Gods and Legions (34 page)

'Then why,' he said, feigning a look of puzzlement, 'are Christians said to fear and despise me, and claim I am not one of them? Here, I shall say it: "Jesus is lord." Now am I saved?'

I felt all eyes at our table upon me, and noticed that all other conversation in the room had fallen silent. I spoke clearly and evenly. 'I do not know of any Christians who despise you, though they might doubt your commitment to their faith. By merely speaking those words, you have fulfilled only half the requirement. You must also believe in your heart.'

'Ah – so whether or not I am saved is contingent upon whether or not I believe. If I
believe
I will receive salvation, then I will receive salvation. Circular logic, is it not? What if I do not, or cannot
completely
believe – will I be partially saved?'

'No, my lord,' I said. 'You can no more be partially saved than can a woman be partially pregnant.'

A few of the diners tittered appreciatively at the weak witticism, but were quickly silenced by Julian's stony face.

'So in other words, my entire fate is based on whether or not I believe. Not on good works, not on charity, not on love. I need only utter the magic words and believe them, whether I am an illiterate peasant, a king, or a scholar, although, in fact, the more I am the latter, the less likely I am to believe. What kind of a religion are we establishing here, that is based so much on the vagaries of one's heart rather than on one's actions in the world?'

'My lord, you belittle our faith,' I rejoined, striving to contain my anger at his mocking tone. 'You cast it in overly simplified terms, to which no religion could stand up. This is not the proper venue for a discussion of this kind. If you insist, we shall talk of these things tomorrow, in private, when you are not so—'

'Calm, calm, Caesarius, I meant no offense,' he interrupted, smiling lightheartedly. 'I call our other guests to witness that I have said nothing vicious or untrue, have I?' Most of the others at the table diverted their gaze or laughed uneasily. 'Here, on my honor, I confess my belief that God raised Christ from the dead, for I truly do believe that, Caesarius, as much as I believe that Athena appeared personally to Odysseus to assist him on his return home, and that Apollo spoke directly to Croesus through the oracle. Is there any disputing now that I am as much a Christian as the Pope himself? I believe those things!'

'"The devils also believe, and tremble," say the Scriptures.' The room fell into shocked silence.

Julian's eyes narrowed again. 'What exactly are you implying, Caesarius?'

'Only this,' I said slowly. 'The passage from Paul you cited presupposes that you have also acknowledged the verity of the Ten Commandments, the foundation of the Christian faith, the first of which is that you shall have no other gods. When you say "Jesus is Lord," you must mean he is
the
Lord of all, not
a
lord. Your belief in Athena and Apollo negates your profession of fealty to Christ.'

I sat back in my seat, incensed at Julian for putting me on the spot in this way. He stared at me, smirking, and for the first time I noticed true malice in his eyes. 'Ah,' he said, 'so there is a catch. An implied definite article modifying the noun "Lord" in Paul's passage, which neither the Greek language nor its translations into the Latin were able to make explicit, apparently due to their linguistic and structural shortcomings, and which insightful Paul, writing in a language other than his mother tongue, was unable to clarify. Forgive me my denseness on this matter, Caesarius, in not recognizing what every Christian peasant across the length and breadth of Europe and Africa has apparently easily accepted. So there is only
one
lord, you say?'

I licked my lips, sensing I was being boxed into a corner, but not sure precisely how. 'You
know
that is true, my lord,' I said, and immediately bit my tongue.

Julian seized upon my words triumphantly, as he had been waiting to do. 'Did you call
me
"lord"?' he asked mockingly. 'And I seem to recall your referring to the Emperor Constantius by the same term, did you not? And what will you call my successor, I wonder, should you be fortunate enough to continue your service under him? What has become now of your singular "lord," dear Caesarius? Or is there indeed a plurality of such eminences which you, in your wisdom, have not yet had the opportunity to explain to me?'

I was furious at his petty tone, and at the sophistic direction the conversation had taken.

'With all due respect,
Augustus,
' I said, 'you know as well as I that common court courtesy dictates that I refer to you by the title "lord." It is a linguistic convention. You are disputing semantics, not religion.'

He smiled contemptuously and turned to the men seated around him, who were staring wide-eyed and gape-jawed at my challenge to the Emperor. They quickly, and nervously, smiled back at him, but failed to meet his gaze, and he stood up, draining his cup and holding it out to the steward behind him for a refill.

'The most notable example I have witnessed this evening of the pot calling the cauldron black,' he said. 'My dear friend Caesarius now claims that we must somehow
assume
that the Apostle Paul meant one lord, not many, and that we must somehow
assume
that Paul's definition of the word "lord" was different from that used by any other man either before or since. Our Galilean here parses the meaning of Paul's simple phrase to support his own views, making Paul say something completely different from what the bare words of the text show. And when I ask an honest question about a discrepancy, as any honest reader should, it is I who am accused of disputing semantics. Is this a fair summary of our discussion thus far?'

The two rows of heads along both sides of the table nodded vigorously in agreement at Julian's assessment of my apologetics, and then all faces turned back to me. Maximus, I noticed, had perked up considerably and was staring at me with a broad smirk that exposed his crumbling teeth.

'My dear Caesarius,' he continued, 'if you and I, who have been friends now for many years, are unable to agree on a concept as simple as the definition of the word "lord," how then are we to resolve the disputes raging across the Christian world from Spain to Armenia, concerning the very nature of Christ Himself?'

My stomach had shrunken to a tight, hard little ball inside me, but I resolved to take a stand against this grossly unfair attack.

'Caesar Augustus,' I argued, 'religion is a matter of faith, not science, and it is in the nature of men that their differences increase in direct proportion to the strength of their faith. The divisions among Christians must not be viewed as a weakness in the core of Christianity, but rather as a sign of the strength of men's faith. The Greeks invented philosophy to take the place of religion, and were successful because our ancestors' pagan beliefs contradicted men's desire both for reason and for reasonable faith. In Christianity, however, the Greek philosophers have met their match, and have been defeated.'

Julian stared at me bug-eyed, and I held his gaze a long moment, until finally, shaking his head groggily, he burst out laughing. A hard, brittle laugh that sounded alone and hollow against the smooth plaster walls of the dining hall as he looked down both sides of the room with humorless eyes. After a moment several of his tablemates joined him with hearty guffaws, and with the precedent set, all those present joined in, their hooting and coughing swirling around me like so many pestering starlings. I sat motionless and expressionless until he finally calmed himself and wiped a tear from one eye.

'So,' he gasped, as the noise died away immediately, some of the men still with expressions on their faces indicating puzzlement as to what they were actually laughing about. 'Our silent Christian has balls after all, and a religion, he says, that is the rival of Homer, Plato, and Aristotle combined! Caesarius, my man of reason, my camp alchemist and anatomist, now professes faith over science. I'm not sure what to make of your medicine now, dear friend – perhaps it would be put to better use serving my horse rather than my own pagan heart and lungs!'

Here again he broke into another round of uncontrollable snorts and cackles, the others also joining in with their own strained and delayed versions of his mirth, some of them looking at me with dismay and, I believe, pity. I had had enough of Julian's public humiliation of me. I rose slowly from the table and addressed him with as much coolness and dignity as I could muster.

'My lord,' I said deliberately, 'I am not a trained philosopher or rhetorician as are you. Since it is God we are speaking of, we do not understand it. If we could understand it, it would not be God. We seek one unknowable, God, with another unknowable, ourselves, which in the end is impossible, a tautology that even a pagan philosopher can see: we cannot be understood, even by ourselves, because we are made in God's image. I limit myself to being an interested observer of the physical world and of men's actions within it, rather than of the obscure thoughts and reasons men may have for such actions. By attacking me this way, you attack the Church itself, and therefore you commit an unspeakable evil.'

Julian's eyes narrowed. 'And by killing my father and my brothers, by killing my wife and my son, by doing all in their power to do me in as well, what have the Christians done to me? That, too, was evil.'

I recoiled, that he could attribute his family tragedy to Christians. 'What Constantius did to you was not done in Christ's name, but rather in his own madness. You cannot blame his faith for his evil. You would certainly not allow me to blame the excesses of Hellenism on your... lapses. He will be judged by God. Vengeance on innocent Christians is not yours to take.'

'Nor is your blind faith mine to have.'

I knew then, Brother, that in the thickness of my tongue I had failed in the most important discussion of my entire life. I was through with that dinner, through with Julian's friendship, through with his obsession with Maximus, and if I had not been so blinded and distracted over the past year by all the events that had transpired, I would have recognized the irreparable breach that had opened between us long before, on that cold mountain pass in Thrace.

'My lord,' I said coldly, rising from my seat, 'I refuse to be party to further mocking or abuse. I therefore beg to be excused from this dinner, as well as from my professional duties as your physician.'

With that I stepped over my couch, nodded curtly, and strode calmly down the side of the long table to the door at the far end of the room, feeling every eye upon me, the very silence of the room seeming to magnify the soft, shuffling sound of my sandals on the clean-swept floor. It was the longest walk I ever made, a walk encumbered by the emotions roiling within me, of fury at the ordeal to which Julian had publicly subjected me, of pride at leaving the table and my position at the Emperor's side for the sake of principle, of relief at ending the confusion I had been suffering by serving a man whom I increasingly viewed as an enemy to Christianity – and of worry about my physical safety and that of my family, at turning my back on the most powerful man in the world.

As I reached the door, I looked back briefly and saw that Julian was smiling, and already leaning over to Maximus, engaged in a lighthearted conversation, while all along the table the conversation was beginning again to be animated. The clink of knives on serving plates resumed, and I knew that within a moment my presence would scarcely be missed, and it would be as if the dispute had never taken place – a dispute which to me had meant the end of a career, possibly the end of my life had it been carried to its logical extreme, but which to Julian and the rest at the table was merely a heated discussion abruptly cut off by an overwrought Christian zealot who, like all his coreligionists, took himself far too seriously for polite company.

I strode down the corridor in a blind rage, turning corners at random, entering empty halls, until I arrived at last at a tiny peristyle built into an unused space between two wings, a small, bubbling fountain in the middle embellished with a mosaic portrait of Jesus surrounded by the twelve Apostles. A small shaft of sunlight beamed down diagonally from the skylight onto one of the peristyle's fluted columns, illuminating the delicate pink and yellowish veins in the finely polished marble, showing it for all the world like a pale human limb, drained of blood and with the skin carefully peeled back as in an autopsy, each artery and vessel exposed for the physician's examination.

I walked to the column in a daze and stood staring at it, willing myself to clear away the rushing thoughts and confusion crowding upon my brain, focusing my eyes on the bright, sunlit stone, forcing myself to concentrate only on the essential of life. Emptying my mind, I brought my face closer to the stone, tracing with my eyes the meandering, bifurcating pink and yellow lines, following each to its tiny, indistinct end and then retracing my steps along the capillary until my vision began to blur from the strain and intensity of my focus and the sweat from my forehead burned my eyes. I closed them, and pressed my cheek, my whole body against the marble, which was cold except for the thin, narrow stripe that had been warmed by the beam of sun, and suddenly all the rage and frustration that had been built up in me by Julian's words and actions over the past year broke out. Struggling for control, I slid slowly down the veiny marble, sinking to my knees, still grasping the column with my arms for support, the trail of living perspiration on the fluting glistening and marking the path of my decline and redemption.

For a brief moment only, before it dried, the moisture lent an aspect of life and suffering to the cold, dead skin of the stone, and then even it evaporated and was gone.

After Caesarius' courageous but ineffectual debate with the Emperor, he returned home to us at Nazianzus, a beaten, tired man. For many days after his arrival he scarcely moved, sitting despondently in the kitchen or praying for hours on end in the tiny chapel I had built on one end of our modest dwelling. Caesarius was so quiet, and moved so rarely, that though the house was small for three grown men and a woman, his presence was barely felt.