Many Paths—One God
By the Rev’d Dr. Robert Darwin Crouse
“There is one true and living God, in knowledge of whom is eternal life, in whose service is perfect freedom.”
It is the thirst for that knowledge and that freedom, it is that desire for God which - whether acknowledged or merely implicit - underlies and impels every quest of the human spirit.
“All men by nature desire to know,” says Aristotle, in the first line of his Metaphysics. But what it is that they desire to know? They long to know the reasons of things, the causes, the truth of things; finally, to know that truth by which and in which all truths are true. What are all our sciences, what are all our fragments of knowledge but droplets from that fountain of which we long to drink in its fulness? “My soul is athirst for God,” cries the Psalmist, “yea, even for the living God.” (Ps. 42:2). Thus, Aristotle’s Metaphysics finds its culmination in the magnificent theology of Book Lambda.
What is our quest for happiness, but a desire for the good? And what is that good we seek - whether knowledge or not - but some participation in that pure and perfect good which is God himself? What is our quest for liberty, but our longing for God’s own city, the heavenly Jerusalem, which is above, and is free, and is the mother of us all? “My soul hath a desire and longing to enter into the courts of the Lord: my heart and my flesh rejoice in the living God.” (Ps. 42:2)
What is our quest for beauty, but a longing for that pure and perfect beauty which belongs to Sion? And what are all our fragmentary images of beauty, whether in painting or sculpture or poetry or music, or whatever human arts, but pallid reflections of the unimaginable beauty of the countenance of God? “My heart hath talked of thee, Seek ye my face: thy face Lord, will I seek.” (Ps. 27:9)
All human desire, all human longing and aspiration, expressed in a thousand different forms, at a thousand different levels, is ultimately desire for God. St. Augustine makes that point at the outset of his Confessions: “It is thou, O God, who dost rouse mankind to delight in praising thee, for thou has made us for thyself, and our hearts are restless, until they find their rest in thee” (Confessions I, 1.) It is the restless heart, “the concreated and everlasting thirst for God’s own realm,” (Dante, Paradiso, II, 19-20) that is the impulse of every quest.
In the history of literature and religious life, the universal metaphor of that quest is the path, the way, the road. At the beginning of Greek literature, for instance, there is the figure of Odysseus, whose very name means “wayfarer”. He is one who takes the road: the odos, which leads him from the ruined city, through horrendous strife and perils, to his home. Plato, in the Republic, explicates the inner meaning of that journey in his image of the upward path from the darkness of the cave to the clear illumination of the sun.
For the Hebrew people, the definitive image is the road which leads from Egypt, through the Red Sea, through the trials of the wilderness, to the Promised land of peace and liberty: an image, in turn, of the inner journey of the human spirit. For the medieval Christian, likewise, a central metaphor of religious life is the road of pilgrimage: to Jerusalem, or Rome, or Compostella - a symbol of the mind’s journey into God. Dante, coming to himself “nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita” (Inferno I, 1), “in the middle of the road of our life,” is instructed that he must take a different road (“altro viaggio”: 1, 90) if he is ever to escape from the wasteland in which he finds himself.
Many paths - one God. But are all paths equally viable or efficacious? Dante, in the Convivio (IV, 12) after an eloquent account of the many forms and levels of the quest for God, continues:
Truly, this road is lost by error, just as earthly roads are lost. For just as from one city to another there is necessarily one best and most direct way, and another which always detours and goes in the wrong direction, and many others which more or less divert, or more or less head towards the goal, just so in human life there are diverse roads, of which one is most true, another most false, and others more or less true or false. And as we see that the most direct road leads to the city, fulfils desire, and gives rest after toil, and that which goes the opposite way can never satisfy or give rest, just so it happens in our life: the good wayfarer reaches the goal and has rest, he who mistakes the way never arrives, but with much striving of soul gazes ever onwards with longing eyes.
It is possible that some paths are simply false, or lead only to tragic conclusions? Might the journey be only (as Arthur Rimbaud put it) the path of a drunken boat tossed upon waters of chaos? (“Le Bateau Ivre”) Is it possible that, as Franz Kafka decided, “there is a goal, but no way; what we call wayfaring is only wavering”? (The Great Wall of China). As if, as St. Augustine says of the noblest Platonists, that they see the land of peace, as if they were upon a hilltop beyond a wooded valley and can find no road of access (Confessions VII: 21)?
The claim of Jesus to be “the way (odos), the truth, and the life” is undoubtedly an exclusive claim: “No one cometh to the Father but by me” (Jn 14:6). Yet his claim is also inclusive, for he is the divine logos, “the light who illumines everyone who comes into the world” (Jn. 1:9), and he does not deny the truth implicit in the ancient Law, or in the wisdom of the Greeks. There are many false paths, many perversions of human desire and aspiration which lead to hell; but there are also relatively true paths, whose implicit truth is fulfilled or completed as they converge in that one path of mediation between God and man, that “new and living path (odos: Heb 10:20) which is Christ Jesus (c.f. St. Thomas’ account of the salvific significance of fides implicita: St. Thomas II, II, 2, 7)
Many paths - one God. There are many paths which lead to Christ, the living way. There are also many paths which lead to false gods and perdition, and the Articles of Religion (Article XVIII) sharply warn us against the perilous presumption of a sophistic relativism which refuses to discriminate:
They also are to be had accursed that presume to say that every man shall be saved by the Law or Sect which he professeth, to that he be diligent to frame his life according to that Law and the light of Nature. For holy Scripture doth set out unto us only the Name of Jesus Christ, whereby men must be saved.