Herr Alexianu rapped the handle of the shears hard against his left palm and closed his fingers around it so tightly that his knuckles turned white. His cheek muscles contracted and released.
“Christianity, you see — and I mean the original, unspoiled version — is essentially a male religion, as we can see in the apostle Paul’s hostility toward marriage. This rejection of the feminine was not, as people assume, a product of the apocalyptic mentality of the era; it comes from a moral-aesthetic system of values that ranks acting above suffering, and therefore endorses whatever we might do—regardless of the motive — over what simply happens to befall us, for active doing is inevitably more character-building, more personality-strengthening, than passive receiving. Acting is masculine. But for women life is something that befalls them. Duns Scotus’s potuit, decuit, ergo fecit, which he offered as proof for the Immaculate Conception, speaks volumes. Her son the Mother of God befell: the loftiest symbol of the feminine. Anyone inclined to doubt the biological possibility of the fact is faced with God’s utmost masculinity: yes, he could do it, it was fitting, he did it. To act is divine; to suffer is earthly. What in us is divine, acts. This is our manly part. What is earthly in us, suffers. The earth is feminine.”
“So does that mean the Savior’s crucifixion wasn’t divine?” Fräulein Iliuţ dared ask.
Herr Alexianu gave a narrow smile. “I expected this objection. In fact you might say I even coaxed it out of you. The answer is obvious: No, Christ’s death, his enduring of death, was not divine; that was the human fate he took upon himself. But the metaphor goes further and deeper than that. He died out of love. And therefore his death must also be a symbol for love. Above all, his suffering. And that is the case. Because it is true that in love, acting and suffering are transposed. He who loves, suffers love. He who is loved, produces love — and therefore acts. Christ’s suffering contains a terrible warning.”
“But also an example!” Fräulein Iliuţ objected with a severity that seemed to be more rooted in convention than conviction.
Herr Alexianu held up his hand in a Roman gesture of dismissal. “First and foremost it is an image. An image that each can and should interpret as he will. Or would you be ready to let yourself be crucified out of love? Would you be prepared to do that?”
Fräulein Iliuţ did not answer. But it was clear that she was suf — fering.
“Understand what I am saying!” exclaimed Herr Alexianu. He was so worked up he had turned red; his sentences, which up to now he had been drumming into Fräulein Iliuţ with clipped precision, now became hasty and frayed, tattered like flags in the hail of fire during an assault; we watched as the swarming squads of his thoughts dissolved and regrouped, in order to take a height that had been set as their objective, at great sacrifice, while Fräulein Iliuţ’s face also displayed a delicate, modest blush of red. “Understand what I am saying! I confess the idea sounds outrageous. But it contains the secret of salvation. To make yourself loved — to produce love, without falling into the passion, the guilt of love yourself — the loftiest form of being human — an extraordinary degree of dignity … We can even see a forerunner of this viewpoint in Plato — except that’s insignificant, it doesn’t matter where the idea comes from, and yet it holds the secret of Christ. It’s absurd to imagine the Son of God as a sentimental loving person. He was extremely lucid. His powers of perception are so refined that he has nothing to do with the emotional drivel of the rabble. He rejected every outburst of emotion, just as he turned away his suffering mother. What he acknowledged was the love of Mary Magdalene. For she loved much—in her case that was completely unambiguous: she let herself be loved; she created love. That is the essential moral religion. To love — to love from within one’s self, in order to experience the momentary happiness of being extinguished in eternity — that is the apotheosis of selfishness. To love, without asking for love requited, without hoping for love requited, according to Năstase, requires the lonely strength of the man in the wilderness. In actuality it means scorning and neglecting one’s fellow man. Goethe’s “And if I love you, what’s that to you!” is utterly solipsistic. He was a self-confessed heathen. Christianity is the religion of the ideal society. As a continuation of Judaism — a tribal religion — it is the only faith that counts on its God loving back. Consider the role hope plays in Christian teachings. Their aim is for God to take us up into himself lovingly — in other words: to make us beloved in his sight, to make him love us. But that, too, should be understood metaphorically. Tenets of faith are the metaphors for the most earthly form of existence.”
Fräulein Iliuţ looked up at him, and her tormented expression dissolved in a reflection of pure admiration. We could see that she loved him.
But Herr Alexianu stared rigidly ahead, without looking at her.
“Năstase is striving for this highest level,” he said. “But his reasons for doing so are more biological than ideological. This task was assigned to him by nature. Arranging your life according to ideas is a German approach. Our own mentality, which was molded by antiquity, prefers to derive philosophy from life. Năstase is naturally predisposed to create love, despite — or perhaps precisely because of — the fact that he himself is incapable of loving. But he is anything but coldhearted. He acknowledges love as a necessary force, for the exaltation it creates, the animation it brings to our souls, and for its role as a binding force in civilization. But he advises us to be extremely careful and cautious in its use. Just think: if love for your neighbor became truly common, it would mean the end of love as something exceptional, as a special form of affection. This can already be seen in civilized society, in the secular form of the theocratic state. In other words: Christianity is robbing itself of its core, the core of its true ethical initiative. Năstase aims to avert this danger by a rigorous scientific analysis of the subject matter.”