ITS OMNIPRESENCE: my theological namesake quoted approvingly to his Greek audience a common bit of philosophical wisdom from their own cultural milieu when he spoke of God the Father as “the one in whom we live and move and have our being.” Does not such a formulation recall Yog-Sothoth, who walks with the other Old Ones between the dimensions, and in whom past, present, and future are one? Does it not recall Azathoth, the primal chaos that resides not only at the center of infinity but at the center of each atom, each particle, perhaps serving as the unaccountable subatomic bond that has categorically escaped scientific explanation? But here I overstep the limits of my formal authority, so effectively does this demonic pantheon inspire a plethora of transgressive and exhilarating speculations.
ITS ANNIHILATING HOLINESS: in the Hebrew Scriptures, in the desert, under the merciless sun, the Israelites witness repeated outbreaks of Yahweh, Who “is a consuming fire,” an untamable force, a burning pestilence, a plague of serpents. And so is He revealed not just as the Holy Other but as Wholly Other, possessed of a cosmically singular sui generis nature that cannot and will not abide contradiction. In the words of Luther himself, if you sin “then He will devour thee up, for God is a fire that consumeth, devoureth, rageth; verily He is your undoing, as fire consumeth a house and maketh it dust and ashes.” As Otto wrote with such frightening clarity of apprehension, there is something baffling in the way His wrath is kindled and manifested, for it is “like a hidden force of nature, like stored-up electricity, discharging itself upon anyone who comes too near. It is incalculable and arbitrary.” To see His luminance shining from the face of Moses is a horror. To see His face is to die.
This incomprehensible, inconceivable, incalculable, arbitrary horror serves as the font, finish, and focal point of our entire tradition. I trust my attempts at commentary would only weaken the blow of the brute fact itself.
“My son.” The voice speaks behind him, and he looks sideways in acknowledgment of its presence without actually turning to face it. “Have you read them again?” The voice is thin as a reed, like a sick child, and also thick and murky, like a chorus chanting together in imperfect unison. But even now, with the world having passed beyond its own farthest extremity, the voice exudes a supernal calmness and control that still, astonishingly, serve to comfort and soothe.
“Some of them, yes,” he replies. “But something is eluding me. They seem to contain two different strands or stories. One of them is like a dream narrative that follows an alternative plot and — perhaps — posits a world in which the efforts of the other narrative have failed or were never made. But I’m not at all certain of any of this. I need to read the pages once more.”
“Then read,” the voice says. “But remember that we are waited upon.” As if in confirmation, the ocean roar of voices swells momentarily to a peak, washing up from below the balcony outside and telling of a tensely waiting throng before settling back into an undulating trough.
He nods and returns to the pages.
ITS TRANSCENDENCE. In the Book of Isaiah we encounter a Yahweh who protects the cosmic order from destructive incursions by the ancient chaos serpents but also launches His own cosmos-shaking assaults against that order, all leading up to a concluding note of horror in the book’s worm-infested final verse that has resounded down through the ages and brought no end of trouble for biblical exegetes, since its literary and theological effect is to stamp the book with the impossible message that Yahweh is the ultimate chaos monster who only saves His creation from the others so that He can destroy it Himself. (Surely you remember this subversive reading of the Isaian text from my last book, which sold relatively well but drew such scathing condemnation from my fellow theologians.)
Is it possible, can we conclude, that these and a thousand other aspects of our tradition were always both more and less than they seemed — that they were, in a word, other than they seemed; that instead of pointing directly toward spiritual and metaphysical truths, the great concepts, words, and icons of our tradition were in fact mere signals, hints, clues, that gestured awkwardly toward a reality whose true character was and is far different from and perhaps even opposite to the surface meanings?
Consider: humanity’s dual nature — conscious and unconscious, deliberate and autonomic, free and determined, physical and spiritual, cerebral and reptilian — has always singled us out as the earth’s only true amphibians. We have always acted from two centers and stood with feet planted in two separate worlds. Now we have seen this duality ripped apart or brought to fruition — how to regard it is unclear — as those elements of reality represented by our reptilian brainbase, and by the darkest archetypes of our collective unconscious, and by the corresponding monstrous elements in our mythological traditions, have fulfilled a nexus of ancient race-level fears.
Does this perhaps indicate something of our role in what is transpiring? Do we perhaps serve a necessary function as bridges between the realms, simply by the fact of our fundamental duality?
I turn my eyes skyward and see the gargoylish figures still commanding the open air between the coiling columns of smoke. Rubbery black demonoid shapes with smooth blank faces and leathery wings swoop and careen like flakes of ash on a hot wind.
A moment later I stumble on a fragment of granite, and the involuntary ducking of my head proves perfectly timed for avoiding a surely fatal encounter with a squid-like shape twenty feet long that bloats and shimmers through the air in a rhythmic pulsating pattern like a sea creature propelling itself through deep water. I stare at its underside, sick with terror, as it slides past and over me, but then note with relief that the fat torpedo-shaped body is turned so that its great blank eye looks laterally instead of downward. Had the thing been looking down, it would have done what these sentinels always do when they detect their prey: it would have paused directly over me and regarded me through that alien eye with an equally alien intelligence. Then it would have bunched itself into a knotted mass of claw-tipped tentacles ringed around a dilating sphincter-mouth set with concentric rows of needled teeth, and dropped upon me with inconceivable speed and ferocity. I have already seen those serpentine tentacles enmesh many a man in their deadly loops. I have heard the human flesh sizzle and scorch on contact with that corrosive extra-dimensional matter. I have watched shrieking people disappear into that churning meat grinder of a mouth.
As incongruous as it may sound, I now express thanks, not just passive resignation but a positive gratitude, for the waking nightmare that has overtaken us. For those things that otherwise seem so horrific in their surface appearances can actually serve to awaken us from our dogmatic slumbers and lead us to a more vital and viable faith, a faith that is unshakeable, unassailable, impervious to doubt: a true theological exemplar of Luther’s Ein Feste Burg, although this mighty fortress, if rendered in literal brick and stone, would embody a warped architectural schema of a pointedly nonhuman and non-rational nature.
It would be so easy to rearrange some of these fragments, to clarify their individual and collective meanings by connecting some of their philosophical edges where they obviously cohere. But despite his pleading for permission to do so, the rule is firm: the pages and their contents must remain in their received order, and must be met and dealt with in that order and no other. Any interpretation must emerge from and pointedly account for that canonically unalterable jumble in its precise given form. A new Revelation, so many members of the hierarchy have said to him and to each other on so many different occasions since the papers first came into their possession at a time when the global nightmare was just beginning to invade from the shadows. A new scripture. A third testament. They have said such things in tones of awe, and exultation, and confusion, and horror, and, increasingly, with a dogmatic air of fanatical certitude.