all natural events and should not really be termed miracles. Thus they keep together, in their serpentine course in the underbrush of subtle speculation.
Now, Synesius, contrary to the many of his day, understood the resurrection to be “a holy mystery,” or as Dr. C. Bigg thinks he means, an allegory, which Spinoza understood it to be as he expressly affirms. That is, the resurrection is a pious fraud, a white lie. Synesius argues in defense of his position, that lying is necessary, that deception is better than naked truth for the common run of people, who are unable “to gaze on infinite light.”[1] To tell them plainly that Christ has a spiritual and immaterial nature was letting too much light shine upon their eyes. It would blind them. So they must be duped and by degrees gotten to this spiritual insight.
The position of Synesius is the same as that of Spinoza and Mrs. Eddy, namely, that if a trick had not been worked upon the disciples, making them believe that the body of Christ was raised up, they would never have been brought to believe in his existence as independent of and free from the body, which is the significance of the ascension, which was another illusion; for it must have been a descension or cessation of the body rather than an ascension or a perpetuation of it. Thus by this enlightening illusion the disciples become gloriously disillusionized. By seeing their Lord
- ↑ Neoplatonism p. 339 f.
