Longinus shook his head. “You’ve got me, Cornelius. I cannot imagine a spirit, a being without a body, a something that is nothing.”
“Many persons can’t, Centurion. And that’s the main difficulty in accepting the Jews’ Yahweh, their one god. He is a spirit, they say, without physical form or substance. They believe in him, but how do they know him, how do they learn what he’s like? In a word, if he does exist, how can he be made comprehensible to man?”
Longinus smiled indulgently. “But you say you think you have felt one and maybe heard one. Why?”
“I don’t know if I can explain. Maybe it goes back to the fact that my first lessons were taught me by a Greek slave. He was purchased by my father from a lot brought to Rome after one of those early rebellions. This man was one of the wisest I have ever known. I shall never forget his teaching concerning the gods. When we would speak lightly of our Roman gods, old Pheidias would scold us. ‘Don’t speak disparagingly of the gods,’ he would say, even though he himself did not believe in them. I can still remember his words. ‘The gods,’ he said, ‘are symbols of man’s efforts to attain a higher life, a more noble plane of living. The good gods are the symbols of the good attributes in man; evil gods symbolize the base passions. Therefore, hold communion with the good gods, and seek to avoid contact with the evil ones.’”
“But how does that teaching explain what you feel?”
“Wait,” Cornelius smiled, then continued. “Sometimes Pheidias would confide in us and talk in more intimate terms of his own philosophy. At such times he would tell us that his own gods were merged into one omnipotent and omniscient good god, a spirit without a body, everywhere present. This one god was a synthesis of the good, the true, and the beautiful. And though he could not be felt, as I feel this rail here”—Cornelius ran his hand along the ship’s rail—“and though he was not to be seen or heard as one sees or hears another person, he was nevertheless even more real. ‘For the only things that are real,’ my tutor would say, ‘are the intangible things, and the only imperishable things are those that have no physical being. Truth, for example. Truth has no body. Who can hold truth in his hand? And yet truth is eternal, unchangeable, indestructible. And love? Who can destroy love; who can defeat it? Yet can you put love in a basket and carry it from the shop? And who can measure a modius of love or weigh out twelve unciae?’” Calmly he regarded Longinus. “And I ask you, my friend, who can? What, after all, is more indestructible, unchangeable, immortal than the intangible?”
The “Palmyra” was moving around the river’s bend now and gaining speed as it came into the straight stretch at a point even with the right-angled turning of the city’s south wall. “But forgive me, Longinus,” Cornelius said lightly. “I hadn’t meant to be giving you a lecture on the nature of the gods or the one god.”
“It has been entertaining and enlightening, my friend. And it has convinced me that you do hold with this one-god idea. Those Jews at Capernaum, cultivating the plant that came up from the seeds that old tutor sowed in your childhood, have brought it along to blooming.” He laughed and tapped the rail with the palm of his hand. “Well, perhaps it’s an advance—from the Roman gods to the Jews’ one god—in superstition.” But then the patronizing smile was gone, and he was serious. “I don’t know, Cornelius. This one-god scheme does have its merits, I can see. I would like to believe, and I wish I could, that such an all-powerful, all-wise, all-good being rules the universe. But”—he paused, and a heavy frown darkened his countenance—“Cornelius,” he began again, “I keep thinking of those slaves back there on the Emporium docks, countless slaves all over Rome and throughout the Empire, beaten, maimed, killed at the whims of their masters, yes, and that baby thrown into the Tiber, numberless unwanted babies exposed to die—drowned, thrown to the beasts, bashed against walls—and yet you say that one good god rules, one all-powerful and all-knowing god, one good god.” He thrust forth a quivering, challenging forefinger almost under his friend’s nose. “Then tell me, Cornelius, why does your good one god send all this ignorance, this stupidity, this cruelty, this despicable wickedness on the world? Tell me why; give me one logical, sensible reason, and I’ll fall down at the invisible and intangible feet of your great one god and worship him in utter subjection.”
“I can’t tell you, Longinus. That very question has troubled me, too. I have wondered, and I’ve tried to explain it for myself. I don’t know how old Pheidias explained it, or even if he did. I don’t recall our ever challenging him on that point. But it may be that this one god—if there be one, mind you—does not ordain all the things that happen in the world. It may be that he is even sorrowful, too, because babies are thrown into the Tiber, because men are cruel and heartless toward other men....”
“Then if he is all-powerful, Cornelius, why does he permit it? You say he doesn’t will it. Then why does he allow it?”