hope that
convincing them of the truth of Christianity would lead the masses to
convert as well. It is also clear that Llull wished to engage in
debate with those who were themselves trying to fathom the essence of
the Godhead. Jewish mysticism, or Kabbalah, as it is more commonly
referred to, was based on secret teachings passed from teacher to
disciple over a long period of time which surfaced in the thirteenth
century as a theosophical approach to Judaism. It dealt with the
essence of the Godhead and the nature of the relationship between En
sof (`Infinity'), the transcendent, unknowable, unchanging
divine essence and creation. One of the main doctrines of this
theosophical system was the ten sefirot (`divine attributes'),
which emanated at a certain moment from En Sof and through them
emerged the creation. The sefirot were the vehicle by which God
revealed himself in the world and hence posited a more immediate and
immanent relationship between the Divine and creation. These sefirot
were also a ladder of ascent and descent from the creation to the
Divine and vice versa.[60] It was with the spiritual leaders of
the community in Barcelona who upheld these doctrines, that Llull
wanted to engage, firmly believing that he would be able to convince
them of the necessity of a Trinity in the Godhead using his doctrine
of the correlatives.[61]
The following is a reconstruction of what Llull might possibly have
said to the Jews in the synagogue of Barcelona:
As is customary I will start with a prayer. God, who gives us
grace, please open the hearts of my audience so that they remember,
understand and will love this sermon, so that they will merit being in
the light of your glory in paradise.[62]
Although I am standing here in front of you in the synagogue where you
are accused of blaspheming the name of Jesus,[63] I have not come
to coerce you into converting, but to have an open debate on the nature
of our respective faiths, and to demonstrate to you how the differences
between us stem from misunderstanding what we Christians believe about
the Godhead. We are accused of believing in three gods, when in
truth we believe, just like you, in one God with one
essence.[64] I have not come here to try and prove to you that you
do not understand the Holy Scriptures which prefigure the coming of
Jesus, born of the blessed virgin Mary, as to argue from authority
will achieve nothing. But, I want us to empty our minds of all
preconceptions and have our memory, intellect and our will wanting to
remember, understand and love the essence of the one God who must by
necessity be three.[65]
Both you and I know and recognise that God must be the greatest of
all beings. If we talk about something being perfect, then we have to
consider the most perfect thing that we can conceive, not being able to
conceive anything more perfect, that perfection is God. This is the
same for all the other terms that we use to describe things. At the
point beyond which we cannot conceive anything else, we will find
God. Because God is beyond our comprehension, both you and I use
terminology that can help us comprehend His being. I call them
dignities, you refer to them as sefirot. These are the revealed faces
of the Godhead and each is in and is equal to the other. There can be
no inequality within the Godhead, hence each of these dignities must
be equal to, and include all of the others.[66]
We agree that God is eternal, and being eternal means that he has no
beginning, middle or end, nor can there be any contrariety in him,
for he is the most perfect of all beings. We also agree that creation
must signify its creator and that man is the created being which most
closely resembles the creator being the pinnacle of that creation.
The world of creation signifies the creator in that a trinitarian
structure is visible in everything. Let us take man as an example.
Man has a body and a soul but without the conjunction of the two man
would be unable to be in being. The anima - the
intellectual soul - too is divided into three for without this division
it would be unable to function in the manner best fitting the
intellect. The memory remembers, so that the intellect understands
and the will can then love or hate according to the nature of the thing
being intellectualised. If this is so, then within the Godhead,
there must also be a threefold division, because if three is the number
which concords best in man and creation, how much more so in God, in
whom everything concords and in whom there is no contrariety.[67]
Understand that in the one essence of the Godhead there must
necessarily exist a trinity of relationship, because without this the
world could not have come into existence. And if I ask you what God
was doing before creation, how can you answer this question without
recourse to a Trinity? It is impossible for God to have ever been
idle (ociosa ) , because being idle goes against His goodness,
greatness, eternity etc. and would mean that there was a beginning.
If there was a beginning that implies change in the Godhead, and we
all agree that there has never been any change in the Godhead. That
must imply that there was eternal activity in the Godhead before the
world was created. For there to be eternal activity there has to be
something to be acted upon as well as the actor and the act itself. If
it was impossible to distinguish between these three elements, then
there could be no activity. If we take God's goodness (bonea) then
within this dignity, in order that God's goodness will be that thing
by reason of which good does good, there must be bonificant,
bonificabile, and bonificar; the actor, the acted upon and the act
itself. It is the same for all the other divine dignities. It is
this that we Christians refer to as the Holy Trinity. The Trinity
are the names by which we reflect this eternal activity that must take
place in the divine so that there could be creation. The Father is
the actor who is in eternal relationship with the Son who is acted upon
and the Holy Spirit is the eternal act between the Father and Son.
These are names which describe a relationship of eternal
activity.[68]
Think, Jews, allow your intellects to forget
pre-conceived notions and allow your souls to engage with
this idea, receiving it, understanding it, and allow your souls to
comprehend the deep and true being of the Godhead so that you can
arrive at true love.
I will demonstrate this with an exemplum, for exempla open the heart
of the stubborn and give pleasure to the imagination so that the
intellectual soul can understand that which lies behind the story, to
know serve and love God:
There was a hermit who lived for many years on a mountain top
contemplating God. One night, while sitting outside looking up into
the heavens he pondered as to what God had been doing before creation.
He realised that God had no body and that God could not be a
circular, quadrangular, or triangular being because he could not
imagine God as one of those corporal shapes. However, not
withstanding this, he decided that if God could not be one of those
geometrical shapes then God could not have been doing anything before
creation as everything in creation revolves around these shapes. The
hermit, disheartened, felt that he had been deceived and that he had
been wasting his life living on a mountain away from people, fasting
and praying, for he now considered that if God had not been doing
anything before creation there was obviously no afterlife either. As
dawn broke, the hermit decided to leave the mountain and to go and
enjoy the worldly pleasures that he had denied himself. As he
descended from his mountain top, he entered a glade with a lovely tree
and a fountain, and a bird sitting in the tree asked him where he was
going. The hermit told the bird what had happened and explained the
conclusions he had reached. He was about to continue on his way when
the bird asked him whether he would sit down under the tree and listen
to a story. The hermit agreed, and the bird told him the following
story:
A Christian and Saracen (Muslim) were discussing and contemplating
God. The Christian asked the Saracen where the voluntat (will) of
God was before creation. The Muslim answered that it was in amant,
amable, and amar. The Christian then asked the Muslim: Is there
any distinction between these three things? The Muslim answered no.
The Christian said, according to that logic, if there is no
distinction then voluntat cannot be in them and if there was nowhere for
voluntat to be, then it could not have been doing anything. To this
the Muslim replied that voluntat was in itself. The Christian
asked, was it in itself without amant, amable, and amar ? For if it
was without the three it would have been idle! The Muslim replied,
no, it was together with all the three. The Christian said that the
three amant, amable, and amar could not be in voluntat without
distinction between them because it would be impossible to talk about
three, two, one or any number, only voluntat alone, and again
voluntat would be without content. To this the Muslim could not
respond. The Christian continued, the same thing can be said about
God's bonea as well. What was God's bonea doing before the world
was created? The Muslim was unwilling to say that it was in
bonificant, bonificabile and bonificar because he could not admit to
the generation of divine powers as this would suggest plurality, so he
answered that bonea was in itself without bonificant, bonificabile and
bonificar. Then the Christian said; if that was the case then bonea
would be idle and empty of granea (greatness) of poder (power) and
of fi (finality). Without power because in itself and in others it
would have no power, neither would others have power in it or of it.
Empty or without finality because nothing good could emerge from it.
Thus was the Muslim defeated by reason of the necessary divine
generation that the Christian had proved to him.
The hermit hearing this story realised how stupid he had been in trying
to comprehend God in physical shapes, not understanding that God was
a spiritual subject in the same way that voluntat which is in amant,
amable, and amar and bonea in bonificant, bonificabile and bonificar
are spiritual not corporal. Thus the hermit contemplated and
understood that in God there had always been eternal activity and he
returned rejuvenated and filled with greater love of God to his
hermitage.[69]
So, Jews, you should understand that in God there must be a
Trinity, so that the world could come into existence, and this
Trinity of relationship is to be found throughout creation and in man
himself. There is concordance between you Jews and us Christians in
that God is spiritual existence not physical and that He is the cause
of all that comes into being. There is no need for there to be
contrariety between us at all, because you like I agree that the
transcendent God, of whom we can have no comprehension, reveals
himself to us through his dignities or sefirot, and while we all
understand creation to emerge from these dignities, we must also agree
that within these dignities or sefirot there must be eternal action
allowing this creation to take place. This is the Trinity about which
you have been so stubborn and about which there has been so much
discord.
Listen and understand this next section which is for those of more
sublime understanding, who have intellectualised and willed to
comprehend what has gone before.[70] There is perfect equality
between all the dignities of the Godhead and each of the dignities is
composed of and includes all the others. There is a ladder of being
(scala naturae) which descends from the Godhead through creation,
each rung of which has within it the imprint of the divine dignities
with their inherent trinitarian structure.[71] Let your memories
remember, your intellects understand and your wills love this notion
which is the same for what you refer to as the sefirot. The sefirot
are the revealed faces of the divine while also being for you, a ladder
of being, the descent from the Godhead to creation. You also say
that each of the sefirot is equal and is composed of all the others and
we have already demonstrated how there must be a Trinity in each
dignity. So from necessary reason, it is proved how there is a
trinitarian structure in all levels of being.
If you contemplate this and understand how this inner relationship in
the dignities exists in every level of creation, then you will also
understand the Incarnation and how this trinitarian relationship in all
levels of being allows us Christians to affirm that there was no change
in the Godhead and that God could be both God and man.[72]
So, Jews, you will be lead from the path of error that you have
followed and which will lead you to eternal damnation, to love the true
God one in three and three in one which path leads to eternal glory.
* I would like to express my gratitude to the Fundación Xavier de
Salas for inviting me to participate in this conference, and to the
very special group of Lullian scholars who listened, criticised and
offered advice and encouragement.
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