2 THE MESSIANIC
MIRACLES
A HERMENEUTIC
Alone, alone, about a dreadful wood
Of conscious evil runs a lost mankind,
Dreading to find its Father lest it find
The Goodness it has dreaded is not good:
Alone, alone, about our dreadful wood.
Where is that Law for which we broke
our own,
Where now that Justice for which Flesh resigned
Her hereditary right to passion, Mind
His will to absolute power? Gone. Gone.
Where is that Law for which we broke our own?
The Pilgrim Way has led to the Abyss.
Was it to meet such grinning evidence
We left our richly odoured ignorance?
Was the triumphant answer to be this?
The Pilgrim Way has led to the Abyss.
We who must die demand a miracle.
How could the eternal do a temporal act,
The Infinite become a finite fact?
Nothing can save us that is possible:
We who must die demand a miracle.
It remains to define more precisely the relation of the three
forms of unity to God, so let us begin with the identification
first announced in the creation narrative of the Son as uniquely
manifest in the role in consciousness of the conceptual form of
unity mind : body. Mark has thirteen different accounts of Jesus
healing the sick. We adduce every one of these as first order
evidence for this postulate of the intimate link between the Son
and the psychophysical. Each of these healing stories evinces
the identification of the Son relative to the conceptual
category mind : body, the delivery of rubrics, Day 1
and Day 4. It is the Son who mediates the
archaeological and eschatological categories, space : time and
male : female. Thus the claim that the prime exemplar of the
identity of the Son is the psychophysical receives insistent
vindication in Mark. The Markan Jesus is ever a healer of the
sick. Each of the thirteen healing miracle stories has as its
presupposition, the lived body, the psychophysical unity
which is the soma of our own being, as well as that of
other living creatures. We see the connection between ourselves
and the subhuman realm in the Day 6 rubric, which records the
phenomenon of sexual dimorphism shared by ourselves and certain
'earth' animals.
Before we consider the messianic events themselves for the light
they shed on the series of healing miracles, we need to
recognise that both sets of narratives are miracle stories. They
are members of the same literary genre: miracle narrative, and
frequently enough, employ the same and similar terms. Surely
they are related in some way touching upon the doctrine of mind
: body. A summary look at just two of the stories of healing
will prepare our investigation of the messianic events.
It would be a simple state of affairs if we could simply
divide the healing miracles into two classes: exorcisms, and so
'psychic' miracles, or events which are in the first place, to
do with the 'psyche' of psychiphysical, thus eliminating and
classifying the second and putatively other set as events
concerning the physical'. However, that is not a valid
procedure. Apart from resulting in what is a Cartesian misstep
which divorces the one from the other, it will not survive
scrutiny. In total, the exorcisms number four: The Man In
The Synagogue (Mark 1.21-8), The Gerasene Demoniac
(5.1-20), The Daughter Of The Syrophoenician Woman
(7.24-31), and The Boy With An Unclean Spirit
(8.14-29). Certain other episodes have about them, qualities in
keeping with the exorcisms. So for example, The Paralytic
(2.1-12) largely concentrates on a saying about forgiveness. Jairus'
Daughter likewise contains a dominical saying - "Little
girl, I say to you, arise." (5.41), as does The Deaf And
Dumb Man (7.32-37) - "Be opened." (v 34). The gospel
preserves both sayings in their original forms. Consequently, it
might seem legitimate to classify these as exorcisms.
Too much attention has been given to the exorcism as a kind of
miracle. Certainly, the Markan miracle stories are logically
ordered, but not in terms of exorcisms and other events. We can
say that the evangelist was clearly aware of the role of mind,
consciousness, in illness. On no account however can we simply
equate the exorcisms with the depiction of mind. For one thing,
we find an awareness of mind in stories about events that are
not exorcisms. The Paralytic is one such. For another,
the metaphysics of the gospel is altogether more refined.
We noted that the messianic miracles consist of two
subspecies and that these in turn confirm the theology of
creation. The three transcendent Days establish the
primordiality of space, and four immanent Days pre-empt the
further disclosures of the gospel. As for the gospels, the same
binary pattern recurs, with exactly three ostensibly
transcendent episodes centred on the notion of identity, and
four immanent events which cohere by reason of the Eucharistic
motif, consumption. We expressed the latter as the principle of
unity. The process of assimilation means the incorporation, that
is, union, of food and drink with the body. Therefore we used
these notions, identity : unity, to paraphrase both the internal
patterns of the narrative cycles of Genesis and the gospel, and
the external relation they subtend to each other. The latter is
a reformulation on a broader scale still, of the paradigm
transcendence : immanence. For these two juxtaposed concepts
encapsulate the very relation of the two texts in terms of their
congruent morphology and content. They summarise what is thus
far emerging as a biblical metaphysics.
We examined a range of secondary criteria evincing an
emergent polarisation within the messianic series. These were
(1) public/private, (2) conviviality/awe, (3) nocturnal/diurnal,
(4) determinism/freedom. We also noted the presence of a
typological contrast between feminine and masculine polarities
as part of this presentation, but without any detailed
exposition. The secondary criteria betoken the consistent
conformity of the messianic series to the categoreal paradigm,
transcendence : immanence. Now the question arises whether or
not the healing events are also organised according to the very
same criteria. This is the question of the integration of the
one set of miracles, messianic, with the other, healing, the
issue of the integrity of the gospel of Mark. A proper treatment
of the application of the several criteria observed in the
messianic series to the other set of miracles in Mark, the
healing miracles, requires considerable detail which the
immediate focus of this essay precludes.
The short answer to these questions is that these secondary
criteria do function in Mark's series of healing miracles, but
not always as clearly as they operate within the messianic
episodes. It is preferable to adopt the primary criteria,
identity : unity, so as to distinguish transcendent and immanent
messianic episodes. We may of course use the secondary criteria
in combination with this fundamental paradigm which observes the
interdependence of the two narrative cycles, Genesis and gospel,
creation and salvation, beginning and end. The overarching
pattern of identity : unity is formulated throughout Mark's
accounts of Jesus healing the sick. With the application of this
formula, identity : unity, to the healing miracles, the
gospel now begins to reveal itself as remarkable in its logical
coherence and aesthetic consistency. Let us take two narratives
as examples to demonstrate this argument, The Paralytic,
and The Daughter Of Jairus.
The
Paralytic (Mark 2. 1-12)
The episode deals at some length with the controversy
generated by Jesus' saying "My son, your sins are forgiven."
From the point of its introduction (v 5) halfway through the
narrative onwards, it dominates the story, effectively the last
seven of twelve verses. The content of the story is highly
concentrated. The words 'say' (five times), 'question in one's
heart' (twice), 'speak', 'blasphemy', 'perceive in one's
spirit', 'question within oneself', and 'know' (vv 5-10) are
consistent. All are surely expressions suggestive of the
category mind. They tend to indicate this event as transcendent
in type. This list of terms does not easily fit any of the
secondary criteria, except perhaps that of privacy/publicity.
Here however, the evidence is contradictory:
And many were gathered
together, so that there was no longer room for them, not even
about the door ... and when they could not get near him
because of the crowd ... (Mark 2.2-4)
This shows that the secondary criterion public/private can be
misleading. It is preferable to analyse the story in terms of
the primary criterion of identity. We found that the identity :
unity criteria were definitive for the messianic series. They
will prove just as reliable in sorting the healing events. The
concept of identity sits at the very core of the controversy:
"Why does this man speak
thus? It is blasphemy! Who can forgive sins but God
alone?" (v 7) … But that you may know that the Son of man
has authority on earth to forgive sins" - he said to the
paralytic - "I say to you ... (vv 10, 11, emphasis
added.)
The theological focus of the narrative is Jesus' identity,
something it has in common with the transcendent messianic
miracles. Attempts which purport to understand this story as
belonging to anything other than the genre of miracle story fail
routinely on this count. The episode conforms perfectly to the
pattern maintained by the three transcendent messianic events.
Jesus' identity, 'the Son of man', is proffered as the cause of
the healing. Mark portrays Jesus' function here as healer of the
paralytic, precisely in the light of who he is. The narrative
discerns the reality behind the man's illness, the phenomenon of
consciousness, mind, in relation to who Jesus is. He is here
identified, either by himself or by the evangelist, with 'the
Son of man'. The same identity touches intrinsically on what
consciousness is. In other words, the identity of Jesus as the
Son of man is inseparable from the nature of human
consciousness. Quite clearly then,this particular episode is of
the transcendent kind.
Jairus'
Daughter (Mark 5.21-24a, 35-43)
Mark dramatically interrupts the story of Jairus' daughter
with his account of The Woman With The Haemorrhage
(5.24b-34). The interpolation of this latter text is purposeful
and strategic in so far as it directs the interpretation of the
situation of the daughter. Its location at the crown of a
parabolic arc whose exact apex can be identified by the verb
'ceased', would seem to indicate its import to this evangelist
in particular. It may even function as a signature for the
psychological disposition of this gospel if we interpret it in
keeping with the conceptual form, space : time, which acts as
its metaphysical rationale. Here several miracle stories belong
to a chain, beginning with The Gerasene Demoniac (5.1s),
and ending only with The Syrophoenician Woman's Daughter
(7.24-31). The complex and fascinating issues surrounding
this string of events include the link between The Woman
With The Haemorrhage and Jairus' Daughter. With
characteristic ingenuousness, Mark has depicted the onset of
sexual maturity in the young girl. Such points influence our
understanding of the story in the light of transcendence :
immanence.
We can profitably take the secondary criterion public/private
to settle the question of the kind of the event, transcendent or
immanent, in the case of The Haemorrhagic Woman.
A more public healing Mark does not record. He refers repeatedly
to the social aspect of the event:
And a great crowd followed
him and thronged about him ... (v 24b); She had heard the
reports about Jesus, and came up behind him in the crowd ...
(v 27); Jesus ... turned about in the crowd ...' (v 30); "You
see the crowd pressing around you ..." (v 31).
This squares with absence of either a personal or a family
name belonging to the woman, in contrast the to story of the
little girl. There is no contradiction or modulation of the
theme of publicity. From start to finish the story remains
certain in its presentation of the phenomenon of sociality. When
the narrative resumes the story of Jairus' Daughter with
the scene at his house, the house of the ruler of the synagogue,
we read of 'a tumult, and people weeping and wailing
loudly' (v 38). The situation is the same as when Jairus first
importuned Jesus, and is that of the haemorrhagic woman - 'a
great crowd gathered about him...' (v 21). The two introductions
to Jairus' Daughter are at one on this point. Then
however, subtle differences begin to appear:
And he allowed no one to
follow him except Peter and James and John the brother of
James (v 37) ... But he put them all outside, and took
the child's father and mother and those who were with him, and
went in where the child was (v 40b) ... And he strictly
charged them that no one should know this … (v 43)
We cannot determine the type of the healing of Jairus'
Daughter by this particular secondary criterion.
Another secondary criterion, is only slightly more useful in
pointing to an episode that is immanent in its type, that of
awe/conviviality. It appears to tell for an immanent as opposed
to a transcendent event, even if somewhat strangely. Just how
ill is the little girl? The gravity of her situation might seem
difficult to estimate. There is on the one hand the wonderfully
ironic tone of the description of the people, who had been
'weeping and wailing loudly' now 'laughing' at Jesus who
believes that the child is not dead but sleeping (vv 39, 40).
This has the appearance of neither awe nor exactly conviviality.
The reasons for this apparent ambivalence we shall soon observe.
The later statement that 'they were immediately overcome with
amazement' (v 42) compounds the mood. Amazement as such is not
fear or awe, of which there is no mention in the text. Hence the
secondary criterion awe/conviviality is also too ambiguous to
establish the kind of the event.
One other secondary criterion is however decisive: the theme
of determinism/freedom. Determinism very clearly marks the
episode from its inception as immanent. The attitude of Jairus
himself is anything but ambiguous. He does not doubt the gravity
of the situation. The condition of his daughter compels him to
beg Jesus for help:
... and seeing him, he fell
at his feet, and besought him saying, "My little daughter is
at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her, so that
she may be made well, and live." And he went with him. (vv
22b-24).
The later report from the ruler's house that his daughter is
dead (v 35), if anything heightens this same mood of necessity.
But, if we are still in any doubt, the concluding clause will
allay it. For there, we encounter as primary criterion,
the metaphor of assimilation for unity used in all three of
the immanent miracles:
... and he told them
to give her something to eat. (v 43).
There is only one other healing story, that of Simon
Peter's Mother-In-Law (1.29s), with a comparably concise
index of the immanent:
And he came and took her by the hand and lifted
her up, and the fever left her, and she served them.
(Mark 1.31, emphasis added.)
The conclusions of these two narratives are remarkably
similar. Jesus also takes the daughter of Jairus 'by the hand',
and tells her to rise up (e)gei/rw).
The same verb in the same case, the imperative, is used in the
account of Jesus healing the paralytic (Mark 2.11). In such
instances this verb alludes to resurrection.
The immanent messianic events, beginning with the story of the
miracle at Cana, all have as their defining moment, ingestion of
either food or drink. All are nurturing events, and
typologically accord with the feminine. There is no doubt that
the evangelist perceives the healing of Jairus' daughter as an
event of the immanent type. It therefore stands in keeping with
the bipolar structure that consistently underpins the
rudimentary Christological premise of the gospel - its doctrine
of the psychophysical. I shall argue for the specific value of
this conceptual form, the mind : body, in the theological idiom
of Luke. Just in which context, we may count in its favour, the
plethora not only of meal scenes, as in Luke also, but also of
healing events. There are eighteen such occasions in Luke, more
than in any other gospel.
This squares very nicely with the fact that Mark has
carefully demonstrated the nature of the illness in terms of the
girl's menarche. The text is inflected with a variety of words
which reflect the notion of the passage from childhood to
womanhood: 'little daughter' (v 23); 'daughter' (v 35); 'the
child' (v 39, 40, 41) - a neuter term in the Greek (to paidi/on); 'little girl' (vv 41, 42).
The intention to specify the nature of her illness accounts for
the interpolation of the story of The Haemorrhagic Woman,
and the strong resonance ('daughter' (vv 34, 35), 'twelve years'
(vv 25, 42)) between the two narratives. The fact of her status
as a child albeit of a gender other than that of the Son, and
the irreversible sexual determination of her body, formulate
Markan immanent Christology. The narrative functions within the
healing cycle, in connection with the first event of the
messianic cycle, Transformation Of Water Into Wine. This
is further evidence of the coherence of the two cycles. Both
address the identity of the immanent Son. Accordingly, the
ambiguity proper to the erotic characterises both stories.
These two narratives do nevertheless vary. The story of the
miracle at Cana ultimately expresses the Son in relation to the
phenomenon of physical, erotic, love. As a theology of
immanence, it is unqualified. We must in due course account for
certain subtleties in Jairus' Daughter, even if the text
allows for the same concept, erotic or 'psychophysical' love,
bodily love, as implicit in the theme of the onset of puberty.
But we can now explain the apparently ambivalent mood of the
text. Jairus perceives the situation as unquestionably grave.
The people however, vacillate between 'weeping and wailing
loudly' and 'laughing' (vv 38-40). The association of Eros
and Thanatos is charged theologically and
psychologically. The same association emerges in the first
messianic miracle story, in the dominical saying "My hour has
not yet come." (John 2.4b). The contradictions of mood we
observed in applying the secondary criteria are authentic and
deliberate. Even if the mood appropriate to the erotic is the
comic rather than the tragic, the irony of the clause 'And they
laughed at him' (v 40), could hardly be more trenchant.
Our response to sexual love, like our response to death is
characterised by ambivalence. A major philosophical component of
this ambivalence rests upon the fact that love as a form of
corporeity stands at the lower threshold of the same. Two people
as constitutive of relationality that is both social and
erotic, constitute the bare minimum of a form of discourse,
which is essentially social or communicative, if not public.
Sexual love is communicative in some sense similar to verbal
discourse. We shall say more about the integration of the
various forms of sense-percipience, since they loom so large in
Christian epistemology, but it is plain from the texts on the
subject which we read in the gospels, that these forms of
sense-percipience, including that of touch, are to be viewed as
of a kind. They cohere in virtue of the concept of communion.
For this reason the three Eucharistic miracles all point to the
final messianic event, the Eucharist itself.
These considerations belong to a developing theory of language
as party to the Johannine doctrine of logos. They are an
essential part of the theology of 'signs', to which I shall
refer as the theology of semiotic forms. It is true enough that
the the social and the erotic diverge, notwithstanding the
essentially intersubjective character of erotic love as
presented in the story of the miracle at Cana. In one sense,
erotic love individuates the self and promotes personal
identity, in another sense it does not, given its minimal nature
as 'social'. Where we find the application of the criterion of
public/private applied to the miracle narratives, we find that
transcendence is depicted in terms of the latter. The subjects
of narratives such as The Transformation of Water Into Wine
and Jairus' Daughter do not belong to this sort. We
shall resume this problematic issue relative to the discussion
of 'phylogeny and ontogeny' later, and the recapitulation of the
categoreal paradigm - identity : unity.
We have examined cursorily two stories of miraculous healing
preparatory to the hermeneutical study of the messianic events.
Both of these participate in the same logical and theological
concerns which dominate and shape the latter. We could have
pursued further the Trinitarian rationale of these narratives.
That both are Christological is undeniable. But a still more
immediate task will be to take stock of the systematic
presentation of soma in exactly one half of the healing
stories.
SOMA
That a number of miracles explicitly put the phenomenon of
human sense perception is more than merely apparent. The role of
sense perception in theories of mind in general and theories of
knowing, epistemologies, especially, suggest the interest of the
gospel in the same. The fact that we are sentient is in Mark's
view, indistinguishable from the fact that our existence is
embodied. The gospels as a whole tacitly identify bodiliness
with sentience, and Mark all but equates the soma and
the manifold of sense perception. The implications of this are
paramount for his doctrine of human nature or 'anthropology'
so-called, and his doctrine of the Christ. We shall later see
that the subject of sense perception assures the rapport of
healing miracles and messianic miracles with each other.
That is, it guarantees their coherence, and reciprocity.
We have just considered The Healing Of Jairus' Daughter.
This will suffice as an introduction to the systematic
presentation of human sense perception in the stories of
healing. This miracle story leans towards a specific mode of
sense perception, the tactile. Immediately before Jesus' words
wake the girl from the comatose state, the text reads - 'Taking
her by the hand ...' (v 41). The theme of tactile
sense-perception is another motif the story shares with that of
The Haemorrhagic Woman (5.28) - 'For she said, "If I
touch even his garments, I shall be made well."' The illness of
the haemorrhagic woman rendered her impure and an untouchable.
The record of her illness and cure involves the concept of
touch, although, like that of Jairus' Daughter, it is not
specifically about the mode of touch. It has its own theological
rationale, and the differences between the woman and the girl
are significant. In the woman's case, the flow of blood, which
had afflicted her for twelve years, now finally ceases. Whereas
the twelve year old girl, is ushered into womanhood. The gospel
inflects their situations in substantively different ways. Mark
associates the mode of tactile sense perception more properly
with the second episode. Not only does he refer to touch as part
of the girl's recovery, but also the notion of her sexual
awakening invokes it. That is not to say that Jairus'
Daughter denotes this form of sentience. It does not, and
clearly, other narratives do. Rather, there is a clear relation
between the governing concept of this narrative which we will
leave undefined for the moment, and those that deal with the
mode of touch.
Other stories of healing involve Jesus touching a sick person,
and these also do not bear immediately upon the theology of
touch per se: the healing of The Blind Man At
Bethsaida (Mark 8.22-26), and that of The Deaf And
Dumb Man (7.32-37). Although the tactile sense is somehow
germane to the process of healing, it does not indicate the
specific forms of sentience with which the theology of these
narratives is concerned. The presentation of Jesus
vis-à-vis tactile sentience in miracle narratives which do not
immediately taxonomise this mode of sense-percipience is linked
albeit subtly, to the notion of incarnation, and a much broader
pattern which establishes correspondences between the Son, the
Transcendent and the Holy Spirit and the modes of
sense-percipience except that of smell-taste. This pattern also
sorts with the doctrine of imago Dei. However these are
issues which we must temporarily leave in abeyance.
This will help to resolve the numerous references to
'daughter' which we have already listed. They began with the
concluding line of the woman's story - '"Daughter, your faith
has made you well ..."' (5.34). Mark surely understands Jesus'
own identity as the Son in relation to the body. His theology of
soma will assign specifically the mode of touch to him,
the Son, in keeping with the story of the miracle at Cana. Thus
if Mark has Jesus touch and heal the sick in the course of
events which are identifiable on other than the Christological
basis of the sense percipient mode of touch itself, it is
because the Son discloses the other identities; namely the
Transcendent and the Holy Spirit. We cannot read every passing
reference to touch in the healing miracle stories as a
Christological signifier.
At this point, let us list briefly in chronological order,
those healing miracle stories that present the various modes of
sense perception:
the cleansing of a leper (Mark
1.40-5) - touch;
the man with a withered hand
(3.1-6) - touch;
a deaf and dumb man (7.32-37) -
hearing;
a blind man at Bethsaida (8.22-26)
- seeing;
the boy with an unclean spirit
(9.14-29) - hearing;
blind Bartimaeus (10.46-52) -
seeing.
We notice at once, that there are just six such episodes. We
encountered this figure as the overarching framework of the
series of Days of creation and the messianic series. Moreover,
there are two stories for each of the three modes, touch,
hearing, and sight. Even at first blush, this has every bit the
appearance of a schema. The analogy of the six Days and the six
messianic miracles accords with what begins to emerge as the
organisation of the twelve healing events.
The narratives about the various modes of sense percipience
belong essentially to the Markan doctrine of mind : body. Almost
exactly half of the healing miracles depict modes of sense
perception. It is necessary to add the rider 'almost' due to the
ambiguous status of the story about Simon Peter's Mother-In-Law,
which even for Mark is uncommonly brief and is passed over with
indecent haste. Moreover there is an equal number of miracles
depicting each mode of sentience: two miracles relating to
touch, two to hearing, and two to seeing. The variety of the
stories concerning sentience is both balanced and
representative. The only mode of sense perception absent from
this list is smell-taste. This as we shall see, is not an
oversight. A special status attaches to the osmic-gustic
mode(s), just as the Eucharist is determined especially in
relation to the Eucharistic miracles. With the results of this
summary in mind, we can now resume our study of the messianic
miracles.
The Four Immanent Messianic
Events
The doctrine of imago Dei is explicitly announced in
the creation theology of Genesis. We recognised at once in the
three entities, the forms of unity, the unique instances of the
identities in God of the Transcendent, the Son and the Holy
Spirit. Genesis is equally about God and the world. The
nature of God determines the world of creation as radically
threefold. Space-time is the unique exemplification of the
Transcendent and of transcendence generally; male-female is the
unique instantiation of immanence and of the Holy Spirit in
particular; while these two forms of unity, the first primordial
and the second eschatological, are mediated by the form of unity
mind-body, the single occasion which reveals the identity of the
Son. The three forms of unity delineate six categories that
consist in a variety of relations, relations that we are yet to
discern. What now seems beyond reasonable doubt is that the
generality of these six categories determines human
consciousness at its most radical level.
Here then, are the utmost general, fundamental, radical,
irreducible constituents of mind(s), which establish the
potential for communication between human beings - hence
John's depiction of the Son as logos or Word. It is in
virtue of these conceptual entities that thought and so
communication obtains. This was the essential meaning of the
categories. Their ontological status concerns us far less than
the fact that they impinge upon ourselves as embodied
conscious beings. And this in a way that is pervasive,
encompassing and ineradicable. What is significant about these
six entities for biblical metaphysics, is that they
radically compose the anatomy of mind : body, that is to say,
consciousness. Hence, certain of the fundamental
structures and processes of consciousness will be reducible
ultimately to these various conceptual forms, or ideas. The
concepts of space and time, mind and body, male and female are
pre-eminently determinative of our own human consciousness. Thus
we have to reckon with the idea of six ultimately general
centres of human consciousness. The psychophysical, mind : body,
or soma, stands at the centre of these categories, and
reflects the phenomenal world as likewise centred on the logos.
Now the messianic events are homologous with the theology of
creation, formally in full, and referentially with a view to the
reciprocity of the two narrative centres. But the miracles do
not simply repeat the categories of the story of 'beginning'.
They function complementarily, indicating the precise phenomena
which 'end' the story begun in Genesis. We note from the
prevalence of theologies of sense-percipience in the healing
miracle stories, the very same pre-occupation with the idea of
communication; that is, the same concern with the word as
devolving upon not just seeing and hearing, but also the sense
of touch. We have still to analyse the messianic stories.
Already however, we have noted the relatedness of the healing
and messianic stories. From an all too brief survey of some of
the miracles of healing, we have unearthed the direction of our
exposition of the messianic miracles. We know that the stories
of healing too concern the doctrine of human consciousness. They
too recapitulate the categoreal paradigm, transcendence :
immanence, identity : unity. But the hypothesis which now
recommends itself in view of such facts is that the messianic
stories themselves concern sense perception.
The formal aspect of our clue, the fact that exactly six of
the healing miracles deal with sense perception, is a promising
start. By now we are accustomed to associating the figure six
with the Christological category, mind : body, since it appears
all too pertinently for us to ignore in both messianic
Christologies, Transfiguration and Transformation Of
Water Into Wine. However, the four feeding events are
definitive for the messianic series as a whole. They pronounce
it in contradistinction to the theology of transcendence in
Genesis. Their content complements and concludes the story of
beginning. An even still more promising fact confronts us here.
For these four feeding events exhibit the predominant formal
feature of the messianic series. What is so promising about the
fourfold aspect of the theology of immanence is that it fits
perfectly the shape of sense percipient modality.
Systems of enumerating the modes of sense perception do vary.
Some of them include a sense of the location of one's body,
called 'proprioception'. There does not seem enough warrant for
this sort of analysis in any rigorous understanding. Nor is
there any reason to divorce the sense of smell and the sense of
taste, the so-called 'chemical sense'. The portrait the gospel
give will be squarely fourfold, and in each case, whether
metaphorical or actual, it will involve assimilation as the
basis of a communio. We also have to conjure with the
fact that taste involves touch, which lies at the basis of the
metaphorical use of the language about taste for the sexual and
by extension, in reference to death. This was implicit in both
creation narratives, P and J; and in connection with this, we
notice references to taste as well as death in both
Christological narratives, The Transformation Of Water Into
Wine and The Transfiguration. The simplest pattern
that proffers itself is the fourfold one.
Three modes are formally co-extant, in just the sense that we
have now mentioned, for they are more or less all ingredient in
communication: touch, hearing and vision. These stand together
as somehow of one kind, an they are the subjects of virtually
half of the healing miracles in Mark. The olfactory and
gustatory modes, smell and taste, belong together as one and in
distinction from the others. It is only in the sub-human realm
that the 'chemical senses' maintain a role of some sort in
communication. Another distinguishing feature resides in their
dual aspect, and more significantly, in that it is more
immediately compresent with the body itself than the others. It
is only by eating and drinking that the body sustains itself. If
we said that Mark virtually equates the soma (mind :
body) and sense perception, here is the reason. Without eating
and drinking, the body would cease to be. The other three forms
of sense perception accordingly take their cue from this, the
most essential of the four modes, or what we might alternatively
call the generic form of sense-percipience, or its ground. The
modes of touch, hearing and seeing are not as ineradicably
implicated in our day to day survival in the same way as is the
single mode smell/taste. The role of appetition in sentient
processes was first suggested in the second half of the creation
narrative and then in the story of the Garden of Eden. The 3:1
measure first enunciated in the second half of the
creation taxonomy marks the beginning of the theology of the
sense-percipient modes.
The other argument from form, which strongly supports our
emerging interpretation of the four Eucharistic events, must be
the application of the principle of unity. We shall have more to
say about unity later, but the modes of sense perception satisfy
this aspect of the theology of immanence. The 3:1 configuration
of both subgroups, Days identifiable as the theology of 'virtual
immanence' and the four 'Eucharistic' miracles, is
effectively fourfold. Seriality assures the tetradic form in the
creation story; the Eucharistic motif secures it for the
miracles. The referential significance of tetradic form in the
narratives is to unity. Here immanence stands logically
and numerically distinguished from the categories of
transcendence. The point is that the various forms of perception
co-inhere. They function together, as one. This idea requires
elaboration, but we enter it here in noting the fourfold shape
of sense perception. This is part of the biblical
epistemological understanding of the difference between the
conceptual and the perceptual. The paradigm of the former is the
three-dimensional spatial manifold. The principle of identity
belongs to the conceptual pole. Thus the three pure conceptual
forms are fully divergent from one another.
But the paradigm of the perceptual, the immanent, is fourfold.
The four-dimensional manifold is the manifold of sense
perception. With the addition of a fourth dimension, time,
outlined all too briefly in Genesis, there is a consequent
shift from the conceptual to the perceptual, even as death
enters the picture. Time qua death means sentience
rather than ideation, or pure conceptuality. Hence time as it
will be deployed in the miracle narratives, particularly in the
final messianic miracle, is the time of sentient being. The
doctrine of sense perception rescues time from the status of a
mere abstraction, and locates it firmly within the quotidian
experience of each living entity. It is the business of the
gospel to enunciate it clearly and fully. So too, tetradic
structure as identifying immanence, is coterminous with unity
rather than identity, and the functioning of sense perception in
human (and animal) consciousness tends towards the expression of
the same principle. The gospel thus presents a complex
interaction between the notions:
time-appetition/consumption-death, where the compound term
appetition/consumption is identical with the tetradic manifold
of sense percipience. These are ideas we can pursue only by dint
of interpreting the messianic miracles in light of the same
construct governing precisely half of the healing miracles,
namely sentience or sense perception as it radically informs
consciousness, or mind.
It is necessary to forestall the longer discussion of the
Eucharist. For the moment it suffices to note the obvious fact
that it literally nominates just that mode of sense perception
which this interpretation seeks to assign it, smell- taste.
We have already examined the story of the miracle at Cana in
sufficient detail to have observed that it offers
preliminary vindication of the interpretation of the series of
four feeding episodes à propos the phenomenon of sense
perception. That first messianic miracle story is about many
things. It reformulates the three immanent polarities of the
three conceptual forms first articulated in the creation
theology: mind, space and the symbolic masculine. That is, the
Johannine narrative reformulates the categories of the second
half of the creation story: temporality, somaticity and the
symbolic feminine as signal of humanity. This is hardly
surprising, for the story of the Fourth Day of creation, its
analogue in the archaeological week, in introducing the forms of
unity, announces the soma as the first of these and
simultaneously adumbrates Eros. The temporal and the
symbolic feminine are the closely related categories.
But, in an unqualified sense, John's first miracle story, the
first of the messianic miracles, is about the reality of sexual
experience as this is formed by the sense-percipient mode of
touch. The primary topos of the narrative is the
perceptual category touch. Touch provides the fundamental
appetitive content of the erotic. It is the single lure
directing this specific form of satisfaction. In other words,
without sense perception of the 'haptic' mode, there would be no
erotic, no sexual experience. Touch is at once the precise
identity of this form of appetition and satisfaction. Jesus at
Cana is none other than Christ-Eros. Incarnate, he
embodies the real lure of desire. That is to say, conscious
sexual desire signifies a vital aspect of Mind, or logos.
Hence we have Jesus in both Mark and John achieving miracles of
healing by means of touch. Hence also the great controversy
which necessarily surrounds this sign, for it imputes to Jesus
as the incarnate Word an aspect of existence more germane to the
animal and human world, that of sexuality.
This is not to say that the theme of the erotic exhausts the
meaning of the episode. The perceptual as the basis of a type of
appetition, a kind of desire, is one aspect of what the
evangelist is describing. There is another, which concerns the
way that touch functions as the source of a mode of knowing.
Desire relates more immediately to this particular form of
sentience, as we shall later argue. But we must not get ahead of
our story here. The foremost instantiation of touch as a
determinant in human consciousness engages that particular form
of awareness or intentionality we shall refer to as desire.
There is no way of avoiding the psychological import of the
miracle story. It ascribes to the immanent Son what is readily
recognisable as the erotic aspect of reality. The preparation
for this disclosure was clearly outlined in both creation
narratives., albeit in varying tempers.
Rather than pursue either expression of this sentient mode
touch, either its conative, that is, appetitive face, or its
cognitive, that is, rational side, we must follow first
the broader picture, that of the class of messianic miracles, as
systematically related to the class of things we discerned in
the P creation narrative. Consequently we must entertain the
real possibility that the remaining two Eucharistic
miracle stories might have to do with the body as a manifold of
sense perception. For clearly the healing miracles elaborate a
theology of perception, and just as clearly, those narratives
cohere theologically and metaphysically with the messianic
cycle. In view of the manifest hermeneutical link between the
first sign, The Transformation Of Water Into Wine and
the sense-percipient mode of touch, we are thus proposing that
the two other feeding miracles, The Feeding Of The Five
Thousand and The Feeding Of The Four Thousand,
events belonging obviously to this class of Eucharistic
miracles, concern the remaining modes of sentience, namely
hearing and sight. As for the actual Eucharist itself, clearly
it denotes the generic mode of appetition-satisfaction, the
compound mode smell-taste. Firstly, let us consult Mark's own
narrative. Two very notable points strike us immediately, which
support this hermeneutical possibility:
- the last of the two miracles of loaves is
bordered by two healing episodes. The story of the cure of a
dumb and deaf man (Mark 7.31-37) sits immediately prior to
the feeding miracle narrative itself, The Feeding Of The
Four Thousand (8.1-10) and the discourse it
subsequently generates (vv 11-21), and the story of the
healing of the blind man at Bethsaida immediately follows
it;
- the discourse on Mark's two Eucharistic miracles
contains a reference to the two modes of sense perception,
seeing and hearing, a reference all the more conspicuous
because it is a quotation, and all the more deserving of
attention for that:
Having eyes do you not see,
and having ears do you not hear? (v 18)
The emphasis here is effectively that of Mark. The saying
invokes several Old Testament texts:
Listen, you foolish and
senseless people, who have eyes and see nothing, ears and hear
nothing. (Jeremiah 5.21);
The word of the Lord came to me: Man, you live
among a rebellious people. Though they have eyes they will not
see, though they have ears they will not hear, because they
are a rebellious people. (Ezekiel 12.2);
He said, Go and tell this
people: you may listen and listen, but you will not
understand. You may look and look again, but you will never
know. This people's wits are dulled, their ears are deafened
and their eyes blinded, so that they cannot see with their
eyes nor listen with their ears, nor understand with their
wits. So that they may turn and be healed. (Isaiah 6.9, 10)
Matthew's much-expanded version, retains the logion, but he
has detached it from its original context. He has placed it
after the parable of The Sower and the teaching on
parables (13.1-13a):
This is why I speak to them
in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they
do not hear, nor do they understand. With them indeed is
fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah which says: 'You shall indeed
hear but never understand, and you shall indeed see but never
perceive. For this people's heart has grown dull, and their
ears are heavy of hearing, and their eyes they have closed,
lest they should perceive with their eyes, and hear with their
ears, and understand with their heart, and turn for me to heal
them.' But blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears
for they hear. Truly, I say to you, many prophets and
righteous men longed to see what you see, and did not see it,
and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it. (Matthew
13.13-17, parallel Isaiah 6.9s).
Matthew's account of the discourse on the feeding miracles,
that is, his apparent parallel to the Markan context for the
citation, contains only a vestige of the Markan
original:
"Do you not yet
perceive ... How is it that you fail to perceive that I did
not speak about bread?" (16.9, 11).
The degree of elaboration in 13.13s means that although
Matthew's context has disordered the original conception in the
gospel of Mark, Matthew himself highly esteemed its
significance.
In light of this, we must ask whether the two miracles of
loaves concern these very modes of perception, seeing and
hearing. The facts advocating such an interpretation are
cogent:
- the miracles of healing exist in league with the
messianic cycle, and they clearly incorporate a systematic
treatment of perception in respect of what lies at the heart
of the gospel's Christology, namely its doctrine of mind :
body;
- the first of the messianic events, the miracle at the
wedding in Cana, denotes explicitly the mode of touch as
furnishing the basis of sexual love;
- the two miracles of loaves - as well as the Eucharist
- are linked in a most systematic and logical way to
the miracle at Cana, such that the interpretations of any of
the four implicates those of all the others;
- Mark places at the boundaries of the last of the two
Eucharistic miracles and its discourse on the significance
of the two episodes, two healing miracles, the introductory
one about hearing, the concluding one about seeing;
- he refers explicitly and emphatically to these same
modes of perception in the same order, in the discourse on
the loaves-miracles in relation to the 'understanding' of
the latter.
Further to the above, a hermeneutic of the miracles of loaves
which understands as their primary reference, the two modes of
sense-percipience, hearing and seeing, can be proposed, which
will make good the contents of the discourse (8.11-21). By way
of introduction to this, the theology of signs, we notice Mark's
introduction to the discourse on the miracles. The first part of
this section (vv 11-13) considers the demand for a sign:
The Pharisees came and began to argue with him,
seeking from him a sign from heaven, to test him. And he
sighed deeply in his spirit and said, "Why does this
generation seek a sign? Truly, I say to you, no sign shall be
given to this generation." And he left them, and getting into
the boat again he departed to the other side.
This is unquestionably one of the gospel's most remarkable
texts because it puts paid to any literalist interpretation of
the feeding miracles themselves. At this point, Mark's very
narrative appears to virtually self-deconstruct. The pericope
militates against every reading of the Eucharistic miracles
which relies for its final meaning on their actual, historical,
status. The immediate effect of the discourse is to redirect any
grasp of the three feeding miracles as well as the Eucharist
which predicates them as actual and demonstrative of the
supernatural, 'from heaven'. Neither is its force merely
critical. The intention of the passage is not merely to be
self-refuting, or to undermine our own confidence in the gospel
narratives. For in the next section, Mark has Jesus' teaching
concentrate on the details of quantities of substances involved
in the feeding miracles.
Like the first part of the discourse, this second half is
introduced with a polemic against the 'Pharisees' (and those 'of
Herod' or 'the Herodians'.) The subject passes to our ('the
disciples') understanding of the episodes, before the various
details of both episodes are scrupulously recalled; the number
of initial provisions, the number of persons present, and the
quantity of remaining portions. The conclusion restates the
theme of the disciples' failure:
"Do you not yet understand?"
Immanence And The Theology of
Signs
We should remark concerning Mark's own usage, that apart from
the longer ending of the gospel, Mark 16.17, 20, the evangelist
uses the word 'sign' only in the introduction to the discourse
on the Eucharistic miracles (8.11-13) and in the so called
Markan Apocalypse (13.4, 22). This word, shmei~on,
occurs frequently in the gospel of John, who uses it for example
of the first two miracles (2.11, 4.54). In both John and the
synoptics some ambivalence attaches to the role of the miracles
in the life of faith. We have already noted in relation to
the discourse in Mark 8.11-13 a reluctance on the part of the
evangelist to permit the sign to obscure the signified. This
comprises a study in itself, a major part of which should
explicate the absence of the miracle at Cana, the first of the
messianic series, from Mark and the fellow synoptics.
Here we can give some account, however brief, of the theology
of signs. This will add significantly to the already persuasive
argument for understanding the whole messianic series as a
theology of perception which functions complementarily to
the theology of conceptual forms, introduced in the creation
narrative. There seems no other satisfactory way of
understanding the formal, numerical content of the two miracles
of loaves which are so vital to Markan theology that Jesus
himself recapitulates these in the discourse (Mark
8.14-21), nor of broaching the recesses of meaning within the
Johannine narrative of the first messianic miracle, and that of
the last, The Transfiguration. It will be possible and
logically incumbent upon us to incorporate in the same
hermeneutical process, the similar content in the
Johannine story, the miracle at Cana.
We interpret the meaning of the two miracles of loaves, The
Feeding Of The Five Thousand and The Feeding Of The
Four Thousand, as indicative of the very relationship
between perception by means of hearing ('acoustic') and seeing
('optic') respectively and time as death. It is obvious at the
outset that a clear relationship between hearing and time
exists. Music at the very least signals something of their
metaphysical affinity. On hearing music, as on hearing the
course of any acoustic event, we are aware of the passage of
time. The relationship to time of optic sentience is less
obvious. For all that, astrophysics speaks of the two polarities
of the visible spectrum, its red and blue ends, juxtaposed as
those of light sources which are moving away from and towards us
respectively. If nothing else, the science of the Twentieth
Century has forged an ineradicable bond between light and time,
even if it did for some time, ignore the role of the observing,
that is seeing, subject.
This brings to our attention an important formal aspect
common to the acoustic 'semeia' or signs, which are the
twelve tones of the dodecaphonic scale, and to the optic signs,
which are the visible hues of the spectrum: the fact that both
are polarised. Thus whereas pitches are determined relative to
one another as high or low, the optic signs are likewise
divisible into the two ends of the spectrum. This polarisation
not only integrates the two series as intimately adverting to
one another, it reiterates the categoreal paradigm,
transcendence : immanence. Let us then look very briefly at the
possibilities for hermeneutics such a reading of all three
miracle narratives will provide.
The Transformation Of Water Into
Wine
As Christological, and therefore as concerning the
psychophysical, all the messianic miracles and their antecedent
Days comprise the biblical understanding of humankind. The
disclosure of God is necessarily the disclosure of the human to
itself, and central or pivotal to this must be the revelation of
the psychophysical, the embodied mind of humanity, or human
consciousness. We have urged that the Days series expounds the
ideal or conceptual radicals of consciousness; and that this is
complemented by the gospels which present a doctrine of
perception, the doctrine of soma. The relevance of the
miracle narratives to thought itself if not its palpable
expression in communication, that is to
sense-percipient consciousness if not language, is
affirmed by the opening of the gospel of John.
The first miracle story of the series follows fast upon the
heels of the opening hymn to the Word become flesh. Thus we
cannot divorce the relevance of the event at Cana, and the
subsequent Eucharistic miracles from the same concept. If the
conceptual polarity of mind guarantees thought, then the
perceptual is complementary and indispensable to this same
process as its end; it is the warrant for communication of the
very same. Thought whatever it is, does not remain in splendid
isolation. It seeks expression, it demands incarnation. The
incarnation of the Son itself expresses the essential
equilibrium between the conceptual and perceptual polarities of
consciousness on this point. Thus at the outset the theology of
semiotic forms or signs, semeia, sits with the opening
of the fourth gospel. It endorses the hymn to the Word. In
effect then, the theology of semiotic forms establishes the
basis for a Christian doctrine of language.
The first sign is the event which denotes the haptic mode of
perception. It announces the immediacy of touch as elemental in
any construction of the symbolic means of communication. We
shall discover upon close examination of Mark's twelve healing
miracle stories the very basis of this haptic semiosis. Thus a
first point concerns the reference to the form of the healing
miracle narratives themselves made in the final discourse on the
miracles of loaves . If the story of The Five Thousand
details the quantity of remaining portions or fragments of
loaves and fish as contained within just twelve baskets, then
the healing miracle series will flesh out certain details
concerning this.
The miracle story itself, The Feeding Of The Five
Thousand, as we contend, refers in the first instance to
the 'miracle' of hearing at the heart of which lie the semiotic
forms constituting the dodecaphonic series. We shall
obviously be justified in reading the same narratives, Mark's
healing miracle stories, as expressions of these semiotic forms;
or rather, the semiotic forms themselves, will be exemplary or
representative to the paramount degree of the realities
contained within the narratives. This does not mean the acoustic
series alone. For the miracle at Cana places haptic sentience
first. Its numerical details clearly signify the categoreal
scheme given in the congruent narrative cycles of beginning and
end, Genesis and the gospels. Let us be sure, this is no mere
exercise in analogy, the basis of metaphysical thought. The
narratives are as real and as actual as the very deliveries of
sense-percipience. They divulge ourselves to ourselves, for the
texts themselves speak of the very things which lie at the heart
of our human consciousness: the conceptual forms and their
perceptual counterparts.
The miracle at Cana and the haptic semiosis which it entails
as an essential component in the theology of semiotic forms,
stands more intimately linked to the actual Eucharist than
either of the other two comparable events with their attendant
semiotic forms. This claim follows from its Christological
function. In this sense, the episode at Cana is the first of the
series; just as its analogous Day, the fourth, in the creation
series, introduced the immanent polarities of the transcendent
categories. The first miracle story in the gospel of John very
precisely puts the twelve radicals of consciousness in it
presentation of the process of 'becoming'. The six stone jars of
water for the Jewish rites of purification to which he refers so
posit the conceptual categories. But these same, the six
conceptual forms are somehow the entities which 'become' the
perceptual forms. That is precisely what the evangelist intends
in the description of The Transformation Of Water Into Wine.
This entails that the six perceptual radicals are placed in a
one-to-one correspondence with their conceptual counterparts, a
tenet which follows logically from the congruent morphology of
the two narrative cycles, underpinned as it is by the theology
of three identities in God, recognisable under the two aspects
of transcendence and immanence. This process, the formal basis
of which remains not only a major tenet concerning the doctrine
of human consciousness, but one also concerning the nature of
God triune, is to be later complemented by what occurs in The
Transfiguration of Jesus. There is in these two
Christologies, a doctrine regarding the relation of God to the
world and the consequent relation of the world to God, which we
are not yet at liberty to pursue.
Generally, the sequential order of the Days of creation and
that of the messianic miracles do not concur; for the former
categorises the three transcendent events and subsequently the
three-four immanent events in parallel, whereas the latter
proposes a pattern of even oscillation between transcendent and
immanent episodes, immediately recognisable in Mark's consistent
and recurrent use of the expression ' ... to the other side'.
One point however where they do concur is in respect of 'the
first of his signs'. Just as Day 4 inaugurates the second half
of creation, its analogue, the miracle at Cana is the first of
the series of four Eucharistic events. The question whether or
not the creation pattern sets up a hierarchy of forms must be
deferred for now. We shall have occasion later to comment on
this regarding the New Testament doctrine of creation. Here
however, we can recognise the possibility that the haptic
ingredience in consciousness is focal or central, and virtually
enjoys the same status as primordial of space, the space which
the body itself inhabits.
This haptic semiosis may seem less obvious than the other two
semiotic forms. To be sure, touch is a fundamental ingredient in
human and sub-human consciousness. But the way in which it so
ingresses is certainly far from immediately apparent. The idea
at the heart of the story of the miracle at Cana which advances
the gospel's doctrine of the logos and of communication
and sits contextually within the theology of these four events,
is that of the body's own representation of itself to itself.
Here however, the expression 'representation' is of course
inappropriate. A representation is not something we are inclined
to touch, and the term is far too 'imagistic'. The idea at stake
here, is that one of the rudimentary forms, processes, of human
understanding is our apprehension of our incarnate self. It is
self-awareness as embodied self-awareness. If we are endowed
with consciousness, and if in turn we are conscious of this, we
know that we know, its manner, depends upon bodiliness,
that is, how we know that we know. This 'how', or
modality, follows from the fact that the body consists of
members, and that these are effectively recognisable as
distinctly as are the several acoustic and optic semeia.
An arm is not a leg, though both are nameable as limbs. These
two members, like others, are set in certain fundamental
relationships to one another, relationships of similarity and
dissimilarity. A variety of such relationships obtains, and they
are like the Transcendental and Pneumatological semiotic series,
polarised. They are radically disposed as binary.
The relationship of the body to space clearly reflects the
conceptual polarity of mind. We argued that in no uncertain way,
the three-dimensional spatial manifold, which evinces the
cruciform pattern, stands as the biblical iconography for the
relationality of the transcendent forms, the six ideas
constituting the mental polarity of mind. Now the body is not
space itself; even so it is one way, perhaps the only way, we
have of knowing about space. Bodies reflect space, they manifest
it. We can no more take the body out of space than we can take
space out of the body. There is here, a certain fundamental
ontology between these two categories which can be described as
mimetic. The body mirrors space. Thus, if three-dimensional
space is the model for the three forms of unity, then the body
as the mirror of this space, also acts somehow as the mirror of
these very ideas, these transcendent forms. Here the operative
word is mirror. In the narrative it is equivalent to the verb
'become'.
We must not lose sight of the fact that the body functions as
paragon, a copy only, a mimetic and palpable reproduction of the
ideas, the conceptual polarity of mind. If we hold within
consciousness something like this palpable reflection of our own
bodiliness, or rather, if consciousness entails one's prehension
(feeling) of oneself, then it follows that this is also a
prehension of mind as constituted by the ideas disclosed in the
creation story. For just as space acts as the model for these
ideas, and depicts their certain relational divergence from one
another, the body reflects or represents space. Just as
the separation of the 'waters above' and 'waters below' portends
the initiation of space, water in the miracle story suggests all
three transcendent forms, particularly space, as well as all
three immanent denominations of the same - the time of space :
time, the body of mind : body, the female of male : female.
The author of this messianic miracle story at least, is no
stranger to the story of creation, as the beginning of the
gospel made clear. The invocation of the P creation narrative is
the invocation of the six conceptual forms. In the story of the
miracle at Cana, the mention of the six stone jars of water
evokes these same. The six jars of water changed into wine so
places the perceptual forms in juxtaposition with them.
Conceptual and perceptual forms are to be reckoned as equal
here, even though as we see there are in both series, always
four and not three immanent episodes, both manifests of their
provenance in God.
The point at issue here is that the morphology of the body
itself informs us as to the existence of the categoreal forms.
If the Markan stories of healing expound a semiotic of
this kind, they do so in the interests of abandoning any hard
and fast division between ideas on the one hand, and
perception on the other, or as we may say, between mind and
mind-body, thought and its expression. No lasting separation is
maintained between mind and body, even though we have to
urge the existence, and persistence, of Mind independently of
the unity mind : body. The two sixfold series integrate
morphologically. This stipulates their intimate relationality,
and it might be summed up by saying no beginning without end,
and no end without beginning. The idea of
transformation-transfiguration which we will later examine,
concerns the ramifications of the isomorphism between the
narrative of Days and the messianic miracle stories. Not for
nothing are these two narrative centres, so fundamental to
Christian metaphysics, formally and literally analogous. Their
respective concerns, the conceptual and the perceptual
polarities of mind, do not occur in isolation from one another.
They obtain in the closest possible relationship as given by
both Christological miracles, Transformation Of Water Into
Wine, and Transfiguration.
We can hardly overemphasise that there is a precise and
comprehensive correspondence between the conceptual forms and
human corporeal existence. The body 'represented' in
the mind is none other than the mind-in-the-body. It pertains to
the possibility of language as the event of shared communication
whose persisting reality is mind itself, the conceptual
constituents of which are posited in the story of creation.
However, here in the context of a theology of the Word, the
expression 'representation' is too one-sided if by it we
understand the visible nature of the word; that is, if we mean
exclusively its visible or graphic forms. Etymologically, the
term 'represent' need not have this all too imagistic nuance,
but it usually nevertheless does. We shall see that there is a
close connection between the phonetic and the conceptual, just
as there is between the graphic and the perceptual. This reverts
to the fundamental juxtaposition maintained by the
Transcendental and Pneumatological miracles themselves, as
theologies of acoustic and optic sense-percipience
respectively. These are as are the conceptual forms space and
male : female, maximally variant, maximally opposed to another.
For just as the (transcendental) conceptual forms are
weighted a propos of transcendence : immanence, the same occurs
amongst the modes of sense-percipience. The acoustic semiotic
forms are thus the fittest of any to speak for the conceptual
consciousness. So this 'representation' in the mind of the body,
or what is the same thing, this 'representation' in the body of
the mind of conceptual forms in particular, we should understand
not in terms of image but of sound.
What is clear is that the acoustic readily epitomises the
'abstract' as opposed to the 'concrete', the 'mental' rather
than the 'physical', and as such, effectively the
conceptual as distinct from the perceptual, even though it is
itself a perceptual mode. It really does not matter
how we phrase their disparity. I have already
referred to the apparent contradiction involved in the symbolic
masculine, which even though it is a pure conceptual form is
nevertheless weighted in favour of immanence. In the same vein,
acoustic sentience amounts to a contradiction of perception qua
immanence since it instantiates the Transcendent. It is obvious
that the acoustic, in virtue of its transcendental status among
the three modes of sense-percipience expounded in the messianic
miracles, will be necessarily germane to the theology of
transcendence, the theology of conceptual forms, in a manner
complementary to the nexus established by optic sentience and
the perceptual pole. The more detailed exposition of this aspect
of the theology of semiotic forms lies ahead. But in advance of
a more detailed analysis, we should caution here against any
restrictive sense of understanding the 'representation' of the
body-in-the-mind/mind-in-the-body by the haptic semiotic forms,
as irretrievably concrete in the sense of visual. We must
consciously sustain equal attention to the phenomenal aspects of
language as on the one hand acoustic-spoken, and on the other
graphic-written, as to the fact of the mediation by haptic
sentience itself of these very same, if we are to reach a viable
Christian doctrine of language which is implicit in the
narratives before us.
There is a precise and comprehensive correspondence between the
conceptual forms and human corporeal existence. We
can now give two examples of the theology of haptic semiotic
forms, one of each kind, transcendent and immanent.
The Haemorrhagic Woman (Mark 24b-34)
This is one of the six or so stories from the healing miracle
cycle in Mark, whose subjects are other than the
sense-percipient soma. That is, its metaphysical purpose
is the presentation of one of the conceptual forms. There are
six such stories which recapitulate every one of the six
conceptual categories so that the healing miracle cycle
dovetails perfectly with the two sixfold series of 'beginning'
and 'end' - the Days and the messianic miracles.
Mark 5.1 begins a chain of stories of Jesus healing the sick.
Its overarching form is a trajectory which begins with The
Gerasene Man (5.1s) and concludes with The
Syrophoenician Woman (7.24s). At the apex is The Woman
With The Haemorrhage. The word 'ceased' - e0chra/nqh (v 29), which could be
rendered more literally, 'was dried' - plots the precise apical
point of the two arms of this parabolic curve of narrative.
In addition to the fact that the nature of the illness
which indicates that this particular Markan narrative
belongs to that half of the theology of haptic semiotic forms
concerned with the conceptual rather than the perceptual, that
it involves a female rather than a male, also specifies which
half of the conceptual categories we are dealing with. We recall
that the division into transcendent and immanent of the two
halves of the narrative centres 'beginning and 'end' or Genesis
and the gospel, Days and messianic miracles, is followed by the
subsequent division of these two categories themselves according
to the same paradigm. Thus the transcendent categories,
the conceptual forms themselves have immanent denominations as
well as the transcendent ones, and thus too the perceptual modes
have transcendent as well as immanent forms. This makes for four
categories in all. Where the feminine sits within this scheme is
as immanent rendering of a conceptual category. The three
transcendent conceptual forms, space, mind and the symbolic
masculine, each have their immanent counterpart, space : time,
mind ; body and male : female. That we are dealing with a
healing episode that reiterates a conceptual category rather
than a perceptual one, and that this involves a woman, means
effectively that the idea at the heart of the narrative must be
one or the other of the three conceptual categories we have
referred to as conceptual forms of unity: time (that is
space : time), the body (that is mind : body) or the feminine
(that is male : female).
Reading the narrative of the healing of The Haemorrhagic
Woman it is obvious that all three of these ideas are
present. Gender, the eschatological or Pneumatological,
conceptual form of unity, is presented as epitomised by her
suffering (v 26); temporality, the primordial or Transcendental,
conceptual form of unity, is clearly indicated by the reference
to the duration of the illness (v 25), and will be emphasised by
the repetition of the very same duration in the ensuing miracle
narrative (v 42); and the body, the Christological, conceptual
form of unity, is implicated by several means, the references to
'daughter' (v 34), and of course by the word 'body' itself (v
29). Only one of these however is paramount.
Remember that our survey of the conceptual forms concluded
with a co-ordination of the three forms of unity according to
the paradigm transcendence : immanence, with reference to the
pivotal role played by the mediating category mind : body. This
aligned the morphology of the feminine body with the past, and
that of the masculine with the future. For the analogous
relationships sustained by the three forms of unity results in
the congruence of 'beginning' and 'end', the categories space :
time and male : female, intervenient between which is focal or
mediating category, soma or mind : body. Thus the body
replicates both the primordial and the eschatological. The
'phallic' body and the 'womb' body co-ordinate temporality and
gender. For just as temporality is bifurcated into oppositional
perspectives towards the past and towards the future, the body
is bifurcated into female and male. These convergent primordial
and eschatological conceptual forms simultaneously impinge on
the human constitution, mental and physical, conferring
upon it the image and likeness of God. This convergence of
temporality and gender entailing the identification of masculine
with the future (transcendence) and that of the feminine with
the past (immanence) is reiterated in the drama. Mark
presents us with that very alignment or metaphysical
co-incidence between the womb-body and the past:
And there was a woman who had
had a flow of blood for twelve years, and who had suffered
much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had,
and was no better but rather grew worse. (Mark 5.25, 26).
The illness of the woman is specific to her gender, and the
multiple references in the introduction to time past are
anything but casual. The orientation of the gender of the
woman's body signals the temporal vector. There is even a sense
in which the 'flow of blood' (v 25) suggests something like the
confluence of past into present, the passage of time as
suffering of a specific kind. The association of the feminine
with the past is not gratuitous. It follows upon the metaphysics
seminal to the creation narrative. To this Mark adds more and
more detail in conformity with the theology of the body, the
theology of haptic semiotic forms:
She had heard the reports about Jesus, and came
up behind him in the crowd and touched his garment. For she
said ... And immediately the haemorrhage ceased .. And Jesus,
perceiving in himself that power had gone forth from him,
immediately turned about in the crowd, and said ... (5.27-30).
We have extracted this passage from a carefully constructed
whole. It is prefaced by the story of The Daughter of Jairus,
to which it reverts having concluded, so that the arc of a
parabola reflecting the very movement of the characters in this
story, is subtended from the point of the woman's cure, a point
given by the word translated 'ceased' (v 29). Still closer
examination of the narrative would begin with a
consideration of the story of The Gerasene Man and end
with that of The Syrophoenician Woman. This would
confirm and extend the same pattern. That the healing story was
important enough for the evangelist to have crafted it in so
fine a way is evidence of its meaning and value. A significant
part of that is its careful recapitulation of the concept of
time. This places it among the corpus of six Markan miracle
stories dealing with the conceptual polarity of human
consciousness, and further still, amid the wider body of twelve
miracle narratives which reconfigure the categories expounded in
the narrative cycles of creation and redemption.
The identification of the haptic form will add yet more
weight to this postulate, and will provide us with the
opportunity to comment upon the haptic semiosis. We might be
inclined to rush to the conclusion that the womb is the somatic
bearer of meaning of the concept time. But the semiology of the
story is subtler than one might first think. Moreover it demands
as already observed, much more detailed consideration of the
related pericopae, here notably those of The
Daughter of Jairus and The Syrophoenician Woman.
The theological rapport between these texts, and of course that
of The Gerasene Demoniac, must be taken into account if
any real understanding of them is to be reached.
The woman's coming to Jesus from 'behind' is signal in view
of the fact that Mark has so conspicuously interpolated the
episode into a string of related events and in view of the
extensive structuring of the text as noted. The Woman planned to
avoid confronting Jesus and succeeded. He is forced to 'turn
about' in order to face her. These literal means designate the
semiotic form proper to the category - the back. Her approach
from 'behind' - o)/pisqen (v 27)
- and his 'turning about' ( e)pistrafei\v
(v 30)) - both articulate the behind part of the body, its
back, as that member which signifies time in the process of
human self-reflexiveness.
The spinal column is the centre of this member just as the
solar plexus is centre of one's front. Between back and front
are the sides bordering both sites. The lateral body is the
point beyond which our vision, unless we turn about, is impeded.
Since we are speaking here of time, we need to incorporate the
concept of motion, which the narrative itself does noticeably.
When moving, this lateral region of our bodies, its sides, is
one that we palpably associate with the confluence between past
and present, and the present and future. If we are walking
forwards, or travelling in a vehicle of any kind
which is moving in that direction, provided we are facing the
direction in which we are travelling, which is always the case
for anyone wanting and needing to see that direction, we can
perhaps begin to understand this sign. By the back of the body,
we include part of its lateral aspect, that precise region of
one's body which measures a beyond which any given point or
points seem to pass as we move. Hence we speak of our past as
being 'behind' us. In the miracle story this is reflected by the
apex of the parabolic text, indicated by the word
'ceased'. The association of time with this semiotic form
is thus borne out at an experiential level. The back is that
member of the human body which we associate with the idea
of time by dint of our self-understanding as embodied beings. It
is necessary to repeat that the relation of past to present is
continuous, and the semeion conjures fittingly with this
fact. We have emphasised that the future, the direction which we
more or less must face, that is which confronts us, presents us
with an antithetical relation. For we have argued here that the
future as devoid of temporal passage, can only be said to be
linked with the present discretely. There is therefore a
specific and succinct way in which time, demonstrated as the
continuous inheritance of the present of a settled past, is
portrayed by means of the haptic/somatic signifier, the dorsal
body.
It goes without saying that the bodies of males no less than
those of females are party to this precise element of haptic
signification. The bodies of males no less than females possess
a back as well as a front. Thus the conceptual forms of unity
must be signified irrespectively of the gendered body. The
meanings of 'womb' body and 'phallic' body as in this context
therefore, do not in the first place refer to the specific
sexual differentiation of any particular body. If anything, they
controvert this. In sum then, there is a precise and
comprehensive correspondence between the conceptual forms and
human corporeal existence. The story of The Haemorrhagic
Woman contributes to this with its clear exposition of the
body's 'back' qua semeion or sign, and the
categoreal form time. It is one of exactly six such narratives
in the gospel of Mark which accomplishes this, in accordance
with the categoreal scheme first proposed in the creation story.
Blind Bartimaeus (Mark 10.46-52)
This is our second example before we finish with the
introduction to the theology of haptic semiotic forms. It is
useful for two reasons: the first is that dealing with a mode of
perception it stands in contrast to the previous example which
concerned a conceptual form, and secondly, it will dispel any
facile association between specific functions of organs or
members of the body and their theological signification. Reading
the narrative carefully enough, even if only for a first time,
should reveal the specific form concerned.
And throwing off his mantle
he sprang up and came to Jesus. (Mark 10.50).
The story has much in common with other healing narratives;
for example, the theme of faith, and the theme of following or
discipleship (v 52). But nothing in any other healing story
situates this particular mode of perception a propos of the
somatic form indicated by the word 'mantle' i9ma/tion. The plural of the same word
is used in the story of The Transfiguration (9.3),
of Jesus' 'garments', and later (15.20) of Jesus' clothes in the
Passion narrative.
This word designates that part of the body including the
shoulders and arms. This may seem odd, but it is necessary
to remember that the schema is representative at a broad level.
It incorporates the body dismembered so to speak, at the most
elementary level. The eyes in themselves do configure the
conscious process involved here. The semiosis of the haptic must
involve members, parts, regions of the body which are
susceptible of touching, of feeling. One cannot touch one's
eyes, the very things one sees with; or certainly, one does not
often do so. Nor do the eyes come into contact with anything on
a regular basis. This precludes them from the status of haptic
semiotic form. As does the fact that there is no obvious
antithetical member of the body. For in each semiosis polarity
is a significant factor as restating the categoreal paradigm,
transcendence : immanence. There are two stories of cures of
blindness, and these confirm the binary structure common to all
semiotic forms. The countervailing semeion is given in
the only other story of a healing of blindness in Mark 8.24.
This is the briefest of introductions to the haptic semiosis.
(For the complete account see Semeihaptika:
The Body And Touch.) Certain key characteristics
must be met by all semiotic forms, and certain criteria
fulfilled. Haptic signs must be bodily zones which come into
contact with things and of course, with other persons. The arms
and shoulders accomplish this. Moreover the forms in this
case, the arms-shoulders, are set in relation of antithesis or
opposition to the lower limbs of the body, as for example back
is to front. We see this pattern of polarity in Mark's two
narratives which deal with vision. It is specifically the arms
of one's body which tell us the distance of things from us, for
the arms sweep out before and behind in arcs of varying sizes,
not dissimilarly to the way in which our eyes function. The span
of the arm, because of the joints at the shoulder and the elbow,
provide us with very exact information regarding the distance of
things from us. Thus whatever other functions they achieve, the
limbs of the body generally serve to focus our location in
relation to the environment in lieu of vision if needs be, due
to their capacity to calibrate our distance from the objects
around us. When we consider that we do in fact use our
arms (and legs) to measure distances, when for example we find
ourselves groping in the dark, and equally, considering that the
eyes virtually reach out before and around us, prehending things
in just the way that our limbs do, this particular semiotic form
becomes intelligible. In the Markan theology of haptic semiosis,
this particular miracle story equates the upper limbs of the
body as signifying visual processes in self-reflexiveness.
In other words, the member of the body shoulders-arms stands for
vision in a semiological schema, the haptic, and it will have
its analogue in the other two semiotic series, acoustic
and optic.
Little wonder then that Mark relates the man's action of
'throwing off' his mantle. The description conveys his joy and
alacrity at dispensing with a great burden. We have all too
briefly alluded to the other story of a healing of a blind man
in the gospel, these two figures taken together, reveal that the
limbs of the body represent the visual processes in a schematic
theology of semiotic forms. It will be necessary to make good
the difference between the two narratives in terms of their
diverse semiotic forms. For there is again much that remains to
be accounted for here, especially the divergence as to
past/future and analogously feminine/masculine. Even so, these
two examples should suffice to introduce the idea that the
semiotic forms, which by dint of of expressing the mode of touch
are Christological, bring together in a corpus or whole, both
the conceptual and perceptual categories.
Even though the gospel of Mark currently lacks the story of
the miracle at Cana, which stands in relation to the theology of
haptic semeia as the two stories of loaves and fish
stand to the optic and acoustic signs, the form and content of
the miracle stories are absolutely consonant with the
comprehensive patterns given in the texts of these messianic
miracles. Every one of Mark's twelve stories of healings
recapitulates either one of the six conceptual forms or one of
the six perceptual forms and assigns it a somatic/haptic, index.
(This adds to the possibility that the gospel of Mark may have
originally contained the story of The Transformation Of
Water Into Wine; an interesting conjecture and one in
support of which further evidence exists in the gospels.)
The Feeding Of The Five Thousand
There is no need here, nor is it the most opportune point, to
enjoin detailed consideration of the theology of signs. That
said, this miracle narrative which sits with its complement at
the centre of the chiasmos, is vital to Markan metaphysics. The
reason is that the acoustic semiosis provides the most succinct
and practical exposition of the relational nature of the
entities under consideration, the categoreal constituents of
human consciousness. We should note, the acoustic semiosis, and
not numbers, which are of course mentioned not only in the
feeding miracle narratives, but which establish the story of
creation as a taxonomy. We should recall here that the first of
the immanent messianic events does not involve
multiplication/fragmentation. It is less about quantity than
quality. This points to the various semiotic forms, the haptic,
optic and acoustic, for they all, unlike numerical data,
function as qualia. A musical tone, like a visible hue,
or a tangible bodily member has an affective aspect, a
qualitative property, which no geometrical or mathematical
abstraction enjoys. This is of the greatest value for practical
rather than exclusively doctrinal purposes. It promises the
delivery by the narratives of a praxis. But our first
and foremost obligation here is nevertheless to establish the
doctrines stemming from the texts, and this cannot be done
without reference to the semiotic forms, perhaps the most
important of which remains the musical scale.
Because it presents every one of the formal features contained
in numerical form in the three Eucharistic miracle stories, it
discloses the formal characteristics of the contours of
time as of human consciousness and Mind, or God the Son. In the
musical tradition handed down and shaped by various
Christian civilizations in the West, the fundamental unit, an
octave, consists of twelve members, the figure mentioned in the
first miracle of loaves and fish, in which it enumerates the
quanta of remaining portions or baskets full of fragments. This
figure is fundamental to our study since it concerns the
analogous six Days and miracles. This does not mean the
exclusion of the Sabbath : Eucharist from consideration, but
clearly the hexad is a prominent formal feature of the two
texts. It recurs in both Christologies, so that the acoustic
semiosis is at once congruent with the exposition of the haptic
semiosis which these stories denote, and which the series of
twelve healing miracles in the gospel of Mark iterates. We have
just now provided two examples of these.
That the semiotic forms established by the acoustic series also
comport formally with the remaining Eucharistic miracle
narrative is obvious, given the prevalence of the figure 7 in
the narrative. This is certainly surprising, considering that
the stories of Days, and messianic miracles, in their entirety,
are heptadic in form. The commonest, clearest, and most salient
expressions of the heptad in the musical scale, are the
so-called diatonic scales, the major and minor scales. The
commonest of musical scales in use in the west since the
Renaissance, employ seven tones. These are known as the diatonic
scales. Thus where there are two scales consisting of five
serially order tones in any octave, there are also two scales
consisting of seven tones in distinct forms of serial order.
These scales, the major and minor, both comprising just seven
tones, do not exist merely by default, or by exclusion once the
pentatonic is given. That is, they do not occur simply as the
result of any prior division of the octave into the pentatonic
scale. They form the basic series of tones which accounts for
the harmonic structures of western music.
The seven tones or elements of the diatonic scales bear upon
this figure which we have seen often enough in the narratives
which concern us: the creation story consists of seven serial
units, and the messianic miracle series likewise contains seven
serial members. We encounter a raft of sevenfold
series in The Apocalypse also. The link between the
archaeological immanent messianic miracle, The Feeding Of
The Five Thousand, and the eschatological one, The
Feeding Of The Four Thousand, is secured by the iterated
cipher in the former, the figure 5, and the iterated figure 7 in
the latter. Thus the dodecaphonic series consists of
combinatorial sevenfold and fivefold scales, as well as two
sixfold scales. These structures are amongst the most
commonplace of all the various morphologies expressed by the
acoustic semiosis. The acoustic semiotic series, the twelve
tones of the dodecaphonic scale which constitutes an octave,
thus stands itself in the very best stead for integration with
the formal rudiments of the other semioses. These are the first
points we should raise in support of the emerging hermeneutic.
Just as there are both a pentatonic or five-tone and two
(diatonic) or seven-tone scales in the western musical
tradition, there exists also, and again neither merely by
default, a twelve-tone or dodecaphonic scale. Again, due to the
plasticity of the acoustic series, to say nothing of human
inventiveness, there are within the octave exactly two scales
with just six members. These are the two whole tone scales. If
we observe the presence of this cipher in both Christological
miracle narratives, six, we must remember that also that both
series 'beginning' and 'end', can be reckoned as sixfold.
The total tally of beginning and end events, Days excluding the
Sabbath, which is not a day of creation proper,and messianic
miracles excluding the Eucharist, which is not a miracle proper,
is therefore twelve.
The musical scales, or what is the same thing, the acoustic
series, present structural features corresponding to the quanta
detailed not only in both miracles of loaves and fish, The
Feeding Of The Five Thousand and The Feeding
Of The Four Thousand, but just as clearly the Johannine
story of the miracle at Cana, The Transformation Of Water
Into Wine and its certain complement, The
Transfiguration which explicitly enumerates the six
conceptual forms and correlates these with the theology of
perception contained within the messianic series. It is this
semiosis which is thus best fitted to elaborate the relations
obtaining extensively between the various entities,
conceptual and perceptual, depicted in both narrative cycles.
Clearly then, if the details of the immanent messianic
miracle stories enmesh, so too do their corresponding
semiologies.
The difference which secures the co-existence of so many
serial forms of order in the twelve musical tones of an octave,
depends entirely on the intervals between them. So for example,
the interval between each member of the two sixfold whole-tone
scales, is always one whole tone. These are the two scales which
will signify the two serially ordered entities, conceptual and
perceptual, and which fully articulate the various relationships
referred to by means of the various numerical details. The
intervals between members of the pentatonic scales are unequal;
as are the intervals subdividing the members of the diatonic
scales. So that the two whole tone scales, each consisting of
six members, are perfectly fitted to express the serial
taxonomies of both the theology of creation, Days, and the
theology of salvation, messianic miracles. The cogent factor
which fits them for just such a purpose, is the logical one of
the equal interval measuring each step from one to the next
member of the series. The use of an interval as the principle of
serial order reflects the notion of fragmentation, of division,
or its obverse, multiplication, depending on one's point of
view, both being deployed in the two stories. Thus the creation
narrative uses the fission motif for the first three Days of
transcendence proper, and the fusion motif for the subsequent
four Days. Similarly, the miracles of loaves and fish entail
division/multiplication.
The Christological miracle at Cana on the other hand,
involves no division/multiplication; the story begins and ends
with equal quantities, now of water, now of wine. We have
already remarked on the singular character of the Christological
miracles and their antecedents in the creation story. Here too,
that is within the acoustic semiosis, the two whole-tone scales
consisting of six (different) members each, distinguish
themselves; for the division between each successive member of
the series is equal, that is, it is always the same. Pentatonic
and diatonic scales contain at least two unequal divisions or
intervals; three and two semitones (or one whole tone) in the
former case, and two semitones (one whole tone) and the semitone
in the latter case. We could propose that the chromatic
(dodecaphonic) scale compares to the two whole-tone scales in
singularity, for the intervals it contains are the same, a
semitone serving to divide each and every member of the series.
But it leaves nothing out; that is, the chromatic scale,just
like the gathering up of all the fragments, includes everything
such that in one sense there is no division, no fragmentation.
(The word 'chromatic' in this context is profoundly apt from a
semiological point of view for it suggests the spectrum of
visible hues. It suggests the analogous members of the optic
semiotic series, which are denoted in the subsequent miracle of
loaves and fish.)
These various acoustic serial forms of order are certainly
man-made, nonetheless they are equally natural. They reflect the
innate structures and patterns which formulate the manner in
which humans hear sound, and sound moreover, which is
susceptible of precise mensuration. We chose to begin with the
acoustic semiosis because it meshes with both other semioses.
The 'signs' intrinsic to the process of hearing confirm
corresponding structures in both semiotic series, seeing and
touch. Perhaps for the same reason, who can say, this narrative,
The Feeding Of The Five Thousand, is to be found
in all four gospels. Indeed in John it is virtually equivalent
to the Eucharist. This evidently most primordial of the
Eucharistic miracles, in effect the theology of hearing,
provides the best opening, or beginning to a semiotic theology.
It surely conveys the closest association between the human
sentient body, soma, and reception of the Word. This is
an ongoing concern in the fourth gospel, and we find for
example, immediately prior to the story of The Feeding Of
The Five Thousand, John consistently reverts to the idea
of hearing as itself radically implicated in the process of
believing:
"Truly, truly, I say to you,
the hour is coming, and now is, when the dead will hear the
voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live .... Do
not marvel at this; for the hour is coming when all who are in
the tombs will hear his voice ... I can do nothing on my own
authority; as I hear, I judge; and my judgment is just,
because I seek not my own will but the will of him who sent
me." (John 5.25, 28, 30).
This last reference is striking because it precisely confirms
the specific mode of sentience, hearing, as identifying the
Transcendent, the 'Father', more of which directly. Immediately
prior to the miracle story we find:
"But if you do not believe
his [Moses'] writings, how will you believe my words?" (John
5.47).
The first miracle of loaves then, concerns acoustic
percipience: hearing. This mode of sentience, like others
comparable to it, presents us with the phenomenon of a variety
of serial forms of order, scales. These are congruent with the
organic and formal properties inherent in the two textual
series, Days and messianic events. That is, they elaborate the
same structures and patterns which scripture proposes as the
disclosure of mind (consciousness) to itself. To understand
further what this phenomenon involves, is to pursue the formal
patterns inherent in the acoustic 'signs' presented to us by
evolving human consciousness in relation to the disclosure of
the same, Mind, within special revelation.
In sum then, the twelve tones of the western musical
chromatic scale, the dodecaphonic series, in its variety of
permutations, effectively presents us with the real content of
the story of The Feeding Of The Five Thousand.
That these semeia or signs themselves are innately
connected to temporality, and so finally to mind, is the premise
for this part of the theology of semiotic forms. There is no
other means of determining the plethora of relations which
obtain between the various members of the two orders, conceptual
and perceptual. Any effort to come to terms with not just the
meaning of this particular immanent messianic miracle, but also
with that of the series in its entirety, and moreover with a
Christian understanding of the revelation made in the story of
creation must countenance these phenomena - the acoustic semeia.
There is no alternative method. To begin to understand the
theology of signs, is to begin to understand the acoustika.
This system, which has evolved over time in tandem with the
development of Christian culture constitutes a primary resource
for theology. (A rider is necessary here, since we find the
pentatonic scale in many cultures other than the Christan one.)
Part of the reason for this claim must lie in the fact of the
affinity of the same with time. That hearing is to be linked
with time, will follow from their categoreal co-incident
instantiation of the Transcendent, ('the Father') within the
overtly Trinitarian theology of both cycles, beginning and end,
Genesis and gospel.
The Feeding Of The Four Thousand
The next step in our procedure will probably by now be
readily foreseeable. We are establishing the hermeneutic of this
narrative Pneumatological as centred on seeing, thus its
numerical schemata should add to an emerging theological
understanding of the sentient body, the soma. The
repeated figure is here seven.
The term 'chromatic' used above in relation to the
dodecaphonic scale is an apt cue for the introduction of the
theology of 'optic' signs, the theology expressed in the
schemata of this miracle story. Although it is used in the
context of music, it also refers to express the notion of
colour. Since the publication in 1704 of Newton's magisterial
work on light and colour, Opticks, (although the actual
discovery had taken place some thirty years previously), we have
thought of white light as composed of the hues visible in the
rainbow, into which the scientist divided and from which he
recombined them by means of prisms. We see virtually everything
as a two-dimensional coloured surface. These colours are none
other than the semeia or signs with which the miracle
story is concerned. We do not always agree on the precise number
of colours that we perceive, although just like audible tones,
they are determinable by specific measurement. Whether we reckon
the number of colours as six or seven is not an issue, since
both figures occur in these stories of miraculous feedings. The
figure six is employed in the tradition of the miracle at Cana,
and the figures seven here in the related final feeding miracle
story.
If we emphasise the aptness to immanence of unity, and hence the
fact that each of the somisms or sentient modes, touching,
hearing and seeing, operate sympathetically to one another,
there is a logical case for reading the repeated figures in the
three immanent miracles as emblematic of the same. These are the
figures 5, 6, and 7. The number of visible hues and the number
of tones in the two diatonic scales, the most common of any
musical scales, are the same. So too, the serial narratives in
Genesis, the gospel, and The Apocalypse, all employ these basic
forms, all involve sevenfold patterns which tie them intimately
to Trinitarian theology. The meshing or co-incidence of the two
series of signs, tones and hues, includes the event at Cana.
Thus while they may serve to distinguish the episodes from one
another, it is necessary to note also their apparent
integration, as given by the fact that they constitute a
numerical progression. Several features which guarantee the
utility of the colour scale are as follows.
The colour series is polarised. Thus when tallied as
containing six units it consists of two triads. The vocabulary
of art and psychology uses vernacular terms 'warm/cool' to
express this polarity. Astrophysics speaks of the juxtaposed red
and violet or blue, ends of the spectrum as indicating light
sources moving away from and towards us respectively. Whichever
terms we employ, we can extend the reformulation of the binary
form to the entire spectrum and so speak of the oppositional
relationship between red and green, orange and blue, yellow and
indigo. These six signifiers reformulate the antithetical pairs
of Days and corresponding pairs of messianic miracles, for
example Day 1 and Day 4, Transfiguration and Transformation
Of Water Into Wine. This binary pattern of the optic semeia
conforms to the serial structures of the narratives of beginning
and end, of Genesis and the gospel. It is a finite series with a
first and a last term.
To speak of the breaking up - 'refraction' - of white light
as pertinent to the meaning of The Feeding Of The Four
Thousand, and of the division of the musical octave into
various scales, pentatonic, whole-tone, diatonic and
dodecaphonic, in the context of The Feeding Of The Five
Thousand, clearly brings to mind the relation of these
events to the Eucharist and more clearly still to the death of
Jesus on the cross. The Eucharist is in one sense, closer
to the haptic semiosis than either of the other semiotic forms
because of its pertinence to the Son. The body in the light of
the fractio panis can be understood in terms of
dismemberment. Thus the 'breaking of the bread' ritually
concerns identity as well as unity in the sense that the body
itself is the manifest of the same dialectic. We said above that
the somatic/haptic sign of the categoreal form time, is that
particular member of the body, the back, which 'embodies' this
in our self-understanding. That part or fragment of the body
necessarily becomes isolated for consideration, even as
simultaneously it remains a vital part of the whole, in any
epistemology-psychology of the way in which this concept
functions in consciousness.
The haptic semeia reproduce both the propensity to
absolute identification of the acoustika on the one
hand, and yet the inevitable constraint towards to unity of the
optika on the other. For just as the conceptual
Christological categories achieve the conjunction and
disjunction of relata, the perceptual categories do
likewise. They no less than the conceptual forms are accentuated
according to the categoreal paradigm. This is encapsulated for
us in the copula of the various Christological titles:
'beginning and end', 'alpha and omega', 'first and last'.
The process of semiotic configuration, the 'embodiment' of
the various categories, both transcendent and immanent, which
number twelve in all, is therefore also the process of
dismemberment from the corpus, of differentiation from
undifferentiated unity, of morphological severance from the body
of something less than a whole yet more than a part. For this is
demanded by the law of identity. Nevertheless, it is also the
process of the body's being made whole, the task of immanence,
as of the Holy Spirit. The haptic semiosis as hexadic, stands
poised between those of the acoustic and optic, whose ciphers, 5
and 7, repeated in the miracle narratives are signal of the
Transcendent and the Holy Spirit respectively. We shall later
pursue this idea in relation to the forms of intentionality, or
prehensive modes, which are specifically or innately tied to the
categories.
We are adverting here to the value of a theology of the body,
a theology of the haptic semeia at the heart of the
Johannine miracle story. The members of the body as members, are
exemplars of the necessary communication between the dialectical
principles, identity and unity. The haptic semeia are
weighted according to neither principle, alternatively, we may
say that they are accentuated in virtue of both at once. If the
category mind : body mediates between primordial and
eschatological categories, then just so does the haptic semiosis
mediate between the acoustic and optic semiotic series. This
corporeal mediation, the meaning of the event of the cross
as constituting the heart of the theology of Eucharist,
confers alterity on these two antithetical semiotic forms and
also rescues them from absolute inconsistency. If the category
mind : body mediates between primordial and eschatological
categories, then just so does the haptic semiosis mediate
between the acoustic and optic semiotic series. Its corporeal
mediation, reflects the meaning of the event of the cross
as constituting the heart of Eucharistic theology, and
confers alterity on the two antithetical semiotic series,
retrieving them from absolute disintegration.The syntax of all
three semiotic series, their linguistic coherence, can be put as
follows:
transcendence
:
immanence
acoustic haptic optic
Remember that the two peripheral forms or categories, those
of 'beginning and end', are weighted antithetically. That is,
the acoustic semeia show a greater propensity to express
identity, while the optic semeia are more determined to
express unity. As Newton discovered, white light is constituted
by light of component wavelengths which manifest themselves to
us as the various chromatic values, or visible hues. That indeed
says it all. The acoustic semeia do not offer the same
kind of integration. They do not innately manifest the same kind
of propensity to unity. We cannot hear all twelve tones of the
dodecaphonic series simultaneously - it is a cacophony. Although
it is true that harmony consists in the simultaneous sounding of
certain tones, and this is just one of the many phenomena which
is part and parcel of the theology of acoustic semeia. The optic
semeia are invaluable precisely in that they stand over
and against the acoustic signs. They assist us in
overcoming much of the difficulty occasioned by conceiving
the reality of the principle of unity in theological terms. For
they put the case for unity of some of the various entities
which they signify.
We should note yet another divergence among the three series
of semiotic forms relative to the paradigm transcendence :
immanence. It governs so many of the theolougmena we
encounter in biblical metaphysics. We cannot press for any
one-to-one correspondence between the three phenomenal modes of
sense perception which disallows or curtails the paramount fact
of their integration. As espousing the principle of immanence,
each of these perceptual modes obtains relative to the others
according to the principle of unity. The modes of sense
perception conform to the fourfold aspect of Godhead, that of
the unity of identities in God. It is certainly clear that the
gospels propose each of the three phenomenal modes of sense
perception in specific relation to one of the identities in God:
hearing, (the acoustic), to God Transcendent, or 'the Father',
seeing, (the optic), to the Holy Spirit, and touch, (the
haptic), to the Son. But the real relevance for these sentient
modes is directed by the fact that overall they reveal the
immanent polarity of God. This means that they express unity at
the expense of the antithetical principle identity. It means
also they bear a particular relationship to the Holy Spirit.
Something of their ingrained proclivity towards
non-differentiation is demonstrated by the fact that there is
actually a fourth entity comparable to these three phenomenal
modes of sentience - smell/taste. We must not lose sight of the
fact that the Eucharist belongs to the very same set of events.
Furthermore, the Eucharist, as denoting the reality of
consumption, epitomises this very concept - unity. That which we
consume becomes an inseparable part of us. Thus the Eucharist
irrevocably expresses the principle of immanence - unity. There
is not adequate accounting for these four terms along the lines
of a theology of transcendence, since it is committed before all
else, to the disclosure the differentiation of identities in
God. This is prohibited by the existence of the fourfold form.
The explanation of just how a fourth categoreal is implicit
in the doctrine of God's immanence, must await the later
discussion of the gospels. We shall contend that their fourfold
form is a vital part of that explanation, and its clearest and
most concrete expression.
Conversely, if we were to say of the conceptual forms, the
transcendent categories or ideas, that they are
indistinguishable from one another, we would be committing an
error just as serious and defiantly of the clear logical tenets
set by the two series of narratives. The pure conceptual forms
posit the reality of identity, the complementary and immanent
modes of sense perception exemplify unity. Both concepts
are vital to a proper understanding of God. The following table
summarises the trinitarian rationale of the Christology emergent
in the P creation narrative and the messianic series. The pure
conceptual forms, rather than the forms of unity, which are
those categories univocally expressive of identity, are listed
as underlined.
|
Transcendence
- Conceptual Form of Unity
|
Immanence - Mode
of Sense Percipience
|
The Transcendent
|
space : time
|
acoustic
|
The Son
|
mind
: body
|
haptic
|
The Holy Spirit
|
male : female
|
optic
|
Apart from the fact that they elaborate a Christian theory of
language, the real value of the semiotic forms is their utility
for praxis. They can take us to the heart of Christian prayer
and meditation. The development of their potential in this
direction must accept certain procedures long developed in the
religious traditions of the East such as are encapsulated in the
terms, 'mantra', 'mandala', and 'mudra'. Adopting an insight
central to the Buddhist tradition we may repeat here that
prayer-meditation without understanding is aimless, and that
understanding without prayer-meditation is fruitless. We require
both a theological grasp of the realities of Christian
metaphysics and a means wherewithal to practise the same. It is
here exactly that the semiotic forms are indispensable. In
themselves, they avow that theological understanding can never
subsist in an objective vacuum; that in fact it must always
affect the subject. Such technologies as are involved in terms
like 'mantra', 'mandala', and 'mudra' testify to the
transformative power inherent in semiotic forms. In this regard
they are paramount methods of recreating the conative
consciousness. I mean by the latter, those processes of both
will and desire which spring from the conceptual and perceptual
poles of mind respectively.
The miracle at Cana is the first of the string of miraculous
Eucharistic stories. The two similar events have clearly defined
series of semeia or signs, whose elucidation in relation to the
biblical doctrine of Mind is the theology of signs or semiotic
forms. Hence we provided two examples above to show how the
reference to the six jars filled with water which is transformed
into wine, expounds the shift from the conceptual polarity to
the perceptual, and correspondingly a semiosis, the haptic,
which added to the two other semiologies, those of the acoustic
and the optic, encompasses the sentient body itself. This
theology has all the hallmarks of a comprehensive philosophy. In
all then, there are three patterns or series of signs: haptic, The
Transformation Of Water Into Wine; acoustic, The
Feeding Of The Five Thousand; and optic, The
Feeding Of The Four Thousand. We have outlined the barest
aspects of their concurrent configuration, their syntactical
integration, above.
We have drawn attention here to the various numerical details
of all three feeding miracles to show that the theology of
semiotic forms can account for them in a manner consonant with
the same presence of formal logic within the creation story. To
neglect one is to neglect the other. The consequences are dire
in either case, because they make of both narrative cycles,
nothing more than ad hoc textual fragments. The
series of creation events and the series of salvation events are
not truncated literary items lacking in all internal and
extensive coherence. The semiological hermeneutic given here,
which has required an all to summary introduction to the
theology of semiotic forms, posits that the feeding miracle
narrative supply a vital component of Christological, that is
Christian epistemological-psychological, doctrine. For it is
only by means of elaboration of the various relational and
structural details inherent within the three semiotic series
themselves , haptic, acoustic and optic, which can deliver the
meaning of these narratives. The alternative is to doom them to
lasting triviality.
Hence the three Eucharistic miracles thus announce the role
of three modes of sense perception - touch, hearing and seeing -
in expounding the doctrine of the (human) soma. We have
in this briefest of introductions to the theology of semiotic
forms, accounted for the basic numerical details which are a
significant part of the narratives. We cannot ignore them.
Numbers belong to language, and to simply pass over them as if
they had no bearing at all on the meaning of the episodes is
itself the failure of understanding of which the final discourse
on the feeding miracles speaks. The patterning of the creation
story itself includes as germane to such ways of reasoning. If
serial order is apparent in that narrative as germane to the
theological project, then it must be because of the concepts of
time and death. No serious attempt to reckon with either
textual cycle, that of Genesis or the messianic miracle series,
can disregard them, as for the most part contemporary theology
has tried to do. We shall find later yet another reference, this
time in the gospel of John, to these three episodes which also
utilises numerical details, emphatically indicating their
significance.
The reason for introducing at this point the theology of
semiotic forms was to offer further evidence for the
hermeneutic. In effect, the numerical details are but the very
beginning of this. For they point to the three systems of
signification. Of these, the acoustika are certainly the
more important. This claim is justifiable on the basis of its
prominence of the narrative in the gospels and its multiple
attestation. It sits at the centre of each of the four. But it
is equally assured by the mereological capacity of the acoustic
series of semiotic forms. The various entities, conceptual and
perceptual categories, given in the texts are the rudiments of
Christian metaphysics, and a fully articulated doctrine of the
Christ. But these entities sustain a very wide variety of
relations among themselves. To such relations, rather than any
mathematical reasoning itself, the acoustika are the
final and best testimony. Surely this squares with the notion of
incarnation and just as surely it offers the basis of a praxis,
without which no adequate philosophy can hope to survive. The
first task of incarnational theology, and hence of a Christology
'from below', will be to render a systematic explication
of these very same signs or semeia. From the use
of the expression 'become' in the Johannine miracle story
onwards it is obvious that the relation of the six conceptual
categories to the six perceptual categories cuts to the very
core of Christian theology. Likewise any competent hermeneutic
of The Transfiguration must confront the same conceptual
schema. The primary means of achieving this lies in reasoned
consideration of the acoustic semiotic forms, which as we said
before, centres the messianic series in every one of the four
gospels. Now we must indicate how the Eucharist itself forms
part of the Markan theology of perception.
The Eucharist And Soma In
Mark
The relation of the final messianic event to the three
feeding miracles poses no problem for the interpretation put
here, namely that these episodes are a theology of perception.
Where the miracle narratives posit a systematic theology of
three modes of sense perception, the story of the Last Supper
belongs to the same. Actual ingestion of food and/or drink
necessarily involves smell-taste. In this way, the Eucharist
completes the series. In terms of the doctrine of soma,
the Eucharist denotes the mode of smell-taste.
We discerned at least two different intentions behind the
narrative of the Last Supper. In one sense, it enjoins a ritual
remembrance. Contemporary scholarship is now inclined to accord
the specific lack of any mention of remembrance in Mark's and
Matthew's accounts of the Last Supper its full value. It is
contended that these particular narratives do not enjoin ritual
observance, a liturgical act which is fundamentally
re-iterative. The all important term 'in remembrance of me' - th\n e9mh\n a(na/mnhsin (1 Corinthians
12.24, Luke 22.19) which will be so vital to an understanding of
the messianic series as an entirety from the standpoint of the
primordial category, is actually missing from both Mark and
Matthew. It is necessary to emphasise in response however, that
Mark does use the concept of anamnesis (memory) in the discourse
recalling both miracles of loaves (Mark 8.14-21):
"Do you not yet perceive or
understand? Are your hearts hardened? Having eyes do you not
see, and having ears do you not hear? And do you not
remember?" (kai\ ou(
mnhmoneu/ete Mark 8.18,19).
Moreover, this discourse brings into view the full spectrum
of immanent messianic episodes. That is, it suggests precisely
what we shall directly do, namely consider the Eucharistic
events as a fourfold series which finally answers the categoreal
theology of transcendence elaborated in the first creation
story. Here then, the precedent for the Eucharist, the last
event of the sevenfold messianic series, is either the
event in the Garden of Eden, or the Passover. It can hardly be
both. As a rite, or religious act, the Jewish feast of Passover
is the substantial model or precedent for the Eucharist, if we
mean by the latter, that which Paul and Luke have in mind. On
the other hand, we have observed the relationship between the
Eucharist and the Sabbath. This is very plain to both Mark and
Matthew among the synoptists and also to John. Luke does seem to
have overlooked or to have ignored the logical intention behind
the messianic series as a whole, which influences his theology
of the Eucharist. Paul tends to look to the mythology of the
second creation account. He accepts the Genesis 3.1s story as a
veridical report of the prehistory of mankind. Such acceptance
cannot survive the scrutiny of contemporary criticism. On the
other hand, we noted in passing, that the P creation narrative
is not only congenial to an evolutionary theoretical
understanding of the origins of humankind but positively
supports it.
Thus Mark, Matthew and John, because their primary reference
in creation theology is to the first, the P narrative, all stand
in good stead where issues concerning the evolutionary past of
humankind are concerned. The other injurious effect of the
Pauline adoption of the J narrative is to have influenced
thinking about the New Testament theology of creation. Received
wisdom deems this a to be non-existent; that is, it argues that
there is little if any creation theology in the entire New
Testament. The thrust of the present hermeneutic of Mark
routinely rejects that view. The closest possible link between
creation and salvation exists due to the clearest possible
congruence, isomorphism, analogy, between the Day series and the
messianic events. The same is in turn borne out or at least
anticipated, for example, by the expressions 'first and last' in
Isaiah 41.4, 44.6, 48.12. These of course evolve into the
identical Christological formulae of the New Testament -
'I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the
beginning and the end.' (Revelation 22.13)
To stress any relationship between the Sabbath of creation
and the last of the messianic events is not to deny the cultic
or religious correspondence between the Eucharist and the
Passover. Rather, the relationship of the Eucharist and the
Sabbath such as we find in Mark, Matthew and John, subordinates
the ritual to the didactic purpose. Our concern is with this
alternative doctrinal, metaphysical, dimension of the Eucharist.
This is what connects the feeding miracles to the Eucharist, and
of course, the messianic series to the Days series: Markan
teaching. The single most important philosophical premise of
that avowed intent is the doctrine of the form of unity mind :
body. The story of the Eucharist is vital to the theology of soma.
Therefore we repeat that it vindicates the identification of the
logical subjects of the miracles of feeding as the three
modes of sense perception, touch, hearing and vision, to which
it adds the fourth, the last of the series, the Eucharist proper
as the exemplar of immanence, and so consistently identifies the
remaining sense percipient mode, smell-taste, the one most
linked with death.
The pattern of the Markan Eucharistic theology emphasises
unity - one loaf and only one exists in the boat with the
disciples and Jesus. In effect then, the one loaf of this
narrative, an overt reference to the Eucharist, stands for the
Eucharistic mode of sense percipience, smell-taste. There is no
requirement of a 'miracle' of feeding in this case, for the
event refers to itself. What it involved is quite literally
ingestion of food and drink, and consequently the olfactory and
gustatory modes of sense-percipience. Such sentient
modality stands outside the pattern of the three phenomenal
modes, and no semiotic series is involved. Nor is the event
paired with any transcendent occasion, unless of course that be
the resurrection. For Luke especially, and to a certain extent
John, this may be so. Both evangelists include appearance
stories in which the risen Christ himself eats with his
disciples. Such a reckoning brings the tally of events to a
total of eight, a figure which Luke incorporates into his
introduction to the story of The Transfiguration (Luke
9.28), and one which just as conspicuously John uses for the
beginning of his appearance story about Thomas (John 20.24ff.
26ff). Any resolution of the meaning of such an inclusion of the
'octave', all the more noticeable in John's story which contains
a reference to 'Thomas, one of the twelve, called the
Twin' (20.24), cannot be undertaken without recourse to the
theology of semiotic forms, just noted.
The 3:3:1 structure recapitulates the sevenfold pattern in
Genesis, where more than ever, the seventh Day is distinguished.
The Eucharist centres the whole pattern. If we were to determine
its signification as part of the intersection of three axes
epitomising the cruciform, it would have to be their single
point of intersection. We can thus argue that Mark sees the
three phenomenal modes in relation to this singular unifying
event. In a sense he is urging that the appetitive nature of
perceptual consciousness takes its cue from the structural
centrality of the olfactory-gustatory modes of sentience. In
other words, this mode of sense-percipience is foundational to
the entire corpus of sentient existence.
The Eucharist epitomises the mundane , the immanent, in
contradistinction to the transcendent, more irrevocably even
than the miraculous feedings, in part as we saw, because it
points to itself as the signified mode of sentience. Moreover,
as the last member of the messianic series, it possesses
exceptional status. Consequently, we should read the relation
between the Eucharist and the Eucharistic miracles as stressing
the originary or generic status of the former. Short of
affirming that the stories of miraculous feedings originated
from a sustained meditation on the significance of the Last
Supper, we may say that the Eucharistic miracles extend or
derive from the Eucharist. The Eucharist stands as their first
and final point of reference.
We have yet to account for the fourfold rendering of
immanence, and indeed for the various ways of reckoning
perceptual consciousness. Thus far, we have seen the figures,
two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, applied in turn to
the sense-percipient manifold. We have concentrated until now
only on the four immanent events from the messianic series, it
is time to turn to the three transcendent counterparts to the
feeding miracles: The Stilling Of The Storm, The
Walking On The Water, and The Transfiguration Of Jesus.
Part of the reason for delaying consideration of them stems from
the fact that the defining moment of the messianic miracles is
the normative subset of four immanent feeding events, just as,
conversely the three transcendent Days remained regulatory in
the Days series. In answering the questions relating to
these narratives we shall return to the doctrinal content of
Mark's Eucharistic theology.
The
Three Transcendent Messianic Miracles
The real difficulty concerns what if anything we are to make
of the transcendent miracles complementary to the feeding
events. These three miracles bear such immediate resemblance to
the first three Days that we are almost inclined to the view
that they really add nothing or very little to the emerging
doctrine. The formal structures common to both narrative cycles
are essential to the interpretation of the three transcendent
miracles. These will prove consistent and fully reliable. The
three transcendent messianic miracles do put the case for the
analogy between the two series with obvious clarity. This is the
first function these narratives fulfill.
We should first notice the incidence of the numeral six in
the two Christological miracles, The Transformation Of Water
Into Wine and The Transfiguration. Both of these
contain references (John 2.6, Mark 9.2) to the figure six, just
as both contain references to the Son of man, and to taste. This
indexes their Christological intent. The figure as it stands in
the story of the transcendent miracle should certainly be read
as a reference to the creation story itself, though commentators
have been all to slow to draw this conclusion. The combination
of the figure six with the word 'days' in the introductions to
both miracle stories places the comparison of the miracle story
and the theology of beginning beyond reasonable doubt. We have
expounded the latter in terms of the six categories that furnish
the roots of human consciousness: space-time, mind-body,
male-female. These categories consist not only as bipolar
entities, but also in a triadic relation with one another. Thus,
polarity and analogy function interdependently. This is indeed a
common enough characteristic of very many early
religious/metaphysical systems of thought.
What is remarkable about these six categories when we compare
them with the modes of sense-percipience, is that their nature
is ideal. By this, I mean that they are ideas. In every case, we
are dealing with ideas. Whether we take space, or the
body, time or Mind, or either eschatological category, male or
female, the result is the same. As ingredients in consciousness
these entities all have in common one thing - they are concepts.
The gospel on the other hand, is concerned with sentient forms,
the stuff of which we are likely to describe as concrete.
However we phrase it, there is an obvious difference between the
six transcendent categories of the stor of 'beginning', and the
categories of immanence, disclosed in the gospels. This
difference is the first thing put in the texts which refer by
means of the same figure, six, now to the conceptual
(transcendent), and now to the physical (immanent) categories.
The same difference is summed up in the incarnational aspect of
the miracle narrative in John, which implies that the difference
between conceptual and perceptual is of the same order as that
between above and below, or heaven and earth, God and the
world. The same expression - 'become ' - is used: 'And the
Word became ( e)ge/neto) flesh'
(John 1.14), 'the water now become (gegenhme/non)
wine' (John 2.9).
Even though it belongs to the series of messianic events, it
is clear from its introduction, that the story of The
Transfiguration recapitulates the six categories of
transcendence, as a doctrine of the transcendent Son. Mark's use
of the expression 'six days' adroitly captures the six
categories of transcendence. It thus serves in reference to the
Christological, mind : body, which is constituted by these
'ideas' or 'conceptual forms'. But it serves not simply to
repeat these categories. It must somehow fulfill, conclude, in
effect end them. Thus The Transfiguration and with it,
the other two transcendent episodes from the series of
(immanent) messianic miracles function complementarily to the
conceptual polarity envisaged by Genesis.
The actual content of all three transcendent miracle
stories bolsters the analogous relation between the texts
of Genesis and gospel. At first glance, they may even
appear void of novel content. However, any view that the three
transcendent messianic miracle stories do not add to the
theology of soma is a mistaken estimate of their
significance. For in addition to guaranteeing the analogy
between Days and messianic events, they perform another vital
function. Their further role is to delineate the twofold aspect
of the structures of perception. This evidence of polarity
secures the isomorphic, or analogical, relation between the
bipolar conceptual forms, and the structure of perceptual
consciousness which is beginning to surface in the gospels.
We noted in the prior study of the Genesis text, that the
three transcendent episodes are normative for the series as a
whole. The pattern of the second half reproduces what is already
given in the 'beginning', for beginning is a criteriological
notion for the theology of transcendence. This was the reason
for avowing that the real significance of the narrative accrues
to the presentation of the three pure ideas or conceptual forms:
space, Mind and the symbolic masculine. Now however, any
examination of the three transcendent messianic miracles must
conclude that they are indebted in some way to their precedents,
the first three Days of the creation. Even so, this relation is
complemented by the equally obvious fact that the last four Days
of the creation can only avoid apparent redundancy by
acknowledging their counterparts in the messianic miracle
series, which assign with full finality, meaning to the immanent
polarity of the opening inclusio, the 'earth'. Concrete
and material, or rather, earthly as they are, the four feeding
events alone lend real weight and purpose to the creation story.
For it is not a story about beginning ('heavens') only; it is a
story about heavens and the earth, beginning and end. The
semantic value of the latter cannot be realised without the
analogous narratives in the gospel, the three immanent messianic
miracles and the Eucharist. The quanta of the four feeding
events, the concrete stuff of the sense-percipient manifold are
at last what the expression 'earth' in the creation story points
to. Here then we are again confronted with the
evident purpose behind the analogical morphology of the two
narrative cycles:
The analogy of Days to messianic events: the normative rubrics
of the analogous texts are shown underlined and shaded
DAY 1
|
DAY 2
|
DAY 3
|
DAY 4
|
DAY 5
|
DAY 6
|
SABBATH
|
TRANSFIGURATION
|
WALKING
ON THE SEA
|
STILLING
THE STORM
|
WATER BECOMES WINE
|
FEEDING 5,000
|
FEEDING 4,000
|
EUCHARIST
|
We have already averred that to isolate any one messianic
narrative and treat it as discrete and self-contained is out of
the question. This applies equally to the two cycles. The nexus
of meaning on which all miracle stories in Mark rely, is the
messianic miracle series as a whole. It is established as a
totality, something clearly indicated by the opening inclusio
of the creation cycle, as well as the by two references to the
figure six in the first and last episodes, and its integrity is
essential to its meaning. The dependence of the gospel on
the creation story however is matched by the relation of the
story of beginning to that of end. The narratives are mutually
inclusive, and any dependence, any relationality is reciprocal.
The creation story for its part requires the completion supplied
only by the messianic series.
So the gospel narratives will require that instead of working
from the definitive status of the transcendent to the immanent,
we reverse the procedure, and so interpret the analogous
rationale of the texts. It is the four feeding events, the
immanent members of the messianic series, which clearly possess
normative status. That is why we examined them first. This is
guaranteed by the apparent similarity between the three
transcendent miracles and their corresponding Days. For the
transcendent messianic narratives mirror the theology of Genesis
to such an extent that they appear to border on redundancy. It
is also secured by the role of the Eucharist. As the last of its
series, this is that episode to which all others tend. As final,
the Eucharist endows true telos and definitive status
upon the Eucharistic miracles rather than their transcendent
counterparts. By extension it recapitulates the Sabbath.
Accordingly, the four immanent messianic events are those
episodes which confer upon the rubrics contained within the
second half of the creation narrative, real, effective and final
intent. Thus where the three transcendent Days are identifiable
as statutory for the analogy between Days and transcendent
messianic episodes, the obverse must also be the case. Namely,
the analogous relation between the four last Days and the four
immanent messianic will entail that the former in some sense
defer to the status of the latter.
Consequently, any hermeneutic of The Stilling Of The
Storm, The Walking On The Water and The
Transfiguration, must in the first instance devolve upon
the authoritative role given to their Eucharistic counterparts.
For at the most radical or categoreal level, the messianic
events are of a piece, and even though we refer to three of
their number as 'transcendent', they clearly all belong to the
one class. This pairing of the messianic events is a significant
aspect of their meaning for which any hermeneutic of the
transcendent miracles must account.
The same will apply to the latter four Days, and it will
entail not a revision of their hermeneutical role, but a status
in accordance with that of the transcendent miracles. For
whereas the first three Days stand out as pre-eminently telling
for the theology of creation, the theology of transcendence,
alternatively the four feeding events do likewise a propos of
the theology of salvation, the theology of immanence. We must
observe therefore, that at the broadest level, the transcendent
miracles in some sense defer to their normative counterparts in
the messianic series, each of the immanent events with which
they are paired. Clearly then, they subtend a relation of
complementarity to the Eucharistic events. If the series is
triadic, Trinitarian, then it is necessarily also binary. The
central events are linked together by contiguity as well as by
referential means. We recognised various inflections in the
texts of the first and last, the Christological events, too
conspicuous to be anything other than a deliberative theological
link. Of the second and second last events, the Pneumatological
episodes, we affirmed their necessary subscription to the
structural logic of the texts by dint of their positioning in
the series, and of similarity to the central miracles.
These are all factors which we must bear in mind as we
determine the possible meanings of the transcendent
miracles. Nor is this as complex as it may seem since the
story of the archaeological Days is a precedent. It allows us to
have established already, certain paradigmatic structures of
meaning. The other signal consideration, is that of the part
played by time. This was a key factor in the creation series,
obviously since it is a story about 'days'. But it was also
presented in the forefront of the compound Sabbath-Eucharist. It
is true that we rely on the second creation story to more fully
depict what is only implicit in the P narrative, the link
between time and death. That is as it must be. These texts are
no more than preparatory. They do not pretend to be a theology
of death. The disclosure of time as an immanent
determination of a conceptual form, space : time, remains
the business of the theology of immanence, for the gospel in
other words. It is for this reason that we must be alert to the
concept of time as presented in the theology of soma,
that is, the theology of perception. The first remark about time
is of course the prominent one of the link between the Eucharist
and the death of Jesus. The gospel proposes that perceived time
- time not in the abstract but as indivisibly part and parcel of
any act of sense perception, ordains the background against
which the realities divulged in the miracles stories transpires.
such 'perceived' or 'sentient' time is foundational to the
doctrinal purpose of the narratives. It was to begin with, in
Genesis, but is now more than ever so. This is something we must
also bear in mind.
In each of the three immanent miracle stories - remember,
these are normative for the series - we find references to time:
And Jesus said to her ... "My hour has not
yet come." (John 2.4, Transformation of Water Into Wine;)
... and they had no time even
to eat. (Mark 6.31, The Feeding Of The Five Thousand;)
"I have compassion on the
crowd, because they have been with me now three days, and have
nothing to eat:" (Mark 8.2, The Feeding Of The Four
Thousand.)
These are incidental details, but nonetheless underline the
significance of temporality for these stories. It is the Last
Supper which provides us with our really important clue. Mark
concludes his account thus:
"Truly, I [Jesus] say to you,
I shall not drink again of the fruit of the vine until that
day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God." And when they
had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives. (Mark
14.25, 26).
Matthew 26.29, 30 is virtually the same. But the Lukan
parallel is:
"... for I tell you that from
now on I shall not drink of the fruit of the vine until the
kingdom of god comes." And he took bread, and when he had
given thanks he broke it and gave it to them saying, "This is
my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of
me." (Luke 22.18, 19).
This account proposes something otherwise all too
obvious, and it is reflected in 1 Corinthians 11.23-26:
For I received from the Lord
what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night
when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks,
he broke it, and said, "This is my body which is for you. Do
this in remembrance of me...This cup is the new covenant in my
blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of
me." For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you
proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.
Even though this same element - remembrance - was missing
from both accounts of the Last Supper, Mark's and Matthew's, we
noticed that their recapitulation of the feeding miracles, which
is nothing less than an Eucharistic theology, refers to it (Mark
8.18, Matthew 16.9). There it is perhaps all the more
significant for having prompted the discourse in the first
place:
Now they had forgotten to
bring bread; (Mark 8.14);
When the disciples reached
the other side, they had forgotten to bring any bread.
(Matthew 16.5).
The all-important clue is the mental-temporal framework. On
this point and in their conclusions all four records agree,
whether or not the Eucharist, like the Passover, bears
repetition, that is whether or not Jesus himself actually
enjoined its repeated observance. Very succinctly, all of
these narratives plot the orientation of the present towards the
past. They all posit the same temporal vector which is in
keeping with the immanent disposition of perceived time, as it
is with the feminine principle. By the latter is meant, time
manifest indivisibly from sense-percipient awareness.
This brings to light the temporality intrinsic to the
Eucharist. It is an event within the present - just as the
Sabbath event is. Nonetheless, it exists in reference to the
past. The phrasing in both Paul and Luke is th\n e0mh\n a0na/mnhsin, 'in remembrance
of me', is unmistakeable.
The role of anamnesis or memory in the Eucharist has
thoroughgoing implications for the hermeneutic of the
Eucharistic miracles. It posits the compresence of memory in
sense-percipience. We cannot therefore argue for the existence
of a particular mode of sense perception, in the case of the
story of the miracle at Cana for example, the haptic, touch,
without reference to the spatiotemporal bifurcation into
immanent and transcendent realms; those of the past-present and
present-future respectively. What we must propose instead is
something we will call 'haptic memory', and accordingly for the
other two stories, 'acoustic memory' and 'optic memory'. That
is, we must make full provision for the fact that the primordial
category reiterates the categoreal paradigm. Such that
sense-percipience and memory consist indivisibly; they are
concomitant, and the subjects of the three immanent messianic
miracles. Thus the continuity of the past of sense-percipient
occasions immanently within the present of the same, is the
psychophysical reality to which the narratives point with utmost
clarity. This 'Eucharistic' tenet of the intrinsic complicity
between sense-percipience and memory is fundamental to the
doctrine of mind, and to Christology. There is no abstract
memory shorn of content, just as there is no sense-percipience
void of vectoral temporality. Sense-percipience obtains in
virtue of the ability of the consciousness to recall. This was
the point of the co-ordination of the spatiotemporal and
anthropological categories in the discussion of the 'feminine
body', 'womb body'. The archaeological and eschatological forms
of unity in their extensive relation do not indicate merely the
physical disposition of the body as sexually determined in one
of two forms. Their co-ordination signifies the intrinsic
temporal inclination of sense-percipience in one of two forms.
It is obvious that for the moment then, in the normative events
of the messianic series, we are confronted with sense-percipient
memory.
We have already acknowledged the peculiar spatiotemporal
orientation of immanence. The nexus between present and past
exemplifies the meaning of immanence due to the principle of
unity. The referentiality - we cannot say 'relation' in the
sense just used - between present and future, conforms to the
transcendent. In either case we are taking the present as the
point of reference, the point of departure, but not construing
the terms themselves as more than two in number, for the
paradigm transcendence : immanence must remain canonical. Hence
if the vectoral quality of present-past is retrospective, that
of the present-future is alternatively prospective. The certain
equilibrium demonstrated by these two orientations is that of
the continuous and the discrete as echoing the categoreal
paradigm. We cannot doubt that the future is somehow ingredient
in the present, but the nature of this contrasts with the
continuity, contiguity, unity, between past and present. That
the future is unknown, is tantamount to its being the source of
novelty, and this precludes repetition, and so too remembrance.
The future is not remembered, it is imagined. The Eucharist,
regardless of its ritual stature, posits appetitive
consciousness as the occasions of sense-percipience in relation
to past such occasions, perhaps to just one such occasion of
which the single Eucharist, the repeatedly recurring event, is
the token. Thus the Eucharistic miracles convey the same
co-ordination between temporal vector and sense-percipience. We
say temporal vector, but we might just as well say anthropic
form, in reference to sexual dimorphism. The point is
effectively neither just the involvement of primordial
space : time nor just the involvement of consequent male :
female, but both. Both forms of unity are implicated in
sense-percipience, for it is structured in accordance with their
extensive relatedness.
The merit of this proposition lies in its application of the
twofold category transcendence : immanence. It provides us with
an adequate logical basis for understanding the theology of soma.
We shall argue that the real semantic importance of the
categoreal paradigm, the understanding of consciousness from the
point of view of the co-ordination of both primordial and
consequent categories, tells for the interpretation of the
messianic events as a whole, in accordance with this tenet.
Thus when we spoke of the relatedness of the categories and
included primordial space : time and eschatological male :
female, in a composite view of the manifold as determined
in two juxtaposed orientations, those of inherited continuous
pasts ingredient in the present, and the same present disposed
in terms of the ingredience of discrete futures, it was in order
to fully appropriate the significance of the relatum
'earth' in the opening inclusio of the creation story
and its rubrical description, ostensibly contradictorily, in the
story of Day 3. But the significance of that term cannot end
there. We argued that the rationale of the relation between the
stories 'beginning and end' is proleptic, and that the
latter term acquires its final significance only by means of the
messianic series, with which we are now concerned. Hence the extensive
relatedness of the categories will require that we take the
meaning of 'earth' vis-a-vis what is disclosed in the immanent
section of the messianic series. What thus begins to
emerge is the doctrine of sense-percipient consciousness, and
this is fully adequate to render the given understanding of the
primordial form of unity, space : time. For the
sense-percipient polarity of mind is itself bifurcated. It
consists of complementary pasts and futures, which are known to
us, in ordinary language terms, as those of memory and
imagination. The former is already explicitly announced as vital
to the Eucharist, which is nothing if not the touchstone of the
'Eucharistic' miracles themselves.
Having proposed that the Eucharist is paradigmatic for the
Eucharistic miracles, we so apply to each of the Eucharistic
episodes the same temporal frame of reference. All alike, obtain
in virtue of the contiguity with the past and continuation of
the past within the present. The feeding episodes all reaffirm
the concept of the inheritance of the past by the present in
relation to sense-percipience. This confirms their presentation
of the related ideas of soma and the symbolic feminine.
Now, since the three transcendent miracles accede to their
defining, normative, Eucharistic counterparts as far as concerns
their interpretation, we may finally put the case that they
represent structures of consciousness which are likewise
perceptual, but in terms of the temporal vector of past-future
in co-ordination with the anthropic masculine. That is, they
explicate a theology of what can only be called perceptual
imagination. As is already evident from the fact that the
transcendent miracles are members of a category which is by
nature and by definition, in the first place immanent, something
of a paradox is at large here. We see as much in the claim
already made that the future is both non-determined and void of
'actual' temporality, the reason for describing it in relation
to the present as discrete. But these characteristics do not
mean that it is not real. (This offsets the paradox we
encountered in the examination of the conceptual categories. For
three of them were defined as transcendent, and normatively so,
yet these also had specifically immanent denominations. That is,
there four of the seven Days appeared to controvert the
emphatically transcendent inclination of the P creation
narrative. This means that in due course we shall have to review
all four fundamental categories of the Markan epistemology.)
The consequences for theology are plain. In its treatment of
the phenomenon of sense perception, the gospel does not traffic
in abstractions. It defines sense perception proper inextricably
in relation to the past. We say sense perception proper, because
the transcendent messianic miracles are if anything contrasted
to the feeding episodes, and will have to be distinguished from
them even while the two kinds remain an integrated serial whole.
Although these two subspecies of events are nevertheless
systematically linked in relationships of binary
complementarity, there is between them a juxtaposition
reflecting the categoreal paradigm to some degree. Now we are in
a position to reckon with the apparent absence of genuine
novelty in the transcendent messianic events, or rather, their
closeness to the actual transcendent episodes in the creation
story. Thus, we argued that the feeding episodes as denoting the
forms of perception contribute what is new and valuable in the
ongoing revelation, or rather, that they realise the meanings
implicitly posed by such terms in the creation narratives as
'earth', and that they propose a set of events, the messianic
feeding miracles, which stand to the second order theology of
immanence in that story of beginning analogously to the relation
between the transcendent first three Days and the transcendent
messianic miracles. For in either case, the theology of creation
or the theology of salvation, one half of the series alone is
normative as conforming to the general morphological scheme
which is reciprocally binding for the two narrative cycles. As
the conclusion of the gospel, the Eucharist vouches for the
viability to Christian metaphysics of memory generally. Nor is
there any doubt on the part of philosophical psychology that
memory is an essential factor in our emotional and mental life.
But further to any generalised appreciation of memory it might
affirm, the gospel systematically places memory and
sense-percipience at the forefront of its exposition of the
Christological category, mind : body.
As for the role of the three transcendent miracles in all of
this, just as the transcendent in the theology of Genesis was
normative, so the immanent is the defining moment in the
messianic series of the gospels, and this means that the task of
interpreting the three stories, The Stilling Of The
Storm, The Walking On The Water, and The
Transfiguration, ultimately devolves upon those events
with which they are each paired. As narratives, the former
are not slavish imitations of the corresponding stories of Days;
nor are they otiose. They are invaluable as party to Mark's
Christian epistemology, or what is the same thing, his doctrine
of the Word.
No less than the six transcendent categories, ideas or
conceptual forms, perception determines human consciousness. It
stands in relation of alterity to these as being concrete, yet
it is formally consonant with them. That is because it consists
of structures of anamnesic, or mnemic, and imaginative
consciousness based on the triadic anatomy of the phenomenal
modes of sense perception. In other words, the gospel
articulates the three modes of sense perception, haptic,
acoustic and optic, concomitantly with the binary temporal
orientation of consciousness, backwards and forwards, and
simultaneously with the fact of sexual dimorphism. These six
centres of consciousness, adumbrated in the story of creation,
are explicitly referred to in both Christological miracle
narratives and the subject of the messianic miracle series in
its entirety. This will guarantee the fullest integration of the
two sets of categories, conceptual and physical. Now more than
ever, it is clear that there can be no possibility of precluding
memory and imagination from human psychophysical constitution.
So too, more than ever is the meaning of incarnation grounded in
the event of human communication.
This is yet another vital component in the doctrine
of 'the image and likeness of God' in the creation of humankind.
The sense-percipient, sentient, immanent polarity of mind is in
its own internal anatomy, congruent with the twofold pattern,
transcendence : immanence. For the analysis of sense perception
commences with the observation that it occurs analogously to
sexual dimorphism. We have for the moment referred to this
binary structuring as perceptual imagination : perceptual
memory. Having now taken the step essential to any understanding
of Mark's doctrine of the human being, we have grasped just how
he frames the phenomenon of sense perception in relation to the
paradigm transcendence : immanence. It is by no means the whole
story. Indeed a very great deal follows upon it, as is obvious
from the fact that Markan theology intends the complete
integration of the formal semiological patterns explicated in
the various feeding miracles. The initial step however, in
understanding the theology of soma which is the backbone
of the gospel, is to consider how it frames the phenomenon of
sense perception in relation to transcendence : immanence.
The perceptual polarity of consciousness has now been aligned
analogously with sexual dimorphism, the anthropic and
eschatological category, just as the conceptual consciousness
was revealed as determining analogously the tri-dimensional
spatial manifold, the archaeological category. In reviewing the
reification of the categoreal paradigm in the polarities of
Mind, at the conclusion of study, we will emphasise further the
specificity of the analogy of the conceptual and the analogy of
perception as those of the primordial and eschatological
respectively. Until now, we have had to stress the triadic form
of the perceptual at the expense of its dyadic morphology. Our
concern was to convey the integrity and comprehensiveness of the
extensive relation of the categories, and the greatest intimacy
between the two polarities, conceptual and perceptual. This lies
at the heart of the isomorphic consonance of the creation series
and messianic series. If the Days and the messianic miracles are
fully congruent morphologically, which they are, then the
congruence of conceptual and perceptual elements of Mind
follows. However, a finer point will be to appreciate the
weighting of these polarities. For the conceptual is
intelligible as according to the paradigm supplied by the formal
shape of primordial, archaeological, three-dimensional space,
whereas the perceptual remains that polarity of consciousness
which fully and finally explicates the category male : female.
Given the clearly primordial role of space : time, and
equally the finality of sexual dimorphism, the Markan analysis
of human, 'immanent' consciousness asserts the role of sense
perception in the most intimate connection with 'memory' and
'imagination'. These common language expressions, although they
are rather more spatial than we would require, and
insufficiently identify the male : female form of unity as the
key to their understanding, fit Mark's broad definition of soma
as radically disposed in virtue of feminine and masculine
and analogously past and future. The 'sexual' dimorphism of
sense perception iterates the categoreal paradigm, transcendence
: immanence. Where the concept of sense-percipient memory is
reasonably self-explanatory, we need to elucidate the idea of
the perceptual imagination. So it is now time to consider the
miracle stories themselves, and any related material in the
cycle of healing miracles, which verifies this hermeneutic.
The
Walking on the Water
We possess three recensions of this narrative. Matthew's is
distinguished by the fact that it includes a role given to Peter
which pictures him as unsuccessfully emulating Jesus. The
Johannine narrative and the Markan are similar in most respects,
although the dominical saying in John is shorter than in Mark.
There are a number of factors which lend real weight to the
interpretation of the miracle according to the terms outlined in
the theology of perceptual imagination. We shall arrange these
in order of occurrence.
Immediately he made his
disciples get into the boat and go before him to the other
side, to Bethsaida, while he dismissed the crowd. And after he
had taken leave of them he went up on the mountain to pray.
And when evening came, the boat was out on the sea, and he was
alone on the land. (Mark 6.45-47)
The contiguity of this miracle with the previous event, The
Feeding Of The Five Thousand is purposeful and has
several implications for the messianic series as a whole. The
first contrast we notice concerns the dismissal of the crowds.
Both Mark and Matthew use several neuter terms such as 'crowds',
'them', 'all'. In addition, Mark refers to the participants in
the feeding miracle as men - a0/ndrev
(v 44). Matthew however at the conclusion of the story
adds:
And those who ate were about
five thousand men, besides women and children. (a/0ndrev ...gunaikw=n kai
paidi/wn Matthew 14.21).
He is alone in this usage, and it is invaluable for it
heightens at least two of the many secondary criteria
distinguishing immanent from transcendent episodes. The first is
the contrast between public and private. This complies
with our understanding of the difference between
perceptual memory and perceptual imagination. Imagination is
always that much more private, although that is too broad a term
here, for the real significance of this contrast pertains to
identity. There is a vital sense in which imagination rather
than memory informs us about our identity. A second point of
difference is that of gender. The Walking On The Sea
comprises Jesus and his disciples. Mark used the word 'apostles'
in the introduction of the feeding miracle story, this sits well
with its congeniality and communality. Not so in the event
following during which Jesus alone speaks in the gospel of Mark,
although the disciples are said to 'cry out'. The second
difference, and it is equally and noticeably pronounced in the
similar The Stilling Of The Storm as we shall see, is
that of the absence of women and children. The miracles at sea
involve boats of the kind associated with the trade of some of
the disciples who were fishermen. Operative here is a clear
polarisation of the miracles according to the category masculine
: feminine. We have referred to the feeding events as
typologically feminine, and we have urged that the symbolic
feminine accords with the principle of immanence, unity, and
thus comprises male and female. The antithesis of this is bound
up with the significance of the term 'Son of man'. Here however,
all we need to observe is that the transcendent messianic
miracles conform to the typology of this polarity, masculine,
which as being transcendent depends on the notion of identity,
separation, fission and so on. In other words, there is a
significant separation of persons according to gender, which
should be associated with the concept of collective identity.
The basis of the distinction between the form of unity male and
female, the symbolic feminine, and the conceptual form symbolic
masculine was given in the discussion of the creation narrative.
The transcendent relatum is that of the masculine. It
occurs in all three transcendent miracle stories in varying
ways.
The motif of privacy, and even more so the masculine typology
of this miracle, like its associates, conform to the theology of
perceptual imagination which we have seen postulated in terms of
the masculine body, whatever we choose to call it; 'phallic',
'centrifugal', 'excentric' or 'efferent'. The explication for
this has been reviewed. Thus from the outset, the transcendent
miracle is imbued with a tone and typology absolutely suited to
the concept of perceptual imagination: the theology of
perception is the theology of soma qua masculine.
He meant to pass by them, but
when they saw him walking on the sea, they thought it was a
ghost, and cried out; for they all saw him, and were
terrified. But immediately he spoke to them, and said, "Take
heart, it is I; have no fear." (Mark 6.48-50, par. Matthew
14.26, 27).
The first sentence - 'He meant to pass by them ...' - has
perplexed generations of scholars and continues to generate real
puzzlement. But when we read the three transcendent miracle
stories as a whole, and contrast them to the four feeding
events, we begin to understand. The latter are all characterised
by 'determinism'. This is not too strong a word, nor are its
philosophical-psychological connotations inappropriate. All
three transcendent miracles are portrayed as profoundly
gratuitous. They serve little or no ostensibly real purpose, and
they even look like displays of pure power when juxtaposed next
to the four immanent events. Why? What does this mean? A very
large part of its meaning is the depiction of the philosophy of
freedom and the psychology of free-will. This stands in sharp
distinction from the determined as from desire. There can be no
doubt that Mark's philosophical psychology is perfectly
articulate on this point. This is not mere tone, mere tenor,
mere ambience for its own sake. What is at stake is the
depiction of perceptual imagination rather than perceptual
memory. Imagination is characterised and indeed virtually
defined by what we encounter in this remarkable sentence: the
gratuitous, the free, the non-contingent.
'Ghost' - fa/ntasma - (Mark
6.49). This is the very word for 'imagination' in both Aristotle
and Plotinus. The only difficulty the term occasions here, and
it is slight, is that it would be still more apt for the miracle
which sets out the concept of optic imagination - The
Stilling Of The Storm. We notice repeatedly the connection
between these two events, pursuant to that of Day 2 and Day 3 in
the creation story. The disciples initially think what they see
is a 'ghost', fa/ntasma/,
(Mark 6.49 par. Matthew 14.26). This description gives
much purchase to the idea that sense perception is here and now
coterminous with 'imagination' and not with 'memory'. We
must concede that the thing so described is visual rather than
auditory. One cannot however, speak of a ghost in any other
terms. If the story is to convey the idea of imaginative
perceptual consciousness, it must use common coin. There are a
number of factors qualifying the appearance motif, and we must
consider these in assessing its interpretation. There is the
fact that the appearance immediately gives way to Jesus' saying.
The effect of which is to allay the terror of the disciples.
This gives the saying its due power and force over whatever it
is they have seen. That is to say, at the climax of the story
Mark has envisaged Jesus' response to the crying out of the
disciples in kind. The real weight of the narrative is thus
ceded to the saying which is remarkable in its own right as
resonating with the story of God's revelation to Moses.
The role of sense perception is predominant; the twelve
disciples both see and hear Jesus. That is, the narrative
contains references to both modes of perception, something we
shall find in the story of The Transfiguration also,
where neither serves as the index of the form of sentience.
Their initial response is to 'cry out' (a0ne/kracan, 6.49). Mark
uses this verb of The Demoniac In The Synagogue
(1.23), The Gerasene Demoniac (5.5, 7), and of The
Boy With A Dumb And Deaf Spirit (9.24, 26). All
three stories, as exorcisms, in the first instance
announce the phenomenon of human consciousness. Mark has
deliberately linked two of these, the first and the last, with
the role of hearing and speaking. The use here of this verb then
follows its deployment in two closely allied contexts which
associate it with acoustic perception if not the imagination.
John's recension contains no mention of a 'ghost' (fa/ntasma/) - just as his
gospel lacks also the related event, The Stilling Of The
Storm, to which the motif of the fantasma or
'ghost' would of course be perfectly suited. Moreover, because
there is no further reference to the wind, and no details
pertaining to the abatement of any storm, it does seem likely
that the author was completely unaware of that story. John
states quite plainly:
When evening came, his
disciples went down to the sea, got into a boat, and started
across the sea to Capernaum. It was now dark, and Jesus had
not yet come to them. The sea rose because a strong wind was
blowing. When they had rowed about twenty-five or thirty
stadia, they saw Jesus walking on the sea and drawing near to
the boat. They were frightened, but he said to them, "It is I;
do not be afraid." Then they were glad to take him into the
boat, and immediately the boat was at the land to which they
were going. (John 6.16-21)
'... and Jesus had not yet
come to them' - kai\ ou0pw
e0lhlu/qei pro\v au0tou\v o9 0Ihsou=v (John
6.17).
These words are remarkable on two counts, both of which concern
us. The phrase 'not yet' encapsulates precisely the gist of a
process of consciousness such as perceptual imagination. We have
understood this in terms of the spatial and anthropic analogues
which impinge directly on the psychophysical, though it is here
the former which prevails. In other words, John opts for a
spatial presentation of the notion rather than that of the
symbolic masculine, the Son of man, even though the latter is
the governing paradigm of the perceptual imagination in each of
its three modes. Here Mark seems to be more comfortable in his
presentation of the idea of the masculine. He does so probably
because it is easier and less prone to misunderstanding.
The alternative is the spatial construct, of future as against
past. The 'not yet' is the future; which is not the same
as the simple 'not'. Clearly there is intention on the part of
Jesus to reach the disciples, to come to them, but it is yet to
happen. The temporal perspective thus identifies imagination.
This phrase says so much about perceptual imagination that no
mention of any fantasma is required.
The second exceptional point concerning the phrase is its
allusiveness to the Resurrection. There can be no doubt that all
three of the Transcendent miracles are similar to the stories of
Resurrection appearances; once again, the visual becomes the
dominant mode of sense-percipience, as if by default. The
argument that this narrative bears close resemblance to the
Resurrection appearance story in chapter 21 of John, has often
been advanced, as has the claim that The Transfiguration
is actually a misplaced Resurrection appearance narrative. From
a theological standpoint, the key concept linking the
transcendent messianic miracles and such stories, is that of
identity. We have more to say below about the relation between
perceptual imagination and God, and transcendence, and about
perceptual imagination and the Resurrection narratives. Both
ligatures surface in John's account of The Walking On
The Sea, just as both lend overwhelming support to the
hermeneutic put here.
"Take heart, it is I; have no
fear." - qarsei=te, e0gw/
ei0mi mh\ fobei=sqe. (Mark 6.50, Matthew 14.2.)
'Take heart' - qarsei=te.
This imperative reverts to the concept of the masculine as being
an injunction to courage. The whole picture we have of the
disciples manfully battling the elements is in keeping with such
a masculine virtue, the obverse of which is their overwhelming
fear.
And he got into the boat with
them and the wind ceased. And they were utterly astounded,
(Mark6.51)
It is very difficult to assess if there has been any textual
assimilation between the two stories of miracles at sea, and if
so, in which direction it has been. The remark 'and the wind
ceased', like the motif of the visible 'ghost' would better sit
in the story of The Stilling Of The Storm. Matthew's
account of The Walking On The Sea which includes Peter
attempting to reach Jesus on the water, concludes with that
disciple's affirmation:
"Truly you are the Son of
God." (Matthew 14.32).
This tells for the identification of the polarity as
transcendent ('God') rather than immanent; hence it supports the
notion of a perceptual imagination rather than a perceptual
memory. We shall resume the link between 'God' and perceptual
imagination later.
And he got into the boat with
them, and the wind ceased. And they were utterly astounded,
for they did not understand about the loaves, but their hearts
were hardened. (Mark 6.51, 52).
Such an ending clearly bolsters the postulate of this miracle
as being of the same sense-percipient mode to the previous one
which specified acoustic memory.
The conclusion: 'or they did not understand about the loaves,
but their hearts (h0 kardi/a)
were hardened' (v 52) reaffirms the notion of consciousness.
Mark now hearkens back to the very event, The Feeding Of The
Five Thousand, which posited the role of the acoustic form
of sentience. We have stressed repeatedly that these
transcendent episodes accept as their cue their immanent
counterparts. That is, this miracle, The Walking On The
Water is linked formally to the previous episode which is
now invoked. Thus here, Mark highlights the contiguity of the
two, and explicitly mentions the episode that identifies the
specific mode of the acoustic. The sclerotic condition of the
'hearts' of the disciples is tantamount to a deficiency in the
kind of imaginative consciousness depicted in the narrative -
the acoustic, and marks them as lacking in the very capacity
that would render them more like God.
This is a vast amount of cumulative evidence. Wherever we
turn in the narrative we meet words, images, and references
which support the hermeneutic we are proposing. The remaining
narratives only add to this in terms of the coherence of the
messianic series as a thematically and logicallyintegrated
whole.
The
Stilling of the Storm
On that day, when evening had
come, he said to them, "Let us go across to the other side."
(Mark 4.35).
Mark 4.35-41 is the first of any transcendent miracle story.
As involving a transit 'to the other side', it sets up that
constant pattern of chiastic oscillation exclusive to the
messianic series, which brings into relation the transcendent
and immanent polarities. It contains evidence vital to the
hermeneutic we are pursuing. In view of its debt to the creation
narratives and because the formal demands placed upon it
restrict its scope this occurs all the more noticeably. The
author exploits rather than conceals the link with the creation
narratives. The introductory 'On that day ...' is conspicuously
similar to the introductory phrase of The Transfiguration
narrative, which likewise invokes the series of Days.
And leaving the crowd, they
took him with them in the boat, just as he was. And the other
boats were with him. And a great storm of wind arose, (vv 36,
37a)
It is not difficult to see even as early as this third verse,
an explicit reference to the identity of the Holy Spirit, of
whom the word 'wind' - a)/nemov
- functions as an index. It will be ratified by at least
two other references of the same kind (vv 37, 39, 41).
and the waves beat into the
boat, so that the boat was already filling. But he was in the
stern asleep on the cushion; (vv 37b, 38a).
Here is a second reference to the creation narratives, and
specifically to the anthropic, eschatological, form of unity,
male : female which thus identifies the Holy Spirit. The
evangelist is recalling the second, the J creation narrative
which recounts the creation of Eve from the rib of the sleeping
Adam - Genesis 3.20-23. Thus Jesus is momentarily envisaged as
an Adam, but notably the solitary Adam extant prior to the
symbolic couple, Adam and Eve. That is, he is conceived here
very precisely as the symbolic masculine, that masculine which
must be, to no matter however slight a degree, transcendent of
its immanent counterpart, the feminine. Hence, where this
narrative identifies the masculine polarity, it does so with
real sensitivity and theological intention. It is essential to
notice once again that Jesus is in the company of men. Just as
at the The Walking On The Sea and at The
Transfiguration, so too here, transcendence is articulated
by the masculine principle. We should note that it pertains in
relation to the collective nature of identity of which Jesus, a
human mortal, a 'Son of man', is the iconic representative. Nor
should we forget that this miracle story has as its counterpart
the typologically feminine The Feeding Of The Four Thousand,
a fact which fully proscribes any polemical allegations of a
subtextual and sexist ideological bias in this narrative. This
will be confirmed in the conclusion of the story with references
to the identity of Jesus.
... and they woke him and
said to him, "Teacher, do you not care if we perish?" (v 38b)
In the saying attributed to the disciples, we find a third
reference to the P creation narrative; the Day 3 rubruc is
conspicuous as exclusively containing the creation of life
within the formative first section of narrative. In so doing, it
clearly tells for the identity of the Spirit, 'the life-giver'.
It is important to pick up the allusion of this reference to the
Holy Spirit. Generally, the Holy Spirit must be aligned with the
feminine polarity, the same as feminine and masculine,
or 'Adam and Eve'. Nonetheless, even though tthe Holy
Spirit is intimately linked with immanence, she is exemplified
in a transcendent form or polarity, the masculine, which is that
understood here. From the psychological point of view,
birth-and-the-feminine : death-and-the-masculine, reformulate
the paradigm immanence : transcendence. That is why each of the
three transcendent miracles are correlated with the future,
death, fear, Resurrection and so on. All three transcendent
miracles transpire against a background of
death-transfiguration, the reason for their tone of anxiety and
fear. Accordingly, all invoke the Resurrection.
And he awoke and rebuked the
wind, and said to the sea, "Peace! Be still!" And the wind
ceased, and there was a great calm. (v 39).
This underpins what we have already observed concerning the
cycle of healing miracles and the messianic miracles, namely
their fullest integration, because it frames the event in terms
of an exorcism. The sea plays a greater role in this story than
in the similar miracle at sea, just as we see it dominate
the Day 3 rubric. The clause describing the abatement of the
wind is identical to that in 6.51 which now looks like
assimilation.
He said to them, "Why are you
afraid? Have you no faith?" And they were filled with awe, and
said to one another, "Who then is this, that even wind and sea
obey him?" (vv 40, 41).
We have said nothing concerning the concept of optic
imagination; like so much else in this narrative, it is
presented succinctly and subtly:
But he was in the stern - kai\ au0tov h0=n e0n th=?
pru/mnh -, asleep on a cushion - e0pi to\ proskefa/laion
kaqeu/dwn. (Mark 4.38a).
At first sight, it would seem that there is very little
indeed in the text that pronounces explicitly the perceptual
modal structure we are proposing. The vocabulary of the story
does not function as it did in the previous case. Because of its
visibility, the fantasma, ghost, spectral apparition, of
the other sea-crossing miracle would better suit our purposes as
part of this story. The closeness in content of the two stories
and the proximity of the ideas they contain may lend itself to
seeing that figure as a cross-reference of a kind between the
texts. Nevertheless, the one relevant image which this pericope
yields is the central one of a Jesus 'in the stern, asleep on
the cushion' (v 38). The image of a sleeping individual is that
of a dreaming individual. Dreams are peculiarly visual,
peculiarly 'optic'. In this way, the narrative does not
disappoint us. On the contrary, it presents directly and as
cogently as possible the very idea we seek. The text is bound to
comply with the recapitulation of the creation motifs. The
concept of creation itself endorses the notion of imaginative
consciousness. The first transcendent messianic miracle story is
wonderful not in the least for its faithful preservation of so
many elements from both creation stories. Yet, it conveys with
formidable simplicity the very notion of optic imagination.
The connection between sleep and visual consciousness is far
greater than any similar link between acoustic consciousness and
sleep. Sleep is not synonymous with the exercise of visual
imagination nor are we proposing that the two are equivalent.
Nonetheless, dreaming as visual is a process intuitively linked
to optic imaginative consciousness. The central image of this
narrative, the sleeping Jesus, conjures up more
articulately than any metaphysical thesis can, the idea we are
putting; the idea of 'optic imagination'.
The
Transfiguration
This episode relates to the event at Cana as does The
Stilling Of The Storm to The Four Thousand, and as
does The Walking On The Sea to The Five Thousand.
The word 'six', so roundly articulated in the opening,
comports with the same figure in the story of the miracle at
Cana, for both are Christologies. This story however, concerns
the Son transcendent rather than immanent, as identified
by the 'voice ...out of the cloud' and the plethora of other
criteria as noted. It is difficult to marshal the elements of
the narrative not because they are disparate and unrelated, but
for the opposite reason. The consistency of the narrative
content is such that its various components forge relationships
with all the others, and to treat any of these without deference
to the others is misguided. Therefore we shall discuss the story
in close connection with that of The Transformation Of Water
Into Wine.
As the last of the messianic events, the miracle bears all
the hallmarks of being the most encompassing. And if we aver
that mind somehow contains or includes its 'self', this is part
of that encompassing, and part of the reason for the figure
'six' which enumerates this process of encapsulation just as it
enumerates the event itself in its function of including the
others prior to it. To this same theme belongs that of death in
its ultimate or encompassing nature.
The opening phrase redirects us not just to the story of
creation, but to the theology of transcendence as a whole. But
even prior to that, the reference in Mark 8.38 to the coming of
the Son of man points ahead to the pericope within the
Markan apocalypse (13.24-27), which also connects the same
figure with 'angels', and further to The Apocalypse.
And he said to them," Truly,
I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste
death before they see that the kingdom of God has come with
power." And after six days ... (9.1,2).
At the outset then, the episode is linked irrevocably by at
least four significant textual factors, to the miracle at Cana,
all of which, quite apart from the logical function
of the chiasmos which construes the first event at Cana against
this the last, secure the hermeneutic we are proposing. They
are:
- the reference to the coming of the Son of man with the
holy angels in the glory of the Father (8.38), and the
subsequent promise made to some of those present that they
will witness this, quoted above, which compares with the
promise to Nathanael that 'you will see (plural - o1yesqe) heaven
opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon
the Son of man' (Mark 8.38, 9.1 cf. John 1.51);
- the formal significance of the figure six (Mark 9.2 cf.
John 2.6);
- and the notable use of the verb 'taste' (Mark
9.1 - geu/swntai
cf. John 2.9 - e)geu/sato);
- the use of a conspicuously axiological term, 'good' (kalo\n, Mark 9.5, John
2.10 twice).
Taste is not touch, but touching is inseparable from tasting
and this is but the beginning. There is a hint in this overture
of the second creation story, which introduces the archetypal
compounding of the ideas, death and consumption. This
follows naturally from the fact that as the prime exponent of
the messianic series, Mark's vision is fixed on the first
narrative of creation. The verb 'taste', with its analeptic
reference to the Sabbath and proleptic signalling of the
Eucharist, supports both miracles as expositions of haptic
perception. It places the sense percipient mode of touch in
closest possible association with the Eucharist as with the core
of Mark's theology of perception. If scripture is Filiocentric,
then the filial immanent category - the haptic - must enjoy a
status in keeping with this fact. In other words, it resides at
the very marrow of perceptual consciousness. Incidentally, that
the author of The Transfiguration at the very least was
aware of the story of the miracle at Cana seems likely. The
probability that the one author is responsible for the two
narratives is well worth considering.
We can broach the difference between these two theologies of
the Son by condensing them into the psychological-theological
terms Eros-logos ensarkos
of the miracle at Cana, and Thanatos-logos
asarkos of Transfiguration. The theology of
death concerns the Son, even if in the first instance it recurs
to the conceptual form mind, rather than the perceptual
analogue, haptic imagination. The deference appropriate to the
conceptual form by the perceptual analogue is evident in the
narrative; its introductory invocation of the creation story
leaves no room for doubt on that score. But for its own part,
imagination too sorts adroitly and immediately with the event of
death. Imagination is prospective, it propels us forward, and
this projection entails the encounter with the one future event
about which all others galvanise, our own death. This accounts
for the tenor of the narrative, and those of its kind, the other
two transcendent miracles.
Death as the psychological centre of gravity of imagination in
its various modes gives rise to angst, to that range of emotions
comprising awe, fear and so on, which qualify the transcendent
miracles. Eros and Thanatos in this regard,
establish the ultimate or extreme peripheries of existence, and
the furthest boundaries of the spectrum which is consciousness
itself. Just so, they mark the inception and resolution of the
messianic chiasmos. We exist between them, in terms of our
location within the trajectory from birth to death; and are
always necessarily closer to one or the other as to a focal
point. They establish two radically polarised moments of human
existence, notwithstanding their certain relation, as a process
crossing from one side to the other. That here is one only
crossing in John, as against Mark's constant pattern of
oscillation, is observant of this fact. Concerning more of which
we shall have to say later.
The relationship of the phenomenon of touch, both sensuous,
as haptic memory, and non-sensuous yet perceptual, as haptic
imagination, to sexual love and to death respectively, belongs
logically to the significance of the two episodes as
Christologies. The Markan narrative puts it with unexampled
ease, largely because of the associations that the various texts
engender among themselves. If implicit in the introductory
reference to 'tasting death' (9.1), is the somewhat
contradictory idea of sensuous touch, then there was a similarly
discordant note in the first messianic miracle involving Jesus -
'my hour ...' There it was understated as being ill-suited to
the convivial tenor of that occasion. So too, in this story, the
Christological title - "This is my beloved Son", (or "My Son, my
(or the) Beloved" (9.7)) - can refer us back momentarily to the
miracle at Cana; but only momentarily. The sensuous, that is,
the sentient mode of hapticity, thus invades The
Transfiguration narrative just as the idea of death
intrudes upon the story of the miracle at Cana, for these are
linked as the polarities imagination and memory link the one
mode, the haptic, in the identity of the Son. In light of this,
we might say that here The Transfiguration rather than
remembering 'Eros'
imagines it, and The Transformation Of Water Into
Wine rather than imagining 'Thanatos', remembers it.
These two episodes, even though they are both theologies of
the Son, are juxtaposed according to the paradigm transcendence
: immanence. The chiasmos which organises the events following
their binary and triadic logic, places the two Christological
messianic events at greatest remove from one another. Where
imagination is compared to memory on the basis of a common mode
of sense perception, it is done so in terms of antithesis if not
complementarity. It may be possible to construe the sequence of
events as denoting the maximization of contrast in the case of
the two Christological events, coming as they do first and last.
In essence, the perceptual category, 'haptic imagination', is
the occasion of transcending 'haptic memory', or Eros. This is not a simple
mental capacity but a centre or perspective of consciousness on
par with other perceptual and conceptual forms. It is as
authentic as the erotic consciousness itself. Every form,
whether perceptual or conceptual, every radical of consciousness
of either polarity, exists in a relationship of antithesis or
complementarity with its relatum. Thus the binary or
bipolar shape of consciousness in general, follows the
eschatological form of unity male : female.
The movement towards unity and equilibrium we see everywhere
in both series, Days and miracles, is evidence of the identity
of the Holy Spirit. To put it another way, the eschatological
category male : female moulds the anatomy of mind in the image
and likeness of itself, the fundamental shape of which is
antithesis. Hence 'haptic imagination' obtains in opposition to
'haptic memory' as non-sensuous to sensuous, symbolic masculine
to feminine, imagination to memory, Thanatos to Eros.
'Haptic imagination' thus stands over and against 'haptic
memory' as in a certain sense, the overcoming or transcendence
of the erotic. That this should be associated with death is
hardly surprising, for the erotic itself operates in league with
birth. It is important to remember this when considering the
introductory remarks about 'this adulterous and sinful
generation' (Mark 8.38).
The value of adopting a psychological hermeneutic of the
messianic miracles, and of speaking in the present context of 'Eros'
and 'Thanatos', lies in their application to the
description of the life trajectory of the individual and of the
race. They signify at the levels of both ontogeny and phylogeny
a succession of distinct times ('days'), or stages, each of
which enjoys increasingly complex relationships to the others as
time advances. The last miracle, Transfiguration, and what it
signifies in terms of the reality of mind, 'haptic imagination'
qua Thanatos, is proper to the latter if not the
very last phase of one's existence. This relation between
time-as-death and mind, lies at the heart of the meaning of
Transfiguration and the theology of death.
Here then we will sketch in the briefest outlines some of the
elements which bring the two Christological episodes into a
complementary if antithetical relation. Cana denotes as we have
indicated haptic memory - a synonym for which is erotic love.
This is not to confine the meaning of the structure 'haptic
memory' to a single psychological mode, that of desire, but
certainly, our purposes here demanding as they are of the
introduction only of this part of Christian epistemology, will
concentrate on that particular attitude or species of awareness,
desire. Here erotic is redefined according to the incarnation
itself. That is, by such terms as 'erotic love', 'Eros'
and so on, we do not mean simple physical gratification, on par
with the satisfaction of a particular appetition, even though
that is the basic psychological reality at stake. We mean
instead love informed by the axiological functioning of mind
which drives the satisfaction of this particular form of desire.
The conclusion of the miracle contains this value judgement, and
that it is in keeping with the creation story comports with the
other factors serving to establish the closest rapport between
the series of Days of 'beginning' and the messianic events
comprising the 'end':
When the steward of the feast
tasted the water now become wine, and did not know where it
came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew),
the steward of the feast called the bridegroom, and said to
him, "Every man serves the good (kalo\n) wine first; and
when men have drunk freely, then the poor wine; but you have
kept the good (kalo\n) wine until
now." (John 2. 9, 10).
This is no mere after-thought. Like the refrains extolling
the 'good-ness' of creation in the P narrative, it forms the
conclusion of the narrative, and accounts for almost half of it.
The evaluation of the wine does not give rise to awe and
anguished astonishment, the mood of the companion miracle, but
certainly occasions much perplexity, if not irony. For John is
commenting on the experience of erotic love after the
incarnation, and his comment will stand on its head judgments of
the kind that "Christianity gave Eros poison to drink."
(Nietzsche). The evangelist has already stood on its head, our
expectation concerning the Parousia preparatory. For if
'the Christ' is now already present, what further need is there
for sexual reproduction? What further role exists for erotic
desire, since it has accomplished its goal - the incarnation of
the Word? This lies behind the ironical remark of the mother of
Jesus' regarding the exhaustion of the wine supply (2.3). It is
as if erotic love itself has now become superfluous, the reason
for the motif of superabundance. John is now writing for a
generation of Christians who had not ceased to hope for the
Parousia, something of which is visible in the promise
given to Nathanael (1. 51). But he is writing from the point of
view of a psychologist, who understands desire in general, of
which sexual desire must remain the most canonical of forms, in
terms of its role in the satisfaction of creation towards its
own ends. Ends which are summed up for us in the word salvation.
He controverts the commonplace judgement that life and love
in the pre-Christian world is superior in terms of this
fundamental component of our experience, the experience of
physical love. For he evaluates the same experience after the
incarnation, in spite of the fact that it is already superfluous
to need if not to desire, as in fact 'the good wine'. The first
experience, the former wine, by comparison is 'poor'! These are
remarkable claims whose truth only time itself can adjudicate.
Desire, here envisioned in arguably its most powerful,
recognisable, and salutary form, the erotic, certainly in a form
in which we apprehend the very meaning of the term 'desire', is
here assigned to the Son. (The Lukan version of The Last
Supper will appropriate the same metaphorical construct
John utilises, wine as a figure for the nature of love grounded
in sexual desire.) If in the creation story we were confronted
with the sheer will of God, that power which we recognise in
ourselves as pertaining to conceptual consciousness or ideas
rather than perceptual consciousness, and whose primary
psychological gauge is freedom, now in the perceptual polarity
of consciousness to which John introduces us in no uncertain
terms, and whose conative counterpart must be the power of
'desire', we can begin to understand something of the relation
between the two series. The world is not simply the province of
'will' in the sense that it conforms to our freely determined
purposes, nor for that matter to those of God. We are also
'servants' (dia/konoi,
John 2. 5, 7, 8, 9) of the world-process; we are also subject to
the constraining forces of 'desire', just as clearly in some
sense 'God', here the incarnate logos, is. The
same epithet is often applied to Jesus himself. The somewhat
imperious tone of his response to his mother's request, '"O
woman, what have you to do with me? My hour has not yet come."'
(v 4), is another fine moment of Johannine irony, for at a
stroke it associates with death the subjection of Jesus the Son
to the satisfaction of desire in its most canonical form, the
erotic. It does so because of love, rather than in spite of the
same.
Desire
Versus 'Desire'
In the following discussion it is important to remember that
desire, occasioned by of either mode of sentience, haptic
memory, or haptic imagination, is part of a larger network of
epistemic and psychic processes. It is the affective or emotive
expression of this centre of consciousness, which must have also
an intellective or rational component. If we have taken the
affective rather than intellectual form of the haptic in either
case, memory or imagination, that is because these are more
immediately recognisable. They are so because feeling rather
than thinking is more the more immediate, familiar and dynamic
factor in our conscious life. Epigrams such as "The
basis of experience is emotional" (Whitehead), "Reason is the
slave of the passions" (Hume); "Man is a useless passion",
(Sartre), all of which are similarly dismissive of the rational
capacity of humankind relative to its domination by the conative
or appetitive nature of consciousness, all testify in somewhat
cavalier fashion to this notion. A more balanced statement
however begins to emerge in the gospels as we shall now see.
The Transfiguration, as revealing the Son, no
less than The Transformation Of Water Into Wine, is
about desire. So many elements frame the two narratives as
complementary that it is hardly possible to understand the event
of Jesus' identification in the miracle, couched as it is in
terms which distinctly recall those of the first episode,
without recourse to the notions of love and desire:
And a cloud overshadowed
them, and a voice came out of the cloud, "This is my beloved
Son [alternatively, my Son, my (or the) Beloved]; listen to
him." (v 8)
To the event of The Transfiguration however, the term
'desire' simpliciter is not entirely apt, though something very
much like it is involved. It is not entirely apt as being
insufficient, for something more than desire is at work in the
psychology envisioned in this story. This affective tendency
native to the haptic imagination consists of the individual
'desire' for purity - given a caveat concerning the
judgement of sexual love. It corresponds to transcendence in its
total freedom from relationality, intersubjectivity, dependency
on the other. It knows that 'Eros'
desires that this other should desire s/he who already desires
the other, and the consequent proclivity of the same to
deferment if not lack of attainment. The word 'purity' is
infelicitous as suggesting that sexual desire is innately
impure. We must be wary of such a judgement - for it contradicts
the very judgement in the miracle story we have just observed
and the refusal of Johannine psychology to make
counter-intuitive claims concerning desire-sexual love. This
story admits resolutely the goodness of satisfaction of this
form of appetition. The Transfiguration with its picture
of Jesus' 'garments ... glistening, intensely white, as no
fuller on earth could bleach them' (Mark 9.3), is in fact
speaking of something at considerable remove from the
satisfaction of earthly desire, to which it is nevertheless
related as complementary even if contrastive. It too concerns
the satisfaction of a 'desire', though here we will have to say
a 'desire' that is both more and less than what we mean by the
word 'desire' in the context of sexual love. In other words,
while its object is other than profane, it is aspirational in
the same sense that erotic desire is. We can suggest tentatively
that this entails another way or mode of desiring. We shall
argue later that the very differentiation of imagination from
memory, requires that we broaden the scope and nature of desire
simpliciter, that is, erotic desire. We cannot doubt the
reality of the form of appetition indigenous to haptic
imagination any more than we can doubt its essential goodness:
And Peter said to Jesus,
"Master, it is well (kalo/n)
that we are here...(Mark 9.5, cf. Matthew 17.4, Luke 9.33).
The adjective is identical with that used by the steward of
the feast (John 2.10), and is a certain point of contact between
the two Christological miracles - the two theologies of haptic
sentience.
Purity in this context is tantamount to individuation as
fulfilling the requirements of self-determining autonomy -
identity; something which is comparatively less achievable
within a sexual relationship. For the latter requires one's
definition (identity) in the light of the 'other'. The same
impulse to self-sufficiency, or an impulse similar to it, is
implicit in the sexual form of desire, which reduces plurality
to its lowest level - that of the pair or couple. Two is the
minimisation of the immanent. It is a kind of shared existence,
but one which compares intensely with social existence, as
pictured in The Feeding Of The Five Thousand. Or
as we may say, it attenuates immanence to its least where
plurality is concerned. Other forms of communion, other forms of
the ontic and epistemic nexus, other forms of the connective
tissue of reality do not posit the manifold in such a condensed,
contracted and intense form. There exist the family, the
society, the nation, the class and so on. These are all in
varying degrees exponents of existence as immanent. But already
and always implicit in sexual satisfaction is this reduction of
the plural and social nature of being to the level of a simple
dyad. We might even argue, given the sufficient literary
precedents in the second creation narrative, that the 'two' in
this case, is effectively a one. Here something about the real
ambiguity of the erotic emerges. For it appears to mesh with
what is truly proper only to the genuine monad, and hence it
evokes death. So we must suggest, if a dyad, or a crypto-monad,
then why not a true monad?
Then there is the issue of freedom as just conveyed by the
word 'autonomy', another reason why the concept of desire misses
the mark regarding what The Transfiguration denotes. Any
discussion of desire in the context of aspirations to
transcendence, a large part of whose objective is the
circumvention of desire, if it isn't paradoxical, must at least
be circumscribed. This is a thorny issue, not just for Buddhist
epistemology. Hinayana and early Mahayana Buddhist doctrines
make renunciation all but the necessary condition of the soteric
process. The problem is just how does one achieve such a goal,
the transcendence of desire, if not by means of desire itself,
the very thing one seeks to transcend? It is an equally
problematic question for Christian epistemology for just the
same reason.
Nor are we at liberty to revert to the concept of will. Let
us assume for the moment that it stands to transcendence as does
desire to immanence. Whether we say will or desire, what is
meant is the completion of a motive, the fulfillment of an
intention, the satisfaction of a project. On the face of it
there is no reason to opt for the moral superiority of will over
desire. This was fundamentally affirmed, even while it remained
largely unspoken, or unformulated, in the psychology of
Reformation theology. Something of the kind, the refusal to
privilege will at the expense of desire, lies behind these words
in the Johannine prologue, preparatory as they are to the story
of the wedding at Cana, a story which could well do justice as
an archetype of Reformation theology. We affirmed just now, that
the temporal psychology stemming from Mark's series of messianic
events, and so too from the creation story, operates at both
levels, those of ontogeny and phylogeny, of the individual and
society both. The numbers of persons present in the miracles are
strongly supportive of this. For example, the miracle at Cana is
preceded by a list of disciples whose personal names we learn,
whereas the more public occasions involving bread and fish fail
to mention any such individuals. They refer only to multitudes.
This theme of the public or private tenor of the various
messianic events is highly signal. We can so contend that entire
phyla, certain classes or groups of persons aggregated on the
basis of heredity, geography, race, and even epochs, conform to
the archetypal patterns at work in the very things disclosed in
both narratives. For these narratives point in the first place
to our own psyche, our own conscious and aconscious being.
But to all who received him,
who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of
God; who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh
nor of the will of man, but of God. (John 1.12, 13).
It is true enough that every human is born as human 'of the
will of the flesh' (e)k
qelh/matov sarko\v). John here subsumes both will
and desire under the one heading 'will'; hence 'the will of man'
(qelh/matov a)ndro\v)
corresponds to 'will' in the foregoing discussion. The point is
that either intentional state of consciousness - will or desire
- remains human. Will no less than desire remains subject to the
tyranny of the self, the very thing to be overcome. Will cannot
trump desire (qelh/matov sarko\v)
merely in virtue of being conceptually based rather than
perceptually based. Such a judgement might be Platonic, Gnostic,
and the rest, but it remains at variance with Christian
doctrine. The subtleties attendant upon the Buddhist doctrines
of nirvana, like those pertaining to the psychology of The
Transfiguration cannot be easily brushed away by any
simple division and the subsequent claim of the priority of mind
over body, even granting meaning to such terms.
But we should not forget here the equivocal status of the
transcendent miracles in respect of transcendence : immanence.
They denote entities which are in the first instance perceptual,
the three forms of imagination, and as such comply categoreally
with immanence. Nevertheless this is perception of a
'non-sensuous' kind, and for this reason the three miracle
stories bear close resemblance to the three transcendent Days.
The equivocal status pertaining to processes of consciousness
stemming from a form of perceptual imagination such as haptic
imagination in the case before us, proves its worth here,
because it appears to bridge any permanent and irrevocable
divide between transcendent and immanent, conceptual and
perceptual, as between will and desire, and to recognise the
latter for what it is - complex - and subsequently to qualify it
in terms of the normative incidence of the transcendent; whence
its ambivalence, its status as 'non-sensuous perception'.
Inadvertently or not, we have just introduced a major theme
of Markan and biblical metaphysics in having discerned a
fundamental psychological divergence between the creation story
and the messianic events. The former writes large the concept of
freedom, as is given by the archaeological category - space.
This sits well with the notion of 'will'. The theology of
immanence on the other hand, for which the Eucharistic miracles
with their motif of necessity are the typical occasions,
pictures something, we have referred to it as 'desire', far
removed from will. One of the classical themes, and persistent
dilemmas, of philosophical psychology concerns the relationship
between these psychological processes and the extent to which
they account for human affective experience. It was not possible
to speak of creation without noticing that the notion of will
pervades the entire series, and conversely it is not possible to
deal with the four immanent events in the gospel without paying
particular attention to the role of desire. In the Lukan account
of the Eucharist we read:
And he said to them: "I have
earnestly desired (e)piqumi/a
e)pequ/mhsa) to eat this passover with you before I
suffer ... (Luke 21.15).
Luke's narrative on this point accords perfectly with the
link between the miracle at Cana and the death of Jesus, a point
reinforced by John 19.34, the description of the death of Jesus
in terms of water and blood, recalling the first miracle. Of
course it is not merely the messianic miracles in which we find
this pattern of contrast between the gratuitous as a marker of
transcendence and the necessary as that of immanence. It
is one of the secondary criteria serving the polarisation of
every one of the miracles, both healing and messianic.
We therefore used the vocabulary of classical philosophical
psychology, freedom/determinism. The discussion of these
psychological processes, of which there are more than just the
two now mentioned, is of paramount importance in Christian
psychology and epistemology. It will take us in another
direction to the hub of the biblical view of the person. But
without digressing from our task of investigating The
Transfiguration in the light of the exposition of
sense-percipient consciousness, we must say here that while the
concept of 'desire' is appropriate to that which the event
records, it is so not without thorough qualification. This
should follow axiomatically from what we have already proposed -
namely that the transcendent messianic events, while they are
nevertheless immanent in their fundamental orientation, for they
stand in a relationship of complementarity to the unequivocally
immanent feeding miracles. Thus the transcendent miracles as
categoreally immanent, nonetheless qualify the notion of
immanence.
The same was conveyed by their conditional description:
'non-sensuous', 'equivocal', 'ambiguous' and so on. In other
words, by noticing that they appear to enjoy an almost hybrid
status, halfway between absolute transcendence and unequivocal
immanence - corollary to the description of the forms of unity
in the creation story. We must remember everything that we have
indicated concerning the difficulties of adhering to the P
creation narrative, that is of describing what is simultaneously
similar and dissimilar to the subjects of that text. That is,
the nature of perceptual imagination as paradoxical. Because of
this, what we mean by 'desire' also bears qualification. For in
the first place, desire belongs to unqualified immanence. We can
say without remainder that 'desire' is proper to just those
psychological forces and mental processes envisioned by the
story of the miracle at Cana, and the other members of its kind,
feeding episodes, which expound the concept of actual forms of
perceptual memory. Perceptual imagination on the other hand,
even if it is immanent in a qualified form, possesses its own
psychological or affective mode. This may indeed be similar to
desire, but it must nevertheless enjoy similarity to its
counterpart, will. The reach of imagination as prospective
rather than recollective endows it with such similitude.
The focus of Mark's account is on the 'garments' of Jesus. At
the core of the episode, the details which mention these present
Mark's image of 'haptic imagination'. It is as if the
'transfigured' body of Jesus itself - because of transcendence -
was not susceptible of actual touch, in spite of the fact that
touch remains the governing concept.
No significance attaches to the garments of Jesus as garments
in themselves. Their contact with his body is what rendered them
effective in the cure of the woman with the haemorrhage who '...
touched his garment. For she said, "If I touch even his
garments, I shall be made well."' (5.27, 28). The mention
of garments is figurative. It signifies the organ of skin,
the organ of touch. Clothing rests on the surface of the body,
like a second skin. (In the case of John the baptiser, skin is
clothing - 'Now John was clothed with camel's hair, and had a
leather girdle around his waist ...' (Mark 1.6.)) It is the
orientation outward which is linked to the theology of masculine
gender, as we noted, of one's clothing, which vindicates it as a
metaphor for the skin. That this fact is effectual in The
Haemorrhagic Woman, and again in Jairus' Daughter
highlights the specific nature of their illnesses, as illnesses
connected to sexuality. Though here too the tone of the
evangelist is one of utmost restraint. Thus if the final image
of haptic imagination with which the narrative leaves us, that
of the luminous garments of the transfigured Jesus, is
remarkably chaste, that is precisely due, or as it should be.
The pericope as a whole is qualified by genuine reserve, for the
essential connection it bears with the story of the miracle at
Cana must be articulated in such a way as to guard against any
misinterpretation.
So rather than a reference to the body, more precisely to the
skin, the body's outer surface, we read a description of 'his
[Jesus'] garments'- ta\
i9ma/tia au0tou= (9.3). Mark here discloses the haptic
semiotic form proper to the centre of consciousness 'haptic
imagination' - the skin. It is the skin which we seek to clean,
to wash, to purify; the skin, the outer ('phallic'), garment
which remains the object of our wish/urge ("desire") for purity,
for oneness with the monadic self which we are. It accords with
the principle of the masculine as disposed outwards,
centrifugally; thus it reconfigures the masculine body as
'phallic'. Such a reading makes sense of the role of
purification in the healing of The Leper, (Mark 1.4-45)
which, like The Transfiguration, refers to Moses (Mark
1.40, cf. 9.5), and moreover resumes the mention of purification
in the initial messianic miracle (John 2.6) with which the
latter acts as complement and foil. Concerning this, we shall
say more.
That is not to say however, that the semeion of Transfiguration
is phallos; it is not. The phallos remains the sign for
the symbolic masculine - a pure conceptual form, an idea. The
mention of shame in Mark 8.34-38 regarding the glory of the Son
of man suggests nothing if not the semiotic form of the symbolic
masculine - 'phallos'. This particular moral emotion complies
with the nature of collective (rather than individual) identity.
The adjectives describing 'this generation', 'adulterous and
sinful', which leap at us from the page - moixali/di kai \a9martwlw=?
- read in a part of the tradition - pornhra kai moixalidi - 'wicked and
adulterous'. Whichever tradition we follow, they reaffirm the
central conative force of haptic imagination. Here then, the
collective, 'this generation' is contrasted with the
individual 'me and ... my words'. Mark uses denunciations of
this kind rarely and with evident reluctance, given that they
are stock in trade of authorial religious fulmination.
His intention here is not paraenetic as such. Instead he seeks
to elaborate the doctrine of mind, which in turn involves the
doctrine of perception, more specifically, the doctrine of
haptic imagination as a fundamental source of the religious
impulse. The Transfiguration deals with the perceptual
polarity of mind, whose semeion is the skin. This
iconography of the skin as designating the perceptual form
rather than the phallos as the sign of the conceptual form,
promotes the motif of individuation and sets the haptic
imagination apart from the symbolic masculine as irreducibly
personal rather than collective. It also secures the notion of
identity fully exemplified in the uniqueness of Jesus, in
keeping with the Christological intent of the messianic miracle
narrative. Thus rather than the collective experience of the
moral emotion shame, we would expect that of guilt to correspond
to the single individual, the person. Only here, rather than
guilt, it is the opposite, the absence of the same, to wit,
innocence:
And after six days Jesus took
with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high
mountain apart by themselves; and he was transfigured before
them, and his garments became glistening, intensely white, as
no fuller on earth could bleach them. (9.2-3).
What was said of the motifs of privacy, the symbolic
masculine and the mood of awe about the previous two
transcendent events applies here; and just as touch is indeed
the most private of any mode of sense-percipience, this is the
most private of any miracle in Mark:
'apart by themselves' - kat' i0di/an mo/nouv (v
2).
The hermeneutic of the transcendent messianic events as the
theology of perceptual imagination prescribes that this story
should posit the idea 'haptic imagination'. If Mark for reasons
of his own has not included any explicit reference to this mode
of sense-percipience in The Transfiguration, then
Matthew makes up for it:
But Jesus came and touched
them, saying, "Rise, and have no fear." (Matthew 17.7, -
kai\ prosh=lqen o( I)hsouv
kai\ a)ya/menov au)tw=n ei1pen e)ge/rqhte kai\ mh\
fobei=sqe.)
Even so, Mark's story is replete of references to sense
perception. Thus vision: '... before them ... (v 2), glistening,
intensely white ... (v 3), appeared ... (v 4), overshadowed ...
(v 7), no longer saw any one with them.' (v 8); and hearing:
'they were talking to Jesus. (v 4), For he did not know what to
say. (v 6), and a voice came out of the cloud ... (v 7), " My
beloved Son; listen to him"... tell no one what they had seen
...' (v 9). Such references may seem strange in view of the fact
that we are urging that the story vouches for the existence of a
centre of consciousness grafted to the tactile mode of
sense-percipience, 'haptic imagination'.
The explicit references to hearing and seeing that we do find
of course do promote the general relevance of sense perception
to the interpretation of these narratives, linked as they are.
Neither mode, vision nor hearing, are out of place here, given
the centrality of the haptic as Christological. The
Christological categories are equally transcendent and immanent
in terms of their accentuation. Thus if the optic memory is that
particular mode of sentience weighted in favour of immanence,
then this accentuation is equaled by the form haptic memory.
Conversely, where the acoustic imagination reifies the
transcendent albeit as perceptual category, to an exceptional
degree, then haptic imagination is equal to it in terms of the
same, transcendence. Paradox belongs to the nature of the haptic
consciousness. The relative potency of this particular mode is
reflected in that both miracles which concern it are first and
last. If the contrast between haptic memory and haptic
imagination is different in degree as being the greatest of any
such of the structures of consciousness, this means that the
potency or might, in a word force, attributable to the erotic is
attributable no less to its antithesis, as is represented in
this story. Accordingly we drew the parallel between the two
Christological events as that of Eros and Thanatos.
This does not mean that the other modes are inferior in
rendering the essential antithesis between transcendence and
immanence. Only, we must recognise the value of the chiastic
structure of the nexus of messianic events, and draw the
relevant conclusions from it.
Moses
and Elijah
And there appeared to them
Elijah with Moses; and they were talking to Jesus. (Mark 9.4).
Directly, we shall examine the three healing miracles which
recapitulate the subjects of the three messianic miracles. In
the case of the healing miracle linked with The
Transfiguration, The Cleansing Of A Leper
(Mark 1.40-45), we shall find a similar reference to Moses. The
presence of this two figure has occasioned substantial
hermeneutical problems. Moreover, it has led to the conclusion
that the chief hermeneutical resource for the event is to be
found in those narratives such as the revelation to Moses on
Mount Sinai. The consequences for this particular narrative as
for the messianic series as a whole have been disastrous. No
detailed consideration can be entered here, but we can provide
an overview of their significance and point the way of the
hermeneutic.
In the messianic event, the persona of Elijah, which
has become so overlaid with theological and mythological
tradition, is the one mentioned to a greater degree. The figure
of John the baptiser is superimposed with that of Elijah and
this relates to the figure of the Son of man whom we have
encountered already (8.38):
And he said to them, "Elijah
does come first to restore all things; and how is it written
of the Son of man , that he should suffer many things and be
treated with contempt? " But I tell you that Elijah has
come, and they did to him whatever they pleased, as it is
written of him." (vv 12,13)
One dilemma is that already Jesus has all but conceded that
he is neither John the Baptist nor Elijah (8.27-30); yet he
seems to be referring to himself ('me ... Son of man/he') as the
Son of man in the ensuing pericope (8.38), and at the
end of the miracle story we find what looks like a figure
compounded of Elijah-John-Son of man (9.12,13). This compound persona
Elijah-John-Son of man, recounts the notion of transcendence in
relation to the anthropic category; that is the transcendent
form of the eschatological category, the symbolic masculine, the
masculine in se, in accordance with the principle
of identity. Mark's portrayal of the ascetic John then
accords with the relation of the symbolic masculine and haptic
imagination. The Cana miracle story on the other hand pursues
the relation between the symbolic feminine and haptic memory.
Feminine
: Cana : : Masculine : Transfiguration
This is not to say that the feminine : masculine and
correspondingly Moses-Elijah typology is the main concern of the
Transformation-Transfiguration complex. Hence:
And suddenly looking around
they no longer saw anyone with them but Jesus only. (v 8)
Both narratives elaborate the theology of perception or soma,
pursuant to the epistemology-psychology of the creation story.
But we can hardly begin to understand the concepts of haptic
memory-haptic imagination without the additional notion of the
gendered body and its eschatological semantic. We begin the
discussion of these two figures a propos of the Transformation-Transfiguration
alliance, as indicated earlier. Even prior to the Cana miracle pericope
we are introduced to both Moses and Elijah. As the prologue
draws to its close John places both figures in close proximity:
For the law was given through
Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has
ever seen God; the only Son, who is in the bosom of the
Father, he has made him known.
And this is the testimony of
John, when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to
ask him, "Who are you?" He confessed, he did not deny but
confessed, "I am not the Christ." And they asked him, "What
then? Are you Elijah?" He said, "I am not." "Are you the
prophet?" And he answered, "No." (John 1.19-21)
There is a substantial portrait following this of John the
baptiser. It passes without interruption into the calling
narrative, and of course the miracle story. In the latter we
find the symbolic masculine and feminine under the aegis of
water and wine respectively. The first of these metaphors recurs
immediately to the creation narrative, and is already associated
with John by the theme of baptism, which announces the role of
the Holy Spirit (1.33), the source, provenance, generatrix of
the eschatological category masculine : feminine. The evangelist
uses this metaphor - water - again in the later story about Jesus
And The Samaritan Woman At The Well (John 4.1-42), where
an exchange between the two figures comparable to that between
Jesus and Jairus' Daughter/The Haemorrhagic Woman
takes place.
I am drawing some sort of comparison not only between
feminine and masculine, but also between the two miracles and
the two personae. The first comparison should not cause
any surprise. Although we did not explicitly enlist the category
of gender as a criterion establishing the polarisation of the
status of the miracles, nor that of the Days, it is clear that
it operates in this way. We have already referred to the role of
John the baptiser as an exemplar of the symbolic masculine, a
persona which devolves upon the enigmatic Son of man
figure. Mark draws upon this in his portrayal of the death of
John (6.14-29), and it is likely that it forms part of the
meaning of the enigmatic introduction to The Transfiguration
which speaks of those 'standing here who will not taste death
before they see that the kingdom of God has come with power.'
(Mark 9.1) Note that this also suits perfectly the categoreal
alignment (analogy) between the symbolic masculine and the
present-to-future trajectory, and hence it squares with the
category haptic imagination.
Certainly the image of John consistently provided by the
gospels conforms to what we have defined as the symbolic
masculine. He is the earliest of any proponent of asceticism in
the gospel, although in this respect his identity is
singular rather than participatory in any collective. He stands
apart from if, he doesn't actually flout traditional Jewish
values with their emphasis on the family. For which very reason
he is a target of the religious and civil authorities and prone
to ostracism. The logion preserved in the gospel of Luke makes
this a basis of his comparability with Jesus:
"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
7.31-35).
Luke seems to capture perfectly the link betwen Eros
and Thanatos. He
pictures a contrast between Jesus and John on the basis of a
theology virtually identical to that of the miracle at Cana, a pericope
which his gospel lacks, all the more remarkably since that story
accords so completely with one of the evangelist's most favoured
of subjects, commensality. Luke's fondness for this theme
results in a portrait of Jesus decidedly weighted in favour of
immanence. This short pericope is no exception. Its
figure of wine consorts perfectly with that element as the chief
exemplar of the feminine in the story of the miracle at Cana. In
so far as the latter is about wine, not water, it conforms to
the feminine as the occasion of masculine and feminine. Hence
Jesus here in Luke as Son of man, is portrayed in terms quite
antithetical to the figure of John as Elijah-Son of man. The
figure of John the baptiser does not sort well with the Cana
miracle story, but with that of Transfiguration, in
which the concluding extended discourse superimposes him
figuratively on Elijah-Son of man.
That conclusion, like the introduction, contains a battery of
perplexing references to time. And it is the categoreal analogy
between space-time and male-female which will assist in
unravelling the presence of the personae in the Transfiguration
as well as their relevance to the first messianic miracle. Here
is the introduction:
And he said to them, "Truly,
I say to you there are some standing here who will not taste
death before they see that the kingdom of God has come with
power." (Mark 9.1).
And the conclusion:
And they asked him, "Why do
the scribes say that first Elijah must come?" And he said to
them, "Elijah does come first to restore all things; and how
is it written of the Son of man, that he should suffer many
things and be treated with contempt? But I tell you that
Elijah has come, and they did to him whatever they pleased, as
it is written of him." (Mark 9.11-13).
The first reference to time we have previously quoted: '"will
not taste death before they see that the kingdom of God has come
with power."' Mark uses three verbs: the first '"will not
taste"' (geu/swntai))
is a third person, plural, middle voice, subjunctive aorist; the
second '"before they see"' (e1wv
a1n i1dwsin) is a third person plural, active voice,
subjunctive aorist; the third '"has come"' (e)lhluqui=an) is a
feminine, third person singular (the kingdom of God), active
voice, perfect participle in the accusative case. Luke, who is
often complimented on his polished Greek, has the same two first
verbs, having elided the clause '"kingdom of God has come"' to
simply '"kingdom of God"' (Luke 9.27). Matthew (16.28) also
follows Mark's first two verbs, but he writes the concluding
clause: '"before they see the Son of man coming (e)rxo/menon) in his
kingdom."' He thus substitutes a masculine, singular, middle
voice, accusative case, present participle. On any reading this
presents a baffling array of personae, times and places!
The conclusion is little if any clearer. 'Must come' (dei= e)lqei=n), a
construction using active, indicative, third person singular of
the present tense for the first verb and the active, infinitive
aorist tense for the second. This is followed by the masculine,
singular, active, aorist participle in the nominative case
- 'coming' - here translated 'does come' (e)lqw\n). Verse 13 picks
up the same verb the introduction used of the subject 'the
kingdom of God', the verb '"has come"' (e)lhluqui=an); here in
the conclusion, the subject is Elijah and the verb ('has come' -
e)lh/luqen), is a
third person, singular, active, indicative, perfect. The three
intervening verbs are 'restore' (a)pokaqista/nei), a third person, singular,
active, indicative, present; 'suffer' (paqh?), a third person, singular, active,
subjunctive, aorist; and 'be treated with contempt' (e)coudenhqh=?), a third
person, singular, passive, subjunctive aorist. They hardly help
matters. One thing is clear, the eschatological category, the
anthropic male : female, sits at the nucleus of this raft of
times, places, and persons. Little wonder then that we see its
so many permutations alluded to - past-present, Moses-Elijah,
wine-water, memory-imagination.
If the myth of an Elijah regressus or Elijah redivivus,
the figure based on Malachi 3.1 and 3.23, connects this
conclusion to the introduction, we can at least make this
distinction: it is far from the case that we can simply identify
the Son of man with the person Jesus, even though certain
theologians have done so. It is obvious from the quotation above
that Jesus both does identify himself with the Son of man (v 9)
and doesn't in so far as he distinguishes himself from the
subsequent Elijah-John reference (vv 11-13). Whatever the
nature of John's post-mortem 'being', it is not identical to the
resurrected being which is the Christ. The introduction seems to
project a corporate figure - 'some standing here' (tinev w]de tw=n e)sthko/twn)
- towards a future. But it is not nearly as corporate as the
terms 'generation' in the prior denunciation (8.34-38) would
suggest. That is, the miracle itself does not point immediately
to the symbolic masculine, the occasion of collective identity,
any more than the story of the miracle at Cana in the first
instance isolates for consideration the symbolic feminine.
The introduction sounds the inextricable complicity between
the symbolic masculine and corporate identity and futurity which
so fits the Elijah-John figure, even if, as the conclusion makes
patent, he 'has already come'. He is more and less than a single
individual. We must remember that the symbolic masculine is one
of two eschatological categories, and that this concept allows
for the kind of concept indicated by Elijah regressus
or Elijah redivivus. Its specific spatiotemporal
orientation however is altogether other than these words
suggest. The value of the categoreal analogy of
present-to-future and the symbolic masculine - quite apart from
the obvious relevance it has for a theology of perceptual
imagination - lies in that very value of novelty which
transcendent space itself confers upon the world. In this sense,
the Elijah-John figure is counter to the figure of Moses, to
whom the epithet redivivus
(or regressus) is
certainly more apt. Another fact which suggests this same
differential is that Moses is generally associated with the law.
It is Elijah and John the baptiser rather than a reincarnate
Moses who incarnate the office of prophecy with its attendant
link to what is yet to come.
John the baptiser is already dead by the time Jesus'
transfiguration takes place. Nor does the story of his death
(Mark 6.14-29) fail to mention the possibility that he was an
Elijah of sorts, and the possibility of some further future
manifestation yet of the same persona. Here again, if
only momentarily, he is compared to Jesus, or rather, Jesus is
compared to John, on the basis of being' raised from the dead'.
The expression 'raised' which Mark uses for this report - e0ghge/rtai [e)k nekrw=n] - we saw in
Matthew's account of The Transfiguration; when Jesus,
having come to the disciples who were overwhelmed with fear,
touched them and said "Rise, and have no fear." (Matthew 17.7).
King Herod heard of it; for
Jesus' name had become known. Some said, "John the baptiser
has been raised from the dead; that is why these powers are at
work in him." But others said, "It is Elijah." And others
said, "It is a prophet, like one of the prophets of old." But
when Herod heard of it he said, "John, whom I beheaded, has
been raised." (Mark 6.14-16).
The terms Mark uses in the discourse on Elijah and John:
'risen from the dead', e)k nekrw~n a)nasth=? (v 9), and 'rising from
the dead', e)k nekrw=n
a)nasth=nai (v 10),
both relate directly to the participle in the introduction
'standing' - e)sthko/twn
(v 1). Whatever the precise relation between the two figures,
'Moses with Elijah' and Jesus, one point seems clear enough: if
they stand as representative of eschatological principles
corresponding to the eschatological relata masculine and
feminine as paradigmatic of differing if related eschatologies,
the one operative in the era prior to the incarnation and
death-resurrection of Jesus, the other after it, it is the
latter, Elijah, and not the former, Moses, who dominates Mark's
account of The Transfiguration. Elijah and the figure of
John the baptiser play a much greater role in the gospel of Mark
than ever Moses does. To the same end, Mark appears to envisage
Jesus and John as belonging to the same epoch. Jesus' death and
resurrection inaugurate the new age, the second age, and for
this reason Elijah and not Moses is the main presence in the
episode representative of the new eschatological dispensation.
The introduction and the conclusion of the narrative are
linked, just as the two personae Moses and Elijah are,
for they apparently reify the two related eschatological
principles, one conforming to the symbolically feminine
past-present which Moses epitomises, and the other to the
symbolically masculine present-future, which Elijah embodies. It
is in the context of the new or second dispensation, the epoch
in which the eschatological reality conforms to the masculine
eschatological principle, that we should speak not of Elijah regressus,
but of an Elijah progressus. The meaning of the symbolic
masculine, and in part, Son of man, and therefore of the future
rests upon this figure. The initial association of the two
figures 'Moses with Elijah' and the later singularity of the
figure Elijah/John the baptiser, fits the hermeneutic which
identifies them as representative of the associated but
different eschatological principles which are analogous to the relata
of the eschatological category - symbolic feminine and symbolic
masculine. That is, as we have emphasised, that the feminine as
through and through immanent by nature, incorporates the
masculine - 'Moses with
Elijah', while the latter itself in some measure is transcendent
of this conjunction 'Elijah-John the baptiser'. Analogously
intimately with the same complex as if we could not speak of one
without the other, perceptual memory is implicitly connected to
the symbolic feminine, and perceptual imagination correlatively
linked to the symbolic masculine.
The Feminine And Haptic Memory
In The Transformation Of Water Into Wine
Broadly speaking, the haptic memory is identifiable as Eros,
but not so the symbolic feminine with which it is connected
nonetheless. In the miracle story the symbolic feminine is
manifest first in the person of Mary, Jesus' mother, who prompts
the actual miracle. She also elicits the retort: "O woman, what
have you to do with me? ..." (John 2.4). This reveals some
measure of distinction between the economic, symbolic
feminine, and the erotic, haptic memory. The symbolic feminine
is not intrinsically erotic, any more than the symbolic
masculine is intrinsically the business of the transcendence of
the same, the erotic, even though the conceptual radical and the
perceptal radical of consciousness in each case are clearly
related. For one thing, the symbolic feminine is counter to the
masculine as its complement. The symbolic masculine for its part
seeks the transcendence of this form of unity; it seeks
transcendence of the feminine, it does not seek transcendence of
the erotic as such. Just so, haptic imagination does not require
transcendence of the feminine, it requires the transcendence of
haptic memory, the erotic.
That said, there is a sense in which the erotic also
subserves the reproduction of the species, and this we can term
briefly the 'economic', an expression which conveys the
Pneumatological aspect of the anthropic category, whether this
be feminine or masculine. But as to what was
said now about Eros and reproduction, reproduction is
not intrinsic to the erotic. It is important to concede the
compatibility of the two forms - here symbolic feminine and
haptic memory - but it is just as important that we not blur or
gloss their essential differentials. The eschatological,
Pneumatological, anthropic category, symbolic feminine, is not
in the first instance to be phrased according to the erotic, but
rather in terms of the economic. It pertains firstly to the
household, the familial, the regeneration of living beings. This
defines the parameters of the category as a form of unity,
as masculine and feminine. The oikos, home, household,
family, phylum, serves as iconographic of the feminine. It acts
then as the complement to, and also, up to a certain point, as
antithesis of, the 'symbolic masculine'. As for the erotic, its
province is the soma, the body. Just as there is a
profound difference between the symbolic masculine and mind,
there is an analogous difference between the feminine and the
body.
The Masculine And Haptic
Imagination In The Transfiguration
In the relation between the symbolic masculine and haptic
imagination - one may be congenial to the other. This means that
the desire for transcendence of the erotic impulse as a
pervasive form of consciousness, and the general ideological
tendency towards the collective expressions of identity, these
are generally compatible. But they are by no means always so,
nor are they the same. That they do differ in point of the
contrast between individual and collective, is overlooked by
this congeniality, for such collectives even though they may be
constituted by a single gender, whether male or female,
nevertheless provide for the erotic. They may in fact even
subserve the erotic, haptic memory, rather than its complement,
haptic imagination. The transcendence of forms of erotic
appetition is properly galvanised by the desire and need for
personal individuation. In this regard it is no different from
erotic appetition as such. There is thus a strong association
between the 'haptic imagination' and the symbolic masculine,
given repeatedly in the Son of man references. For all that,
they remain nevertheless distinguishable, and we should not make
the mistake of conflating them. Mark's reverence for his subject
belongs just to this distinction as we are about to see. We can
now add to the link between the conceptual form symbolic
masculine and the persona the Son of man. That the
latter plays an important role in the miracle is attested by a
Son of man saying in Mark 8.38 immediately prior to the miracle
story, and two further references to 'him' in the concluding
postscript, Mark 9.9,12.
The Symbolic Masculine
We introduced the Son of man in relation to the symbolic
masculine, or the category of the masculine, in the general
treatment of the transcendent forms of the conceptual
categories. The fundamental theme of which is the separation,
division, fission of the same from the relatum with
which a conceptual form is otherwise conjunct as form of unity.
Hence we proposed: there is a space which is void of space-time;
and mind persisting independently of soma, mind : body,
whatever the shape or form of the latter; and finally the
masculine transcending the feminine, where feminine itself means
precisely masculine and feminine. It follows that the immanent
forms of the conceptual categories do not obtain independently
of their relata. There is no time-in-itself,
body-in-itself, or feminine-in-itself. There is only space :
time as conjunction, mind : body as conjunction, and male :
female as conjunction of the two relata. These immanent
forms of the conceptual categories thus evince unity as distinct
from identity. From its very introduction in the Day
3 rubric:
'And God said: Let the water beneath the
heaven gather together in one place, so that dry land
may appear. And it was so.' ((LXX: sunaxqh/tw, sunagwgh\n,
sunh/xqh, sunagwga\v (Genesis 1.9))
The idea of the symbolic masculine confronts us with identity
as a collective phenomenon. It is this feature of the generic,
'gathering together', which accounts for the ambiguous status of
its transcendence, even if that were necessary, since the
inclusion of the creation of 'earth' within the 'heavens'
category consisting of the first half of the text, already marks
it as such. Society presents various forms of collective
'identity'. The defining factor may be gender, age, race,
nationality, health, language and so on; but the most common
rationale is that of gender, 'kind', spoken of the two types of
plants in the Day 3 rubric. As we observed, the two forms of
living plants are the prototypes of masculine and feminine which
appear finally in the last of the six Days. The creation of
animals in conjunction with that of humankind during that Day we
may well see as a construal for its complement, the Day 3
rubric, which I am understanding in terms of the symbolic
masculine, the sense of the latter being encapsulated in the
axiom "Birds of a feather flock together." This conceptual form
is then not exclusive to humanity, but a pervasive
characteristic of the entire animal kingdom, and even we may
say, of biota in general.
The emotive tone of the symbolic masculine must stress the
collective nature of its identity. One can only be male, or
female, in relation to others who are the same, male or
female. There is no specific, individual, unique masculinity or
femininity; there is no single male or single female. Gender is
by definition generic as opposed to the singularity of space in
contradistinction to which it obtains, as the 'waters below' to
the 'waters above'. The same concept of collective existence is
native to the meaning of 'man', 'mankind' and to the
meaning of Son of man. The angelology of the Son of man
references is no facile solution to this problem, it recurs to
the theology of the Holy Spirit, and the exemplification of the
same in the anthropic. The references to angels in the Son of
man sayings which precede both Christological miracles give full
reign to two ideas. Firstly they concern ideal/mental beings
(conceptual forms) rather than corporeal (physical-perceptible)
ones, and secondly they connote the idea of many such beings, a
collective or family of the same. Gender is plurality; it is the
men of man, the women of woman; and it is a conceptual
determinant of consciousness.
In the second creation story, a gloss on this difference
between the individual as unique, by which the event of death
obtains, and a member of the phylum occurs. The tendency to view
the first human couple as a pair of individuals, a tendency
which Pauline Christology adopts, has given rise to numerous
philosophical problems. Akin to this confusion, is the tendency
to construe in just the same diametrically opposed ways
simultaneously, those of individual and society or class of
persons, the references to the Son of man. It is not clear
from the theology of creation alone, whether the 'symbolic
masculine' is one single person or a collective. In this regard,
the same ambiguity surrounds the conceptual form as surrounds
the personae Adam and Eve, the very dilemma reproduced
in the various Pauline Christologies of recapitulation - anakephaliosis - which
envision Jesus as the second Adam. Philosophically the issue is
critical; it pertains to the central most persistent controversy
in 'sociology', the question regarding the dichotomy
individual-society and the presumed ontological priority of one
or the other. The relevance of the same for any doctrine of the
Trinity is immediately obvious. In other words, we have also to
reckon in these proceedings with diametrically opposed
anthropological views and concepts of personhood. We shall refer
to the two perspectives by the terms 'phylogeny' for the
society, and 'ontogeny' for the individual.
But first we must secure what was just said concerning the
uniqueness or principium individuationis which
identifies the Jesus of The Transfiguration vis-à-vis
death. In connection with the ambiguity of the eschatological
references to the Son of man which somehow are compelled to
envision at least as a possibility, the harvest of the age as
some sort of death of the whole of humankind, we must add this.
All things are possible, but not all are equally possible.
Whereas for now at least, as a rule, it is the individual and
not the society which dies. Death remains the primary occasion
of individuation, and here, by the term death, we mean the Thanatos
compresent with the conceptual form mind, the logos, the
Word made flesh. We mean the very mind to which The
Transfiguration reverts by default, since it is the
normative correlative of this transcendent and Christological
form of haptic sentience, haptic imagination.
To acknowledge this, is to grant the very reason for the echoes
of the three conceptual forms delineated in the three
transcendent miracles, especially in The Transfiguration.
The Son of man can never be identified tout court with
the same Jesus. For given the plethora of eschatological Son of
man sayings in the gospel, that figure must be sited within the
context of the possible death of the race as a whole, the
perishing of the entire human phylum illustrated as a distinct
possibility in The Stilling Of The Storm. The death of
which Jesus speaks in the concluding passage in the Markan
account, and during the actual miracle itself in the Lukan
account (e!xodon,
Luke 9.31), is none other than his own. It is not and can never
be the death of anyone else than a single individual. It is
certainly no collective death. It is not the death of any group,
class, society, species, or phyla. It is his very own death, the
death of the human person Jesus. This acts as the final
differential between the Jesus of the last messianic miracle and
any putative Jesus as Son of man. Mark is perfectly clear on
this point, where the second creation narrative and subsequently
Paul, are anything but so. That said, the certain
juxtaposition between Eros of the first Christological
episode, and the outlines of its antithesis, Thanatos in
the last, mark the latter event exactly in accordance with the
concept of the symbolic masculine as both Pneumatological, and
hence concerning humankind as a whole, and the idea of
collective identity or identities. This theme will occupy us
later, under the discussion of the conceptual forms, and the
general bearing they have on the relation of the world to God.
The symbolic masculine is a conceptual form with an
expansive and visible application in human life, primarily
collective as 'aneconomic' or crypto-economic. It is an idea, a
conceptual form, a transcendent category; but that is not to say
it has no bearing upon lived existence. The transcendent
masculine or 'symbolic masculine' is a most useful term in the
discussion of religion in general, particularly in the
discussion of the history of various traditions, two of which
are indicated for us in The Transfiguration story by the
two names, Moses and Elijah, and by the reference of Peter to
the 'three booths' (Mark 9.5), one for Jesus, one for Moses and
one for Elijah. Several of these traditions have longstanding
practices of celibacy and other forms of ascesis. Hence the
religious practice of celibacy during long ages prior to the
birth and death of Jesus and even subsequent to it, readily
lends itself to the hermeneutic of the complex of factors: Son
of man, Moses and Elijah, John the baptiser, death, resurrection
and 'haptic imagination' as the transcendence of Eros.
It is the last of these which lies at the heart of the
narrative. Purity stands as the dominant motif of the story as
is given by the references to 'intensely white', 'no
fuller on earth' and so on. This theme recurs to the references
to the jars of water 'for the Jewish rites of purification' in
the first miracle story. The link between sexual desire and the
'desire' for purity according as we have defined these latter
two terms, is as real as anything else in the narrative. We can
speak of such a desire for purity as 'anerotic' or
crypto-erotic, for the basis of its inspiration is nevertheless
love: '... and a voice came out of the cloud, "This is my Son,
my Beloved; listen to him."' (Mark 9.7) Moreover, what it
seeks will be some sort of intellectual or mental equivalent to
the ecstasy of the flesh; its object will be bliss in another
form: ananda, eksatasis, as lasting joy.
Desire expressed by haptic imagination will on this count be
insusceptible of repetition, like both death itself and baptism
itself, for it belongs to the domain of imaginal rather than
that of mnemic sentient consciousness.
Collective, that is conventual types of celibacy, by men or
women, may be driven by economic motives, or by the will
to collective identity, being together - mitsein -
fraught nonetheless as it is with undertones of the homoerotic,
or by both. We need to distinguish this - the symbolic masculine
- on the one hand, and the aspirations of haptic imagination on
the other. The symbolic masculine has its own creedal impulse.
This may or may not serve the interests of transcendence
of Eros. For example, the symbolic masculine replete as
it is with its drive towards mitsein, collective
identification with one's own kind, can easily
degenerate into malevolent forms of nationalism. Judaism itself,
and Christianity which inherited so much from it, has always
been liable to this form of decay. Both the conceptual form, the
symbolic masculine, and the perceptual form of consciousness,
haptic imagination, generate their own constellations of moral
emotions, and as sympathetic as these may be to one another,
they are not so entirely. The congeniality of the former to the
latter is not unconditional.
When we read of Jesus taking 'with him Peter and James
and John', the least number of witnesses to any miracle in the
gospel, and the following description of the place of the event,
'up a high mountain apart by themselves', (9.2), and likewise
when we read later 'And suddenly they no longer saw anyone with
them but Jesus only' (v 8), we are reminded of the specific
subject of the narrative; haptic imagination'. Mark is telling
us something quite important about this aspect or structure of
mind; to wit that it enjoys the extremist tendency towards
individuation as towards death. If death were a collective
experience, and here the meaning of genocide comes unbidden to
mind in all its horror, as one of the more persistent evils
characterising the twentieth century, there would be no real
purposes in distinguishing the meaning of this last miracle from
the conceptual form, the symbolic masculine. In the animal
kingdom of course, the deaths of species do occur. Evolution is
marked by the phenomenon of death of a generic magnitude. And it
is questionable whether such catastrophic acts of destruction
form any part of the consciousness of sub-human life forms. But
for the human person matters are altogether otherwise. For
humans a pre-eminently conscious of Thanatos. Such
awareness shapes the very nature of mind, that is, consciousness
itself, to an extraordinary degree, a degree arguably equivalent
to the extent to which mind is shaped by Eros. Then
there is the factor of one's being as unique. On both scores,
consciousness of death, and the 'ontogenetic' ('ontogenic')
awareness, we stand divorced from the animal realm.
In sum then, societies do not die; they are pre-eminently
assured of survival. Just as assuredly, it is the individual who
dies. Here we can carve at the joint the profound difference
between the conceptual form - symbolic masculine - on the one
hand, and the perceptual form - haptic imagination - on the
other.
The symbolic masculine does not specify the transcendence of
touch, the transcendence of the erotic. In its commonest
manifestation it may specify the absence of one gender in
relation to another, the typical form of generic identity.
There are others of course, which depend upon various criteria
other than gender. In other words, the symbolic masculine is
precisely non-reproductive, it renounces 'oikos', it is
strategically aneconomic as we see from the introduction to The
Transfiguration. We are defining the symbolic masculine in
terms of its governing concept, albeit negatively. What is
denied in any monosexual or 'homosocial' culture, is in short,
offspring, progeny and all that goes with it, as denoted by
terms such as oikos and phyla. The several
references to the antipathy between following Jesus and the
demands of the family in the gospel thus sit very well indeed
with the notion of the symbolic masculine as first sounded in
the overture to the miracle story, Mark 8.34-38. But even
though such collective forms of being may ostensibly deny the
erotic, or do so by implication, that is not the prime
motivation operative in the conceptual form symbolic masculine.
We tend to identify the principle purpose of such cultures as
being in league with the transcendence of the erotic; this is a
miscalculation. For as is well known, a certain proportion of
the population will experience erotic attraction to members of
the same sex. This has been a difficult lesson not only for
religious traditions; it is a lesson which other 'homosocial'
cultures, for example the armed forces, institutions of learning
which segregate the sexes, must confront.
The Markan doctrine of haptic imagination is
sympathetic to the idea of the symbolic masculine, but it far
from identifies the two. As forms of consciousness, both
generate a range of moral emotions, some of which may be
compatible with one another; but their difference is as real as
the fact that the former, the actual subject of the miracle
narrative is perceptual, physical, and the latter, whose
topicality is tangential to the narrative, is conceptual,
mental.
The emotional ambit of haptic imagination, though congenial
to the symbolic masculine, is never identical. We looked at
their respective complements to see this in its immediacy. The
complement of the perceptual form is haptic memory, which is
responsible for erotic desire. Precisely this is what the haptic
imagination seeks to transcend. We should not lose sight of the
fact that one and the same identity lies at the base of these
disparate modes of consciousness. That is, haptic memory and
haptic imagination as complementary, evince identity through
contrast, or contrast through identity. The very same applies to
the conceptual forms, symbolic masculine and symbolic feminine.
Here the identity is not the Son, but the Holy Spirit. What the
symbolic masculine then seeks to transcend is not the erotic as
such, but the feminine. I am bound to emphasise this point in
the interests of clarity. What the erotic is to haptic
sentience, the economic is to the feminine. The genuine
similarity as well as the real difference between these centres
of consciousness, haptic imagination and symbolic masculine, can
be grasped by framing their concerns in this way. The
elaboration of the role of desire in relation to the structural
compatibility between both haptic memory and the symbolic
feminine on the one hand, and haptic imagination and the
symbolic masculine on the other will further our understanding
of its meaning. This we will undertake in developing the
doctrine of intentionality. We introduce desire for that reason.
Haptic Imagination
For its part, haptic imagination represents the affective at
what is its most intellectual extreme. The 'desire' to
disestablish the erotic ties of affectivity itself accords with
the tendency of transcendence to separate itself from any
putative polarity, in the interests of identity. Identity which
occurs in the symbolic masculine on the basis of the collective
is clearly second order identity. On the other hand,
identity in the case of the haptic imagination, concerns
the individual, and an authentic experience of identity. If
haptic imagination means anything, it means the individual. The
problem here however, is that of the normative status of the
erotic as a perceptual category. There is a clear sense in which
haptic imagination if it is not beholden to haptic memory, then
it defers to the status of the same as normative. The love
of 'God' is the driving force behind my desire that I touch or
am touched by God. We see as much in the story of The Leper,
the healing miracle equivalent to the messianic event. Thus it
takes at face value everything believed concerning incarnation.
This is the essential meaning of haptic imagination: that which
one cannot touch or be touched by as yet.
The erotic enjoins the private. It exists at the lowest
threshold of communication, as occurring between just two
persons. Thus if haptic memory in the form, erotic desire, all
but precludes plurality, the more so does haptic imagination. In
one sense, it is the culmination of what is implicit in the
erotic, as death, although this requires time, and the full
trajectory of life experienced in its plenitude. There is thus a
very clear equivalence between haptic imagination and the
individual, clearer still than the equivalence between the
erotic and the individual. The haptic imagination
reproduces the status of 'the only Son from the Father'
(John 1.14) - it is both filial, or Christological, and
transcendent. The tone of the introduction is irreducibly and
forcefully personal, private, individual, on which count it
evokes the principium individuationis - death:
"... there are some standing
here - tinev w0=de tw=n
e9sthko/twn - who will not taste death before they
see that the kingdom of God has come with power." (9.1)
This pronoun 'some', or 'certain ones', should be read in
light of the actual difference between generic identity as
expounded immediately prior by Mark's use of the word
'generation', which he typified as 'wicked and adulterous'. The
'some' of which he speaks in the introduction to the miracle
narrative itself are those who have attained a state of purity
and transcendence relative to that of Jesus himself, 'the only
Son'. They have, in virtue of the power of the centre of
consciousness haptic imagination, reached the last and final
stage of personhood, irrespective of the religious traditions to
which they are nominally allied, as suggested by the presence of
the figures of Moses and Elijah talking with Jesus. The pronoun
'certain ones' means that they are beyond all collective
expressions of identity, and so beyond those very traditions
themselves. It is expressive of the meaning of individuation,
and the plural form does not obscure the notion of uniqueness
which is conveyed by the link sustained by The
Transfiguration and The Baptism. The
Transfiguration envisages a process and an outcome
conferred not merely upon The Son alone. The mention of the
personal names in the introduction, 'Peter and James and John',
supports this conclusion. Thus the miracle contrasts the
realisation of individuation with the collective identity of the
symbolic masculine. The opening pledge in Mark 9.1 thus speaks
of death as the means of transcendence of death. This
transaction is the work of haptic imagination, with its
necessarily essential desire for purification : '... and his
garments became glistening, intensely white, as no fuller on
earth could bleach them.' (Mark 9.3)
In this its fullest sense, it therefore recapitulates what
preceded the first miracle in the gospel of John, the
description of the baptism of Jesus by John which in Mark reads
as follows:
In those days Jesus came from
Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan.
And when he came up out of the water, immediately he saw the
heavens opened and the Spirit descending upon him like a dove;
and a voice came from heaven, "Thou art my beloved Son [or my
Son, my (or the) Beloved]; with thee I am well pleased." (Mark
1.9-11)
The account of the baptism of Jesus in John does not use any
title; which is all the more intriguing since the two references
in Mark to the Son as 'the Beloved', one in The Baptism,
the other in The Transfiguration. The title on both
occasions is profoundly consonant with the theology of the first
miracle story. Of course both evangelists agree on the role of
the Holy Spirit, the same Spirit who is readily identifiable as
both symbolic masculine in The Transfiguration and the
symbolic feminine in the miracle at Cana.
Enough has been said concerning the perceptual mode. The
patterns connecting the conceptual and perceptual radicals of
mind should be clear. We are not suggesting however, that the
symbolic masculine precludes the influence of the feminine in
the miracle of The Transfiguration; it does not.
Conversely, in emphasising the appropriateness of the feminine
to the first event, the miracle at Cana, neither do we mean to
exclude the role of the masculine.
The symbolic masculine qua eschatological principle,
is conceivable in terms of identity. It exists as a transcendent
form; but the overall accentuation of the category masculine :
feminine in virtue of immanence exacts the qualification of the
same at almost every turn. The element of water in the lengthy
descriptions concerning baptism and the figure of John prior to
the first miracle betoken the symbolic masculine. In the
same way, Moses stands as representative of the feminine
eschatological principle in The Transfiguration, even if
his role does not compare with that of Elijah.
Thus the relation between the symbolic feminine and haptic
memory is analogous to that subtended by the symbolic masculine
and haptic imagination. These relations are just two of many
such which obtain among the conceptual and perceptual forms.
What this means in the first place, reaffirms the doctrine of logos.
Analogy, so fundamental to the method of metaphysics, confirms
the doctrine of logos.
If 'the only Son of The Father' is equivalent to what we would
otherwise call mind, then a procedure which emphasises the nexus
between the various entities it involves on the basis of analogy
is perfectly reasonable. The point is that what is apparent in
one relation, may be difficult to discern or scarcely apparent
to us in the analogous relation. The possibility of
extrapolating from one relation to the other, allows us to
obviate some of the lacunae in our understanding.
Now in the case before us initially, the miracle at the
wedding in Cana, it has been easy enough to recognise a
particular 'prehensive', intentional, psychological, mode, that
of desire. The language of the last episode repeats much of the
initial vocabulary; Son of man, the formal figure 'six',
'Beloved', as well as the Elijah-John persona who is
instrumental in the events leading up to the transformation of
water into wine. We see something of the same intentional mode
'desire', in the intellectual curiosity of the disciples after The
Transfiguration. They may have been extremely fearful
during what transpired, but once it has happened, they
want to understand, want to know '"what the rising
from the dead means''' and '"Why the scribes ... say that first
Elijah must come?"' Even before this, in Peter's request we
sense their fear giving way to a mode of desire that the episode
as a whole generates:
And Peter said to Jesus,
"Master, it is well that we are here; let us make three
booths, one for you one for Moses and one for Elijah." For he
did not know what to say, for they were exceedingly
afraid. (Mark 9.5, 6, emphasis added.)
As afraid as he is, Peter is nevertheless glad to be where he
is at this point, and his perplexity itself can be understood in
keeping with the predominant affective tone of the Cana miracle,
'desire' provided that we modify the conventional sense of
'desire' in order to account for the difference of imagination
from memory. The first episode is normative for haptic
sentience, and we might also say, normative for 'desire'. If
desire/appetition is the defining conative mode of that polarity
of consciousness expounded in the immanent series, the feeding
miracles, then we can apply it, albeit with some qualification,
to their complements or counterparts, the three transcendent
miracles. Hence we can speak of a mode of 'desire' appropriate
to these forms of consciousness which constitute the sentient
imagination, particularly in relation to haptic
imagination. For the moment, let us use the expression
'intellectual desire'. Such will certainly fit with the second
aspect of the identification of 'the beloved Son':
"... listen to him." - (a)kou/ete au)tou= v 7).
Now in conjuring firstly with the relation feminine : haptic
memory, and then with that of masculine : haptic imagination, we
can conceive of the relation, just expressed by the sign ':' in
the first instance as desire proper, desire readily recognisable
in the form of erotic appetition. The feminine stands to haptic
memory as the masculine stands to haptic imagination. The
relation (:) in the first case can be summed up as
physical desire, the relation (:)
in the second case can be summed up as mental desire. Remember
that the soma is always the union of such components,
however we describe them, physical/mental, perceptual/conceptual
and so on. Concerning the nature of erotic desire John
Anderson's epigram aptly describes this idea: "Copulation is a
mental event." That said, the presence of mental desire in
relation to the erotic, its intellective or non-physical
component, necessitates the presence of the symbolic masculine
vis-à-vis haptic memory, just as the presence of physical
desire in relation to haptic imagination, engages the presence
of the symbolic feminine in intellectual desire.
I do not mean to pre-empt here the detailed discussion of
what belongs to a further stage of study, even so, having
already introduced the two forms of desire so recognisable in
the two Christological miracles, which we have somewhat
inadequately called desire simpliciter or erotic,
physical desire, and the desire-to-know, intellectual or mental
desire, we can justify the remarks just made in the interests of
allaying any charge of sexists bias, since the fact that the
topic is so fraught ideologically and polemically. The main
details to be set out as are as follows:
- both symbolic feminine and symbolic masculine as
conceptual forms function relatively to both perceptual
forms, haptic memory and haptic imagination, analogously;
there are no truncated subjects, and no truncated objects;
- the manner or mode of this relation varies, and this
mode is what we have called prehensive, psychological, or
intentional;
- two such ways - there a in all twelve - which the
conceptual forms are related to the perceptual forms have
been necessarily depicted as underlying both Christological
narratives;
- one of these
is desire in its conscious or simple form, desire simpliciter,
erotic desire, sexual appetition, whose occasioning,
('canonical', 'sufficient'), radical or category is haptic
memory;
- the other is intellectual desire, the desire-to-know, a
compound and alternative mode of desire, which stands to the
simple form as does haptic imagination to haptic memory,
since haptic imagination is the radical or centre of
consciousness which is the sufficient condition for this
form of appetition;
- this does not entail that haptic imagination produces
no form of desire simpliciter, it does, it is
responsible for the desire for purity; nor does it mean that
haptic memory produces no form of the desire-to-know, it
must, since it has both a cognitive and a conative
intentional mode, and just as we have not detailed the
cognitive form of haptic memory, neither have we detailed
the cognitive form of haptic imagination;
- what is meant by terms such as 'canonical' or
'sufficient condition' in this context, is that particular
categories sustain varieties of given intentional modes,
such as desire, and desire-to-know, and that these
categories themselves are ultimately definitive of these
same intentional modes; hence desire is best represented by
haptic memory, and desire-to-know by haptic imagination;
- any datum or
data belonging to
haptic imagination occurs for the symbolic masculine,
according to the intentional mode (simple) 'desire'; and
this same datum
also, or these same data
also, are prehended by the symbolic feminine according to
the intentional mode 'desire-to-know';
- conversely, the symbolic masculine prehends any datum or data belonging to
haptic memory, according to the intentional mode
desire-to-know, whereas the symbolic feminine prehends the
same according to desire simplicter.
Put even more simply, the symbolic masculine 'wants',
'desires', in relation to things which are the objects of
perceptual imagination, whereas the symbolic feminine
'wants-to-know', 'desires-to-know', these same; and conversely
the symbolic masculine 'wants-to-know', 'desires-to-know', those
very thing(s), datum or data, which the symbolic feminine
'wants', 'desires', namely things given in haptic memory.
Although the primary instance of relationality between the
two principles masculine and feminine involves correspondingly
the two forms of desire - one physical the other mental - and
correspondingly the two forms of haptic sentience, the relations
of these things in themselves means mutatis mutandis the
relation between the symbolic feminine and haptic imagination,
and similarly the relation between the symbolic masculine and
haptic memory. The full exposition of these relations is the
task of the theology of semiotic forms. There is absolutely no
hard and fast appropriation by the one event, therefore centre
of consciousness, of the one principle. Both principles are
operative in both forms of haptic sentience, and the procedure
of analogy will make this plain, and so expound a Christian
doctrine of desire. But this is a theme proper to another story
entirely.
This discussion has been phrased in terms of consciousness or
mind, but that it is equally about the eschatological should be
obvious. The appearances of Moses and Elijah in the miracle if
they do justice for the feminine and masculine principles
respectively, nevertheless do so because in the first place they
embody the eschatological. This function takes us to the second
part of Peter's confession, which speaks of 'three booths'
All three evangelists report Peter's suggestion regarding the
three 'tents' ('booths'). The last word - skhna/v - which brings to
mind the identity of the Holy Spirit, also calls to mind the
'tent of meeting', the 'tent' of assembly, where God encounters
his people', where God indwells. (Tent is an image which
coincides nicely with Mark's semiotic index, that of the derma
or skin.) This tradition itself probably recalls Davidic and
pre-Davidic times when tent shrines were in use. The Priestly
redaction (Exodus 25-40) of the earlier tradition which had been
conceived before the building of Solomon's temple, tends to
archaize. Its description of the tabernacle as mishkan connotes the verb
'to tent'; the word itself designated 'tent' in an earlier
period. The Greek word here for the same thus immediately
invokes the Moses tradition, as does the term 'departure' - exodon - by means of which
Luke refers to the exchange between the three figures; something
neither Mark nor Matthew mention:
And behold, two men talked to
him, Moses and Elijah, who appeared in glory (e)n do/ch?) and spoke
of his departure (th\n
e1codon) which he was to accomplish at Jerusalem.
(Luke 9.30)
These motifs, the mountain, Moses, the booths, 'tents', the
fear of the disciples, 'his exodon', the cloud which
overshadows, all invoke the Moses tradition. All configure the
previous dispensation, that particular eschatological epoch
defined by the feminine principle. That the eschatological is a
primary if not the primary theme here should be clear. The
references to death start building in Mark 8.31, the first of
the three Passion predictions. They continue unabatedly: 'cross'
(8.35) is followed immediately (8.34-38) by the discourse on
losing one's life, and then by the reference to 'taste death' in
9.1. Luke's stated subject of the talk between the figures, and
the subsequent discussion among the disciples concerning the Son
of man, the rising from the dead and Elijah - the latter
discourse is absent from Luke's account - all tend directly to
the same purpose. The Transfiguration if it enumerates
haptic imagination as part of a schematic
epistemology-psychology, that is, Christology, makes the idea of
death inseparable from this.
The value and relevance of such a radical of consciousness as
haptic imagination for a theory of mind in general, and moreover
for religious studies is inestimable. The Judaic tradition does
not have anything like a monastic tradition. Here, we must
reserve judgement on the Essene community. The Essene sect, with
which some scholars are anxious to associate John the baptiser,
is one of the few incidences of such praxis in Judaism, that is
proto-Judaism, known to us, either prior to or after the time of
Jesus. Appearing in the second century BCE, in rural Palestine,
it probably survived until the Jewish war c. 73 CE. Pliny (Natural
History, 5.73) refers to the Essenes' practice of
celibacy. Josephus (Antiquities of the Jews, 18.11,
18-22), and Philo (Quod Omnis
Probus Liber Sit, XII.75-87), both give detailed
accounts of the sect, but the former also mentions an order of
the same group whose members were married, had children, and
whose wives participated in the purification rites of the
community, (War
2.160-161). Whatever their views regarding celibacy, the Essenes
were not and are not representative of mainstream Jewish
religion. Nor can we consider the phenomenon of the Essene
community as comparable with the expressions of monastic
religious cultures in Buddhism and Christianity. These are
instances of religious and metaphysical traditions throughout
whose virtually entire history, celibacy has been highly
regarded. It is the virtual sine qua non of
salvation in certain Buddhist traditions, since it is the
renunciation of desire in what is regarded as one of its most
virulent forms.
Of the three monotheistic religions, all of which
conform typologically to the transcendent perspective,
although they do so in varying ways, only Christianity has
enjoined celibacy on any remarkable scale. The absence of any
such phenomenon in Islam provoked Schopenhauer's judgement that
it was not in fact a religion at all. I do not know if he
extended this judgement to Judaism, which is logically
warrantable given his premise. Segregation of the sexes is
expressed in a variety of cultural norms in Islamic society, yet
there has been no whole scale relinquishment of the family as
the economic unit of society.
One serious dilemma confronting the simple literal
interpretation of Moses or Elijah in the story of Jesus'
transfiguration as a reference to any Judaism past, or
contemporaneous with Jesus, or future, is this notable paucity
of traditions of religious asceticism in Judaism. Historical
time is a major factor militating against a narrow and purely
ethnico-religious, if not ideological interpretation of the two
figures, Moses and Elijah. Judaism proper I will argue, is
concurrent with the eschatological epoch of the formation of the
other two monotheistic faiths; namely after the Christ. The
biblical theology of religions supports the identification of
two families of religions, in virtue of the eschatological relata,
symbolic feminine and symbolic masculine. These stand as
taxonomic principles at the broadest level identifying immanent
and transcendent eschatologies.
At the temporal hub of the shift from the former epoch, with its
doctrines centering on samsara, is the
incarnation-resurrection, which ushers in the second and final
eschatological epoch. All three monotheisms, Judaism, Islam and
Christianity have emerged in their definitive forms,
subsequently to the birth of Christ. All three also have in
common the doctrine of the resurrection: Orthodox Judaism,
Christianity, and Islam with its teaching regarding Yaum al-Qiyama.
(Progressive Judaism holds the belief in the immortality of the
soul.) This was not yet the case with the 'proto-Judaism' of
Jesus' day; when the doctrine of resurrection was still not
formally part of the tradition. The three monotheistic faiths
have eschatological doctrines which are equally transcendent in
type; eschatological doctrines which accord with the masculine
principle. One token of which is the fact that they all have
shared at one time or another, the practice of male
circumcision, not extant in the East. Eschatology here, I am
taking as the governing criterion of the theology of religions.
By 'eschatology' I mean in the very broadest senses, the
ultimate fate of the embodied individual, and the final destiny
of humankind, as of the world. Thus a didactic concern with
death is the defining moment for what I mean by 'metaphysics' or
'religion', notwithstanding the fact that the earliest forms of
Buddhism profess an anti-metaphysical stance. (See Jan
Nattier, Buddhist
Eschatology, The Oxford Handbook Of Eschatology,
Edited by Jerry L. Walls, Oxford University Press, 2008.)
In order to pursue the hermeneutic of the references to
'Moses with Elijah' and to Elijah, and also those to the Son of
man, in the narratives under scrutiny, we must look elsewhere
than the monotheistic faiths other than Christianity. Islam and
Judaism both offer too little that vindicates what is the
central proposition of The Transfiguration, the mode of
consciousness we refer to as haptic imagination. In line with
the latter, certainly the Son of man reference in the overture
to the narrative has been accentuated preparatory to the miracle
narrative itself. The relative sympathy between the two
complexes symbolic masculine and haptic imagination has
been emphasised. And if Islam corresponds to any one of the six
normative forms of consciousness it must be to the conceptual
form, symbolic masculine. Some sort of case therefore emerges
for associating this particular religious culture with the
John-Elijah figure who is always still to come.
The meaning of the appearance and disappearance of Moses and
Elijah, like that of Peter's suggestion that the earthly trio of
persons,' Peter and James and John' (v 2), make three booths,
one for Jesus, one for Moses and one for Elijah (v 5), depends
upon the complex associations which we have tried to
elucidate, that between symbolic masculine and the attendant
concept, Son of man, and the actual topic of the miracle, haptic
imagination as a form of consciousness. It is no foregone
conclusion that the two figures who appear 'talking to Jesus' (v
4) are synonymous with their historical counterparts, if indeed
such individuals existed at all. The problem of accepting the
names at face value is not confined to the question of the
historicity of the two figures, as significant as that very
question is. It accrues not only moreover, from the deliberate
compounding of the Elijah figure with John the baptiser in the
epilogue (v 9-13); nor only from the mythology implicit in such
references, since both figures are subjects of redivivus
myths. The 'epiphany' of the two, similarly to their
disappearance, must also form a meaningful part of the
hermeneutic. The word 'appeared' - w1fqh (Mark 9.4) in this context is highly
significant. This word, which occurs twice in the Apocalypse,
occurs only twice in a resurrection appearance story:
"... and behold, he is going
before you to Galilee, there you will see (w1yesqe) him." (Matthew
28.7)
"The Lord has risen indeed,
and has appeared (w1fqh)
to Simon!" (Luke 24.34)
The introduction to The Transfiguration announces the
theme of time - 'six days'. This is vital to the hermeneutic.
Not only have we noticed that in distinct ways the two
characters who appear with Jesus and talk to him seem to have
the function of fleshing out time in its fullness so as to
connect backwards to a remote past and forwards to an unknown
future, but the same concept of time logically meshes with the
theme of death. The fact that the subject of the exchange
between the three figures is the exodon of Jesus, the
fact that the topic is death, suggests as does the 'booths', the
relation of other religious traditions. Moses and Elijah thus
stand in some important degree, as designating the same other
traditions. These other traditions are marked by their
correspondence to the eschatological reality conforming in
principle to the symbolic feminine, as represented by Moses in
one case, and the eschatological reality conforming to the
symbolic masculine represented by Elijah in the other. These two
other faiths, or metaphysical systems, stand respectively prior
to and subsequent to the death-resurrection of Jesus.
The categoreal forms are not merely determinants of
consciousness; they must propose certain radical manifestations
of religious consciousness itself. This lies at the heart of the
appearance of the two personae as well as Peter's
discombobulated longing. A key to these same forms of religious
consciousness as noted, is the phenomenon of the beliefs and
praxes generated by the haptic imagination, of which the most
clearly recognisable is the celibate/ascetic lifestyle. These
various factors, time/death/eschatology/'booths'/Moses with
Elijah/talk of Jesus' exodon/ascetic
praxis taken together, all work towards this end, the depiction
of a theology of religion. It is here precisely that attention
is due to the fact that real otherness is involved. The
formative Judaism of Jesus' day does not satisfy the vital
meaning of the event. It remains insufficiently differentiated
from the Christian, hence 'Judaeo-Christian' revelation.
Nor is it merely the absence of any sustained and widespread
ascetic practice within the Judaisms of the past and
present which diminishes its candidature for what is represented
by either mythological figure, Moses or Elijah. The same
unsuitability of Judaisms as candidates for the identity of
alternative traditions prior to and after the Christian
revelation, epochs of which Moses and Elijah respectively are
emblematic, yet nonetheless in discourse with it, is
present in other aspects of the text. There is the fact that
Judaism lacks the capacity to universalizability. Judaism is
barely susceptible of the status of world religion precisely
because of its ethnic particularity. The concept of the election
of an exclusive ethnic group conflicts utterly with the meaning
of universal, which the event of the discourse between the three
figures The Transfiguration betokens. Again, Peter, the
apostle to the Jews, has been characteristically rebuked just
prior to The Transfiguration (Mark 8.27-33), regardless
of his identification of Jesus as 'the Christ', for being 'not
on the side of God, but of men.' These various facts in league
with the serious problematic regarding the historicity-mythology
of both personae, Moses and Elijah, would all seem to
proscribe the identification of either of those 'other'
particular world religions as the Judaic faith.
The Transfiguration portrays a world broader in
its range than anything imagined by the Judaism of Mark's day,
as well he knew. His intention encompasses the world of
human religious aspiration expressed according to the reality of
the 'Son of man in the glory of his Father with the holy
angels', the transcendence represented by the haptic
imagination, and in keeping with the symbolic masculine. The
image of the parousia at the end of chapter 8 signals the
latter, the reference to the 'some standing here' at the
commencement of chapter 9, the former, as we said above.
In this last event of the messianic series, Mark presents
Christ as saviour not solely to the Jews. Instead we see his
portrait of the 'cosmic' Christ. The Christ of The
Transfiguration is the universal saviour, and a
hermeneutic in keeping with the stature of the universality of
the category mind : body is requisite. There is no mention of a
place recognisable as the homeland of the Judaeo-Christian
tradition, which plays so vital a role in Judaisms. Mark says of
the setting nothing more than that it was upon 'a high mountain'
(v 2). This transcends the parochial confines of Peter's dubious
yearning. This last great messianic event envisions the
universal Christ, not a tribal deity. What Peter's impetuous
desire to make 'three booths' (9.5) suggests, is precisely a
kind of ethnic-religious, ideological longing that finds no
refuge whatsoever here. The same tenor of encompassing which was
concentrated in the introduction - 'And after six days ...'
- telescoping Genesis and the gospel in one fell swoop, is
now sustained in a momentary irony recalling the character of
the disciple. Given the breadth of the scene, the theological
rationale of its filiocentric topicality, universality,
and the concept of a religiously inspired ascetic praxis,
we are led in another direction. And to another time, extending
to the furthest reaches of the past as is given by the mention
of Moses, a figure synonymous with antiquity. Everything points
in the direction of the East and to a time prior to the
formation of Judaisms and Judaism proper. The 'Eastern' faiths
and metaphysical creeds had already fully embraced what is
connoted by the allusion to redivivus
rather than resurrection, which is to say, an immanent rather
than a transcendent eschatology, belonging to the epoch
prior to the birth of Jesus. Their eschatology with its doctrine
of rebirth, in effect the doctrine of redeath - punarmrtyu
- that is the doctrine of samsara, is in keeping with
the feminine as denoting the temporal vector past-present.
Moses and Moksa
The phenomenon of religious asceticism has been and remains
practised on a prevalent scale on the Indian sub-continent. The
Jain, Buddhist, Ajivika and Hindu family of religions all
manifest this phenomenon. Indeed they are sometimes referred to
as sramanic on this
basis. Sramana is the
Sanskrit expression for a wandering ascetic, a monk, (Pali - sammana, Chinese - shamen); the feminine form
is sramani. In the
Jain tradition, at one time, the main rival to the Buddhist,
ascetic praxis was central. Jain tradition celebrates its
foundation by Vardhamana or Mahavira ('Great Hero'), whose life
story resembles that of the Buddha. Indeed both figures have
more in the way of documented evidence guaranteeing their actual
(historical) existence than either Moses or Elijah can be said
to enjoy. The Mahavarata, 'great vow', taken by the monk or nun,
proscribed sexual relations as well as personal possessions. In
the case of Maksarin Gosala, the practice of asceticism
led to voluntary self-starvation c. 487 BCE, in accordance with
the ideal of noble death. This gave rise to the Ajivika school.
The Buddhist tradition speaks of the monastic community, the
sangha, as one of its three jewels, and ascetic praxis,
in a form clearly distinguishable from the Jain practice, which
it would consider excessive, has been and remains one of its
foundational elements.
The most enduring of the Indian religious cultures, broadly
definable as Brahmanism, teaches the Vedic doctrine varnasramadharma. This
comprises both the enjoyment of one's privileges and the
observance of one's obligations, based on the notion of caste,
and the observance of the asramas, the stages of life.
They are usually counted as four, and during the last of them,
the follower of the Vedic way becomes a renouncer, samnyasa.
Throughout this stage of life, the disciple concentrates on moksa, liberation, which
calls for the renunciation of possessions, social status,
home-life with its trappings, and so on. Although married
couples today do not adhere to observance of the asramas,
voluntary celibacy as enjoined by the tradition is still
practised on a wide scale on the sub-continent. In the west,
clearly for some time, it has been in decline.
We alluded above to the developmental psychology of the
messianic miracles. The antecedent Days series links the
conceptual forms, that is to say mind, with time. The morphology
shared by the two cycles entails something similar for the
perceptual manifold, the sentient soma. Thus a significant part of the
hermeneutic of the miracles concerns the appearance in time of
the entities they depict. The Transfiguration is the
last event of the miracle series, and its chiastic relation to
the first, sets it over and against the event at Cana, even
though both pertain to the same identity, the Son. The doctrine
of the asramas, is
congenial to this aspect of Markan philosophical psychology.
Although much more remains to be said on the subject,
particularly concerning the distinction between ontogenetic
existence and phylogenetic existence, we resume what was put
above concerning the perceptual form elaborated in this
last miracle story and the psychological understanding of the
human life course. It is final, a ne plus ultra, a point
of reference beyond which there is no other. We saw the
same in the depiction of mind in the conceptual categoreal
scheme of Genesis 1.1-2.4a. As the event of self-reflexiveness,
mind is self-referential and inclusive of itself as of every
other entity like itself, the remaining conceptual forms. If the
location of The Transfiguration in the chiastic series of
messianic events reflects haptic imagination in like terms that
is because both categories, mind and haptic imagination, reveal
the one identity with respect to his universal stature and
theirs. Here then the description:
"... there are some standing
here - tinev w0=de tw=n
e9sthko/twn - who will not taste death before they
see that the kingdom of God has come with power." (9.1)
can be seen to answer to the realisation of what is implicit
in the form of consciousness, haptic imagination, that is, as
nothing other than moksa,
in whichever tradition we find it. The subject - tinev- is plural, and need not be
confined to a single figure. The meaning of 'Moses' is not to be
identified tout court with either Vardhamana, Maksarin Gosala,
or Sakyamuni Buddha. Nor for that matter with any figure though
the same be an actual and identifiable individual. The symbolic
feminine entails the idea of phylum or family, and so includes
variation from any specific norm. (The single term buddha itself
contains a variety of different meanings. In addition to
referring to the historical figure of the fifth century BCE, the
expression covers other 'buddhas' and the concept 'buddhahood'.
So the word may denote equally, a particular entity, the
class of such entities, or again the quality which such actual
entities hold in common.) In this way it is legitimate to read
the indefinite pronoun 'some' as referring to any and all of the
traditions mentioned: 'buddhas' or awakened ones (Buddhism),
'Jinas' or conquerors (Jainism) or the 'jivanmukti', liberated
ones, of the Hindu tradition.
The quality or property which such persons may be said to
hold in common, a property which members of related if different
creeds also share, is summed up in the term which transposes the
expression e)/codon, 'exodus',
liberation from samsara, meaning moksa, or
deliverance. The relatedness of this to the Christian
eschatological promise is given by the fact that the second part
of the description - e9sthko/twn
- is a form of the verb frequently used to designate the
resurrection. In other words, the e)/codon of which Jesus
speaks with Moses and Elijah, may in the case of the first
figure be readily transposed into moksa. The liberation from slavery of the
people of God with whom the third covenant is established
becomes in the light of Transfiguration, identical with
this - moksa - as a final goal. Another relevant, and
equally prominent part of the Moses tradition, that of the
association of this figure with Torah, likewise becomes
immediately recognisable in the context of the sramanic faiths as Dharma (Pali Dhamma), sometimes
translated identically to the translation of Torah: 'law'.
Whether or not the dharma
is as the Hindu epithet puts it, 'eternal' - sanatana dharma - it is
older than the concept of moksa
and the practices pertaining to the latter. The understanding of
dharma by these various
traditions differs considerably. For example the Hindu tradition
speaks at length of varnashrama
dharma, the observance of the obligations and rules
binding one as a member of a caste, jati. Aspects of this
bear comparison with many of the Jewish mores relating to ritual
purity, commensality, food laws and so on. But Buddhism does not
adopt the same attitude and beliefs concerning dharma. It overturns at one
stroke the close connection between social hierarchy and dharma. But on any account,
dharma remains the
universal order, the abiding structure underpinned by an
eschatological reality.
I do not propose to do anything other than introduce the
hermeneutic of the single figure 'Moses' here. This component of
the hermeneutic alone demands detailed consideration which
cannot be entered at this point. The present purpose is to
establish the categoreal scheme more or less in its entirety and
moreover in this particular case, to rescue The
Transfiguration from its own entrenched captivity to a
hermeneutic which not only privileges Judaism at the expense of
the demands of the text itself as well as those of contemporary
theology, but which I cannot find worthy of belief. Like the
aetiology of death contained within the second creation
narrative, belief in the historicity of a national superhero,
Moses, is untenable and unhelpful to the advance of Christian
theology in the third millenium.
What we are seeking in this hermeneutic of the two figures
Moses and Elijah who stand in relation to Jesus in varying but
related ways, ways which are essentially bound to the concept of
the eschatological, should be plain. It is not a
re-interpretation of the Moses tradition, much less that of the
relation of Judaism to Christianity itself. Our brief is with The
Transfiguration; our quest is to understand the meaning of
this, the one great last messianic miracle, which is a
transcendent theology of the Son. It is all too important a text
for us to simply trust to the unthinking acceptance of Moses and
Elijah as somehow nominating actual human persons. Like the
second creation story with its aetiology of death which a
community of faith grounded in contemporary scientific
understanding can no longer accept as anything other than
mythological in sensu plenu, to avow that 'Moses' and
'Elijah' are identical with past individual human persons is
intellectually indefensible. Like the mythological explication
of death in the second creation narrative, such a demand I
believe raises serious questions regarding the ethics of belief.
These are in the broadest of terms, the reasons for
construing the roles of the various figures mentioned in the
narrative in relation to Jesus as we have done. The
eschatological category, male : female, is just that. It not
only reveals the identity of the Holy Spirit in creation, but
acts as the construal for the eschatological. To aver that the
incarnation stands as the axis of historical time, engages
eschatology. These ideas of mind, time, and eschatology are all
galvanised in the description of Jesus' Transfiguration, and any
hermeneutic of the figures of Moses and Elijah in particular,
cannot avoid at the very least the consideration of an
eschatology which answers to the principle of the
feminine. Those eschatologies developed over long periods of
time which are the legacy of the sramanic family of
religions prior to the birth and death of Jesus do this
admirably. Thoroughly immanentist in persuasion, they espouse
the principle of the feminine.
This hermeneutic entails not merely the recognition of
the legitimacy of the same samsaric eschatology as
prevailing during the period in question, but its adoption as
the universal eschatology prior to the incarnation. Why?
Currently, Christian eschatology does not allow the fullest
incorporation of an eschatological understanding of the immanent
as feminine. Eschatology does not simply begin with incarnation,
that is with the three monotheistic faiths; nor is it simply the
business of the masculine. In other words, to call the anthropic
the eschatological category has ramifications for Christian
theology which on no account can be dodged. It inflects with new
significance, the incarnation from the perspective of
feminist theologies. In short, it demands appreciation by
specifically feminist Christian theologies of those world faiths
involved. There is all too little indication that this has
occurred or is occurring even now. Such neglect on the part of
feminist theologies has been unconscionable and obtuse. The
completeness, comprehensiveness, consistency, and equilibrium of
Christian theology require a thoroughgoing rethinking of
eschatological doctrine which recurs to the notion of
incarnation-resurrection as focusing historical and
eschatological time. Eschatology before and after Christ would
thus embrace the feminine and masculine polarities respectively.
Mark's last great messianic miracle, which the Christian east
has always taken to its heart, contains untapped hermeneutical
potential for the future of Christology now that the recognition
of religious traditions other than the Judaeo-Christian is
finally incumbent on us. This is indeed just one reason why the
story of The Transfiguration is from the theological
point of view, so astonishing and promissory.
The
Johannine Stories Of The Resurrection Appearances And The
Three Transcendent Miracles
In general terms, modernist responses to the resurrection
narratives, like those to the miracle narratives, have been
marked by polarisation. For the most part, the tendency has been
to adopt one of two extremes, both of which are unsatisfactory:
one is to insist on the literal understanding of the stories as
if this were the end of the matter, and nothing further need
follow; the other amounts to an exercise in incredulity,
resulting in blanket dismissal from genuine consideration,
because of their visibly somatic tone. These responses
fail for the same reason; viz. their complete neglect of the
antecedent texts bearing immediately upon biblical
anthropological doctrine. That is, they do not engage with the
presentation of a systematic epistemology-psychology,
foundational to biblical Christology, the doctrine of the logos.
Neither approach has met the exegetical and hermeneutical
demands such narratives oblige.
Most tellingly in view of the hermeneutic proposed here, neither
has realized the consistency of the relation of the two genres,
the clear connection maintained by the miracle stories and the
resurrection narratives. That the healing miracle stories and
the first three stories of the resurrection in John are
consistently related, follows from the hermeneutic of the
miracles of 'virtual' transcendence, which posits the three
centres of perceptual imagination. These are accounted for in
three of the Markan healing miracle narratives to which I shall
come directly. One might have expected at the very least, some
measure of consideration of the role of sense-perception in
those narratives comparably to what we encounter in the
'appearance' stories so-called, but not even a nod in that
direction has been forthcoming.
In Mark, there are three healing miracle narratives concerning
sense-percipience which thus complete the systematic correlation
of six of the twelve such stories of miraculous healings with
the messianic series, insofar as they delineate imaginal
perceptual consciousness. Both sentient memory, and sentient
imagination expound the perceptual polarity of consciousness,
pursuant to the binary delineation of the corresponding
conceptual pole in the P creation narrative. Furthermore, the
other six healing miracle stories confirm the latter; that is,
they reiterate the conceptual polarity as disclosed in the story
of beginning. Thus the two series of miracle narratives, healing
and messianic, are methodically bound to one another, just as
are the two sevenfold series of 'beginning and end', the
P creation and messianic series.
Since we are here concerned with the apparent links between the
resurrection appearance narratives in John, and the two
classes of miracle stories, both healing miracles, and messianic
miracles, including of course the Eucharist in the latter, let
us note here, that the gospel of John contains only one of each
of those classes which bears upon the discussion. The only
healing miracle in John which is about sense-perception is that
of The Man Born Blind (John 9.1-41). This is a
narrative of genuine moment to the evangelist. Its length is
exceeded only by the very last of John's seven 'semeia', The
Death Of Lazarus (10.1-44), and then only marginally. Both
pericopae contain metaphorical references to light, recursively
to the P creation narrative. The messianic miracle in John, The
Walking On The Water, nominates acoustic imagination in
its classical, or rubrical form, analogously to the Day 2 rubric
of the former. Hence this gospel as a self-contained text
contains two explicit references to three of the phenomenal
sense-percipient modes.
But this ostensible paucity of interest of the fourth gospel in
sense-perception generally, should not be accepted at face
value. I will argue that the numerical reference contained in
the epilogue, namely '153', with an economy not characteristic
of John, refers effectively to the first, third and fifth
messianic miracles, all Eucharistic in kind. And, moreover, by
dint of their enumeration as such, clearly leaves for
discernment and deliberation, those remaining events of the
messianic series with which they are paired; the second, fourth
and sixth. These are of course the three messianic miracles of
'virtual transcendence', the classical expositions of optic,
acoustic, and haptic imagination respectively. Hence the author
of the epilogue was well aware of the theology of perceptual
imagination. And if it is so, as it seems to me probable, that
the author of the three resurrection narratives of chapter 20
and the author of chapter 21 are the same person, then we cannot
ignore their nexus. Certainly, it warrants repetition that any
critique of these resurrection narratives, and others of the
same genre, which does not engage with the presentation of the
theology of sense perception in the gospels, is not only
questionable, but untenable in the extreme.
That The Walking on the Water, The Stilling Of The
Storm and The Transfiguration, as the final
deposition of sentient imagination, or imaginal perceptual
consciousness, have a lasting contribution to make to the
theology of soma is sure. We can say tentatively that
the internal evidence of the texts for the existence of centres
of consciousness of the kind here described, is already
substantial. Given the arguments from form, or what is the same,
the fact that this hermeneutic satisfies the existence of the
messianic series as a cycle, a whole, and one in keeping
with the story of 'beginning', and the additional fact, as we
are still in the process of affirming, that it reckons with the
integration of Mark's two great cycles of miracles, messianic
and healing, there seems little reason to doubt it.
We have noticed repeatedly the gospel accentuates the
association between Eucharist and Eucharistic miracles, and that
this extends even to the transcendent miracles. They complete
the exposition of perceptual consciousness in that they depict
the imaginal complements to the three forms of sentient memory.
We have thus assessed them as essential to the theology of
perception. Having said that, we may now note the tacit
relationship between the transcendent miracle narratives and the
resurrection narratives. This relationship is part of the
relation Eucharist-Eucharistic miracles. The Eucharist indeed
remains the final episode of the sevenfold series, to which the
six messianic miracles are preliminary. As such, it effectively
has no corresponding transcendent complement. True to its
immanent perspective, the gospel of Mark virtually understates
the resurrection, belief in which, is not the foremost concern
for him as it is for John. Nevertheless, as far as the
resurrection is the point at which his narrative culminates,
there is a discernible pattern that orients the transcendent
messianic events towards the resurrection complementarily to the
pattern of the relation between the Eucharist and the three
feeding miracles, and in keeping with which, the same four
events remain the necessary conclusion of the second and
tetradic half of the P creation story. Without the final
dispensation which they provide, that narrative in itself
retains only half of its meaning.
One cannot enumerate the resurrection as an eighth serial
event. The Eucharist is not a miracle as such; and the
resurrection is not simply a miracle comparable to those of the
sixfold messianic series precisely because the gospel portrays
the miracles in general as aspects of the resurrection; the
healing miracles no less than the messianic miracles. The latter
each reflect the resurrection in a given measure, precursively
to its status as the culmination of the gospel; and none more so
than the three transcendent messianic events. But none of the
latter can be reckoned as displaced resurrection appearance
stories. Such a view destroys their inherent cohesiveness, as
well as the greater consistency of the messianic series as a
whole. Furthermore, there is no counterpart to the resurrection
in the archaeological week, which is foundational to the
messianic series and the Eucharist, except by dint of the
certain relation of analogy maintained by both series, beginning
and end, and by the significance of The Transfiguration
in deference to the Christological rubric, Day 1, which denotes
the conceptual form mind.
Therefore significance of the heptad as the formal core in
the organisation of the gospel of Mark can hardly be
overestimated. Its literary integrity and the meaning of every
one of its miracles look to the creation narratives as to a
semantic precedent. But the same applies to the hermeneutic of
the P creation story. For it cannot obtain in a vacuum, as a
beginning sans end. The sense of an ending provided by
the ensuing rubrics of the last four days of the P
narrative, and moreover, of the J narrative of creation in its
entirety, is inconclusive in the extreme. They provide no
dénouement of issues raised implicitly in the first creation
story and explicitly in the second. Moreover, as
theologies of immanence, both narratives are proleptic vis-à-vis
the messianic series, and in no uncertain sense must the second
part of the P story defer to the disclosures if the latter.
These texts exert and equal and opposite reactions upon one
another. If the three miracle of virtual transcendence are thus
recursive, and beholden to the initial three rubrics of Genesis
1.1s, then the second half of that narrative is proleptic and
must submit to the normative theology of immanence which only
the four Eucharistic events divulge. The prosecution of their
hermeneutic(s), the creation story as a whole, and the messianic
series as a whole, is mutually inclusive, and interdependent. We
cannot have one without the other.
But here we must reaffirm the value of the theology of
creation for the doctrine of resurrection, specifically a propos
of the rapport sustained by the messianic miracle stories, and
the resurrection narratives. Not infrequently, scholars have
been led to the mistaken notion that The Transfiguration
narrative in particular is a 'displaced appearance' story. This
completely ignores the structural nexus of meaning proposed by
the narratives and everything we have said concerning it - that
to perceive it is to begin to understand them. It also leads to
a view of the resurrection narratives which bears no relation to
the antecedent material in the gospel. Some scholars have
impugned the value of narratives such as John 20.11-18, The
Appearance To Mary Magdalene, or John 20.24-29, The
Appearance To Thomas, on the basis of their reliance upon
the role of sense-percipience. But they have usually done so
without having said a word about the theology of soma
seminal to any understanding of the Eucharist, nor with any
reference whatsoever to that whole strain in Mark which
deals consistently with perception, the healing miracles and the
messianic miracles. The presumptions inherent in such estimates
render them totally worthless. They are thoroughly void of any
valid assessment of the messianic series, to say nothing of the
creation story, as Christian epistemology. Thus they make no
effort to evaluate the obvious concern of even the healing
miracle stories with sense-perception relatively to stories
regarding the appearance of the risen Jesus to the
disciples. And not appearance only. The entire gamut of
sense-perception, seeing, hearing, touching, and tasting is
accounted for in the messianic series; and in both capacities:
that of memory proper in keeping with the Eucharist and
immanence, and that of imagination in keeping with
transcendence. That these are neglected as factors in reckonings
of the resurrection 'appearance' narratives is remiss in the
extreme
By this I mean that such evaluations have failed miserably to
engage in any measure at all with the systematic epistemology
and anthropology of the gospel to which the very resurrection
narratives point, much less to appreciate its aesthetic
integrity. The appearance stories do indeed concede a dominant
role to perception. What we have been at pains to expose is the
extent to which sense perception is innate to the doctrine
of the imago Dei, and that the content of the gospel
prior to the resurrection narratives, is nothing if not an
exercise in preparation. That we see, hear, and touch, testify
to the image and likeness we bear to the Spirit, the Father and
the Son, respectively.
To impugn the 'appearance stories' for their reliance on
sense-percipience, without so much as a glance even at the clear
concern of the six healing miracle narratives with the same, and
void of any inkling that so much attention has been
given to the doctrines of perceptual consciousness in the
gospel, there in tandem with an overarching doctrine
of mind, which was the business of the very first of the
biblical narratives, must be called what it is. While ever it
refuses to consider the existence of a systematic
epistemology-psychology in the tradition, which is focused on
the role of sense-percipience in consciousness among other
things, the tendency to deprecate the resurrection narratives
which employ the same is at best grossly deficient, and at
worst, pabulum posing as sophisticated erudition.
Thus the relationship of the transcendent messianic events to
the resurrection epitomises the resurrection in relation to
systematic Markan metaphysics. Thus I am urging the evaluation
of the resurrection narratives, particularly those in John which
demonstrate an implicit relation to the messianic series, and
which are furthermore intelligible as are both sevenfold, serial
narratives, creation and salvation, on the basis of a
theology irreducibly Trinitarian in its logical nature. The
analogous relation of of the three forms of perceptual
imagination to the three pure conceptual forms guarantees this
recursion of the resurrection stories. That analogy employs the
construct of the imago Dei. Thus it secures the relation
of acoustic imagination and the pure conceptual form space;
optic imagination and the pure conceptual form symbolic
masculine; and haptic imagination the pure conceptual form mind.
Not for nothing then do we notice the presence of all three such
modes of sense-percipience in the narratives.
Of course, vision, that is, the optic, is present in all three
Johannine accounts; as is the acoustic, since the risen Christ
speaks in each. The two miracle narratives, The Stilling Of
The Storm and The Walking On The Water, which
attest these centres of consciousness, optic imagination and
acoustic imagination are on first examination, indeed similar
This is just so in virtue of their antithetical relation as
archaeological and teleological or Transcendental and
Pneumatological respectively, in tandem with their obvious
function in semiotic communication. The visual and the aural are
the most obvious forms of sentience employed in language. And
the problem of how to distinguish one from the other miracle
story arose because of this. The depiction of Jesus at rest, and
sleeping in the boat during the storm in the messianic
Pneumatology, is abundantly clear in its illustration of optic
imagination, which is readily operative in our dreaming. And
equally, the use of the telling manner of self-identification in
the event which proposes The Transcendent in the similar episode
leaves us in no doubt, just as does the first resurrection
narrative, which uses the expression 'Father', no less than
three times;
pa/ntev ga\r au)to\n ei}don
kai\ e)tara/xqhsan. o( de\ eu)qu\v e)la/lhsen met' au)tw~n,
kai\ le/gei au)toi~v qarsei~te, e)gw/ ei)mi mh~ fobei~sqe.
- 'For they all saw him, and were terrified. But immediately
he said to them, "Take heart. It is I. Have no fear."' (Mark
6.50).
We need to reassess Mark's apparent paucity of interest in
the resurrection a propos of the messianic miracles. The links
between the story of The Appearance To The Women At The Tomb
(Mark 16.1-8), the only resurrection story in his gospel, and The
Transfiguration are too plain to ignore:
- both begin with a reference to the day(s);
- three male disciples are present as witnesses to
the transfiguration and three women witness the scene at the
empty tomb (Mark 9.2 cf.16.1);
- the men are enjoined to silence, the female
disciples are instructed to inform the others although they
too remain silent (9.9 cf. 16.7, 8);
- both stories speak of white clothing (9.3
cf.16.5); Matthew highlights this, (thus Matthew 17.2
compares with 28.3);
- during the miracle a 'voice... out of the cloud'
is heard, and at the tomb the 'young man' speaks
(9.7cf.16.6);
- both events are charged with the atmosphere
proper to the transcendent, namely awe which generates angst
(9.6 cf. 16.8).
It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that such
associations are intended. This is not to contend however, that
The Transfiguration is a resurrection narrative.
Given the relative dearth of resurrection narratives in Mark,
a tendency which the remaining two synoptists do not exactly
mirror, it will be preferable as well as profitable to discuss
this relation of the three miracles of 'virtual' transcendence
and the resurrection narratives as these are available to us in
the fourth gospel. There is no mistaking John's own theological
predilection. Like Matthew, who exhibits a clear and abiding
awareness of Torah, both in its content and form, and whose
gospel may be legitimately characterized as the most Judaic of
all, the gospel of John is likewise idiomatically disposed in
virtue of the theology of transcendence, rather than that of
immanence. This makes for genuine equilibrium among the four, a
fact in itself well worth pursuing in terms of its
eschatological ramifications, which fit the two
teleological-Pneumatological components of consciousness; the
symbolic feminine~optic memory on the one hand, and the symbolic
masculine~optic imagination on the other.
There are several overwhelming reasons why we should consider
the three miracles of virtual transcendence and the resurrection
vis-à-vis the resurrection narratives in John, rather than any
of the synoptic gospels. In John we find three narratives, prior
to the epilogue. The latter may be considered an addition, but
an exceptionally important one in respect of the history of the
tradition of the messianic miracle series, as I shall argue.
This is all the more extraordinary because three of that series
are absent from the fourth gospel. John lacks The Stilling
Of The Storm, The Feeding Of The Four Thousand,
and The Transfiguration. The Transfiguration
bears genuine comparison with The Raising Of Lazarus.
Like The Transfiguration this is the last of the
(notably seven) signs in John, prior to the death and
resurrection of Jesus; it is plainly a Christology as is the
last messianic miracle; it contains numerous references to the
temporal span of the 'day' in keeping with the noteworthy
introduction to the last messianic miracle story (John 11.6,9,
24, 39, and 12.1, if we include the following pericope, The
Anointing At Bethany, which immediately mentions the
'Lazarus ... whom Jesus raised from the dead', all the more
remarkably since it begins with the phrase common to The
Transfiguration, 'Six days' (e(/c
h(merw~n)).
Instead of the former two, those paired theological narratives
which postulate the identity of the Holy Spirit, The
Stilling Of The Storm and The Feeding Of The Four
Thousand, the Johannine Pneumatological component is
accomplished by means of two healing miracle narratives: The
Healing Of The Official's Son (John 4.46-54), and The
Man Born Blind (9.1-12). These occupy positions in his
sequence of miracles which correspond precisely to those
maintained by the two messianic events in their own proper
serial order; that is, second and second last respectively, even
though they function formally as a pair. I add the latter rider,
because the chiastic structure of the complete messianic series
is not followed by John. His gospel has one primary 'cross[ing]
to the other side', which serves the two episodes at the centre
of the chiasmos, both of which his gospel contains. This means
of course that his sequential arrangement of his seven miracles
is slightly more immediately like the creation story template.
Neither the order of that nor the order of 'signs' in John is
chiastic.
The other factor is of equal if not even greater moment to the
possibility of recovery of something of the tradition regarding
the three Johannine resurrection narratives vis-à-vis the three
miracle narratives no less than it is to their hermeneutic. And
it is this.
In the chapter subsequent to that of the resurrection
narratives, John 21, there is, so I will argue, substantial
evidence that its author was well aware of the completed
messianic miracle series. It is given by the supposedly cryptic
but nevertheless clear referential symbolism of the figure
'153'. This is further supported by the (1) reference to Cana,
where the first of these events is said to have occurred,
furthered again by the name Nathanael (John 21.2), whom we may
legitimately specifically associate with that event (2)
reference to the setting, the Sea of Tiberias (1.1, c.f. 6.1),
the proximity of one and actual location of the other of those
two remaining messianic miracles which are contained in this
gospel, at is epicentre; and (3) the introduction which also
mentions 'the sons of Zebedee' (John 212) for the first
and only time in this gospel, indicative of an awareness of
something at least, of the synoptic tradition in which those
same disciples assume a prominent role. Two of the synoptic
gospels, Mark and Matthew, contain the messianic series in its
completest form in any single gospel; and certainly, they both
contain those episodes missing from John.
The figure enumerating the catch of fish, '153' (John 21.11),
abstractly and pointedly in keeping with the proliferation of
numerical references in the feeding miracle stories themselves,
adverts to the sequence of the three Eucharistic miracles: these
are first, third, and fifth in their suite. There follows the threefold
injunction to Simon Peter '"Feed my lambs ... Tend my sheep ...
Feed my sheep."' (21.15, 16, 17.) These last two injunctions are
clearly marked 'A second time he said to him ... ' and
'The third time he said to him ... (vv (vv 16,
17). The use of ordinal numbers here confirms my understanding
of the figure 153, and comports also with John's description of
The Transformation Of Water Into Wine as 'This, the first
of his signs ... '(John 2.11, emphases added).
Then follows the actual meal which the risen Christ
shares with his disciples. Surely these facts not only allow
for, but positively require pressing the suit discerning a
link between resurrection narratives and messianic miracles, as
concerning the meaning of the texts themselves, and the history
of the tradition. Consequently, they answer also any burden of
proof for a Trinitarian hermeneutic as the very rationale of the
three Johannine 'appearance' stories, since the three messianic
miracles in question are irreducibly theologically Trinitarian.
In connection with which, we should note the existence of the
baptismal formula at the very conclusion of the gospel of
Matthew, in the pericope The Commissioning Of The Disciples,
following the third and final resurrection appearance story in
that gospel:
"Go therefore and make disciples of all nations,
baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of
the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have
commanded you: and lo, I am with you always to the close of
the age." (Matthew 28.19, 20.)
In John the three narratives prior to the epilogue are:
(1) The Appearance
Of Jesus To Mary Magdalene - John 20.11-18;
(2) The Appearance Of Jesus To
The Disciples - John 20.19-23;
(3) Jesus And Thomas - John
20.24-29.
The first depicts Jesus, portrayed in terms of his close
relationship with Mary Magdalene, who nonetheless, is prohibited
from touching
him. Jesus gives the reason for this as:
"... for I have not yet
ascended to the Father; but go to my brethren
and say to them, I am ascending to my Father and to your
Father, to my God and to your God." (v 17).
The second reads:
And when he had said this, he
breathed on them, and said to them, "Receive the Holy
Spirit ... (vv 22, 23);
in the third, the only story in which Jesus is apprehended by
haptic sensation, and which enjoins his disciples to
faithfulness in Jesus himself, Thomas calls him:
"My Lord and my God!"
(v 28, emphases added).
The difficulty if any here, is why a tripartite rationale of
this catena was never observed? Perhaps after all it is just too
apparent. It might seem that either the first narrative or the
last, could be deemed Christological; and so too, it is not
immediately easy to decide whether the first or last should be
interpreted as identifying Transcendence- the "Father". However,
this very undecidability sits perfectly with the chiastic
structure of the messianic series. For it is possible to begin
enumerating the series with the first miracle at Cana, or at the
centre of the chiasmos with The Feeding Of The Five
Thousand - The Walking On The Sea. The former
procedure yields the series Son - Spirit - Transcendence,
whereas the latter would give Transcendence - Spirit - Son. If
the evolution of these appearance stories in John can be taken
in tandem with that of the messianic miracles as they
appear in his gospel, then given the negative injunction
concerning the haptic, and the specific naming of the "Father"
in the first of them, it would seem preferable to opt for
the latter. We must note that the appearance story involving the
disciple Thomas does in fact emphatically describe him actually
touching the risen Christ. He also does indeed both see and him;
but the pericope gravitates around the empirical evidence
sustained by the action of his touching the wounds of
his Lord:
So the other disciples told him, 'We
have seen the Lord. " But he said to them, 'Unless I see his
hands, the print of the nails, and place my finger
in the mark of the nails, and place my hand in his
side, I will not believe." ...
Then he [Jesus] said to Thomas, "Put your finger
here, and see my hands; and put out your hand,
and place it in my side; do not be faithless, but believing."
(John 20.25, 27, emphases added.)
This mode of touch, in both orders of consciousness, the
normative and conscious functioning of haptic memory, and the
non-normative functioning of haptic imagination, is irreducibly
Christological. In this resurrection story alone it is deployed
positively, just as it was negatively in the first pericope
involving Mary Magdalene. Reading the narrative involving Thomas
and the risen Christ thus sorts with John's preferential regard
for the transcendent Son rather than the immanent Son, as is
clear from the gender of Thomas as opposed to that of Mary
Magdalene. It consorts with the order of the messianic chiasmos
as beginning from the centre, including its both arms
simultaneously and yields the sequence: The Transcendent - The
Holy Spirit - The Son. Thus too, it begins with that identity
whom we routinely associate with beginning itself, The
Transcendent ("The Father").
One uncanny feature of this last of the three narratives is the
ironic fact that Thomas effectively denies himself the
opportunity to believe. His insistence on empirical evidence,
the evidence of the senses, and in fact, all three of them,
hearing, seeing and touching, and, the latter emphatically, just
as he insists, results in knowing rather than believing. I make
this observation because belief, which plays such a seminal role
in John's gospel, is perfectly apt in the specifically
Christological context of the story. I shall later affirm the
doctrine of intentionality, which posits that four specific
modes of conscious intentionality, modes of awareness, or types
of consciousness, are the products of four of the categoreal
entities taxonomised in the narratives of 'beginning and
end'; that these in turn govern the specific
soteriological-eschatological perspectives of the four gospels;
and finally, that intentionality and axiology, pursuant to the
same taxonomies, are of co-dependent origination.
That is, that knowing and its concomitant value truth, derive in
the first instance from both acoustic memory and the pure
conceptual form space, and that these guide the theological
perspectives of Mark and Matthew respectively as both
Transcendental. Conversely, that the intentionality of belief is
the realization of the pure conceptual form mind, and that with
its concomitant axiological perspective, the good, these
constitute the specific epistemological-psychological complex
which distinguish the fourth gospel. The other Christological
conscious intentional mode, desire, like belief, is the effect
of the other conscious Christological category, haptic memory
(-haptic imagination), and just as surely, equally inseparable
for the same value, the good. Such Christological forms of
intentionality, belief and desire, whose concomitant axiological
identity is specifically that of the good, are exemplified in
the specific theological perspectives of John and Luke
respectively.
Thus, what is good or evil, is also necessarily specifically
susceptible of belief (or desire), rather than knowing or
willing. This particular intentional mode is necessarily the
business of mind as pure conceptual form, and the same
intentional mode, belief, and its essential axiological
identity, remain irreducibly Christological phenomena. This
doctrine is pursuant to biblical metaphysics; it follows
from both the P creation narrative and the messianic series.
Thus we note in the story of Jesus and Thomas, the clear
presentation of the role of touch, and haptic
memory-imagination, is an index of The Son, rather than any
other identity in God. In keeping with which, is John's
single-minded understanding of belief. In this same context, we
should note also, the invocation of the Day 1 rubric, which is
the classical deposition of the category of mind, and hence of
its specific and necessary affiliation with the intentional
function, belief and the axiological identity, the good. That
invocation squares with Luke's unique introduction to The
Transfiguration - 'Now about eight days after
these sayings ... (Luke 9.28, emphasis added) - since it returns
us to the first day of the week, just as its does with those of
Mark and Matthew to the same pericope. Their references to the
figure 'six' instead of 'eight', comport with the symbolism
operative in the first Christology of the messianic tradition:
Kai\ meq' h(me/rav o)ktw\
pa/lin h]san e)/sw oi( maqhtai\ au)tou~
kai\ Qwma~v met' au)tw~n. - And eight days later, his
disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them.
(John 20.26).
Two further points merit mention here. The first is that of
the primary criterion defining the three mesianic miracles of
virtual transcendence, a motif which they share with the first
three creation rubrics; namely, identity. The first of the
resurrection stories, regarding Mary Magdalene, is common to all
four gospels, a fact sometimes overlooked by critics of these
narratives, at pains to concentrate on their many discrepancies.
In its Johannine recension, after she has discovered that the
tomb is empty, Mary alerts the disciples:
Mary Magdalene went and said to the
disciples, 'I have seen the Lord; and she told them
that he [Jesus] had said these things to her. (John
20.18, emphases added.)
There is a significant amount of discourse between Mary and
the risen Christ in the first part of the story; significant
because it conforms to the analogous relation between acoustic
imagination and space, which is here the 'empty tomb'. It is
only when the risen Christ calls Mary by her name that she
recognises him (John 20.16). Both categories, space and acoustic
imagination identity The Transcendent. In Mark it is not the
risen Jesus himself who speaks, but 'a young man ... dressed in
a white robe (Mark 16.5). He tells her:
But go, tell his disciples and Peter, that he is
going before you to Galilee; there you will see him as he told
you." (Mark 16.7).
There is thus no opportunity for the unresolved identity
motif here. Matthew expands upon this version, replacing the
'young man' with 'the angel of the Lord', and adding also
further ciphers of transcendence. This figure more or less
repeats the command of the young man. However, this evangelist
adds:
So they departed quickly from the tomb with fear
and great joy, and ran to tell his disciples. And behold,
Jesus met them and said, "Hail!" And they came and took hold
of his feet and worshiped him. Then Jesus said to them, "Do
not be afraid; go and tell my brethren to go to Galilee, and
there they will see me. " (Matthew 28.8-10).
Once again there is no presentation of the theme of identity,
mistaken or otherwise. Even so, it is worthwhile to note that
the injunction '"Do not be afraid;"' (mh\
fobei~sqe, v 10) occurs verbatim in The
Walking On The Water (Matthew 14.27), a Transcendental
messianic miracle. There it effects Jesus' own self
identification. He was initially believed to have been a 'ghost'
(fa/ntasma/). In other similar
pericopae however, the same marker, identity construable of
transcendence, is pronounced. It occurs twice in Luke; the
second time, The Appearance To The Disciples is
comparable to what we have just seen in Matthew:
As they were saying this, Jesus himself stood
among them. But they were startled and frightened, and
supposed that they saw a spirit. (pneu~ma,
Luke 24.36, 37).
The previous such occasion, The Walk To Emmaus (Luke
24.[12] 13 -25), is the second resurrection narrative in that
gospel, since the first, as in all four gospels, is the account
of the empty tomb, which in Luke describes 'two men ... in
dazzling apparel' (Luke 24.4), who deliver the good news to Mary
Magdalene and several other women. This is the final
pericope of that gospel, and consists of two parts. In the
first, Jesus unbeknownst as such to the 'two of them' en route
to Emmaus, draws near and accompanies them.
When he was at table he took bread and blessed,
and broke it, and gave it to them. And their eyes were opened
and they recognized him; and he vanished out of their
sight.(Luke 24.30).
The final appearance story in the gospel is somewhat similar,
and it too contains the presentation of the identity motif:
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 21.12-14).
Thus the theme of Jesus' identity is common to more than one
resurrection story and more than one gospel, just as it surfaced
as the primary criterion distinguishing 'virtual' transcendence
in the messianic miracles, and certain of the healing miracles.
John's enumeration here, 'the third time', is somewhat
perplexing, since there have already been three resurrection
accounts: the first involving Mary Magdalene; the second, all of
the disciples except Thomas; and the third, Thomas and 'his'
[Jesus'] disciples'. (Ordinal enumeration will occur immediately
subsequently in the epilogue, there twice, so I propose;
the first time, in relation to the rehabilitation of Simon
Peter, and in the second, in the hermeneutic of the number
'153'. Both episodes gravitate about the same motif, that of
feeding, or as we may say, 'Eucharistic nurturance'.) What is
just as odd, is the placement of the following, after those
three stories:
Now Jesus did many other signs (a)/lla shmei~a in the presence of the
disciples, which are not written in this book, but these are
written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son
of God, and that believing you may have life in his name.
(John 20.30).
The second point deserving of mention is that this coda would
be just as well placed were it to follow the final appearance
narrative, that of the epilogue. What is yet more remarkable
about it is the fact that the term 'sign' (shmei~a)
of 'many other signs', given that it is John's signature
term for a miracle of either kind, messianic or healing, may
here also patently refer to the absence of the three messianic
events of the fully tally, to which the figure '153' certainly
refers. That is, when read in conjunction with the meaning of
the numerical reference, it seems to call attention to the
incompletion of the messianic series in John. As it stands here
of course, it forms a bridge to the final chapter, hence it may
be taken in conjunction with that particular numerical signifier
and its function. The appearance story of chapter 21, like the
other three such narratives in John, are not referred to as
'signs'. However, because the former does include a miracle, the
marvellous catch of fish, we might well argue for its later
placement, immediately prior to the last two verses of the
gospel:
This is the disciple who is bearing witness to
these things, and who has written these things; and we know
that his testimony is true. But there are also many other
things which Jesus did; were every one of them to be written,
I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books
that would be written. (John 21.24, 25).
Thus it is not only valid, but essential to read the formal
tripartite aspect of these Johannine resurrection narratives in
this way, for it reflects faithfully the organisation of the
chiasmos to which the messianic events conform. It connects
messianic miracles and resurrection with the theology of
creation. It also bears upon the Eucharistic motif in the
epilogue, since the Eucharist as conclusion of the sevenfold
series, is absent in John. We noted in this connection, the
number of miracle stories in this gospel, just seven; that is,
omitting from consideration the meal which the risen Jesus
shares with his disciples on the shores of the Sea of Tiberias,
and of course, excluding also, because it is a post-resurrection
event, the miraculous catch of fish. Thus relating the messianic
miracles to the resurrection narratives follows clear
indications in the texts themselves that a procedure of this
kind should be followed in the interests of both the history of
the tradition and hermeneutics. These indications are as
different from each other as they are strong:
- the certain indication that specific resurrection
narratives bear striking resemblances to the messianic
miracles;
- the indications in the Epilogue, chapter 21, of the
gospel of John which point to the tradition of the
messianic miracles;
- the certain connexity between the tradition concerning
the resurrection after 'three days' , the sign if Jonah
logion, and the messianic miracles analogously to the Days
of the creation series.
The latter connections, between the tradition of rising
'after three days', the sign of Jonah sayings, the three
transcendent messianic miracles, and finally the three
transcendent Days of beginning, are absolutely germane to the
development of the tradition of the messianic miracles
themselves. Such considerations constitute a theological study
in itself. None of these issues has been dealt with, and we do
not propose to pursue them here. They have arisen as the result
of the corroborating evidence the resurrection narratives
provide for the hermeneutic of the three transcendent messianic
miracles proposed in this study. That they are well worth
pursuing is beyond doubt, not in the least for the light they
shed on the relation between John and Mark. All the
evidence therefore suggests that the closest of possible
ties is maintained between the four sets of narrative: creation
story, messianic miracle cycle, the sign of Jonah sayings, and
resurrection narratives. The particular compatibility maintained
by the Johannine resurrection narratives and the narratives of
the three miracles of 'virtual' transcendence which posit
sentient imagination as a primary constituent of the aconscious,
is further supported by the epilogue of this gospel and its
resonance with these both.
In view of the above, it is also reasonable to ask whether or
not the apparent and close ties between the first three
resurrection narratives in John and the messianic miracle series
indicate close ties of their sources. That is, whether or not
the author(s)/compiler(s) of the texts are the same. The several
indications outlined here of such a link are far more than
merely inferential. The self reference of the author (John
21.24), anticipates the conclusion to those three narratives
(20.30,31), and adds substantially to such a case. This figure
has often been identified with 'that disciple whom Jesus loved'
(21.7); he was first to identify the risen Christ who 'stood on
the beach' before he was known to the others, just as he was the
first to enter the empty tomb, ahead of Peter (20.1-5). Both
cameos, that of chapter 20 and that of chapter 21, point
consistently towards the conclusion of the gospel, which again
presents the two disciples, Peter and the beloved disciple, in
terms of genuine differences. If then, the authorship of the
epilogue is other than that of chapter 20, that person has
succeeded admirably in concealing this fact. I cannot accept the
analysis of the epilogue which claims it has been written by two
different persons. Thematically, it is of a piece, and functions
perfectly in its capacity of denouement to the gospel.
The Transcendent Miracles And
'God'
In the above discussion of The Transfiguration, in
refining the notion of perceptual imagination, we spoke of
'non-sensuous' perception. That all three structures of
imaginative consciousness can be described as non-sensuous yet
perceptual is a sign of their paradoxical status. The expression
'not yet' - ou0/pw -
in the story of Jesus And Mary Magdalene like the same
expression in John's account of The Walking On The Sea
captures the same paradox.
The concept of non-sensuous perceptual imagination that we
encounter in the transcendent messianic miracles is not
paradoxical for its own sake. The forms of perceptual
imagination reify the transcendence of immanence, which I shall
otherwise refer to as 'virtual transcendence'. That is their
paradox. Perception is taxonomically immanent; it stands in
contrast to the conceptual polarity at the broadest level of
logical distinction. Both pure conceptual forms and actual
perceptual or mnemic modes iterate the paradigm transcendence :
immanence in its entirety. Conceptual forms of unity like forms
of imagination, in explicating the aconscious order, refine this
distinction. Transcendence is synonymous with God. Moreover, we
have identified the logos or Mind with the Son. The idea
of perceptual imaginative centres of consciousness as put by the
messianic episodes under consideration answers to what we mean
when we ascribe to God something as fundamental to consciousness
as perception is. Scores of texts in this tradition abound.
Paramount here is the categoreal disparity between memory and
imagination, of which we gave an overview in the discussion of Eros
and Thanatos. There is a profound sense in which sense
perceptual memory denotes the parameters of the peculiarly
human, the finite, the transient. This is never more poignantly
exposed in the Christian tradition than it is in the Eucharist.
The ascription of actual rather than potential sense perception
to God is problematic in virtue of the finite dimensions of soma.
But, if the concept of a 'God' (the Transcendent) who
experiences sense perception is problematic, the idea of a God
who nevertheless perceives is not. This is why the idea of
non-sensuous perception, namely 'perceptual imagination' is
vital to the theology of soma. It is precisely the
transcendent nature of perceptual imagination, which justifies
its ascription to God. The enjoyment of perceptual events
by God is equivalent to the transfinite perspective of
eschatology, the fact that it is not yet actualized. This is not
a licence to underrate its reality; the future is real, as real
the masculine principle, and as real as one's own mortality is.
Thus the explanation of these miracles allows us to appropriate
a longstanding tradition in the Hebrew canon, which attributes
perceptual consciousness to God. Its status as paradox
represents more than conventional anthropomorphism. It
constitutes an attempt to resolve the relation of God and the
world as evinced in consciousness, as in the following examples:
His eye is upon mankind, he
takes their measure at a glance. (Psalm 11.4)
Does he that planted the ear
not hear, he that molded the eye not see? (Psalm 94.9)
Hearing, to take one particular example of perception,
engages what we have called 'acoustic memory', but it also
engages 'acoustic imagination', potentiality for hearing. This
does not mean the possibility of hearing what is not heard, but
the possibility of hearing what is not yet heard. The expression
'imagination' in 'acoustic imagination' is equivalent to 'not
yet'. The sense in which 'God hears/is heard', is the meaning of
'acoustic imagination'; the sense in which 'God touches/is
touched' is the meaning of 'haptic imagination' and the sense in
which 'God sees/is seen' is the meaning of 'optic imagination'.
That as humans, as mortals we own the same enjoyment is to be
expected. As private as The Transfiguration is, it is
nevertheless experienced by three of the disciples. Absolute
transcendence as witnessed in the first half of the creation
narrative is of another order. And even then, the absolute
transcendence of the conceptual forms lends to perceptual
imagination as transcendence of immanence, or 'virtual
transcendence', that which is expressed by the word 'beginning',
to wit, the propensity to creation. The latter so becomes all
but synonymous with perceptual imagination.
To repeat, the spatiotemporal manifold is bifurcated; it
exists radically as past and future polarities. From the vantage
point of the present, in which we are already and always
immured, two vectoral possibilities are offered us; forwards and
backwards. We can 'move' ('emote') to a future or a past, that
is all. This binary form, the real significance of which is the
eschatological category male : female, and finally the soma
as bifurcated perceptual consciousness, consists with the
tri-dimensionality of the spatial manifold, as divulged in the
creation story. The ground of this bifurcation is the immediate
present. Nothing is past except in reference to the present, nor
can anything be future unless it is so in reference to the
present. The primary, radical distinction between the past and
the future posits the paradigm transcendence : immanence. Future
space transcends its otherwise corporate existence with
time. The temporal referentiality of the expression 'future' is
discordant if by 'temporality' we mean the kind of passage and
relation to the present with which the past is imbued. It should
be obvious by now that this term here is used to mean the
transcendent form of the primordial entity, space - 'the
heavens'. This transcendence is what we mean by 'the future'.
The ingression within the immediate present of the future, which
is discrete, confers novelty upon the same present. The
non-determination of any event is therefore the measure of its
future. The categoreal co-ordination of the future and the
symbolic masculine likewise means the absence of passage; the
absence of perishing. Thus, according to the principle of
identity, the co-incident future-masculine is ontologically
other than the feminine-past. It is deficient in determination
(actuality), but lures temporal passage towards itself as
towards potentiality.
The real analogy proper to the sense-percipient
consciousness, by which we mean the whole manifold of perceptual
consciousness, memory and imagination, is not the category of
space. For as we saw, that is proper to the tri-dimensional
structure of conceptual forms. The paradigm which is proper to
the perceptual is not the primordial, but the eschatological,
female : male, emphasitic of polarity, of bifurcation. In
co-ordinating both the spatial and anthropic categories
relatively to perceptual consciousness, it is the latter which
is paramount. Thus every one of the four Eucharistic episodes is
qualified by the typology of the feminine; conversely the three
transcendent miracles in their delineation of what are
essentially the three modes of non-sensuous perceptual
imagination, espouse the polarity of the symbolic masculine,
with its attendant theology of the Son of man.
Perceptual
Imagination In The Healing Miracles
Concentrating as we are, on the messianic series, it is not
possible to say enough concerning the healing miracle cycle,
even though we have had recourse to it already on several
occasions. Of the twelve or so healing miracles, half deal with
the perceptual forms. The fact that Mark has two events
involving touch, another two about hearing, and two also about
sight, drew our attention to recapitulation of the binary
aspect of the messianic cycle. In each pair, one healing is
immanent in type and the other transcendent. In other words,
three healing narratives propound sentient memory, and another
three deal with sentient imagination. The three Markan healing
miracles of the latter kind are: The Cleansing Of A Leper,
(Mark 1.40-45); The Healing Of A Blind Man At Bethsaida,
(8.22-26); and The Healing Of A Boy With An Unclean Spirit,
(9.14-29).
These stories reproduce the theological and logical
rationales of the three transcendent messianic miracles. In
other words, there are three narratives of healings which
confirm Mark's doctrine of perceptual imagination, yet one more
fact which demonstrates the great aesthetic and logical merit of
Mark's gospel, its consistency and thoroughness. Our next step
is to consider those three texts. We shall do so in their order
of occurrence. In brief, we will repeat the various criteria
which specify each as an event of either kind transcendent or
immanent. These criteria are of two orders, secondary and
primary. The secondary criteria are as follows: 1)
private/public; 2) awe/conviviality/; 3) diurnal/nocturnal; 4)
freedom/determinism.
The third criterion which relates to the hour of the
occurrence of the miracle, scarcely comes into play in the
healing events, even though in some cases it can be stated
fairly surely. The primary criterion for the distinction is
stated as identity : unity. The presence of one or the
other of these factors can be decisive in the distinction. There
is also the consideration of the gender of the person or persons
involved. In Mark, though not in John, we find not infrequently
that females are the subjects of the miracles of healing.
The Cleansing Of A Leper
We should firstly list those criteria telling for the kind of
this event as transcendent. The motif of privacy is present to a
high degree. Unlike its incidence in other stories, its is
presented without any contradiction. The conclusion builds upon
the motif and so reinforces it:
And a leper came to him ...
And he sternly charged him, and sent him away at once, and
said to him, "See that you say nothing to anyone ... But he
went out and began to talk freely about it, and to spread the
news, so that Jesus could no longer openly enter a town, but
was out in the country; and people came to him from every
quarter. (1.40, 43-45).
Equally sure is Mark's presentation of the psychology of free
will. Here Jesus is not constrained to respond. His action is
wholly voluntary. This certainly denotes the polarity of the
transcendent. It is stated explicitly in order to inhibit any
inference of constraint the introduction - 'came to him
beseeching him' - may carry. If further evidence were required
that the event conforms to the transcendent type, this amply
provides it:
And a leper came to him,
beseeching him, and kneeling said to him, "If you will - e0a\n qe/lhv - you can make me
clean." Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand and touched
- h1yato - him,
and said to him, "I will - qe/lw - be clean - kaqari/sqhti." (vv 40,
41).
Both here and in The Transfiguration, as in the story
of Transformation Of Water Into Wine, touch and ritual
cleanliness, 'purification', are closely linked. This narrative,
short though it is, brings to light the relationship between
will and imagination. The orientation of both the messianic
event and the healing is forwards, towards the future, or as we
may say in anthropic terms, typologically masculine. It also
reveals the compossibility of imaginative consciousness and
sympathy: 'moved with pity' - splagxnisqei\v.
As a theology of haptic perception, this event evinces the
idea of imaginative consciousness rather than memory. There can
be little doubt that the somatic theology behind the story of
the leper is identical with that of The Transfiguration.
The name 'Moses' - Mwu+sh=v
- occurs in the injunction to silence just as The
Transfiguration mentions him in conjunction with Elijah,
'talking to Jesus' (9.4). The mention of Moses here must
therefore be thoroughly weighed in understanding the meaning of
the same figure in The Transfiguration. This pushes the
understanding of haptic imagination in the direction indicated
above. Both the messianic miracle and the healing miracle denote
the 'haptic imagination'. The theme of identity
though not explicit, is nevertheless part of the conclusion. The
man publicises his healing such that Jesus is known and
identified:
... so that Jesus could no
longer openly enter a town, but was out in the country; and
people came to him from every quarter. (v 45).
Mark strikes an exceptional compromise here between the
demands of one secondary criterion - privacy - and the demands
of the major one - identity, at the same time allowing the
recovered man to bear the responsibility for his own cure. More
remains to be said on the subject of this narrative; however, as
an exposition of the theology of haptic imagination it is a
fait accompli.
The Blind Man At Bethsaida
This story begins and ends with the theme of privacy:
And he took the blind man by
the hand, and led him out of the village; (8.23) ... And he
sent him away to his home, saying, "Do not even enter the
village." (v 26)
More significantly, there are two important signals of the
transcendent and the identity of the Holy Spirit. These appear
to the recovering man as indistinguishable from his own kind:
And he looked up and said, "I
see men; but they look like trees walking." (v 24).
a0nqrw/pouv o3ti w9v
de/ndra - 'men which are like trees'. How immediately
this conjures up the story of Day 3 in which the creation of the
two types of plants foreshadows the creation of male and female
of Day 6. We discussed the description of the reproductive or
generative disposition of the two types of plants as a
categoreal definition of the symbolic and symbolic feminine. The
combination of these two symbols - men and trees - in this
narrative is unmistakable. Mark carefully places them adjacent
to one another, and the meaning could not be more patent. The
narrative reverts directly to the story of Day 3. If we had to
isolate the reference to the category of the masculine in the
creation story, it could only be the Day 3 rubric about the
earth and plants. The story of The Man Born Blind in
John chapter 9 incorporates the use of clay formed by earth
mixed with spittle (John 9. 6), and the mention of the pool of
Siloam (v 7) with the same purpose in mind, evoke the
transcendent theology of The Holy Spirit after the Day 3 rubric.
The consistency and deliberation of the motifs common to the
Markan and Johannine pericopae illustrate a theology of
the transcendent Holy Spirit. We have dealt with the link
between transcendence, the masculine and The Holy Spirit.
Thus where the masculine : feminine denotes the conceptual
category proper to the Holy Spirit, the perceptual mode which
does likewise is that of vision, the optic memory and optic
imagination delineated in the two stories of blind persons. Here
Mark specifies the latter, the transcendent form of this
immanent mode - perceptual imagination. The fact that the person
is male, although Bartimaeus is also male, and the clear
reference to the symbolic masculine indicate this.
We should not fail to note also the context of this passage.
The crossing from the location of the previous feeding
(immanent) miracle has been accomplished (8.10) before the cure
at Bethsaida, and this signals the alterity of transcendence to
immanence. Additionally, Peter's declaration of the identity of
Jesus (vv 27-30), which we discussed above in relation to The
Transfiguration, a theme which redoubles Mark's
efforts to depict transcendence, follows the story of the cure.
Both The Blind Man At Bethsaida and the messianic event
subsequent to it, The Transfiguration, conform to the
transcendent. The location of the intervening texts allows the
fullest radiation of their influence.
This story re-affirms Mark's theology of what we have called
'optic imagination': a centre of consciousness which exists in
virtue of the mode of seeing, and which is disposed in the
direction of futurity, or as we should say the perspective of
the symbolic masculine. Its theological rationale is identical
with that of the story of The Stilling Of The Storm.
Thus it reinforces the hermeneutic advanced for the three
transcendent messianic episodes.
The
Boy With An Unclean Spirit
The story follows immediately the account of Transfiguration,
a transcendent event. The lack of any detail suggesting a
movement towards the opposite is noticeable. To the same end,
the episode is clearly associated with death and resurrection,
just as the subsequent pericope (9.30-32) is a
prediction of Jesus’ death and resurrection:
"... And it has often
cast him into the fire and into the water, to destroy him
(Mark 9. 22) ..." ... and the boy was like a corpse; so that
most of them said "He is dead." But Jesus took him by the
hand, and lifted him up, and he arose - h0/geiren au0to/n kai a0ne/sth
(vv 26, 27).
The orientation of the episode is prospective; it is geared
forwards in time towards the future and towards the death of the
boy, which denotes transcendence. More importantly, to the same
end, both protagonists are male, one is a boy the other his
father (vv 17, 21, 24). The latter functions as a virtual index
of "The Father" so that the episode identifies the acoustic
precisely in terms of The Transcendent.
We have commented already on the use of the verb 'to cry out'
- kraxei=n -
in the story of The Walking On The Sea - the messianic
equivalent of this event. It is used twice in the text: the
father first crying out (v 24), and then the dumb and deaf
spirit possessing the boy doing likewise (v 26).
The final reference to prayer (v 29), connotes a state
of mind which sits perfectly with all of this as an image of the
transcendent rather than the immanent. The addition to the
latter verse by some texts of the phrase kai nhsteia - 'and
fasting' - is of a piece with what we are beginning to
understand in relation to the perceptual imagination - namely
its value for praxis.
Mark portrays the illness similarly to that of the daughter
of the Syrophoenician woman (7.24-30), not only as requiring an
exorcistic technique, but as somehow stemming from the
relationship between parent and child. Hence, the role of the
belief/unbelief of the father is not just an aside; it is of
principal relevance. The father is a major influence in both the
origination and resolution of the crisis. The cumulative effect
of all of which is again incontestable. This event is
unambiguously identifiable as transcendent in type.
It should be obvious by now that this story reiterates the
major premise of The Walking On The Water, following
precisely the relation of The Leper to the story of The
Transfiguration, and the two narratives, The Blind Man
At Bethsaida and The Stilling Of The Storm. It is
further evidence of the systematic nature and thoroughness of
Markan metaphysics, that is Mark's doctrine of mind. Here is his
doctrine of perceptual imagination, in particular, what we have
termed 'acoustic imagination'.
The closest and most systematic organisation obtains between
the healings and the messianic series, so that each of the
twelve subjects depicted in the Days series and the messianic
series, is replicated in a healing narrative. It is not now
possible to examine more thoroughly the relation of the healing
stories to the messianic miracles. As just briefly noted
however, this is one of absolute co-incidence and reveals the
artistic and logical integrity of the gospel of Mark. The three
particular narratives we have discussed, do systematically
restate the subjects of the three transcendent messianic
miracles. They expound the theology of soma and depict
consciousness in terms of the three modes of perception, touch,
vision and hearing, and their concomitant ingression in
consciousness. That was the reason for investigating them in the
present context. They support our interpretation of the
transcendent messianic events to the fullest extent.
The
Extensive Relation of the Immanent Categories
The opening inclusio of the P narrative, 'the heavens
and the earth', provided the hermeneutic key of the same, the
co-ordination of the three/six events of creation. That is, it
allowed us to understand the story of creation as the consistent
relation of the three great occasions which reveal
transcendence, God. That these same three entities, forms of
unity, differ from one another is as certain as is the fact that
they are analogous and so related to one another. Analogy and
polarity function cooperatively in this way in a variety of
metaphysical belief systems. On the basis of the text's
self-presentation we were able to predicate the
differences between the forms of unity. Because the narrative
demonstrates and refers to its own form as highly significant,
in just which respect it is comparable to the word 'word' or logos,
we were able to comprehend the distinctive quality of the three
entities which it concerns. Accordingly we argued that space :
time and male : female co-exist in a relation parallel to that
which the inclusio denotes, transcendence : immanence.
Thus even where these two forms of unity - like all three forms
of unity - contain a transcendent and an immanent term, even
where internally they recapitulate the paradigm transcendence :
immanence, their relation to one another, which of itself
comprises the third form of unity, mind : body, also
recapitulates the categoreal paradigm.
This means that the initial relatum in the form of
unity space : time, namely space itself, functions as the
exemplar of transcendence and that male : female as form of
unity acts likewise as the immanent relatum. Significant
in either form of unity is space in the case of the primordial
entity, and the feminine in the case of the immanent, since by
feminine is meant precisely the unity of both masculine and
feminine. We said, on account of this, that primordial space :
time was weighted in favour of transcendence, a predisposition
which reveals the natural inclination of the author since the
narrative was effectively one about beginning and writes large
the role of space : time, and that conversely the eschatological
category male: female was weighted in favour of the feminine.
(We might say, conversely, that the gospel of Mark shows an
inclination or bias towards the eschatological, male :
female, except that the real significance of this category is
for the truly immanent, the soma, the body as the
manifold of percipience for which that, the eschatological form
of unity is the paradigm.)
What this further entails is the matter of real interest to
us, the peculiar tendency of the central category, mind : body.
For as being both transcendent to the same degree as the
primordial and immanent to the same extent as the
eschatological, effectively and paradoxically, it has no real
bias, no real weighting. It reaffirms the innate proclivity of
both forms of unity to which it relates analogously. This
co-ordinating Christological category which is of most interest
to us, thus becomes the centre of the resolution of the inherent
tension between the other two, and it is just this to
which the various Christological titles point - 'beginning and
end', 'first and last', 'alpha and omega'.
This process of reasoning depends purely on the structures
native to the text. In philosophical terms, the tenets regarding
the specific natures of the forms of unity are 'analytic
statements', they follow from the use of its own terms by the
text itself, no reference outside of which is required. We can
pursue the same process in respect of the things revealed in the
messianic series to consist beside the transcendent categories,
namely the forms of memory and the forms of imagination. Thus we
can make a truly comparable set of analytic statements about the
immanent categories precisely because they 'inherit' the same
formal characteristics that belong to the conceptual forms.
Because the messianic miracles are truly analogous (isomorphic)
to the series of Days, the same principles which account for the
peculiarities of the various forms of unity will be operative in
the consistency of the immanent categories. When we take them
together as clearly their precedent indicates we must, we arrive
at grasping certain differences between them.
The co-ordination of the categories ensures the further
development of Christology, by which we mean the doctrine of
mind. The primordial category, space : time, allowed us to model
the consistency of the three true transcendent forms (pure
conceptual forms) themselves according to the paradigm of the
three-dimensional manifold. That this same model configures the
cruciform is more than simply gratuitous. This was part of the
reason for saying that the central, universal, sovereign
category is mind : body. The extrapolation occurs not from the
spatial to the psychophysical, but from the latter to the
former. Space is three dimensional both because of its
provenance and because there are two other entities - mind and
the symbolic masculine - which are in categoreal affinity with
it. In other words, the tri-dimensionality of space is a witness
to its epistemic orientation. Space has three dimensions because
there are two other things in direct affiliation with it, and
because the nature of each of these three entities is in the
first instance epistemic/psychic or Christological.
Neither category, space : time nor male : female provides us
with entities which are epistemic and psychic ends in
themselves. The psychophysical alone functions as an
epistemic/psychic end in itself, and it is the final and
sovereign explanation for both these entities. Hence the
fundamental pattern which associates the Christological
categories is sixfold; it combines the triadic shape of space,
and the binary form of the anthropic male : female. The real
significance of space is as analogue of the transcendent,
threefold structuring of mind. Just so the real gist of the dyad
male : female is complementarily the metaphor of perceptual
consciousness, soma,
whose binary structure consists as forms of imagination and
corresponding forms of memory. Here then, we revert to the
initial model of this Trinitarian contour of mind as first
illustrated in the interpretation of the P narrative of
creation:
The axes marked A-B in this iconography actually anticipate
what only the final eschatological disclosures of the canon can
bestow. Transcendence as it exists unequivocally, that is, as it
consists of the three transcendent forms, space, mind and the
symbolic masculine, ought to be represented iconographically by
three axes at right-angles, illustrative of their maximum
differentiation from one another of the same three forms:
These same three forms will not have
reference to their immanent modes, namely space : time, mind :
body, and male : female, all of which may be properly signified
by the A-B vectors. As
far as transcendence disposes mind, the model should
simply consists of three axes at right-angles emergent from what
appears to be a single point. Transcendence of itself does not
account for the complementation of the true conceptual
forms by the three forms of unity, that which the completion of
the three axes of 180 degrees signifies. Not that this was the
full and final meaning of immanence; it was but a prolepsis.
This is what was meant by proposing the normative status of the
immanent messianic miracles for immanence in general.
Thus the iconographical value of the axis of 180 degrees lies in
its illustration of immanence, and true bipolarity. Such
bipolarity occurs between the sentient forms of both imagination
and memory of one and the same mode. The forms of memory, and by
memory we mean the necessary conjunction of memory and
imagination, are responsible for complementing the categoreal
analogy of transcendence with that of immanence. The forms of
unity instantiate immanence, the conjunction of polarities, less
ably than the forms of memory. The latter are the final and
definitive expressions of the immanent. Just as forms of
imagination are something of a shadow of the pure conceptual
forms, ideas, so too the forms of unity are an echo of the forms
of memory. Both intervening categories, forms of unity and forms
of imagination, are truly equivocal as to the real antithesis
between transcendence and immanence; both are somewhat
hybridized, equivocal, or ambiguous in relation to the ratio set
by true conceptual forms - space, mind, the masculine - on
the one hand, and actual perceptual forms - acoustic memory,
haptic memory, optic memory - on the other.
It is the business of the eschatological soma to dispose mind,
consciousness, in virtue of true bipolarity. In this shift from
the transcendent/conceptual polarity of mind to its
immanent/perceptual polarity, is the change from threefold
divergence to bipolar convergence. This bipolarity is the first
stage in the progress of immanence. We have said previously that
the seal of immanence is fourfold. So indeed it is; but the
first and most basic step is to construe the bipolar or dyadic
structure of immanence. Our model for this is thus the axis in
its entirety, the axis that is of 180 degrees. This stands as
the paradigm for each of the three sentient modes consisting of
the relation between sentient, perceptual imagination and
sentient, perceptual memory.
Once more it is incumbent upon us to stress that the
extrapolation in this case again defers to the sovereignty of
the Christological event mind : body. If the anatomy of mind is
dyadic as well as triune, this is the effect of the
eschatological, the Pneumatological, and it means not that the
shape or structures of consciousness follow from the event of
sexual dimorphism, but that sexual dimorphism itself is entailed
by the central, universal, and sovereign event - the
psychophysical. This is the meaning of 'end' or
'salvation'. Just as space defers to mind as
'three-dimensional', so too the unity of female and male defers
similarly to mind as consisting of truly binary perceptual
polarities - memory and imagination. In other words the
eschatological category, anthropic male : female ultimately
defers to the psychophysical just as space does. Its ultimate
rationale is to be found in the Christological event. The soma is the arbiter of male
: female, and not the other way around. The Christian
metaphysical understanding of male and female rests finally upon
the phenomenon of perceptual consciousness; we have referred to
that here as perceptual imagination and perceptual memory. There
are male and female because there is percipient imagination and
percipient memory - these are the protagonists in the salvific
process. These furnish the content of salvation, not male and
female. The 'real' male and female are the perceptual
imagination and perceptual memory respectively. That is to say
that the direction of fit is from the conceptual form of unity,
male : female to the normative perceptual forms.
Although it is a task best suited to the theology of semiotic
forms, we need briefly to indicate the progression from dyadic
immanence, perceptual imagination : memory, to the final
cipher of immanence which is fourfold. In either narrative
cycle, Genesis or the gospel, we encounter the fourfold
structure as the single most important signifier of immanence,
and this tetradic manifold demonstrates the unity, as opposed to
'trinity', of God. We have just completed the categoreal
analogy, and noted that the immediate
epistemological/Christological concern of immanence is for
sentience, the sense-percipient soma, in all three modes - haptic, acoustic
and optic - and in both complementary aspects, imagination and
memory. This results in a sixfold sequence, three forms of
memory and three corresponding forms of imagination. If we place
these in a sequence, neither that of Genesis, nor that of the
messianic series, but in fact, the kind of serial order which we
find implicit in the gospel of John, we are in a position to
indicate just how the binary axis generates a fourfold sequence.
Perceptual imagination is one relatum and perceptual
memory the other. These relata are of the same mode. In this
manner the unity of modality converges contrastive imagination
and memory. The structures in consciousness which answer to the
iconography of the true axis of 180 degrees are those same
perceptual radicals or categories generated by one and the same
mode of sentience - whether haptic, acoustic or optic - in both
forms, the form of imagination and the form of memory.
Both procedures, the co-ordination of the primordial
spatiotemporal category with analogous transcendent mind, and
the co-ordination of the eschatological anthropological category
with analogous soma,
mind : body, are what we refer to as the categoreal analogies;
the conceptual and perceptual categoreal analogies. What we are
affirming in them, is the ontological priority of the
psychophysical in relation to both space and to the anthropic
form of unity. The question of what space is in se cannot arise if mind
is prior to it in this respect, because mind is not adding to
space in any way or distorting its intrinsic reality. The same
applies to the eschatological event, male : female. As to what
this is or could be in itself need not concern us. We should
look not to the fact of sexual dimorphism as explaining mind,
but rather conversely, mind : body, soma, accounts for sexual dimorphism. What is
ontologically prior is once again soma as telling for the identity of the Son,
only this time, in relation to the Holy Spirit, not to
Transcendence, ("The Father"). This ensued like the categoreal
analogy of the conceptual forms, from the logic inherent in the
narrative structures. Both entities, primordial space, and
eschatological male : female conform themselves to the universal
category, the sovereign and arbitrating event - mind : body.
Whereas space is created, in the image and likeness of
Transcendence, (God), and whereas the same is true of the
anthropic in respect of immanence, to wit, that it is created in
the image and likeness of immanent God, Mind is God.
This is the justification for asserting its ontological
priority.
When we investigate the cyclical temporality of the messianic
miracles, we find an interesting pattern. Remember that what was
said concerning the two temporal perspectives of the
spatiotemporal manifold applies here, the past-to-present of
immanence, and the present-to-future of transcendence. Applying
these two radical orientations to the binary theological systems
of Genesis and the gospel, we see that the story of Days
conforms to the transcendent perspective, and the messianic
series to that of immanence. This means that cyclical
temporality is naturally appropriate to the chiastic structure
of the miracles.
The chiasmos therefore, is not without significance. But the
semiotic forms, and the actual references to time within the
text itself, provide the answer to the way in which immanence is
shaped by the tetrad. The references to time in the feeding
miracles, and in The Walking On The Water explicate an
important aspect of the meaning of the chiastic structure
itself. If events are patterned correspondingly first to last,
second to second last, and third to third last, then when we
examine the references to time in the narratives we find that
the episodes related in such one to one correspondence occupy
diametrically opposed intervals within the nocturnal/diurnal
cycle. This sorts perfectly with:
- references to '... evening and ... morning' in the
creation story and its analogous relation to the messianic
series;
- the many references in the gospels themselves to 'three
days and three nights' in the passion predictions and in the
sign of Jonah logion;
- the secondary criterion diurnal/noctural which sorts
the messianic events into transcendent and immanent
polarities;
- the diurnal references in the stories of The
Transfiguration and the diurnal/nocturnal references
in The Death Of Lazarus as well as the deployment of
the light/darkness and day : night constructs in the fourth
gospel as a whole.
These factors all prompt the understanding of the six
messianic events as fulfilling a cycle. I will not rehearse the
full argument for this feature of the messianic miracles series
here, but these episodes do clearly function as metaphysical
markers in this way. We can extrapolate from that twenty-four
hour cycle to the annual (solar) cycle or to the lunar cycle and
so on; but the net result is the same; the full quota of six
events encompasses temporal intervalsas an entirety, each
interval being characterised identifiably by the differential
decreasing/increasing light. We could use the annual cycle to
illustrate the innately temporal quality of the messianic
series, the result will be the same. We shall utilise the
twenty-four hour cycle instead, for it is primary, being
referred to in the texts themselves. The nocturnal/diurnal cycle
occupied by these six occasions is as follows:
WALKING
ON THE SEA
acoustic imagination
|
STILLING
THE STORM
optic imagination
|
TRANSFIGURATION
haptic imagination
|
FEEDING
FIVE THOUSAND
acoustic memory
|
FEEDING
FOUR THOUSAND
optic memory
|
WATER
BECOME WINE
haptic memory
|
sunrise ...
|
morning ...
|
midday ...
|
sunset ...
|
evening ...
|
midnight ...
|
These are ordinary language expressions for the various
intervals, the ellipses referring to the fact that the intervals
extend seamlessly into each other, in a recurrent cyclical
pattern. We could be more precise in confining every interval to
a period of four hours, which would mean that the first for
example, begins around 2 A.M. and ends around 6 A.M. ('... about
the fourth watch of the night ...' Mark 6.48). Additionally we
could further add the Eucharist as that particular event
situated between the last period of decreasing light which
adjoins the first period of increasing light. But there is no
point in being pedantic, since the periods of daylight in
relation to those of nighttime vary according to time and place,
and a general idea of the pattern is all that is required here.
The real point here is that the two episodes which mark one and
the same identity - and so one and the same mode of
sense-percipience - occur during antithetical intervals. Thus
for example, The Transfiguration takes place
during the period of maximum daylight, and the miracle at Cana
occupies the interval separated from this by exactly twelve
hours, during the darkest part of the night. The defining factor
here is the juxtaposition of periods of increasing and
decreasing light.
Now imagine the above pattern in a linear and cyclical
representation such that three diameters through the centre of a
circle join corresponding events, Transformation Of Water
Into Wine to Transfiguration and so on. This is
the complementarity first adumbrated in the 'earth' axis of the
creation story, the complementarity of feminine and masculine as
the paradigm of the relationality of perceptual memory and
perceptual imagination. It signifies the fact of the synergistic
relationality of nevertheless oppositional centres of
consciousness, one functioning as memory, the other as
imagination, which share the same sense-percipient modality. In
this context any two such elements, once again take the previous
example, that of haptic memory relative to haptic imagination,
will encompass two other members of the cycle. Every such
instance of a dyad in this structure includes two other
elements, so making for four components in all. Of these four,
only two share the same sentient mode. But the two other
elements included in the same structure complete the full quota
of three sentient modes. Neither of these other two modes enjoys
full representation, actual complementarity. For that belongs to
just one particular mode of sentience marking the boundaries of
the tetrad. But their presence in one form or another, either
perceptual memory or perceptual imagination, accounts for the
full, unitive, representation of somatic consciousness.
The series is an entirety; it is perfect synthesis and has a
given telos. It is thorough, final, and in a real sense
'eschatological'.
Thus taking the example of haptic imagination relative to haptic
memory, there are the following two modes of sense-percipience
contained in this compass: acoustic memory and optic memory, for
the entire string of four intervals includes midday-haptic
imagination, sunset-acoustic memory, evening-optic memory, and
finally midnight-haptic memory. (The complete discussion of this
pattern involves the examination of the texts of the messianic
miracles with a view to discerning their temporal location
within the diurnal-nocturnal cycle, and is part of Mind And Time: The Theology Of Semiotic
Forms.) Alternatively, taking the same pattern but
this time beginning with haptic memory, the four forms of
sentient consciousness strung together are as follows: haptic
memory, acoustic imagination, optic imagination, haptic
imagination. Formal sequences of this kind illustrate a vital
tenet of Markan metaphysics, they begin the explication of
immanent consciousness as the event of the unity of the same, in
contradistinction to the conceptual polarity of consciousness,
which defines mind in terms of identity, divergence and the
like.
The interpretation of the binary form of the messianic
narratives in terms of the role of perceptual memory and
perceptual imagination answers the question of how we attach any
real meaning to the transcendent miracles; the question of
how we ascribe any further meaning to the stories of The
Stilling Of The Storm, The Walking On The Water,
and The Transfiguration when they so self avowedly
emulate the events described in the first three Days. The
ostensible redundancy of these putatively transcendent
miraculous events stemmed from the fact that their having
thoroughly vindicated the analogy between the theology of
transcendence, series of Days, and that of immanence, the
miracle series itself, tended to obscure their own import. In
the wake of this, there arose the issue of their interpretation
independently of what the creation theology has already imputed
to them. The solution lies at hand in the normative status of
the immanent messianic episodes.
The chiastic structure of the messianic series correlates a
transcendent counterpart with each immanent miracle. We argued
that the latter are definitive. Thus, any interpretation of the
transcendent miracles must start with these facts. It must only
be in relation to its immanent partner that we can posit a
meaning for each transcendent messianic event. This gave us
adequate reason to ascribe to them the task of designating what
we have called the perceptual imagination. Such a procedure
vindicates the co-ordinating pattern of the eschatological and
primordial categories, the categoreal analogy. For it depicts soma
as the orientation of consciousness forwards and backwards so as
to square with the binary shape of spatio-temporality (the
primordial) and sexual dimorphism (the eschatological) in their
formal congruence. This reasserts the focus of biblical
metaphysics as Filiocentric, as concerning the identity of the
Son, in this case the immanent Son, whose unique instantiation
is soma, the psychophysical.
The six messianic miracles, referred to in the first of their
number, the story of The Transformation of Water Into Wine,
and then again in the last, The Transfiguration, where
they are juxtaposed to the six Days, are for biblical
metaphysics - we might also say, philosophical psychology -
nothing less than a systematic exposition of the phenomenon of
perceptual consciousness. In short, theirs is the business of
what we have termed the various forms of memory and the various
forms of imagination. What is remarkable about the six
conceptual forms when we compare them with the modes of
sense-percipience, is the nature of the first as ideal; they are
ideas. In every case, we are dealing with ideas. Whether
we take space, or the body, time or mind, or either
eschatological category, male or female, the result is the same.
As ingredients in consciousness the transcendent categories all
have in common one thing: they are concepts. The gospel on the
other hand, is concerned with sentient forms, the stuff of which
we are likely to describe as concrete. However we phrase it,
there is an obvious difference between the six transcendent
categories, and the categories of immanence, disclosed in the
gospels. This difference is the first thing put by the texts
which refer by the same figure, six, now to the conceptual
(transcendent), and now to the perceptual (immanent) categories.
The radical difference between the two series of entities
derives from the fact of what we have called the conceptual and
perceptual polarities of our human consciousness. On no account
does this imply that we can assign the former to mind, and the
latter to body. That does not form any part of Mark's intention.
We have seen already that the status of the forms of unity is
not unequivocally transcendent; that the three transcendent
ideas, pure conceptual forms, themselves contain an immanent
polarisation: the three forms of unity: body, temporality and
the feminine. In addition, perceptual imagination on the surface
look like nothing else so much as it looks like the three
transcendent forms, another ambiguity, this time concerning the
gospel. Soma is
the psychophysical as unity; it consists indissolubly with the
mind. This of itself precludes any superimposition onto the
Mind/mind : body dichotomy of the two classes of things,
conceptual and corporeal. In using terms such as mental/physical
or ideal/corporeal or conceptual/perceptual to describe the
patterns disclosed in the various texts, we are accenting the
radical difference between ideas (concepts) and the contents of
sentience (sense perception), both of which pertain with equal
effect to the mind : body if in a somehow antithetical way.
We have concentrated on the messianic series as it occurs
relative to the series of Days, following the cues in the two
Christological narratives. Thus we have analysed its hexadic
structure, and there is more to be said concerning the fourfold
aspect of the sense-percipient manifold. This tetradic contour
expresses the principle of immanence, unity, and sets out the
real difference of the messianic, immanent, events as a whole
from the conceptual forms expounded in Genesis, the theology of
transcendence proper.
The three transcendent categories, or forms of unity, space :
time, mind : body, and male : female, articulated in the rubrics
of Days 4, 5 and 6 and also the ensuing sabbath, stand in
analogous relation to the immanent messianic miracles and the
Eucharist. As a series, the modes of perception articulated in
four immanent messianic events, three feeding miracles and one
actual Eucharist, answer to the second half of the creation
narrative. This is the result of the two narrative cycles,
'beginning and end', sharing exactly the same formal logic. The
form of the propositions in both cases is notably identical: it
is bipolar and Trinitarian, and ultimately heptadic. This means
that the gospel's image of the significance to mind : body of
the four modes of sense-percipience is also a theology of the
trinity. How can this be? The Eucharist is of a different order.
It stands apart as being neither paired nor miraculous. How do
we assess the Trinitarian aspect of the schema in relation to
the Eucharist?
The biblical account of transcendence distinguishes itself from
immanence in two ways. (1) The form or shape of
transcendence is triadic, and disposed in virtue of identity;
whereas that of immanence is fourfold and unitive. (2) The contents
of the two notions also differ radically. We have expressed this
as the disparity between the idea of identity (transcendence),
and that of unity (immanence). As far as the latter is
concerned, there are at least two paradigms. There is the
transcendent category which designates unity and the Holy
Spirit, the human entity, male : female. This paradigm is
logically valid for an understanding of unity, in spite of the
fact that it utilises a transcendent category, a form of unity,
to formulate what is proper to the antithetical polarity, the
immanent. The second of the biblical paradigms for unity as for
immanence, concerns human consciousness as systematically
defined by the four immanent messianic events. These describe
mind : body in terms of the various modes of perception. Whereas
the dyadic male : female paradigm pertains to the theology of
transcendence, the messianic events as a whole, and the four
feeding episodes in particular, are clearly formulated as the
theology of immanence. In other words, the latter are definitive
for the biblical conception of unity. This does not mean that we
cannot utilise the paradigm of 'transcendent immanence', the
male : female form of unity, only it does focus unity on the
subject of the theology of immanence, soma.
The theology of Trinity is not only about the threefold nature
of God. It is also about the unity of God. Trinity means
"tri-unity". If then, there is a fundamental opposition of sorts
between transcendence and immanence, it is because of these two
aspects: three identities in one God. The latter aspect
does not conform to the former. Three identities do not entail
unity or oneness which is otherwise threefold. This explains the
formal difference in these serial narratives. Transcendence,
identity, obtains in virtue of the threefold; alternatively,
immanence, which is effectively fourfold, is the occasion of
unity. Thus the unity of God is formally or logically a
fourfold, tetradic, unity. Why should we expect that the one
aspect - threeness - would express the 'other'? Why should God's
threefold nature and God's unity be formally identical? They are
not.
Thus, all the fourfold patterns in the narratives we have been
examining, as theologies of immanence, logically refer to the
unity of God. They stand in relation of complementarity to the
presentation of threefold identity in God. This is the
fundamental theological difference between immanence and
transcendence. The oneness of God is a fourfold oneness.
Moreover, the definitive instance of the same unity, is human
consciousness. The mind : body, soma, a virtual theological byword for the
disposition of human consciousness by the modes of sense
perception, is what we mean by the term world, 'earth', when we
urge the connexity of the world to God. Human consciousness
ensures the oneness of God. This returns us at once to the
creation theology of Genesis which announced the relation of
humankind to the subhuman and to God in these terms:
And God said: Let us make
human beings according to our image.
And God created humanity
according to his image, according to the image of God he
created it, as male and female he created them. (Genesis 1.26,
27)
The Day 3 story pre-empted that of Day 6, the rubric of the male
and female human beings made in the image and likeness of God.
Even the latter however, was not the conclusive meaning of the
idea represented by the term 'earth'. For the real 'end' of the
story is delivered in the gospel, to which, the theology of
immanence in Genesis must ultimately defer. The significance of
this word 'earth', it is used by the author of the second
narrative in explaining the name of the first male, Adam,
devolves ultimately upon the four immanent messianic events.
The significance of the
'world' to God, is the provision it makes for God's unity.
This belongs to mystery of the identity of the Holy Spirit, who
expresses the immanent polarity of God more absolutely than any
other identity in God, is accomplished by the human soma as this fulfills the
unfolding drama of sense perception. And because human persons
as embodied sentient creatures, are the occasion of God's unity,
the relationship of God to 'the world' is characterised by
obligation. Immanence entails the idea of the responsibility of
God to the world. In this much, it complements the notion of
God's absolute independence from creation. The world is
internally related to God, which means that it must affect God.
Here, the 'incarnation' as the unique expression of immanence of
the Son through the Holy Spirit, is consonant with the
presentation of the concept of determinism or obligation which
we saw in every one of the four messianic events of that type.
In immanent miracles Jesus is obliged to act, and he acts for
the world, and for humanity.
The immanence of God is more than simply timely care. It is
availability, engagement, and indebtedness. Jesus' response to
the multitudes depicted in the feeding narratives, is the image
of God's responsive and susceptible availability to the world.
The immanent God is not free, but obliged, obliged as in a
relation of constraint, to act on behalf of the world. We can
summarise such a relation by the word 'providence'. The
providence of God is the fact that the 'world' or 'earth', which
effectively is tantamount to the embodied being of all life, all
soma, is the occasion
of God's oneness. To put this basic tenet of the theology of
immanence is to avow the creation of 'the world' in terms of the
provision it makes for the unity of identities in God.
This fact colours any 'incarnational' theology. There
is a real sense in which the 'incarnation' is necessary; it
announces the indebtedness of God to the world. For this reason
alone, God cannot abandon the world, since the 'earth' in the
form of human sentient perceptual consciousness(es) ensures the
unity of God. God must act for the world, within the world. S/he
does, first by ensuring the continuation of the body, the
continuation of life; next, by the provision of the Son. The
significance of God to the world is the provision God ensures
for the world's continued existence.
Soma means sentience,
the body's assimilation of the world through the various modes
of sense-percipience. Such a 'somatic world' promotes the unity
of God. The world of sub-human and human consciousness secures
the integration of the identities in God. The body, the
psychophysical event is thus the final satisfaction of
oneness in God of the three identities of the same God. All of
this belongs to the doctrine of the Eucharist. Here too, the
person of Jesus is signal. Jesus' human nature realises the
demand for the unity of God.
But the oneness of God secured by sub-human and our own human
consciousness is not the sole property of Jesus. The doctrine of
immanence stresses the likeness to us of Jesus, the Son; hence
we need not envisage the consciousness of the Son as profoundly
distinct in kind from that of another human, male or female. As
'children of god' (John 1.12), all humans are like 'the only Son
of the Father', Jesus. His representative status does not remove
him from the world, but immerses him within it. The kind of
consciousness the gospel associates with the Son extends to all
human persons. For neither parenthood, the 'fatherhood' of God
or 'his' Transcendence, nor the status of being a spouse, the
countervailing image of the immanent as of the anthropic
category, male and
female, is the common experience of humankind. Not everyone is a
parent; nor a spouse. Childhood alone remains the one, universal
human condition. All humans are children, indeed all created
animals, male and female, are progeny. Thus the
Christological categories remain the focal or central concerns
of the narratives. So we may say of the biological universe
which participates in sexual dimorphism, that it is
filiocentric:
He was in the beginning with God; all things were
made through him, and without him was not anything made that
was made.
(ou)tov h)~n e)n a)rxh~? pro\v to\n
qeo/n. pa/nta di' au)tou~ e)ge/neto, kai xwri\v au)tou~
e)ge/neto ou)de\ e(/n o(\ ge/gonen. (John 1.4)
05.05.2022.
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