INTEGRATIVE LEVELS 



irrational and expression to the inexpressible, was an amazing pheno- 

 menon. The quarrels of theologians, orthodox and heretical alike, 

 over words, letters, or even accents, in their formulations, were 

 understandable enough, once certain premises were granted. The 

 wonderful poetry of the liturgies carried symbolism to a point of 

 daring surely hardly reached by any other great religion. Now it 

 so happened that in the course of time he found himself influenced 

 successively by two (still living) divines, W. R. Inge, the former 

 Dean of St. Paul's, and Conrad Noel, for many years vicar of Thaxted 

 in Essex.^ It is true that they were but vehicles for the teaching of 

 greater than they; Plotinus in the first case, Isaiah in the second. 

 And it was after having experienced a profound attraction for the 

 great tradition of christian mysticism that he came to feel, in the 

 light of the prophetic and apocalyptic tradition, that the former was 

 almost the evil genius of religion. 



For the ancient Mediterranean thinkers, the world, which had 

 neither beginning nor ending, was growing neither better nor worse. 

 It has been powerfully argued (e.g. by Glover^) that the major con- 

 tribution of Christianity, and one of the principal reasons why it 

 vanquished its competitors among the religions of the Roman empire, 

 was precisely that it introduced change and hope into the stagnating 

 sameness of the ancient world. But when asceticism, probably of 

 Indian origin, outbalanced this new belief in the significance of time, 

 the Neo-platonists, whether pagan or christian, had every reason 

 they needed for turning away from the world and embarking on the 

 ecstasies of the mystical contemplation of the One. "The intelligible 

 world," writes Inge,^ expounding Plotinus, "is timeless and spaceless, 

 and contains the archetypes of the sensible world. The sensible world 

 is our view of the intelligible world. When we say it does not exist, we 

 mean that we shall not always see it in this form. The 'Ideas' are the 

 ultimate form in which things are regarded by Intelligence, or God. 

 Nods is described as at once oraGis and KivrjGLs, that is, it is unchanging 

 itself, but the whole cosmic process, which is ever in flux, is eternally 



^ Conrad Noel's books, Byways of Belief (London, 19 12); The Battle of the Flags 

 (London, 1922); Life of Jesus (London, 1937); and Jesus the Heretic (London, 1939), 

 deserve to be even more widely known than they are, but his influence spread far and 

 wide by the compellingness of his preaching and the exceptional beauty and grace of 

 the Liturgy as celebrated at Thaxted. 



^ Glover, T. R., The Conflict of Religions in the Early Roman Empire (London, 1919). 



^ W. R. Inge, Christian Mysticism (London, 1921), p. 95; see also his Philosophy of 

 Plotinus (London, 1929). 



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