LUKE
Desire
For giving me desire,
An eager thirst, a burning ardent fire,
A virgin infant flame,
A love with which into the world I came,
An inward hidden heavenly love,
Which in my soul did work and move,
And ever, ever me inflame
With restless longing, heavenly avarice,
That never could be satisfied,
That did incessantly a paradise
Unknown suggest, and something undescribed
Discern, and bear me to it; be
Thy name forever praised by me.
Thomas Traherne
Centuries Of Meditations: The
First Century
Infinite Wants satisfied produce infinite Joys; and in the
possession of those joys are infinite joys themselves. The
Desire Satisfied is a Tree of Life. Desire imports something
absent: and a need of what is absent. God was never without
this Tree of Life. He did desire infinitely, yet He was never
without the fruits of this Tree, which are the joys it
produced. I must lead you out of this, into another World, to
learn your wants. For till you find them you will never be
happy: Wants themselves being Sacred Occasions and Means of
Felicity.
Thomas Traherne
1 DESIRE AND
BELIEF-IN-DESIRE
In beginning with this gospel, we are following the order of the
messianic events, of which the miraculous Transformation Of
Water Into Wine At Cana, (John 2.1-11) is the first. Such
a procedure accepts the messianic series as ordered
sequentially, and at some variance with the order of the Days of
creation. The formal ordering of the latter complies with the
opening inclusio, the
mention of 'the heavens and the earth'. Thus the creation
taxonomy separates and so sorts the two kinds of events. We have
urged that the rubrics of the theology of beginning are nothing
other than the categorisation of the conceptual forms or ideas
which are the essential or radical structures of the conceptual
polarity of mind. All are ideas whether we speak of mind or mind
: body, space or space : time, and male (the symbolic masculine)
or male : female, all function alike in consciousness. The
functions proper to these two sorts of ideas, pure conceptual
forms (Days 1, 2 and 3), and forms of unity (Days 4, 5 and 6),
are precisely those described above as conceptual forms of
intentionality, both conscious and aconscious: will, belief,
will-to-believe, and belief-in-desire. The six conceptual
entities all exemplify specific formulations of these four modes
of intentionality, although in each case of the latter, one and
only one of the conceptual entities acts as the defining moment,
that is, as the epitome of the same.
This ordering by the taxonomy of creation thus strictly
conforms to the subdivision within the theology of
transcendence, that is the theology of the conceptual polarity
of consciousness, of the same categoreal paradigm, transcendence
: immanence, determining the relation of Genesis to gospel,
beginning to end, conceptual polarity of mind to its perceptual
polarity. The broader relation between conceptual (transcendent)
and perceptual (immanent) polarities, governs each of the
polarities themselves, internally. There is thus within the
taxonomy of creation, a higher level division between
transcendence and what looks like immanence, namely the forms of
unity. This division is set out very precisely by the text which
has sorted into its twin halves, Genesis 1.1-13 and Genesis
1.14-2.4a, the two kinds of conceptual entities; pure conceptual
forms and (conceptual) forms of unity. This is a logical and
sortal difference between the two, even though the text
constantly speaks of 'days', and 'evening and morning' and so
on, of all six rubrics.
Upon arriving at the gospel and more particularly at the
messianic series, however, there is a marked alteration in the
sequence. For one thing, the miracles do not begin but end with
the messianic analogue to Day1. The first of the messianic
miracles is analogous to the Day 4 rubric. Accepting therefore
the significance of this order of the messianic events, we have
to deal with that same text, Genesis 1.14-19, the story of Day
4, and the first messianic miracle, of which we have only John's
copy. A brief note as to the adoption of the messianic ordering
in preference to that of Genesis has already been made. It is
clear from the preceding narrative in John, (1.43-51), as well
as from the reference to 'the first of his signs' (2.11), which
picks up the motif of 'beginning' announced at the very
inception of his gospel, that the evangelist understands the
sequence of messianic events as something significant in itself.
This is therefore a major part of our study. For it means
effectively that we have placed the gospel of Luke,
proportionately to the situation of the first sign and all that
this involves, as signal of the beginning of Christian
discipleship itself. The very same proposition is put in the pericope
which describes the calling of Nathanael. This passage, John
1.43-51, sometimes referred to as The Calling Of Philip and
Nathanael, focuses on the latter. Philip receives little
if any real attention, and the later similar feeding miracle, The
Feeding Of The Five Thousand will similarly mention him,
(John 6.5-7), and again similarly dismiss him, in the interests
of Andrew. Philip will occupy the centre stage briefly in an
exchange about 'seeing the Father' (John 14.8-11). But initially
at least, it is the turn of Nathanael.
That he was from 'Cana in Galilee' (John 21.2), assures his
link with the first miracle, as does the fact that if we care to
identify him with the disciple referred to as Bartholomew in the
synoptic lists, he is the sixth disciple, the numerical
symbolism of which would not have been wasted on John. Was he
perhaps the source of the tradition behind the narrative? Or
further still, had he had some personal experience of what the
event signifies and is attested to in the enigmatic promise
given to him by Jesus (1.51)? Having come from Cana, it is even
possible that the wedding at which the miracle occurred was
Nathanael's own. That would certainly comply with his cameo as
presented in the cryptic exchange between himself and Jesus.
This points at the character of this figure as given
specifically in the miracle itself. The miracle, as a portrait
of the haptic memory, and equally a portrait of the
immanent Son, the divine bridegroom, the divine Eros, the subject of the
vision promised to Nathanael involving the 'angels of God
ascending and descending upon the Son of man' (1.51), is also a
chreia, a portrait of
the disciple, and every disciple, the psychological and mental
explication of whose nature or characteristic being, is to be
found in the understanding of 'haptic memory'. The pattern of
this resemblance accords with the pattern of the miracle and
that of the subsequent miracles, as developmental psychology. If
Nathanael is enjoying the throes of early adulthood, John has
recorded this in keeping with the actual event. For his own
personal identity can thus stand emblematically of the situation
in life of the typical young adult disciple. In the story of Jairus'
Daughter we saw that Mark put the inception of this stage
of one's development as beginning at twelve years of age, with
the onset of puberty.
In the course of the discussion regarding the gospel of Luke
we shall recur to this healing miracle story, for it acts as the
equivalent within the twelvefold schema of healing episodes as inscribing the
form of unity, mind : body. Thus we will contend that of the
twelve radicals of consciousness, precisely the conceptual form
mind : body, and the perceptual radical haptic memory, determine
the psychological and epistemological cast of the gospel of
Luke. Therefore in beginning this study of the fourfold form of
the gospels with that of Luke, we are following the serial order
of the messianic events themselves as representative of centres
or radicals of the perceptual consciousness whose conceptual
analogues are to be found in the creation story. For the
sequence of messianic events reflects the successive order in
which the same centres of consciousness first appear throughout
the life course of the individual. In other words, the things
disclosed in the two stories are things representative of our
own intellectual and affective existence within time itself.
This fact will help explain much of the meaning behind the chiastic ordering of these
events as opposed to the order of their analogues within the
creation taxonomy. It will also avail in the description of the
very things disclosed in the texts themselves. The following are
the primary texts which deal with the two radicals of
consciousness governing the specifically Lukan evangelical
perspective:
ACONSCIOUS
CONCEPTUAL RADICAL - MIND : BODY
|
CONSCIOUS
PERCEPTUAL RADICAL - HAPTIC MEMORY
|
Sevenfold Creation Series
|
Sevenfold Messianic Series
|
Genesis 1.14-19 - Day 4
|
John 2.1-11 - The Miracle At Cana
|
Markan
Twelvefold Healing Series
|
Mark 5.21-24a, vv 35-43 - The Daughter Of
Jairus
|
Mark 3.1-6 - The Man With A Withered Hand
|
These scriptural passages are the classical texts describing the
two entities which serve to index the psychological and
epistemological character of the gospel of Luke. The entities
they denote pervade his specific soteriological and
eschatological perspectives to a an exceptional degree.
Systematically in keeping with the role in the other three
gospels, of the remaining three categoreal radicals and their
ensuing intentional forms, they are essential to the larger
scale Christological purposes of scripture as a whole. Luke
contains parallel versions of both healing miracles cited above;
the reason for entering the Markan accounts is that we are
subscribing to the hypothesis that Luke copied these same two
narratives from a version of Mark's gospel. The Genesis text of
course sits firmly within its context from which to sever it is
impossible. So for example, there is an immediate reference
between the Day 4 story and that of Day 1. Similarly the
messianic series functions as a whole, and the reach of the
influence of every one of the seven events is difficult to
limit. The same applies even more so in the case of the healing
events. The pericope
Mark 3.1-6 has an extended introduction comprising The
Calling Of Levi (Mark 2.13-17), the passage on The
Question About Fasting (vv 18-22), and Plucking Grain
On The Sabbath (vv 23-28). Thus from the end of the prior
miracle story, The Healing Of A Paralytic (Mark 2.1-12),
to as far as Mark 3.6, the narratives are of a piece. This is
effectively comparable to the editing of the fourth gospel from
the first sign story, John 2.1s as far as 4.43, where the second
sign announces the start of a completely new theme. (Mark and
John both agree then as to the significance of these centres of
consciousness where temporality or developmental
psychology is concerned. Both place the relevant narratives at
the very beginnings of their gospel.) The first of the above
texts to require attention are the Day 4 Genesis rubric and its
counterpart, the first messianic miracle, and the first of their
contents to address regards time.
For the messianic miracle, John is our sole source; and it is
there that we must begin. At the outset we discussed first one
of the two Pneumatological events, The Stilling Of The Storm,
in connection with Matthew 16.1-4, since the latter contains
valuable indicators regarding not just time, but the presence of
the semeioptika in
tandem with the hermeneutic of The Feeding Of The Four
Thousand. We can now repeat that same procedure in
relation to the Johannine miracle story. It is certain that
John, like the synoptists, construes this and the succeeding
miracles to pertain to the human life course, that is, to time
in both of its aspects, ontogenetic and phylogenetic. This he
shares with the synoptists themselves; and in fact the Markan
healing miracles too comprise traces of the same understanding,
none more so than Jairus' Daughter. We must remember
that the Johannine series of 'signs' hybridises the two genres
of miracle, messianic and healing, while confining their total
most remarkably to just seven. This blended series nonetheless
maintains the pattern of a developmental psychology. John in
other words, is saying something about time and mind through his
arrangement of the signs. At the centre of this arrangement is
the event of Jesus crossing 'to the other side', the only such
occasion in John. His gospel therefore gives purchase to the
idea of a simple binary division of the life trajectory. Not for
nothing is the first event concerned with sexuality and so
birth, while the last is conspicuously about death and
resurrection.
John 2.1-11 And Time
The text has three notable references to time:
On the third day ... (John
2.1).
And Jesus said to her, "O
woman, what have you to do with me? My hour has not yet come."
(v 4).
... and [the bridegroom] said to him, "Every man serves the
good wine first; and when men have drunk freely, then the poor
wine; but you have kept the good wine until now." (v 10)
None of these however specifies the diurnal/nocturnal temporal
setting; and for this, we must look elsewhere than in John. But
we may take into account what is the event polarised with this
first sign, namely the last, The Raising Of Lazarus. For
that pericope contains
a myriad of references not just to time but to light also. The
first thing to notice is the repetition of the duration of
Lazarus' entombment:
Now when Jesus came, he found
that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days. (John
11.17).
Jesus said, "Take away the
stone." Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him,
"Lord, by this time there will be an odour, for he has been
dead four days." (v 39).
Such graphic terms leave no room for doubt regarding the
condition of the man's body. The figure four here recalls the
immanence of the soma. That is, it puts with patent ease
the soma as not
only the fourfold manifold of sense-percipience, but the event
of death and corruption itself. Where we would have expected a
triadic cipher of transcendence, namely here, we find
instead an index of the immanent; the obverse applies in the
case of the first messianic event with which this is paired. For
whereas the soma or
mind : body is rubricized under the aegis of Day 4, John
commences the narrative of the miracle at Cana by speaking of
the 'third day', which has the effect of bringing the two
occasions into even closer connection; so that we might just as
well be thinking of transcendent mind in the first episode and
of the immanence of the body in the last. Earlier in the
narrative of Lazarus' death the evangelist has defined a day as
consisting of twelve hours:
Jesus answered, "Are there
not twelve hours in a day? If anyone walks in the day, he does
not stumble, because he sees the light of this world. But if
anyone walks in the night, he stumbles, because the light is
not in him." (v 9, 10).
That the event itself occurs during the day rather than the
night, the next verse makes plain:
Thus he spoke, and then he
said to them, "Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I go
to awake him out of sleep." (v11).
So John has Jesus traveling with his disciples during the day,
when they will not stumble, and furthermore, the awakening of
Lazarus, consonantly with the metaphor of waking from sleep as
from death, occurring during the day, rather than during the
night. But not merely during the day, during that interval which
includes the very peak of the day as far as light itself is
involved. For the miracle is the last of its kind in this gospel
and just like the last of the messianic events, there is none
more germane to the Christology of either John or Mark. The
Transfiguration, like The Raising Of Lazarus,
points ahead directly to the resurrection of Jesus himself:
Jesus said to her, "I am the
resurrection and the life; he who believes in me, though he
die, yet shall he live, and whoever lives and believes in me
shall never die. Do you believe this?" (vv 25, 26).
These verses recur immediately to the opening temporal phrase in
the first sign. Thus in keeping with the mention of '"my
[Jesus'] hour"', one may also interpret the reference to 'On the
third day' a propos of the entire corpus of the Johannine signs,
which are impelled towards the resurrection. The miracle at Cana
looks to the miracle of Lazarus' being raised from death, as its
complement, in an incorporative schema which allows both the congruence of the
Johannine signs with the sevenfold creation series, and yet also
simultaneously permits them to be reckoned according to the
three days/three nights pattern consistently with the 'sign of
Jonah saying'. For this reckoning, now sixfold now
sevenfold, is a clear formal feature of both the Days and
messianic series, allowing both their isomorphic symmetry and
asymmetry. The Johannine chiasmos
of course lacks a formal equivalent to the Eucharist. We have
alleged that the meal shared by the risen Jesus and his
disciples depicted in the epilogue, chapter 21, with its summary
'153' cipher specifying the immanent messianic events from a
stance not native to the bulk of this gospel, may indeed be read
in terms of the Eucharist proper. The absence of a record of an
instituted Lord's Supper in an earlier recension of the gospel
of John, supposedly lacking this chapter, is also attested by
the fact that the chiastic
structure of the miracles has been interrupted with the
inclusion of the story of The Healing At The Pool (John
5.1-18). This episode, unlike the remaining six, has no
counterpart. That is not to suggest that it is an interpolation
later than the extant messianic events in John. The opposite may
well be the case.
But we must set aside the discussion of the evolving pattern of
the 'signs' in John in favour of determining the time of
occurrence of the wedding in Cana. One thing is evident, that
the relation of chiastic
pairing between the first and last of the Johannine signs, The
Transformation Of Water Into Wine, and The Raising Of
Lazarus, stands in apposition to the pairing of the
non-hybrid members of the messianic series, The
Transformation Of Water Into Wine and The
Transfiguration Of Jesus. The purposes behind both formal
constructs are identical. Thus whether we take John or Mark, we
have at the start of the series an immanent Christology and at
its conclusion a transcendent Christology. The diurnal time of
Jesus' transfiguration we will determine as synonymous with the
seasonal point-instant of the summer solstice; midday, when the
sun reaches its zenith. The motif of light in both the Johannine
and messianic transcendent Christology secures it as the
categoreal equivalent of the Day 1 rubric. Thus the two miracle
narratives answer the Genesis category of transcendent mind,
with that of haptic imagination. This lies directly behind the
Johannine portrayal of the love shared by Jesus and Lazarus, and
we have already commented on it. Their occupation of the telos
of either series, messianic or Johannine qualifies their status
as ultimately significant to the meaning of haptic imagination.
So if The Raising Of Lazarus and The Transfiguration
both stand as representative of the diurnal interval midday as
encompassing the climax of the intensity of light, we have two
substantial arguments of a kind for the allocation of a
corresponding interval to the miracle at Cana. This immediately
fits the tone of the event. We can barely imagine people
celebrating and drinking wine at midday; more bluntly still, the
more consistently appropriate time for sexual activity, which is
what the narrative indeed denotes, is more often than not this
same; the late evening and beyond, that is, the nocturnal
interval centering on midnight. What other evidence supports of
this conclusion?
In spite of the fact that marriage must have been an extremely
common practice prior to and during the lifetime of Jesus, for
the propagation of the human race was essential to Jewish values
and customs, we learn all too little from biblical literature
about its actual celebration. In this way, the miracle story
itself meets a deficiency in picturing it in a sacramental
light. For it closely allies it, and more broadly still, the
event of contractual sexual intimacy, with the Eucharist as do
the other two Eucharistic miracles. We know that its celebration
may have extended over a number of days, lasting perhaps even
for as long as a week. But concerning the diurnal/nocturnal
interval we need to attribute semiologically to the account in
John 2.1-11, the only assistance we have comes from the
synoptists. Matthew has two parables directly focused on
marriage. The first (Matthew 22.1-14), notably associates 'outer
darkness' - to\ sko/tov to\
e)cw/terwn (v 13) - with the marriage feast, as the
realm into which the uninvited man 'who had no wedding garment'
is ordered to be cast by the king. The second, the parable of The
Ten Maidens (Matthew 25.1-13) has even better evidence of
the kind we are seeking:
"Then the kingdom of heaven
shall be compared to ten maidens who took their lamps and went
to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish, and five
were wise. For when the foolish took their lamps, they took no
oil with them; but the wise took flasks of oil with their
lamps. As the bridegroom was delayed , they all slumbered and
slept. But at midnight (me/shv
de\ nukto\v), there was a cry, 'Behold, the
bridegroom! Come out to meet him.' ... (Matthew 25.1-6).
Matthew's idea of a delay sits perfectly with the Johannine
image of the delayed parousia in the unforeseen and
unforeseeable gift of the good wine when the guests have already
drunk freely. The expression 'the middle of the night' provides
us with a literal basis for assigning this same interval to the
Johannine sign. The significance of the time interval which is
emphasised as marking the arrival of the bridegroom, has already
been prepared for in The
Unknown Day And Hour:
But of that day and hour no
one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the
Father only. "As were the days of Noah, so will be the coming
of the Son of man. For as in those days before the flood they
were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage,
until the day when Noah entered the ark, and they did not know
until the flood came and swept them all away, so will be the
coming of the Son of man. (Matthew 24.36-39).
But know this, that if the
householder had known in what part of the night (poi/a? fulakh~?) the
thief was coming, he would have watched and not let his house
be broken into. (v 43).
The ensuing parable of The Faithful Or The Unfaithful
Servant, which is placed just prior to that of The Ten
Maidens also elaborates this theme with references to
drinking:
"But if that wicked servant
says to himself, 'My master is delayed,' and begins to beat
his fellow servants, and eats and drinks with the drunken, the
master of that servant will come on a day when he does not
expect him and at an hour he does not know, and will punish
him, and put him with the hypocrites; there men will weep and
gnash their teeth. " (Matthew 24.48-51).
In this parable once again, the delayed parousia figures, the
reference to its unknowable quality echoing the dominical saying
in John's narrative about Jesus' hour being 'not yet come.' The
Markan parallel to The Unknown Day And Hour, which lacks
a reference to Noah, nevertheless has the following:
"Watch therefore - for you do
not know when the master of the house will come, in the
evening, or at midnight, or at cock crow, or in the morning (h! o)ye\ h! mesonu/tion h!
a0lektorofwni/av h! prwi~) - lest he come suddenly
and find you asleep. And what I say to you I say to all:
Watch." (Mark 13.35-37).
These texts are all unreservedly apocalyptic; and if they are
sympathetic to and proleptic of not only The Apocalypse as a
whole, but of its last section, in particular, which begins with
the sevenfold series of The Angels With The Last Plagues
(Apocalypse 15), where nuptial imagery predominates, then we
have to reckon with the link between the same and the gospel of
Luke, since we are arguing that the psychological and
epistemological ground of this particular gospel is none other
than the immanent conceptual and perceptual Christological
categories, mind : body and haptic memory; and moreover that
these determine not only Lukan soteriology, but are essential to
Christian eschatology. One of Luke's own exhortations to
watchfulness which includes a reference to the marriage feast,
and which is parallel to the Matthean parable of The
Faithful Or Unfaithful Servant is as follows:
"Let your loins (o)sfu/ev) be
girded and your lamps burning, and be like men who are
waiting for their master to come home from the marriage feast,
so that they may open to him at once when he comes and knocks.
Blessed are those servants whom the master finds awake when he
comes; truly, I say to you, he will gird himself and have them
sit at table, and he will come and serve them. If he comes in
the second watch, or in the third, and finds them so, blessed
are those servants!" (Luke 12.35-39).
It is clear from this that Luke himself associates nuptial
imagery, that of the eschatological wedding banquet, with the
late evening. Prior to this, The Friend At Midnight,
a pericope confined to Special Luke (Luke 11.5-8),
while it does not employ imagery of the wedding feast, also
accords with the temporal disposition of midnight, and
explicitly so, as fitted to the time of feasting:
And he said to them, "Which
of you who has a friend will go to him at midnight (mesonukti/ou) and say
to him, 'Friend, lend me three loaves; for a friend of mine
has arrived on a journey, and I have nothing to set before
him'; and he will answer from within, 'Do not bother me; the
door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot
get up and give you anything'? I tell you, though he will not
get up and give him anything because he is his friend, yet
because of his importunity he will rise and give him whatever
he needs. " (Luke 11.5-8).
The case for assigning the interval encompassed by midnight to
the first of the messianic miracles is guaranteed by these
texts, just as it is warranted by the formal affiliation
maintained between the first and last signs, The
Transformation Of Water Into Wine and The
Transfiguration. The temporal interval surrounding
midnight is preceded by the two durations, afternoon and
evening, during both of which the light is diminishing.
The last of this series is the period about midnight, when the
darkness reaches its maximum. So the miracle at Cana, the first
of the three immanent, Eucharistic, episodes announces itself as
the first of a series of episodes. This complies with the
organization of the second half of the creation story, which
begins with Day 4, containing the creation of the sun, moon and
stars. When we read the Genesis text as homologous with the
messianic series, the anomalous mention of light and darkness,
and morning and evening in the first half of the narrative, when
as yet there has been no creation of luminous planets, must seem
much less strange. The hermeneutic given here, can lay claim to
dismantling such objections since it refuses outright to cede to
any literal hermeneutic. This second section of the creation
story in particular, which contains references to assimilation,
just like the second creation story as a whole, wants the fully
fledged doctrine of immanence which only the gospels themselves
can supply.
But the miracle narrative in John does not stand alone. For just
as the earliest sections of all three synoptic gospels
extensively address the kinds of realities subsumable under both
immanent Christological categories, haptic memory - The
Transformation Of Water Into Wine - and the conceptual
form mind : body - Day 4 - the same tendency is observable in
the gospel of John. The story of the 'sign' at the wedding
establishes an inspirational centre of the same order and in
conformity with the same chronological pattern of the synoptic
gospels. It betokens the first phase of the ministry of
Jesus once his baptism has occurred. Better than
anything, this explains for example, why the Johannine
account of The Cleansing Of The Temple (John 2.12-22) is
found here rather than prior to The Passion (John
19.1-37), as is the case in the synoptic gospels. No sooner is
the miracle narrated, than this episode is recounted. In it we
find an explicit articulation of the Lukan conceptual category,
soma, or body, (mind : body):
Jesus answered them, Destroy
this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." The Jews
then said, "It has taken us forty-six years to build this
temple, and you will raise it up in three days?" But he spoke
of the temple of his body (tou~
naou~ tou~ sw/matov). When therefore he was raised
from the dead, his disciples remembered that he said
this; and they believed the scripture which Jesus had
spoken. (John 2.19-22).
The phrase 'three days' cements the close connection between The
Cleansing Of The Temple (John 2.13-22), and the
immediately previous miracle where the same figure
functioned as an introduction. Reflecting the semeioptikon
we find the same pattern. Just as the actual wine of the miracle
itself suggests this, indigo-violet, the colour of its
constituent 'black' grapes, there is a sustained contemplation
in the narratives beginning with the hymn to the logos
all the way as far as Jesus And The Samaritan Woman
(John 4.1-26), on both darkness and night. Many links establish
the thematic consistency of this section of John's gospel, whose
'sign' quite literally is the first of the messianic events.
When speaking of 'the beginning', we first hear John mention
'darkness':
The light shines in the
darkness (skoti/a?),
and the darkness (skoti/a)
has not overcome it. (John 1.5).
He employs this same contrast in the story of Lazarus, since
both the opening hymn and the final miracle in his gospel focus
on Johannine transcendent Christology. Both narratives revert to
the very opening rubric of the creation story, that of the
'separation' of light from darkness. If the binary form day :
night is more apt, since it configures the mind : body in that
same narrative under the Day 4 rubric, and recurs also in the
Lazarus pericope as we have noted, then we need to see
also that the Johannine account of The Cleansing Of The
Temple is followed by that of Jesus and Nicodemus:
This man came to Jesus by
night (nukto\v) and
said to him, "Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from
God; for no one can do these signs (shmei~a) unless God is with him." (John
3.2).
The close of the pericope reverts once more to the same
figure:
And this is the judgement, that the light has
come into the world, and men loved darkness (to\ sko/tov) rather
than light, because their deeds were evil. For everyone who
does evil hates the light, and does not come to the light,
lest his deeds should be exposed. But he who does what is true
comes to the light, that it may be clearly seen that his deeds
have been wrought by God. (John 3.19-21).
We hear still more on the theme of sexual love, the milieu
of the incarnation for John as is apparent from his editing of
the first sign immediately after the beginning of the gospel,
and once again he ties together the various but interrelated
notions we have already come across; mind, the body, sexual
love, purification and so on:
Now a discussion arose
between John's disciples and a Jew over purifying. And they
came to John and said to him, "Rabbi, he who was with you
beyond the Jordan, to whom you bore witness, he is here
baptizing, and all are going to him." John answered, "No one
can receive anything except what is given him from heaven. You
yourselves bear me witness, that I said, I am not the Christ,
but I have been sent before him. He who has the bride is the
bridegroom; the friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears
him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom's voice; therefore
this joy of mine is now full. He must increase, but I must
decrease." (John 3.27-30).
Then follows Jesus And The Woman Of Samaria (John
4.1-42), in which yet again, but now for the last time, we
encounter the predominant figure of sexual love, clearly
depicted in terms of intentionality, that is, in terms of
desire, and in terms of the persistence of desire, that is
haptic memory, the abiding figure for which is thirst:
Jesus said to her, "Every one
who drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks
of the water that I shall give him will become a spring of
water welling up to eternal life." (John 4.13-14).
The woman's situation vis-a-vis Jesus, is like that of
Nathanael, so that when she exclaims - "He told me all that I
ever did." (4.39), we are reminded of Jesus' remark to
Nathanael - "Before Philip called you, when you were under
the fig tree, I saw you" (1.48). As returning to that point in
the narrative of this first section of the gospel, also
accomplished by the numerical symbolism of the woman's six
'husbands' and the figure of the water, both of which recall the
miracle at Cana, the initial 'sign' is recapitulated for the
last time. For The Healing Of The Official's Son (4.43)
marks the inception of a new phase altogether in the trajectory
plotted by the Johannine signs.
We may now turn to the healing miracle narratives. Not only has
Luke followed Mark's story of The Man With A Withered Hand
very faithfully, but in fact Luke's text follows exactly that of
Mark 2.13 onwards, with regard to the extent of the themes
centred upon what we have termed haptic memory. This makes our
task somewhat easier, for it allows us to concentrate on Luke at
this point. In claiming as the guiding psychological principles
of Luke's gospel the two correlated forms of intentionality,
desire and faith-in-desire, the products of centres of
consciousness, or categoreal radicals, haptic memory and
the concept soma
respectively, we shall also employ the doctrine of
intentionality. For it is hardly possible to discuss the
perceptual or conceptual radical in the abstract. That each of
the two radicals embodies all six of the appropriate modes of
intentionality, the six conceptual modes for the conceptual
radical, and the six perceptual modes for the perceptual
radical, has already been put. So there is not simply one form
of desire, although there is only one canonical form of the
same, just as there is neither one only form of faith-in-desire,
although, once again there is a single sovereign or canonical
form of the same. These sovereign species of the two modes
of intentionality formulate the heart of what is specific to
Lukan theology.
Additionally we have said that in each of the four gospels, one
of the four simple modes - desire, knowing, will and belief -
and one of the four compound modes - belief-in-desire,
will-to-believe, knowledge-of-will, and desire-to-know - are
expressed canonically, that is definitively. This will also help
to narrow the discussion. In other words, the discussion of the
gospel of Luke as engaging the discussion of what haptic memory
is and is not, will necessarily entail the discussion of desire.
For haptic memory is the occasion of the definitive or
regulative expression of this state of awareness, or form of
intentionality. Just so, in discussing the mind : body as a
fundamental constituent of conceptual consciousness, we shall
also concern ourselves with belief-in-desire. For what is meant
by that very term is finally provided for by that specific
conceptual radical. Where necessary, we shall also consider
other related modes of intentionality in order to give a fuller
account of the radicals themselves. So for example here, in
considering the gospel of Luke, it will repay us to enter some
comments about the episteme,
that is the specific form of belief, as well as the specific
intentionality belief-in-desire, proper to the conceptual form
mind : body. We have already just previously alluded to this, it
will be seen to be peculiarly pertinent in Luke's case. It
comports perfectly with what we know of Luke from the immediate
nature of the text itself - that it is wrought to the level of
being art.
The healing miracle narrative around which so much else seems to
have been arranged, conforms to the Markan outline, with few
changes. To the several parabolic sayings about fasting, Luke
has added a final one (Luke 5.39), which directs us to the
conclusion of The Transformation Of Water Into Wine.
Luke's concluding parabolic saying is conspicuous from our point
of view, since it contains the expression xrhsto/v - 'good', (var.
xrhstoterov -
'better'). This word noticeably posits the form of value
appropriate to haptic sentience as well as to the mind : body.
It therefore sits with the overall presentation of Jesus
healing, and healing by touch, which he does here in the story,
for the second time, since Luke, like Mark, has already told the
story of The Leper (Luke 5.12-16). It is therefore
possible to extend even further this block of text which must
first occupy us. And whereas The Paralytic intervenes
between the latter, Luke's recension of the healing miracle
denoting haptic imagination and the continuous stretch of text
leading up to that which denotes haptic memory - the Man
With The Withered Hand - the two stories of the cure of The
Paralytic and that of The Leper denote the two
aspects of the transcendent Son; in other words, the former
denotes the conceptual form mind, the latter haptic imagination,
its perceptual counterpart. Like Mark, Luke's apparent purpose
in such an arrangement acknowledges the necessity of referring
to mind - The Paralytic - in any discussion of mind
: body - The Daughter Of Jairus - as it notes the need
to regard haptic imagination - The Leper - in any
discussion of haptic memory - The Man With The Withered Hand.
It is of course instead the immanent Son that is envisaged in
these several pericopae, which posit the affective and
intellective blueprint of the gospel of Luke. We can grasp soon
enough the editorial principle according to which Mark has
placed the previous two miracles prior to the texts which reveal
a tangible, palpable Jesus, the Son enfleshed, incarnate. This
organising principle Luke has followed, but it would seem that
these two narratives, The Paralytic and The Leper,
have been placed where they now stand, in a way that reflects
their original independence as textual units. Both
evangelists place the first listing of the twelve
disciples after relating the healing of the man's hand in the
synagogue and Luke again follows Mark in adding to the passage
about Jesus' ministry:
And all the crowd sought to
touch (a(/ptesqai)
him, for power came forth from him and healed them all. (Luke
6.19 cf. Mark 3.10).
This means in effect then, that the text grouped around the
healing miracle, since we are taking that as the specific centre
of gravity for the propositional content of the gospel at this
stage, can be extended as far as 6.19, after which the Lukan
recension of The Sermon On The Plain follows. The only
real sticking point in all of this is the disciple list. In that
list, strangely we do not find the name Levi, whose
commissioning Luke told at the very beginning of the sequence of
events. Levi functions in a manner altogether similarly to the
role of Nathanael in the opening sections of the gospel of John.
John's ironising account is surely more subtle, a fact which has
resulted in the failure of many exegetes to discern the theme of
sexuality in the Johannine portrait of him at all. The Lukan and
of course Markan presentations are genuinely humanistic. Levi,
if indeed not shown to be the incorrigible reprobate, is
nevertheless a pariah. His introduction to us is also the
introduction of one of Luke's most signature themes -
commensality. The image of table fellowship of Jesus 'with tax
collectors and sinners' (5.30), is the first of many portrayals
of Luke's figure of Jesus who is to spend so much of his time
eating and drinking, just those actions which sit perfectly with
our contention regarding the specifically Lukan mental and
emotional temperament. That motif of appetition and satisfaction
which prevails throughout the gospel, will claim our attention
as it squares perfectly with the idea that Luke's own
perspective conforms to those aspects of the Christological
doctrine we have set out above. But first of all, some comment
on Luke's attitude towards healing is in order. For it is clear
to us, whether or not the story concerning his being a physician
is true, that the miracles of healing show just how aware of the
body he was.
HEALING
MIRACLES IN LUKE
Luke relates the following miracles of healing:
The Demoniac In The Synagogue - Luke 4.31-37, (Mark 1.21-28);
Simon Peter's Mother-In-Law - 4.38-39, (Mark 1.29-31);
The Leper - 5.12-16, (Mark 1.40-45);
The Paralytic - 5.17-26, (Mark 2.1-12);
The Man With A Withered Hand - 6.6-11, (Mark 3.1-6);
The Centurion's Servant - 7.1-10, (Matthew 8.5-13, John
4.46b-53);
The Widow's Son At Nain - 7.11-17 *;
The Gerasene Demoniac - 8.26-39, (Mark 5.1-20);
The Haemorrhagic Woman - 8.42b-48, (Mark 5.24b-34);
The Daughter Of Jairus - 8.40-42a, 49-56, (Mark 5.21-24a,
35-43);
The Boy With An Unclean Spirit - 9.37-43, (Mark 9.14-29);
The Crippled Woman - 13.10-17*;
The Man With Dropsy - 14.1-6*;
The Ten Lepers - 17.11-19*;
The Blind Man Near Jericho - 18.35-43, (Mark 10.46-52).
Luke therefore has omitted just three healing miracles from
Mark: The Syrophoenician Woman's Daughter (Mark
7.24-31), The Deaf And Dumb Man (Mark 7.32-37), and The
Blind Man Of Bethsaida (Mark 8.22-26). In spite of
that, Luke's final tally of fifteen events of this kind exceeds
Mark's count of thirteen. Similar discrepancies between their
totals of messianic miracles occur, as Luke has no record of The
Walking On The Water, and The Feeding Of The Four
Thousand. In common with both Mark and Matthew, his gospel
lacks the first sign, the story of The Transformation Of
Water Into Wine. Additionally he has one miracle, which
like that recounted in the final chapter of John, bears some
sort of relation to the feeding miracles, (although this is more
clearly so in John), and is understood by the evangelist in
connection with discipleship: The Miraculous Catch Of Fishes
(Luke 5.1-11). The four healing narratives marked with an
asterisk above, texts exclusive to Luke, are reckoned as having
been drawn from 'special Luke', which scholars designate by the
symbol L. This refers to a source which appears to have been
known by him alone among the evangelists.
We can thus say at the outset, that Luke never fought shy of
retelling stories of Jesus healing the sick. While it may not
decide one way or the other, the thesis of Luke's role as a
physician, it certainly corroborates the identification we are
making concerning the specific character of his gospel. For the
abiding interest of Luke in Jesus as healer confirms the
possibility that the core of his own peculiar psychological and
philosophical perspective is grounded in the concept of the
body, and the percept of haptic memory. Not only is
Luke no stranger to the notion of corporeity, or bodiliness,
rather he is its proponent. If then the Christian faith more
than any other encourages its adherents to be at home in
their bodies, which I believe it does, although not in any
unqualified sense, Luke is the best representative of this
general tendency. One need only consider doctrines such as
incarnation, the resurrection of Jesus, and the general
resurrection from the dead, the role of the Eucharist, and of
course the consistent portrayal of Jesus as healer of the sick
in the gospels, and Luke's similar portrayal of the disciples in
The Acts, for evidence of this. We need therefore to revisit the
Genesis story for a broader understanding of the body or soma, as a fundamental
conceptual form, that is, as a radical of human and sub-human
consciousness. But first, since it pertains to the more readily
accessible, that is conscious mode of intentionality, desire, we
will assess the evidence in Luke's gospel for our claim that
this alone of the four modes of conscious (elemental)
intentionality represents his character and provides the key to
much, including his soteriology and eschatology.
THE
THEME OF APPETITION-SATISFACTION IN LUKE
This topic has attracted considerable attention in recent years.
If we compare Luke's portrait of Jesus with that of the other
evangelists, it is immediately apparent that table
fellowship or commensality, occupies a vital role in his
theological repertoire. We have already drawn attention to the
twofold incidence of the word 'desire' in the account of the
Last Supper - e)piqumi/a?
e)piqu/mhsa - (22.15), because this serves as the final
point of reference to the intentional cast of the gospel. Even a
summary review of the various literary genres or forms into
which the many stories dealing with eating and drinking alone,
speaks for the thesis that the theme of appetition-satisfaction
is seminal to Luke's outlook. If this is not in keeping with the
sovereign, that is, canonical expression of desire which belongs
to haptic sentience, we shall nevertheless account for that
anomaly in due course. It must be remembered that only John
contains the first of the messianic miracles, The
Transformation Of Water Into Wine At Cana, a fact which
may verify that it was considered audacious in its presentation
of the role of haptic memory and finally of sexuality in general
in apposition to the identity of the incarnate Word. Even so,
Luke like the other evangelists, including John, seems to blur
the boundary between the two modes of sense percipience, touch,
and smell-taste, as for example in the The Transfiguration
and The Anointing Of Jesus.
The recapitulation of this theme in Luke spans virtually all
genres. Certain instances are in fact hybrids, and difficult to
classify into a single genre. Many instances can be subsumed
under the evangelist's favoured mode of presentation, which we
will refer to broadly as storytelling, and more precisely
perhaps, parable. Some incidences are only indirectly a part of
the presentation of the motif, for example, the parable of The
Seeds. Nonetheless we shall list these as party to the
same generic concept, which is determined by the criteriological
motif food and or drink.
Parables
And Stories:
The Wheat Gathered And The Chaff Burnt - 3.17;
The Question About Fasting - 5.33-39;
The Tree Is Known By Its Fruit - 6.43, 44;
The Seeds - 8.11-15;
The Importunate Friend At Midnight - 11.5-13;
The Parable Of The Rich Fool - 12.13-21;
The Watchful Servants - 12.35-40;
The Faithful And Wise Steward - 12.41-48;
The Barren Fig Tree - 13.6-9;
The Kingdom Of God Like Leaven - 13.20, 21;
The Narrow Door/Eschatological Banquet - 13.22-30;
The Guest And The Host - 14.7-11;
Hospitality To Pariahs - 14.12-14;
The Great Banquet - 14.15-24;
The Lost Son - 15.11-32;
The Rich Man And Lazaros - 16.19-31;
The Dutiful Servant - 17.7-10;
The Days Of The Son Of Man - 17.22-37.
Historical/Polemical
Narratives Set In The Context Of Table Fellowship
Levi, Having Been Called By Jesus, Makes Him A Feast In His
House - 5.27-32;
Plucking Grain On The Sabbath - 6.1-5;
The Anointing At The Pharisee's House - 7.36-50;
The Denouncing Of The Pharisees And Lawyers - 11.37-54;
The Cure Of The Man with Dropsy While Dining With The Ruler -
14.1-6;
"This Man Receives Sinners And Eats With Them" - 15.1, 2;
Jesus And Zaccheus - 19.1-9.
Miracle
Stories
Simon Peter's Mother-In-Law - 4.38, 39;
The Miraculous Catch Of Fish - 5.1-11;
The Daughter Of Jairus - 8.40-42a, 49-56;
The Feeding Of The Five Thousand - 9.10-17.
Other
References To Eating And Or Drinking
Prophecy Of John The Baptiser Drinking No Wine Nor Strong Drink
- 1.15;
Mary's Song That The Hungry Are Fed - 1.53;
The Infant Jesus Lying In The Manger - 2.7, 12, 16;
Anna The Prophetess Fasting - 2.37;
John The Baptiser Enjoins The Multitudes To Share Their Food -
3.11;
Jesus Fasts - 4.2;
Elijah Sent To The Widow During Famine - 4.25, 26;
Blessings Upon Those Who Hunger Now - 6.21;
Woes Upon Those Who Are Full Now - 6.25;
Jesus, Glutton/Drunkard Compared To John Eating No
Bread/Drinking No Wine - 7.31-35;
Joanna, Susanna And Many Other Provide For The Twelve - 8.3;
The Missionary Twelve Enjoined To Take No Bread - 9.3;
The Petition For Daily Bread - 11.3;
Denouncing Of The Scribes For Loving Places Of Honour At Feasts
- 20.45-47;
The Exhortation To Watchfulness And Against Dissipation And
Drunkenness - 21.34-36.
If Luke's gospel contains more miracle stories than Mark's, in
spite of the relative dearth of messianic events, and precisely
because of the surfeit of healing events, then it is also the
case that his references to the motif of assimilation of food
and drink far outstrip that of any other evangelist. That Luke
himself was conscious of such almost tendentious references to
eating and drinking, is made plain enough in several of them,
the comparison he has drawn between John The baptiser and Jesus
in 7.31-35 being the most salient. Any attempt to divine the
specific characteristics of this gospel must countenance such
facts.
In examining some of the more representative members of the
above list of texts, it will be possible to treat them as
independent units. However, that which first demands our notice,
The Man With The Withered Hand, is clearly embedded in an
extensive narrative as noted above. Here Luke seems to have
followed Mark's gospel very faithfully. We observed previously
that 'the first of his signs', The Transformation Of Water
Into Wine posits the centre of consciousness haptic
memory, and subsequently expresses canonically or in a
regulatory way, the intentional mode desire. Thus sexual desire
is representative of what we mean by desire, it stands as a
reference point for the several other expressions of the same
form of intentionality. Even though this narrative is missing
from all three synoptic gospels, it could easily be set within
this early section of the synoptics. Our procedure in treating
the four gospels, and thus in beginning with Luke, conforms to
this very pattern, pursuant to the exposition of a developmental
psychology inherently in the messianic series, congruently with
the themes of time and death-resurrection. For if his gospel
sits in a peculiar relation to the conscious mode desire, and
its aconscious counterpart, belief-in-desire, then these same
structures announce the inception of our adult intellective and
affective lives as persons.
Therefore we shall first address the body of text that appears
to have been organised around the healing miracle narrative
whose haptic semeion
is the hand, which just as the text itself does, stands as
representative of the haptic memory and consequently of the
intentional mode desire. Thus we will examine that section of
the gospel from The Calling Of Levi (Luke 5.27) as far
as The Man With The Withered Hand (6.6-11). The affinity
between the twelve healing miracles and 'the twelve', more
discernible in Mark than Luke, is a topic worthy of
investigation in itself, but one which we shall comment on only
in passing, and it presents itself here with the obvious
correlation between the disciple 'Levi' and the healing event.
One can glimpse immediately the clear connection between the
particular haptikon,
the hand as haptic (somatic) signifier of haptic memory, the
perceptual radical, and desire, the intentional mode which
follows from it. That is, we can very well imagine Levi manually counting his
money, just as he is pictured doing so in so many famous
paintings of the subject.
Luke 5.27-6.11, Levi, The Question About Fasting, Plucking
Grain On The Sabbath, The Man With A Withered Hand (6.12-19)
The sequence of events and the textual order of Luke 5.27-6.11
follow directly that of the parallel in Mark (2.13-3.6). Luke
contains all the Markan miracles prior to this section in just
the same order as that of the latter gospel, having interpolated
The Miraculous Catch Of Fish (5.1-11), which is an
approximate parallel of sorts to Mark 1.16-20, The Calling Of
Simon, Andrew, James And John, a story Mark had told just
prior to the very first miracle narrative.
Nevertheless both evangelists agree to relate the commissioning
of Levi, a disciple whose name never recurs after this point in
their gospels, independently of their former stories of Jesus
calling his followers. The two texts are of approximately equal
size, and both twice mention 'tax collectors' as having been
amongst Jesus' table companions (Mark 2.15-16, cf. Luke
5.29-30). Mark writes 'tax collectors and sinners' followed by
'sinners and tax collectors', as against Luke's 'tax collectors
and others' followed by 'tax collectors and sinners'. The
antagonists are described as 'the scribes of the Pharisees'
(var. 'the scribes and the Pharisees', Mark 2.16), and 'the
Pharisees and their scribes' (Luke 5.30). But more importantly
for us Luke complements Mark's single verb 'eat', used twice
(Mark 2.16), with the expression 'eat and drink' (5.33) which he uses
once only, (emphasis mine).
The same occurs in the opening verses of the next pericopae about fasting.
Here Mark has only the verb 'fast' three times in his opening
(2.18). In all, this verb occurs six times in his first five
verses. But Luke instead has 'yours [the disciples of Jesus] eat
and drink' (5.33,
emphasis mine), and he has halved the incidence of the word
'fast'. Moreover, the concluding verses in each recension are:
"... but new wine is for
fresh skins." (Mark v 22), and
"But new wine must be put into fresh wineskins. And no one
after drinking old wine desires new; for he says, 'The old is
good.' (var. 'better' Luke 5.38-39).
This divergence is well worth noting, for it brings Luke's
recension of the parabolic sayings about fasting clearly into
line with the first Johannine miracle story:
... and he [the steward of
the feast] said to him [the bridegroom], "Every man serves the
good wine first; and when men have drunk freely, then the poor
wine; but you have kept the good wine until now." (John 2.10).
There are several instances unbeknownst to the other two
evangelists, of Lukan and Johannine texts in sympathetic
resonance, which continue to baffle scholars. We have just
previously mentioned one, The Miraculous Catch Of Fish
(Luke 5.1-11), to which only John (21.1-14), has anything like a
parallel. This is yet another.
As for Matthew's recension of the four pericopae under consideration here, he divides
the Markan narrative into two, moreover, he has already
disordered the sequence of events; so for example, The
Stilling Of The Storm has already been related. Matthew
has maintained the seamless connection between the calling of
the tax-collector whom he refers to as Matthew, and the
affiliated picture of Jesus infringing the purity rules of the
Pharisees (Matthew 9.9-13), and this is followed immediately, as
it is in Mark, by the passage on fasting (9.14-17). The ensuing
two pericopae, the
first about plucking grain on the sabbath, with its concluding
Son of man saying, and the healing miracle, having been
separated from the previous two, are nevertheless also
contiguous (12.1-14). The former concludes as it does in Mark,
with albeit a truncated version of the Son of man logion, for the two clauses
"The sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath" (Mark
2.27) are missing, and Matthew has instead:
"Or have you not read in the
law how in the sabbath the priests in the temple profane the
sabbath, and are guiltless? I tell you, something greater than
the temple is here. And if you had known what this means, "I desire (qe/lw) mercy, and not
sacrifice,' you would not have condemned the guiltless. For
the Son of man ... (Matthew 12.5-8, emphasis mine.)
In all of this, Matthew has followed Mark, which means that the
references to drinking and wine exclusive to Luke, do stand out
all the more conspicuously. It is difficult not to believe that
Matthew has in fact mitigated the real force of the Son of man
saying as given in both Mark and Luke, whether or not wittingly,
since he has omitted the two initial clauses which give it added
weight. Additionally, the saying 'Something greater than the
temple is here' may be read as countervailing the value innately
given in the phenomenon of physical embodiment, if we read the
noun 'temple' synonymously with the concept of the body. John
employs just such a metaphor in the text immediately following
the first miracle narrative, that of The Cleansing Of The
Temple; 'But he spoke of the temple of his body.' (John
2.21). But against such a reading stands the saying 'I desire
mercy and not sacrifice', all the more noticeable for being a
quotation. Thus at the very least, Matthew's account seems
perplexing.
Disciple And Healing
To begin with, we should not fail to notice a connection in the
synoptic accounts which John also makes, between an individual
disciple and the miracle. In either case, synoptists or John,
this is accomplished by the same means, textual and thematic
contiguity. John prefaced the first sign with an extended
description of the first disciples, with Nathanael the last
mentioned. Not only does Nathanael's order among the
listing lend extra emphasis to his significance, but the
description of his calling covers a total of seven verses, far
exceeding the coverage given to anyone else mentioned in this
context, including Peter. There is an indubitable sense in which
the sign at Cana acts as a chreia
of the individual Nathanael. The brief but certain image of the
'fig tree' (John 1.48), under which Jesus saw the disciple prior
to his being called, is a token not just of assimilation. It is
congruent with the essential meaning of the miracle itself. We
never learn whose wedding was celebrated at Cana. The only other
time in the gospel of John we hear of this disciple, is in the
final chapter, which once again has overtones of the theme of
commissioning, although there it has more to do with the
relation between Peter and the 'beloved disciple'. There the
evangelist refers to 'Nathanael of Cana in Galilee' (21.2). This
makes possible of course that the actual wedding being
celebrated at the outset of the gospel, was Nathanael's. He is
referred to in that final chapter in which, we shall put, the
entire corpus of three immanent (feeding) miracles are listed
numerically. There, he figures in rapport of some kind with the
'beloved disciple', if as seems warrantable, we allow John's
characterisation of him in accordance with the notion of erotic
love. This is all the more reasonable if we determine the
presence of the unnamed 'beloved disciple' on the first
occasion:
One of the two who heard John
speak, and followed him, was Andrew, Simon Peter's brother.
(John 1.40).
Such a determination has been made by others because it fits
with the overall anonymity of 'the disciple whom Jesus loved',
and it secures his function as a witness (19.35, 20.30-31).
There is thus a link forged in the mind of the evangelist
between himself as 'the disciple whom Jesus loved' and
Nathanael, the exemplar of erotic love. Hence his need to exist,
if at all, in the background on the first occasion, for there it
is a question not of the 'intellectual love of God', or to put
matters more theologically, not of transcendent desire, but
rather of actual, physical, sexual love; love and desire in
their immanent denominations. If we were to seek a miracle story
as chreia for the
'beloved disciple', it could only be The Raising Of Lazaros.
John has arranged the first and last miracles in his gospel,
just as Mark would have, were the first sign not missing from
that gospel, in accordance with his Christology. The first
expresses the immanent Son, the last the transcendent Son; both
of course revolve around the notion of love so dear to
John.
The point at issue is that of the consonance between the twelve
categoreal forms and the twelve disciples. This cannot be
pressed too far; even so, its presence is real and contributes
to the purposes of both evangelists, John and Mark. For not
without reason are the references to the disciples often
formally confined to the twelve fold schema, whilst the two
textual cycles, the six Days of creation and the corresponding
six messianic miracles, formulate the doctrine of mind. In
several instances, it is not difficult to glimpse behind the
stories of the messianic miracles, character traits which
correspond to the psychological-epistemological radical in
question, and a particular individual - in this case, these are
haptic memory and 'Nathanael'. John later connects both Philip
and Andrew with The Feeding Of The Five Thousand (John
6.5-9), and Matthew associates Peter with The Walking On The
Water (Matthew 14.28-33). In the Johannine text
introductory to the messianic sign we find a veiled reference to
the rationale of the affiliation of individual disciples with
particular events:
Jesus saw Nathanael coming to
him, and said of him, "Behold an Israelite ( I)srahlhti/v) indeed,
in whom is no guile!' (John 1.47).
It is of course this reference to the ehtnicity of the
individual which at once links individual and 'society', or as
we say, ontogeny and phylogeny. It serves certain basic tenets
entailed by the soteriologies and eschatologies of not only
John, but of all four gospels, and these we shall continue to
develop, such is the consistency and prevalence of this
correlation. The pattern of correlation between a particular
disciple and a particular healing event, at its most precise in
the gospel of Mark, where there are just twelve healing miracles
proper, involves the correlation between two epistemic forms, or
modes of knowing. These are the two epistemic forms, or modus cognoscendi, peculiar
to Mark, the conscious one being psychology and its aconscious
counterpart that of the human sciences, anthropology and
'sociology' so called. Thus the explication of this schema involves the
exposition of the canonical form of knowing which ensues from
the perceptual radical acoustic memory, namely psychology, and
the canonical form of will-to-believe, which is conditioned by
the conceptual radical time, namely the human sciences. The same
two categories, acoustic memory and the conceptual form of unity
time, are constitutive of specific expressions of the
intentional modes desire and belief-in-desire. Only neither of
these is canonical, since the canonical intentionality of the
same belong to haptic memory and the conceptual form soma (mind : body), those
very radicals or categories operative at the hub of the gospel
of Luke.
The specific desire arising from acoustic memory is that of homo hierarchicus. It is
the satisfaction of the impulse for honour, recognition, esteem,
status. This looms large in Luke's own gospel of course, (see
for example David B. Gowler, Hospitality And Characterization
In Luke 11:37-54: A Socio-Narratological Approach).
It does so because the desire for honour is related to desire
itself qua sexual
desire. Clearly sexual satisfaction may be party to the
satisfaction of the same psychological constellation, since it
may involve the surrogate satisfaction of hierarchical desire in
the event of the domination/submission of one of two persons to
the other. We shall find this clearly outlined in The
Centurion's Servant, where it is all the more remarkable,
for that narrative involves two members of the same sex, two
males, and in the case of such homosexual relationships, parity
is theoretically at least, more available than it may be in the
heterosexual case, something which ideologues of both sexes,
male and female, had to confront in the course of the historical
development of the feminist movement. We shall discuss that
particular Lukan text below, it is an essential part of the
first section of this gospel where we find much of the material
intrinsically proper to his outlook. But it is Mark rather than
Luke who gives us the rounder account of homo hierarchicus; that is,
if as we shall argue, his gospel is centred on the two
categories just mentioned, it should not fail to reckon
theologically, and more explicitly eschatologically, with this
phenomenon, this aspect of the theology of desire. This remains
a fundamental concern for the theology of religion generally,
since hierarchic desire all but annihilates the erotic impulse,
a fact to which even as subtle a psychologist as Nietzsche seems
to have been quite blind, and is linked at once, with the
desire-to-know as we see in the history of those particular
religions which maintain strong traditions of ascesis. Hence in
Mark, the ascetic John the baptiser plays a role different to
that which he assumes given the Lukan perspective. Luke we
notice defines Jesus over and against John; Mark, like the
evangelist John, does not. These topics belong to a later stage
of our discussions, and for now we must resume the course of the
argument concerning Luke.
Here, instead of the link between disciple and messianic
miracle, we encounter the association between a particular
disciple, Levi (or Matthew?) and a healing miracle. But since
the number and form of the healing miracles in the gospel of
Mark conform to the isomorphic Days-messianic events, the effect
is the same. Whether we take the messianic miracle of Water
Transformed Into Wine, or the healing miracle, Man
With A Withered Hand, makes no real difference. Both posit
one and the same aspect or centre of consciousness, one and the
same perceptual radical, that of touch, the haptic, in its true
(immanent) form - haptic memory. We shall find on closer
investigation that every one of Mark's twelve healing events is
formally (logically) identifiable with either one of the six
Days, or one of the six messianic miracles.
That haptic memory and not haptic imagination is at stake in
this episode is certifiable by several factors. Mark and Luke
both mention 'the sabbath' (Mark 3.2, 4, Luke 6.6, 9), for which
we have already been prepared by the logion '"The Son of man is
lord even of the sabbath"' (Mark 2.28, Luke 6.5). For the
sabbath as the last of the six Days, answers to the Eucharist as
the last, and indeed 'seventh', member of the messianic series.
That the Eucharist presents us in its logical function, with the
phenomenon of memory in its entire metaphysical gamut, must
never be overlooked. Otherwise the three Eucharistic miracles
will be shorn of all significance, and their meaning will rest
most uneasily on their presumed actuality, in clearest
contravention of Mark's inveighing against such a hermeneutic
(Mark 8.11-13, Luke 11.29s).
The difference between John's portrayal of the messianic event
in keeping with the character of Nathanael, and that of Mark and
Luke, who reckon the equivalent healing miracle besides their
portrayal of Levi, and yet again Matthew's recension, which has
Matthew in place of Levi, makes no difference whatsoever to the
validity of the construal. For in the end, as an index of
personality type or as a chreia, as a typological psychology, there
will be untold millions of individuals who may be said to fall
under the same. Indeed, if we take the twelve tribes of the
Hebrew scriptures as a precedent after which the lists of the
disciples are patterned, then more of the meaning of the
parallels between persons and events falls into place. This very
idea of collective entities as essential to a group psychology,
a typological or personality theory, lies behind the references
to 'Israelite' and 'Israel' which John first makes (John 1.47,
49). Further to that, the same idea and the same references are
complemented by the ensuing Son of man saying in John 1.51. For
the devolution of the enigma behind this title, as behind the
symbolic masculine with which it is synonymous, will be upon the
concept of collective identity.
It would be logical to pursue here that particular relationship
which exists between psychology and 'sociology' (so-called). For
on the one hand we are dealing with an 'individual', however we
should define that, and on the other, with a 'class' of the
same, whatever that might mean. In other words, we have stumbled
upon the recurrent aporia
in anthropological studies and the social sciences as to whether
the individual or the collective (society) is prior. There does
seem to be a shift from one to the other in tandem with
that of the shift from the Old Testament to the New. For in the
former we see all to clearly the understanding of persons as
some sort of uniform and homogeneous entity on par with actual
space ('heavens'), the exemplar of transcendence par excellence.
It is this which enables their separation, their disjunction
from circumambient others, so too their identity, which is the
given meaning of a tribe. The twelvefold tribal system is the
dominant and recurrent social and anthropological pattern by
means of which personhood is to be understood. This is no longer
the case in the New Testament, although something of it remains.
What replaces the former vision behind which we may logically
discern the conceptual form space, is instead the body which
inhabits or indwells that same space, and of course, mind.
Bodies are to be thought of as indeed somewhat more individuated
than the space which they occupy. The system of twelve tribes so
becomes in a sense, the newer one of twelve individuated persons
- twelve disciples, twelve representative bodies. The larger
task of expounding this as one of the foundations on which any
typological psychology or personality theory must rely, also
belongs to Christian metaphysics, but we shall have to defer it
until a more appropriate part of the essay.
Where Mark, Luke and John all concur once again, is in
contextualising the psychic-epistemic structure, haptic memory,
as given by the miracle narrative. John has the disciple list
followed by the (messianic) miracle, whereas Mark and Luke
relate the (healing) miracle, and place their first
comprehensive disciple list after it (Mark 3.13-19, Luke
6.12-16). In Mark the sequence is briefly interrupted (Mark
3.7-12), by the description of the multitudes following Jesus to
the seaside, where he seeks refuge in a boat, and by the general
description of healings Jesus performed.
The Lukan arrangement has the reference to 'touch' in even
closer proximity to the healing than the Markan original. These
references make good any alleged deficiency in the narrative
where the precise mode of sense-percipience is concerned. Thus
the Markan, Lukan and Matthean stories of the healing do not
specify the verb 'touch', but the version in Matthew, even
though it is displaced from the wider context which Luke has
maintained, contains the following:
He said to them, "What man of
you, if he has one sheep and it falls into a pit on the
sabbath, will not lay hold (krath/sei) of it and lift it out?" (Matthew
12.11).
This might be said to make up for Matthew's account of
generalised healing (4.23-25), which omits any mention of
'touch'. As for Mark and Luke, we do encounter later in their
summaries of healings a specific reference to the haptic:
... for he had healed many,
so that all who had diseases pressed upon him to touch (a(/ywntai) him. (Mark
3.10).
Luke has placed his generalised reference to healing after his
description of The Calling Of The Twelve, and has
instead:
... and those who were
troubled with unclean spirits were cured. And all the crowd
sought to touch (a(/ptesqai)
him, for power came forth from him and healed them all. (Luke
6.18-19).
The
Healing Miracle
All three evangelists record a gesture which the man
makes in accordance with Jesus' command, one which might suggest
he is about to touch something or someone:
... and he said to the man,
"Stretch out your hand." He stretched it out, and his hand was
restored. (Mark 3.5b).
... and said to him, "Stretch out your hand." And he did
so, and his hand was restored. (Luke 6.10b).
Then he said to the man, "Stretch out your hand." And the
man stretched it out, and it was restored, whole like the
other. (Matthew 12.13).
The essential reality of touch is surely implicit in
the figure of the hand itself, the semeion of haptic memory. (For a
brief but fascinating introduction to 'haptics' detailing the
case of a man who had lost the sense of touch, see Gabriel
Robles De-La-Torre, 'The Importance of the Sense of
Touch in Virtual and Real Environments'). The
messianic miracle in John which purports the very same centre of
consciousness also lacks any direct reference to touch - but the
effect of which is if anything, to heighten its relevance. For
not only has the revelation of Jesus to Nathanael whom he saw
'under the fig tree', prepared us for the reality of haptic
sentience, but the same is at once inseparable from the concept
at the heart of the narrative. A wedding is nothing more nor
less than the celebration of faithful sexual love between two
persons, the foundation of which is the haptic form of
sentience. Moreover the mention of taste leaves no room for
doubt, since to taste is necessarily to touch:
When the steward of the feast
tasted ( e)geu/sato)
the water now become wine ... (John 2.9).
The substitution here of the actual Eucharistic mode,
smell-taste, for the mode touch, the Christological one,
requires consideration. It will redirect us to Luke, whose
plethora of references to eating and drinking as also tokenising
the haptic, needs to be assessed. We shall see that Luke
consistently elides these two modes of sentience, perhaps in the
interests of good taste, perhaps because of their certain
affinity in consciousness itself. But in this he follows the
format sustained by both Christological messianic events, The
Transformation Of Water Into Wine and The
Transfiguration, which refer to taste in relation to The
Son. Such elision, whether in John or Luke, or in the other
synoptists, is certainly precursive of the Eucharist as
signifying the passion and death of Jesus. For all
accounts of the Last Supper mention the wine or the cup. In
keeping with this, the Johannine first sign too points ahead to
the cross, just as the cross looks back to the miracle:
And Jesus said to her, "O
woman, what have you to do with me? My hour has not yet come."
(John 2.4).
But one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and
at once there came out blood and water. (John 19.34).
One can hardly miss the aptness not only of the metaphor, the
consumption of wine for the satisfaction of the erotic appetite,
nor the nexus between the passion and death of the incarnate logos, which is fully
sympathetic to Luke's case, but also the gambit which first
conceptualises desire itself:
When the wine gave out, the
mother of Jesus said to him, "They have no wine." (John 2.3).
Not to have, and indeed not to have to drink something as
intoxicating as wine, is as summary and succinct an image of
(sexual) desire as one might conceive in so very few words. This
justifies the actual concept of miracle. Thus for John as for
Mark, these phenomenal modes of sense-percipience, touch,
hearing and seeing, are effectively just that - phenomenal,
miraculous. They furnish us with independent yet connected
series of semeia,
signs, or signifiers, upon which their 'miraculous' status may
be said to rest, and which establish the possibility of
interpersonal communication. Take the very instance in question
here, and that in accordance with the haptic semiotic series
itself: the hand as signifier. It is a fact that all of the
external members of one's body function as means of touching.
For the body itself is encased in a 'derma', an outer covering of skin. We saw this
envisaged in The Transfiguration, where the meaning of
'three tabernacles' or 'three tents' (trei~v skhna/v Mark 9.5), carries the
same import. In his confusion, Peter's suggestion to Jesus about
the 'three booths' conveys the same semeion. But the outer covering of the body,
the skin, its largest organ, is the sign for haptic imagination.
The hand is the signifier of the complementary radical, haptic
memory. It consists not just of skin. In other words, by 'hand',
we understand something other than mere bodily externality. It
is that member of the body so often associated with 'to have and
to hold'. A hand may hold and contain, as well as
penetrate by means of its individually articulated fingers.
These two radicals of consciousness function as a means of
self-representation in consciousness, as part of the haptic semiosis of the miracle at
Cana; that is, as part of the doctrine of mind, the doctrine of
logos, the word, upon
which we shall elaborate in the discussion of the gospel of
John. The skin, signifies the haptic imagination,
the hand signifies the haptic memory. They stand in a certain
relation of juxtaposition or antithesis to one another, the
reason why the two messianic Christological miracles appear as
first and last. The forms of intentionality of which
they act as the sufficient and necessary conditions are the
aconscious desire-to-know (haptic imagination), and conscious
desire (haptic memory). Luke's account of Plucking
Grain On The Sabbath alone repeats the somatic
(haptic) index, or sign:
On a Sabbath, while he was going through some grainfields, his
disciples plucked and ate some heads of grain, rubbing
them in their hands (xersi/n).
(Luke 6.1).
To take the conative mode alone, desire: haptic memory
is the basis of sexual desire; haptic imagination is the basis
of the desire for purity. John of course adroitly includes a
reference to the latter in his presentation of the radical
haptic memory, for the six stone jars of water are said to be
'for the Jewish rites of purification' (John 2.6). But sexual
desire necessarily entails only something akin to the desire for
purity. In fact, it may be antipathetic in relation to it, just
as the aspiration to purity probably will be towards the desire
for sexual satisfaction. More needs to be said on this score;
for if memory always comprises imagination, which it must
according to the categoreal paradigm transcendence : immanence,
where the latter relatum consists of a composite which
includes the former in some guise or another, then it must
follow that the erotic have some incorporative cathartic factor.
The erotic may encompass an objective that is nothing other than
cathartic, and perhaps even should incorporate such an element.
This is the reason for the statement in the Johannine story
about 'rites of purification'. Sexual love here in John's first
narrative, assumes a nearly sacramental purpose. Any human (and
any subhuman) activity, such as feeding and sexual congress,
which requires repetition in accordance with the periodic
structure of time, already has the potential of ritualisation,
guaranteeing its link with mental states such as belief and
belief-in-desire. It is elevated by such a reference, and
delineated in a manner which deals with the internal
inconsistency of the thing itself. This inconsistency results
from the theology of identity.
In other words, the erotic does and yet does not encompass a
cathartic objective; just as the wine both does consist of
water; but neither entity consists of this alone, and in a
sense, what is now is, or has become in its transformed state,
is altogether other than water. What it was, was water, but it
is now 'become' (gegenhme/non
John 2.9) wine. This inconsistency of the erotic towards its
complement, the cathartic, bears comparison with the Platonic
concept of becoming, in which both being and non-being are
coalesced or co-ordinated. The inconsistency is the result of
the fact of the incorporation of the transcendent relatum. In itself and for
itself, the desire for purity, represented semiologically by the
skin in the Transfiguration narrative, is transmuted,
transformed. That is what we mean by saying 'in some guise or
other'. Haptic imagination is necessarily present in haptic
memory - it is always there, for there is no past without a
future as there is not immanence without a transcendent
component of some sort. But identity, the real business of
transcendence, is not a first order concern of immanence.
Rather, unity is. Thus haptic imagination, and so too the desire
to which it gives rise, which in itself may be isolable
and identifiable as that for purity or catharsis, is in a sense
suborned, compromised, co-opted by haptic memory. This is why we
allege that only something akin to the desire for purity is
encompassed in sexual desire. This belongs to the notion of
transformation, and that of becoming. Just so, it is the -
albeit imagined - future which in this case becomes; for memory
- the actual past, the remembered past of occasions of haptic
sense-percipience - here has its way.
From this first survey of the healing miracle which
systematically puts the existence of a centre of consciousness,
namely haptic memory, which we are in the process of defining as
formally expounded by the first of the three immanent messianic
(feeding) miracles, we can see that Luke very carefully follows
Mark. If then Luke's Markan source lacked as it does in its
present version, the first sign, Luke's own gospel does also.
But if anything, Luke's redaction has heightened the concept of
haptic memory for it has heightened the theme of sexual love,
the immediate psychic or conative, manifestation of the same. He
has done this by including a reference to 'drink' in the
introductory verse of the passage about fasting, and also by the
concluding verse, which as noted bears a striking resemblance to
the conclusion of the messianic miracle story. This verse,
missing from both Mark and Matthew, and presumably Luke's own
work, also remarkably contains a reference to 'desire':
"And no one after
drinking old wine desires (qe/lei)
new; for he says, 'The old is good (xrhsto/v).'" (Luke 5.39).
(As noted, Matthew used the same verb in his account of The
Calling Of Matthew.) The final word too of this verse, the
adjective 'good' is of paramount importance. It reiterates the
presence in the Johannine miracle story of the adjective kalo\n - 'good', even
though it is not the self same expression, a fact which may be
attributable to its sounding so much like the Greek form of
'messiah' - xristo\n
- which Luke had earlier used in his first generalised summary
of healing (4.41), and prior to that also in The
Presentation In The Temple (2.26, 'the Lord's Christ').
Luke is certainly not beyond such poetic niceties. They are in
fact well suited to his overall style as well as to his artistic
temperament.
The Calling Of Levi, or Mathew as he is known to the
evangelist of the same name, is homogeneous with this section of
text. If the commissioning of an individual begins this theme of
appetition and satisfaction not just in its literal sense, but
also in relation to sexual intimacy, which we will claim is
characteristic the specific psychological disposition of the
gospel of Luke, then the commissioning of 'the twelve' concludes
the unit Luke 5.27-6.19. That is not to confine it, for as the
list of references to eating and drinking above proves, Luke is
much given to reiterating it at various stages throughout his
entire gospel. In Levi's (or Matthew's) case, the commensal
functions along these lines; sharing food and drink with 'a
large company of tax collectors and others' who in the eyes of
the scribes are 'tax collectors and sinners' (Luke 6.29-30),
renders Jesus himself equally a reprobate. He does not seem to
have rejected their judgement:
And Jesus answered them,
"Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who
are sick; I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners
to repentance." (Luke 6.31).
This concluding verse of the narrative cements the relation
between specific disciple and specific healing event. Thus the
ensuing and concluding stories of 'the twelve' and the
generalised account of healing, emphasise the same relation of
disciple and healing, only in regard to groups of persons.
Tax-collecting was not an occupation for older men. This squares
with what little we know of Nathanael in so much as if he is
envisaged by John beside the 'nuptial' miracle at Cana, we may
well suppose that at his calling, we was still a young man.
Nathanael of course was no pariah, such as Levi is. Nor can Levi
be cast in the role of faithful spouse to be, if the next verses
are any indication. For the role of bridegroom in the pericope concerning fasting
is given to Jesus:
And Jesus said to them, "Can
you make wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with
them? The days will come, when the bridegroom is taken from
them, and then they will fast in those days." (Luke 5.34-35).
John's narrative first tells of 'Jesus and his disciples' being
'invited' (e0klh/qh
John 2.2) to the wedding, and then mentions 'men' (pa~v a!nqrwpov), as those
who both 'serve the good wine first' and 'drink freely' (2.10).
But effectively the greater role seems to belong to 'the
servants who had drawn the water' (dia/konoi v 9).
We must not forget that the healing episode is Christological.
The mode haptic sentience is the perceptual instantiation of The
immanent Son. We see it in the miracle at Cana, where in turn it
underpins John's understanding of the incarnation of the eternal
logos. If The Word is
to become flesh, then not only bodiliness, or the concept of the
body - soma - but also
the percept which is the haptic and no other form of sentience,
must instantiate the same identity. In either case, healing
miracle or messianic miracle, the theological reasoning of the
event is that of Christological immanence. This serves Luke's
soteriology most ably. For the final image of the sick in need
of a physician cedes to a topic which meshes completely with the
disposition of the gospel as about desire, and that is meta/noia - repentance.
The presentation of the concept here is admirably couched in
terms which recall the sexual metaphor itself in virtue of the
criterion of need. For if the immanent is signaled primarily by
the criterion of consumption, then a foremost secondary
criterion is that of necessity. We shall find it again and again
in Luke in connection with the notion of desire:
And Jesus answered them,
"Those who are well have no need (xreia/n) of a physician, but those who are
sick; I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to
repentance." (Luke 6.31, 32).
Given that the twelve miracles of healing reiterate the
categoreal scheme, that is, as recapitulate the six conceptual
radicals of the 'beginning' and the six perceptual radicals of
the 'end', and also given the typological apposition between
these same twelve narratives and the twelve disciples - we are
deferring to Mark in this much, which serves as a source and
inspiration for Luke - we can say in the case of Levi at least,
that there is genuine warrant for the coupling. In other
instances, where the concept of the group and thus of collective
intentionality predominates, most notably those concerning the
perceptual radical acoustic memory, envisioned in the story of The
Feeding Of The Five Thousand, and concomitantly in that of
The Deaf Man (Mark 7.32-37), a narrative missing from
Luke, in which Mark includes the reference to 'multitudes', it
is more difficult to press for a one-to-one correspondence
between a particular figure, that is disciple, and the occasion.
This is only because we tend to think of all persons as
individuated. But according to the degree to which the same
individuals answer to the same radicals, in terms of their
representativeness as types of these very things, such thinking
may or may not be warranted. So for example, the acoustic
memory, the subject of The Feeding Of The Five Thousand,
favours a view of the person which accentuates his belonging to
the particular group or society endowing him with his language.
Here, individual differences will be eroded, for the condition
of belonging to a class is similarity if not sameness. Contrast
this with haptic memory. Here the unity which marks immanence,
is reduced to the couple, the dyad. For the erotic requires no
more than a single other. One relates to one's class on the
largest of scales. Sociality is plurality at its maximum - the
greater, the more multitudinous, the better. It understands
personhood phylogenetically. But the erotic redefines plurality,
that is immanence, in terms of the body as essentially more
private than public, in fact, as highly distinct, if not unique;
or as we say, ontogenetically. In most cases, it will confine
itself to just a single individual. This is still corporeity,
still immanence, still plurality. But it is attenuated plurality
when compared to what transpires in corporeity as constituted by
the acoustic. In short, two is a fish of a quite different
kind than five thousand.
We can therefore say that in Levi's case, or in that of
Nathanael, the apposition between the 'individual' as
typologically mimetic of a certain mental structure, haptic
memory, is indeed all the more reasonable. If we were to seek a
representation of the acoustic memory, we should rather seek
very many persons, in whom the individuating process remains at
a minimum. It is not that certain persons are incapable of
representing the group or social class; they are. But this very
representation obliterates everything we usually associate with
if not understand by a personal name, one such as Levi, or
Nathanael.
Another point which must be made here resumes what was said just
now about Mark being the source of this Lukan material. If we
are claiming that the primary disposition of the latter is to be
found in the two intentional modes, desire and faith-in-desire,
of which the perceptual form, haptic memory and the conceptual
form soma are the sufficient and necessary conditions, then why
point to those narratives in Luke which are common to both
gospels? For Mark, as we shall see, is effectively all about the
social. That is, he takes his primary cue from the intentional
forms related to acoustic memory and the conceptual radical time
- namely, knowing and the will-to-believe. Yet we are here
referring to texts in Luke which appear to stem from Mark.
We should remember we have not posited a hard and fast boundary
between the two gospels as manifesting the relation between the
two perceptual radicals and their conceptual counterparts which
underpin the respective forms of intentionality, distinguishing
their specificity. The haptic and the acoustic are both forms of
memory in their normative determinations; and their
corresponding equivalents in the conceptual realm, the ideas of
the soma and time
respectively, are both 'forms of unity' belonging to the same taxon.
But this section of Luke's gospel will help us to make sense of
those references first given above to eating and drinking, only
some of which are to be found in Mark. We can of course approach
the same list independently of the narratives extending from
Luke 5.27-6.19, which he seems to have drawn from Mark. But
clearly the four gospels establish a corpus, just as the various
modes of intentionality and the various categoreal forms do.
Moreover, the four gospels are in accord in their presentation
of those specific epistemic and psychic entities which determine
the character of Luke. It is not that the other evangelists
never write about desire, nor about believing-in-desire.
Certainly they do. But Luke writes about these same things to an
extraordinary extent. The great merit of what Luke has adopted
from Mark, and accentuated for his own purposes, is its thematic
integrity. All four pericopae,
Levi, Fasting, Plucking Grain and The
Man With A Withered Hand, and even the two following, The
Twelve, and Healing Summary, are of a piece. To
seek a single point of reference for all might prove difficult
were it not for the fact that the Son of man saying proffers
itself fairly readily:
And he said to them, "The
sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath; so the Son
of man is lord even of the sabbath." (Mark 2.27, 28).
And he said to them, "The Son of man is lord of the
sabbath." (Luke 6.5).
The sabbath, mentioned also in the other outstanding if longer
point of reference for this block of text, the healing story,
stands in relation to the Eucharist as first to last by means of
the isomorphic pattern maintained by the seven Days and the
seven messianic events. The Institution Of The
Lord's Supper, Luke 22.14-22, in a sense, the
last of 'earthly (immanent) events performed by Jesus, is for
Luke final and irrevocable. We shall therefore use it as the
final and lasting point of reference in Luke to the plethora of
occasions in which Jesus eats and drinks with others, and
teaches on these same subjects. David's action taking and eating
the bread of the Presence, and also giving it to those with him,
which was not lawful, is just one more point of contact between
the discourse, Plucking Grain and the miracle story.
Both David's and Jesus' actions, and Jesus' teaching as
well as healing, fly in the face of religious propriety. This is
the first of several such occasions which find their final
resolution in the Eucharist; in other words, it is the beginning
of the end for Jesus. Jesus' last Passover supper with his
disciples however pre-empts the eschatological banquet, and as
we must note, Luke will take up the same motif, that of
eating/drinking, even in his resurrection narratives. We have
not listed these above - Luke 24.30, 35, 41-43 - but in some
sense they stand as final tokens of the systematic disposition
of this gospel.
Prior to the above list of the many texts in the third gospel
which deploy metaphors of consumption, that is, appetition and
satisfaction, we entered a list of the healing miracles in Luke,
having argued that his greater number of examples of this genre
evinces his mind-set as disposed in virtue of the fact of bodily
existence. Before we make an assessment of the stories revolving
around table fellowship and the concept of
appetition-satisfaction, it will repay us to examine briefly at
least two of the healing miracle stories which are contained
only in Luke. In this way we may introduce the larger picture of
commensality, which more effectively than anything else,
supports the case being put here for the disposition of the
gospel of Luke. The second of these is remarkable for the fact
that it virtually reiterates The Man With A Withered Hand.
The first can be taken as comparable to Jairus' Daughter.
Both of these narratives as noted above, serve the Markan
categoreal depiction of those specific radicals responsible for
the intentional forms, desire and belief-in-desire, namely,
haptic memory, the perceptual radical, and soma or body (mind : body),
its conceptual counterpart, respectively. It is almost as if
Luke in reiterating the two narratives, wishes to give them
added weight, or to make them his own.
The
Widow's Son At Nain (Luke 7.11-17), A Sinful Woman Forgiven
(7.36-50)
In this story exclusive to Luke, the 'relationship' is one
between a mother and her dead son. On account of this the son
may be likened to the person of Jesus himself, and Luke
relates his being 'the only son of his mother' (monogenh\v ui(o\v - 7.12)
to this very effect. What is worth noting here is the use of
touch by Jesus as he restores the boy to life;
And he came and touched (h(/yato) the bier, and
the bearers stood still. And he said, "Young man, I say to
you, arise." (Luke 7.14).
This is all but identical to the command Jesus issues to the
daughter of Jairus, (Luke 8.54, cf. Mark 5.41), and we shall see
directly the same as true of the previous narrative, The
Centurion's Servant. So to the later relationship of
father and daughter, the evangelist here juxtaposes that of a
mother and son. There are many instances in Luke detailing
healings which utilise touch and or verbal utterances, but this
one in particular is relevant to our case. For it adds a third
instance to the previous two in which the evangelist draws
comparisons between 'the physician' and the young
man who is in need of him. Luke is not sexualising
the event any more than John does the episode involving Jesus
and Lazaros. But clearly he colligates the identity of Jesus
himself and haptic consciousness, and consequently forges a link
between Jesus and the intentional form, desire. If anything,
this episode, like that of Lazaros in the fourth gospel, extends
the parameters of desire beyond those of its sovereign or
canonical expression. For we witness the love of a mother for
her son in Luke's story, and the love of the sisters for their
brother in John. Luke has already been speaking of love, (Luke
6.27-36), and in a way which not indirectly binds it to desire:
"And as you wish (qe/lete) that men would
do to you, do so to them." (Luke 6.31).
The healing narrative cedes to that of The Messengers From John
The Baptist (Luke 7.18-35), to which it is preparatory, for The
Widow's Son artfully ended thus:
Fear seized them all; and
they glorified God, saying, "A great prophet has arisen
amongst us!' and "God has visited his people!" (Luke 7.16).
The extended discourses on The Messengers Of John The Baptist
and John The Baptist himself (Luke 7.18-30) thus
function contrastively to the portrayal of Jesus in the
characteristically Lukan terms which relate him to the
phenomenon of desire. That is to say, these passages form a
caesura before the final and explosive juxtaposition of John and
Jesus, reminiscent of the previous narratives subsequent to the
story of The Calling of Levi, The Question About
Fasting and Plucking Grain On The Sabbath (Luke
5.33-6.5):
"To what then shall I compare
the men of this generation, and what are they like? They are
like children sitting in the market place and calling to one
another, 'We piped to you, and you did not dance; we wailed,
and you did not weep.' For John the Baptist has come eating no
bread and drinking no wine; and you say, 'He has a demon.' The
Son of man has come eating and drinking; and you say, 'Behold,
a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and
sinners!' Yet wisdom is justified by all her children" (Luke
7.31-34).
Luke plies these linked themes most adroitly. It is as if he
knows that any theology of desire will be greeted with
suspicion. The reference to 'tax collectors and sinners' (7.34)
reminds us at once of the identical phrase in the story of
Levi's commissioning (5.34). Luke will use the second term - a(martwlo/v - more than
once in the very next pericope, which tells of Jesus having been
anointed by 'a woman of the city who was a sinner' (7.36-50), in
connection with both touching and the related Eucharistic
mode(s) smell/taste. We cite here, only the most salient
features of this extended narrative:
One of the Pharisees asked him to eat with him,
and he went into the Pharisee's house, and took his place at
table. And behold, a woman of the city, who was a sinner ...
brought an alabaster flask of ointment, and standing behind
him at his feet, weeping, she began to wet his feet with her
tears, and wiped them with the hair of her head, and kissed
his feet, and anointed them with the ointment. The Pharisee
... said to himself, "If this man were a prophet, he would
have known who and what sort of woman this is who is touching
(a(/ptetai) him,
for she is a sinner."
There is here very substantial evidence for the hypothesis
we are putting a propos of the gospel of Luke, and I do not mean
merely the ingenuousness of an image which portrays Jesus
as both loved and loving. Luke has heightened the pitch of the
scene relative to the similar narratives (Mark 14.3-9 and John
12.1-8). Coming much later in Jesus' ministry, the anointing for
them both serves as something of an overture of the passion and
death of Jesus. Both evangelists agree on the value of the
unguent:
But there were some who said
to themselves indignantly, "Why was the ointment thus wasted?
For this ointment might have been sold for more than three
hundred denarii, and given to the poor." And they reproached
her. (Mark 14.4-5) c.f..
But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (he who was to
betray him), said, "Why was this ointment not sold for three
hundred denarii and given to the poor?" (John 12.4-5).
Indeed Luke's account radically contrasts the prophet Jesus with
the prophet John. There is no hint here of Jesus' approaching
demise, no sense of foreboding. He is too much the bon vivant, and the woman
'who was a sinner' accentuates the characteristically Lukan
portrait of Jesus. But we should not underestimate the equally
Lukan concept of repentance, given by the reference to her
'weeping' and her 'tears' (7.38, 44). This, if only momentarily
will permit of some kind of allusion to death, resonating with
the previous story of The Widow's Son At Nain in which
Jesus bade the woman "Do not weep." (Luke 7.13). If we allow
this, that is, if we contend that the later passage about the
sinful woman who anointed Jesus may be read in the light of the
story concerning the death of the 'young man', then we must also
extrapolate in the opposite way. That is, we can begin to
understand the story of The Widow's Son At Nain
vis-a-vis that of the anointing. This has the consequences that
Jesus' perception of the woman's suffering, of her pathos, the
deepest longing she feels for her only son now lying dead upon
the bier, may be linked to desire, even sexual desire itself, if
we accept the connexity between love and death. The expression
'he had compassion on her' ( e)splagxni/sqh 6.13) speaks for this. Jesus,
is profoundly aware as he was at the wedding at Cana, that
something must occur; he must act. Her suffering demands his
response. (For more on the role of women generally in the gospel
of Luke, and the story of The Widow At Nain see Edith
Ashely, Women In Luke's
Gospel).
Once again some link obtains between the gospels of Luke and
John regarding stories of The Anointing, even though the
latter locates the event in time - prior to the Passover feast
- and place, Bethany, in keeping with the accounts of Mark
and Matthew. Neither Mark (14.3-9) nor Matthew (26.6-13) inflect
their accounts as John and Luke have with overtones of the
connectedness between (sexual) love and death. For them, the
controversy centres on the economic reality of the permanent
presence of the poor, and concludes with the notion of
remembrance, which links itself to the Eucharist soon to follow.
John (12.1-8), certainly feels the connection with death, since
he mentions Lazaros' whom he 'had raised from the dead' and the
day of his [Jesus'] own burial (12.1, 7). He also incorporates
the theme of the poor and the betrayal of Jesus by Judas. The
other synoptists place the passage concerning Judas immediately
following their recension of the anointing. Thus if anything,
John seems to hint at the possibility of sexual jealousy on the
part of Judas towards the woman, clearly in his story, Mary, the
sister of Martha and Lazaros; possibly he means that in
connection with all three, for we are told that Jesus loved each
one of them, (11.5).
John's account is remarkable for the sentence: 'and the house
was full with the fragrance of the ointment.' (John 12.3b),
especially since he referred to the odour of putrefaction in the
story of Lazaros' death (11.39). But Luke's story of The
Anointing is equally remarkable since it alone develops
the theme of love to a degree greater than any other of the
three. The woman's love for Jesus is for him signal of her
repentance, and it underpins her faith:
And he said to the woman,
"Your faith has saved you; go in peace." (Luke 7.50 cf. 8.45:
And he said to her, "Daughter, your faith has made you well;
go in peace.")
We shall return to this subject of the woman's faith after we
have considered another story of an outcast who demonstrates
exemplary love, the centurion, the account of whose slave having
been healed by Jesus is the first of the three episodes of
healing in chapter 7, taking as we may, The Sinful Woman Who
Anointed Jesus as a healing miracle, which is inferred by
the citation just noted. This certainly complies with the Lukan
presentation of the Eucharist, even if the passage is at some
distance from that event in the course of narrated time. If
Jesus is to serve as food to the world according as that
occasion, the Eucharist, somehow marks the true and teleological
significance of what was first described in the story of the
human couple in the garden of Eden, which it does in conformity
to the messianic series as a whole, then Luke better than the
other evangelists has grasped the link. We shall see that even
if desire and faith can be said to be at such remove from one
another as to mirror the relation of polar opposition, then we
may use the vocabulary of time itself, specifically that of
midwinter as against midsummer for the two conscious forms of
intentionality, desire and faith respectively. This very
antithesis must involve that they nevertheless complement each
other. The same is given in the relationship of the two
corresponding aconscious modes of intentionality, the
desire-to-know, and faith-in-desire. Such complementarity can be
construed in terms of simultaneity of spatial (hemispherical)
polar opposition. Thus the conscious intentional mode, faith simpliciter (John), and the
aconscious mode faith-in-desire (Luke), are conceivable as
the analogues to the polar opposites, midsummer day and
midwinter day respectively, which are nevertheless simultaneous
or concurrent in the oppositional hemispheres. So too are their
simultaneous counterparts, the aconscious desire-to-know (John),
and desire (Luke), the analogues to night at the summer
solstice, and night at the winter solstice respectively. For the
basic paradigm of the conscious forms of intentionality remains
that of the processive diurnal interval, whether this be long,
as in the case of faith, or short, as in the case of desire.
Correspondingly, the analogous template for the aconscious forms
of intentionality, the desire-to-know and faith-in-desire, is
the nocturnal. In the case of John and Luke, the relationship is
one of contrastive complementarity, but we can glimpse from this
paradigm, how they belong together. (Where Mark and Matthew are
concerned, the relationship is again complementary, and this
configures the rapport between the corresponding forms of
intentionality. But the difference here is noticeable; for the
two equinoxes posit equal durations between day and night.)
Before passing to the second of the healing stories exclusive to
Luke in this first section of his gospel, a section mirroring
the same concentration in both Mark and John at the same phase
of those gospels, on the archetypal form of desire, the sexual,
and its aconscious underpinning, faith-in-desire, we should note
a further similarity between Luke and John which concerns their
stories of Jesus having been anointed by a woman. Here Luke and
John, if not Luke and Mark, are more in accord as to the
significance of the episode as we shall argue. This is not to
urge that the two episodes are one and the same - fairly clearly
they are not. The time of their occurrence is the deciding
factor against any such argument, the discrepancy between the
duration of the ministry of Jesus as described by the two
evangelists notwithstanding. Efforts towards this conclusion,
motivated as they are in simplifying matters for the exegete,
succeed in confusing the identities of the women involved,
proposing that Mary the sister of Martha and Lazaros must
not only have been Luke's 'woman of the city, who was a sinner'
but also that she must have been identical to the Mary known as
Mary Magdalene, referred to in the ensuing passage (Luke
8.2). Both assumptions are untenable. A more likely
argument would be that there are three distinct women involved
here. The woman who anointed Jesus at Bethany is clearly
identified by John (11.2, 12.3). Mark (14.3s), like Luke, never
names her, a fact which has suggested to some scholars that the
Johannine version has been copied by the synoptists. It is
fairly certain that the two stories of anointing in Mark and
John are one and the same; but Luke regarding this part of the
tradition, as in other cases, seems to go his own way.
How the Johannine and the Lukan stories do concur however is
psychologically. Just as John tells the story of Jesus' being
anointed subsequently to The Raising Of Lazaros, for
only The Plot To Kill Jesus (11.45-57) intervenes so as
to further the iconic similarity between Lazaros and Jesus, so
too Luke places his story of Jesus' anointing in close proximity
to that of the 'resurrection' of The Widow's Son At Nain.
The intervening pericope
in this case is The Messengers Of John The Baptist (Luke
7.18-35), which juxtaposes 'wailing' and 'weeping' (John) with
'piping' and 'dancing' (Jesus), and which concludes so nicely by
means of Luke's signature 'eating and drinking', and hence
desire. (We shall say more later concerning the figures of music
and dancing, and concerning art in general vis-a-vis the Lukan
epistemic index.)
Thus the Johnannine telling of Mary Anointing Jesus
looks back to the story of Lazaros, the last miraculous event,
and from there to the initial messianic miracle at Cana, its chiastic counterpart, in
which the themes of love (Eros)
and death are momentarily allowed to merge, with the difference
being that in the final miracle in John, it is instead death (Thanatos) which receives
the emphatic treatment.
If the narratives of the anointing of Jesus stem from a common
original, which is unlikely, then Luke's in comparison with the
Johannine and Markan versions, is divested of any substantial
link with death. This comports with the context of his account,
the fact that the texts from 5.27 as far as the end of chapter 7
are purposefully focused as are the earliest sections of both
Mark and John, on the implications for Christian theology of the
meaning of the soma,
the body. This sits well with the Johannine dominical saying
given in the first messianic miracle: "My hour has not yet
come." (John 2.4) It also fits with Luke's tendency visible in
not this particular tradition alone, but generally in his
overall employment of eating-drinking and Eucharistic imagery,
to highlight the psychology of desire. Having transferred the
story of Jesus being anointed by 'a woman' to the earliest
section of the gospel, in clear juxtaposition of its recension
in all other gospels, has the effect of emphasising the
specifically Lukan orientation. In sum, it shapes the event in
the light of the physical reality of existence, the reality of
the body as a given element in consciousness, and equally the
reality of desire. The only hint of death as opposed to desire
here is deployed by means of the connection between the pericope
and the other one prior to it also involving a woman, The
Widow At Nain (7.11-17). But that event too is
very remarkably not about death, but about life, the life of a
young man on the threshold of adulthood - neani/ske (7.14). The
links between the two women's stories are symbolised by the
element of tears/crying, expressive of another Lukan favourite
theological theme, that of compassion. But overall, there is
here as in the first messianic miracle, little if any real
deployment of the theme of death. (Kylie Crabbe
discerns the various threads which tie together the story of the
woman with others in this section of the gospel of Luke, see: Transforming Tables: Meals as
Encounter with the Kingdom in Luke).
The
Crippled Woman (Luke 13.10-17)
This is the second pericope exclusive to the
gospel of Luke, which we shall examine. The event it recounts
also takes place on the sabbath. In other respects it bears
comparison with the first controversial healing on the sabbath.
The setting, that of the synagogue, is the same, and on both
occasions Jesus was teaching, (Luke 6.6 cf. 13.10). This time
the antagonism comes from a single person, the 'ruler of the
synagogue' (v 14), but he elicits the same opposition from 'the
people' so that Jesus refers to them collectively as
'hypocrites' (v 15). It is interesting to us because it includes
the mention of animals, and moreover animals engaged in eating
and drinking:
Then the
Lord answered him, "You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the
sabbath untie his ox or his ass from the manger (fa/tnhv), and lead it
away to water (poti/zei)
it? And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan
bound for eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the
sabbath day?" (Luke 13.15-16)
These images of the animal nature of appetition are a far cry
from those contained in the Markan narratives, The Gerasene
Demoniac and the Syrophoenician Woman's Daughter,
which featured the imagery of feeding animals. Luke's are more
neutral, or if morally charged at all, then they must be seen as
positive portraits of the same. The 'sabbath' reference may well
allude to the J creation narrative, the 'archetypal' event which
connects assimilation with both desire and knowing, as does
Markan metaphysics. We shall argue that Santayana's expression
'animal faith' for the intentional mode belief-in-desire, is
thoroughly apt, stemming as it does from the second half of the
creation narrative in which the plenum of living creatures comes
into existence. Luke more than any other evangelist expresses
solicitude for animals, given the quantity of references to them
in his gospel. The strength or force of the thing in question,
here not only the aconscious mode, faith-in-desire, but actual
desire itself, given under the aegis of thirst, is presented
graphically as it overrides even the gravest of the
commandments, those which pertain to the sanctity of the
sabbath. Thus the actions and sayings of Jesus in this healing
event conform absolutely with his demeanour envisaged in the
earlier narrative, Plucking Grain On The Sabbath.
Once again, the sabbath and consumption (Eucharist) comport
perfectly together, and again square with the intentional
archetype, desire. Even though the sentient mode is not quite
exactly that of the haptic in particular, it is very closely
allied to it, on account of the function in the animal
consciousness of the olfactory/gustatory, or Eucharistic mode,
which is so nearly bound to the haptic. The implied link here
between health or well-being and sexuality, all the more
provocative for involving a woman, lies behind the
'indignation' a)ganaktw~n,
13.14) of 'the ruler' and his ilk. Nor is the bodily semeion for haptic memory
and so too for desire, lacking:
And he
laid (e)pe/qhken) his
hands (xei~rav) upon
her, and immediately she was made straight, and she praised God.
(Luke 13.13).
Thus not only the time, sabbath, nor the place, synagogue,
nor the antagonism of 'the people' make this second pericope in
Luke emphatically mirror of the first. For the haptic icon of
desire itself, the hand, presses home the point. What this story
does add however to the former, is the promotion of the human
and subhuman solidarity which furnishes the basis of desire in
the first place. Luke provides us with an image of subhuman,
that is animal, need. The last time we heard of a 'manger' was
in the infancy narratives:
"And this
will be a sign for you: you will find a babe wrapped in
swaddling clothes and lying in a manger." ... And they went with
haste, and found Mary and Joseph, and the babe lying in a
manger. (Luke 2.13, 16).
From the inception of his gospel, Luke is aware of the
significance of the act of nurturing. The consumption of
life-sustaining food and drink establishes the cognitive and
conative focus of his thinking. Jesus is first given to us in
his gospel as embedded in the sub-human and human realm for the
very sake of the same: since he fulfills the
evolutionary-historical telos, he is himself food for the realm
of all living things - he is the ('Eucharistic') object of our
desires, and still more, since what is designated always by the
actual Eucharist itself, life-sustaining food and drink,
satisfies not only a desire, but a need. We cannot lose sight of
this radical difference between the actual Eucharistic miracles
and actual Eucharist. It remains the single rationale for the
differentiation of the former from the latter, and the fact that
the latter may function as summation of the series.
There is an indubitable sense of the immanence of God at work
and at play here, nor can we doubt that it sustains this gospel
as a whole. On arriving at the story of The Crippled Woman
we should observe how tactfully the evangelist articulates the
concept of desire. The image of 'animal' thirst in 13.15,
John extends over as many as forty-two verses in the story of Jesus
And The Woman Of Samaria (John 4.1-42), the
concluding presentation of the archetype in that gospel. Even if
we disallow this same text as interpolated, the classical
description of the radical, haptic memory, along with that of
its canonical form of intentionality, desire, given in John
2.1-11, employs the very same model - thirst.
The recognition of these nuances gives added meaning to
Luke's picture of the opposition between Jesus and the
'hypocrites' who surround him in 'one of the synagogues' where
the woman was healed. If there are grounds for the charge of
antisemitism to be leveled at the gospel of Luke, in the
interests of fairness we need to consider the distance between
his own disposition and that of Judaisms. We cannot typify the
latter as entirely bereft of the same intellectual and affective
patterns which predominate in Luke, for there is clear and
certain, though limited evidence in the Hebrew scriptures of the
same, The Song Of Songs and the book of Jonah being its
classical instances. Indeed in our exposition of the aconscious
form of intentionality, belief-in-desire, without which desire
itself is as nothing, we shall consider the latter writing, the
book of Jonah. For there we find a remarkable marriage between
the very Lukan theme of repentance and the concept of human and
subhuman solidarity, and thus of 'animal faith'.
Even so, the Hebrew scriptures and Judaism itself generally,
remain substantively anerotic. In terms of the literary
celebration of physical love, The Song Of Songs compares with
some of the Buddhist and Hindu tantras, but in the opinion of
this writer, is much overrated as representative of the centre
of consciousness we have called 'haptic memory'. We will be
forced to acknowledge that a certain disparity of vision remains
between this particular gospel, Luke, and rabbinic Judaism. The
latter is of course less inimical to the scope and tenor of the
Matthean gospel, and we will propose that where a match
between a world ('archetypal') religion and a particular gospel
may be adduced, the fit there is as near to perfect as we may
expect. But in Luke's particular case, that is, given his native
propensity to construe the world through the lens of the
intentional mode desire, and its aconscious counterpart,
belief-in-desire, there must necessarily be some measure of
mutual antipathy between this particular gospel and Judaism from
the point of view of Torah qua
will. There is a very real sense in which Luke here breaks new
ground in the continuity of the Judaeo-Christian trajectory, the
subject of the sayings regarding 'new wine' (Mark 2.22). It is
really only a matter of time before a fracture appears in the
fabric of this trajectory. Luke, sensible as he is of the
historic process itself, and of the very roots of the emerging
Christian tradition, can see full well the implications of his
own position, nor does he resile from them. For, as we shall
argue, where there is a definite unbrokenness between the
will-to-believe and belief simpliciter,
and correspondingly, an equal and seamless nexus between
the desire-to-know and knowing simpliciter, between will itself and desire,
there is no similar traffic or commerce. These are immiscible.
But note Luke's own recension of the saying regarding the new
wine, in which unlike Mark, the final verse is a positive
assessment of the palaio\v:
'And no
one puts new wine into old wineskins; if he does, the new wine
bursts the skins and it will be spilled, and the skins will be
destroyed. But new wine must be put into fresh wineskins. And no
one after drinking old wine desires new; for he says, 'The old
is good."' (Luke 5.37-39).
Whatever the merits and demerits of the former testament, and
however inimical to one another the two conscious processes,
will and desire, as well as the two aconscious processes,
knowledge-of-will and belief-in-desire, Luke's own assessment of
'the former', that is, his own attitude towards the Judaic
tradition as given here, is positive to a degree well beyond
Mark if the logion is any guide at all. The saying
squares immediately and resolutely with the conclusion to the
Johannine miracle story, which is of course the classical
depiction of the haptic memory, whose sovereign form of
intentionality desire is. On the value of Luke 5.39 as a textual
variant see Significant
Textual Variants. Notes in Metzger's Textual Commentary
are to the same effect:
The
external attestation for the inclusion of the verse is almost
overwhelming; its omission from several Western witnesses
may be due to the influence of Marcion who rejected the
statement because it seemed to give authority to the Old
Testament. (Bruce M. Metzger, A
Textual Commentary On The Greek New Testament, United
Bible Societies, London, 1975, pp. 138-139.)
In seeking a match or fit between a specific religious
tradition and the mode of intentionality desire, along with its
aconscious counterpart, belief-in-desire, we can do no better
than to answer with the later and highly evolved Vajrayana
Buddhism. For there we encounter the same paradoxical approach
to the phenomenon of desire, and its conceptual basis,
belief-in-desire. It begins as the response of the mind to the
awareness of its very own embodiment and the repercussions this
has for consciousness, equivalent to such as we discover in the
gospel of Luke. In Luke this paradox will be rendered as
desiring desire. These topics of course lie well beyond the
purview of this part of our study. But Leaving aside all
temptations to project guilt onto any one party alone, we may as
well note here and now, that the discussion of the fundamental
dissonance between the gospel of Luke and a version of reality
which may be accounted as 'Judaic' in the broad definitions of
that term, will be forced to meet the simple fact that Judaism
itself reflects a limited perspective of the cosmos, and one
which invites its own rejection by alternative perspectives.
That is to say, that if the four gospels are to be reckoned as
individually disposed in any singular fashion after the ultimate
structures of consciousness itself, a pattern which we may
detect also in the radical varieties of Christian culture, and
if world religions in their turn may also be thus reckoned, then
Judaism no less than any of these may not lay claim to certain
and absolute universalism. There is indeed a quite troubling and
worrisome aspect in which Judaisms more perhaps than any other
family of world religions, with the possible exception of some
schools of Hindu thought, place themselves at a real
disadvantage where the universalism suggested by the term
'world' becomes criteriological. Though to suggest as much in
the present climate of theological thought, appreciative as it
is of political and ideological currents, may be to incur
immediate censure.
This short survey of two of Luke's own healing stories
certainly corroborates the postulate that the psychological, or
conative, temperament of his gospel is to be found in the
phenomenon of desire, as will the very next miracle we are to
examine. This will mean that the Eucharist must function
centrally in his theology, for it is towards that event that the
many and consistent references we have to eating and drinking
tend. It has also proved Luke's capacity to integrate his
material since it has been impossible not to infringe the
boundaries between healing miracles and discourse as well as
narrative. The attention to such matters will fit perfectly with
what concerns us later in this essay, namely the conceptual
radical soma (body) as
foundational to an episteme or mode of understanding: art. We
have already made mention of the fact that the mode of
understanding connected with haptic memory, the corresponding
perceptual radical, is that of technological rationality.
Thus technological consciousness is the cognitive realization of
haptic memory and erotic desire, its conative realization - for
both of which the hand acts as the somatic or haptic semeion. Luke is certainly
a technician, or as we should say, an artist. Art is the
epistemic or cognitive realization of the conceptual form, soma. It therefore stands
in the closest possible relation to techne as possible, mirroring the aconscious
conceptual pole in relation to the conscious perceptual
pole, or adopting the temporal metaphor, analogously to the
relation of day to night respectively.
The Healing Of A Centurion's Servant - Luke 7.1-10
We have just discussed two healing miracle narratives bearing
on the thesis that desire is the distinctive and innate
conative intentional form peculiar to Luke, since these
narratives constitute a strand of the gospel recorded only by
Luke, a strand designated by L ('special Luke'), and so may be
said to reveal something at least of his own specific theology
of salvation. (For introductions to L see Dr. James D.
Tabor, Colour Coded Luke;
also Special
Luke). There is yet another miracle narrative calling for
comment for it occurs in the earliest sections of the
gospel concordantly with the other pericopae espousing the systematic exposition
of a theology of desire which we have already examined. Hence
its location squares perfectly with the general outlines
sustained by the messianic series qua developmental psychology such as we find
in the other synoptists, and the gospel of John too, which
locates the story of the miracle at Cana first, and also much of
the subsequent material likewise, in keeping with the
significance of the perceptual form haptic memory, the
categoreal radical which functions as the incipient mental and
affective focus of our lives as adults.
We should not fail to notice that another healing takes place
between that of The Man With The Withered Hand and that
of The Widow's Son At Nain, to wit, The Centurion's
Servant, and that it not only conforms to the general
psychological pattern of Luke's gospel in as much as it almost
certainly represents a sexual relationship between two persons,
but does so all the more topically if not polemically in that
the relationship is between two males of differing ages. The pericope has drawn much
attention positive and negative from various camps. Queer
Theology has seized upon this story as in part a vindication of
its own agenda, that of the liberation of homosexual men and
women. We may notice in passing, the context in which Luke has
placed the story, which is at one with the others encountered so
far, and certain of the other intervening texts including The
Beatitudes, may be read in connection with the purposive
concentration here of stories revolving around the theme of
sexual desire. Worth noticing in this narrative is Luke's
use of the term 'slave' (dou~lov,
(Luke 7.3, 5, 8, 10), which at once resounds with the Johannine
'servants' (dia/konoi
- John 2.5, 9) of the messianic miracle. In both cases, as for
the immanent miracles generally, such terms revert to the idea
of necessity or determinism; in other words, we have here to do
with desire as distinct from (free) will. They comport perfectly
and immediately with the presentation of the psychology of
appetition in the Eucharistic miracles and the Eucharist itself,
which latter is Luke's final and ultimate exposition of the
theology of desire and belief-in-desire.
This is a profoundly controversial narrative as having been
enlisted in the ideological controversies which followed
liberation theology in the twentieth century in the polemical
battles waged by Queer Theology. Here we need to take stock of
the paucity of any relevant and current theology of desire,
specifically sexual desire, even admitting that the word
'current' itself denotes some sort of radical demarcation from
modernist mores, if not their 'transvaluation'. (On the subject
of the lack of a theology of desire see: Sarah Coakley, Ecclesiastical
Sex Scandals: The Lack Of A Contemporary Theology Of Desire;
so too the article by the same author in The Harvard Divinity Bulletin,
vol. 33, no. 2, autumn 2005, Pleasure Principles).
The story of The Centurion's Servant is not exclusive to
Luke. Accounts of the episode, which scholars accepting the Q
theory regarding the sources of the gospels assign to the same,
that is Q, are contained in both Matthew (Matthew 8.5-13)
and possibly John (John 4.46b-53). (Even granting the Q
hypothesis, certain scholars argue that the recension in Luke
contains some Lukan special material, namely verses 1, 4 and 5.)
In all three instances, once again editing, that is the specific
location of the narrative, must be taken into account in
its hermeneutic. John places it as the second miracle
story, drawing our attention to this fact by means which recall
'first of his signs', the messianic miracle at Cana:
This was now the second sign
that Jesus did when he had come from Judea to Galilee. (John
4.54).
John shapes the event as representative of the symbolic
feminine, the fact that no female figure is mentioned
notwithstanding; but the general ligatures of the event to the
first miracle must not be overlooked. John uses the words
ui(on (vv 46, 47, 50,
53) - 'son'; and paidi/on
- 'child' (v 49); and pai~v
(v 51) - 'boy', 'servant', 'slave'; the last of which, the term
favoured by Matthew, and to a lesser extent Luke, might suggests
the possibility of a sexual as well as inter-generational
relationship between the two males. But we must observe that
John uses pai~v only
once; moreover he includes the term path\r - father (4.53.) It would therefore be
advisable to opt for the view that the Johannine recension
reports an episode other than that recorded by the two
synoptists. The dearth of miracle narratives in the fourth
gospel relative to their currency in the gospel of Luke ought if
anything make for a clear-cut interpretation of this event as
distinctly marking something other than the erotic, which is
properly confined to the 'first sign'. It is likely that
the numbering of the two episodes is by reason of this same
purpose. The Johannine account is edited contextually notably as
is Simon Peter's Mother-In-Law in both Mark and Luke,
the evangelist having drawn our attention to the fact that The
Official's Son is the second of the signs. (The link
between the first and second signs in John, literally expressive
of the ties between the erotic and the economic, as resulting
from the two forms of unity, soma
and the symbolic feminine, mirrors the same connection sustained
by the Lukan redaction of the two healing miracle
narratives, Jairus' Daughter and The Centurion's
Slave, by means of their virtually equal ties with
the 'synagogue' as noted above. There is a deep-seated
connection here at the epistemic level worthy of investigation,
for the first episode, that concerning soma, has as its episteme, art, just as the
mythopoietic is invoked by the idea of the cultus ('synagogue'),
and the symbolic feminine has as its episteme, that of
evolutionary theoretical-historical understanding. We have
already proposed a certain tie between the aconscious orders of
consciousness, here comprising soma as well as the symbolic feminine, and
such modes of understanding, in respect of the repeated
instances in the texts which associate the sub-human realm with
the same. This squares with the depiction of the categoreal
status of all three (aconscious) forms of unity as paradoxical
and ambiguous, and we will further pursue the same ideas
in the discussion on the gospel of Luke.)
The Matthean context of Peter's Mother-In-Law (Matthew
8.14,15), has it follow immediately The Centurion's Servant
(Matthew 8.5-13), made possible since Matthew omits the first
healing in the Markan series, that of The Demoniac In The
Synagogue, for reasons which we must later address. Worthy
of note in the Johannine story is use of the same clause in the
second Markan miracle story. Except for the pronoun 'him'
instead of 'her', John mirrors verbatim the clause used
by both Mark and Matthew in their accounts of the cure, Simon
Peter's Mother-In-Law (Mark 1.31b, cf. Matthew 8.15b,
and Luke 4.39a), that healing episode which presents the
symbolic feminine even if in the most cursory manner:
a)fh~ken au)ton o( pureto/v. - the fever
left him (John 4.52).
Regarding this clause, it is likely Luke has faithfully
copied Mark in repeating first the story of The Man With An
Unclean Spirit (Luke 4.31-37), which is followed
immediately by Simon Peter's Mother-In-Law (4.38, 39),
although he has polished the Markan account, so that his more
elaborate locution in the second story, containing the verb
'rebuke', with its exorcistic connotations, recalls immediately
the prior episode in which the same word exactly occurred: 'But
Jesus rebuked him ... (Luke 4.35). Thus he would appear with
even more deliberate articulation than Mark, where the ligatures
are those of Peter in relation to 'the synagogue', the relation
of Peter to 'mother-in-law' and the location of the two
episodes, Capernaum, to subsume the second all too brief episode
under the first:
e)peti/mhsen tw~? puretw~?
kai\ a)fh~ken au)thn - [he] rebuked the fever, and it
left her ... (Luke 4.39a).
kai\ a)fh~ken au)th\n
o( pureto/v - and the fever left her ... (Matthew
8.15b).
kai\ a)fh~ken au)th\n
o( pureto/v - and the fever left her ... (Mark
1.31b).
The theologian credited with first recognizing the evident if
not unmistakeable nature of the relationship between the two
males in the Matthean and Lukan narratives of the centurion is John
J. McNeill, in 1976. Donald Mader in 1987 contended that
Matthew, was ignorant of its homoerotic connotations, and used
the term pai~v
because it was extant already in the Q document, and that Luke's
having avoided it indicates the latter's sensitivity to the
same. (The argument that there has been any deliberate
desexualization on the part of the evangelist is more suited to
the Johannine account. See Koepnick who, invoking the criterion
of multiple attestation, also emphasizes the superior
historicity of the synoptic records stemming from the Q source
as against that of John, originating from the 'Signs Source'. He
argues that Q and Signs Source 'originate from a strong early
oral tradition', and that 'It is probable that the Signs Source,
like its early parallel source Q, preserved the word pais - not huios - in its original
form.' Koepnick, Eric, The Historical Jesus and the
Slave of The Centurion: How the Themes of Slavery, Sexuality
and Military Service Intersect in Matthew 8:5-13,
p. 5). But even so, Luke himself uses pai~v (Luke
7.7), and uses moreover the epithet 'dear'. The
attribution to Matthew of such an ignorance relies on the
premise of an Aramaic original of his gospel. On this count
alone it is dubious enough. The 2004 article by Jennings
and Liew, Mistaken
Identities but Model Faith: Rereading the Centurion, the
Chap and the Christ in Matthew 5.1-13,
concludes that Jesus in Matthew's account indubitably affirms
the 'pederastic' relationship between the Centurion and his
'boy':
Particularly in recent years,
much has been done in Matthean studies in terms of ethnicity,
gender, class, and even colonial politics. What remains to be
seen is how questions of sexualities, even abject sexualities,
may play a part in these investigations. (Op. cit. p 494.)
In any case, we are here dealing with Luke, and that he was
prepared to portray Jesus as not only failing to censure the
relationship between the two males, but indeed to have him
approve it in the most unquestionable of terms, those concerning
the man's faith, agrees immediately with what we are arguing.
Luke refers to the Centurion's honorable reputation among the
Jews in a way which Matthew does not, and which recurs to the
classical exposition of the categoreal concept, the body,
contained in Mark's narrative, Jairus' Daughter. Thus he
seems to be saying with Mark, that soma lies at the heart of belief-in-desire,
but he is surely extending its parameters beyond its previous
Markan confines, where the sexual and canonical form of desire,
is concerned. This form of intentionality, faith-in-desire,
along with desire itself, are the two intentional modes about
which the gospel of Luke gravitates. There can be no doubt that
Luke himself wants to disestablish any notion of the confident
superiority of the Judaic ethical code and its mandatory
superimposition on an alien culture. This agrees completely with
his broader purposes:
And when they came to Jesus,
they besought him earnestly saying, "He is worthy (a)c)io/v) to have you
do this for him, for he loves (a)gapa~?) our nation, and he built us our
synagogue." (7.4, 5).
As noted already, Luke here ties the event to the
healing of Jairus' Daughter, the classical Markan
exponent of the categoreal soma
and so too of the intentional mode, belief-in-desire. But Luke
also momentarily redirects our attention away from the personal
affections of the centurion towards his affection for a 'nation'
( e!qnov) altogether
other than his own. Is Luke citing this love as a pertinent if
not mitigating factor in the response of Jesus to the situation?
It would seem so. The same detail is absent from Matthew's
account. Luke's use of the expression 'a slave who was dear ( e!ntimov) to him' (Luke
7.2) again advances upon the Matthean account in terms of the
story's sexual overtones. The word occurs elsewhere in the Lukan
corpus, and in the New Testament. For example in Luke 14.8,
again within the context of implicitly sexual imagery, he uses
it in the comparative degree - e)ntimo/tero/v - 'more honorable', 'more
worthy', 'more valuable', 'more prized':
Now he told a parable to
those who were invited, when he marked how they chose the
places of honour (prwtoklisi/av),
saying to them, "When you are invited by anyone to a marriage
feast, do not sit down in a place of honour (prwtoklisi/an), lest a
more eminent (e)ntimo/tero/v)
man than you be invited by him ... (Luke 14.7, 8).
What then shall we make of Luke's version of the event apart
from the obvious facts that his use of the word e!ntimov and his distinct
portrayal of the two countervailing backgrounds, the Hellenistic
and the Jewish, a most pertinent feature of his account bearing
immediately on the question of the homosexual relationship? The
latter is possible of further exegesis. It suggests if anything
sympathy on the part of the centurion towards Jewish sexual
mores. The concept of hierarchy, of subordinate and
superordinate, is such a paramount element in both narratives,
the Matthean and the Lukan:
But the centurion answered
him, "Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof;
but only say the word, and my servant (pai~v) will
be healed. For I am a man under authority, with soldiers under
me ( u(p' e(mauto\n)
and I say to one, 'Go,' and he goes, and to another, 'Come,'
and he comes, and to my slave (dou/lw?), 'Do this,' and he does it." When
Jesus heard him, he marveled, and said to those who followed
him, "Truly, I say to you, not even in Israel have I found
such faith (pi/stin).
I tell you, many will come from east and west and sit at table
with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, while
the sons of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer
darkness; there men will weep and gnash their teeth." And to
the centurion he said . "Go; be it done for you as you have
believed ( e)pi/steusav).
And the servant (pai~v)
was healed at that moment. (Matthew 8.8-13).
And Jesus went with them
[elders of the Jews]. When he was not far from the house, the
centurion sent friends to him, saying to him, "Lord, do not
trouble yourself, for I am not worthy to have you come under
my roof; therefore I did not presume to come to you. But say
the word, and let my servant (pai~v) be healed. For I am a man set under
authority, with soldiers under me ( u(p' e(mauto\n): and I say to one, 'Go,'
and he goes; and to another, 'Come,' and he comes; and to my
slave, (dou/lw?)
'Do this,' and he does it" When Jesus heard this he marveled
at him, and turned and said to the multitude that followed
him, "I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith (pi/stin)." And when
those who had been sent returned to the house, they found the
slave (dou/lon)
well. (Luke 7.6-10).
Matthew's elaboration of the presumptively adversarial
cultures of the centurion and Jesus in his conclusion is
reminiscent of the same theme in his story of The Canaanite
Woman's Daughter (Matthew 15.21-28), which Luke lacks. The
pericope contains
allusions to homosexual love, particularly the image of throwing
the children's bread to the dogs. (The last term is a common
enough trope in the literature for a male homosexual prostitute.
See John Barclay Burns, Devotee Or Deviate: The "Dog"
(keleb) in Ancient Israel as a Symbol of Male Passivity and
Perversion). Luke's account at least for the
purposes of the exercise, ostensibly adopts the prejudices of
'the house of Israel' itself against gentiles, pretending that
such kinds of erotic attachments, same sex ones between males in
particular, were exclusively their property alone, and unknown
amongst observant Israelites; a proposition which Matthew and
Mark regard as naively chauvinistic, since it is couched in the
language of negotiation if not jest, given their records of the
exchange between Jesus and the Syrophoenician woman. Thus in
both narratives we encounter the juxtaposition of
representatives of cultures at variance over the topics of
sexual ethics and of homosexual love. Equally in both, is the
illustration of what possibly lies at the heart of the moral
dilemmas surrounding the same, the questions regarding parity
between the two parties. If the moral issue at stake turns
on this, it must be in virtue of the fact that an essential
condition of love be equality. For this takes us to the heart of
the doctrine of incarnation. A wholly transcendent 'God', one
who is 'above' us in all respects, cannot be loved if love
demands equality. The condition of equality is satisfied in the
event of incarnation as we are reminded time and again in
scripture. The theme of equality finds its fullest elaboration
of the subordinate/superordinate motif in the pericope The
Centurion's Servant, in which the preposition 'under'
plays a key role. So for example:
And Jesus went with them.
When he was not far from the house, the centurion sent friends
to him, saying to him, "Lord, do not trouble yourself, for I
am not worthy to have you come under ( u(po) my roof;
therefore I did not presume (h)ci/wsa) to come to you. But say the word,
and let my servant be healed." (Luke 7.6, 7 cf. Matthew 8.8.)
The study by Gowler referred to above on Luke 11.37-54,
highlights the significance that honour, or what we are here
referring to as hierarchic desire, has for this evangelist, even
while this specifically conative intentional form is proper to
Mark. That is, even though it is acoustic sentience, acoustic
memory in particular, which gives rise to this specific desire,
the desire for the esteem of one's peers and of one's
subordinates. (For Gowler's emphasis on the theme of
social hierarchy see Text, Culture, and Ideology in
Luke 7:1-10: A Dialogic Reading). But of course
the essential link between acoustic memory and haptic memory
ensures the possibility of transference between
their respective conative expressions - the desire for
hierarchic esteem and sexual desire. Thus if acoustic memory
affords the opportunity of appetition-satisfaction of a species
of desire, albeit a non-canonical one, for the sovereign
occasion of desire is the sexual, then the desire for
esteem nevertheless offers itself as a surrogate occasion
for the same. In other words, the innately social expressions of
hierarchy in both the animal and human realms may present
themselves as substitutes for the erotic; some instances of
sexual appetition and satisfaction may in effect, be nothing
other than disguised social (hierarchic) appetition and
satisfaction. (In Mark, we shall see that the actual psychology
of homo hierarchicus
is constituted in terms of the canonical intentional forms
proper to that gospel: the will-to-believe and knowing, those
two modes of intentionality determined by the conceptual
category space : time and the perceptual category acoustic
memory.) Once again we encounter in his portrayal of human
consciousness that it is radically tied to that of the
sub-human. To speak of 'pecking order' in this context, complies
with the Genesis rubric, Day 5, whose image of the creatures
above and below, the birds and aquatic animals, suggests the
very same. Social hierarchy and the desires
attendant upon it, require much more attention than they have
been accorded in evolutionary psychology. That they impinge upon
sexual desire, desire in its canonical form, is indubitable.
This question of equality seems to sit at the
heart of Luke's presentation of 'aberrant sexuality'.
Optic memory is the sufficient and necessary condition for
acquisitive desire - the desire for material or economic, gain.
These three expressions of desire obtain in a graded hierarchy,
with the erotic ceding to the economic and that in turn ceding
to the hierarchic, reflecting the pattern set out previously in
the semeioptika, where
the gradations were illustrated as seamlessly synthetic, wholly
integrated, by means of the pivotal radical, optic memory. Thus
while it is certain that these three forms of memory differ from
one another expositionally of the principle of identity, that
is, while there is no real mistaking what was felt (touched)
from what was seen, and in turn, what was seen from what was
heard, their corresponding species of desire are capable of
integration. To be sure, where there is immediate contiguity
between the modes of sentience, there is real integration of
modes of intentionality. But further to that, there can be and
is, transition from the initial mode - here haptic, since we are
discussing desire, the predominant conative intentional form
proper to the gospel of Luke - to the final mode, the acoustic
by means of the intervening sentient mode, the optic. Thus the
three forms of appetition-satisfaction must be integrally
linked: erotic-economic-hierarchic. The first three
miracle narratives in John, The Transformation Of Water Into
Wine (John 2.1-11), The Official's Son
(John 4.46-54) and The Healing At The Pool (John
5.1-18), portray this same graded hierarchy of (conscious)
conative intentionality, even though only the first of these
explicitly details a sense-percipient form, haptic memory. If
this arrangement is to be taken as representative of a
developmental psychological theory of the emotions, then this
should in turn influence a more precise understanding of the age
of the pai~v in the
second story. Opponents to any hermeneutic laying claim to the
likelihood that the Matthean and Lukan versions both offer
invaluable resources to a theology of homosexual liberation
would do better not to rest their case on the apparent minority
of the 'boy', alleging a pederastic relationship and thus
generating still more heat and still less light. For they
will have to address the fact that the suffering child in Jairus'
Daughter, who is mentioned as having been twelve years of
age (Mark 5.42), makes quite plain some sort of theory of
adolescent sexuality. As germane to the
interpretation of the expression pai~v we should mention a pericope confined
to Luke, in which the very same figure is used:
Now his parent went to
Jerusalem every year (kat'
e!tov) at the feast of the Passover. And when he was
twelve years old (e)tw~n
dw/deka), they went up according to custom (kata\ to\ e!qov th~v e(orth~v);
and when the feast was ended, as they were returning, the boy
Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem. His parents did not know it,
... (Luke 2.41-43).
The narrative is well known, and there is no need to cite it
in full. What is interesting is that the Lukan recension of the
healing of Jairus' daughter, like that of Matthew (Matthew
9.18-26), and unlike the Markan original, fails to mention the
precise age of the girl. However Luke does not fail to mention
in the preceding narrative, which is grafted to this one in all
three synoptic gospels, the duration of the illness of the
haemorrhagic woman, again in keeping with Matthew's account: 'a
woman who had had a flow of blood for twelve years' - e)tw~n dw/deka, Luke
8.43; par. Mark 5.25 - dw/deka e!th; Matthew 9.20 - dw/deka e!th. That Luke's
inclusion of The Boy Jesus In The Temple distinguishes
his standpoint is certain. The entire narrative (Luke 2.1-52) is
special Luke material. Its conclusion is signal of what we are
predicating as the specificity of the gospel as a whole if we
allow the central role of the composite narrative of The
Haemorrhagic Woman-Jairus' Daughter:
And Jesus increased in wisdom
and in stature, and in favour with God and man (sofi/a? kai\ h(liki/a? kai\
xa/riti para\ qew~? kai\ a)nqpw/poiv. Luke 2.52.)
Not merely the figure 'twelve', but also the setting of the
Jerusalem temple - e)n tw~?
i(erw~? (Luke 2.46) - which the boy Jesus himself also
refers to as '"my Father's house"' (2.49), reminiscent of the
role of the synagogue in the later story of Jairus', the 'ruler
of the synagogue', aligns the narratives. If it has any poetic
bearing, any allusiveness to the portrayal of a growing boy,
one, the mention of whose exact age here certainly connotes the
sexual maturation explicitly denoted in that later pericope, then this is
implicit in the mention of 'stature', just as the sheer
physicality of the term denoting an edifice is significant. It
is used metaphorically in John 2.21 subsequently to the story of
the miracle at Cana to portray the body - 'But he spoke of the
temple of his body' - tou~
naou~ tou~ sw/matov au)tou~. (We encounter the
very same figure also in 1 Corinthians 6.19: 'Do you not know
that your body (sw~ma)
is a temple (nao\v)
of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God?') The
word h(liki/a, also
sometimes translated 'years', such as we find in John 9.21,
where 'he is of age' - h(liki/an
e!xei - is said of the man born blind, also clearly
denotes physical stature, and hence as here, can indicate the
onset of sexual maturation. (Luke notices of Zachaeus that 'he
was of small stature' - h(liki/a?
mikro\v h~(n (Luke 19.3). Is this too a typically Lukan
touch in that it conveys information to us about the actual size
of the man's body? The story sits well within the Lukan
theological mindset as grafted to the soma, the reality of embodiment, the corporeal
nature of existence.)
Several points vital to understanding Luke's evident lack of
censure regarding the relationship between the centurion and his
servant must be mentioned. The first of these is the caveat that
the pericope is in no way a defense of pederasty,
notwithstanding the proposition that some sort of theory of
adolescent sexuality is implicit, if not explicit, in narratives
such as Jairus' Daughter, The Calling Of
Nathanael, and The Syrophoenician's Daughter, as
well as the first miracle narrative in John, which thematically
opens the messianic series vis-a-vis a developmental psychology.
These texts endorse the idea of a beginning of adult
life qua sexual life at puberty. The emergent pattern of
the Johannine semeia is plainly announced in The
Transformation Of Water Into Wine, which aligns the onset
of puberty with the incipient, 'first', phase of adult life. If
for argument's sake, and initially at least, we co-ordinate the
sixfold unfolding pattern of the Johannine events with some sort
of systematic portrait of the successive stages of development
of a full human life, the period during which the erotic is
predominant, remains the first of these. Thus we determined
haptic memory a propos of the distal past. But erotic desire as
constituent within the developing consciousness cannot remain
its single focus in the face of the demands of the economic.
These for the most part naturally entail familial
responsibilities, stemming from the propagation of the species.
They in their turn cede to those of that element of
consciousness whose centre of concern is the social,
graphically portrayed in The Feeding Of The Five Thousand.
Such processes are naturally interwoven to an extraordinary
degree, and none proscribes the other. For which reason we
mentioned the inherence of socially motivated desires, the
desires for esteem, within the erotic, and again, within the
economic perceptual conative polarity of mind. All of the same,
are immanent in kind. With the mid-point reached in life there
is of course a radical shift, which in the gospel of John is
markedly signaled by the single crossing 'to the other side'. It
is during the second half of one's life, in keeping with the
reality of transcendence, that the sense of finitude and the
awareness of loss and finally of the finitude of the body
itself, begin to emerge. But there is little or effectively none
of that consciously within the first half of the life
cycle. For argument's sake then, we can set the
first, that is, the erotic phase, from the inception of puberty
until the early twenties. The Jairus' Daughter pericope
explicitly mentions the age of the girl, twelve years. The
subsequent patterns of consciousness,
those of the
economic, mark not the earliest phase of adulthood, but the
period spanning the mid-twenties to mid-thirties.
These factors clearly prescribe our understanding of the
relationship between the centurion and his 'dear servant'. Thus
for example, the theme of their roles as superordinate and
subordinate respectively, should be interpreted against the
background of the 'oikos', the household. Their relationship
should not be seen in the first instance in terms of the erotic.
More importantly perhaps, we have to allow for the
interpretation that the subordinate partner was significantly
older than the age of what we understand literally by the term
'boy'. There is sufficient evidence in classical
Greek to read the term 'boy' to mean a mature man. It
is still used with this sense in contemporary English parlance.
The age of the 'boy is never defined. Such
a reading sorts well with the fact that in any household, work
is at paramount, and the physical capacity of a mere boy is
disadvantageous, within the second phase of the developing life,
and not the first, that is, the economic and not the erotic. The
neighbouring texts also conduce to this hermeneutic: the son of
the widow referred to in the ensuing story (Luke 7.11-17), is
referred to as monogenh\v ui)o\v,
(only son, v 12), and neaniske/,
(young man, v 14). The significance of this should not be lost
on us, since Luke is clearly at pains to convey the dire
economic situation of the woman. This narrative is followed by
that of The Messengers From John (Luke 7.18-35), which
culminates in the dominical logion regarding 'the Son of
man ...eating and drinking', a trope for the appetitive aspect
of haptic memory which resumes that of the first messianic
miracle, and furthermore by The Sinful Woman (Luke
7.36-50), who touches Jesus so as to scandalize Simon the
Pharisee (v 39). Luke's editing here is consummately executed;
for the role of the sinful woman, who was probably forced to
prostitute herself, acts as a foil to the prospective future of
a motherless son. At the heart of these several narratives sits
the complex alliance between the erotic and the economic. But
the point is clear enough in the case of The Centurion's
Servant. For that narrative too envisages interests proper
to what we are calling 'the economic' rather than the erotic.
This entails as noted, that the age of the 'boy' is to be
understood accordingly. The relationship of the centurion and
his servant can in no wise be legitimately read as
intergenerational to the degree that it involves a minor.
Concerning the corruption and exploitation of whom the gospels
are abundantly clear. There is no need to cite the relevant
texts.
The Centurion's response to Jesus, like that of the negotiating
Syrophoenician woman, shows just how sensitive he is to the
question of master-slave relationships. His deferential
attitude to Jesus is vividly described in both versions,
Matthew's and Luke's. The counting of any interpersonal
relationship regardless of sexuality, in terms of
cherishing, that is, 'dearness', would certainly preclude the
exploitative objectification of the beloved on the basis of
superiority, either of years, or financial resources, or social
status. Given these factors it is not anachronistic to read the
narrative along the lines adopted by proponents of a theology of
homosexual liberation. Nevertheless, the theological
perspective of the Lukan story actually centres upon economic
rather than erotic desire. In just which respect it conforms to
the second miracle narrative in the gospel of John, the
difference being that there is no blood relationship between the
Centurion and his servant comparable to that of the 'official'
and his son.
THE
THREE KINDS OF NORMATIVE DESIRE
Erotic desire is
contextualised contiguously not merely with its economic
neighbour, a fact which the Johannine editing of the first two
miracles makes plain, and with which it is continuously situated
in the Markan mandala, but is linked further still with
hierarchic desire, since this in turn conjoins the economic form
of desire, consequently as acoustic memory conjoins optic
memory. This means that the subtext of the various references in
The Centurion's Servant can be read legitimately a propos
of the dialectic of dominance and submission firstly in regard
to the economic - which is what the Johannine narrative, The
Official's Son restricts itself to - and secondly to the
phenomena of hierarchic desire and erotic desire, both of which
the economic mediates. (On the concept of dominance/submission
relative to the narrative see Koepnick, The Historical Jesus and the Slave
of The Centurion. His suggestion that the expression pai~v may be legitimately
understood to refer to the economic inferiority of the 'boy' to
his master, the centurion, is well contended.) The economic
motif is as pronounced in the Lukan redaction as it is in the
Johannine story. The textual contiguity of The Centurion's
Servant and The Widow's Son (Luke 7.1-17), ensures
the viability of reading the former in terms of the economic as
well as the erotic given the graduated ties between the two. For
the dire economic situation of the woman, like that of the
centurion, may seem of less immediate concern than her
psychological suffering, but it dominates the background of her
plight. In the same light, the economic becomes a major motif in
The Sinful Woman, not by means detailing the very great
price of the unguent, a factor which Luke omits and which the
other three accounts of The Anointing Of Jesus mention,
(John 12.3-8, Matthew 26.6-12, Mark 14.3-9), but because of the
parable of The Debtors contained within the pericope, Luke 7.41-42. The
economic theme in The Centurion's Servant is supported
by the effort on Luke's part to stress the comparability between
the Centurion and Jairus as men of means:
"He is
worthy (a!cio/v) to
have you do this for him, for he loves our nation, and he built
us our synagogue." (Luke 7.4b).
Then came one of the ruler's
(a)rxisunagw~gwn)
of the synagogue ... (Mark 5.22); While he was still speaking
there came from the ruler's (a)rxisunagw/gou)
house ... (v 35); Jesus said to the ruler of the synagogue (a)rxisunagw/gw?) (v
36); When they came to the house of the ruler of the synagogue
(a)rxisunagw/gou)
... (v 38) cf. And there came a man named Jairus, who was a
ruler of the synagogue (a!rxwn
th~v sunagwgh~v) ... Luke 8.4 ) While he was
still speaking, a man from the ruler's (a)rxisunagw/gou)
... house (v 49).
Such contextuality maintained also by Matthew, but less
explicitly, because he uses the simpler term 'ruler' (a!rxwn - Matthew 9.18,
23), nevertheless endorses what is the theological
(psychological-epistemological) foundation of Luke's
gospel; namely the body as responsible for the intentional mode
belief-in-desire. For in Jairus' Daughter, and in it
alone within the Markan corpus, the evangelist relates that very
conceptual radical of consciousness - the soma. The implications for
understanding the references to the 'faith' of the centurion,
are crucial, even if subtle as is Luke's wont, and somewhat
ironic, since both Matthew and Luke compare the belief of the
centurion most favourably with that of 'Israel'. We cited The
Daughter Of Jairus as the classical presentation within
Mark's very clearly and formally defined healing series,
of the conceptual categoreal form, the body. Both Luke, and to a
lesser extent Matthew also, here make plain the nature of the
connection between the aconscious role of faith, which is none
other than faith-in-desire and conscious desire itself. The
centurion is in no wise a believing nor practising 'Israelite'.
If his 'faith' is to be compared and compared approvingly with
that of 'Israel', and so affirmed, this distinction must be
made. Luke's strategy is thus as refined as his impeccable
style; for he makes the distinction, and yet at the same time
the connection between the 'two'. This amounts to articulating
the distinction as well as the connection between mind on the
one hand and mind : body (soma)
on the other. The very same must therefore apply to the
conscious and aconscious. The Centurion's Servant is of
vital significance to the Lukan programme, and the choice
of a heterodox, and even aberrant sexuality, all the more
appropriately accentuates the certain relation between
faith-in-desire and faith itself, just as it does that of the soma or mind : body and the
transcendent mind, which are respectively their categoreal
conditions.
This story is important for that reason alone. We have
already cited the theme of necessity (determinism) as one of the
secondary criteria delineating the immanent miracles, both
messianic and healing. It characterises all three feeding
miracles and the Eucharist as well, and we will note in this
connection, in tandem with our observations concerning both
conscious forms of intentionality, desiring and knowing, the use
that Luke makes of the expression dei~ - 'it is necessary that ...', 'it must
be that ...'. But the aconscious counterpart to desire is not as
some would have us believe, another desire, a 'second order
desire' so called, and for the very good reason that this same
deterministic aspect of the conscious intentional process
is offset by another which is wholly to do with autonomy, even
if autonomy is a less fitting word than it will be for faith simpliciter. So then, the
conscious process, desire, does not exist in a vacuum, it is
underpinned by a mental or conceptual base. This is not the same
thing as a 'second order desire'; a so-called desire regarding a
desire. It is difficult to understand just what any such
psychological entity might be. It is notional only, and
philosophically confused at that. Not that a physical
(perceptual) prehension of another physical prehension is out of
the question. One may desire to know; both processes, desiring
and knowing, are identifiable as conditioned by the
perceptual polarity of mind. Both desiring itself and knowing
itself, in their simple or elementary forms, are physical or
perceptual processes. (The desire-to-know is not the hybridised
integration of two modes, desiring-and-knowing, which as we have just put, is the
basis of perceptual aesthetic judgement. It is the consequence
of optic memory and a canonical mode of intentionality, and
which too moreover, is aconscious.) Actual desire, desire simpliciter, is a conscious
form of intentionality. The desire which functions aconsciously
we shall determine as differing in certain respects from its
conscious form. The difference of haptic imagination (desire-to-know) from haptic
memory (desire simpliciter),
tells for their disparity, in tandem with the difference of the
non-normative good from the normative good. (The very same thing
occurs in in the case of will-to-believe; willing and believing,
are both conceptual, both elementary, and both normative). There
are certain respects in virtue of which the will-to-believe
varies from actual will simpliciter. We shall comment further on
these matters at a later stage of this essay.) But any stance
towards a desire is not itself another conscious perceptual
stance of the same order as that of the desire itself. It is a
conceptual attitude, and hence we refer to it as faith-in-desire. Its
sufficient and necessary condition is the body, and that remains
a concept. Let
us be clear on this point. The body
is not the same entity as haptic memory; the former is a
conceptual form, belonging to the aconsious order, the latter is
a perceptual mode. Even so, they are locked together in a
relationship of coherence and desire, the consequence of haptic
memory, cannot function without its conceptual counterpart, here
the soma, or body.
Here we must broach a highly contested field, that of
theodicy. Here precisely, because we have to deal with Luke's
somewhat exceptional treatment of the theme of desire, one in
which, whether we like it or not, the sexuality approved may
contravene received norms of Christian morality; and theodicy
precisely because the discussion of homosexual love is
inseparable from it. Moreover, it is incumbent on us to fully
repudiate this notion of second-order desire, it is necessary to
say more concerning the ambiguity of aconscious faith-in-desire,
if not its adoption of what is rightly the characteristic
ontogenetic aspect of faith itself, namely autonomy. First
however, it is necessary to clear the ground: that being the
received wisdom which views desire generally in juxtaposition to
will, analogously to the antithesis between 'what must be' and
that which is subject to our choosing. But this grossly
simplifies matters. It is equivalent to the elevation of the
disparity between desire-to-know and will-to-believe to an order
of the same, an insoluble dilemma. We might just as well order
these with the same inarticulate simplicity. The theodician
aporia, the issues attendant upon the responsibility for both
good and evil on the part of both 'God' and humankind will not
so readily be disposed of as to aver one way or the other, that
we either have or do not have free choice. This is the reason
for the doctrine of the aconscious in which we see for example
that will itself is accompanied by an intentional form we have
called knowledge-of-will. Or, to return to our subject, the
reason for admitting to consideration that there is something
akin to desire according to the exact same pattern, that
of aconscious and conscious forms of intentionality.
Faith-in-desire thus introduces into the question of theodicy a
more nuanced picture of just what desire itself is, and how it
operates.
We can, and surely will in our treatment of the gospel of Luke,
characterise desire itself as compelling. This is the image
presented to us in every one of the three feeding miracles,
beginning with The Transformation Of Water Into Wine.
Just as surely we will juxtapose will with this as an
intentional capacity marked by freedom. But neither of these
modes of intentionality exists independently. Knowledge-of-will
supervenes upon desire; and will itself in the same structural
manner, is related to belief-in-desire. These both belong to the
province of practical reason, the logos ensarkos. We previously grouped the
eight evangelical modes of intentionality in terms of the
relations of supervenience. The iconography of which is as
follows:
The theological equivalents to theoretical and practical reason
are the logos asarkos
and the logos ensarkos.
The first is illustrated in the first icon above, and the second
illustrates the logos
ensarkos or practical reason. In the first the
conscious mode of intentionality belief supervenes upon the
aconscious will-to-believe. This is only part of the pattern of
supervenient intentional forms; it is completed by the
symmetrical ratio between desire-to-know and knowing. In both
cases, there are reciprocal and symmetrical relations between
the conscious and the aconscious. With these two constellations
of intentional forms divisible according to the rational
distinction between theoretical and practical reason, we come
upon the semantic field proper to the two dichotomies listed
above. The logos asarkos,
or theoretical reason, engages the three conceptual forms: logos, that is mind, the
symbolic masculine and time. It ranges against one another, the
first and last of these as enjoining autonomy and heteronomy.
These are the defining characteristics of faith and knowing
respectively. In this constellation, it is not faith and
knowing, but faith and the will-to-believe, the aconscious
counterpart to knowing, which prevail against each other. Faith
is the proper function of mind, and will-to-believe, that of the
conceptual form space : time. But the will-to-believe like its
conscious counterpart, knowing, is from the point of view of
philosophical psychology, criteriologically definable as
heteronomous ('phylogenetic'). We have already examined the
narrative of The Haemorrhagic Woman, in which we saw the
basic outlines of this tenet: the public or extremely social
nature of the event; the reference to 'faith', but in
anticipation of the later and immediately ensuing episode, Jairus'
Daughter; the role of time; the role of 'knowing' on the
woman's part (Mark 5.29, usually rendered somewhat imperfectly
as 'feeling'), as well as that of 'perceiving' on the part of
Jesus (v 30), both of which refer to the conscious function
corresponding to the will-to-believe.
The other thing to mention here is that the symbolic masculine
is party to this same complex. In its own right, it fuses the
two intentional forms will and faith. It functions in the
supervenience of belief upon will-to-believe. This puts the
will-to-believe and belief into such a perspective that the
discussion of the dichotomy, heteronomy and autonomy can best
proceed. We can see from this much clearer picture, that of the
relation between belief and the will-to-belief, or to put
matters more logically, between will-to-believe and belief, that
it is a more refined and scrupulously articulated one which
addresses the dialectic between autonomy and heteronomy. This
bears at once on theodicy. Faith-in-desire insofar
as it replicates or co-opts faith, which is by definition set
against knowing as is autonomy against heteronomy, cognitive
ontogeny against cognitive phylogeny, this ontogenetic
cognition, the faith of faith-in-desire, does not in the first
instance involve will. We see from the relations of
supervenience, just as will-to-believe is prior to belief, that
faith-in-desire supervenes analogously upon will, that there
must be an essential relation between the two, will and faith,
as was also given by their taxonomic belonging to the same
order, that of pure conceptuality. But even if this is so, even
though it is incumbent on us to distinguish between will and
faith, there is in the aconscious basis of desire which we refer
to as faith-in-desire, a something by means of which the full
power of necessity, of determinism, must be qualified.
The logos ensarkos,
practical reason, brings into immediate confrontation the two
intentional forms consequent upon haptic memory, and acoustic
imagination: namely desire and knowledge-of-will. Note
here, it is not will simpliciter
as such and desire which contend one with the other, but desire
and knowledge-of-will.
Once again, we are dealing with the relation of supervenience:
knowledge-of-will follows upon desire. This inflection of the
dichotomy introduces refinement rather than casuistry into the
aporia. It refuses to put the cart, will, before the
horse, desire. In this process, another hybrid intentionality,
that of optic memory, desiring-and-knowing, is also engaged. It
acts as the corollary to the symbolic masculine in the case of
theoretical reason. Once again it is altogether a different
relation than the irresolvably posited dilemma which simply and
baldly juxtaposes will and desire. As before, the initiating
force is a conatus.
Previously it was the aconscious will-to-believe, here it is
conscious desire. The more complete explication of these
patterns, which touch immediately as noted upon the vexatious
issues of theodicy, must also grapple with their epistemological
implications. In other words, it is illegitimate to discuss the
theodican issues regarding practical reason, desire and
and so, without reference to those involved in theoretical
reason. The role of the symbolic masculine, and hence that of
will-and-faith in the case of theoretical reason, and the role
of optic memory, and hence desiring-and-knowing in the case of
practical reason, are paramount. There is no need to further
engage these issues here, we must return to Luke's very topical
narrative.
The determinism of actual desire in the aconscious
(belief-in-desire), occurs in a qualified sense. To speak of
believing (in) a desire is thus to conjoin autonomy and
necessity. Belief, here 'faith', must take its cue from the
conscious where it is synonymous with what we understand by the
word 'autonomy'. The primary definition of this term is
'self-governing'. The centurion is not simply governed by, that
is 'under', others. Clearly enough he sees himself in relation
to Jesus in this light, on this occasion, he is the client, he
is requesting help from a superior, a 'superordinate', and so he
deems himself 'unworthy' to have Jesus within his own house,
within his presence, 'under [his] roof', even though as we see,
the Jewish community deems him 'worthy'. But that is not all. He
exists within a social hierarchy which grades others below as
well as above him. This allows for relational autonomy towards
these others. There is a degree to which as well as a kind in
which, he exercises self governance. The self-governing
'subject', the centurion who disposes of others just as he is
disposed of by others in turn. He acts to some degree in a
manner that can only be described as 'autonomous to a given
extent', in regard to the 'object-subject' of his desire, the pai~v. He is motivated
and affected by an intentional process of which he remains the
sovereign in some respects. Even if there is a certain contrast
between aconscious faith-in-desire, and actual conscious
and normative faith, we cannot draw it too sharply so as to
leave the two completely truncated. The premise of his desire,
is belief. In this respect, the story accords perfectly with Jairus'
Daughter. She is to be given 'something to eat'; her
bodily existence is to be affirmed. If the centurion's faith is
commended, his faith-in-desire, signalled by his love of the
'boy', then so too is his own bodily existence which he shares,
as one shares 'something to eat', with him. This is the nature
of faith-in-desire. It may not be autonomous in the strictest
sense that there is one isolated, singular believing human
being. Faith-in-desire reshapes faith in the light of the actual
connectedness of bodily existence; it is in essence a shared
faith, without which faith itself is incomplete.
In this respect, the intentional mode faith-in-desire fulfills a
function vital to the doctrine of mind. For it brings into focus
the relation between the body and haptic memory. This relation,
first announced in the The Transformation Of Water Into Wine,
is best understood in terms of the concept 'transformation'.
What is prior to desire both chronologically, as we see in the
story of Jairus' Daughter, and ontologically, is the real and
actual standing back from desire itself and regarding it, with
either belief or disbelief, a process which occurs in the
aconscious order of mind. This is in no uncertain sense quite
different from actual desire, for it cannot be perceptual. Its
categoreal definition, at least at the primary level, must be
given as conceptual: the elementary (conscious) modes of
conceptual intentionality are will and belief. The attitudes and
the rest of the intentional processes themselves which compound
the contents of desire as their 'data', these themselves
can only ever be conceptual. (If we encase the word 'data' as we
do the word 'subject' in commas here, it is precisely because
the forms of unity adulterate the clear boundaries of conceptual
and perceptual, that is of subject and object.) In this way they
can never themselves be desires, even 'second-order' ones so
called. That is a philosophically unwarranted use of the term
desire, and obfuscates an essential tenet of the theory of
mind. The distinction is germane because it insists on the role
of faith, and therefore too, on the role in however altered a
form, of autonomy. This much is clear from the pericopae insofar as
concerning the all important event of faith. The aconscious form
of faith, faith-in-desire, the direct result of the categoreal
role of the idea of 'the body' in shaping both our feeling and
thinking processes, distinguishes itself from actual and
conscious desire as concept does from percept. Hence we cannot
logically speak of an attitude or stance towards desire, which
is as desire itself: that is what the conceptually confused
notion of 'second-order' desire attempts. In so doing, merely
redoubles the element of necessity, of determinism. It leaves no
room whatsoever for manoeuvre, having raised the causal past,
from which we can never escape, to the highest pitch. That we do
have certain attitudes to our desires is never in doubt. How
often we find ourselves in conflict concerning our desires
demonstrates the prevalence of that which we have termed
'faith-in-desire' or 'belief-in-desire'. But Christian
philosophical psychology proposes a structure of consciousness
cohering with desire in an order of mind other than conscious,
and shifts completely away from a notion of unmitigated
appetitive necessity, from the notion of a wholly
irresistible force, and approaches the image of intentionality
as shaped instead by something reminding us of autonomy. This is
'shared autonomy'. The centurion and his partner must mutually
believe the desire itself. It cannot be the faith of one or the
other; the centurion or the boy. They are bound together, and
here the idea of necessity or determinism is perfectly apt. It
is a mutually equanimous pact which remodels actual faith.
Luke's choice in this way, reflects the 'choice' of the
centurion. By choice here, we do not mean to invoke the concept
of will. That too is to be carefully distinguished from faith.
Perhaps 'understanding' is a more appropriate term. But his
picture of an ignoble and presumptively transgressive sexual
desire which confronts us with the absence of conventional mores
and with the presence of the role of 'aconscious autonomy',
aconscious faith, the faith-in-desire, a faith truly shared just
as the bodies of those who love one another are shared, makes
all the more apparent the characteristics of this form of
intentionality. We shall return directly to the aconscious basis
of desire as the intentional form belief-in-desire after the
discussion of the hierarchies of desire, conscious and
aconscious, for this brings back into focus the serial orders of
the two narrative cycles, creation and salvation, orders which
we described as parallel and chiastic respectively. Their
relation is integral to framing more intelligibly the dialogue
inherent in the aconscious forms of intentionality, and also
that between the two embattled forces of will and desire.
In examining the intentional mode knowledge-of-will, we will see
the very same thing, the very same something, offset. So that
neither will nor desire will have full control over the human
affections. These two aconscious modes of intentionality,
faith-in-desire and knowledge-of-will, mutually
countervail against one another in the dialectic between
will and desire, a fact which we first noticed in the two
healing narratives, Jairus' Daughter (faith-in-desire)
and The Boy With An Unclean Spirit (knowledge-of-will),
which Mark sets in the clearest relational terms to each other.
What should be noted here in passing, is that the pattern of
relations between the two conscious cognitive modes, faith simpliciter and knowing simpliciter, is the
opposite of their aconscious counterparts; and that the same
variance obtains in the case of the relations between the two
sets of conative intentional modes. In other words, the relation
subtended between desire simpliciter
and will simpliciter,
is the obverse of that sustained by desire-to-know and
will-to-believe. Any final resolution of the entire problematic
regarding will and desire is thus framed by Markan Christology.
The reason for such a claim lies in the fact that the problem
has only ever been half stated. It is insufficient to speak
of determinism, by which we mean desire, and freedom by
which we mean the will. For not only is each of these
underpinned by a corresponding aconscious form of
intentionality, faith-in-desire and knowledge-of-will, but this
way of framing the issue completely ignores the corollaries
which are just as germane to the problem. Thus if there is such
a thing as will there is also a will-to-believe and this must be
reckoned with. As for desire, it is met by the desire-to-know as
its aconscious counterpart. These aconscious forms of the two
fundamental conative modes of intentionality, will and desire,
are absolutely germane to the questions of both theodicy
and human moral responsibility.
Before leaving Luke's narrative of The Centurion's
Servant, we should remark its integration into its
context. It has a particular rapport with The Sinful Woman.
Both pericopae end on
the note of 'faith'. This is not the first incidence of the
expression in Luke. There was in the overture to Mary's Song
Of Praise (Luke 1.46-55), the following:
" ... And blessed is she who
believed (pisteu/sasa)
that there would be a fulfilment of what was spoken to her
from the Lord." (Luke 1.45).
This adduces another feature of faith-in-desire to the
description of which we can add. It also helps to explain the
curious repetition of the line about 'the fever leaving her/him'
which all three synoptists use in their recensions of the
healing of The Mother-In-Law of Simon Peter (Mark 1.31b,
Matthew 8.15b, Luke 4.39a), and which John also uses in his
story of The Official's Son (John 4.52). These four
stories are theologies of the economic, of the Holy Spirit. As
such, they announce the idea of the symbolic feminine. This is
another facet of faith-in-desire as opposed to faith simpliciter; that it is
typologically feminine rather than masculine. If The
Centurion can be read as expounding the concept of the
symbolic feminine, as should be the Johannine narrative which is
at first glance so much like it, The Official's Son, in
other words, if that at least part of Luke's theological purpose
is to identify the economic centre of consciousness rather than
that of the erotic, or in addition to the same, since these are
invariably linked as noted, it is hardly surprising that two of
these first three occasions in which the evangelist mentions
'faith', have to do with women. The concluding dominical saying
in The Sinful Woman Forgiven of course anticipates the
same remark concerning 'faith' in The Haemorrhagic
Woman (Luke 8.42b-48), cited above. There is one mention
of faith before that, occurring in 8.11-15, the exposition of
the previously given Parable Of The Sower:
The ones along the path are
those who have heard; then the devil comes and takes away the
word from their hearts, that they may not believe (pisteu/santev) and be
saved (swqw~sin,
Luke 8.12.)
Thus both healing pericopae,
The Sinful Woman Forgiven, if we count it as such, and The
Haemorrhagic Woman connect faith with salvation:
And he said to the woman,
"Your faith (pi/stiv)
has saved (se/swke/n)
you; go in peace." (7.50).
And he said to her, "Daughter, your faith (pi/stiv) has made you
well (se/swke/n);
go in peace." (8.48).
It is necessary to quote these texts once more, because in
addition to the initial mention of faith within the confines of
a healing miracle story, The Centurion's Slave, which
may legitimately be read in connection with the symbolic
feminine, the succeeding portrayals of faith are typologically
feminine. Both the woman who anoints Jesus, and the woman
suffering the haemorrhage are certainly presented in terms if
not of sexuality proper, then in terms of their being as
engendered. So just what kind of faith is here being described?
There is a distinct difference between faith simpliciter and
faith-in-desire recognizable from their differing respective
locations within the serial order of the forms which give rise
to them. We see that in the first case, faith is bounded by the
conceptual form, the symbolic masculine and the form of unity
space : time, the very entity outlined in The Haemorrhagic
Woman. But in the second, that of faith-in-desire, the
outcome of the conceptual form soma, we see that it is bounded by the
symbolic feminine, and the form of unity (transcendent) space.
These differences are germane to our understanding of the Lukan
presentation of faith, particularly at this point in his gospel.
He seems intent on emphasising the links between faith and those
centres of consciousness which we generally associate with
virtues of a typologically feminine kind, particularly the
virtue of compassion. The same is true of the image of faith we
see momentarily in the discussion ensuing the parable, where
'hearts' (kardi/av)
speaks similarly. This is a kind of faith which must be 'felt'
just as the woman's 'touching' of Jesus must be felt, and which
is indissolubly contracted with love, of which the parable
enclosed within 7.36-50, that of The Two Debtors (vv 41,
42) speaks:
When they could not pay, he
forgave them both. Now which of them will love him the more?"
Simon answered, "The one, I suppose, to whom he forgave more."
And he said to him, "You have judged rightly." (vv 42, 43);
" ... Therefore I tell you,
her sins, which are many, are forgiven, for she loved (h)ga/phsen) much; but
he who is forgiven little, loves (a)gapa?~) little." (v 47).
The woman depicted in this narrative has in common with the
centurion, sexual transgression. She has in common with both the
widow at Nain and the haemorrhagic woman, the fact of her
womanhood, the fact that her body being that of a woman, is
prone, vulnerable, susceptible; but to what exactly? This
condition we might describe as 'passive' in the very sense of
the resonance of that word with 'passion', 'feeling', 'the
Passion', 'compassion' and so on, in order to distinguish it
from faith simpliciter,
in order that is to differentiate aconscious and conscious
faith. So typologically, the faith-in-desire of which the two
stories of The Centurion's Slave and The Sinful
Woman in particular speak, can be thought of as kindred to
the symbolic feminine, rather than the symbolic masculine. For
the contiguity of the categoreal forms in the creation narrative
warrants that we interpret some of the difference between faith
and faith-in-desire along such lines. We have previously
put that the symbolic feminine and the soma, as forms of unity, lie at one end of the
spectrum of the conceptual forms, which may be described as
'concrete' antithetically to 'abstract'. This concretion is akin
to feeling qua
suffering, the kind of experience marked by the cognates
of the expression 'passion'. It is an image of the aconscious
intentional mode as the deliberative submission to the claims
laid upon us by the past. Thus where faith-in-desire is
characterized as contiguous with the symbolic feminine, it is
intelligible on the basis of passivity, even though as remarked
already, the term 'faith' must involve some measure and kind of
autonomy. The reason for saying 'some measure and kind' is the
ambivalence to which the soma
as categoreal form and faith-in-desire, its consequent
intentional mode give rise, will mark each one of the radicals
of the aconscious. There is no dodging their paradoxical status.
Luke
6.20-8.3
Subsequently to the narrative
of The Sinful Woman, the evangelist continues thus:
Soon
afterward he went on through cities and villages, preaching and
bringing the good news of the kingdom of God. And the twelve
were with him, and also some women who had been healed of evil
spirits and infirmities: Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven
demons had gone out, and Joanna, the wife of Chuza, Herod's
steward, and Susanna, and many others, who provided for them out
of their means. (Luke 8.1-3).
Therefore we can well understand the thematic focus of almost
the whole of 6.20-8.3, which is thought to consist of non-Markan
material, as in accordance with the specifically Lukan
perspective, and its formal connectivity with the symbolic
feminine. This block which is usually accounted for in terms of
the sources Q and L, represents distinct tendencies of Luke
himself, and those tendencies are immediately recognisable in
the conceptual categories and perceptual categories to which we
have drawn attention, the pre-eminent ones being soma and haptic memory, and
thus also to the two forms of intentionality, faith-in-desire
and desire itself. We have not commented on all of the material
contained within this section of the text, and we must now do
so.
There is a strand of text focused on John the Baptist which
culminated in the dominical saying ostensibly contrasting Jesus
and John:
"To what
then shall I compare the men (a)nqrw/pouv) of this generation (genea~v), and what are
they like? They are like children sitting in the market place
and calling to one another, 'We piped to you, and you did not
dance; we wailed, and you did not weep.' For John the Baptist
has come eating no bread and drinking no wine; and you say, 'He
has a demon.' The Son of man has come eating and drinking; and
you say, 'Behold, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax
collectors and sinners!' Yet wisdom (sofi/a) is justified by all her children."
(Luke 7.31-38).
This text follows that of 7.18-30 which refers to the
disciples from John the Baptist, whom he has sent, asking of
Jesus '"Are you he who is to come, or shall we look for
another?"' (v 20); a summary of healings (v 21); several quotes
from Isaiah to the same effect (v 22); a further saying: '"And
blessed is he who takes no offense (mh\ skandalisqh?~) at me."' (v 23); and
finally Jesus' discourse concerning John (vv 24-30). All of this
material is of a piece with what we have learned so far in the
section Luke 6.20-8.3. The mention of 'wisdom' within the
conclusion of the discourse identifies the entire section,
6.18-35, just as does the figure of John the Baptist. We have
previously discussed the symbolic masculine and its intensional
links with both John the baptiser, and of course with its
contrastive relatum,
the symbolic feminine - here denoted by the term 'wisdom'. It
will not pay to construct an elaborate and fixed framework which
denies relationality as well as oppositionality between the two,
the symbolic masculine and the symbolic feminine, both of whom
evince the identity of the Holy Spirit. The enigmatical Son of
man here is identified with Jesus in the penultimate verse of
the logion which envisages the masculine and feminine as Sophia
or Wisdom, the Holy Spirit. But elsewhere, for example in the
quite close introduction to Luke's account of The
Transfiguration he is emphatically not of this world, and
in principle enjoins the forfeiture of the same:
For what does it profit a man
(a!nqrwpov) if he
gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself? For
whoever is ashamed of me and of my words, of him will the Son
of man be ashamed when he comes in his glory and the glory of
the Father and of the holy angels. But this I tell you truly,
there are some standing here who will not taste death before
they see the kingdom of God." (Luke 9.25-27).
As close as they are contextually, these words nevertheless
do occur later, notably after the turning point marked by
Peter's confession Of Faith (Luke 9.18-20). It may well be
that the best and perhaps even the only way out of the obscurity
of these references to the Son of man, will have recourse to the
notion of temporality. For the moment of course, in the first
section of material peculiar to Luke, 6.20-8.3, life and its
self propagation continue apace. Such life belongs to the idea
of the symbolic feminine and the economic. The troubling
existence of the masculine relatum or principle, which the
aggregate necessarily co-opts if it does not actually contain,
makes it possible to juxtapose the masculine in itself with the
same, male and female.
It is the latter whom Jesus identifies in 7.31-35, even as he is
identifiable as Son of man, and it is the former, the masculine
in itself, the transcendent term of the form of unity, the
coming Son of man, of whom John, at least at this point in time,
is pre-emptive or promissory. The contrast between
John the Baptist and Jesus is thus not one of mutual exclusion
as is given by their common embodiment of the masculine
principle, to which the title 'Son of man' refers. John
represents the symbolic masculine as the transcendent relatum
existent within itself and for itself. Luke brings into rapport
with one another not merely the contrastive stances towards
'eating and drinking', activities which set apart John from his
fellows in accordance with the conceptual form of the
transcendent masculine. In the wake of this come piping and
wailing, dancing and weeping, even birth and death, if not
exactly life and death, and of course the aconscious mode of
intentionality faith-in-desire and its conscious counterpart,
faith.
The Holy Spirit, whom Luke champions, is evinced in another
parable contained within this section of the gospel, by means of
the proper perceptual mode, vision. It is used to encapsulate
the injunction against Judging Others (6.37-42):
He also told them a parable:
Can a blind man lead a blind man? Will they not both fall into
a pit? A disciple is not above his teacher, but every one when
he is fully taught will be like his teacher. Why do you see
the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the
log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your
brother, 'Brother, let me take out the speck that is in your
eye,' when you yourself do not see the log that is in your own
eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye,
and then you will see clearly to take out the speck that is in
your brother's eye. (vv 39-42).
Several motifs in this passage reverberate with what we have
already found in the section. Not merely the saying about the
disciple not being 'above' his teacher which may anticipate the
importance of the theme subordinate/superordinate in the miracle
story to come immediately after this grouping of parables,
extending from 6.37 to 6.49. The two sayings here concerning the
teacher-disciple relationship in fact intrude on the narrative
flow, which opened with the saying about the blind. This itself
is precursive too, of the later citations from Isaiah in
the passage on The Messengers From John:
In that hour he cured many of
diseases and plagues and evil spirits, and on many that were
blind he bestowed sight. And he answered them, "Go and tell
John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their
sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear,
the dead are raised up, the poor have good news preached to
them. (7.21, 22).
The phenomenon of vision is salient to this evangelist, for
the very same reason that the anthropic categories are. The two
Pneumatological categories, which as illustrated above, border
the Lukan modes of intentionality stemming as they do form
haptic memory and the conceptual soma, are those of optic
memory and the symbolic feminine. These are vital to Luke's
theological intent.
The very next parable in Luke 6.43-45 too identifies the Holy
Spirit:
"For no
good (kalo\n) tree
bears (poiou~n) bad (sapro/n) fruit, nor does
a bad (sapro\n) tree
bear (poiou~n) good (kalo/n); for each tree is
known (ginw/sketai)
by its own fruit. For figs are not gathered from thorns, nor are
grapes picked from a bramble bush. The good (a)gaqo\v) man out of the
good (a)gaqou~)
treasure of his heart produces (trofe/rei)
good (a)gaqo/n), and
the evil (ponhro\v)
man out of his evil (ponhrou~)
treasure produces (trofe/rei)
evil (ponhro/n); for
out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks." (Luke
6.43-45.)
Not only does this image revert at once to the Day 3 rubric,
the description of the creations of the two types of plants
(Genesis 1.11, 12), which we have associated directly with the
life-giving Holy Spirit, but it alludes further to the J
narrative in which 'the tree of life in the middle of the
garden' and 'the tree of the knowledge of good and evil' were
said to be (Genesis 2.9). Later in the same story we hear that
they, the man and the woman who had eaten of the latter, and
whose 'eyes were opened, and they realized they were naked, and
they sewed fig-leaves together and made themselves aprons.'
(Genesis 3.6, 7). (Luke does not have an account of the Markan pericope The Blind Man
At Bethsaida (Mark 8.22-26), which combines both
Pneumatological motifs, vision and the iconic trees; and
in which the blind man says '"I see men; but they look like
trees walking.'" Mark 8.24.) The second creation narrative
itself was instrumental in pointing out the foundational links
between vision, the sense of beauty and desire and knowing. Add
to this of course, the dialectical configuration of
good-evil, as well as the concept of production or bringing
forth. It is more than obvious that Luke has placed these
parables together purposively. If this parabolic discourse does
not refer to those central concerns of the creation narrative,
vision, beauty, knowing and desire, then just what does it mean?
The overture, if we may call it that, to this section of
narrative, consisting of Blessings And Woes (6.20-26)
and the discourse on Love For Enemies (vv 27-36) need
not be pressed into service for the thesis put here. There is
already a weight of evidence telling for the thesis that the
specific conceptual and perceptual entities motivating Luke's
thinking and feeling, and that the specific forms of
intentionality which they generate are equally present in this
block of text. The Beatitudes And Woes seem to point
ahead to the very summary statements of 7.31-35, which end with
the reference to 'wisdom'; and the discourse on the love for
one's enemies easily and beautifully blends with the focal topoi of the section.
THE
SIXFOLD SPECTRUM OF DESIRE
When
they got out on land, they saw a charcoal fire there, with
fish lying on it, and bread. Jesus said to them, "Bring some
of the fish that you have just caught." So Simon Peter went
aboard and hauled the net ashore, full of large fish, a
hundred and fifty-three of them (e(kato\n penth/konta triw~n); and
although there were so many, the net was not torn. Jesus
said to them, "Come and have breakfast." Now none of the
disciples dared ask him, "Who are you?" They knew it was the
Lord. Jesus came and took the bread and gave it to them, and
so with the fish. This was now the third time that Jesus was
revealed to the disciples after he was raised from the dead.
(John 21.9-14)
The above diagram
refers to the epilogue of the gospel of John, chapter 21, which
systematically lists all three immanent messianic miracles by
the means of the numbers of fish caught. This figure, '153' also
succinctly and adroitly incorporates the three transcendent
messianic miracles, for there is no way of understanding the
order of the numbers without their inclusion. The second number '5', refers
of course to the fifth event, which The Feeding Of The Four
Thousand is. However the actual second miracle in the messianic series as a
whole is the episode complementary to this, The Stilling
Of The Storm. So, the strict chronological sequence of the
six messianic miracles is not mirrored by this cipher '153'.
Instead, by means of having referred to the fifth event in the
second place, the author makes us aware of the chiastic order,
the fact that events 2 and 5 in the sequence, both
Pneumatologies, are complementary to one another; hence, he is
referring to all six miracles. We need to recall also that the
setting of The Miraculous Catch Of Fish, the Sea Of Galilee,
is also that of two of the transcendent events. That only three
of the total six miracles are recounted in this gospel makes no
difference to this hermeneutic. The references to disciple
listed only in the synoptic gospels, 'the sons of Zebedee' (John
21.2) suggests the acquaintance of the author of this chapter
with that tradition in which of course, the messianic events
missing from John are recounted.
This figure of the chiastic structure of the six
messianic miracles arranges the immanent (feeding) events on the
left-hand side; these occur first, fifth and third in
chronological order. We have introduced the species
of desire relative to the perceptual forms of memory which they
nominate: The Transformation Of Water Into Wine, haptic
memory, erotic desire; The Feeding Of The Five Thousand,
optic memory, economic desire; The Feeding Of The Five
Thousand, acoustic memory, hierarchic desire. We have
indicated their arrangement according to this text,
semiologically, that is, having use the semeioptika noted in the
Pneumatological miracle story, The Feeding Of The Four
Thousand. We can therefore now address the several generic
expressions of this one intentional mode, desire, beginning with
the conscious order, related in the narratives listed on the
left-hand side of the diagram above.
Haptic Memory : Erotic Desire
The Wedding At Cana (John 2.1-11), the first episode
in the messianic series, accounts for this, canonical desire,
while the Markan healing pericope
which expounds it, is The Man With A Withered Hand (Mark
3.1-6). It is not necessary to list in addition the number of
parables which address the same mental/affective centre of
consciousness, some of these were mentioned in the determination
of the diurnal/nocturnal temporal equivalent of the same. That
the latter is focused on the interval surrounding midnight,
which occurred so frequently in those very texts, accords with
the seasonal equivalent, that of midwinter. In The Apocalypse,
this will be metaphorically represented by the last of the
sections introduced by a sevenfold series, the vials or bowls,
subsequently to which the plethora of nuptial imagery occurs.
The first of these references, which comes at the virtual
conclusion of the description of the sixth bowl, is so
remarkably reminiscent of the temporal motif in the 'nuptial'
parables:
"Lo, I am coming like a
thief! Blessed is he who is awake, keeping his garments that
he may not go naked and be seen exposed!" (Apocalypse 16.15.)
The other references both positive and negative to what we
may broadly name this constellation of the erotic are
'fornication': Apocalypse 17.2, 4, 18.3, 9, 19.2, 21.8, 22.15;
'the harlot': 17.1, 5, 15, 16;
'marriage'/'bride'/'bridegroom':18.23, 19.7, 9, 21.2, 21.9,
22.17. Equally germane to the link between the final quarter of
The Apocalypse and the soteriology and eschatology of the gospel
of Luke, which is that of the soteriology/eschatology of desire,
are the references to 'wine': 17.2; 18.3; 'purple and scarlet':
17.4, 18.12 ('purple' only), 18.16, which are also confined to
this segment of the book.
We should not forget that Luke himself is not averse to an
apocalyptic modulation in his characteristic theme of eating and
drinking, his signature tokens of the love of human persons for
one another. They function likewise in the miracle story just as
John uses the metaphor of thirst for (sexual) desire in his
later The Samaritan Woman (John 4.1-42), which seals the
Johannine presentation of the theme. The shorter
apocalypse in his gospel, Luke 17.20-37, which he shares
with Matthew (Matthew 24.32-44), mentioned above, contained: "As
it was in the days of Noah, so will it be in the days of the Son
of man. They ate, they drank, they married, they were given in
marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark, and the flood
came and destroyed them." (Luke 17.26, 27, cf. Matthew 24.38:
"... eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage ...")
In the same contexts of the links between Luke and the section
of The Apocalypse inaugurated by the bowls series, in other
words, the Lukan and Apocalyptic soteriologies and eschatologies
of desire, and their clear intertextual resonance with the
Johannine miracle story, we should note, albeit without the
contours of the final sevenfold series not just in The
Apocalypse but in the canon as a whole, the following:
When he opened the sixth
seal, I looked, and behold, there was a great earthquake; and
the sun became black as sackcloth, the full moon became like
blood, and the stars of the sky fell to the earth as the fig
tree (sukh~) sheds
its winter fruit when shaken by a gale. (Apocalypse 6.12, 13).
This first description of the opening of the sixth seal
combines the seasonal quarter figurative of the final series of
seven bowls, winter, just as it calls to mind the introduction
to the Johannine miracle story, which depicted the disciple
Nathanael 'under the fig tree', the narrative having ended in
the promise to the disciple of a vision of an apocalyptic cast
(John 1.45-51). Matthew too presents the motif of the fig
tree in the closest proximity to the pericope of the days of the coming of the Son
of man. He however aligns it with the season of summer. But
since the image does not include that of actual fruit, this
occasions no real contradiction:
"From the fig tree learn its
lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts forth
its leaves, you know that summer is near. So also, when you
see these things, you know that he is near, at the very gates.
(Matthew 24.32, 33).
It should be clear, even in spite of the brevity of the
apocalyptic discourse in Luke 17, that the evangelist is capable
of regarding the inherent ambiguity of the mind : body qua conceptual form of
unity, along with its attendant mode of intentionality,
belief-in-desire, from a point of view somewhat at odds with
what we find in his characteristic presentation of the theme of
eating and drinking. This is never more apparent than it is in
the concluding logion:
And they said to him, 'Where,
Lord?" He said to them, "Where the body is, there the eagles
(vultures) will be gathered together." (Luke 17.37).
The saying sorts perfectly not only with the negative, value
assigned to the body, in the last section of The Apocalypse
itself:
Then I saw an angel standing
in the sun, and with a loud voice he called to all the birds
that fly in midheaven, "Come, gather for the great supper of
God, to eat the flesh of kings, the flesh of captains, the
flesh of mighty men, the flesh of horses and their riders, and
the flesh of all men, both free and slave, both small and
great." (Apocalypse 19.17, 18).
Even so, the Apocalypse does not impute only a purely
negative value to the soma,
it could hardly manage to do so and simultaneously utilise the
nuptial imagery pertinent to its eschatology. We need not be
disinclined either to reject its positive estimate given to the
body as a determinant of consciousness any more than we should
neglect Luke's capacity for a negative estimate of the same,
even though this is perhaps understated in relation to the
overall tendency of The Apocalypse. If the overt ambivalence of
the mode of intentionality which this conceptual form, the body,
generates, is to be realised in its fullest potential, then both
views will follow. The Lukan 'optimism', or what is the same
thing, its juvenescent endorsement of the phenomenon of embodied
existence, doubtless stems from the fact that it celebrates 'the
days of his flesh'. Luke is concerned to preserve the
historicity of the risen Christ; he is at pains always to
emphasise the earthly nature of his existence in a particular
given place and at a specific given time. His is a gospel at
once concerned with the concept of incarnation, although it is a
view of the same altogether at variance with that espoused by
the gospel of John. It is a difference as well as a similarity
which is best encapsulated by the two terms soma, or mind : body and
Mind, logos ensarkos
and logos asarkos, Eros and Thanatos, and finally, mythos and logos.
Other texts could be added to those cited in support of the
hypothesis that very considerable tracts of the canon are taken
up with this same phenomenon. In its entirety, the book of Jonah
announced it in the Hebrew scriptures. But we have introduced
the apposite section of The Apocalypse which stands as the
intertextual analogue to the gospel of Luke in order to further
the Pneumatological aspect of the doctrine of consciousness.
That is, in order to approach the notion of a processive
transition from one conceptual radical, space : time, to
another, mind : body, by means of the intervening category,
here, the symbolic feminine, male and female, and concomitantly,
the graded transition of their corresponding forms of
intentionality, the will-to-believe and belief-in-desire. The
underlying hermeneutic of The Apocalypse employed here thus
takes it for granted that its four sevenfold series are
correlates to the soteriologies endogenous to the four
gospels, and that these both implicitly substantiate the
doctrine of human consciousness. In respect of this, it is
important to notice that in the final section beginning with the
series of vials, the writer explicitly conjoins one of the four
living creatures with the inception of the last eschatology:
And one of the four living
creatures gave the seven angels seven golden bowls full of the
wrath (qumou~ -
'passion'/'desire'/'lust') of God, who lives for ever and
ever; and the temple was filled with smoke from the glory of
God and from his power, and no one could enter the temple
until the seven plagues of the seven angels were ended
(Apocalypse 1.7).
Θυμὸς is the spring of the appetitive,
irrational, powers of the soul. Θυμὸς can not be satisfied by
a purpose, since a purpose requires intervention of reason.
This is why θυμὸς can be satisfied only by the gift of a
purpose, which transforms θυμὸς to βούλησις (will). The point
is, that whoever gives such a gift does it on purpose, which
means that a gift is purposeful as a gift, that for the
primary thirst (θυμὸς) of the soul (ψυχὴ) to be satisfied, a
soul must receive her purpose as a gift from some other
person. (Elpenor
In Print: The Primary Thirst Of The Soul.)
The plasticity of the term usually rendered 'wrath', is
ignored in such a translation, which all too readily omits the
overtones of libidinal satisfaction the word necessarily
connotes. The meaning of the word is altogether much close to
the phenomenon of sexual appetition. The noun qumo\v resonates immediately with the
description of Jesus' 'desiring' to eat with his disciples in
Luke's account of The Last Supper, where use of its
cognates is redoubled. What also deserves our
attention here is just that the specific 'living
creature' is not named. The iconographical tradition as noted,
rests upon the astral imagery which Ezekiel adopted during the
exile and which was then put to further use by the author of The
Apocalypse, has itself been notoriously plastic throughout
history. At various times each of the four different symbols has
represented different gospels. (For an introduction to this
tradition see the page by. Felix
Just, S.J.) In regard to the paucity of the evidence for a
clear and certain ligature between the four sections of The
Apocalypse and a particular gospel, we should note
that here alone, as the final member of the quartet instigates
the last phase of the eschaton, just such a link is forged
literally, even if then, it is not specified. This
accommodates the plasticity of the tradition. In the same last
quarter of the book, in addition to the plethora of nuptial
imagery, we should note also the concentration of the references
to Babylon, as evocations of Ezekiel and the exile, and
therefore also of the provenance of the imagery which John
employs: Apocalypse 16.9, 17.5, 18.2, 18 ('great city'), 21. The
description of the fall of Babylon is in chapter 18. Prior to
this, even suggestively of Babylon, there has been only the
oblique reference by means of 'the river Euphrates' in
Apocalypse 9.14 as part of the description of the sounding of
the sixth trumpet.
Optic Memory : Economic Desire
This variety of desire links immediately, as we
glimpsed from the mandala, with the erotic; thus in a sense,
both are kinds of 'having', of 'owning'. It is here of course in
terms of intentional forms, that knowing begins to emerge in a
clearer aspect. Even so, we should not forget that the immanence
of erotic desire, initially entailed the desire-to-know with
desire simpliciter.
For the intentional mode of desire, is purely immanent, arising
from the haptic memory, which is thoroughly decided as to the
difference between immanence and transcendence, object and
subject. Which can only mean that since (haptic) memory is
compounded with (haptic) imagination, desire simpliciter is necessarily
compounded with the desire-to-know. The hybridisation of the
forms desiring and knowing, takes full advantage of this fact.
Optic memory exploits the desire-to-know implicitly contained
within actual desire, so that the final member of the taxon, the acoustic memory,
is capable of delivering the cognitive form from its moorings.
Thus knowing can be considered independently of its
genetic link with the conative.
One of the earliest manifestations of the essential
connectedness between the visual and the acquisitive in the
gospel of Luke is as follows:
"No one after lighting a lamp
covers it with a vessel, or puts it under a bed, but puts it
on a stand, that those who enter may see (ble/pwsin) the light (fw~v). For nothing is
hid that shall not be made manifest, nor anything secret that
shall not be known and come to light(fanero\n e!lqh?). Take heed (ble/pete) then how you
hear (akou/ete);
for to him who has (e!xh?)
will more be given, and from him who has not (mh\ e!xh?), even what
he thinks that he has ( e!xein)
will be taken away." (Luke 8.16-18).
Seeing is a favourite theme of Luke, since it signals the
identity of the Holy Spirit, and if The Acts is replete of
angelological imagery, it is due to this predilection. It would
be difficult to find a more cogently articulated bond between
seeing and having than is put in these verses. They come
after the parable of The Seeds (Luke 8.4-8), after which
follow the discourses on parables in general and one on that
parable in particular (Luke 8.9-15). In the first of these, both
seeing and hearing are configured; in the second,which of course
highlights 'the word', the terms 'hearing' and 'word' recur
(Luke 8.11, 12, 13, 14, 15). But a word is also a graphic
entity, a thing visible; and so verse 18 of the logion literally
enjoins us to 'see as we hear'.
Apart from the classical presentation of the category of
optic memory in The Feeding Of The Four Thousand and Blind
Bartimaeus, the parable of A Light Under A Bushel
common to all three synoptic gospels, and one of the earliest of
the parables to be told, purveys the theme according to the
genre:
"If any man has ears to hear,
let him hear." And he said to them, "Take heed (blepe/te ti/ a)kou/ete
- literally 'see what you hear') what you hear; the measure
you give shall be the measure you get, and still more will be
given you." (Mark 4.23, 24).
Matthew's version almost completely ignores the connection
between seeing and having, although the word 'house' (oi)ki/a?), which neither
Mark nor Luke use, is certainly redolent of 'the economic':
"Nor do men light a lamp and
put it under a bushel, but on a stand, and it gives light to
all in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that
they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who
is in heaven." (Matthew 5.15, 16).
But neither Mark nor Matthew make the link between seeing and
having as desire anywhere near as emphatically as does Luke, who
in the very next verses writes:
Then his mother and his
brothers came to him, but they could not reach him for the
crowd. And he was told, "Your mother and your brothers are
standing outside, desiring to see you." ( i)dei~n qe/lontev se.
Luke 8.19, 20.)
The parallel of this tradition can be found in Mark
(3.31-35), where it sits immediately prior to the parable of The
Seeds, but there is no explicit mention of 'seeing' for
Mark uses the verb 'seek' (zhtou~sin),
usually translated 'asking' (Mark 3.32), even though he later
describes Jesus 'looking around (peribleya/menov) on those who sat around him'
(v 34). Certainly Mark does not combine the verbs 'desire' and
'see' in just the manner that Luke does so, from whom it is
clear that the object of both desiring and seeing here, is
Jesus.
The parable of The Dishonest Steward, (Luke 16.1-9),
special Lukan material, is a prime example of the radical. It
follows the parable of The Lost Son (Luke15.11-32) which
too deals with privation and the loss of both status and the
material necessities of living. But the latter story accentuated
a contrastive relationship between dissipated erotic love and
the compassionate love of the father for his son. From its
opening, with the description of the 'rich man' (a!nqrwpo/v tiv h~n plou/siov),
there is little doubt as to the centre of gravity in the parable
of The Steward. It too is concerned with the material
realities of existence, with livelihoods, but that is all. It
remains focused on the psychology of the economic, void of any
link with the erotic, although there is a clear link between the
economic and the hierarchic, given in the man's presentiment of
the dishonour about to befall him. The narrator provides a
window on the mind of the steward when confronted with immediate
dismissal for wasting the possessions of his master. This
is less a matter of his own privation which again would place
him in a situation similar to that of the previous protagonist,
the prodigal son, although the narrative also employs the term
'sons'. Instead it revolves around the steward's role and place
in society as these reflect his own self-understanding:
And the steward (o( oi)kono/mov)said to
himself, 'What shall I do, since my master is taking the
stewardship (oi)konomi/an)
away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed
(ai)sxu/nomai) to
beg. I have decided what to do, so that people may receive me
into their houses (oi1kouv)
when I am put out of the stewardship.' So summoning his
master's debtors one by one, he said to the first, 'How much
do you owe my master?' He said, 'A hundred measures of oil.'
And he said to him, 'Take your bill, and sit down quickly and
write fifty.' Then he said to another, 'And how much do
you owe?' He said, 'A hundred measure of wheat.' He said to
him, 'Take your bill, and write eighty.' The master commended
the dishonest steward for his shrewdness; for the sons of this
world are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation
than the sons of light (tou~
fwto\v). And I tell you, make friends for yourselves
by means of unrighteous mammon, so that when it fails they may
receive you into the eternal habitations. (Luke 16.3-9).
That the actions of the dishonest steward turn on the shame
he associates with poverty tells for the act of his own self
perception, his own image of himself. Shame more often than not
bears this meaning in moral psychology, and it is to be linked
with corporate existence, one's membership of a family and a
gender; hence the phrase 'sons of this world'. It is most of all
from other members of the same family that we seek to cover
ourselves, perhaps because they know us better than most members
of society. Shame is as such a publicly or socially oriented
emotion, but one also linked to the phylum, or family. Begging
as a kind of moral nakedness, becomes the admission of not only
one's dependence on others, but of a deficiency which exposes
the vulnerable self. Bartimaeus is spoken of in the same terms,
(Mark 10.46 tuflo\v
prosai/thv - blind beggar; Luke 18.35 - tuflo/v ... e)paitw~n -
'blind man ... begging'.) That the debtors are instructed to
write, rather than pay in coin, as well as the reference to
'sons of light', are other motifs in the passage which reinforce
the connection between the acquisitive, that is, the economic
model of desire, and the role of vision.
Another account which draws upon the indissoluble
psychological bond between seeing and having, albeit obliquely,
but which nevertheless contains a wealth of material for a
theology of economy, is that of Paying Taxes To Caesar.
As we have it in the gospels of both Matthew and Luke, it
differs little:
But Jesus, aware of their
malice, said, "Why put me to the test you hypocrites? Show me
the money for the tax." And they brought him a coin. And Jesus
said to them, "Whose likeness (ei)kw\n) and inscription (e0pigrafh/) is this?"
They said, "Caesar's." Then he said to them, "Render therefore
to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things
that are God's." When they heard it, they marveled; and they
left him and went away. (Matthew 22.18-22; par. Mark 12.13-17;
Luke 20.20-26).
Acoustic Memory : Hierarchic Desire
Once again, this element of the biblical doctrine of
consciousness is formally expounded both in a messianic miracle,
The Feeding Of The Five Thousand (Mark 6.30-44), and a
healing miracle, A Deaf And Dumb Man Healed
(Mark 7.32-37). The acoustic semiosis presents us
incontrovertibly with the phenomenon of a graded hierarchy; that
is the very meaning of the word 'scale' - from the Latin scala, a ladder. It is
alluded to in the parable of The Seeds (Mark 4.1-9),
which tells of the threefold yields, thirtyfold, sixtyfold
and a hundredfold (4.8). This is an exponential series, arranged
hierarchically, and is elaborated within the context of hearing
the word. It sits well with the specifically Markan perceptual
perspective of acoustic memory, and the prior narrative
about the family of Jesus (3.31-35), which repudiates familial
ties in favour of 'whoever does the will of God', so reinforcing
the theme of the very broadest of human groupings, the
society, the class of classes, to which hierarchy is
endogenous. This extension beyond the bounds of the family, of
human communication, confronts us with the reality of the
social world. Its common coin is language itself.
In the gospel of Matthew there are several occasions where
this paradigmatic species of desire is linked with the
phenomenon of speech. One such is The Denouncing Of The
Scribes And Pharisees (Matthew 23.1-12). In the narrative,
as well as their functions in learning, the roles of both
hearing and speaking in both teaching authoritatively and
also preaching are described in league with the desire for
'exaltation'. Additionally, the visiblity of honour and the
manner in which the open display of status, here literally of
the hierarchical, that is 'priestly' kind, also funtion in the
service of the same motivation, the same desire for esteem from
one's peers as well as one's subordinates. It is clearly linked,
as it is in the Markan mandala, with the acoustic memory, its
regulative determinant:
... so practice and observe
whatever they tell you, but not what they do; for they preach,
but do not practice. They bind heavy burdens, hard to bear,
and lay them on men's shoulders; but they themselves will not
move them with their finger. They do all their deeds to be
seen by men; for they make their phylacteries broad and their
fringes long, and they love the place of honour at feasts and
the best seats in the synagogues, and salutations (a)spasmou\v) in the
market places, and being called (kalei~sqai) rabbi by men. But you are not
to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all
brethren (a)delfoi/).
And call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father,
who is in heaven. Neither be called masters, for you have one
master, the Christ. He who is greatest among you shall be your
servant; whoever exalts himself (u(yw/sei e(auto\n) will be humbled, and
whoever humbles himself will be exalted. (Matthew 23.3-12).
CONSCIOUS
INTENTIONALITY AND HIERARCHY
This very brief survey of the varieties of radical conscious
desire, in which we have included texts other than the standard
articulations of the same, the messianic and healing miracles,
leaves us at a point where we must address the three
corresponding incidences of desire simpliciter in the
aconscious. But before we say more about desire, we
must recognise the implicit if not innate rationale of the
organizational principle which structures the various instances
of desire, both conscious and aconscious, into hierarchies. This
is not the same thing as hierarchic desire itself, although the
link between the hierarchies of not just desire, but the entire
gamut of intentional forms, knowing, willing, believing and the
rest, and the idea of a scale, or hierarchy itself, requires
understanding a propos of acoustic sense-percipience, and the
corresponding conceptual forms, those of space and space : time.
Here, we confine ourselves to commenting on what it means to
describe a particular instance of any given intentional mode as
'sovereign' or 'canonical' or 'regulative' and so on; and
furthermore, to describe the relation of the other varieties to
this single epitomising instance. So we describe erotic desire
as the sovereign form of desire; and in the iconography, we
listed the economic, and then the hierarchic occasions of desire
as second rate and third rate expressions respectively, of the
same thing, desire. We also emphasised the relation of
contiguity between immediately neighbouring forms of the
intentional mode: thus there is a virtually seamless transition
from (sovereign) erotic desire to its economic neighbour, just
as there is between the latter and social, or hierarchic desire.
Notwithstanding which, there is also a degradation of the mode
in this process of transition from the sovereign and initial
occasion to the medial instance, and further final one. So the
sovereign or primary occasion of desire, or any of other
intentional modes for that matter, is followed by a secondary
and a tertiary instance of the same thing, in this case, desire.
The term 'medial' shall serve as the introduction to the
explanation of the hierarchic structure of intentionality.
If the hand functions in consciousness as a semeion (sign) not just for
the erotic, but for haptic memory as a whole, then we may also
utilise it not simply as in meditation techniques, those of mudra, but in depicting the
scalar organization of the species of desire. At the broadest
level, desire divides itself according to the basic bifurcation
of the spatiotemporal manifold, which, in its two directions,
from present to future (perceptual imagination), and from
present to past (perceptual memory), it reiterates the
categoreal paradigm - transcendence : immanence. Each of these
contains three elements, the subjects of the messianic miracle
narratives. We therefore describe them referentially to the
present as 'proximal', 'medial', and 'distal'. These are
expressions which denote the anatomy of the hand itself, the
three articulated joints of the fingers. They will acquit us of
the task of describing the transitional pattern of both futures
and pasts, in their convergence towards the present. The
simplest and most cogent presentation of this argument is to
revert to the iconography already used. Here are the two mandala
which propose the hierarchical structure of desire, in both
orders, conscious and aconscious. We see that the former, which
is to say, the forms of memory, as always are signified by semeioptika belonging to
the 'blue' end of the spectrum, denoting the settled past; while
the latter are signified by semeioptika
from the opposite end of the spectrum, its red polarity, which
indicates the transcendent future.
The reason for distinguishing as the Markan mandala
does between the forcefulness of desire according to the serial
order haptic-optic-acoustic, and so contending the degrees of
desire as ordered contiguously as erotic-economic-hierarchic, is
ultimately due to the diffraction in memory of those same
perceptual forms. Haptic memory is 'distal' in precisely the sense that it is
active over a longer period of our lives than any other. This is
the meaning of its location in the chiasmos. Haptic memory is engaged up until
the very last phase of the series, which introduces its
complement haptic imagination. (Not that haptic imagination was
not present from the start; it was. Haptic memory necessarily
includes its imaginal counterpart; there is no memory in se; no retrieval,
reminding, recollection of past haptic occasions without some
element of the corresponding imaginal form. Thus too desire is
always composite with desire-to-know.) But to begin with, as we
see from the messianic series, the immanent Christological form
of memory extends from our remotest past - it is this exactly
which gives it such power. It is this which accounts for the
fact the desire in the first degree is the very desire
occasioned by haptic memory, erotic desire. No desire is on par
with it for this reason and this reason alone.
Optic memory differs from both the haptic and acoustic forms
in just that it draws upon what rests between the remotest and
the nearest past respectively. Accordingly we speak of it as 'medial'. It gives rise to
desire of a specifically acquisitive kind, the desire to possess
whatever may be possessed. But this is a second degree grade or
'degraded' order of desire. The force of this desire,as
representative of actual desire itself, is secondary in scale to
that of its neighbour, the erotic. So finally too with
hierarchic desiring which is the result of the acoustic memory.
We therefore speak of it as 'proximal'
- for although it is established as a form of perceptual memory,
it borders the domain of the present. In the scale of the
degrees of conscious desire, this is effectively the least and
last of the class. We introduce here the remaining
three forms of desire which are those of the aconscious. The
order of aconscious (imaginal) desires follows the ordering of
perceptual memory in its hierarchic organization into tertiary,
secondary, and primary, in keeping with the temporality proper
to each: proximal, medial and distal, respectively.
THE HIERARCHY OF ACONSCIOUS DESIRES
The hierarchies of occasions of any conative intentional forms
are either regressive or progressive; that is, they tend away
from the present to the distal
pasts and distal
futures. Such hierarchies do not represent the
comprehensive consistency of intentional modes. Thus when the
sovereignty of the modes belonging to one and the same taxon is taken into
account, in the first case above, those of desire and knowing,
the actual processive flux is towards the present. This should
be obvious in the case of conscious desire. Time is asymmetrical
in this sense; it does not flow from the present to the past.
The directional transit from desire to knowing represents the
instrumental relation of the conative to the cognitive forms of
perceptual memory. The above mandala represent the hierarchies
specific to desire. To account for the first of which, it will
be necessary to consider the aconscious, where the coherent or
corresponding radicals and their intentional modes, mirror this
pattern of regression to remotely prior pasts. The same applies
to the aconscious forms of desire. The desire for catharsis, the
desire for purity, consequent upon haptic imagination,
circumscribes the remotest future. The direction of flow in the
second image above therefore does not represent the way in which
the conative radical consequent upon haptic imagination with its
distal future, and the
cognitive radical, consequent upon acoustic imagination, with
its proximal future,
are integrated. Once again, we shall have to revert to the
'other' order, in this case, the conscious one, so as to explain
this hierarchy. But these topics lie beyond our immediate
concerns here. The main point is that the comprehensive
co-ordination of categories and the sovereign occasions of the
intentional modes both conative and cognitive which they
produce, always tend from either distal through medial to
proximal pasts or futures. The term proximal denotes the border
of the same domain with the present. There is consistent passage
which acknowledges the primacy of the epistemic or cognitive
over the conative. Time as it is given to consciousness, is
always ordered in virtue of the conquest of desiring by knowing
and the conquest of willing by believing. The final realization
of an epistemic purpose, whether it be a form of knowing or a
form of belief, is the necessary goal of all consciousness
insofar as it is temporal by nature. The temporal shift from
feeling to thought, conation to cognition, is instrumental in
this sense.
The syntactical integration
of these modulations or types of one and the same mode of
intentionality, here desire, is inseparable from the event of
hierarchy; for the categoreal or radical constituents of each
intentional form themselves, consist in a graded hierarchy. This
is the meaning of canonicity, namely, the force of the
intentional modes varying according to its type or instance.
Thus in each case of the taxa,
whether the perceptual forms of memory and imagination, or the
conceptual forms, pure transcendent radicals and forms of unity,
there exists a scale which sorts the members according to both
the threefold and sixfold models. Here we must deal immediately
with not only the threefold paradigm but that also of the full
range of human conscious conative intentionality, which means
that we must include the three types of desire belonging to the
aconscious. The question regarding the application of an
intentional mode whose source is conscious, here desire, to
perceptual radicals which are themselves aconscious, brings with
it considerations which are fundamental to the
hierarchical ordering of the types of desire as well as the
types of faith-in-desire. That is, the broader signification of
a sixfold syntax of desires and so too of belief-in-desire can
now be broached.
We alleged that desire arises canonically from the persistence
of haptic memory as a rudiment of consciousness. While haptic
memory belongs to the conscious order of mind, desire itself is
expressed in every one of the six perceptual radicals. It will
repay us here at the outset to repeat the division made
previously between the practical and the theoretical logos, or logos ensarkos and logos asarkos. If we use
the expression logos
here instead of the common English equivalent 'reason', it is
precisely because that equivalent leaves out of account the role
of the conative or affective modes of intentionality. A better
term might be 'prehension', since this word readily promotes the
Christological perceptual category, that of touch or the haptic,
and can refer to both thought and feeling, reason and emotion,
cognition and conation. Nonetheless, we shall avoid it in order
to dissociate ourselves from its connotations in process
theologies. Those intentional modes subsumed under the title logos ensarkos are: desire,
knowledge-of-will, will, and faith-in-desire. Those which are
subsumed under the logos
asarkos are: desire to know, knowing, will-to-believe,
and believing.
We asserted that desire is genetically explicable on the
basis of haptic memory; this is also to posit that this same
'erotic desire' is the first order or primary instance of
that intentional mode. Akin to it, but in a certain sense
degraded from it hierarchically, is economic desire, and so too
further still is hierarchic desire, the secondary and tertiary
kinds of desire respectively. There is a pattern of continual
dispersion of the full force of the consciousness itself in the
serial translation from the first to the second and so also to
the third instances of desire, according to the corresponding
taxonomic transition from the haptic to optic to acoustic forms
of memory. This is not to say that desires of these second grade
and third grade kinds are unreal; they are not. But what is
meant by the term 'desire' itself, is fully and finally given in
the reality of erotic appetition. The satisfactions attendant
upon the subsequent perceptually radical modulations of desire,
are by comparison degraded, diffused, dissipated. Real desire,
and here the epithet real is used most deliberately, is sexual
by definition. Previously we used the notion of surrogate
satisfaction in response to certain themes in the narratives
dealing with both the economic and the hierarchic instances of
desire, themes which purposely harked back to the phenomenon of
sexual love. This notion of surrogate satisfaction suggests the
same thing; it points to the taxonomic ordering of desire
itself. This has been the argument so far.
Haptic Imagination :
Kathartic Desire
Thus stated, the possible permutations of desire extend from
one end of the spectrum to the other, and we have as yet not
fully described those of its instances engendered by the three
forms of imagination, although we have in fact often referred to
haptic imagination, especially in its role of contrast to haptic
memory. When The Transformation Of Water Into Wine
introduced the idea of purification, it was with a view, along
with other elements in the narrative, to the final event of the
messianic series, The Transfiguration. It is not
difficult to determine the type which desire assumes in this
aconscious radical, haptic imagination. No matter how we phrase
it, or in which religious or philosophical tradition we find it,
and no matter how ambivalent it may seem on account of its
aconscious status, it is readily available to us in experience.
The desire for purity is taken up by Mark in more than half of
an entire chapter. It will lead into the second feeding miracle
narrative in his gospel:
Now when the Pharisees
gathered together to him, with some of the scribes, who had
come from Jerusalem, they saw that some of his disciples ate
with hands defiled, that is, unwashed. (Mark 7.1, 2).
Only the miracle storyThe Syrophoenician Woman
whose daughter was possessed by an unclean spirit ensues (Mark
7.24-31), and the narrative of The Deaf And Dumb Man
(Mark 8.32-37), intervene before the second miracle of loaves
(Mark 8.1-10). This editing is highly economical and all
the more cogent for that, since the discourse on purity sits
between the two miracles of loaves, and the flow from the first,
The Feeding Of The Five Thousand, has been interrupted
only by The Walking On The Water, which it must be in
order to establish the chiastic structuring of messianic events,
and by a generalised summary of healing (6.53-56). The
discourses on purity then are intelligible in relation to the
two feeding miracles, those texts which in terms of conative
intentionality, depict hierarchic desire and acquisitive desire
consecutively. Mark 6.45-8.27 is missing from the gospel of
Luke, for which no finally adequate explanation has been given.
In Luke 11.37-41 there is a brief parallel of sorts to the
extensive discourse on purity in Mark. But for all that, Luke is
no stranger to the desire for purity as a generic and
rudimentary presence in human motivation. Just where we might
have expected the larger discourse on purity in the gospel of
Luke, that is, after he tells The Feeding Of The Five
Thousand (Luke 9.10-17), he resumes those narratives which
lead directly to the classical statement of the haptic
imagination, and hence to kathartic desire, The
Transfiguration; namely Peter's Confession Of Jesus,
and the Passion Prediction (Luke 9.18-27). Moreover, in
addition to The Leper (Luke 5.12-16), Luke has an
account of Jesus healing ten lepers (Luke 17.11-19). Like the
first such story, it also uses the theme of cleansing:
While he was in one of the
cities, there came a man full of leprosy; and when he saw
Jesus, he fell on his face and besought him, "Lord, if you
will, you can make me clean (kaqari/sai)." And he stretched out his
hand, and touched him, saying, "I will; be clean (kaqari/sqhti)." And
immediately the leprosy left him. And he charged him to tell
no one; but "go and show yourself to the priest, and make an
offering for your cleansing (kaqarismou~), as Moses commanded, for a
proof to the people." (Luke 5.12-14).
And as he entered a village,
he was met by ten lepers, who stood at a distance and lifted
up their voices and said, "Jesus, Master, have mercy on us."
When he saw them he said to them, "Go and show yourselves to
the priests." And as they went they were cleansed (e)kaqari/sqhsan). Then
one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back,
praising God with a loud voice; and he fell on his face at
Jesus' feet, giving him thanks. Now he was a Samaritan. Then
said Jesus, "Were not ten cleansed (e)kaqari/sqhsan)? Where are the nine? Was
no one found to return and give priase to God except this
foreigner?" And he said to him, "Rise and go your way; your
faith has made you well."" (Luke 17.11-19).
Another and quite similar rendering of the same is The
Samaritan Woman (John 4.1-42). It concludes that section
of that gospel in which so many of the first pericopae we encounter
propose a theology of sexual desire. If then Luke knows only too
well that specific type of desire aligned with the gospel of
John, this accords with the fact that it is only in the latter
that we possess a redaction of the messianic miracle which sets
before us the canonical form of desire, namely sexual desire,
the specific intentional perspective which imbues the gospel of
Luke rather than John. In John's narrative, water functions as a
polysemic metaphor. Clearly it recalls the role of the water in
the first miracle, since this text culminates the presentation
of the theme of erotic love. And although he opens the
conversation by asking her: "Give me a drink." (do/v moi pei~n (John
4.7)), neither Jesus himself nor the woman are said to be
thirsty. Thirst is of course mentioned in the story (4.13, 14,
15), so that after the revelation of the woman's infidelity, it
connotes sexual desire. (We are never told whether Jesus was
given the drink he requested or not.) But it must also stand in
some measure for the material of purification, if not complete
satiation. The woman's request to drink from '"the spring of
water welling up to eternal life"' (v 14) is her request that
she '"may not thirst"' (v 15). The image drawn here of sexual
appetition is two sided; for it is portrayed with the same
bracing realism we found in the chreia dealing with Nathanael, but now it is
depicted as something one might do well to be rid of altogether.
As in the first messianic miracle story, the motif of
purification is understated; but it is present as it must be
since the erotic is a source of defilement. The Markan pericopae in chapter 7 make
no mistake about that:
And he called the people to
him again, and said to them, "Hear me, all of you, and
understand: there is nothing outside a man which by going into
him can defile (koinw~sai)
him; but the things which come out of a man are what defile (koinou~nta) him." (Mark
7.14).
And he said, "What comes out of a man is what defiles (koinoi~) a man. For
from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts,
fornication, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness,
deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All
these evil things come from within, and they defile (koinoi~) a man." (Mark
7.20-23).
Here we find the axiological identity of this radical. Much has
already been said on the subject; it was clearly told in The
Transfiguration by Peter's remark: '"Master, it is good
(well) that we are here ..."' (Mark 9.5), the point being that
if the satisfaction of erotic appetition is a good, then so too
is its complement. For the transcendent form of the haptic
immanent radical is complementary in just this sense - the two
forms of haptic sentience share the same axiological identity;
both are Christological, both express the good. If there is any
paradox resulting from this state of affairs, then it pertains
to the imaginal form of the haptic, as to the aconscious. Even
so, we must repeat that the same imaginal element of
consciousness is always present in memory, the meaning of the
presence of the water which was the 'pre-existing condition' of
the wine into which it was transformed. This water for 'the
Jewish rites of purification' also alludes to the activity of
the form of intentionality native to haptic imagination, and its
compresent role in the erotic (haptic memory). One indissoluble
aspect of erotic appetition is the desire-to-know. Thus there is
never desire qua
erotic desire without the desire-to-know just as there is never
haptic memory without haptic imagination. Eros always seeks to know
the other as well as to be known by the same.
This brings into focus the fact that the actual type of desire simpliciter which the
haptic imagination assumes, makes common cause with itself. Thus
if the desiring haptic imagination seeks purity, it may
certainly do so and often does via the desire-to-know. We need
only regard the fact that learning and monastic cultures have in
a variety of places and times been favourable to one another.
The exposition of the sympathetic and coherent relationality
between believing and the desire-to-know will belong to the
study of the fourth gospel. But for a canonical radical or
category of consciousness, and also for the compound
'apocalyptic' categories, we should note that the intentional
form native to these same will be pressed into the service of
other intentional forms. Thus the desire-to-know as necessary to
haptic imagination is bound intimately with the way in which the
same perceptual mode expresses desire itself. That is to say,
the actual conscious desire for purity and the aconscious
desire-to-know in the fullest panoply of its variations are
mutually sympathetic.
Haptic imagination is essentially ethical imagination just as
haptic memory is the essence of ethical memory. We shall have to
say more concerning this in the context of the Eucharist. That
is, the way ahead for the discussion of what is meant by
'ethical imagination' as the equivalent of the imaginal function
of touch, or what is the same thing, the haptic function of the
imagination, must first attend to the relation between this, the
extrinsic expression of the value, and its normative occasion as
haptic memory, and thereby establish the connection the latter
bears towards what the Eucharist signifies. The greater part of
this exercise deals with the semiotic forms as expressed in the
numerical details of the three Eucharistic miracle stories.
A final point concerning this perceptual form must note that its
province is the distal future. In terms of the graduated shift
from the haptic to optic to acoustic forms of imaginal
consciousness, a shift which correspondingly registers that of
the ontogenetic and conative mode to the phylogenetic and
cognitive mode, there is a corresponding advance away from the
remote futurity of haptic imagination towards the now. The
acoustic imaginal consciousness as its canonical form of
intentionality, knowledge-of-will requires, circumscribes the
boundaries of the present with the future. Haptic imagination
however is fixed to those domains of the not-yet which are at
furthest remove from the present.
Optic Imagination : Ethnic Desire
Once again the classical exposition of the category
responsible for this species of desire, since it depicts the
optic imagination, is The Stilling Of The Storm, (Mark
4.35-41, Matthew 8.18, 23-27, Luke 8.22-25). It recurs to
the Day 3 rubric, in which the expression 'kind' is operative.
The miracle account is fairly summary, although the same cannot
be said of the ensuing narrative of The Gerasene
Demoniac, which relates to it as concept to percept,
symbolic masculine to optic imagination. This editing ploy Luke
copies from Mark, (Mark 4.35-41, 5.1-20 cf. Luke 8.22-25, vv
26-39.) The editing of both Luke and Matthew following suit,
establish the same connection between the Day 3 rubric which
posits the conceptual radical, the symbolic masculine, and the
perceptual radical, optic imagination, the subject of the second
messianic miracle, The Stilling Of The Storm.
The desire occasioned by optic imagination is the want of
kinship, the wish for group identity, being together with those
identical in a certain respect to oneself, most frequently at
the expense of all heterogeneity. The respect in
which such homogeneity occurs is more often than not based on
visible characteristics. Thus the commonplace manifestation of
the desire can be defined as 'ethnic'. The term
'ethnic' as used here, recalls one of the aforementioned four
expressions regularly used in The Apocalypse: tribe (fulh~v), tongue (glw/sshv), people (laou~), and nation ( e!qnouv, Apocalypse 5.9 et passim). These all
relate to collective identity as a structuring phenomenon of
consciousness. As previously mentioned, we find a clear instance
of the psychology of collective identity in martial
institutions, as well as those of learning, in both of which the
sexes may well be segregated. The same is also prevalent in
religious cultures, particularly those of Christianity and
Islam. The homosocial company depicted in the narrative is
contained within the boat as it crosses from one to the other
side of the sea. This crossing denotes a radical shift from the
immanence of the first messianic miracle, to the transcendent
pole. The sea, a predominant motif in the Day 3 rubric, plays a
key role in both the messianic miracle and the ensuing healing
miracle (Mark 5.1, 13). In the messianic miracle
story we note the company of male only disciples. With Jesus,
they are beset by the storm at sea. As in the other
events of the taxon,
the issue of Jesus' identity arises. The real occasion for
identity remains the transcendent categories listed in the first
three Days of the creation cycle, and as far as Jesus himself is
concerned, the first of these, as we understand from The
Transfiguration, is precisely the one which matters most.
The messianic miracle story envisages Jesus in terms of the
symbolic masculine. This is not at all the same thing as his
physical embodiment as male rather than female. The symbolic
masculine denotes the transcendence of sexual dimorphism as a
symbol, from which we may extrapolate to other instances of
collective identity. A homogenous group of women, that is,
a homosocial aggregation consisting exclusively of women, on
this basis, equally exemplifies what is meant by this term.
Other instances as determined by cultures specific to places and
times are suggested by the words used in The Apocalypse.
Language is certainly one such, since it divides groups of
persons into identifiable wholes. Something similar to language
functions in the subhuman realm as the means whereby
conspecifics may identify one another.
The connection between any of the perceptual radicals of
consciousness listed in the transcendent miracles, here that of
optic imagination, and their conceptual counterparts, in this
case the symbolic masculine, is complete. This provides us with
a window to the world of the conative expression of the
category. In The Gerasene Demoniac the term 'Legion'
(Mark 5.9 cf. Luke 8.30), connotes a prime example of the
conceptual category, the army. It too is a band of brothers, a
fraternity, a human agglomerate, in which the identity of the
individual is collected and subsumed under a corporate and
ethnic identity. Apart from its benign co-option in
fellow feeling, that is, aside from its vital role in the
exercise of sympathy, this kind of desire has a demonic aspect
such as the healing miracle demonstrates. The Gerasene
Demoniac calls to mind an image of prey and predator,
for 'The Legion' is effectively a hunting party. The
symbolic masculine, the phenomenon of collective identity,
thus allows full and free reign to instinctually
destructive impulses, of the kind which we normally associate
with adult human males. Thus the optic imagination which is
completely linked to it, may function likewise. The Stilling
Of The Storm refers to 'perishing' for this reason. The
association of the radical with the violence of nature is
indicated by the storm; Matthew's much more dramatic
expression 'seismo\v'
- 'earthquake' - (Matthew 8.24), anticipates its use in
The Apocalypse, the standard Pneumatological text of the New
Testament canon, in which it features repeatedly, most notably
at the conclusion of the three sevenfold series: seals
(Apocalypse 8.5), trumpets (Apocalypse 11.19), and vials
(Apocalypse 16.18). The last of these references speaks of 'a
great earthquake such as had never been since men were on the
earth, so great was that earthquake.' This squares perfectly
with the book's observations concerning the role of warfare in
human history. It announces the sexual psychology of the
specifically masculine form of evil in terms which contrast
absolutely with 'the beginning', to wit, destruction. The
Apocalypse itself, in its entirety is somewhat like a dream,
albeit with nightmarish elements, just as it was the figure of
Jesus 'asleep in the stern' (Mark 4.38, cf. Luke 8.23), which
first illustrated the optic imagination.
Ethnic desire of itself and in itself effectively enlists the
instinctual behaviours of the symbolic masculine. It naturally
insists on the individual wanting to be among its own
kind. We met this same word, 'kind', in the description of
Day 3, the description of the 'gathering together' the sea, and
the subsequent appearance of land. This is followed by the
earth's production of the two forms of vegetative life, which
are veiled references to sexual dimorphism, that is, to male and
female gendered bodies, the subject of the complementary Day 6
rubric. Optic imagination, a perceptual rudimentary component of
consciousness, like its conceptual counterpart, the symbolic
masculine, is responsible for merging the identity of the
individual with with that of a larger whole, as is given by the
primary meaning of 'ethnic'. Ethnic identity is an innate
tendency which drives living things to associate with their own
kind. The verb 'to perish' (Mark 4.38, cf. Luke 8.24), as well
as being a Pneumatological index, binds the following story, The
Gerasene Demoniac, and the concept of nature to this same
tendency, here predicated of humanity. The number of times we
find it depicted in the gospels is quite remarkable. In Luke an
outstanding one is the parable of The Good Samaritan
(Luke 10.25-37). This functions as a blueprint for human
behaviour as beset by the tempestuous passions which the
appetition engages. A variety of 'kinds' is portrayed in the
parable: the robbers form one group; the priest too belongs to
another subspecies; the Levite is again a member of a party of
some sort; and so too is the Samaritan. All the characters
possess a collective identity, in most cases, setting them
against one another. But the last, the 'Samaritan'', forgoes his
membership of the group. He casts aside his belonging to an
exclusionary group in order to affirm the final and only
collective to which any of us may legitimately belong, that of
humankind. Thus the neighbour, whose definition evoked the
parable in the first place, is defined according to the broadest
possible terms; terms which negate subcategorial kinds as
inauthentic. The presence in the story of the optic imagination
as the inspiration to act compassionately stands shoulder to
shoulder with what we witnessed in the story of The Leper.
In the latter, Jesus is said to have been 'moved with pity' (splagxnisqei\v Mark
1.41). For it is imagination which moves us not only to feel
empathy with our fellows, and the subhuman or animal world and
beyond as well, but also to act in virtue of this feeling. The
parable resonates with references to the fact that this capacity
rests almost entirely on the visual mode of sentience:
And behold, a lawyer
stood up to put him to the test, saying, "Teacher, what shall
I do to inherit eternal life?" He said to him, "What is
written (ge/graptai)
in the law? How do you read?" (Luke 10.25, 26);
But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, "And
who is my neighbour?" (v 29);
Now by chance a priest was
going down that road; and when he saw ( i)dw/n)
him he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when
he came to the place and saw ( i)dw/n) him, passed by on the other side.
But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was; and
when he saw ( i)dw/n)
him, he had compassion (splagxni/sqh).
(vv 31-33).
The parable of The Good Samaritan was introduced by a dominical
saying which confirms the presence of this very structure of
consciousness, and we advert to it:
Then turning to the disciples
he said privately, "Blessed are the eyes which see what you
see! For I tell you many prophets and kings desired to see (h)qe/lhsan i)dei~n) and
did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear
it." (Luke 10.23, 24).
The Markan healing miracle which accounts not for the symbolic
masculine, but for the optic imagination, Mark 8.22-26, is
absent from Luke. Matthew's rather perfunctory recension not
only distorts the original version, for he mentions two blind
men (Matthew 9.27-31), but he also dislocates it from the Markan
context in which it follows fairly closely on the heels of The
Feeding Of The Four Thousand (Mark 8.10), and immediately
after the recapitulation of the two miracles of loaves, the
latter of which just mentioned, of course presents the
complementary category, optic memory.
John is familiar with the tradition, or at least with the
details of the method of the cure. He records Jesus anointing
the man with clay made from spittle (John 9.6), which also
recalls the 'earth' motif of Day 3. This agrees with Mark's
reference to Jesus having spat on the man's eyes and having laid
his hands upon him (Mark 8.23). The Man Born Blind (John
9.1-40) is the second last of the seven Johannine 'signs', and
it occupies the entire chapter. A securely Pneumatological text,
it equates the Jesus of this particular episode with the Son of
man (vv 35-37) and hence with the Holy Spirit. The story appears
to complement the second Johannine narrative, The Official's
Son (4.46-54) in theological terms, since it too is a
Pneumatology. The arrangement mirrors the chiasmos of the messianic
series, even though of course there is but one crossing 'to the
other side' in this gospel. The Official's Son addresses
the immanent, and the later story, the transcendent. All three
last signs of the Johannine corpus appear to be transcendent in
their theological type. The Man Born Blind
is an invaluable source for understanding this structure of
consciousness. From its inception it looks ahead, that is, to
the future as to imagination. Jesus' response to the congenital
condition of the man reverses completely the construction placed
upon it by his disciples;
As he passed by, he saw a man
blind from his birth. And his disciples asked him, "Rabbi, who
sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?"
Jesus answered, "It was not that this man sinned, or his
parents, but that the works of God might be made manifest (fanerwqh~?) in him."
(John 9.1-3).
The man's description of Jesus as 'prophet' (v 17), also squares
with this temporal perspective, that of transcendence, hence the
contrast between 'the Jews' as 'disciples of Moses' (vv 28,29),
and the man himself as a disciple of Jesus, here the Son of man.
Ironically, the story contains the famous or infamous reference
to expulsion from the 'synagogue' (vv 22, 23). Ironically, for
this term itself conjures up the reality of ethnic desire:
'birds of a feather flock together':
His parents said this because
they feared the Jews, for the Jews had already agreed that if
anyone should confess him to be the Christ, he was to be put
out of the synagogue. Therefore his parents said, "He is of
age, ask him." (John 9.23, 23);
They answered him, "You were
born in utter sin, and would you teach us?" And they cast him
out. (v 34).
If these verses are of interest to us, it is not because
of any alleged polemical character they may have in striving
against Judaism. In the current context regarding interfaith,
they effectively point to an identity of "Moses" more in keeping
with Buddhistic convictions. For the story begins an ends on the
same note, that of illness or misfortune as inherited due to
previous 'sin'. So the introduction and conclusion controvert
the doctrines of karma
and samsara as roundly
as possible. We discussed such a hermeneutic of the Moses persona previously, in the
detailed consideration of The Transfiguration,
in which he is said to have appeared 'with Elijah' (Mark 9.4).
The references to 'the Jews' and 'the synagogue', which latter
word means 'gathering together', in this context are highly
appropriate, since as a 'faith', it remains a highly problematic
incidence of the very category under consideration, even if to
aver this in the current political climate will doubtless be to
incur censure or much worse. It is necessary to qualify the
description of Judaisms as 'faiths', the reason for the use of
quotation marks. The theology of intentionality will necessarily
distinguish between faith and will, and accordingly assign the
latter to these traditions as part of the same phenomenon
depicted here as elsewhere in the gospels.
The role of the judgement of beauty here is equivalent to that
of the good in the case of haptic imagination, and that of the
true in the case of acoustic imagination. The prevalence of
aesthetic judgement in both Buddhistic and Islamic cultures
forms part of the wider consideration of this fact. Both enjoy
very accomplished witnesses to visual acuity, although the
former probably engages optic memory and the latter optic
imagination to a greater degree than the obverse. The iconoclasm
of the Islamic traditions never suppressed architecture as a
necessary adjunct to the expression of religious thought and
feeling. It might be argued that both traditions remain at
something of a disadvantage as far as musical culture is
concerned, comparatively to the 'western' religious
civilizations, for certainly these have achieved the most
marvelous successes. We are speaking here in the broadest of
terms, but these facts are also supported by consideration of
the difference between the roles played by the written form of
the Arabic language and similarly by the logographic natures of
cultures where Buddhism made inroads, including China, Korea and
Japan. Here of course we must repeat that there is no optic
memory sans optic
imagination, and the complex issues surrounding the relations of
such ostensibly different modes of religious thought as Islam
and Buddhism will have to deal with this fact. That they have
also much in common from a phenomenological point of view,
namely this very strong indebtedness to the phenomenal mode
which intrinsically defines itself in term of that most immanent
of values, beauty, must not escape notice.
What was said in conclusion in the above treatment of the haptic
can be repeated here in respect of the aesthetic; that is, optic
imagination is aesthetic imagination. But we should not
understand this, nor any other imaginal form, as purely
sensuous. It is necessary to keep in mind always the
contradiction involved in any discussion of the imagination as
pertaining to the aconscious. If it is true that imagination by
nature, by definition, by taxonomic categorisation, is
perceptual, it is nevertheless true that it is
non-sensuous. We must allow for the notion of
transcendence even at the expense of imputing paradox to the
thing in question. Again what was said in relation to the
normative status of the complement, optic memory, and by means
of the same, of the further relation of the optic imagination to
the Eucharist, these points are immediately relevant to the
discussion of the axiological identity of this radical of
consciousness.
Acoustic Imagination :
Deontic Desire
The formal rubric presenting this
category is The Walking On The Water (Mark 6.45-52,
Matthew 14.22-33, John 6.16-21). Mark's The Boy With An
Unclean Spirit (Mark 9.14-29) with its clear parallel in
Luke (Luke 9.37-42), likewise depict this same aconscious
radical. John's gospel contains the messianic miracle and so a
healing narrative would be considered otiose, since there are
in all just seven signs, a mixture of messianic and healing
events. In Matthew there are several narratives which might
appear to have been adopted from the Markan pericope: The Healing
Of A Dumb Man (Matthew 9.32-34) which follows directly
his story of two blind men having been healed, cannot be the
parallel to the episode told by Mark, that event in his
healing series (Mark 7.32-37) which shows none of the criteria
for transcendence, since the equivalent of this episode in
Matthew is 15.29-31. Then there is Matthew 15.29-31, which
matches the Markan context in that it is immediately prior to
The Feeding Of The Four Thousand. However this passage
does not single out acoustic sentience as does the story in
Mark, for Matthew writes:
And great
crowds came to him, bringing with them the lame, the maimed,
the blind and the dumb, and many others, and they put them at
his feet, and he healed them, so that when the throng wondered
when they saw the dumb speaking, the maimed whole, the lame
walking, and the blind seeing; and they glorified the God of
Israel. (Matthew 15.30, 31).
The episode recounted in Matthew 17.14-21 is placed
immediately after The Transfiguration as is Mark's
single rubric of acoustic imagination in his healing series.
But Matthew's version makes no mention at all of either
hearing or speaking, the boy being referred to simply as 'an
epileptic' (Matthew 17.15), although certainly the reference
to 'the demon' (v 18) like much else in the text appears to
have been borrowed from Mark.
This structure of consciousness relates to the conceptual
form space as does optic imagination to symbolic masculine,
and as stands haptic imagination to mind. In a certain sense
then, all the forms of imagination defer to those pure
transcendent forms of consciousness. Thus their explication
too acknowledges the status of the pure conceptual forms as
normative for transcendence. In introducing this here, since
we are dealing with desire, and thus somewhat paradoxically, a
conscious mode of intentionality in an aconscious guise, we
shall recall the axiological identity of the pure conceptual
form, it is that of the true. We have not in the previous
discussions of the forms of imagination considered this strand
of Markan doctrine. We might well have done so in the previous
two cases; for, it is clear that what we have called 'ethnic
desire', since it is grafted to the function of vision in
consciousness, must necessarily engage the judgement of
beauty. So also for haptic imagination: it is certain that the
aspiration to purification functions in accordance with the
judgement of what is good. We may therefore take it as read
that the axiological property of each of these three
structures will be indispensable to their fullest exposition,
bearing in mind always that the forms of imagination as
exemplars of value, are extrinsic expressions of the same.
That is to say, the normative occasions of what is innately
the immanent good, the immanent beautiful and the immanent
true, remain the forms of memory: haptic, optic and acoustic
respectively. Even so, there can be no doubt of the role of
value in the imaginal forms. It secures at once, their
polarity with the forms of memory, that is, it cross
references them in tandem with their chiastic structure
obtaining between the complements of perceptual consciousness,
just as it secures their analogous relationality, the fact
that the three forms of imagination belong to the same
taxonomic order, and so subtend relations to one another.
Here then, it is truth in particular, not beauty and not
goodness, which identifies this specific form of imagination,
just as it belongs to the conceptual form, space ('heaven').
Hence we have called the desire which is the outcome of the
acoustic imagination 'deontic', meaning 'being right', 'it is
correct'. Its literal meaning refers to 'necessary existence',
and can be rendered 'that which must be'. We have already
mentioned dei~ in
keeping with the intentional mode 'desire' in the gospel of
Luke and we will survey it in the later stages of this study.
We can therefore qualify the sense of 'necessary' here so as
to completely sever any connection with desire as with
determinism. Luke certainly does not use the expression 'must
be' (dei~)
in this sense, for he has opted for the very opposite insofar
as his gospel is focused on the soteriology and eschatology of
desire, not will, which is the appurtenance of the conceptual
form space. (Precisely the same problem occurs with usage of
the Greek qe/lw
which sometimes refers to 'will' and sometimes to wishing, or
wanting, that is, to 'desire'. The former is a
conceptual mode of intentionality and the latter a perceptual
one. There is in biblical metaphysics no mixing of the two.)
It is Matthew rather than Luke whose soteriological and
eschatological perspectives are those in keeping with both
will and the knowledge-of-will. We can see this at once in his
extended treatment of the messianic miracle, which involves
Simon Peter, something which no other version of the same
event does.
The idea behind the philosophical notion of 'necessary
being' as opposed to 'contingent being' concerns ontology
tself, the doctrines of being. Thus too we encounter the
simple and portentous "I am"/"It is I" ( e)gw/ ei~mi) in each of
the three recensions of the miracle. This resonates with the
imperatives of the creation narrative: "Let there be/ Let ..."
(Genesis 1.3, 6, 9, 14, 15, 20, 24, 26), the Christological
account of space, and those other categoreal entities related
in various ways to it. The distinction between necessary being
and contingent being, arises from Plato, for whom mathematical
and geometrical entities are completely other than those
things which may cease to exist. In time, 'God' too came to be
defined in such terms.
For our purposes however, we need to note the colour, that
is, tenor, of this type of desire. It is focused on rectitude,
on rightness or correctness as truth, since space will be the category
evincing the existence of this very value. In terms of the
intrinsic form of the value, transcendent truth, it is on a
par with the value goodness, which is also thorough or whole,
as it too is a fully transcendent form. Here beauty is the odd
man out; for it is weighted in virtue of immanence, at the
opposite end of the spectrum from truth, even though it
remains comparable to the encompassing value, the good, which
enjoys a transcendent status on par with that of truth, yet an
immanent status on par with the beautiful. So where is there
evidence of the specific axiological identity we are alleging?
In John it is indeed explicit both before and after the
two miracle stories, which identify Transcendence and the
value proper to the same, truth: The Feeding Of The Five
Thousand, and The Walking On The Water,
and connected logically with the compact of ideas which
includes space ('heaven'), will, and knowing. He nevertheless
delineates these two acoustic radicals in the sharpest
possible complementarity (antithesis) to one another. The
first miracle is the exposition of acoustic memory:
"I can do
nothing on my own authority; as I hear (a)kouw), I judge; and
my judgement is just (dikai/a),
because I seek not my own will (qe/lhma),
but the will (qe/lhma)
of him who sent me." (John 5.30);
If I bear
witness to myself, my testimony is not true (a)lhqh/v); there is
another who bears witness to me, and I know (oi!da) that the
testimony which he bears to me is true (a)lhqh/v)." (John 5.31,
32).
The second, immediately following, is The Walking On
The Water, the rubric for acoustic imagination:
Jesus
answered them, "Truly, truly (a)mh\n a)mh\n), I say to you, you seek me
not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of
the loaves. Do not labour for the food which perishes,
but for the food which endures to eternal (ai)wni/on) life, which
the Son of man will give you; for on him has God the Father
set his seal. (John 6.26, 27);
Jesus then said to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, it
was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven (tou~ ou)ranou~); my
Father give you the true bread from heaven." (to\n a!rton e)k tou~ ou)ranou~
to\n a)lhqhno/n John 6.32);
For I have
come down from heaven not to do my own will (qe/lhma), but the will
(qe/lhma) of him
who sent me; and this is the will (qe/lhma) of
him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has
given me, but raise it up at the last day. For this is the
will (qe/lhma)
of my Father, that every one who sees the Son and believes in
him should have eternal (ai)wni/on)
life; and I will raise him up at the last day." (John
6.38-40).
Mark tells the same story in a characteristically summary
fashion, although he expends a considerable amount of detail
on the healing miracle, which also involves the role of the
boy's father, a narrative on which we have already commented.
Turning therefore to Matthew what strikes us first is the role
he grants to Simon Peter:
And Peter
answered him, "Lord, if it is you, bid me come to you on the
water." He said, "Come." So Peter got out of the boat and
walked on the water and came to Jesus; but when he saw the
wind, he was afraid, and beginning to sink he cried out,
"Lord, save me." Jesus immediately reached out his hand and
caught him, saying to him, "O man of little faith (o)ligo/piste), why did
you doubt?" And when they got into the boat, the wind ceased.
And those in the boat worshiped him, saying, "Truly ( a)lhqw~v) you are the
Son of God." (Matthew 14.28-33).
This is a remarkable rendition for a variety of reasons.
Generally, the messianic miracles and the records of the
Eucharist show little variation, but here Matthew certainly
mirrors Peter himself in stepping out alone into uncharted
waters. Why? The text is redolent of the final chapter of the
gospel of John, which similarly alludes to if it does not
depict Peter's martyrdom (John 21.18, 19), In fact the two
evangelists use virtually identical language:
"Truly,
truly, I say to you, when you were young you girded yourself
and walked where you would (qe/leiv); but when you are old, you will
stretch out your hands ( e)ktenei~v
ta\v xei~ra/v sou), and another will gird you
and carry you where you do not wish to go (ou) qe/leiv)." (This he
said to show by what death he was to glorify God.) And after
this he said to him, "Follow me." (John 21.18, 19).
Jesus immediately reached out
his hand ( e)kktei/nav
th\n xei~ra) and caught him ... (Matthew 18.13a).
Here we must not lose sight of the
association of the transcendent miracles with death as with
the imaginal realm. Moreover, even if we find in this story
perhaps the most unflattering portrait of Peter we shall come
across in Matthew's gospel, his gospel is on the whole,
pro-Petrine in the sense of being the most 'Judaic' of all.
The epilogue of John, in which Jesus asks Peter three times if
he loves him 'more than these' (John 21.15, 16, 17),
does not hesitate to portray Peter's shortcomings, in keeping
with the theme of the failure of the disciples in Mark, and
the import of the Matthean story is of the same ilk. The
setting is the same in each.
Once more the mention of will is salient, because it is a
form of intentionality we can very readily attribute to the
charaterisation of Peter in every gospel. But the real focus
of the story is neither nor the will as such, it is acoustic
imagination, and its necessary mode of intentionality
knowledge-of-will. There is a substantial disparity between
the two, and perhaps Matthew's own purpose is to meet this
distinction and put it as succinctly as possible. Matthew too
has Jesus scold the incompetent disciples who in vain
attempted to cure the epileptic boy (Matthew 17.14-20),
evidently his equivalent of Mark's boy possessed of a deaf and
dumb spirit, and Jesus charges them too with
faithlessness (a!pistov
v 17). This also comports with the presentation of the
'disciple whom Jesus loved' in John 21, if we understand that
figure in terms of the role of faith in that gospel, and
if we accept him as in some sense being the author who says of
himself:
Now Jesus did
many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are
not written in this book; but these are written that you may
believe (pisteu/[s]hte)
that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing (pisteu/ontev) you may
have life in his name. (John 20.30).
This author of the gospel of John can
hardly propose himself as a solitary and peerless beacon of
faith without damage to his reputation as well as his witness;
even so his self-awareness on this score remains
psychologically reassuring. It is of a piece with his
self-awareness as to his relationship to Jesus, which is
characterised by the two expressions for 'love' he uses in the
last chapter, a)gapa/w
and file/w; just
as he understands these in connection with the function of the
desire-to-know, the intellectual component in erotic love, the
imaginal component in haptic memory.
The axiological character of acoustic imagination is
probably more immediately identifiable in its own native
intentional mode. Just as haptic imagination inherently
posits, even if extrinsically so, the value goodness as the
satisfaction of its own native appetition to know, the
intentionality of the acoustic imagination, that of
knowing-the-will, realises its own axiological identity, the
true. The knowledge-of-will is as grafted to this value as its
conceptual counterpart, the conceptual form space. So that
once again we can affirm the reciprocity between the type of
desire which this imaginal form generates, and its necessary
mode of intentionality. For this reason we refer to the
appetitive or desiderative type of consciousness which is the
property of the acoustic imagination as 'deontic'. It seeks
what is true, right, correct, just. More can be said of it
than this, but that constitutes a major part of the discussion
of the gospel of Matthew.
In summing up this brief review of the incidence of desire
in the forms of imagination we can again add that such types
of 'appetition' are vastly other than what we normally mean by
the word 'desire'. There is no iterative capacity in such
expressions of desire; there is never the urge for mere
repetition, mere recurrence. For by definition the
desiderative imagination is driven by novelty. This it accepts
from the transcendent forms themselves, none more so than
space and mind. If there is any creative thrust forwards in
time as the business of the imagination must imply, then its
impulse to ever newer satisfactions is the essential driving
force. The prospective nature of these members of
consciousness demands this as we see from the two crossing
miracles at sea:
And he saw
that they were making headway (basanizome/nouv) painfully, for the wind
was against them. (Mark 6.48a).
and equally from The
Transfiguration with its overtones of The Baptism
since this is a once only event antithetically to the given
character of the Eucharist which enjoins repetition. To
imagination, repetition is inimical. We shall be the better
able to understand these structures of consciousness when we
come to survey their semeia,
and since the gospel of Luke requires us to consider in
particular the haptic signs for the categories, we shall
indeed undertake this task. All three of the haptika for the three
forms of imagination, that is their haptic icons or semeia, comply with the
symbolically masculine disposition of the soma. That is, all are
consistently 'phallic' in as much as they are those members of
the body - whether actually that of male or female - which are
outwardly disposed. Another way of saying the same thing is by
means of the contrast between centripetal and centrifugal. The
physical morphology of the soma
in which these same structures of imagination are embodied,
the means of our own representation to ourselves of the forces
both cognitive and conative which they effect, accords with
the latter. To use another physiological metaphor, we may say
of the haptic semeia
which Mark details in each of the twelve healing miracle
narratives, that in the case of the three forms of imagination
these are efferent; they carry out from a locus towards an as yet
unknown and undesired reality.
If we describe the acoustic form of imagination as
'deontic', this is to draw attention to its inherent
axiological identity. All three forms of imagination as
'transcendent' provide for the equation between 'God' and
value; the good as belonging to the haptic, the beautiful in
the case of the optic and the true for the acoustic. Once
more, the full exposition of the axiology of imagination in
the first instance, defers to the three normative categories,
those of perceptual memory, and thereby ultimately to the
centrality of the Eucharist to this important strand of Markan
and biblical philosophical psychology. The full elaboration of
which is the theology of semiotic forms, and the exposition of
not only a Christian theory of language, that is, of the logos, but also one of
'revelation' so-called.
The temporal referential compass of acoustic imaginal
consciousness is that of the present and near future, the
proximal future as with all proximal temporal domains,
bordering on the present. In this respect it functions in
marked contrast to the distal future which is the domain of
the haptic imagination. All of the cognitive forms of
intentionality are disposed in this way; that is, all forms of
knowing and believing, whether of the conscious or aconscious,
delineate the present in relation to either the near future or
the near past. As for belief-in desire, it determines the
present realm relatively to the immediate past; as for
knowledge-of-will, the canonical form of intentionality
proper to acoustic imagination, it determines the present
realm relatively to the immediate future. The conative forms
of intentionality operate in terms of either the distal, that
is remotest, pasts or futures, without bearing upon the
present. These facts are essential to any understanding of
Christian eschatology.
A further remark is in order here. It
concerns the recurrence of one and the same intentional mode
throughout the entire sixfold ranges of both conceptual and
perceptual radicals of consciousness. Thus in the case of
Luke, dealing with that of desire, now that we have mapped in
brief its six radical exponents, and also having specified its
axiological identity, that of the immanent good, we can say
something further on this topic. In the case of the sovereign
form of desire, erotic desire, we meet the normative
definition of the immanent good. There are of course other
aspects to this fundamental radical of axiology. We have to
consider equally the transcendent form of the good.
Furthermore, we have to take into account not only the
normative, that is conscious and intrinsic occasions of this
value, one immanent, the other transcendent, we must also
account for the two non-normative, or extrinsic expressions of
goodness, one immanent the other transcendent. A comprehensive
axiology must incorporate the role of the aconscious, with its
non-normative (extrinsic) expressions of value. That said, it
should be obvious from the above argument that the range of
desire throughout all six perceptual radicals of consciousness
has to do with goodness. It is legitimate to nominate erotic
desire as the sovereign, or canonical, expression of the value
in question. But to see that there are in addition another
five exponents of the same mode, is to see the permutations of
this same value, the immanent good. Goodness, the normative
immanent good, in this way is not confined to just one basic conatus, erotic
appetition and satisfaction. It is manifest in all varieties
of the perceptual polarity of mind which are definable at the
first level as immanent, namely, perceptual. So as there are
six occasions which qualify as epiphanies of 'the good', there
is a total of six exponents of one and the same value. Surely
this is put in the first of the messianic miracles; six jars
of water transformed into six jars of wine. Goodness in its
immanent determination belongs to haptic memory; it remains
the property of erotic desire, as of technological
rationality, the conative and cognitive intentional forms of
the radical. The other five perceptual radicals intrinsically
or extrinsically likewise own specific values. The recurrence
or spread throughout the entire spectrum of a specific
intentional mode, in this case, desire, is effectively the
translation of that specific proper value into the
appropriating one. When acoustic memory acts in league with
the conative power of desire, what is by nature identifiable
in terms of truth, is transposed or translated into another
axiological kind, namely goodness. The basis of this can be
construed as analogical. It has its foundation in the
Eucharistic present, in which value resides as undefined if
not generic.
All occasions of desire, desire in all six generic
manifestations, are in this sense occasions of the same value,
goodness. Since only one of which is sovereign, all must be
scaled in relation to this particular same. This proposition
also applies in every case of a mode of intentionality;
whether perceptual or conceptual, and whether conscious
(normative) or non-normative (aconscious). It fits with the
discussion above of surrogate forms of satisfaction, the
elements of economic and hierarchic desire which we found in
the texts about sexual desire. Alternatively, those elements
of the erotic in stories which have to do with the economic,
ratify the same tenet. Due to the translation of the one value
throughout the entire spectrum of perceptual categories,
that is, the recurrence of the value goodness in guises other
than its canonical and defining moment, the erotic itself is
prone to the importation of what is actually the
property of the other occasions of the same mode. On the other
hand, those expressions of desire other than the sovereign one
also are susceptible of being erotically charged or loaded.
The recurrence of desire in occasions other than the defining
one, its sovereign or canonical expression, is tantamount to
the consistency of a given axiological identity with others of
its genus.
This page was updated 20.04.2023.
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