Norms and Nobility: United in Christ

Had I read a bit further {or remembered my reading from a year ago}, I would have seen that Hicks makes the same points I made about Christ as the logos {only better, naturally}. In fact, I have a hunch that I only made the points I made because I read this a year ago, forgot about it, but the ideas took hold, oddly enough, and surfaced once again upon my reading of Chapter II Part I.

Only giving credit where credit it due here.

Anyhow, I thought a good way to wrap up this chapter would be to review what Hicks said so well. Hicks is not favoring myth {story} alone, nor is he promoting reason {logos} alone. Rather, he is pointing out that we have, as a culture, run fully into the arms of Rationality and not only left out myth, but condemned it. To this, Hicks asks the question:

Would such a reasoning method tell [man] the truth about himself, or would it force man to label himself incorrectly as a programmed mechanism, so that scientific analysis would remain the preeminent means of studying him?

I don’t want to belabor this point any further, so I will move on by saying that we know not only by the manifestation of Christ, but by His nature, certain things are true about man. For starters, we know that a purely rational approach to man is inappropriate, as Christ, the ultimate Man, the Ideal Type, if you will, was a unity of the mythos and logos. This is why we see, after His resurrection, Christ walking with his followers and using the entirety of Scripture to explain Himself.

It was C. S. Lewis who said:

I believe in Christ like I believe in the sun, not that I have seen Him, but that by Him I see all things.

By Him I see all things. This points to the importance of keeping Christ central, even in our discussions of educational approaches.

Hicks says:

One of the most luminous metaphors of all time, Saint John’s use of the logos to describe Christ, rests on this paradox. Christ, the inward thought or reason, anticipated creation; Christ, the expressor of the inward thought or reason, created; and Christ, the naked aboriginal word itself, became flesh and dwelt among men to become the myth incarnate. Christian faith shares this mystery with language: it is impossible to ascribe a beginning to the word that is not at once denotative and connotative, material and immaterial, temporal and eternal, finite and infinite.

And thus ends my thoughts on Chapter 2. Or rather, David Hicks’ thoughts.

Amen.