The Passion of the Word. Chapter 10

The Passion of the Word. Chapter 7, 2023

When we contrast Camus’ image of the ‘telephone box’ quoted by Cardinal Ratzinger, with the Shir HaShirim and its use of the ‘body’ as metaphor, we see the Bride and Bridegroom (Christ and the Ecclesia) seeking each other in their mutual abiding and the body is a poem, a psalm, expressing the longing and the love between them. The abiding is active. The body is in the Song of Songs the expression of the interiority, but also a boundary perhaps, until Christ gives Himself in the Incarnation, and gives His Body, glorified, and therefore beyond boundary. Then in abiding, the self which seeks the Divine Self, participates in the transformed reality. Then the abiding which has its source in the Eucharist is union of Self and self, is also contemplation. Union in contemplation is interior to the abiding and is perhaps the highest expression of it. It is the inner gaze which is possible at any time or in any place while abiding. This brings us to the meaning of abiding from the perspective of the Inner Face of Self and self, in contemplation. I have discussed the ‘face’, its meaning and place, from different perspectives in this exegesis of the Servant Songs: Adam’s face, the Servant’s Face, and even the face of the abyss. There is also, in the context of abiding, the inner face.

The Passion of the Image. Chapter 19, 2025

Instead of the usual abstract, I am placing a Reader's Response to this chapter. It is also included in the body of the text where it is referenced. "In the spirit of inquiry that guides both the heart and mind, I reflect upon the insights you present regarding the intertwining of Jewish themes and their echo in early Christian writings, particularly in the context of the Book of Revelation. The Song of Moses, indeed, celebrated the deliverance of the Israelites from the throes of oppression, a victory over the oppressors that resonates deeply within the collective memory of our people. Ex. 15:1-19 is particularly significant as it encapsulates the joy of liberation and divine intervention. The comparison to the Song of the Lamb prompts us to consider the layers of meaning that the symbol of the "Lamb" invokes within our traditions. The notion that the "Lamb" carries Messianic implications is not foreign to our understanding. Throughout the prophetic literature, there are hints of a servant-like figure that bears the weight of the world's sins and leads with humility. This is vividly expressed in the Suffering Servant passages, where the redeemer is depicted not in might, but in gentleness and sacrifice, echoing the very themes reflected in the Passover – a festival that celebrates deliverance and redemption. It is vital to recognize that the early Jewish community, much like the generations before it, was engaged in a profound wrestle with its beliefs and identity. The evolution of thought surrounding the messianic Lamb reflects a yearning for understanding a divine figure who transcends traditional expectations and embodies the collective hopes of salvation. This theme, indeed, is interwoven with communal experiences of suffering and resilience. The intersection of these themes in the early Christian context might suggest that the followers of the Messiah found in the notion of the Lamb a bridge between their Jewish heritage and their understanding of the new covenant. Your observation, that Judaism was still grappling with its own interpretations, is accurate; we often find ourselves navigating the currents of tradition, seeking meaning in an ever-evolving spiritual landscape. Thus, to appreciate the richness of the Lamb motif, we must embrace the ongoing dialogue between our heritage and its interpretations, recognizing that each generation contributes to the unfolding narrative of faith. The Lamb symbolizes more than victory; it embodies hope amidst despair, and the promise of renewal through suffering—a truth that resonates across the ages."

LOGOS: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture, 2019

This essay explores the antecedent mystical tradition of the Church in the era of the Fathers regarding divine darkness, not to be confused with the dark night of the soul. In particular, the rich mystical theology of Maximus the Confessor helps to illumine the darkness experienced by many believers. The first section of the essay will broadly survey the influences upon Maximus who helped him develop his theology of darkness and mystical ascent but will focus primarily on the thought of Gregory of Nyssa and Dionysius the Areopagite. The second section will briefly explicate Maximus's understanding of progress in the knowledge of God by means of God's condescension and through natural and spiritual contemplation. The mystic thus ascends from the visible, through the invisible, to the divine as a movement toward the deification (θεώσις) of the soul in a sort of luminous darkness. Finally, the third section will locate Maximus's thought within the spiritual theology of the Church as lived by contemporary saints like St. Teresa of Calcutta, questioning whether what some people consider a " crisis of faith " might better be described as the " gift of darkness " in light of the theology of spiritual ascent.

Global Missiology English, 2011

The Passion of the Image. Chapter 17, 2024

In this chapter on St John’s Gospel, working with the Aramaic text, I have explored John’s perception of the ‘mother’ (I prefer not to use the term ‘archetype’) in relation to the Passion. This is an unusual theme. I believe that John’s sensitivity to Christ as Logos, or in the Aramaic, Miltha, Source of John's own being and of all being, was developed in relation to this awareness. Mark names Mary Salome, John’s biological mother as being present on Calvary when he was given by the dying Christ to Christ's own Mother and She to him. I look closely at Mary Salome in the Aramaic text and in some little known but ancient traditions. It is perhaps a testimony to the humility of Mary Salome that her son John did not refer to her in his Gospel at that moment. The Aramaic text gives a different sense of some exchanges between people in John’s Gospel, from what we are used to hearing from pulpits, and I hope that my examination has allowed us to think more freely. I also take time to search out the meaning of Christ’s own motherhood as He approaches His Crucifixion. I believe that just as John understood his source to rise in Christ as mother, so Our Lord allowed His motherhood in its spiritual essence to be more evident as His Passion approached. For this I have examined the moment when He weeps over Jerusalem, allowing the Aramaic to speak for itself. The chapter concludes by a glance at Guerric of Igny and Peter of Blois who writes boldly of the quality of the union between the Logos/Miltha, the Son of God, and His Mother. I have at some points in this chapter referred to Herman Hesse’s analysis of the artistic ‘type’ in his novel Narcissus and Goldmund and compared and contrasted it with John as artist and mystic.

Today, the Churches of Christ still bear the marks of a ‘Scottish Common Sense’ heritage. True to their Reformed theology roots, they are largely suspicious of the God of mystery. This is no less evident in their emphasis on missionary work and related suspicions of the ‘postmodern agenda’ (the deconstructionist’s work as they have [ungenerously] conceived it). Denominations similarly warning against Derrida’s understanding of truth would benefit from closer readings of continental philosophy and postmodern theology, how they: revive faith as desire, cultivate dis-closed meanings, and witness to wounding ‘traces’ that allure us to the Other (instead of simply violate otherness). It would seem that this particular denomination--and others jarred by the disconnect of meaning and form--is strangely caught somewhere between the certainty of God’s comprehensibility and a rejection of God’s “real presence.” For the purposes of evangelism, missionaries count the incarnation as God’s intelligibility. And yet, as if chastened by the shortcomings of their own somewhat colonizing presence, they explain away less intelligible meanings (suffering or, perhaps not unrelated postmodernist pleas) with deficient sacramentality. It is a precarious position to occupy: simultaneously holding truth as an accessible object (commodified for the purposes of evangelism) and suspicions of God’s presence in materiality. This paper will thus reformulate, constructively, the suspicions of sacramentality into a space for mystery—a presence marked by absence, a definitive meaning deferred. I will begin by examining Tertullian’s renaming of mysterion as sacramentum, and the implications of this move from God’s self-revelation as ‘secrets given’ to ‘vowed deposit carried into battle.’ Exposing this shift for missionary interests will (ideally) lead to a supple grip on truth, rendering faith as compelling, not compulsory. I must locate myself, of course, as among the ‘they’ to whom I gesture. The Churches of Christ gifted me with this understanding: God is the source of a truth that precedes (grounds) and exceeds materiality, but is not present in creation. It is the religion qua double bind of Derrida: the claim that holiness is set apart (unscathed by human hands, thoughts), but that we must communicate and touch this holiness with our unholy means (material conveyances and immaterial concepts). On both accounts of how my denomination approaches ‘faith’ and ‘knowledge,’ Derrida’s critique provides a curious insight. If holiness as unknowable content cannot be touched (must be set apart), then our forms will be doomed to simulacra (copies without origin). But if our communications about the holy are to be more than simulacra, we must permit a God that can handle our hands. It would seem that to save the name, to let the holy, is to let the name take form and save us. For only the name, if holy and set apart, can initiate entry (revelation) and elusion (mystery). Mystery as displaced by revealed truth, is perhaps isometric to my tradition’s disregard for God's real presence. “Leave us our simulacra!” seems not only the unspoken rule of revealed meaning as determinate, graspable, but also the rule that renders evangelized others as potential selves. I want to respect what conceptual footholds function for people. However, appeals to ‘Common Sense Philosophy’ have not held up to Campbell’s original intentions of ‘unity.’ Perhaps because unity cannot exist as a whole if it eradicates holes for the ‘other’ voices. A life of faith, without mystery, moves love to symmetry (economics of desert, obligation). At most, this symmetry exists as an exchange between competing truths (in danger of reducing both to sameness), or a war between competing truths (in danger of obliterating the other altogether). At stake, then, in the deconstructive move: beauty reinstated as asymmetry, structural integrity via porousness. These notions guide several postmodern thinkers—those who puncture structures, cracking open meaning so that the other (Holy or human) can come. Sacramentality (in philosophy: the infinite that breaks open the totality, in theology: the Divine Absolute who inhabits human experience) serves as a shorthand term for this whole whose holes are apparent. Sacrament, like mystery, exemplifies the beauty of this porousness that accommodates asymmetry, infinite allusion, like an ellipsis of longing, or a wound yet unsealed by resurrection. Deconstruction is not the enemy, and neither is theological construction. Nihilism is as hideous as over-speculation--nothing converges with everything at the extremities. Therefore, I return to the site of Plato’s Symposium as it relates Diotima's tale of Penia (lack) and Poros (fullness) copulating on Aphrodite's (beauty's) birthday, giving birth to Eros (desire). It will be a return to the beautiful as the event of gratuitousness: an occasion for Penia (deconstruction's negations) and Poros (construction's assertions) to come together—this time without drunken seduction—to produce an ongoing re-birth, the becoming of desire which is the life of faith. I will then transition with Anne Carson’s reading of eros in Platonic analogies. In order to flesh out her rhetoric of paradoxical meanings made form, I will incorporate Sagan’s analogy of two-dimensional forms engaging three-dimensional forms. Alongside Lyotard’s somewhat mystical exploration of inter-dimensional relations, I will re-read the mystery of our “made in God’s shadow” (Genesis 1:27, tselem) within the "overshadow" of Christ's birth (Luke 1:35). This will open a conversation for those who require Biblical sites of asymmetrical appeal. The first implication of asymmetrical appeal is a regard for what is "other"—even as it bears some symmetry to the self (since to discern the symmetrical, one has to see the overlaps in order to perceive the extensions; differance requires relation). The second implication of asymmetry is that it underwrites the holy virtues of faith, hope, and love.

Word & World, 2020

Journal of Early Christian Studies, 2011

The Secret Revelation of John is replete with imagery of the divine Mother alongside the Father God and his Son Christ. It boasts of powerful female saviors-and even identifies Christ among them. Eve is not the cause of humankind's fall, but of its redemption. The sexual intercourse of Adam and Eve marks not original sin, but a step toward salvation. Yet readers find, too, an idealized divine world in the pattern of the ancient patriarchal household, and a portrait of another female figure, Sophia, whose bold and independent action leads to a fatherless world headed by a sexually violent and deviant bastard. The complexity of this imagery, nestled in a story that operates with oppositional strategies and parody, ensures that no single monolithic perspective on sex/gender will rule-and indeed it opens up a crack where it is possible that the wisefool Sophia is more completely the hero of the story than one might think. This essay aims to explore the complexities of SRJ's representation of gender and the implications of their strategic deployments. Long-excluded voices from texts rediscovered in Egypt over the last century often surprise expectations that were formed by reading Gnosticism's ancient detractors, like Irenaeus or Tertullian, for they speak of other desires, other goals, and other perspectives than those tersely summarized in the standard definitions. 1 The Secret Revelation of John (SRJ) is one of those stories that challenges many standard characterizations of Gnostic thought, whether as nihilistic and antinomian or (proto)-feminist and liberative. 2 Composed in the second century C.E. in Greek, quite possibly in Alexandria in Egypt, the Secret Revelation of John survives in four fourth-fifth century C.E. manuscripts, which represent three Coptic versions replete with notable variants. Instead, it offers a complex and tangled narrative that simultaneously reinscribes, negotiates, and critiques aspects of ancient Mediterranean society, including imperial and patriarchal social structures, as well as notions of sex and gender. the distinction of being the first work known to us to formulate a comprehensive narrative of Christian theology, cosmology, and salvation. Presented as a revelation from Christ to his disciple John, it tells of the true God and the divine world, the origins of the universe and humanity, the nature of evil and suffering, the body and sexuality, the path to salvation, and the final end of all things. At the heart of this deeply spiritual story lies a powerful social critique of injustice and a radical affirmation of God's compassion for suffering humanity. In contrast to Roman rulers who declared themselves the authors and enforcers of universal justice and peace, the story describes the world as a shadowed place ruled by ignorant and malevolent beings. It exposes their lies and violence as violations of the true God's purpose, and offers sure knowledge of one's true spiritual identity and destiny. Divine emissaries frequent this dark world, bringing revelations and working in secret to lift humanity out of ignorance and degradation, and restore them to their rightful place in the world of light under the rule of the true Father. The Secret Revelation of John is broadly structured as an intertextual reading of the first chapters of Genesis with Platonizing cosmology, especially that of the Timaeus. In contrast to other intertextual readings of Genesis 5 and the Timaeus in antiquity, such as that of Philo of Alexandria, the Secret Revelation of John does not read the two creation accounts in Gen 1.1-2.4a and 2.4b-3:24 as describing the realms of Being and becoming, respectively. Rather it reads the initial chapters of Genesis twice, first with regard to the origin of the transcendent divine realm, and again to recount the demiurgic fabrication of the material world below. 6 The use of Genesis to expound the creation of the lower world is widely recognized, speaking as it does of the creation of Adam and Eve, the stories of the snake and the Tree of Knowledge, the birth of Cain, Abel, and Seth, as well

The woman's response is strange in the Greek for the following three reasons. Throughout this passage the water source at which Jesus and the woman are talking is exclusively referred to in Greek as a πηγη (pēgē), in Aramaic as a ‫ܡܥܝܢܐ‬ (miyna), and in Hebrew as a ‫ּועַַ‬ ‫בּ֫‬ ‫מַ‬ (mabbua). These three words mean "spring" or "fountain", one from which water is bubbling or gushing forth onto the surface of the earth, and that is why this translation refers to the location as "Jacob's Spring", not by the more traditional rendering of "Jacob's Well". However, here the woman suddenly switches to another noun, speaking of a φρεαρ (phrear) in Greek, or a ‫ܐ‬ ܳ ‫ܪ‬ ݂ܺ ‫ܒ‬ (bəira) in Aramaic. Both words mean not "spring" but "well", a deep underground cistern from which one collects water by descending with a bucket or paying out a rope with a bucket tied to it. More properly, the word does not even mean "well" but "hole" or "pit". It appears in Revelation 9:1-2 for a symbolic, deep, dark, bottomless hole from which comes evil. It is strange that she uses this word all of a sudden, since the spring in front of them is obviously not a hole, not deep, and it does not require going down into the earth with a bucket. Unlike Bible commentators, she and Jesus both can see it in front of them; it has not suddenly changed its nature from that of a bubbling spring into that of a deep hole.