Cyclic Time and Judeo-Christian Historicity

Eliade persuasively argues that Judaism and Christianity have given us westerners a linear, desacralized historicism in which the terror of monstrous time without end threatens to swallow us, the temporal distance from the sacred mythic times which sustain us grows ever greater, and in which only death awaits. Understanding cyclic, sacred time is thus difficult for us - but not impossible. We indeed cannot escape our past, and sacred time is part of that past, surviving with us. Eliade's evaluation of our received condition may be accurate, but even with such conditioning, a grasp (and a life) of sacred time in the sense that Eliade describes it is within the modern Judaeo-Christian westerner's reach. We can still work only that we may dance, as it were.

Perhaps the greatest and most profound break made by Judaeo-Christian historicism from the archaic sacred cycles of time is departure from periodic temporal renewal. Eliade identifies ritual reenactments of the cosmogony as concomitantly recreating time along with the cosmos: "the cosmogony equally implies the creation of time," therefore "time was reborn, began again, because with each New Year the world was created anew." (Eliade p. 76) The point of especial significance is that with this reenactment of the creation of time, "With each New Year, a time that was 'new,' 'pure,' 'holy' - because not yet worn - came into existence." Ancient Judaism, and Christianity to an even greater extent, seemingly did away with this regular refreshment through recreation, first by fixing the cosmogony in historical time, and subsequently by orientating around the historical period of Jesus. By doing so, Eliade points out, people in the present are always getting further and further temporally distant from the time of sacred activity. The time we all still live in is the same historical expanse, stretching millennia backward, and as Eliade might put it, worn from centuries of use. When this historicity is vaunted even further by the intellectual elite, "The road is thus opened to the various forms of twentieth-century historicistic philosophies. ... [These accord] decisive importance ... to the historical event as such, that is, by denying it any possibility of revealing a transhistorical, soteriological intent." (Eliade p. 112, italics his)

Because the sacred events of Christianity are thus fixed and denied the transhistoricity of archaic religion's mythical cosmogonic occurrences, they cannot be ritually repeated in the same way. Rather, the Christian periodically recognizes the dates of significant happenings in the time of Gospel, but "these events took place in history; they are no longer facts that happened at the origin of time, 'in the beginning.'" (Eliade p. 111, italics his) As such, the celebration of these events is merely that: a taking note that they happened, longer and longer ago with each occasion of notice. They are not the recapitulations of archaic religion, with the identification of one's person with the gods or heroes of myth - the imitatio dei - as in the case of the sailor of New Guinea who takes on the costume, gestures, and persona of the sailing hero Aori. (Eliade p. 98)

Furthermore, since the advent of this historicity, western intellectualism has been more and more inclined to see time not only as stretching ever backward, but looming indefinitely before us. For the archaic religious man, the observable movement of celestial bodies was hierophany. For the modern westerner, especially in the light of astrophysics, they have come to be like so many ponderously ticking cogs and hands in an inconceivably enormous clock, measuring mind-numbing intervals in cosmic time, compared to which the whole of human history to date is a single grain of sand in the hourglass. Ultimately time in this modern perception "wears the terrifying aspect that it wore in the Indian and Greek philosophies of the eternal return. Definitely desacralized, time presents itself as a precarious and evanescent duration, leading irremediably to death." (Eliade p. 113)

All this weighs in the modern western mind, and Eliade's homo religiosus should be suffering under these conditions. While of course a great many religious people in western traditions (Christianity shall remain the focus here) are far from unhappy with their religious circumstances, it remains fair to say that a great many likewise are dissatisfied. The massive popularity of foreign religions in the west is indicative of the search of many western moderns for a new approach to the vita religiosa. Many of these searchers, however, may be disinclined to abandon the traditions they have inherited; and for these it is necessary to reconnect, to find what seems missing. The conception of time is but one aspect of the religious person's life that must be addressed.

The absence of temporal renewal is indeed a great hurdle for modern Christians to overcome. Anno Domini two thousand and five pretty strongly reinforces the worn, tired sacred history, with all the foggy distance from the last, single renewed beginning of time "anew with the birth of Christ" (Eliade p. 111), and with all the profane happenings that have unfolded in the meantime. What is required of the troubled Christian - whom, it should be noted, is taken here to be a rather deeply thinking sort of person, if not a virtual theologian - is a shift in his way of thinking about sacredness in time. He and his society are too deeply committed to historicism to abandon it completely, but this does not preclude the advent of a new conception of transhistorical soteriology. Eliade has already identified the idea of the continual presence of God in history as the ultimate valorization thereof (Eliade p. 112); yet this is the point of departure both for the historicism that troubles our subject, and for the idea that may underlie all in developing his new understanding. Eliade puts his finger on the crucial point: "the universal spirit continually manifests itself in historical events and manifests itself only in historical events." (Eliade p. 112) While the continual manifestation of the sacred in historical events poses no difficulty - quite the opposite, in fact - it is the notion that the sacred is manifested exclusively in historical events which leads to much of our Christian's trouble. God existed "in the beginning," He performed the cosmogonic act, creating the world and time along with it, and He thus is transhistorical just as the powers of archaic religion. This is so even if one insists on regarding the creation as a historical, rather than mythical event.

Time may thus be purified still, though not by ritual repetition of the cosmogony (which Christian practice generally does not provide for) which annihilates previous time, but by periodic renewal of one's spiritual energy. This is accomplished more or less in the same way as in archaic religion: through reactualization of myths, and imitatio dei, or comparable acts. While the observation of holidays in the Christian liturgical calendar has been compared to the mere note-taking of historical events that happened however long ago, such is not entirely the case. The participation in being, the "imitation of paradigmatic divine models" (Eliade p. 106) is still present, though the models are historical, rather than (strictly) mythical happenings. Communion is an outstanding example. While the recipient of the sacrament probably does not go so far as the archaic festival-goer in identifying himself explicitly with, in this case, a particular one of the apostles, he does identify himself explicitly with them as the recipients of the original sacrament. Easter is an example of a different sort. While in this case the paradigmatic events - the crucifixion and resurrection - are not reactualized, the Christian, in reflective meditation, may partake in the sorrow and wonder of the disciples alive at the time of the event. A further, even more individualistic, if more general, example is the aspiration to act in a Christlike manner, that is, to live in emulation of the sacred and abide therein. An action performed in emulation of Jesus or in obedience to His commandments is, of course, an imitatio dei. All of these examples point toward the ultimate interaction between the Christian and the sacred: contact with the Holy Spirit. This is the very essence of the partaking of the religious person in the reality, the ontological surplus, of the sacred.
Finally, time, despite its enormity, need not be feared. Eliade cites the example of the Indian development of defining the length of cycles of endlessly repeating cosmic time (Eliade p. 108) as one which - at least for religious and philosophical elites - was cause for despair. Modern science, when speaking of cosmic duration, deals in comparably gargantuan numbers. The terror of this endless linear time comes, however, not from its immensity, but from its uninterruptedness. "For religious man," Eliade says, "profane temporal duration can be periodically arrested; for certain rituals have the power to interrupt it by periods of a sacred time that is nonhistorical (in the sense that it does not belong to the historical present)." (Eliade p. 71-72) For the Christian, these rituals must be the likes of those mentioned above. Beyond these, however, historical time may be interrupted by the realization of the presence of the transhistorical Kingdom of Heaven. Again, even if one holds to the notion that the Apocalypse and Judgment will historically occur, the Kingdom exists even now, will always exist, and has always existed. It is eternal, created outside of profane time, and so the very thought of it is the beginning of interrupting the experience of common duration.

Eliade is indeed right in saying that "Christianity radically changed the experience and the concept of liturgical time," (Eliade p. 72) but it must not be construed from this change that a religious life as potent and meaningful as that of the archaic religious person is impossible. Indeed, quite the opposite is the case, as has been demonstrated above. It is hoped that western moderns will be able to find a reconciliation of sacredness in their religious lives. Homo religiosus needs to maintain this connection, for "the more religious he is, the more does he enter into the real and the less is he in danger of becoming lost" (Eliade p. 96, italics his).