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Mark 5
MARK
5 BAPTISM-EUCHARIST AND THE IMMEDIATE PRESENT
Know then thyself, presume not
God to scan;
The proper study of mankind is man.
Plac'd on this isthmus of a middle state,
A being darkly wise, and rudely great:
With too much knowledge for the sceptic side,
With too much weakness for the stoic's pride,
He hangs between; in doubt to act, or rest;
In doubt to deem himself a god, or beast;
In doubt his mind or body to prefer;
Born but to die, and reas'ning but to err;
Alike in ignorance, his reason such,
Whether he thinks too little, or too much:
Chaos of thought and passion, all confus'd;
Still by himself abus'd, or disabus'd;
Created half to rise, and half to fall;
Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all;
Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurl'd:
The glory, jest, and riddle of the world!
Alexander Pope, An Essay
On Man: Epistle II
Our wisdom, in so far as it ought
to be deemed true and solid Wisdom, consists almost entirely
of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves. But as
these are connected together by many ties, it is not easy to
determine which of the two precedes and gives birth to the
other. For, in the first place, no man can survey himself
without forthwith turning his thoughts towards the God in whom
he lives and moves; because it is perfectly obvious, that the
endowments which we possess cannot possibly be from ourselves;
nay, that our very being is nothing else than subsistence in
God alone. In the second place, those blessings which
unceasingly distil to us from heaven, are like streams
conducting us to the fountain. Here, again, the infinitude of
good which resides in God becomes more apparent from our
poverty.
John Calvin, The
Institutes Of The Christian Religion, I, i, 1
THE UNITY OF VALUE
Within the context of
the theology of semiotic forms, the Eucharist stands in relation
to the three Eucharistic miracles as the specification of the
'animal' mode of sense-perception, the mode(s) of smell-taste
(osmic-gustic), to the three 'phenomenal' modes, touch, hearing
and seeing. Its immediate link to the haptic mode is
guaranteed by the fact that taste entails touch, for just which
reason 'taste' is mentioned explicitly in both Christological
miracle narratives. These narratives also signal the
distinctively binary pattern of the Christian sacraments which
replicate the categoreal paradigm, transcendence : immanence;
namely baptism and Eucharist respectively. The metaphor of
appetition-satisfaction combines all three Eucharistic
miracle stories. Indeed, stories of The Institution Of The
Lord's Supper all refer to communion under two species,
bread and wine, which are referent to the body and blood of
Christ respectively. Thus both miracles of loaves and fish are
incorporated as members of the same taxon of which the haptic is
the initial term when the class is arranged according to
temporal succession from distal to proximal pasts. We refer to
these three modes, haptic, optic and acoustic, designated in the
miracle narratives as 'phenomenal' in contradistinction to the
'animal' mode, that is, to the Eucharistic mode(s) proper, smell
and taste. The latter are also known as the chemical modes.
Although the same role in our prehominid forebears has long
since atrophied, smell-taste still functions as a means
of communication in some animals. Smell remains a powerful
source of knowing in some species of dogs for example, where it
is utilised in the detection of diseases such as cancer with
remarkable degrees of acuity. Whatever its cognitive capacity,
smell-taste nevertheless induces appetition in all creatures, provided the data are judged to be
'good'. Thus if the basis of experience can be said to
be 'emotional', it can be said to be 'Eucharistic', or indeed,
'animal', given the primordial stature of olfaction-gustation.
The acquisition of food necessary to any continued existence of
the living organism, in spite of costing most creatures
inordinate amounts of effort and time, remains primary to
survival, and consumption in its turn, depends on just this form
of sense-percipience. The primordial quality of need-desire is
first envisaged in the J creation story.
There is no fourth form of value concomitant with
'animal' sense-perception, smell-taste, even though its alliance
with the haptic mode might easily warrant its evaluative or
axiological capacity as determined by the good. Smell, as well
as taste, is highly operative in the animal realm in league with
haptic sentience.
In many species oestrus in the female
attracts the male by means of olfaction, and determines the
timing of the reproductive cycle. In humankind, the freedom from
this process is complete. Human sexual reproduction is not
seasonally or periodically impelled in the same way as that of
animals. (Just so, the restrictive diets of many animals differs
from that of humans in the same respect.) In the J
creation narrative, which registers the second and explicit
theological deployment of the notion after its introduction
implicitly in the first creation story, it is of course
associated with 'the knowledge of good and evil'. There
it is precursory to the three feeding miracles and the
Eucharist, as is the theology of immanence in the first creation
story. That no fourth form of value can be attributable to the Eucharistic
mode(s) of sentience sits with the absence of a fourth
(-seventh) conceptual form in the P creation narrative.
If the animal mode of sense-perception signifies no further,
fourth, form of value, it nevertheless clearly marks the
threefold nature of value denoted in the three phenomenal modes
of sense-perception, the subjects of the three miracle
narratives in turn, as constitutive of a single entity. The
existence of a fourth and final sentient mode, the Eucharistic,
or animal form(s) of sense-percipience, determines their
coherence as more than mere membership of a class or taxon. This
explains the structural motif in the P creation narrative, whose
second half precursively adverts to the four Eucharistic events
of the messianic series. There being
noticeably, no conceptual entity analogous to the Eucharistic
mode(s) of sense-percipience, as the story of the Sabbath makes
perfectly clear, the resultant fact of a strict enumerative
distinction between transcendence and immanence according to the
ratio 3:4, is resumed in the messianic series, as in the gospels
taken as a whole, and furthermore in The Apocalypse. Conformably
to the perspective of immanence, in both of these cases,
is a purposeful adoption of the fourfold. The ratio 3 : 4,
initially pronounced in the P narrative, is a legitimate
construal of the four dimensional and Transcendental category,
space : time, even though, as a conceptual form of unity, it is
taxonomically a category of virtual immanence within
what is indubitably a theology of transcendence. But the tetrad
as a marker of immanence, manifest in the spatiotemporal
manifold, cedes to the sense-percipient manifold. The final
semantic thrust of the cipher four devolves upon the delivery of
the messianic series, and the four feeding events in particular.
The creation story demands
accommodation of the theology of the Sabbath in any discussion
of the Eucharist. Their one-to-one correspondence obliges this
treatment. Thus we might ask, if there is no equivalent
seventh conceptual form, how shall we fulfill this obligation?
Insofar as it prefigures the Eucharist, the Sabbath clearly
defines the six conceptual forms, as a class or group,
consisting of two subsets; both the triad of conscious
radicals, and that of the aconscious. Certainly the one-to-one
correspondences of the six conceptual radicals with their
perceptual analogues tells for the same. But if we allow for
identity as a primary marker of transcendence, then this
refutes any unity of these components of consciousness on par
with that of the analogous perceptual categories. Perceptual
consciousness, clearly distinguished by the primordial status
of the Eucharistic mode, secures the unity of value: the good,
the true, and the beautiful. These three axiological
dimensions are epiphanies of The Son, The Transcendent, and
The Spirit respectively. Those corresponding conscious, perceptual,
modes of intentionality, desire, knowing, and
desire-and-knowing, whose functions span the entire spectrum
of perceptual forms, both conscious and aconscious, that is,
both memorial and imaginal, are solely capable of achieving
the oneness of God's being.
Notwithstanding the diversification of value, the business of
the pure conceptual forms as of the theology of transcendence
generally, the unity of value is what is meant by the
promotion of God's unity as the raison d'être of
the creation. There can be no unity of identities in God
without the world, and without the world of sentient beings,
such as ourselves, and our sub-human forebears. The unity of
value is the consistency of the good, the true and the
beautiful, as the function of perceptual modes of
intentionality, depicted in the Eucharist. This is also what
is meant by the claim that the world is internally related
to God. As the raison
d'être of the relation of the world to God, the
unification of value, tantamount to the oneness of God's
immanent nature, cannot be the exclusive prerogative of
humankind, the reason for adopting the epithet 'animal' in
reference to the Eucharistic form of sentience. All
creatures, all living entities which engage in consumption
of other entities, organic and inorganic, provide for the
unity of God. All living creatures are thus responsible for
the achievement of God's immanent nature.
The relevance of sub-human life for theology and for the
doctrine of intentionality should hardly surprise us. It
is first inferred in the second section of the P
narrative, which details the creation of animals and
humans; it occurs next in the J narrative; and it
receives its final deposition in the messianic series.
We see the inclusion of animals in several of the
healing miracle narratives also in the gospels. Further
to which, The Apocalypse recognises in theriomorphic
imagery derived from astrological myths, another trope for 'earth', as for
immanence, tokens of the
gospels themselves, for the purpose of relating them to
the annual compass. Its primary iconographical depiction
of The Son as The Lamb is likewise consonant with these
earlier examples of a theological strain of
'deep-ecology'. The reason for emphasising such elements
of the texts is not to replace the doctrine of the imago
Dei, which renders the status of humankind within
the created world, as unique, but to supplement it. The
net result places humankind both continuously and
discontinuously with its evolutionary antecedents. The
deep ecological theology of intentional modes such as
desiring and knowing, the acknowledgement that these
very processes occur in beings other than humans, of
course fits with the natural theology linking time and
mind semiologically. Moreover, it squares with the
essential rapport between time and mind envisaged in
The Transfiguration, and with the evolutionary
theoretical view of mind as a temporally emergent
property of living beings.
The Apocalypse is unique in its dedication to the
theology of immanence as to Pneumatology. This pursuit
renders it fundamental to the reckoning of the unity of
God, and explains its emphasis upon the anthropic
category. I shall develop this postulate with reference
to the gospels as manifestly specific and diversified in
terms of the doctrine of intentionality vis-à-vis
eschatology. I shall argue that intentionality must be
epistemologically demarcated from the taxonomies of
Genesis and the messianic series to which it is
nevertheless integral. Their integration is complete in
the case of the Eucharistic miracles. Thus the
Christological narrative, Transformation Of Water
Into Wine and the Transcendental feeding
miracle, The Feeding Of The Five Thousand, both
pay heed to the dodecadic tally of categoreal
constituents of mind whose epistemological status is
other than that of the forms of intentionality. The
status of the latter is typological. The twelve
categoreal radicals of both polarities, conceptual and
perceptual, effectively vary from the modes of
intentionality which derive from them. This distinction
is best expressed by transcendence : immanence, the
categoreal paradigm. The Pneumatological principle of
unity certainly shapes both narratives, the story of
'beginning' as well as that of 'end'. But we see in
both, the dominance of the hexadic and dodecadic
strutures enumerated in the Christological and
Transcendental miracle stories.
As the paramount theology of immanence, The Apocalypse
concerns the nature of God's unity. Its chief formal
outlines are the tetrad and heptad, conforming to the
two numerical references in The Feeding Of The Four
Thousand. They permeate the entire text
recursively in a variety of ways. These ciphers attest a
methodical aim comparable to the taxonomic purpose of
those stories of 'beginning and end' in Genesis and the
gospels, which are formally analogous to one another.
But The Apocalypse does not participate in this
relationship with any immediacy, that is, with any
further contribution to their taxonomies. Nevertheless
the P narrative, the messianic miracles, and the various
sevenfold series of The Apocalypse are given to
systematic classification. But whereas the primary
classificatory semantic of the taxonomies of creation
and salvation, 'beginning' and 'end' proper, rests upon
the construct of identity, that of typological
understanding obtains in virtue of unity. It is
typological rather than taxonomical classification that
occupies The Apocalypse. The clearest exemplification of
this alterity is the dissimilarity between the acoustic
and optic semioses. This accounts for the ambiguity
inherent in the syntactical possibilities maintained by
the three texts, creation story, messianic series, and
The Apocalypse, which we have already remarked; its
explication will become clearer as we proceed. It marks
the absolutization of contrast between the two
phenomenal modes of sentience, acoustic memory and optic
memory, mirrored in the relation of the creation story
and The Apocalypse.
Fourfold morphology
as indicative of sense-percipient modality does not
account for the discernible shape of the gospel,
except insofar as the two Christological categories,
haptic memory and haptic imagination, and the two
Transcendental categories, acoustic memory and
acoustic imagination, are isomorphic to the
composition of the annual cycle. That is, they stand
representatively of the (solstitial) gospels Luke and
John on the one hand, and the (equinoctial) gospels
Mark and Matthew on the other, given that these
four-eight categories occasion the four-eight
canonical expressions of intentional modes, conscious
and aconscious, analogously to the four, singular,
temporal moments in the annual cycle. These four,
singular durations, epiphanies of perceptible
alterations in the ratio of diurnal and nocturnal
intervals, reiterate the four
'canonica-evangelical' moments of the year. They
calibrate analogously the measure of the relations of
conscious to aconscious intentional processes, the
relative forcefulness of the two intentional forms
which operate in tandem. They also therefore stand
representatively of the four cardinal directions of
the compass as the first part of the series of seven
seals in The Apocalypse makes clear.
This accords with the discernible pattern of the four
sevenfold series in The Apocalypse as a whole, since
the letters and trumpets both reformulate the acoustic
mode, whereas the seals and bowls both reformulate the
haptic, supporting the identification of those same
series with the specifically various eschatologies of
the gospels. But any such configuration remains
incomplete without the addition of the Pneumatological
categories, since each quarter of the annual cycle
consists of two tokens, indicative of the initial,
conative, distal, phase, and the final, cognitive,
proximal phase of a process, the former being
instrumental to the latter. This requisite is supplied
by The Apocalypse. Its representation of the four
Pneumatological categories is that of the passage from
each and to each of those various tipping points, in
those sections of the text not specifically given to
the reiteration of a tetradic morphology. These two
sections are unnumbered, and the detection of a
heptadic form in each is logically valid. This gives
the work a remarkable degree of formal consistency.
The same two sevenfold unnumbered series should take
precedence of sorts, over the four sevenfold series,
since they announce the Pneumatological,
eschatological radicals of consciousness: symbolic
feminine and symbolic masculine; and optic memory and
optic imagination. Much of the semantic purpose of the
four sevenfold series, letters, seals, trumpets and
bowls, resides in their formal consistency with the
morphology of the gospel and with the conative and
cognitive forms derivative from those very four
Pneumatological, 'eschatological' radicals of
consciousness. Thus they should not be overemphasised
in accounting for that work.
EUCHARISTIC SENSE-PERCIPIENCE AND KNOWING
The six messianic miracles as a
systematic and essentially Trinitarian theology of
sense-percipience have already been considered in the study of
the gospel of Luke. We there examined in detail the six
radical types of conation, or desire, generated by these same
perceptual components of mind. Their study did not include the
Eucharistic mode itself, the animal and osmic-gustic form of
perceptual memory. Clearly within the framework of the
theology of desire, the Eucharist denotes the very
underpinning of desiderative, that is, conative,
consciousness. But inasmuch, does it indicate solely the
appetite for food and drink as necessary to existence? If the
Eucharist is formally and logically framed analogously in
rapport with the Sabbath, is there not some connection with
the portrait we have of the same, the desire-need to consume,
and the knowing of 'good and evil', and death itself,
the centrepiece of the J creation narrative, which was
adumbrated in the P story? The significance of this most
rudimentary mode of sentience must be linked to more than
conative consciousness alone. Its remit must also concern
cognition. I will submit that the modus cognoscendi
proper to the Eucharist is theology itself, more specifically,
the theology of immanence. I am thus proposing that cognition
or understanding occasioned by the mode smell-taste is
identifiable as 'religious' in the broadest of terms. It will
follow from the division of the categoreal paradigm
comprehensively defined in the very isomorphic structures
which interrelate the P narrative and the messianic series, as
well as the recapitulation of the categoreal paradigm within
each of these two cycles, that such 'Eucharistic' theology is
necessarily immanent in kind. This means that it is
necessarily given to the 'religious' explication of the
'connective tissue of reality' (Whitehead); the interdependent
nature of distinctly earthly existence construed in
terms that are recognisable as a metaphysics.
Concerning the Sabbath, matters must differ according to the
same categoreal difference between the fundamental
orientations of the two cycles. Any
'Sabbatical' (transcendental) theology must observe
fidelity to the reality of identity rather than
unity ('yoga'). Since
the Day 7 rubric does not announce a seventh entity
comparable to the six conceptual forms of the prior
hexameron, is it not then equally valid to conceptualise
this Sabbath as an incipient theology of death itself? Such
characterisation of the Sabbath rubric complies with
understanding the osmic-gustic mode of sense perception
vis-à-vis theology as a form of knowing, a modus
cognoscendi. Sabbath and Eucharist will then consist
as defining the broadest parameters of theology as an
episteme, or form of cognition. That conceptual awareness is
bound to the apprehension of finitude and death agrees with
The Transfiguration and its Johannine equivalent, The
Raising Of Lazarus. The
temporal phrase 'After six days ...' links the P
narrative as a whole to baptism and identity and death. The
Transfiguration, as messianic miracle corollary to
the Day 1 rubric, effectively consummates not just the
messianic miracle series, but the six Days and the
six messianic miracles. Its recursion of the creation
series confers upon the conceptual pole of mind as a
whole, that central point of epistemic-psychic gravity,
death. The
Transfiguration refers to the logos asarkos as
Thanatos in several ways:
- the verbatim repetition of the same title in
the synoptic records of the baptism;
- the reference to Jesus speaking of his exodus
(Luke 9.31);
- the general tenor of the miracle narrative,
and its references to the fear and incomprehension of the
disciples;
- the introduction which mentions 'deny[ing
the] self and tak[ing] up [one's] cross and follow[ing the
Son of man]' (Mark 8.34); and 'not tast[ing] death before
see[ing] the kingdom of God' (Luke 9.27);
- the extended discourse immediately
following, which refers to Jesus' death and resurrection
(Mark 9.9-13).
Luke's introduction to the last miracle of the series is
unique:
Now about eight days
after these saying ... (Luke 9.28)
The reference to 'eight' instead
of 'six' seems intent on returning to the first of the Days
series. Thus it includes the Sabbath in the cycle, and yet
clearly recapitulates the correspondence between the
transcendental Christological miracle, and the equivalent
creation rubric, for in the heptadic cycle, the eighth day
returns us to the first. The octave of Luke's narrative thus
sits perfectly with the significance of the acoustic semiotic
series in which the octave and resurrection form a
hermeneutical and semantic unit. We have already noticed the
same in The Appearance Of Jesus To His Disciples (John
20.19): 'On the evening of that day, the first day of the week
...'. The demonstrative adjective refers of course to the
previous narrative also, The Appearance Of Jesus To Mary
Magdalene (20.11-18); further to which we noted the
introduction to the story of Jesus And Thomas: 'Eight
days later ... '(20.26).
We can legitimately read the second creation narrative as
forming an unbroken sequence with the first. It ensues
continuously upon the Sabbath, and signals the inception of
continuous mundane time. We see from which, the role played by
awareness of not just time, but the awareness of death as an
elemental ingredient in human affective and intellective
experience. This complex association between time and death is
a major element in religious and 'metaphysical' modes of
thought. Pursuant to the Sabbath-Eucharist correspondence, the
J narrative also recommends the notion that the mode(s) of
smell-taste are of ultimate significance for
religious-metaphysical consciousness, and for theological
rationality, as a form of 'knowing', comparable in its radical
or rudimentary quality to the six other modi cognoscendi generated
in turn by each of the perceptual categories, and the six
forms of belief, which arise from the conceptual pole of the logos,
or mind. It reinforces
the nexus between Sabbath and Thanatos. The growing
significance of the Sabbath as redolent of finitude and
indeed death will sort fully with narratives of the
Eucharist and the Passion. The latter reveals that
the Triduum centres upon 'Holy Saturday' so-called, the
central, temporal unit during the 'three days and three
nights', during which the body of the dead Christ remains
immured in the tomb. This further reaffirms the affinity
between the Sabbath and the Eucharist forged by the biblical
texts. It reinforces the association of Thanatos-Eros
and the two complementary sacraments, baptism and
Eucharist.
It is here also that the closest ties between knowing, the
specifically Markan theological-intentional idiom, and the
Eucharist, emerge more intelligibly. Certainly the J narrative
makes no bones about a connection between death and knowing,
as well as desiring, although exegetes have traditionally
preferred to concentrate on the latter rather than the former.
The series of letters which begin The Apocalypse refers to
this form of consciousness persistently, the knower in this
case being 'the first and the last ... the living one', who
died and is alive for evermore (Apocalypse 1.17,18). That
series so we have contended, answers to specifically Markan
eschatological norms. Knowing as such, thus becomes a primary
soteriological-eschatological phenomenon, on par with its
conative antecedent, desiring. And given the recapitulation of
two of the Eucharistic miracles in Mark and Matthew, where
both forms of intentionality are resolutely iterated, any
'Sabbatical-Eucharistic', or Baptismal-Eucharistic theology,
will be bound to reflect these facts.
Sense-percipience in the mode smell-taste is paradigmatic of
the three phenomenal modes given in the three feeding miracle
narratives. Thus the Eucharist posits the unity of intrinsic
value which each of these modes realizes in turn. It signals
the unity of the good and the true and the beautiful
as given to intuitive awareness by the means of the animal
mode(s) of sense-perception, olfactory-gustatory. This same
coupled sentient mode, the token for the experience of value
as a generic and immanent reality in conscious life, is vital
to specifically immanent theological rationality. The
relevance of radicals or exemplary types of knowing apart from
theological knowing itself, that is, the epistemological
relevance of the messianic miracle series for theology,
emphasises the role of value. The three forms of value
instantiated by the six perceptual categories naturally fit
them to theological purposes. So if a specific form of value
is indissolubly attendant upon knowing, as well as desiring,
then this cognitive process is by definition innately
theological. That is to say, all knowing as aimed at truth,
must be avowed as theological. The Eucharist guarantees such a
claim, since it posits the oneness of value as God's immanent
nature, the unity of three 'identities' in God. Hence it
stands as the manifest of both theological desire and
theological knowing; the desire for God, and the knowledge
of God.
Consumption, as
dependent upon the Eucharistic mode(s), is the sine qua
non of embodied being. There can be no enduring life
forms of an increasingly higher, or more evolved, order,
without the sacrifice of other living entities. The term
'survival' denotes the dependent relation linking consumer
and consumed. This makes the sacrificial reality of
consumption itself a keynote of religious sensibility in
general, and signals as its composite notion, Thanatos-Eros.
It brings to our attention the nexus between sexual
propagation of the species, death, and ingestion, first
articulated in the second part of the creation story, and
the second creation story as a whole. The myth of Jonah for
example, which represents its protagonist as delivered over
to death, and ultimately redeemed from the same, clearly
utilises this motif. We notice in the narratives concerning
Sabbath-Eucharist as in both Christological miracle
narratives, overtones of the links between Thanatos
and Eros, a compounded notion of the temporal
signifier of rest-sleep-death, and agape, the
Eucharistic feast.
MARKAN
COGNITIVE INTENTIONALITY
As noted previously, the classical testimonies of the
categoreal entities which specify the Markan theological
agenda are as follows:
ACONSCIOUS
CONCEPTUAL RADICAL - SPACE : TIME
|
CONSCIOUS
PERCEPTUAL RADICAL - ACOUSTIC
MEMORY
|
Sevenfold Creation Series
|
Sevenfold Messianic
Series
|
Genesis 1.20-23 - Day 5
|
Mark 6.30-44 - The Feeding Of The Five Thousand
|
Markan
Twelvefold Healing Series
|
Mark 5.24b-34 - The Haemorrhagic Woman
(c.f. John 5.1-18 - The Healing At The Pool)
|
Mark 7.31-37 - The Deaf Mute
|
God said, "Let the water swarm
(wcr#$y; LXX e)cagage/tw) with swarms (Cr#$) of living creatures and let
birds fly across the expanse of the sky (LXX to\ stere/wma tou~ ou)ranou~)." God
created the great sea creatures and every living and
moving thing with which the water swarmed (wcr#$), according to their kinds,
and every winged bird according to its kind. God saw that it
was good. God blessed them and said, "Be fruitful (wrp,) and multiply (wbrw) and fill (w)lmw; LXX au)ca/nesqe
kai\ plhqu/nesqw kai\
plhrw/sate) the water in the seas, and let the
birds multiply (bry;
LXX plhqune/sqwsan) on the
earth." There was evening, and there was morning, a fifth
day. (Genesis 1.20-23 NET2 emphasis added.)
The Johannine miracle narrative is included here
as being of the same theological kind as the Markan healing
pericope. Its uses of the motifs of water, movement, and
multitudes ('swarms') confirm its connection to the Genesis
text. The record of the feeding miracle should be assessed in
relation to at least one other evangelical text of equal
import. In Mark, it follows upon his second, which is actually
the third, of the three messianic feeding miracles: the
recapitulation of both the Transcendental and Pneumatological
narratives of that class. The introduction reads thus:
Now they had forgotten (epela/qonto) to bring bread:
and they had only one loaf with them in the boat. And he
cautioned them, saying, "Take heed, beware of the leaven of
the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod." (Mark 8.14, 15.)
Those terms in the recapitulation explicitly
referential to knowing, have already been discussed; they are
italicised in the following citation:
And they discussed it with one
another, saying, "We have no bread." And being aware
of it (gnou\v), Jesus
said to them, "Why do you discuss the fact that you have no
bread? Do you not yet perceive or understand (noei~te ou)de\ suni/ete)?
Are your hearts hardened (pepwrwme/nhn e)/xete th~n kardi/an u(mw~n)?
Having eyes do you not see, and
having ears do you not hear? (o)pqalmou\v
e)/xontev ou) ble/pete kai/ w]ta e)/xontev ou)k
a)kou/ete;)
And do you not remember? (kai\ ou) mnhmoneu/ete;) When I broke the five loaves for
the five thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces
did you take up?" They said to him, "Twelve." "And the
seven for the four thousand?" And they said to him,
"Seven." And he said to them, "Do you not yet
understand?" (ou)/pw
suni/ete; Mark 16-21.)
The Matthean redaction includes
all three key verbs: ginw/skw -
'to know', 'to have knowledge of (sexual relations', as in
Matthew 1.25, Luke 1.34); noe/w
- 'to perceive', Matthew 16.9, 11, again in the negative
interrogative; and suni/hmi
- 'to understand', 'to comprehend', 'to have insight
into', ('to perceive'):
Then they understood
that he did not tell them to beware of the leaven of
bread, but of the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees.
(Matthew 16.12, emphasis added.)
Matthew also
utilises mnhmoneu/w - 'to
remember', 'to keep in mind' (16.9), as well as epilanqa/nomai - 'to forget', 'to overlook' (v 5), following
Mark, but does not repeat that the disciples 'had
only one loaf with them in the boat':
When the disciples
reached the other side, they had forgotten to bring any
bread. (Matthew 16.5).
Similarly to other moments in
his gospel, Matthew here mitigates the theme of the failure
of the disciples. Jesus' admonition of the disciples as being 'of little faith'; o)ligo/pistoi (v 8) -
sounds a less reproachful tone than that of the Markan
parallel. The recension notably lacks the Markan Jesus asking
if their hearts are 'hardened', and the quotation (Jeremiah
5.21, Ezekiel 12.2) regarding both sentient modes, hearing and
seeing, the key to its own understanding. There is however a
closely related quotation reasonably close at hand,
subsequently to The Parable Of The Sower (Matthew
13.10 ff), in the verbatim rendering of the original
Septuagint version of Isaiah 6.9:
He said, "Listen continually, but do
not understand! Look continually, but not perceive!" (NET
Bible; LXX: a)koh~? a)kou/sete kai\
ou) mh\ sunh~te, kai\ ble/pontev ble/yete kai\ ou) mh~
i)/dhte.)
Matthew also utilises mnhmoneu/w
- 'to remember', 'to keep in mind' (16.9), as well as epilanqa/nomai - 'to forget', 'to overlook' (v 5), following Mark;
verbs which in this context, allude to the Eucharist. It is
worthy of note that ginw/skw
which can also mean 'to remember', carries the additional
meaning of sexual experience, formerly known in English as
'carnal knowledge'. This and the reference to 'hearts' in the
Markan original, both proscribe an interpretation of the two
events in terms of exclusively cognitive intentional
awareness. That is, they prescribe the conative aspect of
intentionality as of equal importance to the cognitive, even
though not a single synoptic gospel contains the
Christological feeding miracle, The Transformation Of
Water Into Wine.
In both gospels the pericope is extremely
condensed. Other verbs such as 'to caution' - diaste/llomai, and 'to discuss' - dialogi/zomai, readily
support the hermeneutic of both The Feeding Of The Five
Thousand and The Feeding Of The Four Thousand
already flagged, as theologies of the Transcendental and
Pneumatological modes of sense-percipience, acoustic memory
and optic memory respectively, and of the essential relevance
these have to consciousness as both cognitive and
conative.
I have drawn attention to the context of the
healing story, The Deaf Mute. Its immediate proximity
to the second of Mark's Eucharistic miracle stories, The
Feeding Of The Four Thousand, (Mark 8.1-10) and the
recapitulation of both Markan Eucharistic miracle stories (vv
11-21), with its concentration on the themes of perception and
cognition is primary evidence for the significance of
cognition to this gospel in particular. The next healing
miracle, The Blind Man At Bethsaida, occurs
counterposed to the other. Thus the two healing events
bordering the recapitulation concur with the citation, the key to the hermeneutic of both
the Transcendental and Pneumatological Eucharistic events:
Having eyes do
you not see, and having ears do you not hear? (o)pqalmou\v e)/xontev ou)
ble/pete kai/ w]ta e)/xontev ou)k a)kou/ete;)
MARK 7.31-37: THE DEAF MUTE
There are several points of contact between the
various pericopae: two healing miracle narratives, the
Eucharistic miracle narratives, and their recapitulation. The
Deaf Mute contains a)nable/yav ei)v to\n
ou)rano\n ('looking up to heaven', Mark
7.34), which is used verbatim, understandably enough, of only
the Transcendental miracle, The Feeding Of The Five
Thousand (a)nable/yav ei)v to\n
ou)rano\n Mark 6.41), distinguishing it from the
Pneumatological event. The same aorist participle occurs in The
Blind Man At Bethsaida, once again not surprisingly
given its subject matter; but it is not used in conjunction
with 'heaven'. (In both healing events Jesus uses his hands.
This point is interesting, because it too ties them together
as bound by the theme of sense-perception, and also because
neither event is intrinsically related to haptic sentience,
the Christological mode. On both occasions Jesus is importuned
in the same manner: 'They brought to him a man ... and they
besought him to lay his hand upon him.' (Mark 7.32), c.f. 'And
some people brought to him a blind man and begged him to touch
him.' (8.22). We may
notice that these two healing events adjacent to the second
miracle story of loaves and fish and the recapitulation of
both, also involve Jesus removing the suffering persons from
the people gathered about him (Mark 7.33 and 8.23), a motif
which further cements their close relationship. But the
first episode ends with the zealous proclamation of the
event in spite of injunctions to the contrary. The second
takes place outside the village, and people are still in
view of sight since the man remarks: '"I see men; but they
look like trees walking."' The motif of privacy here is
notably qualified.)
The prior healing story refers to 'ears' (w]ta,
7.33) as does the recapitulation of the feeding story (8.24),
there all the more remarkably because it is a citation. It
also mentions tou~ o)/xlou
('crowds' 7.33), common to The Haemorrhagic Woman,
(5.24b, 27, 30, 31), as well as to both Eucharistic miracle
stories (6.34, 8.1, 6). This motif is vital to the description
of both Markan intentional modal idioms, knowing and the
will-to-believe. The healing story concerning hearing also
contains the verb diaste/llomai
('And he charged them ...' 7.36 bis), which is used in
the recapitulation also ('And he cautioned them, saying ... '
8.15). The conclusion of this pericopae is worth quoting. It
is fully congenial to the thematic construct combining
speech-hearing and the intentionality of knowing:
And his ears were opened, his tongue
was released, and he spoke plainly. And he charged them to
tell no one; but the more he charged them, the more
zealously they proclaimed it. And they were astonished
beyond measure ( e)ceplh/sonto),
saying, "He has done all things well; he even makes the deaf
hear and the dumb speak." (Mark 7.35-37).
It is a finer point, but all the same worth
noticing: the adverbial qualification 'beyond measure' (v 37),
alludes in general to the notion of satisfaction as fullness,
as well as the use of a cognate depicting the 'fullness' of
the twelve baskets in the the first feeding story and
the recapitulation (plhrw/mata
6.43, 8.20). John uses a different verb in his recension of The
Feeding Of The Five Thousand (
e)ge/misan John 6.13), which occurred in the first
Eucharistic miracle story (gemi/zw
John 2.7 bis), but nevertheless uses a cognate of the
same term, 'full', to describe the satiety of those who were
fed: 'When they had eaten their fill ...' ( w(v de\ e)neplh/sqhsan John 6.12). We
shall have recourse to the gospel of John in the next section
since one of its healing miracle stories agrees theologically,
that is, taxonomically, with the Markan text expounding the
aconscious radical analogous to acoustic memory. The same verb
occurs three times in the Septuagint translation of the Day 5
rubric, then again twice in that of Day 6, with the meaning
'multiply', 'pullulate', 'increase' (Genesis 1.22, 28).
It is difficult not to grant that the primary emphasis for
Mark in the recapitulation falls upon acoustic memory rather
than optic memory, even given the strong likelihood that the
messianic series itself was originally a written rather than
an oral tradition, and even if, the quotation from the Tanakh
notably reverses the order of the two messianic miracles as
indicative of acoustic and optic memory, the order in the
recapitulation also. This is also the order of the two healing
stories which enclose the texts as a sequence. One factor in
support of the priority of the Transcendental narrative is its
attestation in all four gospels. In addition to which, its
companion piece, The Walking On The Water, is absent
only in Luke. On the other hand, we have only two accounts of
the Pneumatological Eucharistic miracle: those of Mark and
Matthew. The chiastic structure of the series means that the
paired events at the peripheries and centre naturally receive
the most accentuation. These are the Christological and
Transcendental pairs of messianic miracles. This itself can be
read in terms of the essential taxonomical rapport between the
P narrative and the gospels.
The other argument in favour of Mark's native preference for
the acoustic rather than the optic form of sentience, is the twelvefold
healing series. These texts all perform in accord with the
analogous relation of the six messianic miracles to the six
days of the creation. We find, not surprisingly, since both
series are stories of miracles, messianic and healing, that he
utilizes the same theological criteria, whether primary or
secondary, to acknowledge the paradigmatic distinction between
transcendence and immanence. The primary criteria, identity
and unity, the latter, often enough in the guise of the
feeding motif, are present in several of the healing events.
The secondary criteria have already been listed, and these too
can occur in the healing stories just as they do in the
messianic narratives, indicatively of the categoreal paradigm.
That Mark limited the healing miracles to twelve in number,
and moreover, that they fully reiterate the twelve categoreal
radicals which are the subjects of the two analogous cycles,
is certainly evidence of the aesthetic integrity of his
gospel. The numerical consonance between the healing series
and the categoreal forms is further linked to the theme of
discipleship. Mark's preferred reference to the disciples as a
whole is simply 'the twelve'. This figure is central to
the Transcendental Eucharistic story as enumerating the
categoreal entities. Like the hexads of the Christological
messianic miracles, it adverts to transcendence as opposed to
immanence.
I submit that knowing in its canonical instance is 'knowledge
of the soul', or 'metapsychology', the doctrinal focus of this
study, The Markan Mandala, and the pre-eminent focus
of Markan and biblical metaphysics. The scriptural exposition
of this knowing is borne by the semiotic forms of acoustic
memory, and defined in The Feeding Of The Five Thousand.
Thus the ultimate responsibility of the acoustic semiosis is
the exposition of Christian epistemological and psychological
doctrine. This makes metapsychology of paramount concern of
theology. Such knowing cannot be merely objective in the sense
of a propositional content capable of acquisition and
possession by mere enquiry, as has been noted. Its axiological
identity prohibits this since truth, the indentifiably
'Transcendental' value, is characterised by axiological
subjectivism. We glimpse as much precisely in The Walking
On The Water, the companion, that is, complement, to the
Transcendental Eucharistic narrative. That pericope, like all
the miracle stories of virtual transcendence,
addresses identity as that aspect of perceptual consciousness,
complementary to unity, notwithstanding that the perceptual
polarity of mind, disposed in virtue of immanence, is
remarkable for the defining expression of unity. The miracle
as sea contains the 'I am' saying resonant with God's epiphany
to Moses: '"I am who I am"' (Exodus 34.) And it recurs also to
the presentation of identity qua transcendence in the
P creation story.
If the Eucharist specifies the
animal mode of sense-perception, smell-taste, within a
comprehensive accounting of the perceptual polarity of mind
as a whole, and if all knowing must necessarily be
inseparably bound to the intuition of value, threefold value
itself being tantamount to the threefold 'God' of Christian
doctrine, then all knowing, psychology no less, must reflect
as much. But the specifically theological, or axiological
aspect of the episteme, metapsychological cognition, is
bound to the value truth. Its veridical cast, in the
canonical, or exemplary degree of manifesting Transcendence,
ensures its cognitive status as first order. Such canonical
status is inseparable from its singular and paradigmatic
exemplification of the true. The epistemological status of
second and third order forms of knowing, is due to those
values with which they are concomitant, beauty and goodness
respectively. We might well enough say of them that they
reveal the beauty of truth, and the goodness of truth. But
their categoreal disposition is not in the first instance
due wholly and solely to truth as the singularly transcendental
form of value. The significance of optic memory and haptic
memory for the unity, or immanence, of God, is the provision
they make for first order or canonical occasions of
knowing-and-desire and desire respectively. That is, their
realization of the values immanent beauty and immanent
goodness is likewise canonical or first order; and it is as
such that they contribute to the oneness of God's being.
Psychological knowing,
knowing of the self by the self, must necessarily be also
epistemological, knowing about knowing itself. Such factors
constitute it as 'meta'-psychology. There is no Archimedian
locus outside of space and time, as well as beyond that of
embodied being, whereby such knowledge is made available to
oneself. In this sense, and for just this reason, it squares
with the status of special revelation as a divine disclosure,
of the '"I am ... "', and with the theology of The Word (logos).
The P narrative and the messianic series formulate the
rudiments of biblical metapsychology; but the acoustic
semiosis and these two narrative cycles of 'beginning and end'
are mutually inclusive. The myriad relations to one another
established by the twelve categoreal entities, recognisable as
psychological-epistemological, and so, Christological, as well
as those of the ensuing forms of intentionality, of which they
are the sufficient and necessary conditions, will remain
insusceptible of understanding without recourse to the
acoustic semiosis.
MARK 5.24B-34: THE HAEMORRHAGIC WOMAN AND JOHN 5.1-18: THE
HEALING AT THE POOL
The essentials of Mark's
text have already been discussed. Its location at the apex
of an extended catena of healing miracle stories tells for
the importance the evangelist attaches to it. In which
respect, it is on a par with The Feeding Of The Five
Thousand. The latter with its complement, The
Walking On The Water occupy the centre of the
chiasmos. They establish a pivotal moment in the narrative
arc of the gospel. We have just noted the presence of
expressions denoting 'multitudes' or 'many (persons)' in
narratives salient the specific theological orientation of
this gospel, as well as the images of the same in the Day
5 rubric. These reflect the phylogenic as opposed to
ontogenic character of both the conscious mode, knowing,
and its aconscious counterpart, will-to-believe. This fact
defines their epistemological and psychological ambit,
their identification in terms of human enterprises which
are recognisably Christological in nature; that is, having
to do with the logos as with consciousness.
There are several different
references to the phylogenic in The Haemorrhagic Woman.
They begin of course with the story into which it is
interpolated, Jairus' Daughter (5.21-24a, 35-41):
And when Jesus had crossed again
in the boat to the other side, a great crowd ( o)/xlov polu\v) gathered about
him. (5.21).
That event has only Jesus, three of his
disciples, and the parents of the little girl attend the
actual healing, and nothing further is added to contradict
this. This miracle occurs in private, consistently with
its subject matter, the conceptual form soma. But
once introduced into the first of two episodes linking the
two female protagonists, the element of the multitude of
persons is maintained in several references: 'And there
was a woman ... who had suffered much under many
physicians ( u(po\ pollw~n i)atrw~n,
vv 25, 26); 'She had heard the reports about Jesus (a)kou/sasa pe\ri tou~ I)hsou~),
and came up behind him in the crowd ...' ( e)lqou~sa e)n tw~? o)/xlw??, v
27); 'And Jesus ... immediately turned about in the
crowd,' ( e)pistrafei\v e)n tw~?
o)/xlw?, v 30); 'And his disciples said to
him, "You see the crowd pressing around you ..."' (to\n o)/xlon sunqli/bonta/, v 31).
Surely, it could
hardly be more emphatic on this point of the extremely
social milieu of the healing. (In addition to
the references to hearing, there are two references to the
woman 'knowing', vv 29, 33, and one to Jesus
'knowing/perceiving' (v 30). There is also a reference to
'truth' (v 33), which indexes the pericope in axiological
conformity with The Feeding Of The Five Thousand.
This text indeed is again remarkable in that it mentions
all three modes of sense perception; touch, hearing and
seeing.)
The Johannine miracle story bears close comparison with
all too many aspects of the Markan event for us to
overlook it as its equivalent. Its Trinitarian
denomination is pronounced at the close, and is comparable
to Jesus' relation to the woman whom he addresses as
'daughter' (Mark 5.34):
But Jesus answered them, "My
Father is working still, and I am working." This
was why the Jews sought all the more to kill him,
because he not only broke the sabbath but also called God
his own Father, making himself equal with God.
(John 5.17, 18 emphasis added).
There are numerous references to God, The
Father in the narratives which follow in John, and these
lead directly and purposefully to the two Transcendental
messianic miracle stories, the first of which is The
Feeding Of The Five Thousand. The introduction of
the healing story with its numerical reference, the 'five
porticos' of the pool at the Sheep Gate, allusively to the
miracle of loaves, is also direct and purposeful, so that
the context of this narrative mirrors the tendency we
sometimes find in Mark to place a healing miracle and a
messianic miracle of one and the same kind as closely
together as possible, similarly to the way all three
evangelists, Mark, Matthew and John, occasionally
associate a particular member of 'the twelve' (disciples)
with a particular miracle. I have discussed certain
factors of this narrative previously, but they bear
repetition in the present argument. The two stories,
although they stem from widely differing perspectives, are
nevertheless of a piece. The size and pertinence of the
crowd is common to the Markan and Johannine texts, and in
the latter is evinced more than once. Their shared features are as
follows:
In these lay a multitude of
invalids, blind, lame, paralyzed. (kate/keito
plh~qov tw~n a)sqenou/ntwn, tuflw~n, xwlw~n, chrw~n,
John 5.4);
The sick man answered him, "Sir, I have no man to put me
into the pool when the water is troubled, and while I am
going, another steps down before me." (5.7);
- both narratives specify the locations
of the cures (Mark 5.21, John 5.2);
- both narratives record the duration of
the illnesses, the Johannine pericope notes also that
the healing occurred on the sabbath (Mark 5.25, John
5.5, and 9c, 10, 16);
- both events involve discourses between
the healer and the healed (Mark 5.33-34, John 5.6-8);
and exchanges between Jesus and witnesses to the
miracle (Mark 5.30-32, John 5.9c-18)
- both narratives deploy the idea of
(social) hierarchy as a key factor in the theological
meaning of the miracle: the woman is ritually unclean,
and as such, untouchable, thus she approaches Jesus
'from behind', ( o)/pisqen,
Mark 5.25-27); the man is the least able of any of the
multitude to help himself, and he comments '"...
another steps down before me."' (a)llov
pro/ e)mou~, John 5.7), thus both
figures are social pariahs;
- both texts include references to
knowing and willing, either implicitly or explicitly:
the woman is compelled to act according to her own
resolve, unaided by another, and her initiative
rewards her with the cure. Mark's reference to 'many
doctors' (5.26) also highlights the existential
reality of knowing as a public and social enterprise.
The Johannine story is equally
clear about the role played by volition on the part of
the invalid, even though he is deprived of the ability
to move: 'When Jesus saw him
and knew (gnou\v)
that he had been lying there a long time, he said to
him, "Do you want to be healed?"' (qe/leiv u(gih\v gene/sqai;
v 5.6 emphasis added.) This makes the story of the man
a more subtle presentation of will in its aconscious
form, since we readily relate conscious will simpliciter
with the freedom to move in space. Whereas the Markan
narrative lacks explicit reference to will, but
nevertheless concludes with a reference to the woman's
faith (5.34), the Johannine text makes no reference
explicit reference to faith as such, but accentuates
the reality of volition.
These descriptions all match
phylogeny as opposed to ontogeny. All of them
illustrate human existence in terms of belonging to
human aggregates or classes just as The Feeding
Of The Five Thousand deploys the same in
league with the phenomenon of language. The location
of the healing miracle story in John, prior to that
particular messianic event, tells for the same: that
both miracle narratives concern the same theological
realities. Language as acoustic memory, itself
attests the same fact of human belonging to a social
grouping of a burgeoning scale. It is a joint
venture, shared by the many, and purposive to the
event of knowing. The will-to-believe we shall
argue, the outcome of the aconscious radical, is
responsible for the episteme best describable as social
sciences. Under the same umbrella, political theory
and anthropological studies can also be subsumed.
And it is just this which forms a vital part of the
theological critique behind the letters which begin
The Apocalypse.
There remains a substantial difference between its
two first series, as between the two gospels
whose eschatologies they restate in symbolic terms:
Mark and John. This difference is best characterised
axiologically as that of the true and the good,
correspondingly to phylogeny versus ontogeny. These
are the eschatologies respectively of the phylogenic
forces, knowing and the will-to-believe on the one
hand, and of the ontogenic forces, desire-to-know
and belief, on the other. Notwithstanding their
variance due to the axiological identities behind
them, the true and the good, their relation is
accounted for in terms of supervenience. Thus
desire-to-know, a Christological drive, is
prevenient to the Transcendental mode, knowing; and
the Transcendental mode will-to-believe, is
prevenient to the Christological mode, belief. This
means of course that no absolute division between
phylogeny and ontogeny can be upheld. They function
in mutual equilibrium, even if the resultant or
supervenient modes, knowing and belief, are
diametrically opposed in terms of the same
differential.
The
will-to-believe, which determines the Markan
theological perspective in tandem with
knowing, is the outcome of the conceptual
form space : time. Like knowing, it occupies
the phylogenic extreme of the scale from the
many to the one. The Feeding Of The Five
Thousand denoting the perceptual
radical acoustic memory, and the intentional
mode knowing, notably involves the greatest
of any number of human participants. The Day
5 rubric, announcing the conceptual
equivalent, likewise envisions swarms of
creatures, birds and fish, in regard to
places and times, clearly adverting to their
movement. The Markan healing miracle
representative of this aconscious,
conceptual complement to acoustic memory, The
Haemorrhagic Woman, no less,
repeatedly refers to crowds. The woman
herself remains virtually anonymous, her
individuality absorbed in the masses milling
about Jesus. The male persona in the
corresponding Johannine story confirms the
same characteristic of the same intentional
mode.
KNOWING AND THE WILL-TO-BELIEVE
'The
proper study of mankind is man' and 'the knowledge of God and
of ourselves' cited in the epigraphs to this chapter, put
succinctly the canonical occasion of knowing. Their nearest
and best available paraphrases must include 'psychology' and
'anthropology' with an emphasis on the role of consciousness
in the latter case. As for the episteme occasioned by the
aconscious intentional radical, space : time, the canonical
mode of intentionality proper to which is will-to-believe, the
best fits must be 'political science', 'social sciences', or
'human sciences'. It is necessary to remember that the latter
does not operate within a temporality contiguous with the
immediate present. That is to say, that it does not, like the
conscious mode knowing, establish the parameters of a proximal
past (or future) which is indivisibly joined to the immediate
present, as do all cognitive or epistemic modes of
intentionality. This is tantamount to noting that the
intentionality derivative from the conceptual form space :
time, in the first place is not epistemic (cognitive). It
generates the aconscious form of will, a conative mode of
intentionality, and is responsible as the driving force of the
conceptual aconscious towards this very end, cognition. But
the end of the aconscious conceptual pole, its epistemic
outcome, is art, the discussion of which formed part of the
study of the gospel of Luke. The will-to-believe may operate
cognitively, just as belief-in-desire may function conatively.
I mention the episteme generated by the aconscious counterpart
to conscious knowing here in order to highlight the coherence
of these patterns of consciousness vital to Markan
Christology.
We can see at once the phylogenic character of both, a
property which surfaced repeatedly in the relevant narratives,
just as it will surface in the ecclesial and world-religious
exemplifications of the dyad. The identification of the
specific ekklesiai and the specific religious
traditions other than Christianity which typify this dyad
clearly pronounce the dominance of social over individual
existence. Calvin belongs to the Reformed Christian tradition,
but is by no means its standard-bearer, not its single nor
foremost spokesperson. His role as part of a more collegial
and societal movement than that to which Luther belonged,
encapsulates the distance between the Reformed and 'Lutheran'
traditions, conformably to the dichotomous relation of
phylogenic and ontogenic patterns of being. The Reformed
Church embodies the psychology and epistemology foundational
to a specifically Markan theological perspective. In the
extra-ecclesial world they are epitomised in Sanatana
Dharma. (I am as reluctant to use the word 'Hinduism' as
to use the word 'sociology' in the present context; the former
because it smacks of 'orientalism', notwithstanding that it
has been thoroughly internalised by many followers of those
various traditions, and the latter because it represents
'linguistic miscegenation', notwithstanding that it is
commonplace in epistemological discourse.)
The postulate that the Reformed tradition epitomises the
intentional modal bases on which the gospel of Mark is
premised, accords with the criterion of heteronomy as a
primary attribute of both knowing and the will-to-believe;
both intentional modes are irrevocably phylogenic in nature.
This tradition is remarkable for its privileging of the social
order over the individual, and in this respect it differs
radically from the first wave of the Reformation which
culminated in the emergence of the Lutheran confessional
branch of the church. Even doctrines such as predestination,
or its inherently social-hierarchical bent, fail to interfere
with the overriding tendency to social cohesion innate within
the Reformed Church, and its ensuing subjugation of the
singularity and autonomy of the person. This impetus towards
social solidarity and the psychological definition of a more
or less purely heteronomous self, which obtains on a par with
the function of a lingua franca, severely proscribes
the functioning of the self as an autonomous being. We shall
come to examine these phenomena in the discussion of The
Apocalypse. The remarks entered here are for the purposes of
designating in the broadest terms only, some of the
reverberations of the epistemological-psychological doctrines
consequent on the Christologies central to both narrative
cycles, creation and salvation, and to account for the
inclusion of The Apocalypse as somehow the third member of
this trilogy.
Which brings us to the caveat necessary to any identification
of the ecclesial and extra-ecclesial instantiations of the
twelve radicals. The foremost of any doctrinal matter which
follows upon the hermeneutic of the two narratives must be the
identification of the cognitive and conative expressions of
these same rudiments of consciousness. That is the reason for
the primary concern with epistemology and psychology as vital
to Christology, and theologies of logos and the imago
Dei. This reveals the status of The Apocalypse as
distinguishable from the analogous series of Days and
messianic events. In sum, its difference may be framed as the
difference of typological from taxonomical theological
classifications. The identification of specific Christian
traditions, like that of specific traditions of world
religions, is not logically comparable to the identification
of categoreal forms. The twelve structural components of mind
disclosed in the two homologous narratives stand apart, as do
those narratives themselves. They are core doctrinal sources
for the present undertaking, Christian metapsychology; by
which I mean an epistemology-psychology that is essentially
Christological and Trinitarian. They denote key precepts for
any systematic and biblical theology. The relevance they have
for Christology and the doctrine of the Trinity is paramount.
The material contribution of The Apocalypse certainly relates
to this doctrinal core. But it does figure as a third
systematic disclosure, in apposition to those which bind
together the two foremost expositions of the essential credal
affirmations characteristic of Christianity, the creation
story and the messianic series.
The recognition of typological 'exemplifications' of these
same radical aspects of consciousness, whether in particular
individuals, as per a theory of personality types, or in whole
classes of persons belonging to given geopolitical units
and/or given temporal-historical complexes, that is whether as
ontogeny or as phylogeny, is of a different order. It is more
proper to speak of the intentional modes derivative from the
actual radicals, and then, to speak of these as tokens of a
given type. Here thus we are drawing a certain and categoreal
distinction between taxa and types. In avowing that the
Reformed Church and Sanatana Dharma equally epitomise
the intentional modal dyad upon which Markan
soteriology-eschatology is predicated, namely knowing and the
will-to-believe, we are claiming that they are type-identical.
Each is a token of the one type. The governing mental and
affective states which define or identify these cultures are
formally identifiable in such terms. But as manifests or
epiphanies of the categoreal dyad, they are not pure
instances. They are not pure exemplifications, of the radicals
themselves; the perceptual form acoustic memory in the case of
knowing, and the conceptual form space : time in the case of
will-to-believe, even though certain evidences of these
categories will inevitably surface in the specific cultural
phenomena nominated.
A distinct and obvious allowance for this avowal of typology
as as a geopolitical and historiographical adjunct to
ecclesiology, is already present within The Feeding Of The
Five Thousand, under the guise of the fractio panis.
This Eucharistic motif, the notion that the baskets collect
together the fragments of the miraculous feeding,
denotes the serial structure of the twelvefold acoustic scale
as a miracle or sign. That is, as a 'semiosis', a means, a
theological method of elaborating the dialectic between
identity and identity in the service of knowing God and
knowing oneself, and an indispensable element of ongoing
special revelation. But the Eucharistic miracle stories also
prophetically portray the church itself in its existential
brokenness, as a dismembered the whole, a unity not unlike the
given nature of the body. For soma maintains the
integrity of its identifiable members, broken and incomplete
as they are in isolation from one another, yet simultaneously
composite, complete only in their togetherness. The
Eucharistic re-membering is then no melancholic re-enactment
smacking of debilitating nostalgia for a lost status quo, a
paradise lost. It is promissory and the pledge of a future in
which the restorative power over death of its poietes,
its maker, poet, re-creator, is celebrated.
The twelve healing miracle stories in the gospel of Mark
support this. They deliver images of the psychopathologies
attendant upon each taxonomical radical and its derivative,
corresponding, mode of intentionality. These narratives should
be read in light of 'the twelve', the followers of Jesus, and
consequently, in accordance with the missional performance of
the church itself throughout time. Mark is unremitting in his
portrait of the failure of the disciples, a fact which at once
suits the first of the sevenfold series in The Apocalypse, and
indeed, later sections of that book. The same commission given
to the disciples as to the church, is presupposed in the
activity of knowing, which I am alleging is fundamental to
understanding the gospel of Mark. The commission given to the
disciples is very nicely and clearly announced in both Markan
feeding miracle narratives:
And when it grew late,
his disciples came to him and said, "This is a lonely place,
and the hour is now late; send them away, to go into the
country and villages round about and buy themselves
something to eat. But he answered them, "You give them
something to eat." And they said to him, "Shall we go
an buy two hundred denarii worth of bread, and give it to
them to eat?" And he said to them, "How many loaves have
you? Go and see. ( u(pa/gete i)/dete)"
And when they had found out they said (kai\ gno/ntev le/gousin),
five, and two fish." Then he commanded them all (kai\ e)pe/tacen
au)toi~v) to sit down by companies upon the
green grass. So they sat down in groups, by hundred and by
fifties. And taking the five loaves and the two fish, he
looked up to heaven (a)nable/yav ei)v
to\n ou)rano\n), and blessed, and broke the loaves,
and gave them to the disciples to set before the people;
and he divided the two fish among them all. (Mark 6.35-41,
emphasis added.)
In those days, when again a great crowd had gathered, and
they had nothing to eat, he called his disciples to him, and
said to them, "I have compassion on the crowd because they
have been with me now three days, and have nothing to eat;
and if I send them away hungry to their homes, they will
faint on the way; and some of them have come a long way."
And his disciples answered him, "How can one feed these men
with bread here in the desert?" And he asked them, "How many
loaves have you?" They said, "Seven." And he commanded the
crowd to sit down on the ground; and he took the seven
loaves, and having given thanks he broke them and gave
them to his disciples to set before the people ( ((i)/na paratiqw~sin); and
they set them before the crowd (kai\ pare/qhkan tw~? o)/xlw~?).
And they had a few small fish; and having blessed them, he
commanded that these also should be set before them
(kai\ tau~ta paratiqe/nai).
(Mark 8.1-7, emphasis added.)
This image of the obligations of
the disciples to emulate the Eucharistic ('sacrificial')
actions of Jesus in both narratives, dovetails with the
epilogue in the gospel of John, which shows Peter
rehabilitated, and three times enjoined to feed/tend the
flock. The conjoint ideas of the failure of the disciples and
of the missional enterprise incumbent on 'the church', along
with the psychopathology of the four cardinal intentional
dyads, will be pursued imaginatively in The Apocalypse, the
hermeneutic of which must therefore give ample scope to church
history and the history of religions, as well as the
futures of both church and world religions, imaginatively
reconceived and preconceived. The same construct is introduced
in the seven letters, and then immediately graphically resumed
in the presentation of the four horsemen allied, each with one
of the four living creatures, hence with a gospel, hence with
an epistemic-psychic dyad, and hence with a formal complex
aconscious-conscious intentional structure. These portraits of
the four horsemen articulate the innate proneness to sin of
the cardinal forms of intentionality.
In the immediacy of the now the effects of
their failures stand as a permanent reproach of the
abuse and corruption by power of the Christian church
in its entirety. The cavalier and
military imagery thus adverts to the perversion
of the four intentional-modal complexes,
demonic in their degraded liability
towards violence and destruction.
The first four seals is therefore re-creative disclosure of
the fractio, the fragmentation of the church reflected
in the very formal constitution of the gospel. They
pictorially conceive the effects entailed by the canonical
intentional-modal forces on which the gospels are formally
based, logically compatibly with Mark's
programmatic tendency to align the twelve healing miracles
with the psychopathologies native to each of 'the twelve',
the categories in themselves, as well as to the disciples.
This quartet is then pursuant to the first sevenfold
series, which reproaches the seven churches
for various shortcomings. The same four evangelical-cardinal
complexes are embodied as types in the four distinctive
branches of the church. The first four seals focuses
Christianity itself as one world religion among at least three
others; but the actual series of seals alone typologizes Christianity
itself, albeit not in isolation from, but relative to
worldwide 'religion' as a human pre-occupation defined
relatively to the meaning of the Sabbath-Eucharist
complex outlined above.
These first four seals thus follow
logically from the prior series of letters, as
well as sorting with later strands of the work,
given over to the same thematic critique. They follow
upon the letters as essentially a critique,
the emphasis being given over to the notion of
the destruction wrought by each. Conquest
is mentioned in the vision of the first of
the horsemen, tying this second series to
the seven letters, in which it was a
keynote (Apocalypse 2.7, 11, 17, 26, 3.5,
12, 21). The injunction to 'conquer' in
the series of letters, repeated as
frequently as is the theme of 'knowing',
assumes a profoundly different tenor in
the last letter, where it becomes framed
comparably with the conquering of the 'one
like a son of man', 'the first and the
last, the living one', who is dictating
the letters. This is one of the very few
features of the seventh letter,
distinguishing it as such; that is,
consonantly with the particularity of the
Sabbath and Eucharist as the final
members of their respective series.
"He who
conquers, I will grant him to sit with me on my
throne, as I myself conquered, and sat down myself
with my Father on his throne." (Apocalypse 3.21).
This is not the kind of conquering
imagined in the first seal, attributed to the rider on the
white horse, further attributable to the remaining three. The
first four seals address the proseltyzing missio ecclesiae,
imaginatively pictured by means of the metaphorical construct
of the four horsemen, advancing presumably in all four
cardinal directions of the compass. It squares adroitly with
commissioning of the disciples 'to make disciples of all
nations' (Matthew 28.19a). This image directs attention not
solely to the fundamental differences between each of these
subdivisions of the church militant. Indeed no greater
differences can be better iconographically rendered than the
notion of the cardinal directions of the compass. Yet this
image account for their relational composition.
The four horsemen allude to the visions in Zechariah. John
understands the mission of the church vis-a-vis the four,
cruciform, directions of the compass, comprehensively
throughout the world and throughout time. (The sixth seal
contains a vision of 'four angels standing at the four
corners of the earth' (Apocalypse 7.1).) The destructive
capacity of the horsemen is intelligible in relation to the
specificity of the gospels, graphically invoked by the four
'zoa' who summon each one, and determined as part of the
theology of logos. Since the mission of the ekklesia
duly reifies the very epistemological and
psychological forces and drives which
characterise the gospel(s), just as these were
initially designed to serve its positive
influence in the world, the
seer of The Apocalypse envisions in this way, the missional
propagation of the gospel in terms of its failure. The
effects of the horsemen are emblematic of systematic evils
consequent upon the historical expansion of Christianity
itself. The psychopathology of same forces which diversify
and specify the theological perspectives of the four gospels
are represented by the four horsemen who betoken the
adulteration of the Christian kerygma compromised by
political power, and whose legacy is summed up in the
conclusion to the fourth seal:
...
and they were given power over a fourth of the earth, to
kill with sword and with famine, and with pestilence and
by wild beasts of the earth. (Apocalypse 6.8b).
The upshot of the distinction
between taxonomical and typological reasoning, correspondingly
to the difference between the narratives of Genesis and the
gospel on the one hand, and those of The Apocalypse on the
other, must be to insist that neither the ecclesial
nor the extra-ecclesial type in this, as in every case, fully
implements the given character of the radical forms of
intentionality in question. Thus neither the Reformed Church
nor Sanatana Dharma wholly embody what we identify as
knowing and/or the will-to-believe. Effectively, neither can
be said to be the perfect token, the absolute expression, of
its type. But they are indeed those very tokens which best
recognisably approximate the same. The further exploration of
the specifically 'Markan' instances of the church and its
corresponding world religion belong to the discussion of The
Apocalypse
THE
IMMEDIATE PRESENT
Each
of the gospels, congruent with the fourfold, annual,
spatio-temporal template, is the exemplar of two forms of
intentionality, only one of which defines a proximal
temporal domain connected to the present. Reference to this
particular template more frequently than to any other is
because it perfectly remodels the inscripted,
intertextual reference to the four gospels in The
Apocalypse. Phrasing this remodelling as 'inscripted' is
meant to emphasise the function of that text as
self-consciously graphic. As written, it is self-consciously
Pneumatological, and hence innately concerned with 'special'
revelation. The role of writing, letters, seals, eyes,
scrolls, and the other numerous other paraphernalia of the
text qua text and the various optical motifs which
proliferate in The Apocalypse, bear this out, as does its
own semiotic focus on visionary experience, and its
Pneumatological-eschatological reinscription of the fourfold
gospel in the four sevenfold series. The iconographic
depiction of the gospels as special revelation, in terms of
the four 'zoa', which resumes the astro-temporal visions of
Ezekiel, is itself analogical since it redeploys their
congruence with the annual template as the basic paradigm of
their interrelation. In just this manner, it echoes the
essential morphological consonance analogously maintained by
the first creation story and the messianic series.
This connection of proximal modes of intentionality is to be
construed a propos of re-presentational immediacy as per the
dyadic association of Sabbath and Eucharist. This carefully
observes the differentiation of the conceptual
('Sabbatical') pole from the perceptual
('Eucharistic') pole, further expounded in the two
Christologies of the messianic series. That said, it forges
no naive difference between perceptual and conceptual as
that of the difference between past and future respectively.
The former, Sabbatical-conceptual intentional modality is
semiologically encrypted by means of the figure 4, the
latter, Eucharistic-perceptual intentional modality by means
of the figure 7, ciphers contained within the
Pneumatological feeding miracle story. Thus the 4-3
cadence, and the 7-8 cadence in the major scale
re-present the intentional modes belief and knowing
respectively; the former in the descending scale, the latter
in the ascending scale, and as such, formally distinguish
the categoreal polarity conceptual : perceptual according to
the construct of pure conceptuality versus actual
perception. The same is reversed in the acoustic semiosis of
the aconscious; the 4-3 descending cadence in the
major scale there signifies the mode desire-to-know,
canonically occasioned by the haptic imagination; and the 7-8
ascending cadence in the major scale now signifies the mode
will-to-believe, the canonical occasion of which is the
product of the conceptual form of unity space : time. This
aligns perceptual imagination as the series of forms
of virtual transcendence with the (purely)
transcendent, conceptual forms; just as it aligns the series
of virtual immanence, the conceptual forms of
unity, with the forms of (actual) immanence,
perceptual memory.
Their representation is consistent in that the intentional
modes of virtual transcendence, desire-to-know,
belongs to the future, as does that of pure transcendence,
belief, since they are both represented as the transition
from perfect fourth to major third; and the intentional mode
of virtual immanence, will-to-believe, like that of
actual immanence (memory), knowing, are both represented as
the transition from (major) seventh to the tonic/eighth,
consistently signifying that they equally belong to the
past. These are all modes of theoretical reason,
semiotically expressed in the acoustic series by the major
sevenfold scale(s). This pattern coheres with the second
order application of the categoreal paradigm; the iteration
of transcendence : immanence, within each polarity of
consciousness, conceptual as well as perceptual. I repeat
the canonical-evangelical exemplifications of the four
dyadic modes of intentionality here for convenience,
following the order observed in the reference to the gospels
given in the first four series of seals:
- John: conscious belief - proximal future-present
and aconscious desire-to-know - distal future;
- Matthew: aconscious knowledge-of-will -
proximal future-present, and conscious will - distal
future;
- Luke: aconscious belief-in-desire - proximal
past-present, and conscious desire - distal past;
- Mark: conscious knowing - proximal past-present,
and aconscious will-to-believe - distal past.
The last of these, which plots the
temporal-theological perspective of the gospel of Mark concerns
us here. Its symbolic, precursive/recursive occurrence in The
Apocalypse is the series of letters, the first of the sevenfold
series.
THE FOUR SEVENTH EVENTS
IN THE APOCALYPSE
The seventh events of
the series of seals, trumpets, and vials, and even those of the
letters in The Apocalypse, each give rise to subsequent events.
As suggesting a linear construct of time this is not surprising.
The prevailing tendency of that book favours vision, with its
innately relative contrast to the acoustic, the mode in which
the creation story is framed, and to which the concept of
cyclical time is congenial, given the acoustic semiotic
phenomenon of the octave. The Apocalypse stands in completest
contrast to the stories of beginning. What evidence does the
book contain for the kind of doctrinal affiliation between
intentionality and eschatology which will offer support to the
hermeneutic of the Sabbath-Eucharist that we are proposing? As
noted, it comes in the seventh letter and the following
three seventh episodes, all of which reformulate the
categoreal link subtended by Sabbath and Eucharist. These
'Sabbatical-Eucharistic' episodes are vital to our understanding
of the Pneumatological feeding miracle story, The Feeding Of
The Four Thousand. They also stand out in the four
heptadic series of The Apocalypse due to the semantic value of
the figure 7 for Pneumatology in general.
Preliminary to any comment on the prevalence of
imagery that may be accounted 'Sabbatical-Eucharistic' in the
Apocalypse, must be the observation that the preferred title for
The Son by the seer is 'the Lamb', to\
a)rni/on, a preferential usage which resounds with the
synonym in John's depiction of the baptism of Jesus, a)mno\v, (John 1.29, 36). (In John
21.15, the risen Christ refers to "my sheep" as ta\ a)rni/a mou.) It occurs in the work
twenty-eight times, a fact which has called some commentators to
remark on the same number a the product of 7 and 4. It alludes
to the Eucharistic modes of sense-percipience, particularly to
taste as to eating. In chapter 5 of The Apocalypse the vision of
the Lamb forms the exordium to the series of seals.
Opinions of the putative derivation of the metaphor from the Old
Testament vary, if in fact there are any at all. Certain
scholars argue for a hermeneutic of the entire book on the basis
of the various Jewish liturgical practices employing the lamb.
(See for example in this connection The
Sacrificial Symbolism Of The Lamb in the Book of Revelation
by John Ben-Daniel, which treats of the entire work in
accordance with the Lamb Christology.) There is more than a
single reference to eating in the series of letters to the
churches. We should not forget that the letters are not numbered
as are the other three series, although there are three
references to the churches as numbering seven (Apocalypse 1.11,
20 bis). But the most emphatically Eucharistic of these
various references to consumption and commensality appears in
the last, the seventh letter of the series. The first instance
of the eating motif comes in the first letter, which is
addressed to Ephesus. It concludes with the promise:
"'To him who conquers I will grant to
eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.'"
(Apocalypse 2.7).
Similarly, the third letter, addressed to Pergamum
ends:
"'To him who conquers I will give some
of the hidden manna ... '"(Apocalypse 2.17).
The fourth letter is addressed to Thyatira, and
refers also to the consumption of foods involved in cultic
sacrifice, a practice widespread in the ancient world. The name
'Jezebel' uncompromisingly connects the act of such consumption
with sexual immorality:
"'But I have this against you, that
you tolerate the woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess
and is teaching and beguiling my servants to practice
immorality and to eat food sacrificed to idols. I gave her
time to repent, but she refuses to repent of her immorality.
Behold, I will throw her on a sickbed, and those who commit
adultery with her I will throw into great tribulation unless
they repent of her doings; and I will strike her children
dead.'" (Apocalypse 2.20-23a).
By far the most resounding of any such reference
comes in the last and seventh letter, which is addressed to
Laodicea:
"'Behold I stand at the door and
knock; if anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will
come in to him and eat with him, and he with me. He who
conquers, I will grant him to sit with me on my throne, as I
myself conquered and sat down with my Father on his throne. He
who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the
churches.'" (Apocalypse 3.20-22).
The 'Eucharistic' motif in the last of the seven
letters confirming its link with the Sabbath just noted,
formally alludes to the death of 'the Lamb', whom the seer sees
'standing, as though it had been slain (e)sfagme/non),
with seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven
spirits of God sent out into all the earth' (Apocalypse 5.6).
The reason here for linking the Sabbath 'rest' of the creation
with the phenomenon of death is not so much due to the mythical
aetiology of death provided in the J narrative. It has to do
with worship, a theme more appropriate to the P creation
narrative. The Day 6 rubric blends two ideas, the reproduction
of living things, both animal and vegetable, and consumption
(Genesis 1.28-30). Of course the J narrative utilises this same
compound, but in the first story there is no hint of primal
miscarriage as in the second story. The Sabbath is resolutely
affirmed by the Priestly author. It is blessed and made holy as
the consummation of God's work (Genesis 2.3), and serves as
foundational to the Judaic liturgical system. A Eucharistic
theology which has recourse to any sacrificial rationale, even a
notional one, must therefore in the first instance acknowledge
the existential fact that life itself depends on the death of
other living entities. Consumption is irrefragably grounded in
this way.
The concluding exhortations of the last letter, the first of the
four clearly demarcated sevenfold series, then give way
naturally to the vision of the worship of 'the one
seated on the throne'. The connecting link between the last
letter and the vision is the door at which the letter's speaker
stands: 'the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning
of God's creation', stands and knocks, ready to eat with anyone
hearing his voice, who opens, and with whom he will eat.
(Apocalypse 3.14, 20), These are distinctly Eucharistic
constructs, carried over to the following text since the 'open
door' into heaven is next mentioned (Apocalypse 4.1). There is
no doubt then, that the last letter performs a role similar to,
if not the same as, the seventh episodes in the following three
series. All are teleological; the seventh seal likewise cedes to
its subsequent series (Apocalypse 8.1-2), with a vision of the
heavenly worship. In Apocalypse 11.19, the seventh
trumpet is followed by a description similar to the previous
portraits of 'God's temple in heaven' after the series
of letters (Apocalypse 4.5 emphasis added), and seals
(Apocalypse 8.2), although chapters 12-14 intervene before the
final sevenfold series, that of the vials. The last image of the
heavenly throne occurs after the series of vials (Apocalypse
16.17-21), the effect of which virtually trumps all three
previous comparable occasions.
This page was updated 2nd June 2020.
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