Readings: Logos as Mediation

As a further elucidation and extention of some of the ideas presented in the previous couple of posts below, here, without my additional comments, are a series of excerpts from the next essay:

~ Simone Weil, On Science, Necessity, and the Love of God, “Notes on Cleanthes, Pherecydes, Anaximander, and Philolaus” [pp.144-147]


[“God is ever a geometer.” ~ Plato]

This is the discovery that intoxicated the Greeks: that the reality of the sensible universe is constituted by a necessity whose laws are the symbolic expression of the mysteries of faith.
(This had probably always been known, but preserved in secret doctrines; and the Greeks perhaps rediscovered it.)
It was certainly still known by the first Christians.
There would seem to be an allusion to symbolism of this kind in the marvelous and incomprehensible words of St. Paul:

‘That ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge.’ [Ephesians 3. 17-19]

The number of wonderfully beautiful, and today totally unintelligible, texts in the New Testament shows clearly that an infinitely precious part of the Christian doctrine has disappeared.
It is very probable that it was systematically destroyed by the Roman Empire in the process of domesticating Christianity.

….If the gates of Hell have really not prevailed, this can only mean that the true faith still lives in secret in the hearts of a few hidden beings. But they are well hidden.

….The two catastrophes in the history of Christianity have been Constantine’s decision to make Christianity official, and the war against the Albigensians accompanied by the Inquisition. St. Augustine came after the first catastrophe, St. Thomas after the second.

….Harmony encloses together God and matter in one and the same world. It is evident, therefore, that it is the Logos.

(Note: Weil translates “Logos” as “Mediation” and says:

"…the divine Mediation descending… into the world, pervades everything. It unites God to God, God to the world, and the world to itself; it constitutes reality in every domain.
"All of this is to be found expressed in the single term Logos * as the name of the second Person of the Trinity.)"

*note: this is in Greek in the original