David and Goliath is a very famous Scripture story, and I never regarded it as having a mystical element until recently. In fact, I have discovered that it fits perfectly with a theology that I have had for a long time, namely, the mystery of the ages of the doctrinal development of the Church. This may sound crazy, but come along for the ride.
To begin, let us recall a key element or aspect of the story. More specifically, David did not come out swinging at the strong parts of Goliath's body. No, if he had taken on Goliath in his arms, legs, rock solid and monstrous gut, shoulders, etc, he would have been a goner.
Too, lawyers, in order to make their case against their opponent, never try to strike their opponents' case at the opponent's strongest arguments or evidence. No, they attack the weakest evidence and arguments first, then progress to stronger ones, until they have toppled everything, like a process of gaining power and opposition.
It has been the same with devil. In pagan Rome, the devil had the empire wrapped around his finger: no truth (paganism is a total denial of truth, since monotheis is the truth, not polytheism), no morals (pagan rome sanctioned all violations of the decalogue in their culture: the self-deifying blasphemy of the emperors, death for entertainment in the gladiator games, abortion, infanticide, gluttony pools, drunkenness, divorce, hedonism, fornication, orgies, sodomy, slavery, inequality of human dignity, greed, bribery, and the like), and materialism (Rome's mere physical accomplishment and grandeur were veritably deified, and perversely glorified by humanity).
When Constantine conquered, that all changed. The great pyramid of God's truths in the Catholic religion loomed before the dragon. It was a complete disaster for the diabolical, for, before that perennial dragon, stood a huge spiritual manifestation of the mystery of God in all its incomprehensible grandeur and profundity. The devil needed humanity to completely discard and spit in the face of this mighty doctrinal wonder before they would go back to no morals and materialism, like 20th century and our modern day, as at pagan Rome, seeing as so long as humanity had faith in some truth of God, they would live for God and not for this world, and so not embrace those same immoralities and babel-like superficiality.
How will the dragon do it? Well, duh, says the dragon, the pyramid is the key. As you ascend the pyramid, truth is more, but evidence to support the truth is less. And what does sinful man, that is, skeptical man, value most for a source except not level of truth but EVIDENCE! Bingo: Moreover, evidence is least at the top and most at the bottom. So start at the top, the place of least evidence, or the doctrines of Trinity and Incarnation, and work down to reason, the source with the most evidence.
Let us analyze this theology of the pyramid, and then we can show that the Church’s historical doctrinal trajectory has descended the pyramid perfectly. Well will start from the bottom and work upward:
- Reason: The weakest source in terms of truth is Reason, since it only gives natural truth, as in basic monotheism and natural law, but it is the most evident source; all men have reason and can plainly see it. No man may excuse himself from seeking out truth with reason. "The fool has said in his heart, there is no God." (Ps 14:1)
- Scripture: Scripture is less evident than reason in the world, since only Christians have it in full. For example, the New World Indians only had reason before Europe came to them. Before the Spaniards came to the Aztecs, they did not have Scripture. No savage can ever have Scripture unless it is brought to him. So, again, whereas all men have reason, not all men have Scripture. Scripture is less evident. But it is the most evident source of Revelation. All three forms of Christendom accept the Scriptures. Yet, the Scriptures are also the least reliable source of Revelation by themselves, since they are highly susceptible to misinterpretation without Tradition and Bishops. Protestants only have Scripture, but they are all over the board on truth.
- Tradition and Bishops: the evidence for general Apostolic Succession and Oral Tradition is less in the writings of the Fathers than for Scripture. The vast majority of early Church Father testimony is citing Scripture. On the contrary, quotes that argue for valid Tradition and Succession from the Apostles are much less. So, again, Tradition and authoritative Apostolic Succession are less evident to humanity than Scripture. But Tradition is far more reliable than Scripture, since it gives the right interpretation. With only Tradition, the Orthodox would still have all their dogmas, even without Scripture. But again, the evidence for Tradition is less than Scripture, hence why only two of the three forms of Christendom accept Tradition, Orthodox and Catholic.
- Peter: Quotes in antiquity that speak of Peter's special office of infallibility are far less than quotes about general Apostolic Succession. Therefore, Peter's special role in Apostolic Succession is less evident than general Bishops, hence why the Orthodox do not accept him. But Peter is even stronger in truth than his other brothers combined, since with Peter, the fullness of truth on earth is known in Catholicism. Hence why the Orthodox are a little bit in error and debate a thousand years of what we know to be certain as dogma.
- Trinity and Incarnation : Finally, the Trinity and Incarnation lies even above Peter, since God is the ultimate source of truth, but those mysteries are so elusive, so hidden!
What we have shown is that as you ascend the pyramid of sources, the truth increases but the evidence for reliability decreases, and down the pyramid, vice versa.
Finally, in light of this, since God’s sources of truth are ordered theologically, and the devil must necessarily work with reality as it is, it is no surprise that the devil is taking pot shots at the lesser evident sources of Catholic truth and moving down to the most evident sources, and, derivatively, at the most reliable sources in terms of truth, down to the least reliable. In that way, truth peels off little by little, like knocking off layers of a pyramid.
The historical journey of doctrine in the Church bears this out completely!
After Pagan Rome, the majority of the primary heresies afflicting the Church until the Schism were mainly attacking God in His special nature as Triune and Incarnate: Arianism, Monophysitism, Monothelytism, Nestorianism, Apollinarism, Pneumatomachianism, Tritheism, and so forth. Too, Islam culminated these: it totally denied the Trinity and Incarnation and, if that were not enough, went on to suggest a revelation beyond Jesus, the Quran, which Arianism, while also denying the Trinity and Incarnation, did not. Too, even the Iconoclastic heresy is an affront to the Incarnate God, since, it involves the interpretation of the First Commandment which is to have no other gods before Him; more specifically, because saints possess the presence of deifying sanctifying grace, saints are in fact divinized, so that sacred images, even images of the saints,, are images of Christ, and hence of God, an Incarnational mystery.
Then, the next great attack was clearly the Great Schism of the East, which assaulted Peter, the supreme apostolic successor, just underneath God.
As for the next great attack, really, in the Middle Ages, Albigensianism or Catharism were minor compared to what was the clear continuing trajectory of the opposition to the Church, the moral fall of the clergy in the late Middle Ages, paving the way for the great assault, the Protestant Rebellion; and lo and behold, the ultimate thing that all Protestants have in common is in contesting the general Bishops and Sacred Tradition, which are just beneath Peter, the supreme Apostolic Successor.
It just keeps going: the Protestants’ confounding of the Scriptures only served to make humanity doubt the veracity of the Bible itself and, in fact, all Divine Revelation, which gave rise to a general climate of solo-ratio, or faith in Reason alone, the natural digression from the Protestants’ counterpart rallying-cry, sola-scriptura (Enlightenment, French Revolution, Masonry, and so forth).
Finally, in the 20th century, even Reason dies, and we have total apostasy, as in atheism in the East [which is irrational since it denies God, who can be known from Reason alone, Vatican I] and relativism and materialism in the West [which is irrational since it denies objective truth].
In conclusion, the devil has done his job and gotten the world back to Pagan Rome in principle; today, not even reason remains: atheism (we can know God from pure reason), relativism (that there is objective truth is rational), and materialism (to believe this life is all there is is irrational, since the soul can be known from reason in addition to God.)! Bingo!
Addendum
A Scriptural Basis: Apocalypse 10
Admittedly, the pyramid is a historical entity in Scripture, and the analogy here holds well, but one can ask, is there something even more pronounced and appropriate? Absolutely! Consider Apocalypse 10, which surely gives us an insight into the mystery of truth:
“And I saw another mighty angel come down from heaven, clothed with a cloud, and a rainbow was on his head, and his face was as the sun, and his feet as pillars of fire. And he had in his hand a little book open: and he set his right foot upon the sea, and his left foot upon the earth.” (Rv 10:1–2)
Now, what does a scroll contain except writing, and what writing is there in the New Covenant except the truth, the Word of God in all its totality? The scroll, therefore, can image the totality of God’s truth and mystery. Moreover, by common Gospel symbolism, we are called to walk in the “Way” which is clearly the “Way [of] Truth”, as in “follow Me.” Hence, that our feet are called to walk the way of truth could be extrapolated to mean, at least on one layer of meaning, that our feet become images of the truth themselves.
Toward that end, the angel bearing in his hand the entire mystery of truth coupled with the vivid symbolism of his feet in alternate environments could easily imply that a mystery of Catholic truth extends into the feet of the angel. Indeed, this will be strikingly appropriate, as follows: note, first, that the strong foot (the right foot, since right, in the biblical theology, means the stronger, as in “and he is seated at the right hand of the Father”) rests on the sea, a weak foundation, whereas the weak foot, the left foot, rests on the earth, a strong foundation.
Wondrous! Strong sources of truth rest on weaker foundation of evidence, and weaker sources of truth rest on stronger evidence, just like our pyramid analogy!
The Crucified Feet: a Visual Analogy on the Human Body
While we are at it, a wondrous secondary addendum can be noted in order that any person may see this mystery visually manifested in their feet, as follows: if the foot images the truth, we note that the foot has five toes. How many sources of truth did we have in the pyramid above? Yes, five. Moreover, when Jesus is crucified, his one foot is placed on top of the other foot, and they are brutally fixated to one another by the nail in such a manner that, effectively, a one-to-one correspondence exists between the five toes of each foot. And lo and behold, if we use the Egyptian model of the human toes, which is where the toes descend in length from the big toe down to the little toe perfectly (and noting anyway that since Jesus is Middle Eastern, this is probably his genetic version), we note that the toes are in opposite pose for the two feet when the two feet are nailed together. That is, on the one foot, the toes fall going in one lateral direction, and on the other foot, the toes rise. Bingo! This perfectly images our theology: as we traverse the five sources of truth, from top to bottom, truth falls, but evidence for legitimacy rises, just like the toes! See.
