Estaban
had
always been a zealous Dominican, wishing to do all he could for
the good of the order and the glory of God. He had been in
monasteries since the age of ten, and he loved the life: the tranquility, the
libraries with their theological treasures, the tradition of so
many lives over so many centuries devoted to the service of
Christ. At an early age he had been ordained as a priest and had
become a professor at the theological academy in Seville.
But
he
felt that it was selfish of him to spend his life so quietly and
securely feeling the presence of God. His students had all taken
their vows, had given their lives to Christ; but outside the
academy walls, millions of people rarely thought of Christ or
thought wrongly of Him. He had read of such people time and
again. And many of his former classmates were directly
confronting such people, taking an active part in the
Inquisition. So Estaban requested that he too might take part in
that great work of saving souls from perdition.
That
was
how it came to pass that one day this young priest found himself
as the chief prosecutor in the case of a young Jewess who had
paid lip service to Christ while continuing in the abominable
ways of her ancestors. The highest dignitaries of the church
were assembled with all the robes and insignia of a great
religious festival. He tried to restrain himself from the sin of
pride, to remember that he was acting in the service of God,
that what mattered was not his own eloquence, (which surely was
superfluous since she was known to be guilty), but the soul of
the young Jewess who must be forced to confess and must be burnt
at a great and glorious auto da fe that she might, with the
grace of God, be granted everlasting life. And so many others
like her needed saving: a great new career in service to God was
opening for him.
But
he
found himself saying things he never expected to say, found
himself, in fact, pleading in her behalf in front of the entire
Court of the Inquisition. It was embarrassing, a shocking
display. And to make matters worse, he spoke well, too well,
much better than he had ever spoken before. It was unfortunate.
She was acquitted, and ever after that he had her soul on his
conscience. All his prayers and penance did nothing to erase his
guilt: his action was unthinkable.
He
apologized
again and again to his superiors and friends; and they could
tell that he was sincerely penitent. They tried to comfort him,
assured him that he meant well and that in the eyes of God that
was what mattered. They would see to it that he would never
again be placed in such a difficult situation. He was evidently
unsuited for the pressures of courtroom oratory. Another task would be
found for him so he might work for the good of the order and the
glory of God.
But,
unfortunately,
the young Jewess, through his folly, had never been brought to a
true understanding of her sins, had not been humbled to
repentance, in fact still considered herself innocent, had no fear
for her soul; and was grateful, immensely grateful to Father
Estaban for saving her from the flames. And her family was
grateful (though they were now much more careful about their
public behavior). And her friends were grateful (though in
public they dared not let it be known that they were her
friends). And Estaban kept receiving, even months after the
trial, anonymous gifts and tokens and letters from well-wishers.
The gifts he donated to the order. The tokens and letters he
destroyed, trying to erase that scandalous incident from his
mind.
His
superiors
wanted him to return to his old professorship, but Estaban
requested that he be given a task, however humble, that involved
the saving of souls. So Estaban became the confessor of several
of the greatest nobles of Seville. And at first the job
delighted him: having contact with real people and real
problems, being entrusted with the care of souls that were in
daily danger. But then it struck him how trivial were the sins
that were confessed to him: mere matters of lust and avarice,
pride and ambition. And he became more and more deeply convinced
that he was a greater sinner than any of them, having lost the
soul of the poor young girl. Who was he to absolve anyone of
anything? It was more likely that his advice would corrupt
rather than cleanse the moral lives of these fine upstanding
people. Estaban requested to be relieved of his duties, to be
given some humbler task of saving souls, one befitting such a
sinner as he.
And
so
Estaban became a seller of indulgences. And he was a fine
salesman, eloquent about the miseries of hell and purgatory,
adept in his argumentation, in the way he summoned evidence in
support of the effectiveness of indulgences. And though his
superiors were disappointed that such a fine young scholar
insisted on taking up such a lowly task, they were pleased with
the results, for many hundreds of souls were advanced in the
celestial hierarchy toward lesser misery and much fine marble
could be bought for St. Peter's in Rome and the glory of God.
But
it
soon came to light that Father Estaban had on occasion given
indulgences to beggars. It would have passed unnoticed, for he
paid for them out of his own pocket: but it so happened that one
of the beggars took offense, was loud in his complaints that he
asks for bread and this priest gives him a piece of paper that
promises in Latin that after he's dead he won't have to suffer
so many years.
It
created
a scandal: giving indulgences to beggars. Why in no time everyone
would be expecting the Church to give them away. Why It was
contrary to the whole spirit of the thing. And Estaban
recognized his error, did penance for having been so weak, for
having forgotten that pity is one of the most powerful weapons
in Satan's arsenal.
In
his guilt and despair, Father Estaban returned to his books,
buried himself in the abstruse studies of his youth; and it was
in such studies that he discovered his true calling.
He
felt
drawn to heresies, to their intricacies and subtleties. It was
amazing how rational and convincing some of them were, how
subtle the ways of Satan. It would be easy for anyone, even he
Father Estaban to be seduced into taking the false for the true,
the Anti-Christ for Christ.
Of
course,
in retrospect, the scholars of the Church always untangled the
true from the false, pointing out the source of the error. But
to be confronted with a new heresy, one that was not yet
officially recognized, that had not yet undergone analysis: that
would be frighteningly difficult for a learned priest to
properly understand, much less the ordinary lay believer. And
time and again throughout history, hundreds, thousands, perhaps
even millions of souls were lost, damned for all eternity before
the Holy Catholic Church had time to diagnose the disease and
begin its curative efforts.
It
occurred to Estaban that if heresies could be described and
analyzed before they captured people's imaginations, many
millions of souls could be saved. And the logic of heresies, the
reasonableness that made them so convincing, made it possible
for someone well versed in theology to imagine the ramifications
of shifts of emphasis, of slight changes in the True Doctrine as
they were developed and expanded. He dreamed of compiling a
compendium of all possible heresies, conveniently indexed, so
that even the simplest carpenter could check his idle musings
and be assured that he had not unwittingly fallen into deadly
error.
The
Grand
Inquisitor did not like the idea. But he gave his approval
nonetheless, so this zealous priest could have a harmless task
to content himself with, a task that might after all prove
useful.
So
Father
Estaban set about his work. And he was amazed at how easy it was
to imagine new heresies. In just a few years, he composed over
7,000 heresies.
The
slightest change in wording or in interpretation of a word could
lead to mortal sin. For instance, in the opening sentence of the
Gospel of John, the standard interpretation rendered the
preposition 'pros' as 'with.' But in classical Greek it was
quite possible for 'pros' plus the accusative to mean 'against.'
On the basis of such a slight change one could claim that "In
the beginning was Reason and Reason was against God and Reason
was God." In other words, Reason by its very nature is opposed
to God but, in fact, is itself God Himself. Variations on those
opening passages of John alone gave rise to 253 heresies. And
there would have been still more if Estaban hadn't grown weary
of the theme.
He
loved
best the heresies that dealt with Christ incarnate as man, with
his man-ness and his god-ness and their varying degrees and
interrelations. That was the most difficult point of theology:
how God could be man. And a simple carpenter. It was hard to
connect the abstruse formulations of theologians with the life
of a simple carpenter. But to fail to do so was heresy, a heresy
that every carpenter since the time of Christ had probably
fallen into, had probably only avoided by never asking the
question.
And
Christ
himself, the carpenter -- could he have known that he was God?
Of course, all is possible to God, but God-as-man? How far a man?
Perhaps
he was even man enough not to understand all these subtleties.
Perhaps he considered the behavior of his disciples
extraordinary. He was amazed at his own behavior in front of
crowds, saying things that he never intended to say. This interpretation
would clear up some of the apparent contradictions in the
Gospels. Sometimes he spoke as God and sometimes as a man who,
as far as he knew, was just a man, unambitious, finding it
difficult to explain his own behavior and to restrain the
reactions of his friends.
And
he
had been among us twice: both before and after the Resurrection.
And if he didn't know that he was God the first time, perhaps he
didn't know the second. And one day waking up in a stone cold
tomb, enshrouded and anointed like a corpse, he frantically
unbound himself, trying all the while to convince himself that
this was a nightmare, though he found it difficult to remember
the other world he lived in when he was truly awake. He stumbled
as he walked out into the bright Easter sun, so painful to his
unaccustomed eyes. Two women who saw him screamed and ran away.
He didn't mean to frighten them, or the soldiers either. But
that was the way with dreams -- sudden shifts of scene,
transformations, and people forever over-reacting.
Everything
he
saw was probably symbolic of something he wanted -- the holes in
the hands and feet probably indicated that he was nailed down to
some job, some pattern of life that he found deadening and
wished to break away from at all costs, in order to start a new
life in a new place among new friends. All these people and
places struck him as unfamiliar. He kept hoping it would end
soon. And it did. But from beginning to end, it was an
extraordinary dream in which he was forever surprising himself
with his own behavior.
And,
reasoned
Estaban, if Christ had been among us twice unbeknownst to
himself and had on those occasions announced at inspired moments
that he would return again, then perhaps he had returned,
perhaps many times, but had passed unrecognized. Perhaps he is even now
among us.
Father
Estaban
broke out in a cold sweat as he reread his pages. They were in a
sense inspired. He had let the words and ideas carry him whither
they would. They struck him as unfamiliar as he reread them now.
"Exceptionally good," he told himself near the start. "A
veritable gem," he told himself as he neared the end. "It alone
will make my compendium a work of art." He tried to restrain
himself from the sin of pride.
But
now
he remembered the last sentence, and he was afraid to read it.
He dared not turn that last page, dared not see the sin of sins
committed so clearly in his own hand. He painfully remembered
the incident with the Jewess, tried to excuse the present
circumstance as another case of that madness. But, fortunately,
this time it was only his own soul that was at stake. No one had
yet read the words. Not even he had read those words of his
madness, not his words, even though he had written them. No, he
wasn't the author. And no one would ever read them.
He
pulled
himself together, took several deep breaths, then calmly and
quietly gathered up his manuscript and calmly and quietly burned
it in the same hearth where he had burned the tokens and letters
from friends and relatives of the Jewess. But as the last page
went up in flame, a doubt arose in his mind. He was no longer
certain that the words on that page read, 'I am the Christ, the
son of God.' He was no longer sure, and it disturbed him
profoundly that it might not have been so.
As
he
wandered through the streets of Seville in despair, he was
disturbed that he was disturbed. He needed to speak to someone,
but he dared not turn to his fellow Dominicans, for how could
they sympathize with a priest who wanted to be Christ, who
wanted not just to be like Christ, but to be Christ in the flesh
-- to forever do the "right" without necessarily even thinking
of God.
Yet
he
didn't know and couldn't believe that that was in fact what he
wanted. It was just an illusion. He had never written it. And
afterwards he was distraught, not in command of his senses,
having just destroyed in a matter of minutes his life's work.
And he couldn't tell the Jewess or her family either, as they
welcomed him with great rejoicing and spread a feast before him.
And
so
it came to pass that Father Estaban no longer worked for the
good of the order and the glory of God, that, instead, he
learned the trade of a carpenter and lived a simple, long, and
quiet life.