ontent="text/html; charset=windows-1252"
http-equiv="Content-Type">
mm3
Epilogue
A number of issues have
arisen in the course of this approach to the gospel of Mark. The
first of these concerns the isomorphism between the series of
messianic miracles and the creation story (Genesis 1.1-2.4a).
The basis of the congruence of the two series, creation and
salvation, is their configuration according to some fairly
simple structures or serial patterns, the primary one being
transcendence : immanence. The fact that both narratives had a
total of seven units each and the fact that these were divisible
in terms of simple double patterns - 3 : 3 and 3 : 4 - was
the first thing that attracted our notice. Thus both stories
manifest a structure at the first level of analysis which is
binary, dyadic, bipolar, polarised. In the story of the Days of
creation it is the clear recapitulation of the formal pattern
established in the first, the most important half of the text.
We observed that Days 4, 5, and 6 follow the Days 1, 2, and 3
respectively, in terms of their content.
In the messianic series, the miracles are also divisible into
two sorts, transcendent and immanent. These are immediately
recognisable by a raft of criteria which we classified as
secondary and primary. When we compared the two textual cycles,
gospel and Genesis, we determined the basis of the division in
either cycle to rest upon the relationality of identity in the
case of transcendence, and unity in the case of immanence,
according to the normative functions of the Days 1, 2, 3 and the
feeding miracles together with the Eucharist. Thus whether we
examined the Days or the miracles, in dealing with the
transcendent episodes, identity was a thematic and structural
motif. Alternatively our survey of the feeding miracles and the
second half of the Days series likewise exposed their basic
content and form to rest on the concept of unity. These are
somewhat abstract terms, but all the more useful to either text,
Genesis or gospel, for that.
In effect then, because each of the cycles had its own emphasis,
it was clear that the the story of beginning required the
messianic miracles, without which it remained inconclusive, a
beginning without an end. Thus the sevenfold series of messianic
events gave final meaning to the term 'earth' in the opening
inclusio of Genesis 1.1 'the heavens and the earth', a
meaning which constitutes the various subjects of the messianic
miracles and Eucharist. Certainly, the miracles reverted to
Genesis as to a precedent. They did not simply append themselves
to that text without due deference. This was absolutely obvious
in the case of the three transcendent events. The series as a
whole however resumed the form of the propositions of the
initial text, and the referential component 'recapitulated' the
'beginning' episodes no less. This recapitulation was more than
a mere duplication. By means of it, the conceptual polarity of
mind disclosed in Genesis was complemented by disclosure of the
soma, the body of sense percipience, its equal and
opposite polarity. That both polarities concern mind, goes
without saying; just as does the fact that both are in the first
instance Christological. This meant that the accentuation given
in the creation story to transcendence was balanced against a
similar but opposite trend in the miracle stories, the emphasis
there being on immanence. Taken as a whole, an equilibrium
between the two cycles is thus generated and their own intrinsic
pattern of symmetry is repeated. In other words, where the two
cycles co-exist as transcendent Days (Genesis) and immanent
miracles (gospel), they formulated one whole.
When looked at as a whole, the Days of creation -
including the seventh or Sabbath - constitute a theology of
transcendence. Each of the members of the series is defined as a
Day. This taxonomises them at the first level as belonging to
the one series, the one class of events which when taken in
opposition to the miracles, instantiates transcendence. Yet
within these seven Days, there is a distinction between
transcendence proper and an 'immanent form' of the same. The
last four Days of the series represented this immanent aspect of
transcendence proper. Conversely, when we examine the miracle
cycle, particularly from the point of view of its relationship
to the text in Genesis, we see a series of events which in its
entirety, is immanent in kind. All of these episodes, including
the Eucharist if in a modified manner, belong to the sevenfold
series. That the Eucharist must be part of the messianic series
follows from the relationship it sustains with the three
Eucharistic miracles, even given that it is not itself
comparably miraculous. Even so, a distinction corollary to that
in the creation story emerges so that there are effectively four
episodes which are unambiguously immanent, while the
remaining three exhibit characteristics of transcendence.
The immanent forms of the transcendent - Days 4, 5, 6, (7) - and
the transcendent forms of the immanent, the two miracles at sea
and The Transfiguration, which posit the forms of unity,
and the modes of imaginative consciousness respectively - both
require special attention. They make explicit the
relationality between the two cycles in so far as they modify
any absolute polarisation of the two cycles such as prevents the
explication of their congruence, their isomorphism.
To put it another way, a fundamental difference between the
story of beginning and the story of the end was effectively one
of the differences between transcendence and immanence
respectively. Nonetheless, each of those stories in turn
recapitulated the same binary pattern, that of the antithetical
modes involved in the categoreal paradigm as announced in the
merism, 'the heavens and the earth'. This after all, their
internal bipolar form, was what further secured their analogous
relationality, or isomorphism. If the creation story had no
immanent perspective at all it could not relate to the messianic
miracle series; conversely, if the latter was totally void of a
transcendent perspective it could not sustain a relation to the
creation story. Hence where the story of 'beginning'
(creation) is essentially the story of transcendence, it
nevertheless demonstrates its own division into transcendent
(identity) and immanent (unity) polarities; and where the story
of 'end' (salvation) is the story of immanence, this
nevertheless also recapitulates the paradigm, dividing into two
sections recognisable as transcendent (identity) and immanent
(unity). It is this further division of the two halves of
biblical theology conforming to the same paradigm, which
guarantees the dialogue between the two polarities. Not in spite
of, but because of the emphatic polarisation already given in
the equal but opposite halves of narrative, Genesis and gospel,
there is a recapitulation of the paradigm again reiterated
contained within each of those halves.
The logical rudiments of consciousness are various. In the
narratives we have considered, we witnessed the incidence of
monadic, dyadic, triadic, tetradic, hexadic, heptadic and
dodecadic forms. Nor is that all. The feeding miracles present
further logical patterns that involve the fivefold and
twelvefold. By such accounts, the formal contours of mind : body
are indeed protean. This plethora of patterns testifies to the
variety of relations subtended to each other by those things
that are the ultimate subjects of the narratives, the realities
foundational to consciousness. However, the incidence of binary
(dyadic) form is striking, and the perfect starting point of
analysis. This study has concentrated on the categoreal paradigm
transcendence : immanence for this very reason. Both the
creation narrative and the seven messianic events of the gospel,
seminal texts for Christian doctrine, confront us with the same
fundamental paradigm. It informs equally the categories of
transcendence - the three conceptual forms and the three forms
of unity - and the description of the structures of perceptual
consciousness - in short, percipient memory and percipient
imagination. It makes for certain consistency among the things
related to consciousness, but it also reveals some of the
relations that obtain between them as nothing less than
paradoxical.
Looked at as a whole then, the formula transcendence : immanence
is the most primary and easily detectable formal aspect of this
strand of biblical theology. It assumes the role of
organizational principle . Concerning as it does, the exposition
of what is from a point of view of the propositional content of
biblical theology, the nature of human consciousness, mind, or
the psychophysical entity which is the human person, we
therefore refer to it as the categoreal paradigm.
Here a review of the four categories disclosed in Genesis and
the gospel can now be undertaken. At the outset, we can simplify
matters somewhat by expressing the contrast between pure
conceptual forms - the ideas of space, mind and the
symbolic masculine, and perceptual memory - of whichever
mode, haptic, acoustic or optic. There is an absolute contrast
between these two categories as between extremes on a scale or
spectrum from transcendence to immanence. We can refine this
notion at a later point, but to begin to review the various
categories, and expound the relations between them, we should
first observe this. Whatever outcomes, affective or rational,
issue from the conceptual forms, we can be sure of one thing,
that they will be at total variance with those associated with
the forms of perceptual memory. Some of these characteristics
have already been alluded to; thus for example, in relation to
the differentiation between free-will and determinism, we can
urge that the processes attributable to haptic memory (the
erotic) are characterised by the latter. Haptic memory, to take
one example of a purely immanent form, is dominated by the
prevalence of a psychological force at utmost variance
with free will. This after all, is visible in the
representations of compelling need given in the various feeding
miracles. At the opposite end of the spectrum from this is the
conceptual form mind. Even though both of these centres of
consciousness identify the Son, they occur in total contrast.
The immanent Son of the miracle at Cana - Eros, or the
divine bridegroom - is the same as the logos, the word
become flesh - from the point of view of a theology of the
Trinity. But the former disposes consciousness in a mode that is
completely other than the way in which it is disposed by mind
itself (logos). This fullness of contrast occurs wherever
we take the instances of the same (Trinitarian) identity given
by perceptual memory on the one hand, and the corresponding
absolute or pure conceptual form on the other.
The purpose of this simple illustration is to convey here at the
start, the fullest expression of antithesis which obtains
between the pure conceptual forms -space, mind, symbolic
masculine - and the forms of memory - acoustic, haptic, optic.
These are unequivocally transcendent and immanent forms
respectively. It is only with the intermediate categories - the
forms of unity, and the forms of imagination - that we encounter
digression from this fullness of contrast.
Both the (three) immanent terms of the transcendent categories
and the (three) transcendent forms of immanence are
characteristically equivocal. They present a status
'intermediate' between normative transcendence, defined as
purely conceptual, and normative immanence, defined as mnemic
sense-percipience. Forms of unity and forms of imagination
mediate the absolute contrast sustained by complete polarisation
in the case of true concepts and pure perceptual forms. We
affirmed that time is necessarily conjunct with space, the soma
with mind, and the feminine with the masculine. What is novel
and determinative of identity in these forms of unity is the
transcendent term of each. That tends to subordinate their
unity. There is a necessary tension between the terms conjunct
in the immanent forms of the transcendent categories, space :
time and so on. Similarly, there is inherent in the transcendent
polarity of the immanent categories, namely the various forms of
imagination, a similar paradoxical strain. Imagination is native
to memory - nonetheless, it strives against it in a certain
sense. We must acknowledge the contrastive elements that
constitute each form of unity; and we must discern the
ostensible dearth of content innate to imaginative
consciousness. It is only the transcendent forms space, mind and
the masculine, which are unequivocally transcendent; and only
the sense-percipient forms of memory, which are unequivocally
immanent. For the rest, we find the dialectic of contrast,
tension, and paradox. Thus, the nature of imaginative
consciousness is poised in equilibrium to the forms of unity.
Whereas the transcendent categories in their immanent forms
manifest contrast at the expense of identity, the forms of
imaginative consciousness realise the principle of identity so
as to subordinate what we would otherwise predicate of them as
immanent in kind, the principle of unity. The net result of
which is to qualify any contention for only neatly delineated
categories of transcendence and immanence.
At the broadest level of analysis, there are two classes of
things to consider: the subjects of the theology of
transcendence in Genesis, and those of the theology of immanence
in Mark generally speaking. As just noted, however, these
categories of the transcendent and the immanent themselves
further recapitulate the same paradigm. Thus there is a
transcendent : immanent structure within transcendence itself,
and the same structure within immanence. This yields four
discernible classes (taxa) of things.
The
Categories of Transcendence
Conceptual forms
The Markan doctrine of mind emphasises three formative subjects
as rudimentary to the specifically human form of consciousness:
space, mind and the symbolic masculine. The first two of these
are arguably more salient than the latter, as transcendent in
the truest sense of the word; nonetheless, all are
classifiable as conceptual forms manifesting the principle of
transcendence. All obtain in virtue of identity. These same
ideal entities lend a shape to consciousness that is
definitively 'Trinitarian'. In this, they reformulate the
transcendent category of space itself - or, what is the same
thing, space itself emulates their epistemic coherence -
so that we may speak of mental, or conceptual, or ideal,
dimensions as well as the epistemological predisposition of
space in se. These dimensions espouse the principle
of identity, such that they shape or dispose consciousness
into aspects which are readily recognisable as different from
one another. The differences are optimal, and that is why they
can legitimately be iconographically represented in terms of
tri-dimensionality. The effect of conceptual forms is thus
opposite in a sense, that of the various perceptual modes of
memory. The issues in consciousness of the same ideas, which are
the many and various conative forces and epistemic processes
that they generate, are typically transcendent. That is to say,
they will be pre-eminently susceptible of identification. In
this, they stand over and against the ingression of sense
perception in consciousness. For memory in general tends towards
the unification of the its elementary forms in consciousness, to
wit, the three phenomenal modes of sense-perception in
humans, plus the fourth in sub-humans consciousnesses, to wit,
the osmic-gustic, (smell-taste). Sentient memory is equally
normative to the normativity of pure conceptual forms, and
formulates the perceptual pole of mind as fundamentally
undifferentiated relative to the functioning of the conceptual
pole.
The range of qualities associated with pure conceptual forms has
to do with the 'beginning'. They signify change, revolution,
novelty; in short, the creative advance. History and
evolutionary theory, and in general, those related discourses
premised on procedures methodologically disposed in virtue of
genetic considerations, have tended towards emphatic recognition
of the past, often at the expense of the future. Usually that
is, without any sense of the immanence of the future within the
past, such as is suggested by both the symbolic masculine and
mind. The delivery of the creation story however, sets great
store by futurity, because it identifies space with 'beginning'
and with transcendence. It writes large the transcendent aspect
of the equation. In effect the space of space : time is
dominated not by the past but by its opposite. The inherent
futurity endogenous to the spatial, supervenes the continuity of
the present with its past. Thus, the future, readily
identifiable with transcendent space, 'the heavens', is the
guarantee of novelty in the universe. In this context we need to
recall what was put concerning the conceptual form mind; namely
that its status as transcendent is equivalent to that of space,
notwithstanding is equivocal reiteration of immanence, in which
it is equal to the immanent proclivity of the symbolic
masculine. Hence it is equally responsible for the same
innovative advance of the created order.
So as to rescue from mere abstractive rationalism what is meant
by the three conceptual forms, I add here a more empirical
understanding of the same. These are their three exemplary
phenomena in religious consciousness. These constitute a class,
which mirrors the taxon of pure conceptual forms itself; the
class of theistic religions, all of which have reached their
final determinations in the epoch subsequent to the incarnation:
Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Their generic sorting in this
wise, the fact that they belong together typologically
as being of one and the same class or kind, is best logically
and definitively expressed as their shared eschatological
credenda; they each confess belief in the resurrection from the
dead, in distinction from world religions defined in samsaric
eschatological terms.
I shall not advance the argumentation for this submission here,
its development leads to the doctrine of intentionality. Nor
shall I undertake to justify the ostensibly unorthodox way in
which it chronologically recasts the theological formation of
Judaism(s) generally as post-incarnational, except to insist
that in such an avowal, belief plays an emphatic role. I shall
say more concerning belief, and its companion mode of
intentionality, will, and their hybrid form,
willing-and-believing, at a later point, in order to further
elucidate that this specific emphasis or perspective in itself,
is irreducibly Christian. That is to say, that the pre-eminent
or governing intentional focus of neither Judaism nor Islam, is
belief as such. The immediate point is to clothe each of the
three ideas, the three pure conceptual forms, with some more
palpable means of identification immediately relevant to the
theological enterprise. Thus I put that they are typologically
instantiated in the three particular world religions
listed: what the conceptual form space is to Judaism, the
conceptual form mind is to Christianity, and the conceptual form
symbolic masculine is to Islam.
It is not the pure transcendental forms themselves as such which
are expressed in these three predominant theistic world
religions, but rather the modes of intentionality to which the
same, pure conceptual ('transcendental') forms will give rise.
These are: will consequent upon space; will-and-belief
consequent upon the symbolic masculine; and belief consequent
upon mind. I make this claim further to what has been said
regarding both the theology of religions vis-ŕ-vis time and the
eschatological categories of symbolic feminine and symbolic
masculine, and the hermeneutics of The Transfiguration
and Transformation Of Water Into Wine, the two
Christological messianic miracle narratives. The hermeneutic of
The Apocalypse as pursuant to the stories of 'beginning and
end', will depend upon these postulates; in particular, that of
its content which posits a Christian theology of religions.
Forms of Unity
These are space : time, mind : body and male : female as
fundamental determinants of consciousness. Expounded within the
second-level taxonomic order of the creation, they are related
to the above as immanent formulations of what are otherwise
categoreally transcendent realities. They bear the appearance of
immanence. This means that in terms of their effects, they may
bear comparison with the forms of memory. We can speak of
their primary or first level taxonomical status as transcendent,
although their evidently equivocal standing as regards the
iteration of the categoreal paradigm, means that we might just
as legitimately construe them in terms of immanence. The
taxonomy in Genesis places them in serial continuity with the
purely transcendent forms. Hence, in the first instance, they
remain definable as conceptual. It may seem most
difficult to concede as conceptual, the body, and again
the anthropic, male and female. We tend naturally to associate
the body and its sexual differentiation with anything other than
the conceptual. Nonetheless, conceptual forms of unity must
firstly be classified as concepts and not percepts. They are
ideas which furnish the radicals of consciousness. Their
role and function in consciousness is initially comparable to
the role and function of the transcendent forms.
The viable tendency to understand forms of unity as if they were
percepts is diminished in the case of time (space : time). We
are inclined to view it as an abstraction. The reason for which
is that space : time in so far as it is spatial, remains
pre-eminently and unambiguously transcendent. Its corresponding
purely transcendent polarity, space, is weighted unequivocally
in virtue of transcendence. Space tends always to dissociate
itself from, to transcend, space : time as a compound entity.
This lends to the spatiotemporal form of unity its greater
similarity to the pure conceptual forms. (The same cannot be
said without remainder of the mind : body, even given its
ambivalence as per the categoreal paradigm, transcendence :
immanence.)
Logically all three forms of unity are of a piece, even though
each is weighted or structured differently. The categories space
: time and male : female stand in opposition to one another as
ordered in favour of transcendence and immanence respectively,
without remainder, that is, without ambivalence. Hence, the
latter may be juxtaposed with what was said just previously in
regard to novelty and the transcendent forms. The anthropic form
of unity, male : female, tends to incur domination by the past.
Their contrast echoes the disparity of the primordial and the
eschatological. Here then is just one respect, in which a form
of unity is most comparable to the modes of memory. The central
category mind : body is equivocally configured as being equal to
the primordial space : time in its transcendent bias; yet equal
also to the eschatological male : female in its immanent
proclivity. This means that the transcendent nature of the
psychophysical is proportionate to its immanent nature. It means
also that the psychophysical remains the focal point for the
resolution of the competing claims of the primordial and
eschatological.
It will be possible at a later point to identify relatively to
the three forms of unity, instances of their typological
occurrences in world religious and cultural phenomena,
comparable to what has been put above regarding pure
transcendental forms, as these also will belong to the
hermeneutic of The Apocalypse.
Categories
of Immanence
Perceptual Memory
One thing is clear: if the story of creation stresses the role
of conceptual consciousness for Christian epistemology, this is
answered and ultimately balanced by the unstinting and
consistent appraisal of the perceptual which we encounter in the
gospels at every turn. We should see this as squaring perfectly
with the 'incarnation', just as it is first pronounced in the
first of the messianic miracle stories. The normative mode for
perception is that designated by the common language term,
memory. The doctrine of perceptual memory is a key component of
Eucharistic theology. Thus the modes of haptic, acoustic and
optic memory stand juxtaposed to the three transcendent forms
with the greatest degree of contrast. Both taxa are normative
and so circumscribe the conscious as opposed to the aconscious.
The theology of memory is a concrete testament to the viability
of Markan metaphysics.
There is no dearth of speculative systems of
philosophy-psychology which describe the nature and functions of
memory in our mental and affective lives as humans. The great
distinctiveness as well as the advantage of Mark's doctrine of soma
is that it secures the affinity of memory, and imagination, with
sense percipience. At one stroke then, Markan metaphysics
resolves the issues surrounding what memory is and how it works.
The recurrent metaphor for twhich is assimilation, and so
appetition-satisfaction. Every one of the miracles which
elaborates the doctrine of mnemic consciousness uses this
figure.
The principle of immanence declares the unity of relata
which to some extent are oppositional, contrastive,
antithetical. The forms of imagination, haptic, acoustic and
optic are co-opted and unified in their corresponding mnemic
counterparts. The forms of sense-percipient memory are
composite, consisting of relata, memory and
imagination, which in a real sense are antithetical to one
another; that is, in terms of the bifurcation of the temporal
manifold. Even so, there is no absolute and lasting distinction
possible between the forms of memory and the corresponding forms
of imagination which they comprise. Memory itself insists on
their synergy. There is no memory without imagination, but to
distinguish between them in practice remains impossible.
The contribution of memory to consciousness, a contribution that
is inseparable from the functioning of sense perception in its
various modes, is also inseparable from the contribution of
imagination. Thus, imagination too participates inextricably in
the activities of (sentient) memory. The principle of immanence,
the unambiguous sense in which immanence espouses unity, entails
that pure memory in itself can not exist. Memory is necessarily
compounded with imagination. We ought not to understand the
contrast between memory and imagination in absolute terms, those
of the theology of transcendence, disjunction and identity; but
in terms of immanence, that is, conjunction and unity.
In the same way, the future is already ingredient within the
past, already contained, included. Yet for all that, the
relation of the present to the future as it is in itself, must
be understood as being discrete rather than continuous. The
indissoluble bond of memory and imagination prohibits the pure
epistemic and ontic retrieval of any past event. Memory never
functions without the intrusion of novelty of some kind and to
howsoever a minimal degree, as assured by the role of
imagination. The extensive analogy for this economic
co-operation of perceptual imagination and perceptual memory is
the eschatological form of unity, male : female.
Perceptual Imagination
As for memory, so also for imagination: there is no imagination
without perception. Mark's doctrine therefore gives meaning and
content to this dimension or mode of consciousness. Even so,
imaginative consciousness involves non-sensuous perception. The
concept of the imagination put here redefines both the ideas of
perception and imagination. For it determines imagination
inextricably with perception, while the concept of transcendence
seems to qualify the notion of the sensuous to the point of
annihilation. One difficulty in conceiving perceptual
imagination is the misconception that future events are not real
in the same way that past events are. The sense in which the
imaginal consciousness consists of discrete and identifiable
forms may also seem problematic. If imagination is co-opted in
the functioning of memory, how then can we argue the existence
of thoroughly independent imaginal centres of consciousness? We
have not stated such a case. In the last resort, imagination is
beholden to memory, from which nonetheless, it differs.
However, there is a clear sense in which imaginal centres of
consciousness diverge from one another and more certainly still
from memory. They espouse the principle of identity. For
example, the ingression of haptic imagination in consciousness
is discernible, that is isolable as in some sense,
self-contained, whereas the ingression of haptic memory is much
less so. For the latter tends to merge sympathetically with the
remaining forms of memory. The ambiguity attendant upon the
attributes and functions of the imagination confront us. It does
so for the same reason that the radical contribution of the
forms of unity to consciousness is problematic. The forms of
imagination are transcendent determinations of what is radically
or essentially immanent in character. Thus, we cannot deny the
ambiguous natures of either the forms of imagination or the
forms of unity. But their second order and non-normative
reiteration of the categoreal paradigm, their irresolution as to
transcendence : immanence, this intermediacy between the pure
conceptual forms on the one hand, and the sense-percipient modes
of memory on the other is what fits them to the aconscious
order. Thus relative to them, the normative (conscious)
categories, the three pure transcendental forms, and the four
four forms of sense-percipient memory stand in equilibrium.
We already have sufficient information concerning the
imaginative centres of consciousness to be able to distinguish
them from other such centres. Structures of imaginative
consciousness are comparable to those resulting from the
ingression in consciousness of the three transcendent forms,
space, mind and the masculine, particularly the last.
Effectively they echo the pure conceptual forms. This is evident
in the close similarity between the transcendent messianic
miracle stories, and the theology of creation. To a lesser
extent, they also bear comparison with the forms of memory. That
is, just as we drew comparisons between the forms of unity and
the two unequivocal determinants of consciousness, transcendent
forms, and forms of memory we can adopt this procedure in
relation to imagination.
Here the notion of transcendence proves its worth. It frames the
direct complementarity between actual and potential sense
perception correspondingly with perceptual memory and
non-sensuous (yet) perceptual imagination. Memory is the being
re-minded of past events, events which reiterate the symbolic
feminine. These are actually determinate. Imagination is the
consciousness of events whose ontological status is not in
doubt, but necessarily non-determined. Memory and imagination
replicate the radical shape of immediacy. This follows the
formulation of the categoreal paradigm, transcendence :
immanence. The present is the province of both. Nonetheless,
present immediacy is not a third term. The Eucharistic hic
et nunc from which putatively infinite vectors in time
extend backwards and forwards is the symbolic conjunction
of masculine and feminine which realises the perceptual
pole of consciousness as incarnate.
We have drawn sufficient attention to the equivocal status of
the intervening categories: the forms of unity on the one hand
and the forms of imagination on the other. One final observation
is in order here; just as the conceptual forms, and the forms of
unity establish the differentiation of human from non-human
consciousness, there are certain indications in two healing
narratives of Mark which confirm the appurtenance of perceptual
consciousness also to the sub-human. These are the two stories
of The Gerasene Demoniac (Mark 5.1-20) and The
Syrophoenician Woman (Mark 7.24-31). These have more in
common than just the single motif of feeding animals: for
example both are conspicuous as exorcistic cures, and both
involve some sort of negotiation between Jesus and the forces
which imperil the lives of the protagonists. They also function
as the first and the last of a chain of healing events, as we
saw in the previous discussion of The Haemorrhagic Woman.
All we need to notice now is that the texts include allusive
references to the role of perceptual consciousness in animals
other than humans. Mark's doctrine of mind would be incomplete
without a reference of some kind to the nature of sub-human
consciousness. These narratives are obvious starting points for
any discussion of the same, the indications being that
perceptual consciousness with its many and manifest outcomes,
belongs equally to the human and sub-human realms. The reason
for such a claim is that the overriding metaphor for
sense-percipience in the gospel remains that of assimilation.
The
New Testament and the Theology of Creation
It is regrettable that we cannot dwell on this topic to
anywhere near the extent that it merits. All the same, we
cannot fail to mention the implications of the interpretation we
have posed concerning the messianic events. These ensue
from the analogy of the two sevenfold series of Genesis
and the gospel - creation and salvation - which enjoy complete
synthesis, and which are arguably the single and best instance
of a systematic rapport between the two canons. The second half
of the creation story, anticipates the gospel. The great
contribution made by the various subjects of the messianic
miracle series to the exposition of Christology, and what belong
to the same, Christian epistemology and philosophical
psychology, concerns sentient existence. Thus, where the
creation narrative frames its grasp of the immanence of God, it
envisions the entirety of living forms. The prospect this
generates for the consideration of the continuity between
animal and human consciousness is invaluable, and sorts well
also with the underlying metaphysical principle of evolutionary
theory - that of unity, which we regard as the signal of
immanence itself. But here we have stumbled upon a major
discrepancy in received theological wisdom; to wit that there is
virtually no New Testament theology of creation. The hermeneutic
postulated here renders the speciousness of such a claim all but
palpable, and we reject it out of hand. It stems from the
indifference of scholiasts to the miracle narratives, and the
widespread traditional preference in Western academe for the J
creation narrative over that of the Priestly author.
We have affirmed repeatedly that the ultimate hermeneutical
value of the second half of the creation story defers to the
events in the gospel, the meaning of which we have just
proposed. That second section of the narrative, identifiable as
a theology of immanence, anticipates the disclosures made by the
later texts. These disclosures concern the processes of sense
perception as radical to the nature of animal and human
consciousness in a manner complementary to the conceptual
categories elaborated in the creation story, which are likewise
foundational for human consciousness.
The prevailing outlook of the creation story is transcendent.
Its demonstrable predilection is for the categories of mind and
space, the pre-eminently transcendent entities. After these in
order of significance, are the immanent polarities of the same,
mind : body and space : time, and the eschatological category,
male : female. Next in order of significance is the role of
sentience, the modes of sense perception, although this is
categorised only pre-emptively. We cannot be sure until we
accept the disclosures of the gospel, where the definitive
account is provided, but this is what the story of the last four
Days effectively anticipates in virtue of the inherent logic of
the two narrative chains. We refer to this content of
consciousness whether in animals or in humans, as ‘immanent
consciousness' or 'perceptual consciousness' on the basis of its
initial contrast with the conceptual polarity constituted by the
pure ideas in particular. Common sense dictates that as for the
categories of immanence, there are ample grounds for comparisons
to be drawn between animals and ourselves. Almost all animals do
possess the modes of sense perception, which we possess, and in
varying degrees of likeness to our own.
The story of the final four Days bristles with living creatures,
in keeping with what we know from experience and with what so
many biblical texts affirm. The former is that we are similar to
animals in varying degrees. Such a tenet is a premise of the
theory of evolution, which seeks to articulate the relationships
between all living things in terms of historical,
'narratological', process. The presupposition of evolution is
that of the unity of the organic world. In this, it does not
deviate from the chief pre-occupation of the theology of
immanence. The view of the relatedness and contiguity of
the human and animal worlds, which the biblical texts repeatedly
acknowledge, is complemented with the view of the human and
animal worlds as discontinuous. The doctrine of imago Dei
is the classic instance of the latter. That it is
fundamental to the theology of transcendence in Genesis 1.1s is
certain. Human and animal life forms are equally 'creaturely'.
The creation theology acknowledges both animals and ourselves as
corporeal and sexually dimorphic. God creates only humans
however, 'in the image and likeness of God'. This puts the
ambiguities of the situation with consummate poise and the same
paradox sits at the hub of the Pneumatological doctrine of
creation: the insistence equally upon continuity and
discontinuity of the human with the sub-human. The conceptual
categories, whose formulation is the chief point of the
narrative, remain the best explanation for the difference
obtaining between the animal and the human. The Genesis story
taken in conjunction with the gospel, only ever infers such a
proposition, but that it is concerned with it is beyond doubt.
Immanent, sentient, consciousness as depicted in the gospel
however, posits the basis of the opposite and complementary
contention, that of the connectedness between our consciousness
and that of our fellow creatures.
A second point regarding creation theology in the New Testament
concerns the importance of the modes of sense perception from
the evolutionary as well as theological perspective. I do not
wish to press the theological case for evolutionary theory. I
consider that a fait accompli. The clearest case for it
exists in the Day 3 rubric which explicitly predicates a
relation between the 'earth' and the two types of plants; a
relation which functions analogously to that of the earth
animals and humans, as expressed implicitly in the Day 6 rubric.
This relation is summed up by the word 'produced'. On the
contrary, what is quite astounding is the entrenched reluctance
of theology generally to accept the contribution of evolutionary
theory to our knowledge of the world and God. The rhetoric that
Christianity is an historical religion, a virtual shibboleth of
modern theological scholarship, rings hollow because of its
consistent neglect by theology of the theory of evolution.
Evolutionary theory and history are twin arms of the one
episteme - call it narratological, or historical consciousness.
If 'the historical Jesus', then so too 'the evolutionary Jesus';
if Christianity is an historical religion, as we are constantly
reminded, then it is necessarily also instructively formed by
the disclosures of the theory of evolution. The epistemological
nexus between history and theory of evolution makes it incumbent
on theology to attend to those disclosures. The recognition of
the implications of evolutionary theory for theology is all the
more important because of a profoundly narcissistic
anthropocentrism which infects the proclamation of the
historical nature of Christian religion.
Any influence of contemporary understanding of the origins of
humankind upon theological reflection need not necessarily be
one-way. Certain possibilities for some sort of reciprocal
interaction between theology and science exist. The contribution
of Christian theology to metaphysics of evolutionary theory will
thus accentuate the role of sense perception. The gospel's
account all but equates mind : body, soma, and the forms
of sentience. It is not yet clear what value evolutionary theory
accords to the same. We should be able to see that a dialogue
between theology and evolutionary theory might possibly
plot the significance of the successive appearance of the modes
of sense perception against the background of the phenomenon of
sexual dimorphism. This is one obvious area for dialogue. As far
as I know, evolutionary psychology, which is perhaps still
hostage to 'sociobiology', has remained silent on this matter.
It is not clear whether we should take the seriality of the
second half of the creation story at face value. That is, it is
not clear whether we should interpret the text as a taxonomy of
the modes of sense percipience from the point of view of the
evolutionary-historical process. The notion of the
emergence of forms of sense-percipience in successive
evolutionary stages may itself be incorrect; yet it is worth
investigating vis-a-vis some of the patterns that emerge in the
texts we have been studying. The real province of the
understanding of the sense-percipient body remains the gospel.
The order between the two cycles varies, and of course it is
possible that it is the business of neither text to make
any delivery of this kind at all. Nonetheless it remains a
possibility.
In its very first presentation, that of the P creation story,
albeit implicitly, sense perception is announced as in league
with value. A recurrent theme of the creation story is
that of the 'goodness' of creation itself. The refrain 'And God
saw, how good it was.' occurs as frequently as the time/light
motif. God positively evaluates the works of each of the Days;
thus, Genesis 1.10, 12, 18, 21, 25 and v 4 ('And God saw how
good the light was'). Day 2 is the only rubric to which this
evaluation is not applied, and as if to compensate for which, it
is applied twice in the case of Day 3. The same judgment is made
at the conclusion of the week (v 31): '... and God saw
everything that he had made, and how good it was.' Axiology (the
theory of value) is crucial to the epistemological enterprise;
that it is equally vital to the theological goes without saying.
It pertains to what we have so far repeatedly affirmed of the
Christological categories - namely their universality. It
applies to both the transcendent and immanent categories; that
is, to the ingression of both conceptual and perceptual forms of
activity in human consciousness.
So whether we are dealing with mind, or soma, and
whether we are dealing with the haptic memory, Eros, or
with mind itself, the enigmatic tissue connecting logos
and Thanatos, we are dealing with the sovereign, central,
focal value in existence: goodness itself. The gospel will
elaborate this notion, for it will consistently frame the
phenomenon of perceptual consciousness in terms of appetition.
Therefore, these narratives confirm our observations that
perception subsists in relation to the animal-human apprehension
of value. The miracle at Cana, which first enumerates one of the
patterns of sentient consciousness, is resoundingly frank on
this score. It ends with a logion about the good wine and the
poor wine. This means of course that consciousness is shaped by
the axiological conviction that sexual gratification is
undeniably one of life's 'goods'; additionally it outlines
a complex system of other axiological beliefs effected by
sentience. For the enumeration of six jars of water transformed
into wine is the application of an axiology to the six forms of
sense percipience - the forms of memory and forms of
imagination.
The relationship between epistemology and axiology is
fundamental to Markan metaphysics. The creation story is the
first text to state this relationship. If the theme of value
resonates throughout the latter, then by default it is the
legacy too of the series of messianic events. We mention it only
in passing here in order to concentrate on the fundamental
hermeneutical issues confronting us. It is vital that we do not
neglect it, and the full exposition of this essential component
of doctrine is incumbent upon us. The Christian doctrine of mind
will have to explicate at every turn, the extent and
significance of the theories of value inherent in the conceptual
and perceptual components of mind revealed in these texts
seminal to Christian metaphysics.
The second point is more obscure, and pertains to the
eschatological, and the certain role that the male : female form
of unity plays in the same. Hindu and Buddhist doctrines of samsara
may have a great deal to teach us concerning eschatology. A
prerequisite will be that we disabuse ourselves of prejudices,
no easy task to accomplish. We need to be able to re-assess the
proximity of the concept of re-birth, 'reincarnation', to the
eschatological doctrine of 'resurrection from the dead'.
Eschatology remains an evasive and prone area for theology, but
one that we must nevertheless broach. Where Christian theology
enters this picture, we can see the context for the immanent as
decidedly the past rather than the future, and hence the
occasion of one’s birth rather than one's death. The province of
the immanent is the past. The same past which is the subject of
both evolutionary theoretical 'science' and history. This has
repercussions for an eschatological doctrine of the
resurrection.
Here equally evasive and prone is evolutionary theory denying
its inherent metaphysical leanings. We have mentioned one of
these - the abstract concept of unity. As a presupposition this
goes today still largely unfleshed and somewhat in need of
substance. But there is another still more pressing demand for
the metaphysics of evolutionary theory which again touches upon
eschatology. The second problem of the theory of evolution is
its dogged faithfulness to the concept of efficient causality.
This is blind faithfulness, faithfulness to a fault,
faithfulness at the expense of the concept of final causality.
Here the prevailing assumption is that the past is completely
shorn from any rapport with the future. We have stressed in
these studies time and again, that immanence is qualified by its
compound nature, so that there is neither memory without
imagination, female without male, nor past without future
somehow ingredient within it. The ingression of the future in
the past vouchsafes the validity of the concept of final
causality. To conceive the past as absolutely shorn of all
relationality to the future is to confer upon it a status
totally at variance with its immanent character.
Thus any hint of teleology or indeed of anything that smacks in
the least of teleology, seems to inspire a kind of dread in most
exponents of evolutionary theory. Symptomatic of this nervous
strain that characterises any discussion of teleology in
relation to the evolutionary process was the coining of
the term ‘teleonomy’. This was to have replaced the concept of
teleology, although the distinction was never more than notional
at best. There have been certain attempts on the part of
'scientific' understanding to address the indubitably
metaphysical implications of evolutionary theory. These speak
varyingly of the 'weak' or 'strong' 'anthropic principle'.
Overall however, such efforts remain fraught. Evolutionary
theory remains as neurotically intransigent as ever about
teleological argumentation. Indeed the posture of evolutionary
science concerning the idea of telos is every bit as
prone as was that of creation theology when it first encountered
the hypothesis of evolution. If theology shirked some of its
responsibilities due to it in virtue of its pre-occupation with
historical method, a pre-occupation bordering on the obsessive,
then it is also true that evolutionary theory for its part has
played down if not denied its own metaphysical foundations. It
is of course precisely the concept of teleology that identifies
the categoreal feminine, the very category that is either
lacking or improperly defined in the prevailing evolutionary
theoretical weltanshauung.
Previously, in relation to the evolution of the percipient soma
we touched upon the concept of value. We can be more precise
concerning this now. Beauty is the purposive lure of evolution.
The telos intrinsic to the evolutionary-historical process is
the aim to beauty. The expression of the value beauty is what
determines the evolutionary process. The end, telos, of
the universe is the manifestation of the beautiful. Humankind,
the categoreal feminine, is the supreme exemplification of
beauty. So too she is, from the point of view of the author of
the second creation narrative, the pinnacle of the created
order. This gives added substance to the repeated
affirmation 'And God saw that it was good.'
The very word aesthesis, meaning sense perception,
should give some indication of the sense in which the emergence
of sentience in the animal-human soma has guided the
morphology of soma, the becoming of the body. The term
'aesthetic' has become synonymous with the beautiful. Thus, the
evolutionary process as it gives rise to the pleroma of sentient
life, is teleologically informed. The teleology of the
process of evolution-history is aesthetically driven. Beauty as
the dominant value instantiated ultimately in the phenomenon of
human reflexive consciousness is internally real to evolution.
Its axiological directive is the beautiful. This requires
sentience in the human. Whether animals can apprehend this
value, is difficult to prove. Evidence exists in the case of
certain species of birds that they respond to 'aesthetic'
criteria in both modes, optic and acoustic, and also for insects
regarding the latter at least. It is certain however that the
apprehension of such a value is a prime factor in human
motivation.
It is no more possible to apprehend evolutionary process than it
is to observe another human being or one's own reflected image
without some semblance of this value comprising the experience.
Nor is it possible to recognise the comparative degrees to which
other sentient forms fulfill the telos of beauty without
acknowledging the superlative culmination of this drive in its
expression in humankind. It is not valid to postulate parity
between humans and sub-humans, animals, precisely because beauty
is real and innate to the process of evolution. To posit beauty
as the specific telos of the evolutionary process thus
insists on the role of this value, beauty, at the very least, in
anthropic self-reflexiveness. Beauty is that specific value
operative in the mimetic, reflexive event of the world's, human,
consciousness of itself. In this way, the human is inseparable
from the awareness of the value beauty (aesthesis). That
the animal-human erotic co-opts this value to a profound degree
goes without saying. Nor has the classical exposition of the
process of 'sexual selection' been able to ignore it, especially
in the case of the evolution of humankind.
Evolutionary-historical process gives rise to the immanent
(animal) consciousness, that is, to the pleroma of sentient
beings of which the human is the last and most beautiful. It is
here once more that the evolutionary theoretical account, which
all but abjures the concept of the categoreal feminine, exposes
not only its insufficiency, but also its disingenuousness.
Whatever an evolutionary 'scientist' may aver concerning the
process viewed in the objective, that the human is a random
outcome, and the idea of parity between the relative degrees to
which sub-human and human forms express that pre-eminently
immanent form of value, beauty, is inconceivable. The solution
of evolutionary science - though never so of mathematics - has
been consistently to repudiate the phenomenon of the beautiful
root and branch. This is at least consistent with the
epistemological classification of evolutionary theory as
science, a definition routinely denounced here, for which
reason the term is highlighted by means of inverted commas.
Thus, science has arrogated to itself a mode of knowing which is
diametrically opposed to it epistemologically. It is not
possible to describe evolutionary theory as ‘science’ for
the same reason as it is specious to apply the same word to
history. This goes directly to the heart of Christian
epistemology: the doctrine of logos. Science and history
are categorically distinguishable not only because of their
opposing temporal orientations. One is ultimately predictive the
other is exclusively concerned with the past. But their
methodological natures are clearly disparate. Evolutionary
theory, identically to history, is narratological. It disavows
principles, laws, though not causality of a restricted kind, as
noted. The premise foundation to all scientific method is
nomological and deductive. To have lost sight of this radical
difference is one of the more egregious epistemological
transgressions of the age.
Yet another concern which evolutionary historians have shirked
is the question of the potential end of life on earth,
which is all to real, and now nearer as a possibility than most
of us would wish. This has implications for the theology of the
symbolic masculine and the Son of man. The received doctrine of
evolutionary theory involves cataclysms and catastrophes in
which vast numbers of species are made extinct. Even so, life in
one form or another has continued. But what faces humankind,
indeed the entire realm of living things during the present
epoch is the possibility that life in its entirety will be
annihilated. More to the point, that this would arrive at the
hands of humankind herself. Why would the evolutionary process
labour over virtually infinite lengths of time to produce
humankind only to have this same last product annihilate itself
and every other living form on the planet? Thus far, a credible
response to the question evolutionary theory has proven
itself impotent to proffer. We are then, as far as evolutionary
theory is concerned, in a condition worse than simply being
hostages to the splendid whimsy of unqualified
randomness, we are the victims of our own ingenuity. On such an
understanding the apparent answer to the disciples
question "Do you not care if we perish?" is tacitly affirmative.
More alarming still, there is the possibility that the
annihilation of ourselves and of all other forms of life might
serve some purpose broadly definable as aesthetic or beautiful.
It is at this very point that we find again that evasive
figure, the Son of man. Of the eighty-two times which the
gospels refer to the Son of man, twenty-seven of these concern
the coming Son of man. So the eschatological Son of man sayings
forms the largest of any group. In the discussion immediately
above we raised the question of death in relation to genera, the
idea of the total death of living entities which share a common,
generic, identity, the death of species. This belongs intimately
to the meaning of the symbolic masculine and the Son of man as
does the concept of beauty. This discussion leads directly to
the dichotomy of the collective versus the individual.
The Christian psychological interpretation of any
generically human will-to-death would stress the necessity to
humanity of identity and the limits of generic, or collective,
identity. True identity the generic cannot and does not
sustain. Death is precisely the single great occasion of what we
mean by 'individuation', 'identification'. Pain and suffering
themselves carry this same capacity to isolate us from our
fellow creatures, but death carries it absolutely. Death
signifies the absolutisation of identity for humankind, in just
which respect it stands beside the predication of the same
attribute or quality in God. Generic death, like generic
identity is truly problematic. If we could answer the question
concerning the future of the human race, and say that it will at
some unknown point suffer collective extinction,
self-annihilation as a totality, we might also be able to infer
the existence of an individual 'Son of man'. A vital part of the
meaning of the Son of man occurs in relation to the phenomenon
of collective consciousness.
Collective consciousness is readily identifiable in certain
animal species where phylogeny outweighs ontogeny. The dilemmas
surrounding the relation of animal consciousness, the immanent
polarity of mind, and the transcendent polarity of the same,
recur to Christology, and hence to the stories of The
Transfiguration and The Transformation Of Water Into
Wine. In other words, it is finally the person and work of
Christ alone which can resolve this dichotomy; a dichotomy
is variously phrased as one/many, ontogeny/phylogeny. In this
context we need to say very much more on the subject of the two
Christological miracles. This study is preparatory to an
exposition of the Christological doctrines contained in these
narratives. But even at first glance, we see that both
events (Cana indeed less so) signify the individual rather than
than any one figure of a kind that is repeatable; for they
depict the ontogenetic rather than the phylogenetic, to borrow
terms from biological discourse. Mark's cycle of events
sites The Transfiguration as the last miracle. It
functions as a ne plus ultra, the equivalent of the
story of Lazarus in the gospel of John. The Raising Of Lazarus
contains the only occurrence in the gospel of John of a personal
name for any figure involved in a miracle. Its use is salient
and the introduction makes very plain the close intimacy enjoyed
by Lazarus and Jesus. The later narrative (John 11.45-12.11)
tends to blur even the distinction between Jesus and Lazarus.
While it is not the same as the resurrection of Jesus, Lazarus
enjoys a kind of re-incarnation if anything, similar to that of
the Elijah-John figure of The Transfiguration. The
Raising Of Lazarus promotes 'their' identity, before the
event so to speak. The merger (union) of their identity, raises
the question of the possible denumerability of mind. Thus the
concept of identity and that of the denumerability of mind
intersect.
Number can be predicated of the generic; number is its warranty.
Generic identity always has the capacity of being counted and
counted precisely. It attracts towards itself the concept of
number. Where mind - the Christological category - is concerned
however, we are not even sure as to singular or plural; we are
not even sure whether it is possible to posit the existence of
one mind or many minds, or indeed whether even to frame the
matter in such mutually exclusive terms is valid. One
alternative here is the adoption of the concept of the infinite
- which transcends the denumerable, and so transcends the
question of singular/plural. We referred previously to the
problematic issue of the denumerability of mind, now we find
ourselves confronted with the dichotomy one/many. This is one of
the great aporias of philosophy, and one which connects
with the Son of man and our relation to that figure. It
takes us to the core of the theology of incarnation.
On the one hand is the tendency to think of minds as given
denumerable entities, attached to bodies. For the bodies are
denumerable. Thus we arrive at the notion that souls, minds, are
many, just as bodies are. The corporeal, so-called 'great chain
of being', never gives rise to such an inference in the first
place. But this does not seem to check the tendency to
conceptualise mind inevitably in relation to the existence of
self-contained embodied persons. In other words, corporeality
itself is contingent upon unity, that great index of the
immanent. On the other hand is the monistic conception. Certain
Hindu traditions conceive the soul, atman as singular in
number. But neither view seems acceptable. The reason for this
is that the antithesis posited by the two categories other than
the Christological category, subtend the relation to one another
of singular and plural. That is to say: space is uniform, and
singular and as such non-denumerable. There is not more than one
space. Persons however are by definition many; they can be
totalized. These categories of space and the anthropic we have
consistently presented in terms of the juxtaposition between the
relata of the Christological formulae: 'beginning and
end', 'first and last', 'alpha and omega'. The primordial and
eschatological categories are representative of the
antithesis one and the many, an idea which remains to been
developed in relation to the epistemology inherent in the
theology of transcendence, that is, the theology of conceptual
forms.
It is not appropriate to engage these topics fully here. We have
outlined certain philosophical and psychological issues
pertaining to the figure of the Son of man, in keeping with the
image of the theology of creation implicit in the messianic
series. This occasioned some consideration of the similarities
and differences between sub-human and human consciousness, and
hence an evolutionary psychology of some kind, as well as a
consideration of the eschatological repercussions of Mark's
doctrine. We have already alluded to some of the latter in the
previous discussion of The Transfiguration. But one
thing is clear: that this issue revolves around dismantling the
confusion stemming from the tendency to compound personal, or
'individuated', and generic identities - ontogeny and phylogeny
- a dilemma which begins with the story of humankind in the
garden of Eden. For we are inclined to read the story of the
first man and first woman not as if they 'are' individuals, nor
as if they were personae representative of the
collective, total, human race, but as both. This is a
categorical error, and the cue for the next stage of our
discussion - the criticism of the Christology of Paul.
Christologies
of Recapitulation in Paul
Some comment is in order regarding a substantial difference
between the gospels and several of the Pauline letters in their
appropriation of the theology of creation. We adopted the view
that some sort of appropriation of the second story of creation
(J) fleshes out details concerning the Sabbath. But the
real import of the seventh event defers to the Eucharist. As a
member of the immanent section of the Days, the seventh day is
not accounted for until the Eucharist itself transpires. It is
precisely in this regard that the Eucharist takes precedence
over the Sabbath, both as liturgical enactment, and as a
theology of (Sabbath) 'rest' qua death.
The Sabbath is provisional in just this sense; the normative
categories of immanence are disclosed in the four Eucharistic
events of the messianic series. It is only here that we
encounter the revelation of the actually perceptual polarity of
mind in keeping with the doctrine of the Word made flesh. Or,
what is the same thing, there are only three entities - forms of
unity - which are eligible for description according to the
basic postulate of the narrative, 'beginning', creation,
transcendence. Thus transcendence theologically (formally) rests
upon the identification of the triad. This renders recourse to
the second narrative of creation, including the story of the
garden of Eden and the disobedience of Adam and Eve relatively
secondary. The status of the J creation story about consumption
of the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil
clearly yields to the theology contained within the Eucharistic
events depicted in the gospels, and the Pauline corpus contains
nothing remotely resembling a developed Eucharistic theology.
This should be obvious to anyone reading the canon synoptically
with a view to its coherence. Even so, in order to press the
case for the isomorphism between the 'end' series (messianic
events) and the 'beginning' series (Days of creation) it is
valid to include the Sabbath in the creation series, and so we
took into account the second creation narrative.
That procedure involved recognition of the primacy of the first
narrative. Indeed it is placed first in the canon with a view to
its pre-eminent status. Any reading of the J creation according
to the hermeneutic put here, if it is not taken in tandem with
the previous creation story, to which it necessarily defers, and
thence, if it is not interpreted correlatively to the
propositional content of the P narrative and so too, with the
extensive relation this bears to the messianic series which
culminates in the Eucharist, cannot stand. That is to say, the
doctrinal content of the second creation story does not exist in
itself. Interpretation of it as such, as if it obtained in a
self-enclosed vacuum of meaning is invalid. Its immediate point
of reference, as a theology of immanence, remains the Eucharist
and the three Eucharistic miracles. The discussion of the gospel
of Luke in particular will support this claim, as will the
Christological doctrines which result from the hermeneutic we
are in the process of developing. But clearly the P creation
story, is central to, if not the actual core of the keygmatic
content of the gospel rather than Pauline anthropology. This
entails that no legitimate understanding of that later narrative
of 'beginning' can ignore the rapport between Genesis and the
gospel, which the Days series and messianic series establish. It
is a rapport encapsulating the relation of the first to the last
canon. Christologies of recapitulation according to such a
judgement are invalid, both in terms of their Christological and
anthropological claims.
The gospels generally - though ostensibly John less so, for
varying reasons, less so - subscribe to this procedure: the
logical citation of the P narrative. It remains inseparable from
the cycle of messianic events which culminate in the Eucharist,
in John, we may say, in The Raising of Lazarus.
Thus any gospel which includes the messianic series, is de
facto citing the series of Days, the P creation narrative.
But the failure to observe the analogous relation of the two
cycles has resulted in the mistaken view that the New Testament
contains no theology of creation. Not only does it possess such
a theology. The logical relation between the three transcendent
miracles and the first three Days, and the close link of the
former to the resurrection narratives, all serve to connect the
concept of creation with the event of resurrection, having
already secured the indissoluble bond between beginning and end.
For this reason we emphasised the temporal orientation of the
creation story as predominantly that of present-to-future. The
logical relation between the four immanent messianic events, the
last of which is the Eucharist, and the second half of the P
creation story function likewise in terms of securing to
relevance of salvation to creation. These are two aspects of one
and the same process, which guarantees the reciprocity of
theologies of creation and salvation. Either of these taken in
isolation is is no more than a truncation.
We have stressed the temper of the transcendent miracles as one
of angst. They transpire against a background not just
of dread alone, but of awareness of the total and irrevocable
nature of death. None more so, than The Transfiguration,
(or in the case of John, The Raising Of Lazarus.) Death
does not loom large in such theology of P as it does in the
second creation story. There is no mention of the mythical
'fall' so-called. Yet the containment of every single rubric
within the span of a 'Day' - ' And it was evening and it was
morning, the nth Day' - will suggest if anything the same
reality. If the motif of light in the P creation narrative
serves to identify the Christological category, mind, then it
also stresses the intrinsic relation of the same and time. Hence
it links the Son and death. The role of time in the creation
narrative, and the role of time in The Transfiguration,
which we have yet to elucidate, work towards the same end. They
remind us of the death-resurrection of Jesus. In both
Christological miracles there are references to death. The
Transformation Of Water Into Wine refers to the same in
the negative - "My hour has not yet come." (John 2.4b). But its
relationship of complementarity to The Transfiguration
assures their common semantic interest in death. Certainly the
theme of death is sustained in The Transfiguration as
the culminating transcendent messianic miracle.
One seminal purpose of the present hermeneutic is to elucidate
the relationship between the Christological miracles. This
requires first the qualification if not the outright repudiation
of the kind of theology of death purveyed in the Christologies
of recapitulation (a0nakefalaiwsiv)
beginning with Paul. Irenaeus and later Augustine appropriate
the germs of the latter and expand them into fully blown
doctrines of 'The Fall' and 'Original Sin' as they are known.
This has coloured Christian anthropological doctrines and it
stands in the way of a balanced understanding of the Markan
theology of death and a theology of death implicit in the first
rather than the second creation story. Even granting the
possibility of a 'first human couple', any conviction however
notional, that it was responsible for the incursion of death
into the created order is a deeply unorthodox reading of the J
creation story. Worse still, it will not survive scrutiny in the
third millennium. I will argue that Paul's reading of this
narrative is counter to the doctrine of creation such as
we find in all four gospels. Thus I invoke the criterion of
multiple attestation in their defense counter to the tradition
stemming from Paul which emphasises the second narrative.
Moreover, I contend that the woman and not the man is the
keynote of this narrative, as delivered in the vision of the
woman with child in Apocalypse chapter 12.
Paul's own situation within the development of Christian
doctrine has given his writings enormous influence, in several
cases much beyond that which they might have otherwise merited
as theology, and certainly as metaphysics, rather than writing
of a distinctly pastoral cast. Characteristically, Pauline
theology is composed in situ, or on the run as we may
say. It is bespoke rather than schematic. Unlike the gospels,
Paul shows virtually no interest the Priestly story of
'beginning' relatively to the attention he gives to the second
creation narrative. In which very respect he stands apart from
the gospels. The messianic series is the backbone of canonical,
evangelical metaphysics, and its recursion to the P story of
creation vouches for its comprehensiveness and logical approach.
We are quite hard pressed to find any explicit reference to the
P narrative in Paul. There is a reference of sorts to the
creation of the human couple (Genesis 1.27) at the beginning of
Romans:
Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their
hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among
themselves. ... For this reason God gave them up to
dishonorable passions. Their women exchanged natural relations
for unnatural, and the men likewise gave up natural relations
with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men
committing shameless acts with men and receiving in their own
persons the due penalty of their error. (Romans 1.24, 26, 27).
This allusion rests almost entirely on the reference in
verse 23 to 'images' (ei)ko/noj)
which picks up the Septuagint Greek expression of Genesis 1.27:
Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and
exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling
mortal man or birds or reptiles. (Romans 1.22, 23).
And there are allusions to Christ the bearer of the new
creation in 2 Corinthians and Romans:
For it is the God who said, "Let light shine out
of darkness," who has shone in our hearts to give the light of
the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
(2 Corinthians 4.6).
For those whom he knew he also predestined to be conformed
to the image of his Son (ei)ko/noj
tou= ui(ou= au)tou=), in order that he might be the
first-born among many brethren. (Romans 8.29).
It is instead the second creation narrative, that of J,
which is more or less crucial to Paul's Christology. He accepts
the Genesis 3.1s story as a literal account of the prehistory of
humankind. Such acceptance will not withstand the impact of
evolutionary theoretical understanding on contemporary biblical
criticism. It is difficult to estimate the full extent to which
this second creation narrative dominates Pauline
anthropology-Christology. It is most apparent in the letter to
the Romans. Romans 1.18-25 first exposes his confident
belief in the second creation story and in Genesis 6.1-4. Romans
3.23 also evinces his reliance on the Genesis 3 myth. The
Christologies of recapitulation in Romans 5.12-21 and 1
Corinthians 15.21, 22 (also vv 45-50), demonstrate plainly that
Paul accepted literally the mythical aetiology of death in the
second creation story, Genesis 3.1s. The Hebrew scriptures
themselves are much more guarded in adopting such a
hermeneutical strategy, although we find references to the
Genesis myth in Ezekiel 28.12s, Ecclesiasticus 25.24 and Wisdom
2.23, 24. Romans 7.7-11 alludes to the same complex
mythology, as does 8.19-22.
This is not to demean or disparage the use of extracts from
these scriptures in The Easter Anthem for example, nor
other Pauline textual extracts in liturgical settings, for
example the use of 1 Corinthians chapter 13 in the Cristian
celebration of marriage. But just how indispensable the premise
concerning 'Adam' is to Pauline Christology is not clear. We do
need to note that often the real purpose controlling such
references as we find in Paul to sexual love, if not those to
death, is pastoral rather than systematically theological. In
order to save this tenet of Pauline theology, one would do well
to argue that the real model for the human here is not Adam, but
Christ; and that to understand this is to refuse to invert the
significance of his Christology. In other words, that the
extrapolation takes place from the Christ to 'Adam'. However,
this tactic would entail that the Christologies of
recapitulation do not actually concern the theology of death
whereas clearly they do. In part, the problem arises from the
tendency to interpret the 'beginning' as synonymous with the
past. Countless generations of Christians have done so; I have
inveighed against that interpretation here. As a transcendent
form, space, the abiding logical topic of the creation
story, is synonymous with the not-yet, the future. Another
major issue is that the J narrative does not effectively deliver
a theology of death as such. It will not stand prima facie
in this function.
The interpretation of Pauline theology is vulnerable on just
those very counts that the gospels impute to Christ by right, Eros and Thanatos. It would be
remiss not to claim that these are major weaknesses in Pauline
Christology. Whether or not they vitiate his doctrine of the
person and work of Christ does not concern us. The comments
entered here are in the interests of approaching the disclosures
of the gospel on their own terms, in short those of systematic
theology. Vulnerabilities of yet another kind again are native
to the systematic hermeneutic of death, and for this reason, I
make no effort to construct Pauline theology and that of the
gospel as options excluding each other. Nor have I ruled out of
court the theological significance of the Genesis narratives
seminal to Paul’s anthropological thought. Rather I have
incorporated them into the Eucharistic theology of the New
Testament, all the while stressing the prospective and thus
provisional nature of the earlier narrative. However, if Paul as
it seems, does in fact adopt these stories as reporting actual
historical verities, this fatally flaws his theology of death
and necessarily seriously undermines his Christology. One of the
most vital steps towards the formulation of a viable and
contemporary Christology involves disavowing any
literalist reading of Genesis 3.1s as an aetiology/theology of
death. Mark frames the last of the messianic miracles, The
Transfiguration and so his transcendental Christology,
precisely in this context of the theology of death.
The psychological meaning of the miracles in the light of Eros
and Thanatos highlights the delimiting occasions
of our human existence. As first and last episodes, they define
the centres of gravity of consciousness, and construe the life
course in keeping with the meaning of the crossing 'to the other
side'. These episodes contain the resolution of the problematic
relation between ontogeny and phylogeny. The fact that the
former is capable of repetition, while the latter is unique
expresses their essential disparity. We can see immediately that
Eros, first presented in The Transformation Of Water
Into Wine accords with the Eucharist and with the whole tendenz
of the forms of memory, to repetition, recurrence, plurality or
manifold unity. And indeed with the phenomenon of the
persistence of memory and its ramifications for desire. Here
then is true recapitulation - the unity of the many. Every one
of the forms of memory engenders psychological processes which
demand repetition. In this, they conform to that aspect of the
dichotomy one/many which denotes immanence - the many as one.
Such an expression itself demonstrates if nothing else, the
duplicity of words, and the necessity in philosophical discourse
to circumscribe the same. We have previously spoken of unity in
relation to immanence, and now repeat that this unity is
essentially a compound; it is constituted by a plurality. The
terms from biological discourse, ontogeny/phylogeny, are
altogether more felicitous as expressing the fundamental
disparity between the individual person and the human family - a
distinction blurred by successive readings of the second
creation story as noted. Thus the messianic series as beginning
with the event at Cana, highlights the notion of the (one, or
unified) human family - the phylogenetic. All of the immanent
episodes conform to this anthropological stance - the viewpoint
which sees humans as members of a group, family, class or in
short a phylum.
Aporias
of Mind
1. Ontogeny and Phylogeny
We must enter a rider at the start here. Having already used the
term 'unity' in relation to the immanence of God and as the
complement of identity, we must be careful to distinguish
between its several meanings. Indeed, in Aristotle there appear
to be as many as four different meanings of 'unity'. It is
important not to confuse the discussion of the denumerability of
mind phrased in terms of the dichotomy one/many. For that reason
we have adopted the terms from biological discourse,
ontogeny-phylogeny, to denote the differentiation of the
individual and the collective. This involves the persistent
controversy of the social sciences, the question
whether individuals or societies are prior. It is important not
to confuse the use of the word unity in the context of the
categoreal paradigm transcendence : immanence, with the concept
of the individual, the singular, the unique person. We
extrapolated from the categoreal paradigm to the polarity
identity: unity. If anything, it is preferable to conceive
ontogeny, the being of the individual person, correspondingly
with the transcendent term of that equation, namely identity. We
have tried to indicate how problematic is the concept of generic
identity. In the same formulation of the categoreal paradigm,
identity : unity, unity is not the same as singularity or
uniqueness, and in fact it consists as manifold unity. It
depends upon the existence of plurality. The family, the
economic, indeed the phylum, these pertain to immanence rather
than transcendence. Phylum, though it is usually translated
'family' is used here in the sense of the 'social'; to refer to
groupings of persons. of a magnitude envisioned in the
Transcendental feeding miracle story, The Feeding Of The
Five Thousand. It sits at the centre of the chiasmos, at
farthest remove from the Christological occasions. These
episodes, which we refer to repeatedly in terms of Eros-Thanatos,
denote just the mental and affective processes which are
determinative of human existence as individuated, or
'ontogenetic'.
The significance of the two narratives that begin and end the
messianic series for contemporary Christology can hardly be
overestimated. This is not merely because the Trinitarian
rationale of the messianic series as a whole has not been
acknowledged and consequently the first and last signs of the
series have not been acknowledged as Christological, although
certainly that is bad enough. The value of both stories for the
future of an evolving Christology rests also upon the fact that
their metaphysical foundations are their own, namely biblical.
One of the current criticisms still leveled at the Chalcedonian
Christological formulation of 'two natures in one person', is
just that it lacks scriptural warrant. One other very apparent
advantage offered by the Christology contained within the
messianic series is the fact that it is developed in relation to
the doctrine of Trinity. In order to utilize the Christological
possibilities inherent in the messianic miracles, it is
necessary first to discern their metaphysical tenets. This
requires the synthesis outlined here; some sort of
anthropological doctrine with specific regard to the nature of
the categories expressed by the words soma and logos;
the psychophysical entity and mind as thing in itself. This
study is thus preparatory to an exposition of the Christology of
the messianic miracles.
There can be little doubt, that from the existential point of
view we experience both orders of being, the phylogenetic and
the ontogenetic. We experience ourselves as members of the
phylum, or possibly of several phyla, otherwise every form of
intercourse would be denied us, and communication of any kind
would be proscribed. So language is a key factor enabling the
experience of phylogenetic being. The Feeding Of The Five
Thousand, which denotes acoustic memory, states this very
plainly. No event of the series mentions a more multitudinous
gathering. Even so, we know and experience ourselves
ontogenetically. We know and experience a self inaccessible to
every other self. This ego, the uniquely private 'I',
indeed is part of the meaning of alterity, or otherness. It is
not infrequently the source of human alienation. But every
healthy individual requires experience not just of its kind, but
of itself as placed apart from it, and even beyond it. The
Transfiguration clearly points to the conceptual polarity
of consciousness and Thanatos as a prime, but not the
single source of the ontogenetic self. The structure of the
conceptual pole of mind as well as its nature are first given in
the creation narrative. Conceptual consciousness remains
intimately germane to the theology of death, or Thanatos,
as the principle of individuation. It is certain
that The Transfiguration takes us back to the
story of Days. And that its introduction reproduces the
entire pattern of the creation and hence refers us to the
conceptual forms, correlating them with the six perceptual forms
of consciousness.
Thus The Transfiguration presents the apotheosis of
Jesus, and pictures him like a God, indeed the very God of Day
1, which initaties and enables the entire series of creative fiats.
Hence the logos, mind, becomes the single category which
encompasses the mystery of death and with it, the mystery of
individual identity, ontogeny. The Sabbath as 'rest'
will be a theme taken up and greatly expanded in The Letter To
The Hebrews, which also develops Eucharistic motifs, not the
least through its somewhat strange depiction of Jesus as the
'high priest of the order of Melchizedek'. Thus it amplifies the
Sabbath : Eucharist analogy. This it does in accordance with the
meanings of 'transformation' and 'transfiguration', as they are
developed in the gospels. The doctrine of intentionality is the
next step in elaborating these strands of Markan metaphysics, as
we shall see in the ensuing study which focuses on the
transcendent Christological category, mind. The point here
however, is that existence is sifted through both filters; the
phylogenetic and the ontogenetic. For all that however, they are
dichotomous and incommensurable. The product of the one cannot
be transposed into the other. They remain juxtaposed to one
another, in a relationship describable as processive.
The reason for treating the locus in chiastic sequence of the
Christological and Transcendental miracles as relevant to the
understanding of the fullness of this contrast, reiterates what
was said previously concerning the Christological categories as
paradoxically weighted in favour of transcendence - in the case
of mind or logos - and immanence - in the case of haptic memory
(Eros). Were we to take the categories which similarly identify
the Transcendent (the 'Father'), the resulting contrast would
not be analogous. Space, to be sure, is a pure conceptual form;
it is a true idea which evinces the full weight of
transcendence. But in like manner, so does the immanent category
which instantiates the Transcendent - acoustic memory. This too
is inclined in favour of transcendence. That is, the (pure)
perceptual form does not set up a maximum contrast with the
corresponding conceptual form. In the case of the Holy Spirit,
the same disparity of contrast occurs, for the same reason. The
conceptual form of the symbolic masculine does not exemplify
transcendence to the same degree that the forms space and mind
do. Optic memory (like haptic memory), is fully immanent, wholly
polarised, but the conceptual form, the symbolic masculine, is
not wholly transcendent. And therefore, when taken in
tandem with optic memory, the immanently polarised
structure of consciousness which identifies the Holy Spirit, the
resulting differentiation is not equal to that which logos and
Eros maintain. It is the peculiarly central, sovereign and
co-ordinating role of the Christological occasions which entail
that they evince both transcendence and immanence to the fullest
extent. To recognise this in relation to the meaning of the
chiasmos is an essential part of what Mark seeks to convey to
us.
In the event of referring to the nexus between the texts - the
fact that the figure 'six (jars)' of water transformed
into six jars of wine in the course of the first Christological
Eucharistic miracle refers to the six messianic miracles
themselves, whereas the same term 'six (days)' refers to the
Days of the creation series - there is a clear effort on the
part of Markan theology to resolve the contradiction implied by
the concurrence of the two series. The entities - now perceptual
mind, now conceptual mind - they describe, do not exist in
isolation from each other, in spite of any radical
differentiation. The explication of their consistence will be a
major task for the theology of semiotic forms. Thus the real
purpose of the structure of the two series and the logical
import of these key terms, effectively this one key term,
'six', which identifies the Son, the real task for Christian
epistemology and so for Christology, is to comprehend the
relation between the two polarities. We here simultaneously meet
with the resolution of the dilemma of phylogeny versus ontogeny.
This, the dilemma of how to view persons and societies at the
same time, is none other than the distinction of mind in the
terms provided and the understanding of the relation of the
same.
2. Many Minds or One Mind
We have chosen to refer to this
dichotomy by means of this formulation of a classical
distinction between singularity and plurality, in spite of the
fact that it was impossible not to use the term 'one' in the
previous discussion of ontogeny versus phylogeny. Here then is
a second dilemma which Christology must face. We spoke above
of the provenance of mind as the given of the reproductive
act, which places each one of us within the human family, and
each one of us as sharing the same perceptual polarity of
consciousness. This assures the nature of society as
phylogenetic by definition. Without it, communication and
knowing would seem to be impossible. Whether we should count
this phylogenetic, perceptual consciousness, as being one or
many is a real difficulty. It is common to hear in the
celebration of the Eucharist the phrase 'We being many are one
body, for we all share in the one bread.' or some such. This
is a bare admission of the dilemma which goes nowhere towards
rendering it more comprehensible, though it does express
something of the relation between incarnation and Eucharist.
It also recognises the barest, or least minimal, human form of
congress, the sexual union of male and female, as
taxonomically belonging to the same class of entities. Thus
the forms of sense-percipient memory are each in varying
degrees, classifiable as phylogenetic, even though this
Christological category, which we have referred to throughout
these essays as Eros, is the least so. Haptic memory
as an exemplification of immanence, is equivalent to the most
immanent of the modes perceptual memory, the optic. Yet, the
pure conceptual category mind, logos, is with the pure
conceptual form space, the most transcendent of this class of
radicals of consciousness. The Christological categories thus
bear the burden of resolving the apparent contradiction
between transcendence and immanence. This dichotomy, the
categoreal one which we can encapsulate as the dialectic, or logos,
of identity and unity, is not the same thing as the relation
between ontogeny and phylogeny.
The tendency to think of minds as given denumerable entities
attached to bodies leads directly to the notion that there must
be many minds. There are even mythologies which ascribe more
than one soul (mind) to each individual. This occurs even though
the concept of corporeity itself, the so-called 'great chain of
being' which links embodied existences in a catena, never gives
rise to such an inference. That is, even though the perceptual
polarity of consciousness - soma - is directly
associated with the meaning of the body, and bodies exist
rather than just one body, the fact that the same bodies remain
generated through historical time, and that somatic unity of a
putative kind at least, can therefore be envisaged; even
this has not checked the tendency to assume the existence of
many bodies. The ensuing assumption entails the existence of
many minds at least far as the perceptual polarity is concerned.
Yet we have already urged the generic nature of perceptual
consciousness. The fact that it gives no purchase whatsoever to
individuation prohibits such an assumption. The perceptual
polarity of mind cannot occasion individuation, and this belongs
just as much to the notion of the many. If there are many things
absolutely identical to one another in all respects, in all
properties we cannot speak of there being many at all. This is
one kind, and the said things are one of that kind. The soma
offers no refuge for the notion of a plurality of minds. If
anything it sits better with the postulate of the singular mind,
soul, atman, affirmed in certain Hindu traditions.
The consideration of human experience from the point of view of
ontogeny makes matters worse, for it redoubles the confusion
over the denumerability of mind. It sustains a contrast with
phylogeny according to the manifest difference of identity and
unity. Identity certainly conjures the idea of differentiation.
Indeed this is how we speak of the plurality within God: as of
there being three identities. Whether or not this is the same
thing as a plurality of minds is far from clear. For one thing,
mind is associated in particular with just one of these
identities, persons, the Son. Consequently, we cannot press the
ontogeny/phylogeny dichotomy into the service of the
philosophical question regarding the denumerability of mind.
Here we must warn against any blurring of the conceptual forms.
That is, we must avoid confusing the category of the
psychophysical with that of gender, the categoreal anthropic.
There is every reason why we should not make the error of
eliding the concepts - the body and gender. Both exemplify
immanence to the same degree, but they remain distinguishable as
categories. The same is true of space and mind: both exemplify
transcendence equally, but this is no reason to confuse space
with mind. The real purpose of the comparison of the
psychophysical and gender, is to understand perceptual
consciousness. Gender is paradigmatic for the relation between
forms of memory and forms of imagination. It accounts for the
radically binary structures of perceptual consciousness. So too
with any comparison between space and logos, or mind in
itself. Space is the paradigm for mind in that its three
divergent dimensions illustrate the propensity to identity of
the conceptual forms, and manifests the same propensity to
identity in truly human consciousness.
We said above, in passing, that the contrast subtended by the
non-Christological categories, namely space and the form of
unity male : female, corresponds to the antithesis posited by
singular and plural respectively. Space, the primordial, is
singular and homogenous. There is only one space, and we speak
of it as being uniform. The eschatological category, masculine :
feminine is completely other as the occasion of plurality. There
are many females and males. This was the reason for averring
that generic identity attracts to itself the concept of
number. If the transcendent status of the Christological
category mind is equivalent to that of space, and the immanent
status of the soma, mind : body, is equal to the
immanence posed by the eschatological male : female, then
we cannot urge either singularity or plurality of mind(s). Or
rather in urging both, as complying according to the categoreal
analogies, we are left with an insoluble contradiction.
Humankind - a term in the context of biblical metaphysics which
we now know connects the anthropic to the sub-human forms of
life in virtue of perceptual consciousness - and space establish
a juxtaposition which it is the task of the mind : body to
co-ordinate. Space as primordial and male : female as
eschatological are the logical correlates of the distinction
between the one and the many. But the distinction between
singular and plural can not apply to the differentiation
between logos, conceptual mind, and soma.
Neither singularity nor plurality fits either.
We should resist any attempt therefore to conceive mind in terms
of a totality - a plurality consisting of members of one kind.
There are no minds as pertaining to the many humans which there
obviously are, for these humans are gendered, they exist as a
kind, and their identity as generic is that of a totality, a
collective, a phylum. These many humans are not the same thing
as many minds. Nor on the other hand is the exclusive solution
offered by the concept of a singular mind, logos,
acceptable. If the former solution confused the boundary between
the anthropic and the psychophysical, the latter portrays mind,
logos, in the image and likeness of space. We put that
space is comparable to mind, such that its own
tri-dimensionality it owes to mind, the reason for claiming the
paradigmatic use of tri-dimensionality in order to model or
illustrate mind iconographically. This is the obverse of saying
that mind, logos, is like space.
We may then say provisionally that mind is neither singular
which space is, nor a totality of generically identical
entities, engendered humans. Thus in spite of the fact that mind
like space is wholly transcendent, it is not singular, as not
being begun; and in spite of the fact that soma is
comparable to the form of unity male : female as
consistently immanent, neither is it plural. Suppressed or
not, one or the other of these are the premises that usually
accompany the way in which we think about mind. Both are
repudiated by Markan doctrine. In the end then, we are left with
the non-denumerabile nature of mind. For just so the dichotomy
singular/plural cannot be predicated of the soma
or of the logos. It is categoreally inapt for both the
psychophysical unity and for mind in itself. Where it serves, is
the categoreal distinction between the archaeological and
eschatological - to wit, the spatial and the anthropic. As there
is but one space, there are many humans - males and females. But
we cannot logically posit either singularity or plurality
exclusively to mind(s).
The concept of an infinite or a transfinite, is precisely
non-arithmetical, and the only way to resolve the question of
the denumerability of mind. That is to say, the appropriateness
of the concept of the transfinite to the category of mind
emphasises the non-denumerability of the latter, the fact that
it is non-quantifiable. The very word logos expresses
something of this kind. Mind is such that in adding to it, it is
not more than it would have been otherwise, and subtracting from
it, it is not less. We should also caution against geometrical,
that is spatial, and arithmetical metaphors for the transfinite.
Neither space nor number can convey the concept as concept, mind
qua mind. The only concept which answers the question of
the denumerability of mind is that of the transfinite or
infinite understood in terms of the two perspectives (vectors)
of perceptual consciousness - memory and imagination. At this
point, we can conclude that the form of serial order which meets
the exposition of mind - logos - in Genesis and the
gospel, is that of an infinite series, without beginning and
without end.
Given the association between time and mind in The
Transfiguration, and the connection between this and the
various Christological titles - 'first and last', 'beginning and
end', 'Alpha and Omega' - it would seem that the idea of
seriality offers the best means of conceiving the
non-quantifiable nature of mind. The creation narrative is the
primary exposition of the doctrine of logos or mind, and
its use of the concept of serial time initiates the frame of
reference necessary for understanding the Christological titles.
The sense in which this narrative itself embodies or at least
epitomises 'beginning' - if not 'end' - cannot be ignored. So
too with the assimilation of this series by the gospels, in the
form of the stories of the seven messianic events. Those texts
function accordingly as representations of 'end'. But our grasp
of the affinity of transcendence between mind and space should
be tempered by the observation that mind unlike space, does not
begin. (Equally, we should say, that unlike the eschatological
category, nor does it end.) And if the creation narrative
identifies one entity with the 'beginning', it is precisely
space - 'the heavens'. Here the relation of either
category to God, in short one of provenance, is the
criterion needed to distinguish both forms of the Christological
categories from those entities with which they enjoy affinity in
terms of transcendent and immanent status. Space is begun or
created by God, whereas mind is God. This is one major motive
behind John's great prologue, the distinction between the thing
created - space - and the person who is dissimilar from all
things created or begun:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was
with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with
God; all things were made through him, and without him was not
anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was
the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the
darkness has not overcome it. (John 1.1-5).
Conversely, the eschatological category, male : female which
stands as the paradigm for the constitution of perceptual
consciousness (soma), is synonymous with 'end'. There is
an intimation of the force of this synonymity, this correlation
of the anthropic to the 'end' which also serves to distinguish
from it the psychophysical, in Mark's account of the exchange
between the Sadducees and Jesus on the resurrection:
Jesus said to them, "Is not this why you are
wrong, that you know neither the scriptures nor the power of
God? For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor
are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven." (Mark
12.24-26).
This explodes the whole premise of Jesus' interlocutors
concerning the resurrection and the permanence of the male :
female form of unity.
The reason for dismantling these presuppositions
concerning mind is to pave the way for its exposition as
elaborated in the gospel. That the doctrine of mind is the
paramount pedagogical objective of the gospel is certain. It
cannot be approached with any of the presuppositions, wittingly
or unwittingly, we have just indicated. The habit of conceiving
mind, and also bodies, either in terms of the singular or in
terms of the multiple, the one or the many, is proscribed by the
peculiar nature of the Christological categories as they remain
the focus of the gospels. The logos, or what is the same
thing, transcendent mind, is not one, nor is it many. It is
non-denumerable, and as such the concept of the
transfinite is due to it. We can clearly affirm the essential
difference of mind qua God from both space : time and
from male : female, since the latter as creaturely, entities
mark beginning and end respectively and bear the 'image and
likeness' of God, but remain distinguishable as creaturely. Mind
has no beginning; nor does it end. It is God. This is the reason
for emphasising its non-denumerability and for distinguishing
it, and affirming it as the focus of both those entities which
consist in proportion of analogy to it.
It is also the reason why the doctrine of incarnation satisfies
an aspect of the essential relatedness between mind and soma.
If all three forms of unity are analogously related, there must
be some sense in which even though it is not begun, and even
though it does not end, the same Christological event
participates in what the primordial and eschatological
categories share. I do not mean finitude, but the sense in which
both of these things are generated. There is some difficulty in
averring that the anthropic male : female form of unity, is
'created' in the precise sense of 'begun', given the logic of
the creation narrative. Although it never explicitly announces
this, the inference is that the synonymity between this category
and 'end' is as real as that between space and beginning. This
would seem to preclude the legitimacy of speaking of male :
female in precisely the same way as speaking of space : time,
namely, in the context of 'beginning'. The suggestion that the
anthropic form of unity is somehow already present within the
state antecedent to 'beginning' if it is not actually identical
to the same is one that offers itself to consideration. Perhaps
this is why the introduction includes a reference to the 'Spirit
[wind] of God... moving on the face of the waters...' These
ideas await an more scrupulous exegesis of the creation
narrative and the wider discussion of the various forms of
serial order which reformulate the Christological titles. What
is clear, is that to speak of the anthropic as created in the
sense of 'having been begun' proscribes the logical and
theological difference between space : time and the same. We can
use the term 'generation', or 'production', to cover the concept
of their dependence on God and hence to ensure the
differentiation from God of the primordial and eschatological
categories.
Wherever we look in the series of Days and the series of
messianic events, the pattern is the same. The archaeological
and eschatological episodes are both similar and dissimilar.
They are dissimilar for espousing transcendence and immanence
respectively, but the content of the narratives brings this
essential opposition into significant difference. Thus in the
beginning series, Day2 and Day 3 share the motif of water, and
the complementary Day 5 and Day 6 comprise the creation of
creatures which reproduce sexually. In the gospels, the two sea
miracles, and correspondingly the two miracles of loaves posit
the same fundamental logical pattern; that of primordial and
consequent, or beginning and end, this time, within what is
identifiable generically as end. For this reason, pursuant to
the affinity between transcendent, three-dimensional, space and
the conceptual polarity of mind, we put the primordial and
eschatological forms in relationship of two axes establishing a
plane, rotating about the third, the Christological polarity of
polarities, represented by the 'nest of ambiguities', the
'juncture', 'adjunction', or more succinctly by the sign ':'.
So too, it has been necessary to discuss the conceptual
categories from a point of view that is decidedly arithmetical.
It has been necessary to articulate the precisely appropriate
and inappropriate ways of grasping the entities before us, to
clear the path ahead, namely the theology of semiotic
forms. These greatly assist in setting out the relationships
subtended by the various entities enumerated in the various
stories of miraculous feedings as in the form of the narratives.
They do not rely on number as we might have expected.
That both geometry and mathematical modes of understanding are
immediately germane to the epistemological enterprise will
occupy us when we consider the epistemic forms - modes of
understanding inter alia - proper to the conceptual
forms. In other words, the conceptual forms, and the perceptual
forms, generate specific instances of cognitive and appetitive
intentionalities, the discussion of which lies ahead. That the
concept of space proposes geometry, or something very much akin
to it, as the means of apprehending it, goes without saying. I
have alluded to the analogous kinship between number and the
anthropic. But our concern is not with geometry or mathematics
as such.
The 'eternal generation' of the Son of which the Christian creed
speaks, thus marks the comparability of the Son as mind (logos) to these two other
entities, as does the doctrine of incarnation. The former
denotes the relation of the Son to the One Transcendent God,
whereas the latter satisfies the profound connection
between that mind which God the Son is, and all bodies, the
physical, the somatic, the corporeal - in short, all of those
things which the corporeal itself apprehends and apprehends as
itself by means of occasions of sense-percipience.
Page updated 01.06.2022.
Copyright MM Publications.
© All rights reserved, including international rights.