Theology Today - Vol 35, No. 2 - July 1978 - EDITORIAL - The Sacred, the Holy, and the Soul

135 - The Sacred, the Holy, and the Soul

The Sacred, the Holy, and the Soul
By Hugh T. Kerr

THESE three common words in the biblical vocabulary and throughout the classic Christian tradition are, curiously, quite uncommon in contemporary religious language. Well, there are reasons. We have been instructed in recent years to blur the distinction between sacred and secular; the holy implies transcendence (not a popular concept today); the soul has been obscured by, presumably, more identifiable psychological components of the self. Are we any better off than our forebears who innocently raised their voices to sing: "O Sacred Head, Now Wounded," "Holy, Holy, Holy," "Jesus, Lover of My Soul"?

Once-upon-a-time, these three little words were universally understood as meaningful pointers to important religious realities. The words have dropped out of current use, but it could be that the referents they suggested remain as significant as ever-under a different vocabulary. The possibility merits some attention.

The sacred sets aside some place, time, person, or action and, as it were, "baptizes" it with special significance. It may be, in itself, very earthy, secular, or profane (such as water, bread, wine, a name, a mountain top, a birthday, a death, a hero, a teacher, a wedding, a family ritual).

The sacred achieves its halo because it enshrines and perpetuates creative and recreative power. We remember the Exodus because then God's people were liberated from bondage; we still read about Job because he trusted in God even at the brink of total despair; we celebrate the nativity at Bethlehem every year because there a new beginning began; and Pontius Pilate's name is spoken whenever the Apostles' Creed is recited because under his reign Jesus Christ was crucified.

These sacred markers stand in the midst of secularities and are themselves intrinsically neutral. Wine, for example, can symbolize the precious, saving blood of Christ, but it can also stand for gross,

136 - The Sacred, the Holy, and the Soul

disgusting drunkenness. The sacralizing of the secular is not an arbitrary rating system, separating elite quality from mundane entities; it ensures that the separated realities will continue to engender the initial creative, redemptive energies. To go back to original sacralifies is to be re-born, re-created, and re-generated. To "do this in remembrance" is to "proclaim the Lord's death until he comes."

Are there any sacred things today? For many, especially within the younger generation, the answer would include: (a) nature and the environment, (b) personal and interpersonal relations, (c) the proper nurture and function of the human body. Not very religious, perhaps, but in many ways serving the same purposes in our day as traditional sacred designations. In any case, it is not true, as we so often hear, that "nothing is sacred anymore."

The holy adds a dimension of mystery and awe. If the sacred sets aside the secular for special purposes, the holy reminds us that some things are ineffable and inexplicable. They remain outside the sphere of understanding; they evoke a sense of reverence; they are, as Rudolf Otto noted, "tremendous" and "fascinating." The holy can easily slip into magic and superstition, but at its highest it becomes one of the essential divine attributes.

Thus says the high and lofty one
Who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy:
"I dwell in the high and holy place,
And also with him who is of a contrite and humble spirit."
(Isa. 57:15)

In biblical thought, since God is holy, the faithful are also expected to be holy, and so "holy" is one of the marks of the church, and faith, hope, and love are nourished by the Holy Spirit-who, like the wind, can be felt but not seen.

There is something uncanny about the holy, simply because we do not invent or command it; we experience it, receive it, and marvel at its awe-full presence wherever it becomes manifest.

It is one of the oddities of our time that in the midst of so much secular, technological, skeptical, and hedonistic culture, there also exists a persistent fascination with the inscrutable and incomprehensible-in other words, with the mysteriously holy. We need only mention the current vogue in things occult, psychic phenomena, TM, Yoga, eastern mystical practices, Atlantic booms, and UFO's.

Those who listen to late-night talk-shows, when the dark settles and all is quiet, are well aware that a favorite topic of discussion revolves around the dimension of the non-rational and the arcane. I have myself experienced in recent years a peculiar run of coincidences, what Jung called "synchronicity." At certain unpredictable times, unusual names of persons or places recur in groups of two's or three's, and then the associations stop as suddenly as they began. I attach no religious sig-

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nificance to these sporadic experiences, anymore than I'm willing to denominate many other psychic phenomena as "holy." But if the word is uncommon in our vocabulary today, the element of mystery is certainly very much with us.

III

The biblical scholars have been telling us for years that the Hebrew-Christian view of personality is psychosomatic rather than dualistic. The self can therefore be defined properly as an animated body or an incarnated soul but not as body and soul. The latter, so we've been taught, is Greco-Roman psychology, and its effects have been mostly disastrous. So the body is the prison-house of the soul (Plato); sin has something to do with sex (Augustine); when we die our immortal souls float free, waiting for the resurrection of our bodies (Westminster Confession of Faith).

But it simply must be that the radical distinction between the Hebrew-Christian and Greco-Roman views can be drawn too tightly. Either that or we must admit that most of the whole of the Christian tradition has not yet learned its first elementary psychology lesson. For one thing, the biblical psychological vocabulary is exceedingly complex, as any concordance or dictionary will demonstrate. And for another, those of us who cherish the classic humanist tradition cannot imagine that the Greco-Roman perspective on personality was all that skewed. I happen to believe in "the resurrection and the life everlasting" according to the Christian gospel, but I am still moved, spiritually and intellectually, by the death of Socrates and his confidence that every human being possessed an immortal soul.

The plain fact is that in the Christian tradition the "soul" has everywhere been acknowledged as the best and most inclusive term to designate the God-given life principle that distinguishes the human creature from the rest of creation. The English word "soul" doubtless obscures the rich biblical vocabulary in which even physical organs (heart, liver, bowels, etc.) can function as emotional and psychic faculties.

I have been reading recently ("dipping into" would be more accurate) the two-volume set of The Penguin Dictionary of Quotations. In the first volume (which goes up to 1900 and was first printed in 1960 and frequently thereafter), there are nearly 150 indexed references to "soul." Most of these are from English literature, though many come from Christian piety, hymns, poems, etc. In the second volume of -modern" quotations (published in 1971), there are only 19 "soul" references. In the classic tradition, "soul" nearly always carries a religious as well as a psychological connotation, and very often it implies some sort of immortality. In the modern references, these suggestions tend to disappear. Today, apparently, the word is only a relic of what it once meant.

But, as in the case of the "sacred" and the "holy," we are now being exposed to a secular variety of the classic understanding. I refer to the

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little book with the astonishingly big circulation, Life After Life, by Raymond A. Moody, Jr., M.D. (Mockingbird Books, 1975; Bantam, 1976). Here we have, not from the side of religion or English literature, but from medical research, impressive evidence that there may be something after all in the Greco-Roman view of the immortality of the soul.

Dr. Moody's evidence is based on the recorded experiences of several hundred people who were pronounced clinically "dead" but who later somehow managed to survive. The doctor was at first reluctant to use his data as a basis for affirming the soul's immortality (psychic existence apart from the physical body). But now he tends to think the evidence is compelling, and he gets even more positive response from Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross. As with the "sacred" and the "holy," perhaps the "soul" isn't as dead as we thought.

These scattered reflections are prompted by the current, widespread fascination with inner spirituality and mystical meditation which is probably the most lively aspect of American religion in our midst today. The departments of religion in colleges and universities, the theological seminaries and divinity schools, religious and theological journals, and the clergy in our mainline churches pay little serious attention to this popular trend, except to denounce it.

It is true, of course, that many of the secular examples of the "sacred," the "holy," and the "soul" verge on the bizarre, the shallow, and the ephemeral. But surely those of us who believe in the rejuvenating power of the gospel are missing an evangelistic opportunity if we ignore these contemporary stirrings of the human spirit. That does not mean we should be uncritical; but we might just discern that many current fads can revitalize for us not only the old biblical vocabulary but the power and presence of divine reality.

As the Apostle to the Gentiles put it: "I am under obligation both to Greeks and to barbarians, both to the wise and to the foolish…. I am not ashamed of the gospel: it is the power of God for salvation to every one who has faith. . . ." (Rom. 1: 14-16).