Note 56 — VII SYMBOLS OF THE MESSIAH: THE LAMB AND THE CROSS THE CHRISTIAN JESUS I THE PAULINE JESUS

Just what an elevation of the spirit to the world of ideas is for Plato, the union of mankind with Christ is for Paul. What the man actually in possession of knowledge, the “wise man,” is for the former, “Christ” is for the latter. What is there called Eros—the mediator of the unity between the world of ideas and the sense-world, of Being and Conscious Being, of objective and subjective thought, and at the same time the very essence of all objective thought—is here called Christ. Eros is called by Plato the son of riches and poverty, who bears the “nature and signs” of both: “He is quite poor, runs around barefoot and homeless, and must sleep on the naked earth without a roof, in the open air, at the doors and on the streets, in conformity with his mother’s nature.” “As, however, he is neither mortal nor immortal, at one moment he is flourishing and full of life, at another he is weary and dies away, and all that often on the self-same day; but ever he rises up again in life in conformity with his father’s nature.”56 So also the Pauline Christ contains all the fulness of the Godhead57 and is himself the “Son of God”; yet nevertheless Christ debases himself, takes on the form of a servant, becomes Man, and dies, thereby placing himself in direct opposition to his real nature, but only to rise again continually in each individual man and allow mankind to participate in his own life. And as Christ (in 1 Tim. ii. 5) is the “mediator” between God and men, so also the Platonic Eros “is midway between the immortal and the mortal.” “Eros, O Socrates, is a daimon, a great daimon, and everything of this nature is intermediate between God and man. The daimon transfers to the Gods what comes from man, and to man what comes from the Gods; from the one prayer and sacrifice, from the other the orders and rewards for the sacrifice. Midway, he fills the gap between the immortal and the mortal, and everything is through him bound into one whole. By his mediation is disseminated every prophecy and the religious skill which has reference to sacrifice, sanctification, sacred maxims, and each prediction and magic spell. God himself does not mix with mankind, but all intercourse and all speech between God and man, as well in waking as in sleep, takes place in the way mentioned. Whoever has experienced this, in him is the daimon.” In this connection we recall to our minds that Eros appears in the “Timæus” under the name of the “world-soul,” and this is supposed by Plato to have the form of an oblique cross.58