The Non-Christian Cross: An Enquiry into the Origin and History of the Symbol Eventually Adopted as That of Our ReligionParsons, John Denham
Religion
The Non-Christian Cross: An Enquiry into the Origin and History of the Symbol Eventually Adopted as That of Our Religion
Parsons, John Denham
Crosses
Now although, following the Gospel of St. John, we have made it a main
article of our belief that the Logos, really the Thought _plus_ Speech,
of God, became about the year B.C. 4 specially incarnate in the person
of Jesus the Nazarene, we ought not to forget that, being the one Power
by which all that ever came into existence was created and all that
exists is sustained, the Logos in any case ever was, is, and will be,
incarnate in every sentient being.
As the Logos of God (or, as the Authorised Version of the Bible into
English most inadequately renders it in the first chapter of St. John's
Gospel, the _Word_ of God) was by the philosophers called the
"Intellectual Sun" and the "Light of the World",[59] being, as a
personification of the _Thought_ and _Speech_ of the All-Father, a
personification of Wisdom and Reason (which, in an even more real sense
than the emanations of the physical sun, form the "Light of the World,"
or, as the original text of the New Testament puts it, the "Light of
the _Cosmos_"), the fact that pre-Christian philosophers affirmed that
the cross was the symbol of the said "Light of the Cosmos," is
obviously one which every writer concerning the cross as a Christian
symbol ought in common honesty to deal with.
That pre-Christian philosophers did so affirm, can be seen by turning
to the _Timaeus_ of Plato, where, referring to the begetting of the
Universal Soul (whom Philo, another pre-Christian philosopher, speaks
of as the "Second God"; and as God's "Beloved Son," "Image,"
"Ambassador," "Mediator," and "First-Begotten"), Plato says
"Such was the whole plan of the Eternal God about the
God that was to be:--and in the centre he put the soul
which he diffused throughout the body:--and he made the
Universe a circle moving in a circle. Having these
purposes in view he created the world a blessed God:--he
made the soul on this wise--joined--at the centre like
the letter X."[60]
Concerning this pronouncement of the great Teacher he so revered,
Proclus wrote as follows
"Two circles will be formed, of which one is interior
but the other is exterior. One of these is called the
circle of the Same and one the circle of the Different,
or of the Fixed and of the Variable, or rather of the
Equinoctial Circle and of the Zodiac. The circle of the
Different revolves about the Zodiac, but the circle of
the Same about the Equinoctial. Hence we conceive that
the right lines are not to be applied to each other at
right angles but like the letter X, as Plato says, so as
to cause the angles to be equal only at the summit but
those on each side and the successive angles to be
unequal. For the Equinoctial Circle does not cut the
Zodiac at right angles. Such therefore in short is the
mathematical discussion of the figure of the (Universal)
Soul."[61]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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