IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE LIGHT…

In my previously posted entries (Kaballah As Advocatus Christi/January 15, 2011; Sefirot/May 14, 2012; etc.), I noted an incredible symbiotic relationship between Christian theology and Lurianic Kaballah, to the point where Isaac Luria virtually makes the otherwise impossibly difficult concepts of the Divinity of Christ and of the Trinity comprehensible through such Kaballistic concepts as Gvul, Tzimtzum, and the Sefirot. Here is another such entry, where the Lurianic vision of the Creation is reconciled with the Torah account through the Christian Gospel of John. In other words, I compare the Biblical Story of Creation to the Creation fantasy of Isaac Luria, in whose account Creation is accomplished by a Beam of Divine Light. Was that Light God’s first creation (in which case, this is in direct contradiction with the Biblical sequence of events (In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light, and there was light!), or was that Beam of Light God Himself, in which case there should be no apparent contradiction?

The Bible is conspicuously straightforward in its account of the first steps of Creation. The heaven and the earth were created first, in darkness, and the light came next. There are some very interesting implications of this, which I will have a chance to explore, whenever I get to work on this section, as I shall consolidate all bits and pieces about Creation possibly in one long entry, and develop this line of thinking much-much further. But first, here is a more accurate retelling of Isaac Luria’s (1534-1572) mystical tale, as quoted in my entry The Legend Of Tikkun Olam (posted on this blog on April 30, 2012), in the Tikkun Olam section:

The God of Infinity, Ein Sof, withdraws into Himself (tzimtzum), in order to make room for the Creation, which occurs by a beam of light from the Infinite, into the newly provided space. Later, the divine light is enclosed in finite vessels, most of which break under the strain and this shevirat ha-kelim (the breaking of the vessels) catastrophe as it occurs paves the way, so to speak, for disharmony and evil to enter the world. Hence comes the struggle to free the world from evil and to accomplish the redemption of both the cosmos and history.

There is no doubt that Luria’s poetic account of Creation is in itself a wonderfully beautiful and thoughtful allegory. It would be a tremendous loss, should it be condemned to dismissal, for not squaring up with the story in the Bible, and my challenge here is to harmonize them, thus reassuring their compatibility.

And therefore, here is my principal harmonization argument. How about these opening lines of The Gospel According to John? These lines are known to all devout Christians by heart, but it would be most instructive to look at the familiar lines from a special angle:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

The same was in the beginning with God.
All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.
In him was life; and the life was the light of men.
And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not.
There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.
The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all men through him might believe.
He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light.
That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.
He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not.
He came unto his own, and his own received him not. (John 1:1-11.)

Ask any Christian, and they will tell you that Jesus Christ was that Word and that Light. But Jesus Christ in Christian theology was (and is) God, eternal and pre-existent to the Creation. For this reason, we may say with equal truthfulness to John’s 1:1 that “In the beginning was the Light, and the Light was with God, and the Light was God.” Now, the reader will be well advised to compare Isaac Luria’s account of Creation with the parallel account in the Gospel of John, and further with the standard account in formal Christian theology of the role of Jesus in the process of Creation, to be struck with a stunning consistent similarity between them.

But, of course, legitimate questions remain. What about the created light, and how does Lucifer fit into this picture? I will argue that we are talking about two kinds of light, and the created light must be, in principle, distinguished from the eternal Light, who is God.

In conclusion, I am delighted to make another philosophical connection, this time between the Bible and an adage from Goethe. In John 12:46, Jesus says: “I am come a light into the world, that whosoever believeth on me should not abide in darkness.” Here it is again, that uncreated light which is so consistent with Rabbi Luria’s original Beam of Light, in his version of Creation.

In the Bible, Jesus comes into the world to let the world see the light, so that now there is no excuse for the unilluminated ones to abide in darkness. And here is Goethe’s adage, from Goetz von Berlichingen: “Where the light is brightest the shadows are deepest.” Indeed, there is no deeper darkness than the darkness which persists in the presence of light. The philosophical battle lines are sharply drawn, as Jesus says, in Matthew 12:30 and in Luke 11:23, that “he that is not with me is against me.”

There is no gentle chiaroscuro here. Just the stark contrast of bright light and dark shadows.