Great Lion of God

by Taylor Caldwell

  Greece would pass away as all nations pass, but the memory of her wisdom and her glory and her beauty would linger forever as long as one man remained to celebrate them. A poet was greater than a king; a wise man transcended the rich; an empire could be immortal only in the quality of men she had conceived and brought forth. Greece, in poetry and wisdom and texture of mind, surpassed all other nations. There were more beautiful countries than this, Saul had heard, and larger and grander. Yet, out of Greece, by a mysterious dispensation, had emerged the uttermost form of Beauty in marble and in word.

  But the Christian community in Athens, both Jewish and Gentile did not, alas, share his excitement and joy over the city. The Jews thought the mighty spectacle of the Acropolis “snares of the devil,” to divert the eye and spirit of man from the everlasting verities, and Saul, about to rebuke them with his lashing tongue, recalled that in his youth he, too, had voiced such sentiments to Aristo. The Gentiles were poor men, former freedmen or laborers or peasants, heavy with dust and toil, and though Greeks they had no pride in their heritage nor could their eyes encompass what Saul saw. They looked at him with dull and wondering surprise. What had this to do with their present or future existence? The works of man, however splendid though they did not see the splendor—were dust and ashes and unworthy of a Christian whose thoughts should be fixed only on eternity.

  The Jewish Christians were men of more substance than their Gentile fellows, being merchants and shopkeepers and bankers as they were in Corinth. They could not understand Saul, though he was of their own heritage and blood and bone. They were good men, and they believed that as Christians it was their sole duty on earth to alleviate the lot of the poor, to elevate the distressed, to feed the hungry and the homeless, to rectify injustice, to proclaim freedom and to denounce slavery, to clamor in the courts of law—there were lawyers amongst them also—for compassion for the criminal and mercy for the wrongdoer. Their emotions and beliefs, they assured Saul earnestly, were liberal and kind and they suffered for the sufferers. Saul shook his head with his old impatience. Of a certainty a man should love his neighbor and assist him, for was that not God’s own Commandment? But that love for neighbor and that assistance bloomed naturally out of faith and the duties of faith, as a rose naturally blooms from the root-stem of its being. Without faith and worship and the truth of God all service to neighbor was a mere self-righteous prattling.

  Saul quoted Isaias to them: “The vile person shall no more be called liberal, nor the churl said to be bountiful, for the vile liberal will speak villainy and his heart will work iniquity, to practice hypocrisy, and to utter error against the Lord, to make empty the soul of the hungry. He will cause the drink of the thirsty to fail. The instruments of the churl are evil and he devises wicked devices to destroy the poor with lying words. The liberal devises liberal things, and by liberal things shall he stand!” (Isa. 32:5-8)

  They were horrified at his words, though Saul said, with a satirical smile, “I did not say them. The prophet Isaias said them. What! Do you not know your own sacred Scriptures?”

  He continued: “The Lord has said that first we must seek His Kingdom, and all else will be added to us, even charity, even mercy for the afflicted. Let that search fill your days and your nights, and as water flows out of holy stone so will the water of your love flow from your souls to quench the thirst of the thirsty, and as manna fell from Heaven, so will the manna of your charitable gifts fall from your hearts.”

  The elders of the Church reproached him, calling his vision hard, saying his spirit was not touched by the prevailing misery, and that surely it was a man’s deepest calling to engage in secular things and to change them for the better. Restraining his wrath, Saul said, “I will quote the prophet Ezekiel to you, and he spoke of this problem. ‘The priests of Israel have done violence to My Law and have profaned My holy things, for they have made no distinction between the holy and the common, neither have they taught the difference between the clean and the unclean.—So, I have profaned them.’ Your life, my friends, is in Christ Jesus, who said He was no divider of men and that His kingdom was not of this earth. Set the light of your faith before men and all dark shadows shall free and the dungeon fly open, for it is faithless men who have created wretchedness and poverty and hunger and grief, and who have taken the roof from the widows and orphans. The man of faith is a shelter to the homeless, a filled larder to the hungry, a well to those who thirst, for out of his faith he is moved to alleviate torment.”

  They were awed, as multitudes before them had been awed, by his sonorous and compelling voice, his fascinating inflections and imagery, his sudden humor and tenderness following immediately after wrath, his eloquence, and by the mysticism of his being and appearance. But, like all men, they were enmeshed in their convictions and Saul began, again, the weary task of enlightenment. There was no life except in Christ Jesus, he would repeat over and over again, and that life was a Gift. There was no salvation in works, but in the faith which inspired those works.

  After some weeks, Peter in Jerusalem, doubtless inspired by the Holy Spirit, sent to Saul, as a companion, a young man named Timothy, whose father had been a Greek teacher, and his mother a Jewess. According to the Jewish law Timothy was therefore a Jew, even if uncircumcised. But he was an embarrassment to the Jews in the synagogues, which he frequented both as a Jew and a Christian, and Saul, remembering his agreement to the Jerusalem community—but sighing—told Timothy that he must be circumcised, “for we shall visit synagogues wherever we travel, to speak to our brethren, and it is sinful to humiliate others and to cause them offense and to force them to be rude. I have said, and taught, that it is not necessary for a Gentile to become a Jew and be circumcised in order to be admitted to the Christian community. But you, my dear Timothy, my young friend, are another pan of fish.”

  Saul had the quick thought that Peter, who had his own humor, was teasing him. However, Timothy, who resembled a young Hermes, obeyed his suggestion with an alacrity which Saul found touching and consoling, remembering Mark. Saul, himself, performed the rite and the ceremony in the most scrupulous Israelite fashion, and was Timothy’s godfather. Thereafter he was to refer to Timothy as “my dear child, my lawfully born child in faith.” He conceived a love for the youth similar to his love for his true son, Boreas, whose wife, Tamara bas Judah, had now borne him two beautiful children, a son and a daughter. The son was named Hillel ben Enoch, the girl Dacyl bas Enoch, and on receiving the news Saul wept with mingled happiness and pain, happiness that Boreas had remembered his grandfather, and sad pain—yet pride in his son—that Boreas had honored his young mother, dead in her girlhood. Saul longed to see his grandchildren and his son with a longing that was an anguish and which haunted his nights, but he knew it was not to be. He confided his sorrow to Timothy, who quickly sympathized and with true emotion, and Saul wondered if Mark would have been so kind and intuitive. He decided he would not. I am always sighing these days, thought Saul, and that is a bad habit, indicating despair.

  In some ways Timothy, the young man, was despairing, saying to Saul, “The heathen are Godless, corrupt, atheistic, libertines, lusters after the flesh and strong drink, full of laughter at the holy things, confirmed in wickedness, faithless. How can we bring these to God and the Messias?”

  Saul replied, “You have not looked upon them with seeing eyes, my child. Contrary to your belief the Gentiles are not Godless, though they live and worship in error. The vast movement of religions from Egypt and the Orient over the west, yes, even to Rome, shows that the heart of man is ever ready to receive and adore the Truth. No tyrant, no madman, can stamp from the hearts of men the desire after God and the living waters, for it is born in the hearts of humanity. Corruption, faithlessness, lusts of the flesh, even wickedness, are symptoms of despair in the souls of men that they do not know God and know only the hunger in their spirits which no pursuit of pleasure or gain can satisfy. They accept the stones of vice and the poison of strong drink, to alleviate th
eir agony and distress, not knowing that That which can console and heal and nourish them is waiting at hand. It is our duty to give them the bread of life and the living waters. When they accept these they will no longer accept vile and deceitful substitutes, mere illusions of wheat and meat and milk.”

  On the other hand, Timothy was ebullient concerning the fate of the Church “in the future, when all dissensions will end and all men, like sheep, will be under the guardianship of the one Shepherd. Alas, that we shall not see this come to pass—but future generations will see it, and what has troubled the Church in these, our days, will no longer trouble her and peace will reign forevermore.”

  To this Saul wryly answered, “I do not denigrate optimism and hope, if they are based on the reality of human nature and probabilities. But to me optimism is cowardly, for optimistic men prefer fable to reality, and hope to the hard rock of fact—and hope is a liar, except when it is hope based on Our Lord. During the Roman Saturnalia men give gifts to their little children. But when children become men they must know that gifts do not fall from the skies under mysterious circumstances and without their own efforts and labor. To believe otherwise is not optimism; it is madness. True, faith is a gift from the hand of God only, but a man must seek that gift diligently and prepare his own soil for the seed. We, as appointed by Christ Jesus, must carry that seed; however, we can only offer it. We cannot even be optimistic, nor can we hope much. We can only pray.

  “You speak of future ages when there will be no such dissension as today in the Church. Alas. My Timothy, preach the Word, be instant in season and out of season. Reprove, rebuke, exhort with all long-suffering and doctrine. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears, and they shall turn their ears from the truth and shall be turned to fables. Therefore, watch yourself in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, make full proof of your ministry.” (Tim. 4:2-5) He added, more gently, “As men are men and prone to error and rebellion, we cannot expect that the Church will be free from dissension and strife and long and angry voices, disputing. We can only stand steadfast in the truth, not tolerant of false doctrine, not conciliators with liars and fools and the violent and those who would change for change’s sake only. For, what is new in the world that men should lust after it? As Solomon said, ‘There is nothing new under the sun,’ nor will there ever be, and generations who will cry ‘This is new, we are the new and what we say is new for today, and verity!’ are foolish in their souls and not aware of history, nor are they men of learning and understanding. They are callow and ignorant and hysterical, and who will listen to them but goats like themselves? Nevertheless, they will be destructive and will confuse the faithful. But we have the promise of God that they shall not prevail against the Church.”

  He thought to himself, “The young demand absolutes. Did I not demand that, myself? But the only Absolute is God. The young demand solutions to all problems, pleasing to themselves, and never question if those solutions are satisfactory to Him, Who is the only Solution. Solutions built on theory and what the young deem ‘good,’ are chaff in the wind, blinding and choking, but never a nourishment. The wise young later understand that, but the young man grown old who still believes in solutions to all human problems without invoking God for wisdom and enlightenment, and believes men alone can find solutions, is a man of age but without comprehension. He is demented, and a danger to all men.”

  Saul, who was never deluded about his fellow men, had his periods of despondency. He could only hope in the ultimate triumph of God, which had been promised.

  He had come to have a deep affection for the Athenians, not only because they received him with more respect than the Jewish Christians and the orthodox Jews but because he felt a kinship with them as worldly and cosmopolitan. He saw, however, that the intelligent and cultivated Athenians were interested in God as a philosophical hypothesis, not to be taken as an actuality in the prosaic affairs of men. God, as Aristotle had said, was the Prime Mover of all that was created, but the created, after having been touched by the divine Finger, was thereafter its own destroyer or its own savior. It seemed incredible to the majority of the enlightened Athenians that God would condescend, and with love, to be born of man and to walk among them to lead them from their error—which was self-ordained. The Prime Mover was surely more august than that, concerned as He was with the creation of universes and suns and planets and galaxies.

  “He is concerned with the fall of a sparrow,” said Saul, and they shook their heads, smiling. “He observes the fly who lives but for a day, and the beetle who busies himself with the laws of his own nature.” The Athenians looked aside and smiled again, and thought that Saul profaned his own God by attributing to Him the pettiest of matters. Nature’s laws, once set into motion by the Prime Mover, could not be altered, and woe to that man or insect or beast who foolishly set himself in the path of inexorable Destiny.

  Saul, in his last days in Athens, spoke to the city on the Hill of Mars, on the Acropolis, in the aromatic heat of noonday, where the shadow of column and cypress cast sharp blue shadows. Above him soared the grand Parthenon and lesser temples, white and blazing as snow under the ardent sun, and nearby was the Rock of Justice, huge, gray, and the Roman Temple of Jupiter with colored friezes on pediments and porticoes, and before it his mighty gilded statue glittering in the light, seemingly helmeted in hot lightnings. Below Saul lay the theater of Dionysus, round as a bowl, filled with seats like narrow marble terraces, rising one above another to the very brim of the bowl, many gayly cushioned and waiting, and the walls ornamented by bas-reliefs of the utmost beauty, depicting gods and their fables and their exploits. The sides of the Acropolis glimmered with the enormous white marble steps leading to the top, and crowds teemed up and down, those climbing with arms full of flowers and other offerings for the temples, those descending conversing with that mingled seriousness and wit and laughter notable among Athenians. And Saul could see, far below in the city itself, the ruby-red roof of the immense marketplace, the Agora, and the crowded official buildings of gold and white, and the endless clusterings of pale and cube-shaped houses with their gardens and their vine-covered walls. Everywhere was color, vitality, vivacity, movement, life and clamor, the exuberance yet logic of the western mind. In spite of the seeming violence of tint and hue and shade, the seething comings and goings, the noise and the music and the roar of voices, the almost intolerable profusion of light, the burning blue of the sky, there was a certain order, a certain restraint.

  And, in the distance, Saul could see the humid purple sea, the dark green of wooded hills, the sepia land, the emerald meadows beyond the city, the glint of golden streams. To him Athens appeared like a glimpse of Paradise. For a fresh breeze, despite the heat, came from the sea, and the brilliance of the air and all that stood in the air held a deep and happy excitement. Even the traffic of wagons and carts and chariots and cars in the narrow streets below possessed a kind of joyous determination. No wonder, thought Saul, that my grandfather loved this city, though I despised him for it when I was young, thinking nothing more beautiful or significant than Jerusalem. Out of Sion came the Law, as he knew, but the Law also contained variety and beauty which were universal.

  The Greeks had given Saul a humorous name: “The Jewish Socrates.” Saul had discovered that the Greeks delighted in the word and its aptness, and they were as great in argument and disputations as the Jews and loved the precision of well-chosen language. He was not offended at the name given him. He looked down now at the colorful crowds gathered to hear him, at the rich in their litters and with their slaves, at the businessmen and the bankers and the lawyers and the physicians, all elegantly dressed, and at the poor and the laborers, the farmers and the drifters, the artisans, the toilers in the city and in the fields. All stood and sat on the steep high marble steps leading to the top of the Acropolis, and many tried to hide in the shadow of ne
ighbors to escape the sun, and many held parasols over their heads in a multitude of rainbow colors. They talked endlessly, of course, in the manner of Athenians, but when Saul began to speak, in his eloquent loud voice, they gave him their attention, politely, for he had a reputation. Besides, it was possible that the gods—in whom they only abstractedly believed—were about to speak in him. Of a certainty, he had an aspect which other men did not possess, with that flaming mane of mingled red and white hair, and his lined and passionate leonine face and the wild blue of his eyes. He was dressed humbly, and in a long brown tunic such as a laborer in the manufactories would wear, and his girdle was only rope and his sandals were tied with rope. But he had a commanding presence, almost godlike, and inspiring, and his gestures were wide and awesome, and from him flowed a powerful and superhuman conviction. He was no ignorant demagogue such as they knew too well no venal politician seeking office and votes, no self-server. He came to them, it was reported, out of love for his God, of Whom, as the God of the Hebrews, they had heard rumors. Not all the rumors inspired admiration, however. He had appeared too much as a God of wrath and very little as a God of beauty, and His devotees were somber and seemed to despise life and laughter and gaiety, and talked with long faces. But here was a Jew who appeared joyous and joyously inspired and who looked down on their city with delight, and so he was a more interesting Jew, and his voice held the richness of rough humor, and his speech was in impeccable Greek.