Glorification

By Nathaniel Dandridge Pendleton
1941

Part III
THE GLORIFICATION OF THE RATIONAL

II. THE HUMAN

"And Abraham called the name of his son that was born to him, whom Sarah bare to him, Isaac." (Genesis 21: 3.)

When the promise was given Abraham that Sarah should bear him a son, he laughed. When this was told to Sarah, she also laughed. When, therefore, the son was born, he was named "laughter" (Isaac), to signify the outstanding affection on the occasion. And the affection signifies the essential quality of that which Isaac represents, namely, the rational mind; in this case, the Divine rational which was born with the Lord after the purification of the maternal human - after the first rational, signified by Ishmael, had come to birth and some maturity of development - after the first rational had come to birth in the way of men, that is, by an influx from the internal into the affection of the sciences. This was represented by the fact that Ishmael was born of Abraham by the Egyptian handmaid Hagar, who represented the affection of the sciences - the love of learning, which is instinctive in man, and which is the means whereby man in time develops the powers of his rational mind. It is obvious that without knowledges derived through the senses and without the love thereof no rational of any kind can be developed; moreover, that the kind and quality of the rational subsequently formed is determined in a marked degree by the nature of the knowledges so obtained.

It is so with every man, and it was the same with the Lord, since He was born according to the order of nature and in the way of all men. With Him, therefore, this first or Ishmael mind was formed by and on the basis of the knowledges which He loved and learned, - a mind which derived its inmost essence and its power of being by an influx from above, or from the Divine within, called the internal man, although this influx was first mothered by knowledges coming from without through the senses, that is, by the Egyptian handmaid.

This first rational, with its characteristic powers and peculiar temper, is of a passing or temporary nature with the regenerating man, and it was especially so with the Lord in the process of His glorification. In other words this first rational mind is due to give place to another and superior rational, formed also by the inspiring influx from within and above, though not, as with the first rational, mothered by the love of external knowledges - the Egyptian handmaid - but by the genuine love of truth, that is, by Sarah, the true wife of Abraham.

Here, then, we have the difference between these two rational formations. The influx from above - the father - was in both cases the same, but the mother in each case was different - different in kind, quality, and also in degree. The love of truth is by no means the same as the affection of the sciences, though they are generally regarded as identical. We may distinguish them by saying that what the Writings mean by the affection of the sciences is fundamentally an innate curiosity directed to the things of the outer world which come to the mind through the senses of the body, while the love of truth is a part of good, that is, it is concerned with those eternal verities which belong to the kingdom of the soul, which are of heaven, and are from above heaven, and which, in man, are the concern of all that is orderly, right, and good in human life. This is the love of truth for its own sake, or rather, for the sake of good; and good is that which is of right, and of eternal order, whether with reference to the things which are of heaven or of earth. This kind of love of truth is the true wife. It is that which mothers the influx from the Divine and produces in man what is called the spiritual rational mind, and in the Lord His Divine rational. And that which is so born is called "laughter," to signify the joy at the birth.

When this true rational is born, there is laughter in the soul, for it is the fulfillment of the soul's inner purpose, the life of which goes forth into this formation and suitably ultimates itself on a lower, subjoined plane of existence, which with man constitutes him a self-conscious individual, which is above the plane of nature and above its dominance, although it is below that more universal plane which is purely the dwelling-place of the Divine. In a word, this subjoined. rational is what constitutes man a man, and yet an angel man. With the Lord the birth of this rational was the true beginning of that which was afterwards to be and become the Divine or glorified Human. Therefore, there was laughter when Isaac was born, to signify this beginning, which in its end was to lead to the union of the Human with the Divine, and thus also to the redemption of all men.

This significance of laughter - the outstanding affection manifest on the occasion of Isaac's birth - does not appear from the letter. What does appear is that this laughter signified a kind of incredulity, even of unbelief that a child should be born to Abraham and Sarah, they being old and long past the period of childbearing. "And Abraham (when he heard the promise of God concerning the birth of Isaac) fell upon his face, and laughed, and said in his heart, Shall there be born to a son of a hundred years? And shall Sarah, that is a daughter of ninety years, bear! "(Genesis 17: 17) So also, when the promise was later repeated and Sarah, standing in the tent door, heard it, she laughed within herself, saying, "After I am old, shall I have pleasure, and my lord old also? And Jehovah said unto Abraham, Wherefore did Sarah laugh? Shall anything be wonderful for Jehovah? And Sarah denied, saying, I laughed not; for she was afraid. And He said, Nay; but thou didst laugh." (I8: 12 - 15.)

Here indeed was incredulity, but the incredulity was of the outer mind. It is always so with the Divine miracles. The inner perception of their truth is met by an outer incredulity; and Isaac was a miracle -  child. This is the point of the story, and in this Isaac fittingly represented the last-born rational, which is not dependent for its formation upon the normal acquisition of knowledge, but is the result of an inner marriage of good with truth. There must indeed be a preceding rational, formed in the usual way as a base or ground (signified by Ishmael), but the spiritual rational is none the less a distinct inner structure. It is a product of regeneration. Its birth may never take place, and when given, it is in the nature of a miracle. And while the first premonitions of its birth excite incredulity, the laughter is in reality of the soul, because of the coming of the late-born child.

Of all the words of human language none more fittingly expresses the fundamental, and therefore the inmost, quality of the human rational than laughter. For laughter and articulate speech are the signal marks of the human mind, or of the reasonable soul. And the two are companions; one is not given without the other. As articulate speech expresses in form every definite thought, so laughter expresses every phase of human emotion as it conjoins itself with thought. A laughing animal is the height of mockery; there is nothing so unnatural, unreasonable, or shocking as the sound as of laughter in which there is no soul, no definite thought, no human affection.

Consider the affections that may be unmistakably expressed by laughter, sometimes the affection of joy, and then of sadness. Sometimes there is indignation, or may be incredulity. Most often, perhaps, we laugh because of something which strikes the rational mind as ridiculous, which amusingly distorts its sense of proportion or relation - a play upon words or ideas that leads to an unexpected conclusion, a double meaning, one of which is as not intended, but in the end is clearly revealed as the real intent. It is always something which challenges a rational, if not always serious, interpretation.

Of all man's external traits, save that of speech, laughter indicates the presence of a reasonable soul, and is therefore significative of that rational mind which is formed in man below the plane of the soul itself, and yet above the body, and which intermediates between the two; a mind which, in its totality, constitutes the man an individual, and makes the spiritual being that lives after death a person distinguished from every other person. The souls of men are also distinguished, one from another, different and separate, even as are their bodies; but personality lies in this intermediate plane - in the rational mind - and is a gradual development, qualified and modified by influx through the soul above, and also by afflux from the outer world through the body.

It is for this reason that the Writings say that the "human begins in the inmost of the rational," as if the soul above was something not human. But the meaning is that the human personality of the individual man begins there - the man, for instance, whom we are and know ourselves to be, and also who is known to others. The soul above this is indeed the very human itself, and a pure gift of God, but to us as individuals it is as a super-human, as that which imparts humanity, or rather, which imparts the faculty of becoming human. This soul above the mind is separated from the mind itself by a discrete degree. The soul lives incorruptible in a higher aura, but constantly descends into the lower, intermediate mind by influx, and so acts upon that mind by correspondence, imparting to it life and immortality, as well as the power to be and become rational; and this, as the vessels of truth derived from knowledge are updrawn by a process of unfolding. The intermediate plane, or the human mind so formed, is at first Ishmael-like; in it that which is from below dominates. Later Isaac is born. In this later mind formation - this spiritual rational - that which is from the soul rules; and as it does so, Ishmael is expelled.

The personal human, therefore, begins in the inmost of the rational. There is the beginning of the conscious individual, the man or spirit, whom we are. It was the same with the Lord. He was born into the world under all the conditions of human life, save that that finite formation with men, called the human internal, was with Him purely Divine. His rational mind and His bodily organism were of like formation to that of other men. In the inmost of His rational was therefore the beginning of His Human personality - the man Jesus. Here also His glorification began, that is, the making Divine of the assumed human; for here it was that the Divine Ipse came into immediate and first contact with the highest forms of human thought - of truth ascending. What happened at this point is treated of in the following chapter. It is involved in the story of Abraham's vision of the three men at his tent door. It here only remains to be said that the concern of His rational mind was with the relation to be established between ascending human truth and descending Divine Good. The doctrine is that the Good of His rational, even as His Soul, was purely Divine. That Good was indeed the Soul descending; and the need was that rational truth ascending should be or become so highly developed, and so clearly purified, that it could conjoin or unite itself with the descending Good. This came to pass with Him by means of certain media, and as it came to pass His Divine Rational, signified by Isaac, was born.

The Divine Rational was born, conceived of the pure Divine descending, and mothered as by human truth ascending, but not at once did it come into the full flower of its glory. Its first birth, in the inmost of the rational, was followed by successive phases of development; as from a spark the Divine flame spread, until the field of the whole rational mind was filled; or, to make the figure of speech more human, and more in accord with Scripture, the Divine rational passed through its periods as the miracle-child Isaac grew to man's estate and fulfilled in representative drama the mind-story of the Christ on earth.