Further Reflections on Christianity

It has been said by Christ that a house divided against itself cannot stand, and that it must fall. He was, of course, in this context, speaking of Satan. “Every kingdom divided against itself is headed for destruction, and no city or house divided against itself will stand. If Satan drives out Satan, he is divided against himself. How then will his kingdom stand?” (Mathew, 12:25-27). This verse is, of course, extremely important. But what comes next is even more important; “anyone who is not with me is against me, and anyone who does not gather with me scatters… people will be forgiven every sin and blasphemy, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. Whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man, it will be forgiven him; but whoever speaks against the holy spirit, it will not be forgiven him, either in this age or in the one to come.” (12:30-32).

But what, exactly, is the Holy Spirit? The Holy Spirit is the event that shatters the natural order of things, the event that “cracks history in two,” to paraphrase Nietzsche. To quote the Marxist philosopher Slavoj Zizek, “Christianity introduced into this global balanced cosmic order a principle that is totally foriegn to it, a principle which, measured by the standards of pagan cosmology, cannot but appear as a monstrous distortion; the principle according to which each individual has immediate access to universality (of nirvana, of the Holy Spirit, or, today, of human rights and freedoms): I can participate in this universal dimension directly, irrespective of my place within the global social order.” (The Fragile Absolute, 111).

However, this is not something that can be done alone. It requires others. It requires love. “For where two or three gather together in my name, I am there.” (Mathew 18:20). We are not to interpret this in the vulgar sense of the idea of Jesus being there, we are to interpret it literally; his spirit, the Holy Spirit of God, is literally there when there is love among men (which is always in his name). It is a love that must reject everything in favor of the Holy Spirit, i.e. universality, in order to truly be one with it. “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and his mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters - yes, even his own life - he cannot be my disciple.” (Luke 14:26). What this means is this; you must reject your relations with others that are based in this world, reject your love for your mother as your mother, your father as your father, etc, in order to embrace them and love them as children of God, that is, directly, as who they truly are. This is further affirmed by the famous verse from Saint Paul, There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." (Galatians 3:28). This is a call not only to reject the various different philosophical and mystical ways of coming to conclusions that are propounded by both the jewish-mystic and greek-philosophical outlook, but is also a call to reject the positions and labels that have been thrusted upon you in life in order to enter into the presence of the Holy Spirit.

It is here that we come to the topic of witch hunts. Witch hunts, such as the one depicted in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, were never really about witches; they were, and still are, about suppressing the humanity of the other. Seemingly innocuous things - singing, dancing, playing with each other, both in a sexual and non sexual way - things which are completely normal and human, become signs of something dark and nefarious. These universal signs of humanity become evil, forbidden, and when partaken in, they can become evidence that is used to condemn the other; in this case, the other is woman and femininity; it is this environment of psychological terror and oppression that is the exact opposite of the materiality of the Holy Spirit.

We see this desire for universality and its immediate negation in exclamation uttered by Abigail, after Tibutta has confessed to witchcraft. It is as follows; “I want to open myself! . . . I want the light of God, I want the sweet love of Jesus! I danced for the Devil; I saw him, I wrote in his book; I go back to Jesus; I kiss His hand. I saw Sarah Good with the Devil! I saw Goody Osburn with the Devil! I saw Bridget Bishop with the Devil!” It is in this moment that Abigail expresses her desire to be brought into the universal (“I want to open myself! I want the light of God, I want the sweet light of Jesus,”) while in the same moment denying that same principle by condemning her peers to be excluded from it. 

It is precisely for this reason that Abigail cannot be brought into the universal, for while wishing it for herself, she excludes others. “Universality for me, but not for thee,” one could say. In fact, if she truly wished to be brought into the Holy Spirit, she would have had to, in a dialectical sleight of hand, deny Christ in the name of her friends, and be condemned with them, in an act of sacrificial solidarity. 

Such an act would be, despite in verbal denial of Christ, be more Christian than the action she chose to take, which results in her salvation but the condemnation of her friends. For it is here that we must remember, the love of the Holy Spirit is precisely that which rejects all present things in favor of itself, in favor of the presence of love and solidarity among human beings. In general, the message of the Crucible can be summed up as follows: it is better to be damned together than it is to be saved alone, for true salvation lies not in ourselves, but in the love, presence and acceptance of the other. This is best expressed in John Proctor’s words at the end of the play; “Because it is my name! Because I cannot have another in my life! Because I lie and sign myself to lies! Because I am not worth the dust on the feet of them that hang! How may I live without my name? I have given you my soul; leave me my name!”

Proctor could confess and save himself from the gallows, but he cannot, not only because it is not true, but because it would not be right to damn his fellow prisoners to death so that he himself may live, and thus, he does not confess, and he dies among his fellow men. But he dies as a Christian, a man of the Holy Spirit, and is that not all any of us could ask for, both atheist and theist alike?