BHAKTI HINDU AND CHRISTIAN
by
Stephen Neill, CLS, 1974.
CHAPTER I. What is Dravidian?
The Romans looked down on the Celts and Britons; the Normans looked down on the Anglo-Saxons; the white conquerors of later days have in many countries remained almost unaware of the cultural achievements of those whom they have managed to subdue by force of arms. (p.3)
…That there may be Dravidian elements in the Atharva Veda no one is likely to deny. But the existence of such widespread common tradition in matter of magic and charms should warn us against facile generalization. (4)
…the Indus Valley Civilisation was violently overthrown by the invading Aryans, there might be grounds for a supposition that this was the case. But there is much to be said for the view of other scholars that the decay of this civilization was due to natural causes rather than to armed invasion; and, if that were so, the question of Dravidian or non-Dravidian must be regarded as answerable only by conjecture. (5)
…The presence of the undoubtedly Dravidian language Brahui in Baluchistan is a slender reed on which too much confidence cannot be placed. –p.5
The so-called cerebral letters, pronounced as far back in the throat as the tongue can be persuaded to go, seem to be an evidence of Dravidian influence wherever they are to be found. There is no trace of them in any Indo-European language outside India; if they are to be found, as they are, in Sanskrit and in the derivative languages, this would seem to be rather strong evidence of the presence and influence of a non-Aryan people. (6).
The great majority of the gods of the Veda are almost demonstrable Aryan, and belong to the somewhat vague borderland between a nature religion and a religion which is growing in direction of theism, that is of beliefs in gods clearly and personally conceived. (8).
Did the Vedic Indians know of any form of visible representation of their gods? The answer seems to be No….And so with all the other gods of the Vedic pantheon. It must be taken as at least possible that the origins of Indian religions are to be sought not in the Aryan world but in some other sphere. (11).
CHAPTER II
“…India’s Great Tradition is indebted to her indigenous, Pre-Aryan, non-vedic heritage”(Curt Maury-Folk Origins of Indian Art, Columbia, 69. (p.209) (p.12)
The Christian tends to be repelled, in addition by the Frankly sexual imagery of a great deal of this Dravidian iconography; the missionary has been more inclined to condemn it. Yet there have been notable exceptions. Dr. G. U. Pope was a strictly orthodox Anglican high church man; yet his devotion to the Tamil people was such that his sympathies reached out far beyond the limits of his own tradition. Recalling that to a South Indian Hindu an “idol” is not a block of wood or stone, but a symbol into which life has been breathed by the ceremony called Avaganam (or Pranaprathishdai) (p.13).
Jan Gonda, usually a cautious scholar, has no hesitation in making an absolute statement: “Vedic worship was unacquainted with any temple.” (p.13).
A Dravidian temple, be it noted, is not primarily a place of worship. It is a house in which a god dwells (p.14).
And even the Protestant, who may pride himself on taking a more spiritual view of the presence of God, should be careful not to protest too much, since he will find much in his own scriptures which corresponds closely to the Indian view. The Yahweh of the Hebrews, at least in early times, was believed to dwell on the top of Mount Sinai, from whence he could be heard riding across the sky in the thunderstorm to the help of his afflicted people (Psm 18; Hab 3); here we are still fairly close to the Vedic idea of god or gods. With the construction of a house of God, whether tabernacle or temple, the idea that God could be localized, that there was one particular place in which his people could be sure of meeting him, though the possibility of other meeting was not excluded, began to replace the earlier concept. But the Hebrew ideas and practices at their most localized and concrete were very different from those which we find in the post-vedic period in India. In the Dravidian temple the god is cared for, is woken in the morning, bathed, fed and from time to time, taken in procession in a fashion to which there is no true parallel in the religions of the Middle East, just as there is no sign of parallel in the Vedic writings. (p.14).
Where have the Vedic sacrifices disappeared to?…But it is at least possible that there again Dravidian influence had been at work. Many religions have a day order and a night order. The day light worship of the great Dravidian temples is based on “puja”, the offering of flowers and ghee, incense and spices, without any hint of the taking of life in any form. It is at least possible that it was from the Dravidians that the Vedic Indians learned that there are other ways of approaching the divine than that associated with the life-blood of living things. (p.15).
CHAPTER V.
The greatest change of all in Indian ideas is that associated with the development of the doctrine of ‘Karma’ and with it of the belief in rebirth or reincarnation. Of this there is no trace in the Rig Veda; where did it come form? We have already seen that it is unwise to assume that everything non-Vedic is Dravidian, and at this point the caution needs to be reiterated.
Professor R.C. Zehner, in his suggestive but uneven work ‘Concordant discord’ (1970), yields to the pan-Dravidian obsession;
“Between the age of the Rig Vida and that of the Upanishads the belief
in the transmigration of souls had struck deep roots in the Indian mind.
How and why this happened we do not know; but the commonsense explanation would seem to be that this (sic) belief was firmly rooted in the religion of the aboriginal population and the Aryan invaders had in the course of time succumbed to it” (p.65)
This is of curse not impossible. On the other side it has been recalled that commonsense explanations are not always true, and that there is no particular reason to a associate the belief in transmigration with the Dravidian tradition.
This belief has arisen in a great variety of forms among many diverse peoples. In Greece this was one of the tenets of the Pythagoreans. Herodotus, our source of so much curious and usually reliable information about the ancient world, is certainly in error when he says that the Greeks learned this idea from the Egyptians (II,23), since with all the immense elaboration of their ideas and practice related to the other world, there is not a hint in the Egyptian records of any idea of transmigration; what probably misled Herodotus was theriomophism as practiced among the Egyptians, that is, their addiction to the worship of animals. It seems more probable that Pythagoras worked out the idea for himself, as any thinker is likely to do who holds that the number of souls is limited; and that porphyry (3rd cent. A. d.) can be relied on when he tells us that:
“the following facts is particular became universally known; first that he held the soul to be immortal, next that it migrates into other kinds of animals, further that past events repeat themselves in a cyclic process and that nothing is new is an absolute sense; and finally that one must regard all living things as kindred. These are the beliefs which Pythagoras is said to have been the first to introduce into Greece (quoted in W.K.C. Guthrie: A History of Greek philosophy, Vol. I, (1967) p.186)”
It seems to me probable that, in much the same way, the Aryan spirit, in its exploration or the meaning of the world, was led to the same conclusion, as Pythagoras. In the Upanishads we can observe the shadow of the dark world falling upon the bright optimistic spirit of the Aryans, as we see this displayed in the Rig Veda. The Weltschmerz so characteristic of much later Indian literature is beginning to appear. But this seems to be the cause rather than the consequence of the doctrine of “karma”. Men do not begin to lose heart because they have become convinced that they are destined to be born again and again into the world; when the burden of suffering begins to be felt as intolerable, the fortunes of one single life may seem inadequate to account for all the woes of the world, or to make available any means by which the suffering may come to be endurable or in the end to be abolished. In such a situation the doctrine of rebirth may be called in to give the somewhat consolation that no weight of suffering can ever finally annihilate the human self, and as deeper encouragement the hope that one day all these miseries may end in the final “mukti”, the dissolution of everything that binds a man to the transitory and the corruptible: “He comes not back”.
In a mysterious passage of the Brhadaranyaka Upanishad (3.2.13), we are told how Artabhaga and Yajnavalkya went apart from the throng, and held private discourse as to what it is that survives of a man, when all that makes up the man has been dissoluted in to the elements; and what they spoke of was The Deed. This is one of the earliest passages in which the doctrine of Karma makes its appearance, with its inevitable concomitant, the idea of the passage of the soul many times through this world. The two sages who converse on this theme are clearly Aryans; I see no reason to think that there is any trace of Dravidian influence in this area of speculation. (pp 16-17).
CHAPTER VI.
…Religion may be understood as personal confrontation by a god personally conceived, and as devotion to or fellowship with this god. When, and from what source, did this understanding of religion enter Indian thought? Is this also to be taken as part of the Dravidian inheritance?
Readers of the Rig Veda have been struck by the almost total absence of anything that could be called a personal relationship between the worshipper and the object of his worship –(p.18)……
Where, then, are we to look for the origins of what later Indian religion knows so well as bhakti, personal self-giving to and adoration of a god, conceived as the only god for me, the one in whom I am to find soul-satisfaction and deliverance?
Some scholars would answer confidently, “In the Svetasvatara Upanishad”. Professor R.C. Zaehner adopts this view, and refers to this Upanishad as “frankly theistic”…
Fr. Dhavamoney follows closely in the steps of his teacher …(p.19).
…certainly there is a theistic emphasis; but the awareness of the impersonal Brahma beyond the personally conceived deity is present throughout; the personal is welcomed as more accessible, but the impersonal still stands as the final stage in understanding and deliverance. (p.20)
….The writer of this (Svet.Up) Upanishad, or perhaps we would rather say the editor, since more than most others this Upanishad gives the impression of being a collection of diverse materials of very different ages, is aware that he has fresh things to say, new doctrines to propound which do not fit exactly into the now fairly firmly fixed Upanishadic tradition; therefore he turns back to what in the Veda was peripheral and now makes it central (p.20).
It is for this reason that the Svetasvatara makes for us the convenient transition from an earlier world of Indian religion to the Bhagavad Gita.
The Gita still presents us with unsolved problems. Some of its phrases so closely resemble Christian and biblical utterance that some scholars have been convinced that it could not have been produced otherwise than under Christian influence. The parallels are indeed striking. But chronology is against the possibility of any Christian penetration…. —p..21.
…In the Mahabharata Krishna is represented as a Kshatriya, and as related by marriage to the Pandavas. He is constantly known as the Dark One, and is so represented in countless scenes of Indian religious art. Have we here direct evidence of the mingling of races, just an in the epic of Rama the contact of the hero with the darker races of the South is represented somewhat obscurely in the figure of Hanuman? Is it unlikely that the Pandavas in their extreme necessity would welcome the aid of local auxiliaries? The adoption of one of the local chieftains by marriage into the sacred clan, though less likely, cannot be judged impossible. (p.23).
Mr. Maury (The Folk Origins of Indian Art) cites in evidence the remarkable legend set out at length in the second half of the Harivamsa, in which Krishna finds himself standing in defence of the herdsmen…against the wrath of Indra, who at the end of the conflict has to recognize in Krishna the victor in the contest, the incarnation of the great god Vishnu…(23)
We have already noted the striking fact that in the Svetasvatara Upanishad the new doctrine of a personal god is associated with the figure of Rudra. Therefore the derivation of Krishna and his bhakti doctrine from a pre-Aryan background…Some scholars still hold that Krisha is not a human here who gradually became identified with a divinity but an ancient tribal deity who later was reduced to the stature of a human hero…The doctrine of bhakti, as it meets us in fully developed from in the Bhagavad Gita is so different from the some what earthy nature-religion of the Veda, from the exaggerated ritualism of the Upanishads, from the austere inwardness of classical Buddhism, as to make us feel that here is something entirely new…(p.24)
…in the classical literature itself there are traces of this association between the bhakti tradition and southern India. In the Bhagavata Mahatmaya, bhakti personified is represented as saying ‘I am born in the Dravidian country’; in a parallel passage in the Padma Purana, she says, “Born in Dravida country, I grew up in Karnatake”. And most striking of all, the Bhagavata Purana, that comprehensive compendium of later bhakti, informs us:
In some particular places, O great King, and largely in Dravida countries, where the river Tamraparni, Krtamala, Pasyavini; and the most holy Kaveri, and the great Western Mahanadi flow, and those men drink of their waters, O King of men, the Pure in Mind mostly become devoted to the blessed Lord Vasudeva (bhakta bhagavati Vasudeve) (The Love of God, M.Dhavamoney; pp.101.
We have noted that the Christian student of Hinduism, on reaching the period of the Gita, feels himself much more at home than in the earlier periods of Indian religion. It is also a fact of history that the Christian message has found far readier consideration and acceptance in the Dravidian areas than in other parts of India. Does the Dravidian, when he hears the Christian Gospel, feel something within himself that is already mysteriously akin to it? Does he incline to accept it, because his race has experienced over many centuries and inner preparation for a message which, when it comes to him, he recognizes as bringing the fulfillment of much that he already knows? (pp.24-25)
TWO
WISDOM OF INDIA AND WISDOM OF THE HEBREWS.
When we turn to south India, we find great riches in all the three inline of wisdom that we have sketched out…the immense range and variety of the Proverbs by the Tamil speech is enriched, specially among village flok; much of this material is undoubtedly very ancient. There is a fully elaborated philosophy, the Saiva Siddhanta…And in between there is a great succession of gnomic and wisdom writings inverse, the noblest specimens of which rank among the highest and most famous of Tamil Classics. (p.33)—Tirukkural (2 to 6th A.D.)—Naladiyar (8th to 12th A.D.)—Ettutogai, Pattupattu, Purana-nuru—Agananuru—Tolkappiyam(7th A.D.)—Silapadikaram, Manimekalai, Jeevagasintamani (5th to 12th A.D).
…the revival of Hinduism can hardly be dated earlier than the seventh century, (p.34).
The special terms associated with the idea and practice of bhakti, eager devotion to a God personally conceived perhaps naturally do not make any appearance in two ancient gnomic works (Kural and Naladiyar). (p.46)
Both the works (Kural and Naladiyar) can be regarded as theistic, perhaps even as monotheistic; but there are few traces of personal piety, or of that eager devotion which mark both the later bhakti works and the pages of the Old Testament (p.46).
The one religious idea that is unmistakably present in all the Tamil gnomic works is that of destiny or fate, associated more or less closely with the ideas of retribution and rebirth. Yet it is interesting to observe that the Sanskrit word Karma, so constantly used in the sense of ‘action and its consequences in the form of retribution’, though used seven times in Kural, has in no instance any technical implication; it simply means action, and at times almost exactly in the same sense as dharma, right action. The word for fact most frequently used in the Kural is ‘ul’. But though there is a whole chapter, 38, to which this word gives the title, the themes of the distichs under this heading are general rather than precise or theological-a sense that a man’s freedom is limited, that is a recalcitrant and unpredictable element in things which is stronger than any resistance that man can offer: ‘What power is as great as that of fate? Man may devise some other thing, and yet fate is there ahead of him (380). The great Beschi held the view that ‘ul’ should be translated throughout the chapter as divine decreta, the divine decrees without specific reference to a man’s own earlier deeds; the world ‘ul’ as he correctly states, means originally nothing more than ‘antiquity’, and nothing can be more ancient than the divine decrees. This is, I think, correct; yet every in the Kural the word ‘vinai’ which in itself means no more than ‘act or action’ is beginning to acquire the sinister connotation of the act or deed the consequences of which can never be avoided. –(pp 46-47).
…the profound difference between the wisdom of ancient India and that of Israel. The Book of Proverbs is throughout clearly and unconditionally theistic (p.48).
Now YAWH is the name by which the covenant God of Israel is Known; this is not a generic term of God, it speaks of a God who make himself known in a specific historical situation. (p.48).
…it must not be forgotten that, in their origin, the ten Commandments are not an ethical but theological statement (p.49).
…the wise man does not feel that he is inventing something; wisdom is not something that he has spun out of his own consciousness, as the spider spins her web; it is a reality that was always there, and man with his limited intelligence is slowly discovering it. In its perfection it was always present as the expression of something that lies hidden in the depths of the divine being itself….(p.50).
…We have noticed that neither the Kural nor the Naladiyar includes a section of Vidu, final deliverance. This possibility is not so much denied as disregarded; virtue is to be its own reward, and the final destiny of man does not fall within the compass of the subjects that the sages are discussing. It is remarkable that, in Hebrew wisdom, the same silence or agnosticism seems to prevail. In the Book of Proverbs the question is hardly discussed at all. In Ecclesiastes the verdict is more definitely negative: ‘Who knows whether the spirit of man goes upward and spirit to the beast goes down to the earth?’ (Eccl.3.21) (p.50).
…Ecclesiasticas, or the Son of Sirach, which continues in to a later generation the wisdom tradition of the Hebrews…we still do not find any clear doctrine of personal immortality. A man survives in the survival of the people of God; if that people goes on unharmed into future generations, for what greater reward need a righteous man hope? A good man will survive in his children, if they also be virtuous, and so he may have a good remembrance possibly for many generations. And this is all…(p.51).
When one considers the astonishing vividness of the Hebrew conviction of being in direct and living contact with the living God, it is astonishing that the sense of personal immortality was so slow to develop. There are hints here and there; but it is only in the latest books of the Old Testament that the believers becomes aware that it is only in his relationship with God that a man really lives, and that that relationship is so profound that such an accident as the death of the body can never touch or destroy it. Even in these later passages, the hope is dim rather than clear. So true is that it is only through the resurrection of Jesus Christ that God has begotten us again to a living hope (I Peter 1.3). So at this point Hebrew and Indian are one (p.51)
…It is not surprising that some Tamil Christians, rightly in love with their own ancient inheritance, have suggested that for Indian Christians these great writings should take the place of the Old Testament, with its specifically Jewish character. With this suggestion I cannot agree. History is a reality; the revelation in Jesus Christ did come as the final stage in a great historical process, with which the Christian must be familiar as it is recorded in the Old Testament. (p.51).
CHAPTER III
THE BHAKTI OF SOUTH INDIA AND THE BHAKTI OF TH ECHRISTIAN.
…Bhakti seems to have been Hinuism’s method of defence against other religious systems which threatened to eliminate all that is most characteristic of Hinduism, and to deprive its Votaries of those things in Hinduism which most bring comfort and consolation to ordinary men and women. (53)
…Professor Zaehner has distinguished three types of mysticism. There is the cosmic mysticism in which man feels himself at one with the whole universe; of this type there are many traces in the monism of the Upanishads. Secondly, there is the deep sense of inward unity, when a man feels that all the many different levels of his own being have ceased to be out of the tune with one another and have come together in one single unity. This, again, is not too far removed from the doctrine of the inward Atman in each of us, which is there though so often unrealized and is ultimately at one with the great Brahman in the universe. Thirdly, there is the theistic mysticism, in which the separate soul feels itself at one with the ground of its own being, felt and known as a god who is love and gives of his own bliss to the spirit which enters into complete fellowship with him. This third type of mysticism may be resolved into two sections, according to whether the experiencer feels himself to be totally absorbed into the great reality, so that there can no more be any question of an I and a Thou, or whether the unity is of will and desire but there is yet a twoness, which makes it possible still to speak of a relation of love between the knower and the known (p.56)
…orthodox Hinduism has followed the other way—belief in the Supreme as beyond personality, beyond good and evil, and in deliverance as an intellectual apprehension of the illusory nature of personal existence and acceptance of the impersonal Beyond as the reality in which the strivings and self-contradictions of human existence find their solution and their rest.
This is true of India as a whole. The advaita of Sankaracharya can be taken as the supreme intellectual expression of this position. Yet in South India the story is different. The mystical or emotional apprehension of oneness with the Supreme, personally conceived, has risen to the level of orthodoxy, and has become the faith by which millions of human beings have lived over many centuries. It is this phenomenon which makes South India on the whole different form the North, and reveals one deep division between Dravidian and non-Dravidian religion… (p.57).
…In the Theravada the ideal figure is that of the Arhat, concerned only about his own salvation; this contrasts sharply with the figure of the Boddhisattva of the Mahayana school who out of compassion for other souls postpones his own deliverance in order that that word or salvation may come through him to others. (p.61)
…This is characteristic of the Mahayana School, in which the doctrine of the succession of Buddhas first makes its appearance. (p.61)
…There seems, however, to be remarkably little connection between the hero god of the Veda and the god who is worshipped in the flourishing commercial city of Kaveripumpattinam; it is more likely that some Dravidian god is not too obscurely hidden under the ancient name (of Indra). Here too we probably have signs of the survival of ancient Dravidian convictions at a time at which the religions of the North were still exercising strong fascination over the minds of men. (62)
…Savia Siddhanta, which is religious through and through, is largely an intellectual analysis of the mystical experiences of the devotee, and takes it stand on the concept of grace (p.62)
…the earliest Tamil literature, dating form the second or third century A.D., is almost free form Aryan influences; by the sixth century at latest the Tamil vocabulary has been fused with the Sanskrit, and the dual vocabulary is a recognized feature of all Tamil literature subsequent to this date. With the language came also Aryan influences in religion; in fact both Buddhism and Jainism may have begun their penetration of the South before the beginning of the Christian era. Was the same true of the bhakti influences associated with the Bhagavad Gita and kindred works? We have few solid ground on which affirmation can rest. The existing translations of the Gita in the Dravidian language of the South are later works of small literary value, and shed no light on the original arrival of the Gita in the South and on the spread of its influence. All that it seems possible to say is that all types of Hinduism must have been known in the Dravidian world soon after the beginning of the Christian era. The harsh rule of Buddhist and Jain sovereigns and their insistence on the strict ordinances of these religions may have been preparing the way for a reaction in the direction of more human values, such as would find its outlet in the bhakti forms of religion. Yet, when all has been said that the prudence or history permits us to say, the sudden revitalization of Hinduism remains a perplexing phenomenon. (pp. 66-67).
…Once converted, King Nedumaran is reported to have turned on his former fellow-religionists and to have demanded of the Jains that they also should apostaise. When they refused to do so, no less than eight thousand were put to death by impalement. This is so contrary to the generally mild temper of Indian life, in which religious fanaticism has on the whole been rare than in Europe and in Christian history…(p 67)
In allegorisation anything can be make to signify anything else. (p.72)
…It is true also that, even when the soul has been set free by bhakti, many things are tolerated in the Indian tradition which the stricter ethic of Christianity condemns: “Morality is a category applicable only to men. God is at any rate not essentially and centrally righteous…in other words there is no necessary connection between bhakti and character” (J.S.M. Hooper: Hymns of the Alvars, p.29), (p.79).
…If sin is committed, against whom is it committed?…God Himself, the Supreme, can be grieved or wounded by the sins of men. He is far above any world in which he could be involved in pollution or in any kind of affliction from the wrong-doings of men. If a man sins, he sins ultimately and finally against himself alone. My sin is in reality only against myself; it binds me to the wheel, it keeps me in the vale of avidya, ignorance, and so delays my day of deliverance. For this reason I should attempt to flee form sin, from the fruits of ancient deeds; at no points is my pursuit of virtue wholly free form this self-regarding element. (p.80)
…What is the nature of the final consummation? The Saiva Siddhata contains the remarkable that the very existence of the universe is a sign of the grace of Siva. When souls had fallen form grace and had entered into the life of separation, that is of illusion, how could they ever find their way back to their true nature, to the good shepherd form whom they ought never to have separated themselves? Thus Saivite answer is that, so far from that universe being mere Maya, illusion without significance, it has a very real significance; it is the place in which souls can find those bodies without which they cannot consume the fruit of ancient deeds, and through the grace of Siva come once again to the point of union with him. There is no final loss or destruction or any soul; in the end all will find their way back, and so there will be complete union between the Lord and the Flock. And after that here comes the mystery. What caused the original fall? And what is the guarantee that there will not be another fall ?The Saivite answer is hid in profound uncertainty. The cause and source of evil is that it was which in the beginning caused souls to go astray. Is there any guarantee of the final disappearance of or destruction of anavam? The answer seems to be NO. The problem is dealt with in the third chapter of the Tiruvarudpayan. The seeker asks, “If one say, “Anavam came incidentally, in the course of development”, what reply is there?’ The answer is given: ‘If this impurity had a beginning, how to explain its appearance? And may it not silently reappear even in the realm of release?’ The comment reads:
If anavam has sprung up incidentally, there must be some cause for its appearance, as there is for a stain on a white garment, or for a tarnish on the surface of a mirror; nor in that case can there be any absolute and final deliverance for the soul, for anavam may again spontaneously appear.
Summary: A refutation of those who teach that anavam has a beginning. (Tr. G.U.Pope).
So there is no clear reason why the whole process should not begin all over again, with a fall of souls, the creation of a universe, the long slow journey by which the souls come back to the place of their origin. This idea of a succession of universe would cause no difficulty to a Buddhist; in fact one modern authority has written that ‘When this universe is dissolved, its dispersed matter-or its residual energy which is continually renewing itself-will in time give rise to another universe in the same way. The process is therefore continuous and cyclical. The universe is composed of millions of world systems like our solar system, each with its various planes of existence’ (Maha Thera U Tittila, quoted in S.C.Neill; Christian Faith and other Faiths, p.121)…It is, perhaps unlikely that our early Saivite writers were in touch with anything like so carefully articulated a Buddhist philosophy. Indeed it is uncertain whether their doctrine owes anything to Buddhist ideas. It is however at least possible that some concept of the eternal potentiality of evil was aborad, and that from this the Saivite thinkers derived their idea of an infinity of possible falls.
Something like this doctrine was set forth within the Christian Church by the great genius of Origien. At the very heart of his doctrine was the principle of the freedom of the will. But, if the will is genuinely free, must not this freedom include within itself the possibility of choosing evil? The great mind of Origen failed to distinguish between the freedom and the indeterminacy of the will. When are we truly free? When we do that which in our deepest heart of hearts we desire to do; and, since man is ultimately made in the image of God, his freedom must in the end be found in perpetually choosing God and in being unable to choose anything else. His service is perfect freedom. The compass is free when it points inflexibly to the north, when nothing obtrudes between it natural tendency to point to the north and the fulfillment of that tendency. And other freedom is spurious freedom. It is for this reason that the Christian Gospel looks forward to one final consummation. In the end every enemy must be destroyed. Out of the heavenly kingdom not merely all evil but every possibility of evil will have been expelled. There will be no anavam to produce once again the possibility of dissent and dispersal. The sheep that have returned to the Good Shepherd will never more depart form him. ‘Yea, goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever’ (psm.23:6) (pp 80.82).
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