The Fall, Before And Beyond Paul

THE FALL, BEFORE AND BEYOND PAUL: A POST-POSTLAPSARIAN THEOLOGY OF DEATH?

INTRODUCTION

This essay follows upon four decades of reflection which began with my admission to an Anglican religious community in Adelaide, South Australia, in 1980. I had for many years previously entertained wishes of this kind. At that particular point in my life, I was nearing twenty-eight years of age, and subsequently to the death of my mother's mother, I had decided the time to enter a monastery was ripe. I remember quite clearly just when and where I made that decision: February the 2nd, The Feast Of The Purification, or Candelmas as it is known to Anglicans. I had been sitting in Belmore Park, Railway Square, Sydney, and on the same afternoon I attended the Eucharist at Christchurch St. Laurence. The account in the gospel of Luke which serves as the basis of this feast, mentions the offering of two turtle doves; in accordance with which, I resolved that my monastic sojourn should last two years. At that time, there were three different Anglican religious communities for men in Australia. I inspected each of them, and finally entered The Society Of The Sacred Mission, the basis of its charter being theological education. In the second year there, I was summarily enrolled in theology at the Adelaide College Of Divinity. I am, to this day, extremely grateful for the experiences which my stay there fostered, not the least of which, was my decision to continue my vocation by writing theology. The rest, as they say, is history.

'Rest', albeit of another, if related kind, is the direct focus of the present essay, as of much metaphysical belief, and religious observance. I soon discovered other members of the same community whose motivation for joining was identical to my own - bereavement following the death a close family member. Two of the men there had had brothers who had died in their youth. This certainly gave me pause for reflection, for the concept of fraternity is foundational to such orders. (I must mention, as among other things in its favour, that SSM included women.) Upon that discovery I remember telling my then 28 year old self that 'We need a theology of death.' I now see this need as ever at the psychological core of Christian belief, just as its prominence rests at the heart of almost all religious and/or metaphysical understanding, a fact to which the final miracle narrative in the gospel of John pays tribute. The visitor statistics to this site confirm the priority this issue provokes for interested parties. It has been said that the chapter on eschatology is indeed a large one in the book of theology, Christian or otherwise. Equally, it has been said 'Grief is a long time.'

The same can be said of philosophy and theology; no one becomes a philosopher or a theologian before the age of fifty. I confess to having a foot in both camps, but since I take my cues from 'holy writ', I deem myself first and foremost a theologian. I confess also, that although now, being on the wrong side of seventy years of age, I am more or less temerarious enough to proffer an answer to that need. By which I mean that none of us is ever sufficiently advanced in wisdom nor just as necessarily, also in years, to undertake such a task. Even so, I feel obliged to make the effort. The recent death of my own mother has been a catalyst in this respect.

I take the present opportunity to pin to the mast my own theological and philosophical colours. These have often proved chameleonic over time, and continue to do so up to the present day. Nevertheless certain tendencies are constant. I no longer consider myself Anglican, nor do I espouse any Christian confessional stance. My own theological education was never trammelled by concessions co-opted by such powers due to their sponsorship. It was pursued after only one year, independently of any particular church, Anglican or other, true to James Barr's proposition, that there is no confessional, biblical theology. But there is such of course, given the essential pluralism of the gospels. Matthew, for example, is a quite Roman Catholic affair, due to its inherent character; alternatively we may say, that Roman Catholicism confirms the theological idiom native to that particular gospel. It is premised, as is the (world?) religion of Judaism, on the function of will as a fundamental epistemic and psychic constituent of human consciousness. (The same affinity between Roman Catholicism and the gospel of Matthew applies in the case of Anglicanism, albeit there, to a difference in degree and kind. That is unsurprising, granted the historic route of that confession, in which both the Roman Empire and Roman Church played seminal roles.) But this is offset by the gospel of Mark; and furthermore supplemented by those of Luke and John. I do not think the pluralism of the gospels as a totality, has ever been fully appreciated or understood. Their genuinely variant, and apparently competing claims have much to teach us concerning the unity of the church. They also function as a vital point of departure for the experience of faiths other than Christianity incumbent on all communities of faith in the third millennium. Thus, in conjunction with the Pneumatology we encounter in The Apocalypse, they provide the basis for a 'Christian' theology of religions as inseparable from the same, ecclesiology.

My own early and ongoing forays into foreign denominational and theological fields, were inevitably set in motion from my role as a church organist from the age of fifteen; this lasted until the age of fifty. For the most part, organists are by nature ecclesiastically promiscuous. They tend to be pre-ordained to seek and find instruments to their liking, irrespectively of confessional boundaries. In my own case, indifference to party lines inclined me, from an impressionably early age, to stray into denominational pastures far afield from those of my kith and kin. Such waywardness has always seemed to me justifiable in light of the accidental time and place of one's birth, its evident arbitrariness. I have worked in various churches in the capacity of organist: Roman Catholic, Anglican, Presbyterian and Uniting Church. Given that my paternal grandfather was a member of the Greek Orthodox communion, I have also made it my business to become acquainted with that particular liturgical tradition. Alas, it does not include organ music or instrumental music of any kind. An early educational background as a schoolteacher of foreign languages only confirmed this obliviousness to confessional fidelity.

Concerning the philosophical, I confess readily to aversion towards so-called 'existentialist' philosophies and theologies. Quite early in my intellectual life I was exposed to the former in the study of French literature in training as a schoolteacher. I believe that they have vitiated our sense of the phylogenic being in their intemperate emphasis on the role of the individual. Individuality obtains in community, not in despite of it. The heroically anti-heroic antics of a Meursault or a Roquentin do not answer to this reality. Unsurprisingly then, given that language is intrinsically public, intrinsically 'phylogenic', not a single existentialist, to my knowledge, has provided anything in the way of a theoretical understanding of language or semiotics in general. So too, Heidegger's mitsein appears as little more than a sop to the Cerberus of social psychology. These deficiencies were soon seen to be addressed in ensuing and various scholarly trends touting the label 'post-structuralist' and 'postmodern'. Nonetheless these too fought shy of any logically organized attitude towards philosophical psychology, abjuring the 'metanarrative', and methodological system. To which they remain just as ostentatiously antagonistic as the existentialism in which they were rooted. None as such, is more than a congeries of various 'isms', or 'wasms' as the case may be, wanting in coherence, consistency, and credibility. By this last term I mean credible content; that is, content which may satisfy in us the will-to-believe, so that, to paraphrase C. S. Peirce, thought may not cease, but rather, at least 'rest'.

In the present ('eschatological') epoch, since August 6th and 9th, 1945, humankind lives under the mantle of possible total self-annihilation. Scientific-technological 'advances' in the field of weapons of mass destruction have assured this as an authentic potential. Never before in human history has this been so. This is a simple fact, with which evolutionary psychology has flagrantly failed to reckon. Much like Freudian hypothesization concerning the death instinct, Heidegger's insistence of the psychological function of Thanatos, equally utterly fails to account for such a development. 'Being-towards-death' after Hiroshima/Nagasaki has assumed a collective dimension as well as the prior ontogenic dimension which always already obtained. Arguably, this phylogenic aspect is more real than its ontogenic counterpart, not that I do doubt the latter. It is as real as the role of Eros qua desire in forging a level or order of being, that is decidedly ontogenic, that is, wholly personalised, wholly my own as this particular and no other individuum. But since the second projected volume of Sein Und Zeit (1927), which might have addressed this issue, never appeared, Heidegger's metapsychological treatment of death, like Freud's, remains 'pre-apocalyptic', sc. virtually pre-modern. This deficiency might have been compensated for by others, more or less sharing the same outlook, such as the French existentialists already mentioned; but it has not been.

I am not the first writer to have observed the unnerving rapport between The Transfiguration and the fateful events in world history just noted, which ushered in the era in which we now live: the cloud, the voice, the blinding light, the compelling fear of the disciples in the presence of that particular epiphany, and above all, its relation to death. Nor am I alone in having noted an equally unnerving fact, to wit, the celebration of the event in the Christian West until fairly recently: August 6th. All three miracles of virtual transcendence, which bear unmistakable relations to the resurrection narratives, particularly those in the gospel of John, are cast in the same register of foreboding. Their tone is resolutely set against that of the three complementary Eucharistic miracles, as heralded by the recurrent motif of crossing 'to the other side'. But of the three narratives of this class, The Transfiguration itself, is the least mindful of the phylogenic. Its proper accent on 'The Son, The Beloved' is also the accentuation of ontogeny, one's own life and death as disjunct and distinguished from that of the many, the 'tribe', the collective. The text of John 1.14-18, which concludes the logosode, is sometimes cited as a parallel of sorts to this miracle narrative, missing from John's gospel. In which, he refers to 'the Word become flesh' as 'the only Son from the Father', and 'the only Son, who is in the bosom of the Father', (monogenou~v, monogenh\v, John 1.14, 18, emphases added.) So too, the miracle as recorded, is striking in its difference from the other two of its kind, for only three of the disciples are mentioned as witnesses, and these are afterwards enjoined to secrecy for a time (Mark 9.2, 9). Both other miracles of virtual transcendence include the twelve as the body corporate.

The general stress on the ontogenic mode of 'existence' over and against its phylogenic dimension, vitiates much existentialist metapsychology. In effect, Rousseau's concept of la volonté générale is very much closer to, and more compatible with the biblical metapsychology of the will. Will remains the basis of the social contract, as we note from the first, in the Torah. The mitzvot are universally applicable to the adherents of Judaism, in which they do not differ substantially from secular law itself, since it is by 'common' law that we all must abide or suffer punishment. In effect, Torah does indeed provide much of the genealogy of secular law in the Christian West. Law and language go hand in glove in this matter. (I shall argue for the comparable psychological role of Torah as the fountainhead of nomological, deductive reason in 'Judaeo-Christian' cultures; that is, for its originary function in the development of western science; in both cases, for good and ill.) By and large then, the existential person remains a thoroughgoing individual, with minimal relational ties to others; alone in remotest isolation and splendour, subject to the bidding of a 'personal', evidently free and possibly solipsistic will. The early manifestos of existentialism were almost uniformly, inherently arelational if not non-relational, in their understanding of communal existence. And if love be the uniquely active ingredient in one's Christian experiences, as is recommended to us by the Johannine corpus, it is difficult to envisage its reconciliation with existentialist creeds given this proclivity.

Apart from Karl Jaspers, who sets himself adrift from theology from the start, championing a vision of 'transcendence' uncommonly void of any reference to the Judaic or Christian theological traditions, similarly to Heidegger in his treatment of conscience and guilt, it is difficult to comprehend the appeal this school of thought has had in the last century, given its endemically characteristic hostility to theology. There remains Gabriel Marcel, for whom mystery stands as the ultimate, explanatory strategy. I shall say more in this vein, due to my conviction that the 'mystery of the family' - and the symbolic feminine - and the 'consubstantiality' shared in varying degrees by its members, are obvious matters in any consideration of the relational nature of consciousness a propos of the death of those members; and that its exposition transcends relegation tout court, to the status of mystery.

A common feature of existentialism, indeed, seems to be the abdication of the quest for clearness. M. Marcel is there to tell us that mysteries must not be degraded into problems. We would like to suggest, in opposition, that the business of philosophy is with problems and not with mysteries. If the apostles of clearness have sometimes been trivial, this is not because they have confined themselves to problems but because they have not approached the most important problems. Even theology, although it is concerned with mysteries, is concerned with them only to the extent that it is possible to put precise questions about them. To the wholly mysterious the only possible homage is silence.

There are atheistic existentialists and religious existentialists, Catholic existentialists and Protestant existentialists. It is difficult to see what all these can have in common except, perhaps, a manner of approach to their very different destinations. One faint clue offers itself on the superficial level: this is that there does not appear to be any really cheerful existentialist. (The Meaning Of Existentialism, D. J. B. Hawkins, Blackfriars, London, 1951, pp 3, 4.)

The popularity of existentialism as a legitimate philosophical reference point, if not an actual basis for theology, generally seems to have depended upon the works of Kierkegaard, the prime mover. In spite of his psychological disquisitions on faith, ultimately, his is just short of a counsel of despair, and finally vaporous as to both genuine philosophical and theological content. I am in agreement with Brand Blanshard's estimate of his significance for philosophy. I find him, if not the European Romanticism whose approaching, dying breath he represents, unsympathetic in the extreme to systematic, theological statement. The surfeit of rhetoric and deficit of logic one encounters in Kierkegaard, though not on a par with that of Nietzsche insofar as it is not quite as vicious, is nevertheless the same. Witness for example his attachment to the story of Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son, Isaac. In the final analysis, one suspects that like Tertullian, Kierkegaard believes precisely because it is absurd. Such are the intellectual vagaries of existentialism.

The primary objection I will raise against existentialist weltenschauungen must concern time. Here then, I have Heideggerian existentialism in my sights. I will argue for the primacy of time and eternity as the dialectic most profitable to philosophical-theological discourse. Existentialism generally regards the infinite, the atemporal, the timeless, along with essence rather than 'existence', as problematic, to say the least. These it considers nugatory, metaphysical and so decadent, constructs. On the contrary, I put that without at least a notional rendition of the eternal, temporality itself is meaningless, or as Whitehead has said, 'feeble minded'.

My own preferences in this matter look to process philosophy, beginning with Samuel Alexander and A. N. Whitehead. That said, I dissent thoroughly from the pursuit of metaphysics according to ontology. Epistemology remains for me the first philosophical frame of theological reference. Here I pursue the formulation in the prologue of the fourth gospel, of The Son as 'the Word'. Thus both doctrinal domains, that of creation, and that of salvation, are requisitely epistemological because they are precisely Christological. My own understanding is that time (space : time) and mind (mind : body) are inextricably bound together. This warrants the accentuation of epistemology over that of ontology, in pursuit of a specifically Christian and biblical metaphysics.

That said, I note certain shortcomings of process philosophy, which stem for the most, from its epistemology. All too few of the examples of sense-perception which Whitehead cites, are other than that of sight; thus there is no comprehensive account of the 'physical' pole. In his defense, I should add that the terms 'feeling' and 'prehension' which predominate throughout his conceptual scheme, and which approximate to the use of 'intentionality' in the present work, certainly imply haptic sentience. (For a more detailed consideration of this connection see Geir, Nicholas, Intentionality And Prehension, at Religion Online.) Further to Whitehead's own epistemology, there is finally no abiding and lucid portrayal of the 'mental and physical poles'. Biblical metaphysics from the very beginning makes for a surer and more cogent understanding of the same. I refer to them in terms of transcendence and immanence; but furthermore, in terms of the nuanced difference between pure 'and' virtual transcendence on the one hand, and that of actual 'and' virtual immanence on the other. This nuance is of decisive value. (In this regard, see, Lawrence, Nathaniel, Morris, Whitehead's Philosophical Development: A Critical History Of The Background Of Process And Reality.)

It is not entirely clear just what to understand by these Process philosophical terms, 'mental and physical poles', nor how precisely to assimilate them to biblical metapsychology. (Their integration with the description of 'conceptual prehensions' as of two different 'species', namely, 'subjective' and objective', makes for further confusion.) The obvious means of the assimilation of the former would be to equate the mental pole with pure conceptual forms, and the physical pole with forms of actual immanence, that is, perceptual memory. The former are related to the latter externally, and the latter to the former internally. So whereas the relation of the pure conceptual form space to the perceptual form acoustic memory is announced in the acoustic semiosis as the perfect fifth, say that of Cb-F#, the relation of the actual perceptual radical to the pure conceptual radical is articulated as the perfect fourth, say that of F#-Cb, its inversion. But this leaves out of consideration the aconscious, with its restructuring of the six elementary categories, divisible according to the first level application of the categoreal paradigm, transcendence : immanence. Thus pure conceptual categories are represented by flattened tones relatively to their analogues, and the lowest of the two ends of the dodecaphonic scale(s), whereas categories of actual immanence are represented by the higher, hence the tones sharpened relatively to their analogues.

It is these analogues which introduce real nuance and proscribe any hard and fast simple relation between the 'poles' as dichotomous without remainder. This then means that the real equivalence to Whitehead's systematic discussion of the bipolarity in God rests upon the second level application of the categoreal paradigm. It therefore takes into account all twelve categories, and not merely the six which are unambiguous in the first instance concerning the same paradigm. Hence the physical pole of the conceptual form space, would be acoustic imagination; and the conceptual pole of acoustic memory would be the conceptual form of unity space : time. In this way, the systematic account of God's bipolar nature in process theology is tantamount to the one-to-one, analogous correspondence between those entities which combine pure and virtual transcendence on the one hand, and actual and virtual immanence on the other. The acoustic semiosis maintains this division with equal clarity; in every case the differential corresponds to a semitone: Cb-C in the example of space as conceptual form relative to acoustic imagination as perceptual imagination, and F#-F in the case of acoustic memory as actual immanence relative to the conceptual form of unity space : time, a category of virtual immanence. There are indeed multiple instances of relations between these poles, and there is no need to discount the previous example as one such. But its outstanding because primary incidence, which first requires examination, and as expressed in the occurrence of the two hexadic whole-tone scales of the dodecaphonic series, is that of the congruence of analogous categoreal entities. In what follows I discuss this briefly vis-à-vis the Peripatetic axiom.

Further caveats should be entered a propos of process theology. Neither are any subtle distinctions made in order to account for the past, which is simply one massive agglomeration, as is the future, unless these be taken as part of the discussion of 'modes of perception' - an unfortunate choice of terminology. That is, unless they are part of the discussion of symbolic reference and its transference from 'causal efficacy' to 'presentational immediacy'. Nor can I accept its confidence in mathematical and/or geometrical (topological) method as fully availing metaphysical exposition. The method of 'extensive abstraction' remains both bloodless and dubious by my lights, in any attempt to decipher the space : time relations of events or 'actual occasions' in relation to consciousness. I do not accept that these relations are susceptible of such a method, given my hermeneutic. Their disclosure is primarily the business of the acoustic semiosis. Granting these caveats, of all trends within philosophy of the last century, process thought remains the most congenial and available to theology.

Here too I vouch for the likelihood that the greatest single innovation in theology in the last century was the interfaith movement. Liberation theology might be an equal claimant for the same, and its encompassing agenda stands it in good stead. Part of that must be feminist theologies. Their foremost, guiding model however, at once places political, if not ideological considerations on the same footing as special revelation in particular. That is to say, they are not theological in the first instance. And since special revelation, the two canons, comprise what must be for me the primary resource for theology, theological intent becomes the primary, governing objective. Hence I reserve the right to criticism of feminist biblical criticism. The examples of whose failures I cite in the following I do not take to be representative of feminist liberation theology. Nevertheless, the wholesale failure of feminist theologies to establish a viable relation to the interfaith movement, which I see as its responsibility entailed by the biblical concept of 'symbolic feminine', once again manifest in The Apocalypse, must surely be reckoned in terms of failure. There is nothing new in such a claim. At the conclusion of the gospel we note the final presentation of the theme of the failure of the disciples, this time extrapolated to the three women who venture to the tomb of Jesus on the day after the Sabbath. Which is by way of saying that in general terms, women are no better than men, nor are men any worse than women. But that is not saying much for either:

And entering the tomb, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, dressed in a white robe; and they were amazed. And he said to them, "Do not be amazed; you seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen, he is not here; see the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going before you to Galilee; there you will see him, as he told you." And they went out and fled from the tomb; for trembling and astonishment had come upon them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid. (Mark 16.5-8.)

That said, the first appearance story in John contradicts Mark's account:

Mary Magdalene went and said to the disciples, "I have seen the Lord"; and she told them that he had said these things to her. (John 20.18.)

Liberation theology has looked to the Exodus tradition for inspiration, if not justification, a text which it consequently privileges. The relation of this same tradition to the genocidal conquest of Canaan, that is, herem in that 'theology', even if only by implication, I take to be problematic in the extreme. If from bondage we are set free, then for what are we set free? With freedom comes responsibility. If the agency of that same freedom is simply for the oppression of the other, then it has been in vain. Christ's own exodon, of which he speaks with Moses and Elijah in Luke's account of The Transfiguration (Luke 9.30, 31) is certainly of a different order from that which follows the 'exodus' in the Tanakh.

Liberation Theology in general appeals to the exodus as scriptural warrant, and rarely if ever addresses this contradiction of its ends and means, implicit in the biblical texts. The same lacuna is even stranger and more incongruous in the case of specifically feminist, biblical theologies of liberation, since we take unjust warfare to be a typologically masculine expression of evil, first presaged in the fratricide of Abel by Cain. (Even though women may now serve in certain areas of the militaries of some nations, conscription, where it prevails, with few, that is, anomalous exceptions, remains overwhelmingly the allotted fate of males. Details are available at The Pew Research Centre. For an argument countervailing the accepted wisdom of this social more see Benatar, David, The Second Sexism: Discrimination Against Men And Boys, pp 104-121.) Further to the point regarding Liberation theology and the conquest of Canaan, there are those, I am one such, who take the story of herem to be the most onerous of the 'texts of terror', or as Paul Anderson has put it, 'the greatest theological and hermeneutical problem in the Bible.' (The Destructive Power Of Religion: Violence In Judaism, Christianity And Islam, Volume 3, Chapter 3, Genocide Or Jesus: A God Of Conquest Or Pacifism? p 31.) The difficulties surrounding any credible Christian, biblical eschatology would seem to pale in comparison to those which the stories of herem pose for the ethics of belief, and so I leave them to Liberation theologians.

Why mention this here? Because in what follows I adduce the conceptual category female : male, to be of paramount importance in framing a Christian eschatology, and because of the identity political wars waged by partisan feminism in the last century. Their legacy is a minefield which needs to be cleared. Also because I believe the same category, the anthropic, male : female, largely informs the perspective of the author(s) of The Apocalypse, a book very clearly concerned with the phenomenon of both masculinity and war. It has become a sometimes insufferable commonplace of the hermeneutic of suspicion, to allege misogynist gender bias in certain of the New Testament narratives. (I mention for instance, in passing, that I recently attended a Eucharist in which the homilist on the parable of The Lost Son asked in all seriousness, why the mother of the two sons was not mentioned? The inference being of course, that she had been sidelined by male, chauvinistic author(s), not for example, that she might have taken up and run off with another man - heaven forfend! The very worst sermon of this kind which I was ever forced to endure, alleged that the portraits of Herodias and her daughter in Mark's version of The Death Of John The Baptist similarly, malevolently traduced those two women. It is not such personae, whether fictional or real who have been traduced by this kind of eisegetical and ideological nonsense, but the evangelists themselves: Honi soit qui mal y pense. In some cases, it is almost certain that their very own sources must have relied upon the testimony of women. I wish to emphasise for the sake of the record, that all actually immanent and virtually immanent modes of intentionality pertain to the symbolic feminine. This includes of course knowing, the predominant intentional idiom of Markan theology.)

I accept as the fundamental keynote of the Tanakh, not the Exodus tradition, but that which first confronts us; the theology of creation and the doctrine of Transcendence, such as we find in stories of 'beginning', and that of these two narratives, the first, Genesis 1.1-2.4a, is of primary importance. The justification of this claim is the notable fact that the messianic series, attested in various quotas in every one of four gospels, is recursive to the P creation narrative. The alternative and equally valid means of the representation of this fact is that the P narrative is precursive to the messianic series. These two narratives of themselves establish the integral relationship of the two canons to one another.

Feminist, biblical theologies have been no less grossly deficient in terms of a theology that is truly biblical, systematic, and philosophical than the efforts of the theology industry in general, dominated as it was, until the middle of the last century, by a predominantly male scholastic élite. The legacy of the latter was the academically orthodox and modernist consignment of certain of the biblical narratives to the dustbin of mythology, chiefly among them, the aforementioned miracle narratives of the gospels, and the P creation narrative - my own long-term interests - and hence the retreat from any approach that is both hermeneutical and systematic; and the subsequent lack of any genuine commitment to an interdisciplinary approach. A similar doom befell many of the resurrection appearance stories, with even less intellectual justification, since their evaluation mutatis mutandis routinely forwent any systematic engagement with the presentation of the extensive epistemology of perception in the very same miracle narratives, and hence, likewise the corresponding epistemology of the conceptual pole in the P narrative of creation. At the same time, continued acceptance of the 'Babylonian captivity' of the academy in general, and the Lutheran academy in particular, to a Pauline creation 'theology' of a sort that does not merit such dignification, including doctrines of anakephalaiosis, maintained its sway in theological circles of both sides of the aisle.

The first step towards a theology of death is then to disabuse ourselves of the imputation to humankind of death. That is, it calls for a revisioning of Paul's elevation of the J creation narrative, particularly in this particular regard, as well as those who subsequently followed in his footsteps, beginning of course with Augustine. Before this narrative, is the first, the P story of 'beginning'; and beyond it, The Apocalypse, both of which will be instrumental in dismantling our being held hostage to an inadmissable misconception. It surpasses understanding that texts of the calibre of the latter should have been overlooked as well as deference due to the gospels in this matter. The mere face value of the content of the P creation narrative alone should have militated against this; the fact that it refers to the doctrine of imago Dei, as well as its profound Christological and Pneumatological content, ought to have guaranteed its theological worth. Its Trinitarian component, which is inseparable from its primary semantic, and its clear-sighted and egalitarian understanding of the sexes, mark it as of outstanding and fundamental importance to the theological enterprise.

The focus of this essay is eschatological, which is why I mention feminist, biblical criticism here and my chief disaffection for it: viz. that I have not encountered any feminist, biblical, theological reconstruction seeking engagement with religious traditions other than Christianity. Moreover, I see the specifically feminist theological programme as necessarily obliged to consider interfaith theology, particularly where the eschatological is at issue. The categoreal paradigm, immanence : transcendence sorts eschatological time into two epochs, and to these the Pneumatological-eschatological categories correspond analogously. Those Pneumatological categories are symbolic feminine~optic memory, and symbolic masculine~optic imagination respectively. Thus the chief theological innovations of the last century ought to have been those of interfaith and feminist theologies in tandem. In the essay, I shall advance the reason for such avowals. Indeed, I shall consider the first incidence of a theology of gender - or 'sex' if you will - in the canon. There it occurs, in the text just mentioned, the P creation narrative, with one of the hallmarks of Christian revelation, namely the creation of humankind 'in the image and likeness of God', the doctrine of imago Dei, just as it does with the other defining feature of Christian theology, namely Christology. This alone could be considered sufficient to ensure the theological value of that narrative but a fortiori the same text is, so I will argue, a classical and indispensable source of Trinitarian doctrine, precisely because of its Pneumatological and Christological tenets.

Additionally, my particular stated disaffection extends to general dissension from the widespread tendency of academic theology to downplay, if not to denigrate, interdisciplinary approaches. That is because the three textual cycles, Genesis 1.1-2.4a, the messianic series, including the accounts of The Lord's Supper, and The Apocalypse, the theologies of creation, salvation and sanctification respectively, are essential to the formulation of Christian doctrines which remain foundational to the faith. As an integrated whole, they systematically recapitulate doctrines of imago Dei, incarnation, and Trinity. What if anything can the structural semantic of the P narrative and its analogical complement, the messianic series, intend if not Trinitarian doctrine? Is there some other way to understand the insistent formulation of structural components as part and parcel of the meaning of both texts, and furthermore, that of The Apocalypse? Why 'dogmatic' theologians have failed to address this first and foremost text in the light of that very doctrine is profoundly incomprehensible. A modicum of intellectual curiosity regarding the same doctrine, a fundamental tenet of Christian belief, and theological expertise in at least equal measure, should have first prompted scrutiny of those texts by reason of the obvious fact that numerical and structural details carry much of its semantic.

Thus I claim that the foremost texts in the canons which conspicuously avow Trinitarian theology are Genesis 1.1-2.4a in the Tanakh; and in the New Testament, the analogous, messianic series. Then there is The Apocalypse as a whole. All of these narratives bristle with numerical details and structural features, the more conspicuous of which are the tetradic and heptadic forms, first delivered in the P creation story. The Trinitarian hermeneutic of both that narrative and the messianic series has been given in the very first two essays of The Markan Mandala; I do not repeat it here. What bears repetition is to note the failure of the members of 'the guild' soi-disant to realize even a notional grasp of its theological potential for what are fundamental tenets of Christian doctrine: namely, Trinity, incarnation and imago Dei.

That the P creation narrative like the messianic (miracle) series have very largely fallen into theological desuetude except for critical purposes, the governing intentions of at least some of which are ideological, or at best, in the first instance non-theological, is a benchmark of the current state of biblical theology. On the other hand, that the Pauline theology of anakephalaiosis where the supposed aetiology of death is concerned, and other dogmata semming from it continue to hold their ground in many quarters, is further evidence of the same. From a personal point of view, the foreseeable future of biblical theology seems therefore quite bleak.

In any redress of this situation, the obvious and best place to begin must be with the gospels, and with the messianic series in particular. It stands mid-way between those first and last parts of the canon as a whole to which I have referred, even if its intervening locus is sometimes blurred by its closeness to The Apocalypse. Reassessment of the centrality of that very narrative cycle to Christian metaphysics must be the first step towards amending what I can only consider a parlous oversight in contemporary scholarship. In conclusion I feel reasonably bound to rephrase an excerpt from the letters of The Apocalypse addressed to the church(es), and to rescript the admonition addressed to the disciples in the gospels as follows:

And to the angel of the church in Academia write:

Καὶ ἐπελάθοντο λαβεῖν ἄρτους, καὶ εἰ μὴ ἕνα ἄρτον οὐκ εἶχον μεθ' ἑαυτῶν ἐν τῷ πλοίῳ. καὶ διεστέλλετο αὐτοῖς λέγων, Ὁρᾶτε, βλέπετε ἀπὸ τῆς ζύμης τῶν Φαρισαίων καὶ τῆς ζύμης Ἡρῴδου. καὶ διελογίζοντο πρὸς ἀλλήλους ὅτι Ἄρτους οὐκ ἔχουσιν. καὶ γνοὺς λέγει αὐτοῖς, Τί διαλογίζεσθε ὅτι ἄρτους οὐκ ἔχετε; οὔπω νοεῖτε οὐδὲ συνίετε; πεπωρωμένην ἔχετε τὴν καρδίαν ὑμῶν;

ὀφθαλμοὺς ἔχοντες οὐ βλέπετε
καὶ ὦτα ἔχοντες οὐκ ἀκούετε;

καὶ οὐ μνημονεύετε, ὅτε τοὺς πέντε ἄρτους ἔκλασα εἰς τοὺς πεντακισχιλίους, πόσους κοφίνους κλασμάτων πλήρεις ἤρατε; λέγουσιν αὐτῷ, Δώδεκα. Οτε τοὺς ἑπτὰ εἰς τοὺς τετρακισχιλίους, πόσων σπυρίδων πληρώματα κλασμάτων ἤρατε; καὶ λέγουσιν [αὐτῷ], Ἑπτά. καὶ ἔλεγεν αὐτοῖς, Οὔπω συνίετε; (Mark 8.14-21.)

The Apocalypse remains the primary Pneumatological member of the New Testament canon, along with Acts. The plethora of fourfold and sevenfold verbal chains and the explicit references to a variety of sevenfold supernatural agencies, spirits, golden lampstands, angels, 'spirits of God sent out into all the earth', heads of the dragon, heads of the beast from the sea, and above all, the series of seven seals, in connection with the four serial forms of order, letters, seals, trumpets and vials, these all harmonize with the rudimentary mathematical content of the Pneumatological, Eucharistic miracle story.

No satisfactory theology of the Eucharist can afford to ignore the numerical references in all three Eucharistic miracle narratives. The demonstrable naiveté and consensual complicity of academe in which is nothing if not egregious, and the best indication of the inadequacy of current Pneumatological doctrine in particular. For example, I recall attempting to discuss with a member of the professorial hierarchy of the hallowed halls of theological learning at Durham University, something of my interest in the feeding miracle narratives. He not only baulked at my use of the epithet 'Eucharistic', but refused it altogether; learned ignorance and academic arrogance at their best. There are thirty-eight occurrences of the verb eu)xariste/w in the New Testament:

Matthew uses it of both The Feeding Of The Four Thousand and of the cup containing the wine which was drunk at The Last Supper, (Matthew 15.36, 26.27); Mark uses it of the recapitulation of the details of the feeding miracles, (Mark 8.6), and of the cup (14.23); Luke uses it of the bread at The Last Supper (22.19); John, perhaps most interestingly of all, since his gospel lacks a formal equivalent to The Last Supper, uses it in the discourse The Bread Of Life (6.23), in reference to the prior feeding miracle. I have detailed comparable instances of terms common to the Eucharistic miracle and The Last Supper narratives in Miracles As Metaphysics. The intellectual swagger of this particular representative of professionalized theology, was breathtaking in its ignorance and arrogation of authority over the issue, in spite of a transparent lack of knowledge. It convinced me, if of nothing else, then of the pointlessness of 'a higher degree' so-called, after the completion of 'the ordinary degree' so-called, at The Adelaide College of Divinity, the theological school of Flinders University, where I enjoyed similar experiences. Its own Procrustean division of theology into compartments, systematic, philosophical and biblical, which outlawed as methodologically transgressive my own interdisciplinary approach, did likewise. Well might Mark's Jesus advise us to '" ... beware the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod."' And well might he rebuke the disciples for obtuseness, and hardness of heart:

I have not found one work which dealt in any way with the figures of these miracles. Commentaries which are intended to explain the Gospels line by line suddenly skip over entire verses when they come to the miracles of the multiplication of bread and fish.

A clear example of what may be termed resistance to understanding is provided by the first rate commentary by Father Raymond E. Brown to the gospel of John in the Anchor Bible. He includes a presentation in table form of all details of the two miracles of multiplication, lining up in parallel columns against each other the two miracles according to each of the four gospels. Every single item in the accounts is compared, but the figures in the miracles are left out. The same blind spot is to be found in similar comparisons by other scholars. (Stecchini, Livio C., A History Of Measures, Part IV: Hebrew Measures, They Have Eyes And Do Not See.)

The P creation narrative consists of two distinct and differentiated halves, in the ratio 3 : 4. (This too was a bone of contention between myself and a member of the aforementioned college, one who had had no real interest in the creation narrative, like so many of his colleagues, and who yet argued against my postulate, at just that point when I was considering the value of further and so-called 'higher' academic pursuit, and subsequently decided against it. Just then, I had already been occupied with the narrative for almost two decades.) It is important to insist on this formal aspect, since it coincides with the inclusio, 'the heavens and the earth'. It ratifies the differential of the categoreal paradigm transcendence : immanence. The Sabbath belongs formally to the second half of the story, and resoundingly answers to the second relatum of the incipient inclusio, 'the heavens and the earth'. We see the repeated instance of the cipher four as signifying 'the earth' antithetically to transcendence, in The Apocalypse. The narrative as a whole divides in this manner as does the analogous messianic series. The formulation of its rubrics into pairs demands recognition of which fact. The seven ordinals which establish it as a sequence, must be viewed in tandem with its twofold division, which means that given the unique status of 'the' Sabbath as not 'a' day of creation as such, the series is both evenly and unevenly divided into two halves. The hexameron is explicitly symmetrical, and the entire sevenfold series is necessarily asymmetrical. This postulate emphasises the two basic Christian theological propositions regarding the threefold identities in God, and simultaneously, their unity. That is, it stresses the natures of God as transcendent 'and' immanent.

This same mathematical ratio, that is, logos, is pertinent to the discussion of axiology, because it permeates the creation narrative, and the discussion of the judgment of value in human and other than human consciousnesses. I will argue that this distinction, which amounts to that of identity : unity, serves the theology of semiotic forms in its clarification of the two relations; the relation of God to the world, and the relation of the world to God. The relation of these same two relations is coequal with the mutual inclusion of Sabbath 'rest' as Thanatos and Eucharistic feast as Eros. In other words, there is a formally propositional, that is, logical differentiation between the two halves of the creation narrative, explicitly announced in its initial merism, 'the heavens and the earth'. This comports with the same configuration of the messianic series; the Eucharist belongs to those three miracle stories I refer to as 'Eucharistic'; thus there are in all four 'Eucharistic events', not three. The equivalent of this ratio 3 : 4, identity : unity, is applicable to the morphological character of each narrative sequence; P creation narrative and series of messianic events.

As propadaeutic to Eucharistic theology, axiology and epistemology coexist indissolubly. This is the reason for their conjunction in the P narrative in the form of God's own repeated judgement of the creation '"And God saw that it was good.'", in conjunction with the configuration of the seven rubrics, each according to the light-time motif, introduced in the narrative of Day 1. A theology of death qua theology of Sabbath-Eucharist must include engagement with the two narratives, 'beginning and end', in their entirety. I will argue that their hermeneutic entails the distinctive quality of cognitive over conative intentional modes, such as we see in the J creation narrative, as preliminary to the messianic series, along with the theology of 'virtual' immanence in P which includes the Sabbath-rest rubric.

My intention here is not the detailed exposition of a full-scale eschatology, though I wish to insist on the overarching breadth of what is outlined in the texts. My objective will rather focus on the development of a coherent and speculative account of the significance of cognitive forms of intentionality for eschatological doctrine. This means precisely the relevance that the four epistemic (or 'cognitive') modes of awareness maintain in respect of the sanctorum communionem, 'the communion of saints'. They belong part and parcel to the idiomatic specificity of the gospels themselves, indistinguishably from their fourfold soteriological perspectives. The Sabbath-Eucharist complex can only be grasped in relation to the doctrine of intentionality as part of logos theology. And the link between proximal pasts/proximal futures and the present, just which occasions of these four various episteme circumscribe, these multiple occasions of knowing and belief in both orders, conscious and aconscious, is immediately proper to the description of the relation between the living and the dead, forged by the resurrection. Thus my chief concern is the interregnum, the state between the end of one's earthly existence and the resurrection from the dead. This interregnum no less than the present state of the world, is characterised by the wholly relational character of human consciousness. This includes consciousness in its most pesonalized, ontogenic, cast; that of conscious belief and aconscious belief-in-desire.

There is no such consciousness without actual consciousness of death itself. This puts in part, if it does not answer in whole, the rationale for the existence of death in the first place, contra the Pauline reading of the J creation story. Freud divined the substantial contribution of Eros to human consciousness, but barely scratched the surface of its partner, Thanatos. Ex hypothesi, the 'reason' for death according to the narratives, regardless of any aetiological assumption, is that quintessentially human consciousness itself is mired equally in both psychological realities, Eros and Thanatos, hence, Eucharist and Sabbath. Such awareness, the nexus between death and the twelve categoreal entities which depict the logos as well as human consciousness in its particularity, ensures human communication. And this 'communication' comprises the sanctorum communionem. (The Christological status of the 'first and last' events of the messianic series, Transformation Of Water Into Wine and Transfiguration as marking the corresponding stages of life a propos of this dichotomy, Eros-Thanatos, does not demean the instrumentality of the remaining episodes of the series in the same process; the general trajectory of birth to death, nor their function as markers of equal importance. Each is representative in this respect; each is a type grafted to the integrity of time and mind.) That same human 'reason' or consciousness, also ensures the unity of persons ('identities') in God. In this much, the created order is more than a mere contingency for God.

Sub-human consciousness does not compare to it in this respect, even granted the evolutionary continuity of the sub-human and human realms, as well as the allowance such consciousness makes for the same unity. The exclusivity of bearing the imago Dei granted to humankind in the Pneumatological rubric, Day 6, testifies to this fact, in combination with the axiological strand of the narrative. Thus if the world itself is the provenance of the unity of God's threefold identities, that unity in its fullness is the accomplishment of human consciousness, specifically found in its realization of the three forms of value, the true, the good, and the beautiful. These tenets square immediately with the general fourfold disposition of the gospel as a mirror of the temporal passage of the annual cycle, to which the eschatological visions of both Ezekiel and The Apocalypse advert in symbolic, that is 'archaeoastronomical' form.

My chief purpose here will be to give an account of the soul - h) yuxh/ - as suggested by the epigraph from Heraclitus. In keeping with that epigram, many will deem this a fool's errand. My response is then it must follow that we never say anything theologically intelligible either of our selves - our 'souls' - or of God. This term, h) yuxh/, is coterminous with 'mind', 'consciousness', 'self' and other synonyms, unless otherwise stated. Any account of which account must reckon with not merely the destiny of the soul, but necessarily also its origin. Hence the references to Christ as 'the heavenly bridegroom', 'the Beloved', 'Eros'. That is, I believe that the Eucharistic forms of intentionality we first encountered in the J creation story, conscious desire and knowing, and their aconscious correlates of virtual immanence, faith-in-desire and will-to-believe respectively, form just as essential a part of the same purpose as the Sabbatical modes; those of conscious will and belief, and their respective correlates of virtual transcendence, knowledge-of-will and desire-to-know. The rapport thus sustained by Eucharist and Sabbath, Eros and Thanatos, not only as theological narratives, but also as ritual enactment, is first given in the dominical saying immediately prior to the first messianic miracle, the promise made to Nathanael by Jesus that he would see '"... heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man."' The Son of man figures in both messianic Christologies; initially as 'Eros', and finally as 'Thanatos'. These portraits must influence any understanding we have of not just the P creation narrative, but the secondary J story also. This has dominated 'creation theology' up to the present day, and to a degree that seems barely intelligible, to the bulk of which I cannot subscribe. It is as true to allege sex (Eros) as the cause of death, as it is to allege death (Thanatos) as the cause of, that is reason for ('logos') sex. If there is one simple lesson to be learned from the J story it is this: no Eros sans Thanatos, but equally no Thanatos sans Eros. Neither phenomenon is chronologically nor ontologically prior to the other. They are each both cause and effect of the other, locked together in im/mortal embrace.

I do not concern myself with beliefs about the last judgement, heaven and hell, and the resurrection of the body from the dead, although these issues certainly belong to eschatological doctrine. My appointed remit is precisely what and how we may intelligently conceptualize consciousness in its relation to death, by which I mean of course, physical death, the death of the body. This stems from epistemology qua Christology, first announced in the Day 1 rubric of the P narrative, where light and darkness, just as for the beginning of the gospel of John, are metaphorical constructs intended to convey the same reality, consciousness, the soul and so on; whichever name we give to the entirety of categoreal entities set out in the narrative(s) of 'beginning and end', and their ensuing intellectual and emotive operations.

1. PAUL ET AL AND THE FALL

Paul's Writings are not the products of theological reflection, and can thus not be interpreted theologically. There is no such thing as a theology of Paul, although many New Testament scholars have written theologies "based on" Paul. The letters individually and as a group do not have theological integrity. They are written from out of fundamental religious/pastoral concerns. (Hendrikus Boers, The Problem Of Jews And Gentiles In The Macro-Structure Of Romans, Svensk Exegetisk Årsbok 47, Eisenbrauns, Uppsala, 1982, p 195).

As a community changes, all such rules and canons require revision in the light of reason. The object to be obtained has two aspects; one is the subordination of the community to the individuals composing it, and the other is the subordination of the individuals to the community. Free men obey the rules which they themselves have made. Such rules will be found in general to impose on society behaviour in reference to a symbolism which is taken to refer to the ultimate purposes for which the society exists. It is the first step in sociological wisdom, to recognize that the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur:––like unto an arrow in the hand of a child. The art of free society consists first in the maintenance of the symbolic code; and secondly in fearlessness of revision, to secure that the code serves those purposes which satisfy an enlightened reason. Those societies which cannot combine reverence to their symbols with freedom of revision, must ultimately decay either from anarchy, or from the slow atrophy of a life stifled by useless shadows. (A. N. Whitehead, Symbolism: its Meaning And Effect, Barbour-Page Lectures, University of Virginia, 1927, p 88).

One may major in a dizzying variety of departments in our modern multiversities, for example, but attempting synoptic depth in interdisciplinary studies goes against the grain of institutional support, faculty interest and academic reward. It is even taken for granted that interdisciplinarity in principle, cannot be "deep" - thus must be "shallow" and not worthy of respect. Research support for faculty is governed by similar values embodied in analogous grant-controlling institutions, and the system is perpetuated from generation to generation. The refusal of a dominant methodology to recognize its general limitations or to acknowledge the need to advance beyond its familiar mainly successful techniques is what Whitehead calls "obscurantism". Even now the winds of modern obscurantism seem steady and strong. (Frederick Ferré, Being and Value: Toward A Constructive Postmodern Metaphysics, State University Of New York Press, Albany, 1996, p 279).

It is here [in relation to "The Fallacy of the Perfect Dictionary"] that the philosopher, as such, parts company with the scholar. The scholar investigates human thought and human achievement, armed with a dictionary. He is the main support of civilized thought. Apart from scholarship, you may be moral, religious, and delightful. But you are not wholly civilized. You will lack the power of delicate accuracy of expression.

It is obvious that the philosopher needs scholarship, just as he needs science. But both science and scholarship are subsidiary weapons for philosophy.

Philosophy is akin to poetry, and both of them seek to express that ultimate good sense which we term civilization. In each case there is reference to form beyond the direct meaning of words. Poetry allies itself to metre, philosophy to mathematic pattern. (Alfred North, Whitehead, Modes Of Thought, Macmillan, The Free Press, 1938, pp171-174).

The Easter Anthem is well known to Christians, many who can recite it from memory. Like the three canticles from the gospel of Luke, it has become staple fare of liturgical celebration for divergent confessional stances. And like those canticles, so I will argue, it is art. Indeed I will characterize Paul's 'theologizing' as a corpus, generally to be of the same or a similar ilk; that is to say, rhetorical. My issue is not with the fitness for purpose of art, or of rhetoric, to theology, nor certainly to liturgy, but with Paul's literal adoption of the imputation to an individual Adam (and Eve?) of death stemming from the second creation story (Genesis 2.4b-3.24):

I have no argument here with his vision of the resurrection nor of the central place it must hold in Christian belief. What most exercises me is the aetiology of death which he appropriates wholesale from the second creation story, as historically veridical and I am very resolutely choosing my battles in this matter. I will argue that to take mythopoietic truths for historical verity is to commit a pathetic fallacy, one that is now more than ever, unsustainable, and that a more thorough and intelligible, and indeed, more credible, theology of death is available to us in the gospels and the Tanakh to which they they too recur. The excess attention abidingly afforded the J creation narrative and its result, the continued neglect of the P creation narrative, have seriously skewed Christian theology, since I take concern with death as a primary topos of religious consciousness. I will advocate that both Paul's anthropology and Christology are called into question by his almost exclusive appeal to the second creation story, a story which is clearly secondary to the first.

1 Corinthians 15.21-22 is not the only occasion evincing Paul's literal reading of the story of 'the Fall' as foundational to his doctrine of 'recapitulation' (a)nakefalaiwsiv):

Other segments of Paul's letters echo the same. His most extended treatment of the notion is contained in Romans:

My first purpose shall be to characterize Paul's 'theologizing' - a term I use in order to highlight his lack of a systematic approach. I shall rely on the works of specialist scholars in the field here. I state plainly at the outset, that I do not find Paul congenial, and that I believe that the treatment and mistreatment of his writings have usurped upon the primacy of the gospel, particularly in relation to the theology of death. I mean of course, the four canonical gospels of the New Testament. This is less his fault than it is of those who came after him, and who perhaps unwittingly, lionized him, because in search of a theology of the New Testament. They begin notably dogmatically with Augustine, and continue until, and comprising, the second wave of the Reformation, that is, including the Reformed tradition springing from Calvin, and beyond. One of the earliest, and certainly the most outspoken of modern exegetes to draw attention to the character of Paul's theological approach is William Wrede. He is unsparing in his criticism as the following demonstrates:

Wrede adds a footnote concerning Paul's evident elision of the concepts of the race and the individual Adam:

Innumerable problems arise from Paul's willingness, not only to accept at face value the second creation story regarding the aetiology of death. It is equally problematic to see the narrative's focus as 'Adam' - I shall argue that it should be Eve - and then to fail to discriminate between a singular being, Adam, and the human race as a whole. Indeed such a manoeuvre solves certain problems for him. It answers in part at least, the question of the relation of the two canons, first, Tanakh, to last, the New Testament. That is, it ostensibly contextualizes his Christology and soteriology in relation to the doctrine of creation, although this is combined with the Exodus tradition. The Easter hymn, consisting of compiled texts from two of his letters, itself melds Paul's theology of death with yet another narrative from the Tanakh, as noted, by means of references to the 'sacrificed' (e0tu/qh) 'paschal lamb' (to\ pa/sxa).

The Pauline Christology of recapitulation might serve thus to affiliate creation and salvation, if we could regard Paul as a systematic theologian. But can we? Here 'context' is in fact a key term in more than one way, for I will agree with 'contextual' readings of Paul that the impetus behind his Christology should be viewed in terms of needs arising from its pastoral settings; and that its primary 'theological' function is to meet specific conditions incumbent on his pastoral guidance irrespectively of any theological procedure that could be considered systematic.

Johan Christiaan Beker places the approach to the 'catholic' Paul historically within the setting of the rise to prominence of scripture at the time of the Reformation:

Other examples could easily be added to these. But as far as I know, the central concern of this essay, which is the 'theology' of recapitulation we encounter in both Romans and 1 Corinthians, lays outside of their purview. This sees Adam as the central player in the drama of the Fall. Are to we assume then, that this personal name covers both male and female, and both the individual and the collective? Does it follow from the creation of Eve from Adam's 'side', according to the J narrative, that we understand Eve, and so womankind in general, thereby sublated by the same means? Might this indeed be how Paul himself saw it?

Robin Scroggs is an example of dissatisfaction with, though not total dissension from, the contextual turn in Pauline scholarship. In his essay, Paul And The Eschatological Woman, he addresses Paul's view of women, avowing that Paul, represents the vanguard of their liberation from subordination by men in the New Testament. Nevertheless he appeals to 'the total context' of the relevant passages, and 'the general sociological conditions in the Mediterranean world of Paul's day' to bolster his argument, and furthermore makes no effort to deny his own situation within the same theological trend:

Clearly Scroggs is unimpressed by certain 'contextualisms'. He devotes an essay to the theme in this collection:

In his treatment of Paul's recapitulation of the J creation narrative in his letter to the Corinthian church, one may wonder that he hasn't dodged a bullet in asserting that 'A review of Pauline theology is both unnecessary and out of place here.' (p 72.) Commenting on 1 Corinthians 11.2-16 he appends a footnote to verse 4:

This essay, Paul And The Eschatological Woman, is one of very few instances where a scholar even mentions Eve in relation to Pauline recapitulation theology; even then, notably, it is confined to a footnote. One can thus only wonder how it was that the second creation story was seized upon by an exclusively male 'scholastic' elite to justify ideological trends which centred on the derogation of not just women, but the body itself, beginning with Paul. The 'eschatological woman' of the essay's title would have been more fittingly apt for an examination of the vision contained in Apocalypse 12, which I will argue appropriates the drama of the J creation narrative, as well as the P story, in ways that are eminently more theologically defensible than Paul's usage of the same, and this because they respect the inherent theologies of both creation stories which consist in essential juxtaposition. That juxtaposition is immediately visible in terms of highly contrastive outlooks; I do not mean simply that the first is positive and the second negative; I mean rather that the governing intention of the P narrative is a theology of transcendence, whereas that of J is an embryonic theology of immanence. Embryonic, because in general terms, this same dichotomy fits the differential establishing the relation of the two testaments, as announced at the inception of the literature as a whole, by the merism 'the heavens and the earth'. Why could Paul have not seen as much, exposes an attitude towards the Tanakh which is expedient if not exactly cavalier. His evident, preferential avoidance of the first creation narrative is revealing in respect of his own general outlook and his 'theological method'.

Scripture itself resolutely attests to this theological difference between the two creation narratives. Not only by its unmistakably prominent alteration of the names of God; but also by the pronounced inversion of the previous inclusio, 'the heavens and the earth', at the beginning of the second narrative; and equally by the recurrent leitmotif of the human-(couple?)-earth-ground, the paronomasia Adam-adamah. These are evidence of a manifest change in perspective. From Genesis 1.1 ( את השמים ואת הארץ) and 2.1 ( השמים והארץ, LXX τὸν οὐρανὸν καὶ τὴν γῆν) until 2.4a the inclusio functions in its initial form. Then, at 2.4b it is reformulated as 'the earth and the heavens' signalling the opening of the ensuing J story.

The P narrative concedes rank to transcendence in virtue of 'heaven(s)' being the 'beginning' term, that is, the first term in the story of 'the beginning'. So too in 2.4a (אלה תולדות השמים והארץ) we encounter the final occurrence of the inclusio. But in this very same verse, at 2.4b, the seam between the two variant accounts, we notice a dramatic shift, legitimately rendered in the NET Bible and NIV Bible for example, as 'the earth and the heavens' ( ארץ ושמים). And no longer is the Creator referred to as 'Elohim' ( אלהים), that is, 'God', as for the first narrative. The Creator in the J narrative is now 'the Lord God' ( יהוה אלהים). (The Septuagint fails to maintain the shift from 'the heavens and the earth' to 'the earth and the heavens' at 2.4a-4bff, nevertheless it does observe the clear distinction between the two names for the deity: ὁ θεός and Κύριος ὁ θεὸς.) We note in connection with this predilection of the first story for transcendence, that the three rubrics of the second half seemingly pay homage to the first. The rubrics Day 1, 2 and 3 announce those three fiats which are established as precedents for the latter course of events. In other words, the three first rubrics are the prior models determining the ensuing three. Even though the creation of the actual earth-dry land takes place during this half of the six Days, the series divides according to the meristic inclusio such that the first section answers to 'the heavens' and the second to 'the earth'. The placement of the merism-inclusio at the beginning and end of the complete sevenfold series ensures this.

The second, and secondary creation narrative then, differs markedly from the first. Upon entering its setting we are no longer in the realms of the abstract, of numbered units, of forms of antithesis, of the primacy of the heavenly; we are transposed immediately to the mundane, to an earthly realm in which even God himself appears on earth, and speaks with the human couple. The story is often known as 'The Garden of Eden'; it describes Adam as per the etymology of that name, as having been formed from the dust; the serpent too is part of the same schematic concentration on the earthly as opposed to the heavenly, since it is confined to the dust. I have characterized it as an embryonic theology of immanence, and thus secondary in importance, for like the second half of the P narrative, it effectively awaits the final dispensation, the doctrine of immanence which only the gospels can and do deliver. That is, as we see from the motif of consumption in the J narrative, like the same thematic construct in the latter section of the first narrative, it defers to the theology contained in the messianic series, the three Eucharistic miracles in particular, as well as the actual Eucharist itself of course. In other words, without the final, actual theology of immanence which is the business of the messianic series, the creation narratives as a whole are no more than a beginning without an end. Both the J account, and the second part of the P narrative are proleptic in this regard. The interdependence of the two narrative sequences, Genesis 1.1-2.4a and messianic series is thus reciprocal. The two texts require each other. Neither is intelligible nor comprehensive without the other. Their mutual inclusivity is one of several justifications of the Trinitarian hermeneutic of the P narrative.

The rubric concerning the earth and sea, that of Day 3, as belonging to the theology of transcendence, the first half of the P narrative, does not contradict this fact. Just as the 'heavens' rubric, Day 2 has a corresponding form of 'virtual immanence', Day 6 has a corresponding form of (pure) transcendence, the Day 3 rubric. The text is nuanced and sophisticated in this respect. Indeed not only does the final figure of the merism, 'earth', anticipate the gospels, which account for the same, that is, for immanence, with the same authority as does the story of beginning account for transcendence ('the heavens'); the extensive reach or referential trajectory of this marker includes The Apocalypse. It is there that we find the two beasts; one from the earth, the other from the sea, in accordance with the way in which these same figures are used in that text, the story of Day 3. I have argued that their recurrence in The Apocalypse as ciphers for the masculine ('from the sea') and feminine ('from the earth') forms of archetypal evil recurs not only to this Pneumatological creation rubric - in just which connection we note the creation of male and female humans during Day 6, the rubric paired with Day 3 according to the logical structure of the text - but that they ultimately revert to the description of the state antecedent to the creation (Genesis 1.2), which mentions both ciphers: the watery deep, and the formless earth. (The details of this hermeneutic can be found at this site.)

In no way then, am I contesting the evil that men, and women do - the topos of the J narrative. Rather I am presenting as the most significant intertextual and biblical theology that we have at our disposal the certain co-ordination of the two series, creation and messianic. Nor does that systematic relationship of the gospels to the first creation story end there. It also encompasses The Apocalypse. That is the reason why we find the same utilization of serial form and numerical references in all three scriptures. The series of seven seals (Apocalypse 6.1-7.17) is the final theological summation of the co-extensive relation between the seven archeological and seven teleological events; the first story of creation and the messianic series; the theologies of creation and salvation.

This far-reaching rapport maintained by the second creation narrative and The Apocalypse is immediately recognizable in the central vision of the latter, of the transfigured woman depicted in chapter 12. This too effects the same forward thrust of the theology of immanence. That is, it too suggests that the portrait of the human couple and the story of 'the Fall', should yield to the theological disclosures of the same final member of the canon as a whole of which they are in no uncertain sense, precursive. My purpose here however is restricted necessarily to examining and assessing the contributions which those two analogous narratives have yet to make to Christian theology in the third millennium. In sum, rather than 'the Fall and salvation', I am concerned to address 'creation and salvation' which I see as the more general typification of the two canons.

Returning to the somewhat odd elision of Eve with Adam as the suppressed premise of Pauline anakephalaiosis, Elaine Pagels drew attention to Paul's use or misuse of the second creation narrative to reduce the status of women generally to one of subordination to that of men.

A raft of contemporary, scholarly evaluations of Paul's theologizing of the second creation narrative, and its legacies after Augustine, Luther and Calvinism, so pivotal in the development of theologies in the West, has declined the continuation of the received view. Krister Stendahl, writing as a Lutheran - in which confession he functioned as a bishop - comments on the Romans passage a propos of the doctrine of justification by faith:

What I wish to call into question is the attention due to Paul, given to the second creation narrative which has overshadowed the former narrative, Genesis 1.1-2.4a. And this for two equally important reasons: the effect which the focus on this disconsolate Hebraic fantasy regarding the nature of death and 'man's' putative responsibility for it has had, and continues to have for some, on the doctrine of humankind - anthropology - and on the doctrine of the person and work of Christ - Christology. My objections rest upon two factors: (1) that Paul has no convincing systematic method in this matter, and (2) that the P creation narrative, which is nothing if not systematic, is also the more significant of the two theologies, and that it is endorsed by all four gospels. Their multiple attestation overrides Paul's single voice, and is buttressed by their virtual silence regarding the J narrative. Preparatory to these claims, I return briefly to one of the staunchest of contextualist readings of Paul, that of Hendrikus Boers. Boers quotes from Whitehead at the beginning of his work What Is New Testament Theology?: The Rise Of Criticism And The Problem Of A Theology Of The New Testament the same criteria for systematic theology to which I have already referred in the discussion of the messianic miracles:

One is reminded here of one possible reason for the retreat from systematic theology in the last century to which Robin Scroggs refers, namely its difficulty, as well as of the dimensions of the task confronting systematic theologians in the present climate of opinion which he also remarks:

Much of the responsibility for the failure to discern the salient and systematic relation between the narrative cycles, Genesis 1.1-2.4a and messianic series, has stemmed from academic disregard for and hence the lack of interdisciplinary approaches to biblical theology, compounded by programmatic disdain for the genre of miracle narratives, instituted by Rudolf Bultmann's 'demythologisation'. The latter was wedded to a sub-philosophical, existentialist weltanschauung. Ever atomized into increasingly unnrelated discrete units, the logical, aesthetic and theological integrity of the series as a whole, in its function of response to the creation story, evaded recognition. Yet the organic consistency and theological value of this series, maintained by all four gospels, and in lieu of any almost any reference to the J narrative of creation, is outstanding. It enjoins a complete hermeneutical reappraisal of the P creation story; the other primary source of Christian doctrine, which has equally succumbed to atrophy if not oblivion.

Bultmann's sophistic claim of a 'signs gospel' as urtext of the fourth gospel thus appears poignantly ironic in view of this failure to discern the evident unity and systematic character of the messianic series. (In this matter, I believe that he was misguided, and led astray by the reference to 'second sign' in John 4.54.) That all but one of the six messianic miracles are contained in Mark, as well as Matthew, as is the story of the institution of the Eucharist, to which they are preliminary, mandates their revisioning from the point of view of 'history of the [written?] tradition', as both all the more necessary and long overdue. 'Demythologisation' itself is a myth. It is predicated on the assumption that the texts in question, in order to be meaningful, must be historiographical; they are not. Rather, they are theological; which means of course, that they are metaphysical. It also depends presumptively and blindly to the reality and significance of context, on the analytical independence of each miracle narrative of the others of its kind. The suppressed premises of Bultmann's oeuvre, and devotees of its assumed method, is that 'myths' - which it never defines with epistemological clarity - are necessarily untrue and so devoid of meaning; and that their 'demythologisation' must amount to a hermeneutic. It does not. In that it has repercussions for the doctrine of creation, the hermeneutical failure of demythologisation is complete. The claim that it is a hermeneutic is nothing but scholastic subterfuge. It remains theologically vacuous and tendentiously iconoclastic.

I reject its methodological presuppositions and hermeneutical pretensions root and branch. The messianic series is clearly the most significant bearer of meaning for Markan doctrine, and arguably, the primary metaphysical, propositional content of Christian doctrine. Its semantic and pedagogic freight for systematic, biblical theology is peerless. The treatment of the genre of miracle narrative from my own point of view therefore, has crucial consequences for the hermeneutic of the P creation narrative. The meaning of these two stories of 'beginning and end', is thus interdependent, and must incorporate in some measure, that of The Apocalypse. The co-ordinated prosecution of their hermeneutic(s) will be decisive for contemporary biblical theology. Their syntactical integration is a pre-eminent instance if not the foremost case of the hermeneutical principle attributed to Luther, Scriptura sacra sui ipsius interpres: "Sacred scripture is its own interpreter".

Recursion of the gospels to the first creation narrative foundational to Christian theology, is a systematic enterprise, and involves consideration of the significance of the Sabbath 'rest' of God qua a theology of death in its analogous relation to the Eucharist. It comprises the doctrine of intentionality, pursuant and vital to logos theology as well as the theme of sanctification throughout The Apocalypse, depicted in terms of the relation of human consciousness to the unity of identities in God. These are central tenets of its sevenfold series of seals, already announced in the Pneumatological, Eucharistic, messianic miracle story, The Feeding Of The Four Thousand.

Returning to the question of a theology which is not only biblical, but also systematic, I begin here with Bultmann because of the violence done by his commentary on the first of the messianic miracles, Transformation Of Water Into Wine (John 2.1-11). This was among a string of attacks on what for the movement of 'demythologizing' which followed, were nothing but low hanging fruit, ripe for destruction; namely, the miracle narratives. He rips the first Johannine sign story from its narratological context, that is, he fails to see any connection of the Eucharistic motif which the story shares with two of its kind and ultimately with the actual Eucharist. Given the reciprocity of the two narratives, Genesis 1.1-2.4a and the messianic series, with equal validity, that is, just as illogically one might have detached one of the rubrics of the former, and treated it in isolation from its certain frame of reference. John, to which this particular miracle narrative is confined, contains also The Feeding Of The Five Thousand, a copy of which all four gospels include. The remaining Eucharistic miracle story, The Feeding Of The Four Thousand is common to both Mark and Matthew.

The lack of theological merit of this school of thought rests upon two factors: (1) its minimalist elevation of theological method to historiography which it renders the virtually exclusive methodological prerogative; and (2) its benighted, and perhaps even willful failure to realize the contextual integration of the six messianic miracles as a serial whole. Added to the evident postulate that the seven messianic events constitute a gestalt, a contextual whole, is that the three Eucharistic miracle narratives, its primary subseries, preface the record of the institution of the actual Eucharist itself. They are primary for theological purposes, because they adduce the role of sentient memory in consciousness as in salvation.

A final point must be entered here concerning this school. It is this. Bultmann is of course New Testament scholar, he does not embark on any genuine consideration of the Tanakh. And that is as it may be. However, his theological remit, largely in keeping with his Lutheran background, is also decidedly Pauline, and this of course must include Paul's interpretation of the J creation narrative. This story offers unlimited potential for 'demythologization'. As far as I know however, nowhere does Bultmann approach it according to this, his idiomatic modus operandi. It remains permanently immune to any treatment such as is applied to the miracle narratives of the gospels.

Let us now then first concentrate on the simple-minded obtuseness of Bultmann's treatment of the first messianic miracle narrative alone. I have no compunction in uttering such invective, given the subsequent, far-reaching effects of the programmatic, academic derision which ensued. Similarly, I make no attempt to conceal my enduring disdain for existentialisms/existentielisms and their sundry offspring, since I view them as inherently antipathetic to systematic theology. The dubiety of their sources in late nineteenth century, continental writers such as Nietzsche and Kierkegaard, are questionable to say the least; the former was no more a philosopher than the latter was a theologian. The most they can claim in terms of relevance for philosophical theology must be, in the first instance as writers, and secondly, as harbingers of critical theory with certain psychological leanings.

I enter here my rejection of widely upheld and current existentialist-demythologising exercises in source criticism/Traditionsgeschichte which postulate the source of this narrative. These allege as its provenance, model or prototype, the Greek mythological traditions concerning Dionysos. (In the case of the two remaining Eucharistic miracle narratives some or another passage from the Tanakh is proffered.) It is necessary to broach these avowals here, even though the movement first engineered by Bultmann, 'Entmythologisierung' is approaching its centenary. The History Of The Synoptic Tradition first appeared in German in 1921, and the English translation of The Gospel Of John: A Commentary, fifty years later. His work set in train an ongoing method which has spawned consequences for Christian theology that are nothing short of disastrous: the wholesale neglect if not ridiculing of the miracle narratives. In the hands of some of its contemporary practitioners, who appear increasingly to be in danger of devolving into populist hacks, it has reached an apogee fortunately and shrilly sounding its own death knell. The reduction of this particular miracle narrative to a single, wholly unitary pericope, without any apparent syntactical accord with others of its kind served this agenda admirably. The same methodological ploy is utilised in the treatment of every one of the six (seven) narratives which clearly form an organized whole, very much more than the sum of its parts. Its glaringly simplistic pseudo-exegesis and faux-hermeneutical results determined trends in biblical theologies which survive to this day in more wonted forms, in imminent danger of devolving into demagoguery.

A case in point is John Shelby Spong's The Fourth Gospel: Tales Of A Jewish Mystic, with its equally myopically decontextualised treatment of the first messianic miracle story. He sings from the same song-sheet as Bultmann, of whom he explicitly approves, and not surprisingly, he stops even further short of any in depth theological result, despondently casting his bread upon the waters of an intellectually impoverished, historical realism, which dictates that to be bereft of historical possibility - let alone verisimilitude - is tantamount to being bereft of meaning. Obliviously to any connective tissue which the narrative may maintain with others of its kind, the exegetical and hermeneutical task is deemed to be done once this 'rationale' is pronounced; although it is not even pronounced, since it evidently goes without saying. This is the popular if not populist Spong's unremitting, and by now, tiresome theme: the narratives are not historically veridical. No, they are not; from start to finish they are theological, that is, metaphysical. Bultmann reckons the relegation of the miracle stories to the level of myth to be a hermeneutic in itself. But we can see from the results it yielded in his commentary on John just how worse than implausible is this claim. Costive in extremis, they will not pass muster as hermeneutical. Nor is his treatment of the miracle story methodically exegetical.

I accept without reservation the allusion of the two miracles of loaves and fish to the stories about Elisha, just as I do the association between The Transfiguration and the traditions concerning Moses on Mount Sinai. These are allusions or associations only. Any merit they may claim as precedents can only be marginal given the clear logical and aesthetic rapport sustained by the sevenfold messianic series and the P narrative. Moreover to leave both matters, supposed provenance, and necessary meaning as accounted for in terms of myths about Dionysos and their self-evidently fictive status and therefore meaninglessness is facile to a degree qualifiable by the very epithet she uses to decry the narratives: 'childish'. My chief objection is that 'exegetical' determination of the miracle narratives as mythological in kind, should evidently absolve the hermeneut of any obligation.

Regarding the source of the first messianic miracle, there is nothing at all in the Tanakh operative as 'antetext'. But indeed, there is rather a serial narrative, which logically functions as the analogue of the messianic series in its entirety, to which it belongs as 'end' does to 'beginning'. The clarity of this intertextual relation is perhaps blinding; sometimes what is all too plain is all too easily overlooked. I reject arrantly the notion that the first sign of the series is beholden to originals whether in Euripides, Pausanias, Aeschylus, Xenocles, Iophon or Chaeremon. My reasons for doing so emphasise the formal significance of the text plainly provided by its numerical ciphers. These confirm its being of a piece with the remaining two Eucharistic miracle stories, and of course with the actual Eucharist.

Not to discern this is remiss in the extreme, as is ignorance of the obvious rapport maintained by these three miracle narratives and the Eucharist. Wine 'the fruit of the vine' (Luke 22.18, cf. the same circumlocution in Matthew 28.29), was certainly drunk at the last supper. The later reference in John 19.34 to 'blood and water' denoting the death of Jesus likewise points to the Eucharist. Precisely this, and of course the P narrative where we find its specific 'antetext' or 'precedent', and not any Hellenic text, is then the first point of reference of the miracle narrative. The resonance between it and the Eucharist itself should have signalled its value to the Lutheran Bultmann, since proclamation of the 'kerygma' (the Word), of such moment to him, habitually takes place within the context of that sacrament. Moreover, the characteristic rehabilitation of marriage and consequent sexual union as arguably the major psychological turning point on which the German Reformation hinges, further adds to the poignancy of his failure. Party to this was the historical divide between the Lutheran denial of free-will and the Erasmian advocacy of the same, a chief impediment of any reconciliation. In this much, Lutheran philosophical psychology once again confirms desire, with its defining criterion, constraint, as a primary function, operation, or aspect of the soul; that is, of mind itself.

As for the actual miracle narrative, the strong sense which it bears of its own innovative stature works towards the same distinctive cast, that of theological, and certainly Christological innovation, the subject of several dominical logia early in Mark, which at once echo its contents and the sense of a completely new dispensation, the theology of actual immanence:

No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment; if he does, the patch tears away from it, the new from the old, and a worse tear is made. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; if he does, the wine will burst the skins, and the wine is lost, and so are the skins; but new wine is for fresh skins. (Mark 2.21-22, emphasis added.)

What the messianic series brings to biblical metapsychology is indeed novel. It is the clarion doctrinal complement of the content of the P narrative, which otherwise remains incomplete and unintelligible; the delineation of perceptual consciousness. There is no equivalent theological proclamation within either the Tanakh nor elsewhere in the literature of antiquity to this effect. (This said, I have already indicated that I agree entirely with the findings of Katherine Veach Dyer concerning the Lukan travel narrative and its recasting of Jesus as a Dionysian figure in "Healing Steps": Jesus' Dionysiac Tour In Luke, in particular with part III: Luke 8.38-1.10, The Jericho Exchange, The Bacchae, And The End Of The Itinerary.)

Any supposed copying by one of the feeding miracles of the other, especially the alleged duplication of one of the stories of loaves and fish by the other, is grist to the theological mill of this school. We are meant to make this observation initially. It is a starting point. Diderot's maxim is apt here: 'Le premier pas vers la philosophie, c'est l'incrédulité' - 'The first step toward philosophy is incredulity.' Leaving matters there however, is exegetically errant to say the least. That The Feeding Of The Five Thousand and The Feeding Of The Four Thousand are mimetically related, is congruent with the relation of the phonetic to the graphic 'Word'. Without further ado, the pandits of 'demythologisation' in making this all too obvious, because initial observation, use it to further justify abandonment of the texts and abdication of any further exegetical or hermeneutical procedure. There is no attempt on the part of such efforts to come to terms with the corpus of the healing and messianic narratives as gestalten which are internally coherent and aesthetically integrated, nor to deal sensitively with any possibility of their semantic worth. The two miracles at sea, The Stilling Of The Storm and The Walking On The Water, bear to one another, the same relationship as that of The Feeding Of The Four Thousand and The Feeding Of The Five Thousand. This leaves all the more in their starkest outlines, the Christologies of the series, Transformation Of Water Into Wine and Transfiguration.

What could have alerted, and indeed should have alerted the academy to the value of the messianic series, and further, to its significance for Eucharistic theology, was its own repetitious insistence that one of the stories of miraculous feeding with loaves and fish was a duplicate of the other. Even where the same morphology occurred vis-à-vis the two messianic miracles at sea, Stilling The Storm and Walking On The Water, no advances were undertaken. When we examine the first creation story we discover the same configuration. There are two rubrics, Day 2 and Day 3, which utilize similar leitmotifs - and which no less obviously, bear some patent pertinence to the two sea miracles just mentioned; this is recapitulated in the second half of the story. There, Days 5 and 6 both involve living creatures. Remarking the similarity of two of the Eucharistic miracles and the same pattern obtaining between two of the miracles of virtual transcendence, the two events of crossing the sea, why was not the same pattern occurring in both halves of the P creation series noted? Indeed why was not the self-evident sevenfold seriality of both narrative catena a sufficient prompt to further investigation? Possibly because of the isolation to one gospel only, that of John, of the first event of the chain. But the pointers to the significance of this episode and their apparent recursion to the story of beginning, the P narrative, should have been sufficient.

This means of course that both series contain just two members which exist apart from the two sets of similar descriptions: the first and last events of the messianic series, and the first and fourth of the Days of creation. I highlight the term 'series' because it brings to our notice the fact that not only are the two narratives serial in form - this might not seem as certain in the messianic series, for a very good reason. The sequence of the messianic episodes is the same in all four gospels. That too is a fact which deserves more notice than it has ever been afforded. Thus once we give due attention to 'the first of his signs', and once we observe John's use of the same expression 'sign' (shmei~on, John 6.14, 26, 30) of the paired miracles at the epicentre of their series, The Feeding Of The Five Thousand and The Walking On The Water, the theological import of this chain of narratives is even more conspicuous.

Again I highlight the term 'paired'; and again because it adverts to yet another simple morphological feature of both serial narratives. The series of Days of creation are formed in parallel; 1-4, 2-5, 3-6, with the Sabbath remaining as noted, the ostensible anomaly, both in respect of not depicting a creative fiat, and in respect of being unpaired. (So too the Eucharist has no formal, corresponding partner, and so too is not a miracle, notwithstanding that it clearly belongs to the messianic series.) The six miracles on the other hand form a chiasmos; thus first and last, second and second last, and the two central episodes, the third and third last, establish the same morphology as do the Days; they are paired.

Now these are extraordinary facts to have escaped our notice for so long such that one can only wonder at the sheer ineptitude of academic theology to have taken as gospel, I mean, to have fallen for, the legacy of David Strauss via Bultmann et al, which has been nothing other than consistently unprofessional, negligent and reprehensible. The simple fact that the two series are noticeably isomorphic should have awakened the interest of biblical theologians. There is nothing comparable in terms of this consonance between the Tanakh and the New Testament. I make these claims because the dual morphology of the creation narrative has been a commonplace of scholarship for some time, and because in itself, it cries out for further scrutiny. That is, this most abstract of any scriptural text invites fulsome consideration of its form as no less significant than its content, and as being on a par with which the proliferation of numbers in the three Eucharistic miracle narratives function.

The contextual ambit of the first messianic miracle is extensive. It is really only with the second sign, described as such (John 4.43) that a noticeably deliberate change occurs in his agenda. Jesus And The Woman Of Samaria (4.1-42), which ends the reach of the first sign, even if it has been interpolated as is so often argued, fits perfectly into a whole of which the miracle story itself is the keynote. These two narratives bracket the intervening texts. The twofold reiteration of the cipher six, first explicitly, next implicitly, secures the passage's position and function as the final term of an inclusio of which the miracle story is the first:

Jacob's well was there, and so Jesus, wearied as he was with his journey, sat down beside the well. It was about the sixth hour ( w(/ra h)~n w(v e(/kth John 4.6)

Jesus said to her, "Go, call your husband, and come here." The woman answered him,"I have no husband." Jesus said to her, "You are right in saying (kalw~v ei)/pav), 'I have no husband'; for you have had five husbands, and he whom you now have is not your husband; this you said truly." (4.16-18)

John's use of this numerical symbol is consonant with its purpose in the Markan and Matthean accounts of The Transfiguration, where it denotes the concluding miracle of the messianic series. John's gospel no less, will utilise the same construct after the story of Lazarus, his theological equivalent to The Transfiguration, to denote its complementary relationship to the first event. That is, The Anointing At Bethany involving the three personae involved in the miracle, Mary, Martha and Lazarus, begins: 'Six days before the Passover, Jesus came to Bethany, where Lazarus was, whom Jesus had raised from the dead.' (John 12.1, emphasis added). This as certainly invokes the hexameron of creation as does the opening temporal clause of the gospel: 'In the beginning ...' In fact, that the Passover is included in the temporal phrase, making it the seventh day, suggests nothing if not the resultant morphology of Sabbath-Eucharist, however nuanced that might seem.

Themes woven into Jesus And the Woman Of Samaria conduce to its consistency with the theological understanding of the incarnate Word plainly given in the story of the first messianic sign. For example the motif of water; the name of the city, Sychar which suggests the Hebrew for 'male'; the motif of Jacob's well; the metaphor of thirst as a trope for sexual desire, specifically the desire of woman for man; and the putative sense of the actual exchange between the woman and Jesus itself, which so scandalised the disciples. These elements all fit with the miracle narrative. Various other factors equally ratify the function of John 4.1-42 as the final element of an inclusio formally begun in the previous narrative. In just this capacity it works conclusively to this first section of the gospel. The concluding episode has the man Jesus importuning the woman for water to drink (John 4.7); in the prior occasion, the woman Mary importunes Jesus for wine on behalf of the guests. (We should add this feature of the narrative to its typologically feminine cast and as further evidence militating against any tendency in the fourth gospel to elevate Mary by making her a virgin/'maiden' such as we may read in Luke and Matthew. John's incarnational theology offers no support at all to such a view, but rather, inclines against it.) The reference to the woman leaving her 'water jar' (u(dri/an John 4.28) is similarly intended to link this pericope with the miracle story (u(dri/ai 2.6, u(dri/av 2.7), thereby further rendering it the final term of the inclusio.

Returning to the messianic miracle story, we see comparable close connectedness between it and the pericope which ensues immediately, The Cleansing Of The Temple (2.13-22). This renders the temple a trope for the body:

The Jews then said, "It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days ( e)n trisi\n h(me/raiv)?" But he spoke of the temple of his body (e)/legen peri\ tou~ naou~ tou~ sw/matov au)tou~ 2.21).

The three day motif here recurs to the sign story which it introduced, so ensuring this narrative as of a piece with the first section of the gospel:

On the third day (Kai\ th~? h(me/ra? th~? tri/th?) there was a marriage at Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there; (2.1).

The text of Jesus And Nicodemus, except for a brief pericope, Jesus Knows All Men (vv 23-25), follows directly. The latter includes a reference to 'the signs that he did' (v 23), and in the former Nicodemus mentions '"these signs that you do"' (3.2.). I have elsewhere dealt with the extrapolation from the diurnal/nocturnal cycle to the messianic events, concluding that the miracle at Cana signifies the nocturnal interval focused upon midnight, and in the annual cycle, midwinter night. Attentiveness to temporal references in these texts usually yields germane results, and this is no exception:

Now there was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. This man came to Jesus by night (nukto\v John 3.2a).

John pictures Nicodemus with the robustly graphic and candidly ironic tone that we have come to expect of him, and in a light at once comparable to his image of the guileless Nathanael:

Nicodemus said to him, "How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb (ei)v th\n koili/an)?" (3.4)

Jesus then addresses Nicodemus in terms reminiscent of Nathanael's recognition of Jesus himself as both a teacher, 'Rabbi' and 'the King of Israel' (1.49):

Jesus answered him,"Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand this?" (3.10).

There is a further consonance between this pericope and that of Jesus And Nathanael. The entire passage turns on a series of dichotomous constructs. The first of these pits flesh and Spirit against one another (vv 5-8); then a further contrast ensues (vv 11-13), between 'earthly things' (ta\ e)pi/geia) and 'heavenly things' (ta\ e)poura/nia). Finally Jesus' speech so recalls the theology of the prologue and the language of ascent-descent with which the calling narrative ended, leading directly to the miracle story:

"No one has ascended into heaven but he who descended from heaven, the Son of man." (3.13).

The story of Jesus and Nicodemus also concludes on the theme of belief and includes a final juxtaposition of light and darkness qua good and evil (vv 19-21).

Like the story, Jesus And The Samaritan Woman, that of Jesus And John The Baptist (3.22-30) has at its core the water motif, even if its metaphorical value here is at fullest variance with its function in both the miracle story and the story of the woman, although the word 'purifying' (kaqarismou~ John 3.25) clearly resumes the miracle narrative (kaqarismo\n 2.6). This pericope adroitly mirrors that narrative in its handling of the relationship between baptism and Eucharist, logos and incarnate Son, Thanatos and Eros, heaven and earth:

John answered, "No one can receive anything except what is given him from heaven ( e)k tou~ ou)ranou~).) You yourselves bear me witness, that I said, I am not the Christ, but I have been sent before him. He who has the bride is the bridegroom; the friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly (xara~? xai/rei) at the bridegroom's voice; therefore this joy of mine ( h( xara\ h( e)mh\) is now full. He must increase, but I must decrease." (3.27-30).

Only the text of He Who Comes From Heaven (3.31-36) remains for consideration. It intervenes before the conclusion to this first section of the gospel, which the story of Jesus And The Samaritan Woman accomplishes, its juxtaposed categories of heaven-earth conforming to the basic construal of the elements utilised in the miracle, water and wine, and thus also to the Eucharistic theology presented there. But here, for added contrast, the emphasis is on the transcendental rather than on the immanent term, just as it is in the portraits of Jesus and the Samaritan woman. Thus the scope of the Christology of immanence delivered in the first messianic miracle story of the gospel extends to John 4.42, and the mention of 'the second sign that Jesus did when he had come from Judea to Galilee' (4.54) at the conclusion of the second miracle story, noticeably not a part of the messianic series itself, but a healing event, and a miracle nonetheless, marks a new beginning in the narrative.

Thus even though the immanent Christology of the series, that is, John's first 'sign', was absent from all three of the synoptic accounts, another factor which lent to its being a ready target for criticism, that same series was all but complete in what is reckoned as the earliest of the three gospels, and moreover, in the gospel of Matthew. Matthew also recounts Mark's recapitulation of the two miracles of loaves and fish (Mark 8.14-21; Matthew 16.5-12). The sequence of the messianic miracles is in every case the same, even in the gospel of Luke, which lacks not just the first episode, but a further two.

Moreover, the two events at the epicentre of the messianic series are contiguous in all three of the four gospels which record them; remarkably so, and suggestively of a pattern. This seems to be a clear structural element which should engage one's intellectual curiosity and further scrutiny. All three synoptists as well as John highlight these two central events in terms of a given disparity, which will be deployed further still, in the organization of the messianic series. That is, it will account for its chiastic structure which configures a one-to-one correspondence between the first and last; second and second last; and third and third last members. In a text comparable to the Markan pericope which precedes the recapitulation of the numerical details of the two Eucharistic miracles common to Mark and Matthew,The Demand For A Sign, (Mark 8.11-13; Matthew 16.1-4; Luke 11.29-32), John has:

The text is not permitted to interrupt the strict contiguity of the two Transcendental messianic miracles, the third and third last events of the completed series, and so it is placed after the second of these, The Walking On The Water. John develops the first expression of transcendence given in the epithet 'eternal' (ai)w/nion, v 27, then vv 40, 47), by repeated incidences of the phrase 'from heaven' (tou~ ou)ranou~, vv 31, 32, 33, 38, 41, 42, 45, 46), as well as repeated usages of 'God' (vv 27, 28, 33, 45), and 'Father' (vv 27, 32, 37, 45, 46). Thus it is certain enough that he seeks to distinguish the second of the two events according to the reiteration of the categoreal paradigm. That means of course, he distinguishes acoustic sentience in affinity with the future, from that which is inseparably allied with the past. These two Transcendental, and central messianic miracles, are the systematic depositions of acoustic memory and acoustic imagination respectively. And the latter is analogous to the pure conceptual form space, depicted in the Day 2 rubric.

Even though both are Transcendental in that both, identify Transcendence ('God the Father'), in keeping with the chiastic form of the messianic series, John establishes a taxonomical distinction between them relatively to the subdivision explicit in the P creation narrative. His gospel includes just three of the messianic miracles, the other four events are healing events. And so his arrangement of these seven episodes is not one of recurrent oscillation from one kind of occasion crossing to that of 'the other side', so to speak. He employs this marker of polarity only once, then in the context of the two Transcendental events at the centre of his series. His series is thus organized according to a single subdivision as is the P narrative, since the last three miracle stories as a whole, are of the same kind as that initiated by The Walking On The Water. That is, the remaining two events The Man Born Blind (John 9.1-41), and The Raising Of Lazarus (11.1-44) are transcendent in kind. They share themes which resonate with the creation narrative, chiefly the motif of light, recursively to the beginning of the gospel. The pattern of the messianic series in the gospels however repeatedly utilises the crossing motif, resulting as noted in a chiasmos.

When we examine the three episodes in the complete messianic series, to which I refer as miracles of 'virtual transcendence' since they are set apart from their complementary counterparts, the three (Eucharistic) events of actual immanence, in conformity with the paradigm transcendence : immanence, or identity : unity, we alight on the fact that identity is a thematic construct common to all three. The tone of dread, among other features which they share, also notably distinguishes them from the Eucharistic miracles. The latter are uniformly and antithetically pervaded by a mood of congeniality. This contrast between the three miracles of virtual transcendence and three of actual immanence corresponds to the same logical, binary division of the P creation story, in which we encounter three rubrics (Days) of pure transcendence and three of 'virtual immanence'. When we include the two seventh events, the Sabbath on the one hand, the Eucharist on the other, there is further confirmation of this pattern securing the morphological congruence of the stories of beginning (creation) and end (salvation). Pure/virtual transcendence and actual/virtual immanence now stand to one another in the ratio of 3 : 4.

All that was missing from both synoptics was the first 'sign' from John, noteworthy because it was listed as first. This was no more strange than that John's gospel itself had no comparable account of The Lord's Supper. The regularity of the messianic events in all three synoptics, clearly demarcated by the rhythmical references to crossings 'to the other side' - yet another formal, structural index, which sorts into two kinds, the six messianic miracles congruently with the binary form of the hexameron - calls for attention as do the several keynotes in the both miracles of loaves which certify their status as at once germane to the singularly commonest, and most defining of all Christian sacraments, the Eucharist. The presence in both Mark and Matthew of one complete subset, the three messianic miracles of 'virtual transcendence', coherent in virtue of the primary, prominent, thematic criterion of identity, as well as several secondary criteria, might also have motivated thought as to the parallel coherence of the three Eucharistic messianic miracles. That is, it too should have suggested the first of the Johannine signs as an essential member of the same narrative chain in its completed form.

The methodological fallacy of 'demythologization' as concerning the messianic series in particular is its failure to see the forest for the trees; the treatment of each miracle story of that series as fully truncated from all others of its kind. This further complicates the outstanding question regarding the relation of the two canons to each other, of which the immediate morphological congruence of the story of beginning, Genesis 1.1-2.4a with that of end, the messianic series, is indubitably its best of any resolution. But quite apart from the pathetic incapacity of Bultmann's commentarial oeuvre to concede any connection whatsoever of John's highly significant story with others of its genre, a reason for yet further dissatisfaction must be his oversight of the several markers with which the evangelist adroitly intersperses this first great Christological, miracle story. I have already dealt with Bultmann's laxity in addressing the salience of this narrative in my discussion of the gospel of Luke. Here I emphasize the following points in summary form which speak for its integral role in this section of the gospel.

The first chapter of the Bible is one of the great pieces of world literature. All questions which have been directed to this first chapter of the Bible, all doubts as to what is there is 'right', all emotional explanations that it is utterly outmoded, in nowise affect the validity of what is there. When one hears this chapter read aloud, and in an appropriate context, one realizes that something has been expressed that has never really been said before nor since.

The uniqueness of this prelude to the Bible can be explained up to a point. The poetic prose of the strophes brings before us with overpowering simplicity the world in its totality. It has succeeded in classical fashion in uniting together what is said of the world as a whole and what is said of its details. It speaks of the whole, 'In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth'; it speaks of the details, of sea and land, of trees and flowers, of men and animals, of sun, moon, and stars. But that would not be adequate to explain the unique effect of what is said at the beginning of the Bible. Its tremendous effect lies in this: that the sweep of the whole world in time and in space comes to a consummate expression in a work of art of the highest order: in time, in the succession of the six days of Creation reaching their goal on the seventh; in space, in the peculiar construction of the chapter which, beginning with a sentence that encompasses the whole, unfolds everything in heaven and on earth as the succession of days runs its course. The achievement in this one place in world literature of so complete a reflection of the world as a whole in both its temporal and spacial dimensions is by no means fortuitous. But one can only see this when one views this first chapter of the Bible in the context on the reflection of the world as a whole in the overall history of mankind. Reflection on the world as a whole occurs only in the reflection on Creation in the overall history of early man. In other words: the world as a whole can only be understood in the context of its coming into being. Early man confronted the world of his time in its quite incomprehensible complexity and variety. The world was a whole only in its coming into being as such; it was grasped as a totality in the reflection on Creation. (Westermann, Claus, Schöpfung, Kreuz-Verlag, Stuttgart, Germany, 1971, English translation, Creation, by John J. Scullion, S.J., Fortress Press, Philadelphia, 1974, pp 36, 37.)

If then the first Christology of the messianic series portends death in relation to sexual love, then the last reiterates this. Jesus is identified as "The Beloved" in the last event, recalling the first with which it is paired. The Eucharist complies with this tendency to converge Eros and Thanatos. Although that event is not instituted on the Sabbath, it clearly corresponds analogically to that particular day of the creation series and to no other. If we read, as correctly we may do, the events of the J story to ensue in time upon those of the first, then 'the Fall' so-called, transpires within the temporal orbit of the last of the seven days; the humans having been created on the immediately previous day. This gives still more purchase to the implicit reference to death intimated by the Sabbath rubric which informs an extended section of Hebrews concerning the same. The lifeless and entombed body of Jesus during the Sabbath will acquire further meaningfulness by dint of these connections.

Although it differs markedly from most other New Testament texts, and yet shares certain middle Platonist tendencies with the gospel of John, I mention Hebrews here in passing. It provides as do the gospels, a theological understanding of death in relation to Christ thoroughly discrepant from what we found in the Paul of Romans and 1 Corinthians. And since it utilizes the Sabbath as conceived in the P creation narrative, it has something in common with the messianic series, even if only notionally. Hebrews does not recapitulate the J narrative. It does not presume a postlapsarian world, although it mentions 'disobedience' and 'unbelief'. The disobedience referred to is certainly not that of the story of the Fall. Rather, it envisages death in terms comparable to the inferences in the creation story; that is, in a positive light: as well-earned rest after one's labors. I quote the text at length since it refers also to Christ's humanity in terms at variance with the image in De Civitate Dei of Augustine of Hippo, who in the footsteps of Paul, seized upon the second creation story, and whose legacy in this matter, has served unwittingly or not, to eclipse the value and signigifance of the first. (We shall return to Augustine's interpretation of the J narrative à propos of the issue of psychogenesis, that is, the generation of the soul.) The relevant text from Hebrews begins with midrash on Psalm 95.7-11:

Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says, "Today, when you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, on the day of testing in the wilderness, where your fathers put me to the test and saw my works for forty years. Therefore I was provoked with that generation, and said, 'They always go astray in their hears; they have not known my ways.' As I swore in my wrath, 'They shall never enter my rest (kata/pausi/n mou).'" (Hebrews 3.7-11.)

And to whom did he swear that they should never enter his rest (kata/pausin au)tou~), but to those who were disobedient? So we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief.

Therefore, while the promise of entering his rest (kata/pausin au)tou~) remains, let us fear lest any of you be judged to have failed to reach it. For good news (eu)hggelisme/noi) came to us just as to them; but the message which they heard (o( lo/gov th~v a)koh~v) did not benefit them, because it did not meet with faith in the hearers. For we who have believed enter that rest (ka/tapausin), as he has said, "As I swore in my wrath, 'They shall never enter my rest (ka/tapausi/n mou),'" although his works were finished form the foundation of the world (a)po\ katabolh~v ko/smou). For he has somewhere spoken of the seventh day (e(bdo/mhv) in this way, "And God rested on the seventh day from all his works." (e)pausen o( qeo\v e)n th~? h(me/ra? th~? e(bdo/mh? a)po\ pa/ntwn tw~n e)/rgwn au)tou~) And again in this place he said, "They shall never enter my rest." (kata/pausi/n mou). Since therefore it remains for some to enter it, and those who formerly received the good news failed to enter because of disobedience, again he sets a certain day, "Today," saying through David so long afterward, in the words already quoted, "Today, when you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts." For if Joshua had given them rest (I)esou~v kate/pausen), God would not speak later of another day. So then, there remains a sabbath rest for the people of God (a)polei/petai sabbati/smov tw~? law~? tou~ qeou~); for whoever enters God's rest (kata/pausin au)tou~) also ceases from his labors as God did from his. (Hebrews 3.18-4.10).

For we have not a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. (Hebrews 4.15).

The extensive paraenesis with its constant iteration of the Sabbath rest motif is consonant with the gospels. They too, clearly and uniformly reformulate the first creation narrative, not the second. This of course reclaims death from its portrayal by classical theologies of 'the Fall', reliant upon a literal reading of the J creation narrative, beginning with that of Paul. It thereby accords with the doctrine of incarnation: 'the Word' is made flesh, not after the event of a putative incursion of death into the created order, but rather, with it, just as the same person must necessarily suffer death. The creation does not initially miscarry due to the disobedience of the first human couple, if indeed there ever was just such a single couple. The created order does not founder due to the misdeeds of the humans who are certainly its final, and not its first accomplishment. The incarnation of 'the Word' 'through whom all things were made' is there 'in the beginning', always, already. He does not come to the rescue of the world in the fashion of a deus ex machina, as its correction, its ransom, returning it to the potential of its former, pristine perfection subsequently to its perdition. There was no pristine perfection to begin with. He is with the world from its inception, its 'beginning' - as is The Holy Spirit - and he has assumed responsibility for its ultimate destiny, and thus for the phenomenon of death. The works of creation are not the exclusive business of Transcendence ("The Father"), any more than are those of salvation the exclusive remit of the Word. The same must apply to the process of sanctification and The Holy Spirit.

The works of Creation are fitted into an overall time scheme, part of which is the procession of the days of work into a day of rest. The sanctification of the seventh day forms part of the time established with Creation: the days of work have their goal in a day which is different from them. There is more here than a reference to the Sabbath as it was later instituted in Israel. There is an order established for mankind according to which time is divided into the everyday and the special, and the everyday reaches its goal in the special. The work of Creation which began with the division of light from darkness ends with yet another division. The very existence of all that has been created is determined by the polarity of night and day. God has built into the succession of ordinary days a movement which is a gift to the creature which has been created in his image. The ordinary days flow into a special day. The course of human history which was set in motion with the conclusion of Creation by the sanctification of the seventh day is no longer a monotonous succession in the monotonous rhythm of life; it runs to its goal just like the days of the week. What is peculiar to the holy day in the course of everyday happenings is that it points to the goal of the creature which God has created in his image. The work which has been laid upon man is not his goal. His goal is the eternal rest which has been suggested in the rest of the seventh day. (Westermann, pp 64.65.)

5. THEOLOGICAL BODIES: FROM GOD TO GAIA AND BACK AGAIN

Body theology, or theology of the body, has enjoyed a boom in the modern era, with even Pope John Paul II making a contribution. Well might one wonder what a lifelong, and ageing celibate have to add to the subject. A better place to begin would surely be the gospel of Luke; or historically, the emergence of the Lutheran confession, which is by way of saying there is nothing new about the theology of soma. The reasons for such a judgement I have provided in dealing with that gospel and its rapport with that particular Christian confession. Any assessment of the contribution of the two creation narratives to a theology of death must of course account for 'the' body as the site of sexual dimorphism, as well as death, which we humans share with our hominid forebears and a plethora of other creatures.

The body and the anthropic are distinguished in the second section of the P narrative; nonetheless, as conceptual forms of unity, they are are closely related. The Day 4 rubric, which hightlights the mind : body as a categoreal entity, is, like each of the Christological categories in the remaining three taxa, distinguished from the other two conceptual forms of unity: the spatiotemporal and the anthropic, the subjects of the Day 5 and the Day 6 rubrics respectively. These latter are presented in highly comparable terms, and this same structural feature holds true of the remaining three taxa. Transcendental and Pneumatological categories in all four taxa bear distinct resemblances to one another, so that in this case, space : time and male : female are depicted as more approximate to one another in some manner, than is the soma to either of them. This leaves mind : body for special consideration. At least, this appears, on first reading, to be so, and the same holds true even though their corresponding modes of antithesis, disjunctive and conjunctive respectively, as well as their analogous forms of relation, external and internal respectively, are juxtaposed to maximum degree. The arbitration of this juxtaposition identifies the Christological, such that it cannot afford to be closer in kind to either relatum in the paradigm transcendence : immanence.

These considerations are thus a first caveat to the theology of the body. Any discussion of the soul, or the nature of consciousness cannot simply forgo attention to sexual dimorphism, even given the apparent proximity of the somatic and anthropic. Historically, psychology has struggled with the same as the following citation shows:

Man is an animal organism with (like others) an unmistakably bisexual disposition. The individual corresponds to a fusion of two symmetrical halves, of which, according to some investigators, one is purely male and the other female. It is equally possible that each half was originally hermaphrodite. Sex is a biological fact which, although it is of extraordinary importance in mental life, is hard to grasp psychologically. We are accustomed to say that every human being displays both male and female instinctual impulses, needs and attributes; but though anatomy, it is true, can point out the characteristic of maleness and femaleness, psychology cannot. (Freud, Sigmund, Des Unbehagen in der Kultur, (1930), ET., Civilization And Its Discontents, James Strachey (Ed.), Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1985, Penguin Freud Library, Vol. 12, pp 295-6, fn. 1.)

Freud here as elsewhere (for example, Three Essays, PFL Vol. 2, p 147 ff.), laments this deficiency of 'psychology' quite candidly. Such an open admission is however, inevitable, given the centrality of sexuality to his thought. The problem may be symptomatic of a general vulnerability of psychoanalysis. Neither the possible rehabilitation of Freud to metaphysics nor the obverse can skirt these issues. Not that Freud himself scrupled to launch metapsychology into an existence of however tenuous a sort, notwithstanding that as the self-avowed 'godless Jew', he protested more than loudly enough his own unbelief in 'transcendence'. At best, he seems to have been wholly dismissive of, if not wholly antagonistic towards the phenomenon of religion generally.

In spite of the metapsychological element of psychoanalysis, Freud expresses certain confidence in the conviction that it operates according to science. This he never elaborates, and the epistemological status of both psychoanalysis and analytical psychology after Jung, in spite of his similar claims, remains at issue. Jung's attitude to religion is diametrically opposed to that of his onetime confrère. In some Christian quarters, he is welcomed; others deem him a crypto-gnostic, and heterodox to the Christian cause, just as he became to that of Freud. Arguments about the epistemological status of the output of both writers, which place them on an equal footing with science, are scarcely likely to convince contemporary philosophers of mind. This indicates one precise point at which either man might have allowed more of science than literary art to influence the future course of their conceptual schemata; namely the question of the role of perception and that of the relatedness of the psychophysical and the spatiotemporal, two key categories of biblical metaphysics qua epistemology. But if either figure treats these at all, he does so only accidentally.

Jung's answer to the role of the anthropic category, the functioning of the concepts 'male and female' in human psychology which necessarily must address sexual dimorphism, and arguably, sexual polymorphism, is even less convincing than Freud's. I wish to state plainly, that these strands in the work of neither is in the final analysis compatible with Christian doctrine. Jung's use of the term 'transcendent' in 'transcendent function' - and likewise, the term 'transcendental' - is on a par with what we shall directly observe in the examples of feminist critiques of the philosophical tradition in the West. It is difficult to attach any genuine semantic to it because it has been eviscerated of its theological and/or metaphysical content. With a penchant both tedious and ornate for Graecisms and Latinisms equal to that of Freud, intended no doubt to bolster the claims regarding the epistemological status of 'Jungian' psychology, just as those of 'Freudian' psychoanalysis, for his part, he attributed an unconscious feminine aspect, the anima, to the male, and and unconscious masculine aspect, animus, to the female. (For an abstract concerning which see the following: The Relation Between The Ego And The Unconscious. Part 2. Individuation. 11. Anima And Animus. It is doubtful that the descriptions of man as 'more objective and rational, woman as more subjective and emotional' will pass muster in the post-feminist era.)

In the final analysis there is as little reason to believe Freudian theory regarding the 'psyche' to be constituted by id, ego and superego as there is to believe Jungian postulates concerning anima and animus. Questions regarding the roles of the conceptual forms symbolic masculine and symbolic feminine in the consciousnesses of both male and female humans, bring to light the validity of any differentiation between the male 'and' female soul, stemming from sexual dimorphism. But there is yet another, and equally pressing dilemma we have to consider: the denumeration of the 'soul', that of phylogeny and ontogeny. Does each human individual possess its own soul, if we aver as essential to psychology as to social science, and of course to religion in general, the dilemma of 'the individual in community'?

The first scriptural references we find to male and female animals and humans, is given in the first creation story, not the second. It is there also that we first encounter an implicit theology of death in the Sabbath rubric. This is taken up in two forms in the New Testament: in both the form and content of the messianic series, common in some measure to each of the four gospels, and in Hebrews. The former is most apparent in the three miracles of virtual transcendence, not surprisingly, if as I aver, these advert to centres of perceptual consciousness which are in broad terms imaginal as opposed mnemic; if that is, in this manner they complement the Eucharistic miracle stories which posit the three forms of actual perception vis-à-vis the Eucharist itself, as grounded in the reality of appetitive and cognitive smell-taste in its rapport with memory. These narratives portray the perceptual imagination as pervaded by anxiety, and fear grounded in the human awareness of its ineluctably approaching mortality. An awareness it would seem, which sets us apart from the sub-human realm.

This appetitive or conative, as well as cognitive role of osmic-gustic sense-percipience in its relation to memory, of which the Eucharist is the logical marker, is the rationale for the hermeneutic of the three feeding messianic miracle stories, and by extension, the three messianic miracle of virtual transcendence with which they are paired. The Eucharist itself, since it corresponds formally and analogically to the Sabbath, clearly iterates in some way, the concern of the P creation narrative as encompassing the beginning of a theology of death. I have commented first, if only briefly, on Hebrews, since it further bolsters the case for critically reviewing the Pauline recapitulation of Christ as the second Adam. The vision of the woman crowned with the sun at the centre of The Apocalypse also reiterates the creation narratives, both that of P and that of J. It confirms the immanentist perspective of the J narrative in ceding the pre-eminent role to Eve and not Adam, once again counter to Paul's treatment of that narrative. In this way, it confirms the difference of the second from the first creation narrative, whose theological inclination is transcendence rather than immanence

My preoccupation here is not the bodily Christ in relation to Eros, but in relation to Thanatos, whom we see portrayed in The Transfiguration, a narrative recurring immediately to the hexameron, and to the Day 1 rubric in particular. But it is difficult to sever the former from the latter as evinced in the Johannine text of the former, and its reference to the crucifixion. Thus in the first miracle story in John which envisions Christ-Eros, the heavenly bridegroom, we find not only mention of the mother of Jesus, but the wonderfully ironic riposte of her son to her intervention in the proceedings after the supply of wine has been exhausted:

And Jesus said to her, "O woman what have you to do with me? (ti/ e)moi\ kai\ soi/, gu/nai;) My hour has not yet come." (John 2.4).

The Greek is acerbic and succinct, bordering on the abrupt, and consisting of almost half the words of the English translation. The story is not about waters for purification, but about wine; that is to say, not about the symbolic masculine, but the symbolic feminine. Here then, Jesus ironically characterizes himself in these very terms; in terms of the symbolic feminine. The same two symbols, water and wine John redeploys in his account of the death of Jesus (19.34), making good the second half of the dominical logion. This bolsters my contention that the death of Jesus concerns the anthropic category in its virtually immanent form as male and female, of which Eve and not Adam is the symbol. The first Johannine miracle narrative is indeed one of the best opportunities in the New Testament, arguing for the ordination of women, and yet as far as I know, it has been ignored as such. Its startling feminine self-characterization of Jesus, or at least, his characterization of his own and our own soma, the psychophysical, the apparatus of the body in such terms, first suggested in the Johannine portrait of Nathanael, is further corroborated by that evangelist's brief but unmistakable references to a further two disciples, Andrew and Phillip, in The Feeding Of The Five thousand. The same two were also mentioned in the Johannine narrative of the commissioning of the disciples, in closest association with Nathanael. These facts belong to the gender-typological differential which sorts pure/virtual transcendence from actual/virtual immanence. That is, by dint of its association with the Eucharist-Sabbath complex, the anthropic and Pneumatological category, male : female, must be considered pertinent to the emergent theology of death in the narratives, a point to which we shall return.

In the same vein, Matthew, to his everlasting credit, refers to the feminine at the conclusions of both feeding miracles in his gospel:

And those who ate were about five thousand men, besides women and children. (Matthew 14.21);

Those who ate were four thousand men, besides women and children. (Matthew 15.38).

The theologies of actual immanence, the three Eucharistic miracle stories and the Eucharist itself, are typologically feminine. Their theological import is normative for the second part of the P narrative. It accords with the role and status of Eve in the J story. She, not Adam, is the primary persona in the J story of 'the Fall'. She is the last of God's creations, and she represents for that author, the ultimate achievement of the Creator's work, just as the same category of symbolic feminine conceptualized in the Day 6 rubric, is the teleological aim of the second half of that narrative. If the second story honors Eve, the female human in this way, it is because she is the final exemplification of the value beauty, in virtue of just which property, the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is desirable. I have commented at length on the role of vision and the value of beauty in this story.

Just so, she is represented in The Apocalypse in comparable terms; first as the woman of the vision in chapter 12, then as the bride of the Lamb-the heavenly Jerusalem. The deference due to the theologies of actual immanence by the J creation narrative, and by the second part of the P narrative, reinforces my contention that Paul has not fully understood its theological cast, immanence as distinct from transcendence, and that Eve, 'the mother of all living', is the actual nucleus about which the story gravitates. Therefore to cite Adam as the type of Christ seems to me less than tenable. And worse, that to conceive of the initial disobedience of the primordial couple as the cause not only of death, but of all the ills attendant upon biological existence, even more so. On this accounting is the same, single (?) figure culpable of the entropic decay of the universe in its entirety? Is the second law of thermodynamics personally attributable to him? Is the ultimate heat death of the universe the fault of Adam, 'O wretched man that he is'?

There can be no reconciliation of any kind of the P narrative of creation with evolutionary theory. That the animals are created after the creation of the humans precludes any such accommodation. We now know from the visible fossil record, and from carbon dating, that our sub-human forebears were just that. They lived and died prior to the advent of humankind in evolutionary time. The propagation of the species always and already guaranteed the death of its ancestors. In a spatially finite world, progeny in itself demands the death of its progenitors. These are simple facts; there was no prelapsarian world; no earth in which humans were first created and were responsible for a monumental miscarriage of the created order through disobediance to a God who walked and talked - as did the serpent itself - in the garden of Eden. To believe which is to attempot to fly, and so to flounder, in the face of reason, and to dishonour belief itself.

Furthermore the J story problematizes what is fundamental to the theology of Sabbath-Eucharist; the fact that all living creatures depend on other living entities for their survival. Hence death is presupposed in the P story, even if it does not mention the consumption by higher animals of other such creatures. There is no postlapsarian world because there is no prelapsarian world: there is only the world as we know it; that in which death is already a fait accompli. To treat the story of the Fall as historical fact is counter to authentic faith. Faith is underpinned by the desire-to-know; commensurately, knowing is underpinned by the will-to-believe. The failure to reckon with the insights of evolutionary theory in the final analysis, not only flies in the face of reason; it is unethical. These modes of intentionality, faith and the desire-to-know, are intimately necessary to one another as exemplifications of the same reality, the Word, according to the two orders of consciousness, the conscious and the aconscious. This is the delivery of the texts and the explication for the pluralistic soteriologies and eschatologies of the four gospels which consist nevertheless as one whole.

Thus predation and the consumption of living things was and is the order of the day for existence; since life itself persists at the expense of life itself. The pervasiveness of death in this context, like asexual and sexual reproduction, is a necessary concomitant of biological existence. These facts must be taken in accord with the link between The Son and The Spirit. As proper to the contours of the present, the hic et nunc, they are immediately relevant to the meaning of Sabbath-Eucharist. There is no merit in accepting at face value the aetiology of death in the J narrative. It is less than a myth. It foreshadows the theology of immanence; that is, it prefigures the disclosures of the messianic miracle series, particularly the theology of actual immanence. And to treat it as even more than a myth, as an actual historical event, when it is less than the same, is both idolatrous and unconscionable. I can no more accept doctrines of the Fall and 'original sin' which impute the cause of death to a single, primordial, human male than I can believe the tortured logic with which Augustine painted himself into a theological corner, and which Roman Catholic and Protestant dogmatics also upheld:

The punishment itself, Augustine continues, "effected in their original nature a change for the worse." Augustine derived the nature of that change from an idiosyncratic interpretation of Romans 5:12. The Greek text reads, "Through one man [or "because of one man," di' e(no\v a)nqrw/pou] sin entered the world, and through sin, death; and thus death came upon all men, in that [(e)/f' w~(?] all sinned." John Chrysostom, like most Christians, took this to mean that Adam's sin brought death into the world, and death came upon all because "all sinned." But Augustine read the passage in Latin, and so either ignored or was unaware of the connotations of the Greek original; thus he misread the last phrase as referring to Adam. Augustine insisted that it meant that "death came upon all men, in whom all sinned" - that the sin of that "one man," Adam, brought upon humanity not only universal death, but also universal, and inevitable, sin. Augustine uses the passage to deny that human beings have free moral choice, which Jews and Christians had traditionally regarded as the birthright of humanity made "in God's image." Augustine declares, on the contrary, that the whole human race inherited from Adam a nature irreversibly damaged by sin. "For we all were in that one man, since all of us were that one man who fell into sin through the woman who was made from him."

Pagels adds a footnote to indicate the source, Augustine, De Civitate Dei, 13,14, and continues:

How can one imagine that millions of individuals not yet born were "in Adam" or, in any sense, "were" Adam? Anticipating objections that would reduce his argument to absurdity, Augustine declares triumphantly that, although "we did not yet have individually created and apportioned forms in which to live as individuals," what did exist already was the "nature of the semen from which we were to be propagated." That semen itself, Augustine argues, already "shackled by the bond of death," transmits the damage incurred by sin. Hence, Augustine concludes, every human being ever conceived through semen already is born contaminated with sin. Through this astonishing argument, Augustine intends to prove that every human being is in bondage not only from birth but indeed from the moment of conception. And since he takes Adam as a corporate personality, Augustine applies his account of Adam's experience, disrupted by the first sin, to every one of his offspring (except, of course, to Christ, conceived, Augustine ingeniously argued, without semen). (Pagels p 109.)

Further to which she remarks:

Augustine believes that by defining spontaneous sexual desire as the proof and penalty of original sin he has succeeded in implicating the whole human race, except, of course, for Christ. Christ alone of all humankind, Augustine explains, was born without libido - being born, he believes, without the intervention of semen that transmits its effects. But the rest of humankind issues from a procreative process that, ever since Adam, has sprung wildly out of control, marring the whole of human nature. (Ibid p 112.)

The theology of death inherent within the creation series is implicitly acknowledged by the construct of light-time, by which means the whole narrative is structured. For this reason, the final messianic miracle, reverts to the creation narrative: 'And After six days ... ' (Mark 9.2, emphasis added.) The creation rubric analogous to The Transfiguration, the story of Day 1, acts as the initiating event of the entire narrative in terms of both form and content. And for this reason the gospel of John utilizes the same thematic construct. It recurs throughout that gospel:

In him was life, and the life was the light of men (to\ fw~v tw~n a)nqrw/pwn). The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. (kai\ to\ fw~v e)n th~? skoti/a? fai/nei, kai\ h( skoti/a au)tou~ ou) kate/laben.)

There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came for testimony, to bear witness to the light, that all might believe through him. He was not the light, but came to bear witness to the light.

The true light that enlightens every man (to\ fw~v to\ a)lhqino/n) was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world knew him not.(John 1.4-10.)

The same antithetical binary of light and darkness will feature in the last and greatest of the Johannine signs, The Death Of Lazarus (11.1-44). That narrative will consistently refer to the intervals of day and night (vv 5, 9, 10, 17, 24 ('the last day'), 39). The phrase 'Six days before the Passover' (12.1) begins the subsequent pericope, The Anointing At Bethany. Surely then, this Johannine miracle narrative speaks in the same voice as does the actual messianic miracle in which that series culminates. The same Greek nouns for 'light' and 'darkness' occur in the LXX version of Genesis 1.3-5, the Day 1 story, as does the verb e)ge/neto three times, a verb denoting becoming, change transformation, which we noted in the first miracle story and in the prologue of the fourth gospel. (The verb in this form notably and musically punctuates the (LXX) creation narrative: 1.3, 5 (bis), 6, 8 (bis), 9, 11, 13 (bis), 19 (bis), 20, 23 (bis), 24, 30, 31 (bis); as does the imperative - genh/qetw / genhqh/twsan - 'Let there be ...': 1.3, 6, 14. Where the verb occurs twice, as conclusively, in the six cases marking the hexameron, it refers to the phrase 'evening and morning'. Equally remarkable, is the fact that this epithet does not frame the seventh day, which nevertheless is numbered.) These facts support the identification of a theology of death in the P narrative, as in the last of the miracles of the messianic series, The Transfiguration, and John's equivalent, also the final miracle in that gospel, The Death Of Lazarus.

Similarly, the analogous relation of the messianic and creation series, and indeed The Transfiguration, conduce to the presence of a theology in which death is a major construal of the texts viewed in combination as they are intended to be seen. But this is not the notion of death as it is for Paul. Neither the story of Lazarus nor The Transfiguration deals with the conceptual apparatus of Pauline recapitulation theology, nor with any presupposition basic to the Fall. That the Johannine miracle story contains references to the anointing of Jesus (11.1, 2 and 12.1-8); that it mentions Jesus' love for 'Martha and her sister and Lazarus' (11.5); that it pictures Jesus' grief at the death of the latter in the starkest way possible, these also tell for the same coincidence of love and death, Eros and Thanatos, on which we have already commented, and which is germane to Eucharistic theology, just as it is to the Eucharistic hic et nunc which is qualified by death as necessary to the sustenance of life.

Like the P narrative, the last sign story in John deploys both antithetical constructs: the light : darkness of Day 1 as well as the day : night of the corresponding Day 4. Even though in the former case h( skoti/a is not used, it is likely enough that the both Christological rubrics are in mind, as is suggested by the metaphorical use of "stumble" and "the light is not in him":

Jesus answered, "Are there not twelve hours in a day? If any one walks in the day, he does not stumble because he sees the light of this world. (ou) prosko/ptei, o/(ti to\ fw~v tou~ ko/smou tou/tou ble/pei). But if any one walks in the night, he stumbles, because the light is not in him." (e)a\n de/ tiv peripath~? e)n th~? nukti/, prosko/ptei, o(/ti to\ fw~v ou)k e)/stin e)n au)tw~?, John 11.9-10).

The previous miracle story, The Man Born Blind, contains the dominical saying '"I am the light of the world"' (John 9.5), although it was prefigured in the pericope appended as postscript to The Woman Caught In Adultery (8.12). This penultimate miracle story similarly uses the light leitmotif of the final episode, pursuant to what we first found in the prologue and the creation story; and similarly to The Death Of Lazarus, uses the day : night binary of the Day 4 rubric:

Again Jesus spoke to them saying, "I am the light of the world; he who follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life." (e)gw/ ei)mi to\ fw~v tou~ ko/smou o( a0kolouqw~n e)moi\ ou) mh\ peripath/sh? e)n th~? skoti/a?, all' e)/cei to\ fw~v th~v zwh~v, 8.12).

Jesus answered, "It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be made manifest in him. We must work the works of him who sent me, while it is day; night comes, when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world." (fw~v ei)mi tou~ ko/smou, John 9.3-5).

The two series, messianic and Johannine signs, support each other formally as well as sharing a significant amount of material. Their ultimate members indicate that the Christologies in the creation and messianic narratives are of preeminent importance in any bid to determine the theology of death in those narratives as wholes. But that this theology is not radically other than the aetiology regarding death which Paul advocates is inadmissible. It is fair to say that his thought in this matter, is his alone as well as being unsupported by any criteria such as Boers mentions, whereby we might deem it to be systematic. Abandoning his wholesale literal acceptance of the narrative concerning Adam and the incursion of death into the created order, must be a first step in the renewal of articulating the relevance of time and death as core components in biblical theology, for Paul's understanding will not square with the testimony of the gospels and the P narrative in unison.

If then the J narrative accentuates immanence and the feminine, if indeed Eve and not Adam, given that she is the last of God's acts of creation, is the primary subject of the narrative, fully exemplifying the beautiful precisely in her Pneumatological capacity of life-bearing, then the text necessarily yields to the definitive theologies of immanence as these are the responsibility of the New Testament. The Apocalypse resumes and reformulates both creation narratives in the vision of chapter 12, that of the woman with child. It does so in a manner similar to the description of the 'four living creatures'. In keeping with John's penchant for the eclectic, these have aspects in common with both the 'seraphim' of Isaiah's vision, and Ezekiel's 'cherubim'. So too, the author elides both the P and the J narratives; the woman and the dragon hail from J, the sun, moon and stars, from P. John's experience as visionary suggests that he is not writing prophecy qua historiography. In this respect, its epistemic status is much more cogent than the story of the Fall. It functions as the fulfillment the second creation narrative, and in fact, that narrative it understands as proto-mythological:

And a great portent appeared in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars (gunh\ peribeblhme/nh to\n h(/lion, kai\ h( selh/nh u(poka/tw tw~n podw~n au)th~v kai\ e)pi th~v kefalh~v au)th~v ste/fanov a)ste/rwn dw/deka); she was with child and she cried out in her pangs of birth, in anguish for delivery. And another portent appeared in heaven, a great red dragon, with seven heads, and ten horns, and seven diadems upon his heads. His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven, and cast them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to bear a child, that he might devour her child when she brought it forth; (Apocalypse 12.1-4).

The introduction to the vision - 'And a great sign appeared in heaven' (Kai\ shmei~on me/ga w)/fqh e)n tw~? ou)ranw~?, Apocalypse 12.1) - qualifies the experience epistemically, which the term 'sign' reinforces. The same form of the same verb is used of the appearance of the red dragon, presented as the foe to the woman. The aorist, passive, indicative, third person singular of the verb o(ra/w ('to see'), w)/fqh, is used in two of the synoptic accounts of The Transfiguration of the appearance of Elijah with/and Moses (Mark 9.4, Matthew 17.3). Its three occurrences in only this particular form in The Apocalypse, are concentrated here: at 11.19, the record of the seventh trumpet which leads directly to 12.1, concerning the woman, and again at 12.3, concerning the dragon; the last two incidences being combined with shmei~on. It is not simply the dragon, to whom John refers as the 'serpent' (dra/kwn - o)/fiv, c.f. LXX Gen 3.1vv) which invokes the second creation narrative. The woman as the chief agent in the drama and the combination of imagery from the Day 4 rubric, sun, moon and stars, tells for the same. As central to The Apocalypse, she, the second, or wholly final Eve, is the manifest of its axiological-theological concerns, to wit, beauty. We shall return to this idea in relation to the Christian eschatology revealed in the series of seals, since there is a clear connection between the numbered sealed servants, 144,000, the number of the tribes to which they belong, and the woman's crown of twelve stars.

The elision of the Day 4 rubric and the woman, a 'transfigured Eve', is striking in its complexity. It reinforces the taxonomical interrelation of the three aconscious, conceptual forms of unity. In the first place it reflects space : time, since the planets as such afford us the only means of measuring the same. In chapter 11, John was told '"Rise and measure the temple of God and the altar and those who worship there ..."' (Apocalypse 11.1). Secondly, the woman with child announces the symbolic feminine. Thirdly the Day 4 rubric denoting the body, utilizes the planets sun and moon, as tropes for masculine and feminine respectively, and the stars as trope for offspring. The concept of embodiment is reinforced by the fact that the woman is 'with child'. In this way, the whole taxon, (conceptual) forms of unity is invoked, just as it was announced by the three consecutive, and obvioiusly interrelated Markan healing miracles; mind : body - The Daughter of Jairus; space : time - The Haemorrhagic Woman; and male : female - The Syrophoenician Woman.

The Day 4 rubric must be taken in conjunction with Day 1; it denotes the Christological category, mind : body, (soma), responsively to the denotation of mind (logos), the premier rubric of the P creation narrative, on which the entire narratological structure depends. For, while ever there is no light distinct from darkness, there can be not even a single Day. The uniqueness of this Day, as of the 'only begotten Son', occurs equivocally in relation to the Day 4 story, as we see from the fact that morning and evening arise subsequently to it, Day 1, even though of course, there has been no equation between sun and day, since no planets have been explicitly mentioned. The same is evident also in the recurrence of the disjunctive terms light and darkness in the Day 4 rubric, which explicitly mentions the sun vis-à-vis the day, and the moon vis-à-vis the night. As signifying a mode of antithesis then, these Christological rubrics employ both the unambiguously antithetical Transcendental and Pneumatological modes of antithesis, disjunctive and conjunctive respectively. The Christological mode replicates both forms of relation, external, (disjunctive), and internal, (conjunctive). In virtue of it alone, the two subsections of the story sustain their relation(s). It alone explicates the ambivalence of the related binaries: Day 1-Day 4; Day 2-Day 5; Day 3-Day 6.

It is reasonable to admit the metaphorical value of the three figures, sun, moon and stars as connotative respectively of masculine, feminine, and neuter, or 'non-binary', not only as standing relatively to the figurative presentation of light qua the mind-logos in the premier rubric, but also as these frequently occur in language, and particularly as substantives. For this is generally how we conceptualize the body itself. The three tropes as a whole thus square with the identification of the logos as the creative agent which begins the series; they also resonate with the concept of embodiment, and the recurrence of God's blessing and the injunction for the propagation of species in the second half of the narrative. In the Markan healing miracle, The Daughter Of Jairus, we meet a similar triangulation consisting of the 'little girl' - she is sometimes referred to by means of a neuter noun, and sometimes by a feminine noun - and her two parents. The latter are instrumental to her recovery, just as they were presumably, to her illness. I mention this because it is the only Markan healing miracle story which addresses the taxonomical subject of the creation narrative; the soma as categoreal-paradigmatic radical, a formal and ultimately general constituent of mind. Her age, like the duration of the illness afflicting The Haemorrhagic Woman, is given as twelve years. That healing story of course involves the notion of death; the father of the girl initially having believed that his daughter was on the threshold of death. But instead, she was on the threshold of sexual maturity as we glean from the interpolation of The Haemorrhagic Woman. Once more the themes of love and death, and of course, desire and death, are interwoven as warp and weft.

The twelve stars which form the crown of the woman with child, are an intratextual device linking her with the same figure deployed in the series of seals, there to maximum effect, since it is there both squared and multiplied by the 'thousand'; and linking her too with the later description of the 144,000, 'the redeemed of the earth' (emphasis added). These links propose the concept of collective identity, epitomised by the twelve tribes involved in the six seals, and the sixth seal itself, and by the earlier vision of the 'souls under the altar' in the fifth seal. But that concept is later modified in the description of the heavenly city, by the conflation of individual and collective in the description of the tribes in combination with the twelve apostles as individuals. If we allow the characterization of the woman as purposively consonant with The Transfiguration, then we again need to modify any sense of identity given here as exclusively collective. The miracle narrative depicts a radical structure of consciousness, haptic imagination, which is irreducibly ontogenic. Its nature as such is clearly announced in the overture to the miracle story: '" ... there are some standing here who will not taste death ... (ei)si/n tinev w(~de tw~n e(sth/kotwn, Mark 9.1 emphasis added). The 'eschatological woman' of The Apocalypse adverts to the book's specifically Christian eschatological content, delivered in the series of seven seals. These seven seals resume the analogous relation of the seven creation rubrics and the seven messianic events, as central to Christian metaphysics. And surely the same is evident from the portrait of the four living creatures qua gospels in their relation to the four horsemen. But this link makes provision for the distinction between eschatological principles which arise in the first instance from the two Pneumatological divisions of symbolic feminine~optic memory, and symbolic masculine~optic imagination.

Theological bodies have to date been more or less exclusively dimorphic. That is, they have generally followed the received perception that limits the kinds of soma to just two; male or female. This view has become increasingly contested of late, and so it is a propitious change to justly notice the third member of the Day 4 rubric, the stars. That figure features prominently throughout The Apocalypse in a variety of ways. The second section of the P creation narrative proliferates with the injunction to multiply, and the presence of the stars in this light, as part of the Day 4 rubric beginning that section, and as precursory to the same is fitting, if, as I am arguing, they are tokens of progeny. It is necessary to distinguish taxonomically between the two categories, male : female and mind : body, just as the same applies to their analogues, optic memory and haptic memory respectively. So then, before proceeding to the complex of astral imagery in The Apocalypse, as if the hermeneutical demands of the the latter were not challenging enough, we must first review the anthropic category itself, depicted in the Pneumatological rubrics Day 3 - Day 6. In this venture it is important not to lose sight of the fact that the primary rationale of the taxonomies of both Genesis and the gospels is Christological. That is to say, that their significance for theology as for philosophical psychology, is not in the first instance ontological. The existence and identity of both conceptual and perceptual categories concerns the disposition of mind; the nature of consciousness; the anatomy of the soul. And as for any significance attaching to the use of the stars in the Day 4 rubric figuratively of non-binary or 'intersexual' bodily morphology, we should keep in mind just that; namely that it is posited under the auspice not of sexual dimorphism per se, but of the soma. That is, the figure of the stars in this context does not relate to male : female as such, but rather to mind : body, their reciprocal relevance to one another notwithstanding.

Any theological-philosophical discussion of transcendence and immanence must countenance the fact that there are six species of transcendence; three forms of imagination, and the three pure conceptual forms with which they are analogous. Even given their proximity there is no justification in eliding the disparity maintained by the anthropic and somatic forms of unity, male : female and mind : body. The transcendence of the symbolic feminine is the business of the symbolic masculine, and the transcendence of the soma or mind : body, that of the pure conceptual form mind. This is the delivery of the first narrative we encounter in the canon, and the keystone to any Christian doctrine of transcendence. Historically, the alignment of the anthropic and psychophysical categories, male : female and mind : body, which I have already queried, has provided feminist polemics with opportunistic targets to attack: essentialist versions of sexual dimorphism. A single example of the same is Genevieve Lloyd's The Man Of Reason: "Male" And "Female" In Western Philosophy.

The transcendent is the favoured term in Lloyd's treatment. That is, immanence bears the brunt of her critique, against her emphatic appeal to transcendence, synonymous as it is with 'God' in the belief systems of the West, and so immanence noticeably comes off second best. This is doubly odd, since transcendence itself in her reckoning, has been eviscerated of any theological intension such that it is difficult to understand exactly what she means by it. Immanence concerns men no less than women; the anthropic form of unity, is just that, a unity, male and female, as the imago Dei posits. I shall further develop the relation between the immanence and the symbolic feminine, but one must wonder nevertheless whether or not all forms of both actual and virtual immanence according to this account, merit censure and deprecation. These will include of course both space : time and mind : body, and of course the entire panoply of percipient memory. Her claim that:

If women are not out there engaging in their own projects and exploits, they are reduced to mere immanence or immersion in life. There is no middle zone between transcendence and immanence.' (pp 98, 99),

conflicts directly with Christian revelation, and is at once roundly denied by the doctrine of incarnation as by a host of other precepts, chiefly the apparently paradoxical delineation of the aconscious, whose conceptual (transcendental) pole functions according to virtual immanence, and whose immanent, that is, perceptual pole functions according to virtual transcendence.

This work is not overtly theological, although it well might be. Lloyd briefly surveys the legacies of Augustine and Aquinas (pp 28-37), but never with reference to either transcendence nor immanence, since she follows their own concentration on the second, the J narrative of creation, in which woman is the helpmate to Adam. This narrative appears to provide an anthropology of sorts, that is, a theological understanding of humankind in its relation to God ('Transcendence'), but in fact does nothing of the kind. The most significant of any anthropological doctrine, and we see that it coheres inseparably with both Trinitarian and Christological postulates as well as the doctrine of imago Dei, is contained in the P story. So much the worse then, for both Augustine and Aquinas. In other words, I am affirming that their anthropologies fall short of biblical metaphysics and Christian teaching in general.

Thereafter she takes up the cudgels fairly late in the history of 'Western philosophy', in the wake of French existentialism. There is a single reference (p 4) to the presentation of logos in Plato, and thereafter, nothing. It well might have been otherwise if only because theology had already had its way with the same philosophy. Effectively not until the Renaissance and the Reformation did philosophy begin to disestablish itself from its theological moorings; and surely the dye had already been cast well before then. But the main reason why the author might have engaged in some measure at least, with theology as well as philosophy is due to her use of the binary transcendence 'and' immanence' - terms which will be highly instrumental in my own approach - which she inherits from Simone de Beauvoir. It is dubious whether either writer can legitimately afford to neglect the theological genealogy attaching to these terms in the Western theological traditions. (For a brief introduction to their early appearance in European philosophy in this connection, see Transcendence And Immanence, by Johannes Zachhuber.) Certainly there is not even a nod of any kind to the hymn to the logos which begins the fourth gospel, and which has had far-reaching repercussions on philosophy.

This is not the kind of rabidly toxic feminism espoused by the gender jingoism of Mary Daly, to whom I shall come directly. Because it has emerged later than the second wave of feminism, the argumentation is certainly less bellicose. But it serves to introduce as well as highlight my own misgivings. The difficulty attaching to Lloyd's reading stems from the importance she herself attaches to academe. This is not unusual in an academic, but just how many men have read any of the writers, male or female she mentions? For this reason I will pit the salon against the academy, art against philosophy. In sum my argument is as follows. The nude female form has been over-represented in pictorial art in the West at the expense of that of the male. In Western, Christian art of course, the primary figure represented in the time frame under consideration is that of the Christ, and not infrequently the crucified. This is a double objectification, since he is shown as trapped, and totally confined by his body, although rarely if ever is he shown naked, as we now believe he is likely to have been. Does the biased alignment of the nude female form in Western visual art with canons of beauty not then rival, and indeed equal, that of any corresponding alignment of 'male' 'Reason' and the masculine in Western philosophy? My guess is that it does.

I will not contest Lloyd's thesis in any detail, except for her claims regarding a 'Reason', putatively biased in virtue of maleness, as guilty of dispossessing women of transcendence and subjecthood insofar as these concern biblical, and philosophical metaphysics. And here I am departing from the history of the European philosophical-theological tradition, and emphasising the hermeneutic proposed in The Markan Mandala. This of course includes the discussion concerning the contribution of the conceptual form of unity, the body, soma, that is, mind : body, vis-à-vis the subject-object dichotomy begun in MARK 4 Subject : Object Qua Identity : Unity. Lloyd's thesis relies heavily on the standard, and by now all too conventional adequation between transcendence and the subject, most often conceived as consisting of the embodied looker, and the objectified, the equally embodied thing looked at. One of the points at issue in MARK 4, was the genuine difficulty attaching to the subject : object dichotomy à propos of the Christological taxonomy developed in the two narratives. That is, how we are to conceive of the body, as characterized by virtual immanence? If all we had to contend with were pure transcendence and actual immanence, matters could proceed without hesitation or any irresolution. But as a conceptual form of unity, soma is beset on all sides by ambiguity. All three conceptual forms of unity, space : time, mind : body and male : female, are the same in this respect. Like the three forms of imagination they introduce profoundly unsettling charges against any rendering of any of the four taxa according to the simple dichotomy subject : object, as they also do against the rendering of the same according to the dichotomy transcendence : immanence. In short, a body as virtually immanent, is not an actual but a virtual object.

I shall directly come to the history of Western painting in this same context, and the predominance of representations of the nude female body over that of the nude male, as a primary part of my immediate response to Lloyd's account. My reason for selecting pictorial art, in which the naked female form prevails over that of the male in the post-Christian era until the late Renaissance, is to directly counter her argument as unbalanced. But a first point of consideration must be the recent developments in the education of males and females in Western countries. We would do as well to ask if in the almost four decades since the publication of Lloyd's work, there has not been a radical shift in the pendulum. Her concentration on the historical record is a bulwark to the general argument of the book, but its political bent has not aged well. Lloyd is an Australian, and the situation concerning men and boys in this country is arguably comparable to that of the USA. For some time, boys and men have been underperforming comparatively to girls and women in the education systems of both countries. Certainly it would seem that 'Reason' inherent in these systems in the West at this point in time, is not skewed in favour of males. (See in this connection Are Men Done? They Are Failing At School, Work And Life.)

Returning to the body, that is, mind : body or soma, as opposed to mind in itself, and to art, as opposed to philosophy, we may say that art is the canonical, epistemic exemplification of this component of consciousness, soma. That is, art is to the mind : body qua conceptual form of unity, as is philosophy, both 'Western' and other-than-'Western', to the pure conceptual form mind, according to biblical metaphysics. Art no less than philosophy is a modus cognoscendi, one method among many of understanding, an episteme. There is good 'reason' to insist on attention to the prevalence of the nude female body in Western art in the period under scrutiny. Art no less than philosophy is a form of 'Reason', and it is constitutionally related to philosophy in the first instance, as is the (immanent) body, soma or mind : body, to (transcendent) mind. An obvious example of the ingredience in art of philosophy, or if you will, theology, is the religious music of Johan Sebastian Bach. Again we might point to Christian, or other, icongraphy in the visual sphere. Thus, if the instinctive or essential function of mind is belief, and if this is exemplified canonically in the same epistemic mode, belief, as philosophy, ('reason'), then we must consider the same epistemic function, belief, of that to which mind in itself is irrevocably related, soma. That episteme is art. This is the basis of my charge that the purview offered by Lloyd is unbalanced.

Here the broadest parameters of both episteme, philosophy, and art, must be conceded. This belongs to their relationality as generated by the two Christological categoreal radicals, mind and mind : body respectively. Art for its part encompasses all media available to the fourfold sensorium. The body in itself represents the fourfold manifold of sense-percipience, and just so, art may obtain in any of all four modes of sentience: haptic, optic, acoustic, and osmic-gustic. Or indeed, in any combination of these. This breadth of possible modes of expression, this wealth of media, is parallel to the same broad compass of philosophy. Both terms, art and philosophy, are thus intended here in their widest possible ambits. Nevertheless, I shall concentrate on the visual arts, and on painting in particular. I have already affirmed the analogous relation between optic memory and the symbolic feminine.

In other words, any historical kinship between 'Reason' and 'the masculine' is to be set against its equilibration; the essential and historical rapport between art and the feminine. I am putting that whereas mind is aligned congenially to the symbolic masculine, just so the symbolic feminine and mind : body consist in the same manner, a fact which is attested to in 'Western' art. The same relation of sufficient and necessary condition, obtains between mind and the philosophical logos as does between mind : body and art as logos. And just as a certain typological alliance exists in the case of symbolic masculine and mind, the same is true of symbolic feminine and the body. In simple terms, if mind and hence reason has been characterized in the Western philosophical tradition as somehow masculine or male, then it is no less true that mind : body has been equally characterized as feminine or female by art. Lloyd has, to the detriment of her argument, completely ignored this fact, one which Manet's famous Le Déjeuner Sur L'Herbe veritably comments upon with tongue-in-cheek, so to speak. The two men who are represented are both fully clothed, one is sporting a cap; one of the two women is totally naked, another in the background is only lightly clad.

The body is typologically characterized as feminine rather than masculine in Christian metaphysics as in Western/European art. The Day 4 rubric, its classical deposition, belongs to the second and 'earth' section of the creation narrative, comprising four and not three elements, which is signal of transcendence ('the heavens'). That it is symbolically feminine comports at once with the injunctions to 'increase and multiply', and this of course requires both male and female. It is also the subject of the healing miracle story The Daughter Of Jairus, from the twelvefold Markan corpus of such narratives which iterate the categoreal forms in their entirety. This means all bodies, not merely the bodies biologically determined as those of females. The twelve categoreal radicals deposed in the narrative cycles of beginning and end are equally divided this way following the sortal actual-virtual. Thus categories of both actual and virtual transcendence are subsumed under 'symbolic masculine'; and categories of virtual and actual immanence under 'symbolic feminine'. I shall further develop the propinquity of each gender with its given advocacy in what follows, but not in relation to biology. That is, I shall not argue for any intrinsic and ordained sympathy or complicity between the two in either case of actual biological, as opposed to 'symbolic', masculinity or femininity. Indeed this has already put in the first essay; but bears repetition if only for the sake of avoiding misunderstanding.

Here I anticipate immediately the reply to the prevalence of the nude feminine body in art Western and the objectifying nature of the gaze, that the latter inherently renders the object inferior. The same charge may be readily levelled at my postulate that the female body is more beautiful than the male, and consequently more prone to visual representation. But there is a significant amount of evidence that women painters themselves are of the same opinion. Very few of them have deviated from the course established by male artists once this became a viable possibility. For the most part they have tended to avoid representation of the nude male. Susan Valadon's single painting of male nudes, Casting The Net, for example, stands alone in her oeuvre which includes many female nudes. Remarkably, this image studiously and completely avoids any representation of male genitalia whatsoever. The observations of Edward Lucie-Smith in this connection are succinct:

When women began to push for an independent creative existence in the second half of the nineteenth century, one of the battles that faced them was the right to study the male nude on the same terms as male entrants into the same profession. ...

By the time women began to achieve something approaching equality with men in the art world, the study of the nude had long since fallen into disuse and was no longer a standard means of training artists.

The rise of feminist art, from the mid-1970s onwards, did not do much to change this situation, though one of the pioneers of the movement, Judy Chicago (b. 1939), has made some fine studies of male nudes, one of which is reproduced in this book. The reasons for this are complex. One is the visceral distaste for all nude representations which inspired many feminists. If the female nude chiefly aroused their ire, then the male nude also attracted condemnation, since in the eyes of some feminists every form of nude representation was an expression of patriarchal control on the part of the artist or photographer who made it, just as all varieties of sexual intercourse were to be seen as a form of rape. Alternatively, if this version was not acceptable, then images of naked males could be seen as threatening icons of masculine potency. That is, if male nudes in paintings and photographs were not a form of rape, then they threatened rape. This form of feminism offers in another guise a revival of the old puritan fear of the body. (Edward Lucie-Smith, Adam: The Male Figure In Art, Rizzoli, New York, 1998, pp 12-14.)

Surprisingly perhaps, very little reference has been made to genitalia in 'body theologies' so-called. And if here then, I am essentially talking about male and female human genitalia, it is quite simply because the P narrative does the same. There of course, the references are 'eucalyptic' rather than 'apocalyptic', covered rather than uncovered; veiled rather than unveiled. Nonetheless these veiled references in the Day 3 rubric are fundamental to the two narrative cycles, creation series and messianic series. That rubric posits the two sexual forms of the animal-human body in terms of their genital dispositions. In this much it anticipates the theology of haptic-somatic semiotic forms. Phallos and uterus are semeia unlike any other. In the first place, except in anomalous cases, no single human body contains both, although in the plant and sub-human animal kingdoms, this does occur, sequential hermaphrodites being much more common that simultaneous hermaphrodites. Secondly, there is an explicit bearing between the semeion and the conceptual form signified: the phallos is an index of the symbolic masculine and the uterus of the symbolic feminine. In all other ten instances of haptic semiotics, the conceptual or perceptual components of consciousness are signified by members of the body not immediately represented in the same way. For example, the hand is the semiotic bearer of haptic memory; the dermal body, the skin in its entirety is the semeion for haptic imagination. The discussion of haptic semiotics was given in LUKE 2 Semeihaptika: The Body And Touch.

A third and still more important distinction why these markers of sexual dimorphism matter so much to theology concerns the doctrine of the relation of God to the world, and that of the world to God; 'God to Gaia and back again'. This bears repetition if only because if serves to elucidate, yet again, the reason for the epithet 'symbolic' in the terms 'symbolic masculine' and 'symbolic feminine'. Genitalia in the male are external; more than probably one clear reason for the 'visceral distaste' of which Lucie-Smith speaks, and certainly part of my contention that the female body is the final exemplification of beauty. That is of course material or physical, and hence visible beauty. (There is a corresponding form of beauty belonging to the optic imagination rather than optic memory, and hence proper to the symbolic masculine, which offsets this. But for the moment, let us remain with the doctrine of relations, external and internal, as manifest in these two corporeal, Pneumatological semeia.) The female body is indeed more readily, aesthetically viable than that of the male, insofar as the reproductive organs are contained within. That is, their configuration is internal as opposed to external. This is a primary reason for the greater incidence of representation of the female nude in Western art in the period under consideration. It is one among a number of such factors, to catalogue which is unecessary here.

This does not mean or even infer that men as possessed of genitalia ordered in this way, externally, are in any sense representative of transcendence, that is, of 'God'; just as it equally does not mean or even infer that women are thus models of Gaia, earth, immanence. Several important factors in both textual cycles strongly militate against just such identification between biological masculinity and transcendence, and biological femininity and immanence. To the first of these I have already pointed: the second level application of the categoreal paradigm transcendence : immanence, 'the heavens and the earth', in the P creation story and the corresponding division of the six messianic miracles. These formal devices sort both taxonomies into pure and virtual transcendence, systematized under the aegis of 'symbolic masculine~optic imagination' and actual and virtual immanence, categorized correspondingly under the banner 'optic memory~symbolic feminine'. The relation indicated by the tilde (~), is in both cases the same; that of analogy.

These four, just aforementioned Pneumatological components of consciousness differ radically from Christological and Transcendental elements, which share certain features. It is difficult to establish relations of superordinacy-subordinacy of either analogue in the former, which is what occurs in the case of the latter two. The distinction conscious and aconscious applies equally to the four Pneumatological radicals, just as it does to the eight Christological and Transcendental categories. The symbolic masculine is conscious and its perceptual analogue, optic imagination aconscious; the opposite is true of the symbolic feminine and optic memory. The symbolic feminine is aconscious, optic memory is conscious. Normativity thus applies equally to Pneumatological elements of mind.

But the distinction between superordinacy and subordinacy does not follow suit. All Pneumatological forms of intentionality which accrue from these radicals circumscribe medial temporal zones. Like their very modes of intentionality themselves, which are per definitionem hybrids, the temporal zones determined by the canonical occasions of Pneumatological modes of intentionality are medial, bordering the parameters of distal and proximal zones, both past and future. They define either medial pasts, as for immanence, or medial futures, as for transcendence. They neither begin nor end their taxa in terms of its inherent temporality. They are not responsible for demarcating either distal or proximal pasts or futures, as are Christological and Transcendental intentional forms which order both. They are betwixt and between in their canonical instances.

This confirms and consolidates the hybrid nature of Pneumatological modes of intentionality. For example, the intentional mode proper to optic memory is desiring-and-knowing, and it delineates the medial past. Canonical desire specifies the distal past of haptic memory, and canonical knowing, the proximal past of acoustic memory. Thus it follows that their hybrid form, desiring-and-knowing, whose canonical occasion belongs to optic memory, must fix the borders of the medial past. Pneumatological intentionality likewise arbitrates between phylogeny and ontogeny; in the same example manifest in knowing and desiring respectively. It conflates this distinction, as well as that of conative-cognitive; in the same example instantiated by desiring and knowing respectively. In such a manner, Pneumatological forms of intentionality reflect the chief property of immanence: to wit, unity. Differences of Pneumatological consciousness from its Transcendental and Christological counterparts are emblematic of the difference of The Apocalypse as a whole from the narrative cycles of creation and redemption, in spite of the certain rapport maintained by the latter to the former. I have referred to the hypertextual quality of The Apocalypse in terms of its apparently derivative quality, the tendency to borrow existing texts from both canons almost to the point of plagiarizing. Its ultimate aim as such was indeed unity in negotiating the conclusion of the canon as a whole.

My reason for this diversion into Pneumatological forms of intentionality here is to prepare the ground for the future discussion of eschatology. If the Pauline doctrine of anakephalaiosis dissolves any hard and fast distinction between the one and the many, ontogeny and phylogeny, the individual and society, whether intentionally or not, in order to link 'the only begotten Son' with a single primordial man, 'Adam', who stands nevertheless for the human race in its entirety, the same or at least a similar dilemma surrounds the conceptual form 'symbolic masculine' and the title 'Son of man'. It is summed up for us in Whitehead's eminently quotable remark:

The individuality of entities is just as important as their community. The topic of religion is individuality in community. (A. N. Whitehead, Religion In The Making, New American Library, New York, 1974, p 86.)

We have already had to consider the radical, that is, categoreal, difference between ontogeny and phylogeny. Effectively, it serves to distinguish the gospels into these two very kinds, following their accentuation of either transcendence as is true of both Matthew and John, or immanence, as per Mark and Luke. Additionally each of the three Trinitarian titles, 'the beginning and the end', 'the first and the last', and 'the Alpha and the Omega' amount to the same, since they correspond to the pattern in which modes of intentionality are conjoined. These are: (1) instrumental relations formulated in the arrangement of the four taxa, which begin with conative modes and end with cognitive modes, for example, the instrumental relation of will to belief; (2) analogous relations stemming from the conceptual and perceptual analogues, for example the relation of faith (belief) to desire-to-know; and (3) supervenient relations, for example the supervenience of knowledge-of-will upon desire, or that of knowing upon desire-to-know, and so on. Every one of these is equally the relation of the one to the many or of the many to the one. Relations of instrumentality and of prevenience-supervenience both reflect the fundamental dichotomy of individual and society, along with its innate dilemma. Analogous relations do not, thus faith and desire-to-know are both ontogenic in kind, and will-to-believe and knowing are both phylogenic.

Even so, none of these relations is eschatological in just the sense that this entails the judgement of 'individuality in community' as Whitehead puts it. This has become a supremely significant factor in later modernity with its record of historical injustices that have been brought to light with devastating clarity, particularly in the Christian or 'post-Christian West'. This is because it was for the most part European and nominally Christian civilizations, which while they may have brought in some form or another, an albeit all too often adulterated version of Christian culture, to their colonized subjects, simultaneously exploited them in such ways and degrees, that entire generations following the first representatives of those same colonizing cultures have had to reckon with their consciences. The same occurred outside the history of European colonization, for example in World War 2, and is occurring now, in the war waged by Russia against Ukraine. How does one as an individual come to terms with his or her ancestry, and society, if that individual enjoys and benefits from the fruits of those very injustices? The Lukan Beatitudes and Woes (Luke 6.24-26) solemnly warn us against just such enjoyment and benefits, and for example, the parable of The Rich Man And Lazarus (Luke 16.19-31) suggest the same. Or, in the case of World War 2, what to do if the community of which one's forbears was a committed member, engaged in the same? Does this result in blameworthiness of the descendents of those agents? In contemporary literature I can think of a single effort which has attempted to address this moral dilemma: The Question Of German Guilt, by Karl Jaspers, although he does not fully address the broader questions concerning the individual self in relation to its forebears, 'the sins of the fathers'. (For anyone interested in this subject I recommend What Did The German Public Know About The Holocaust During World War II, the comments section is also worth reading. I can also recommend The Abyss: Rise And Fall Of The Nazis, in particular, 10/10: The Reckoning. The full series of which is freely available at this link.)

The Russian invasion and destruction of life and property in Ukraine, has already been labelled 'genocidal'. And indeed, the responses of many individual members of Russian society, both male and female, though men in particular, since they were and are liable to be conscripted, has been to simply abandon the country of their birth in droves. How should we interpret this? Is it a positive, negative, or neutral act? Does it absolve them, if in fact absolution were requisite; does it inculpate them, since they might have acted otherwise for good, as did certain members of German society during the Nazi era, and either try and to change their society for the better, or refuse compliance with evil? Yet again, does it effectively do neither of these things, such that we ourselves, who are not directly implicated in the same way, might deem their actions neutral, being finally neither 'hot nor cold', to use another biblical figure of speech?

This is the point at which eschatology in itself delivers us: will my judgement subsequent to my death, concern my individual or social being, or both, or neither? Am I responsible for the actions of the wider society into which I was born, and if so, how? Is my 'soul' a single, individuated entity, void of all relation to my community, as for example it is determined by belief and by desire; or on the other hand, is it a question of knowing and will, which mark 'the' soul as one among many, so that to entertain any notion of individual immortality is a nonsense? And how are we to make any sense of the possible relation of ontogenic and phylogenic being? These matters bring into focus yet another and still quite different relation between intentional forms, as concerning temporality formerly discussed, that is, in terms of its distal, medial and proximal spheres, in combination with the doctrine of relations of God and the world, relations somehow, that is, semiologically portended in the actual physical dispositions of the human body by the Pneumatological-eschatological rubrics of the creation story.

The description of temporal pasts and futures vis-à-vis conscious and aconscious intentionality, provides the basis for a comprehensive response to the question of the relations of the one to the many and the many to the one. This is my reason for having introduced Pneumatology as bound to eschatology here, even though it was always implied in the elision of 'the one and the many' in both the narrative of the Fall so-called, and the conceptual apparatus attaching to both the anthropic category and to the title 'Son of man'. The diametrical opposition of these ways of understanding both being and consciousness in their relation to eschatology undoubtedly confronting us in 'the West', remains a vexing and seeming aporia, and from it, there seems no respite. The threefold and radically Trinitarian disposition of time according to the taxonomies of Genesis and the gospel offer the basis for a response to the dilemma.

Further to any conjectures of post-mortem judgement, it will be equally necessary to countenance the obverse of any concentration on evil, accruing from doctrines of 'the Fall'. If we are to take the doctrine of imago Dei seriously, then human consciousness is inherently axiological in nature as is put by the constant refrain of God's own judgement on the creation: '"And God saw that it was good."' Pursuant to which we observed references to the same value in the two Christological messianic miracle narratives. I am not proffering this argument in keeping with certain efforts to rebuff the conventional doctrines of the Fall and 'original sin', which claim that if mankind's vicious nature was inherited from a primordial Adam (and Eve), then it follows that his virtuous nature was likewise inherited. It is obvious that I have forsaken that narrative as incomplete, and in favour of the first. My position stems immediately and solely from the premise that the P narrative is the beginnings of a unique and Christian anthropology, whose ending is one of the chief tasks of the messianic series. Moreover that these three theological intents, Trinity, Christology and imago Dei, which remain interdependtly coherent, aspire to the same end: the articulation of a Christian anthropology.

It must then be incumbent on any satisfactory, Christian eschatology to account for the possibility that individuals and societies alike provide for the possibility of the realization of good, and not only the good, but truth and beauty as well. We shall come to the axiological aspect of eschatological doctrines in due course. They have already been noted as inseparable from the doctrine of intentionality as part of logos theology. For example, knowing and willing, both conscious and aconscious, provide for the realization of truth, just as belief and desire do for the good. All hybrid modes of intentionality are inextricably aesthetic. They are purposefully given to the judgement of beauty. This concerns understanding a crucial aspect of the rationale of the creation, and its bearing on the immanent nature of God. The relation of the world to God, an internal relation, intelligible under the auspices of the symbolic feminine, achieves God's unity. The world is the province of God's immanent nature, God's oneness of being. Thus all three forms of value, the good, the true and the beautiful, are indispensable to the workings of this process. Those same three forms are entertained in the Eucharist; the ongoing liturgical celebration, the practical demonstration rather than theoretical explication of this fact. In just this manner, 'Gaia' promotes the unity of identities ('persons'), in God, by means of the register in human consciousness, in virtue of its bearing the image and likeness of God, of those various values in all varieties, that is modes, of awareness, that is, intentionality. The creation and the creative advance of the world are the occasion of divine immanence. Without the world God remains 'tritheistic'. And so, the story does not begin and end simply with 'sin'.

And again, it is the case that these span the same divide, from ontogeny to phylogeny, and from phylogeny to ontogeny, presenting us with the same dilemma. The real differentiation among the same three forms of value, the true, the good and the beautiful, is to be found in the resolution of this dilemma. Eschatology in the context of the dilemma, viz. that being itself and its attendant consciousness alike, are and must be considered according to both criteria, individual and society, highlights the need for speculative, that is, theoretical theology. This short foray into the subject demonstrates very clearly just how effectively theoretical and practical 'reason' - I mean of course, the logos - are necessary to one another. If I cannot resist yet another quote from Whitehead, it is because it puts the same fact succinctly. I shall reinforce it with a quote from Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling:

It is no paradox to say that in our most theoretical moods we may be nearest to our most practical applications.

The fear of speculation, the ostensible rush from the theoretical to the practical, brings about the same shallowness in action that it does in knowledge. It is by studying a strictly theoretical philosophy that we become most acquainted with Ideas, and only Ideas provide action with vigour and ethical significance.

The designation of temporality in accordance with the categoreal paradigm, transcendence : immanence, which results in the distinction future : past respectively, analogously to the components responsible for intentionality, the twelve categoreal forms, conceptual and perceptual, is inherently eschatological precisely because of its inherent temporality. In each case two forms of intentionality, one Christological, and the other Transcendental, demarcate one and the same temporal domain: the distal past, and the proximal past as for immanence, and the distal future and the proximal future as for transcendence. The distal past is the province equally proper to will-to-believe and desire. The former is phylogenic the latter ontogenic, such that their relation consists equally of the many and the one. The proximal past is circumscribed by knowing, phylogenic in nature, and belief-in-desire, ontogenic in nature, to the same effect, thus relating the many and the one, eschatologically, or as we may say, in virtue of temporality.

Futurity follows suit. The future delimited by the mode of belief is proximal, and ontogenic; the future delimited by knowledge-of-will is also proximal, but nevertheless phylogenic in kind. The distal future is circumscribed by the intentional forms will, and desire-to-know, the latter being ontogenic in kind and the former phylogenic. In this way, temporality is intrinsic to eschatology as a theology of death which comprises both aspects of being, the many and the one, the society no less than the inidividual. But it nevertheless concerns also the provision accomplished by the world, of God's immanent being. That is, it must include the contribution of humankind to the oneness in being of the Triune God. There is not only the relation of God to the world; but also that of the world to God. These relations of both kinds, external and internal, once again in keeping with the eschatological category symbolic masculine : symbolic feminine, which also encompass the relations of the many and the one, belong to Pneumatology as eschatology. It is the prerogative of the mandala to express them. In other words, their final expositions are susceptible of methodically visual representation.

The relation of the world ('earth') to God is of singular moment to theologies of immanence, and therefore to feminist perspectives of biblical texts. That is because the world remains the guarantor of the unity of identities in God, the unity of Transcendence, The Word and The Holy Spirit. God's unity is conditional upon the world; without the world God can never be 'one in being'. Having sketched this topic I resume the discussion of immanence and the feminine, beginning with one of the most egregious examples of early feminist polemics, Mary Daly. An extract from a reasonably generous obituary is as follows:

Daly's best known phrase—a summation of her essential perspective—was, "Since God is male, the male is God" (first appearing in "The Qualitative Leap Beyond Patriarchal Religion"; Quest 1, 1974). Roland Mushat Frye, in a chapter titled, "On Praying 'Our Father': The Challenge of Radical Feminist Language for God," (The Politics of Prayer: Feminist Language and the Worship of God (1992), ed.Helen Hull Hitchcock; pp 209-228), wrote, "Like most slogans, this one minimized evidence while increasing conviction, and it has served as a powerful rallying cry for radical feminism. ... Through her writings, [Daly] probably contributed as much as anyone to establishing the radical feminist attitude toward traditional Christian language for God."

Frye notes, however, that the slogan "runs contrary to the evidence. Neither the bible nor the Christian and Jewish traditions have ever taught that God is male, and, in terms both explicit and implicit have repeatedly denied that he is. In this, both the Christian and Jewish traditions stand in stark opposition to pagan and gnostic religions which recognized a host of 'genital gods', or dii genitales, as Cicero's Roman contemporaries called them." He points out that "the most dramatic refutation" of any identification of God as a male is found in Deuteronomy 4:16-17: "Therefore take good heed to yourselves. Since you saw no form on the day that the LORD spoke to you at Horeb out of the midst of the fire, beware lest you act corruptly by making a graven image for yourselves, in the form of any figure, the likeness of male or female..." God's fatherhood "does not consist in sexual generation," Fry observes, "but in his calling of them to be his chosen people, and his adoption of them by his grace."

I have already countered this war cry, one which bluntly avoids any appreciation of the relational, by means of my constant and systematic references to 'symbolic masculine' and 'symbolic feminine', and my stated conviction that both sexes are subsumable under both categories, meaning that there are biological males and females belonging to either category. Daly represents an extreme example of the silence and failure of polemicizing, feminist criticism à propos of the transfigured Eve, whom I take to be the chief protagonist of The Apocalypse. In signature adversarial style, and macho to macho, measure for measure, rebarbative rodomontade, Daly cites, and rewrites the post-apostolic father, Gregory of Nazianzus, in defence of her proposition that a male Christ cannot effect the salvation of women, precisely because of his gender:

What has not been assumed has not been healed; it is what is united to his divinity that is saved ...' (Epistle 101)

Her challenge to classical Christology woefully begs the question of the equally limited efficacy of the salvific remit of any female saviour, putative or otherwise, given that sexual dimorphism is routinely and necessarily attendant upon birth, and as such, precludes any doctrine of incarnational theism tout court effected by a single individual. Even if we consider anomalous cases of intersex, the ruthless logic of Daly's reading of the axiom still functions as a two edged sword, both for and against any concept of an androgynous human person to realize the redemption of the human race in toto, just as it does for male or female humans. (I exempt from consideration for the moment at least, the sub-human realm, to which this proscription applies with even more drastic results.) Presumably, androgynous saviours can only save androgynous humans, accepting the premise by means of which Daly's interpretative twist stands Gregory's dictum on its head. Notwithstanding this, androgynous Christologies, as distinct from an androgynous saviour, are not only an intellectual possibility, but an article of faith for some believers. (See R. R. Reuther, Christology And Feminism: Can A Male Saviour Save Women?) Thus the nihilistic bravura of Daly's willful misinterpretation becomes strangely reminiscent of the Buddhist catuskoti, or Nagarjuna's tetralemma: the saviour cannot be male; nor female; nor both (androgynous); nor neither. Here endeth the lesson.

This failed soteriology of early, radical, feminist theology has the merit of provoking thought. I argue the case for the specific maleness of the Christian incarnate Word as intrinsic to its specific form of theistic belief and as the theology of identity is a marker of transcendence and theism in general. This argument will rely upon the Christological epistemology essential to the P creation narrative in conjunction with the analogous rapport sustained by its Sabbath rubric and the narrative of the institution of the Lord's Supper in particular, incorporating special reference to the title 'Son of man' in both the first and second testaments. I will also give heed to the two Christologies of the messianic series, the first and last miracle stories of that catena: The Transformation Of Water Into Wine and The Transfiguration. Both narratives deploy the title 'Son of man'; now in the context of Eros, and now in that of Thanatos. The former is clearly related to the Eucharist, and the latter to baptism, and to The Apocalypse as a whole, so I contend. Both narratives sort with the concept of the symbolic masculine, as the formal subject of the Day 3 rubric of the creation story, as well as with the motif of purification prevalent throughout The Apocalypse, vital to its concept of sanctification and to Pneumatology in general.

The vision of the woman is therefore central to these arguments, even if astonishingly to the sensibilities of certain, polemical, feminist theologies. As The Holy Spirit she is instrumental to the resurrection of the body, and was instrumental to the same in the eschatological age antecedent to the incarnation of The Word, The Son. That is to say, she stands for the principle of samsaric eschatology. She is the foil to the persona Eve of the J narrative, and so the exponent of the role of the feminine principle not only in sanctification as regards the body, that is, the mind : body, or soma. I have already mentioned the Day 4 rubric in its relation to that of Day 1. That the epistemological-Christological purpose of the P narrative, is thus clearly evoked in this same vision, with especial reference to the conceptual forms mind : body and mind respectively, in combination with the evocation of the proto-mythlogical narrative of the J story, is assured. The cosmological tropes sun, moon and stars are here just as patently significative of the body, the body gendered, that is, sexually dimorphic, male and female, and non-gendered respectively. The latter is remarkably announced by the trope of the twelve stars. These three figures, sun, moon and stars, are fundamental to the measure of time, a fact which further corroborates the connection of the vision of the woman with the P narrative of the archaeological week of seven days. The clear association the twelve stars have with both the sixth seal in particular, and the series of seals as a whole, as with the later reference to the 144,000 (Apocalypse 14.1-5), must be accounted for in any hermeneutic of the vision and its relation to eschatology in general.

That the woman depicted is the mother of Jesus is not in question. But her persona need not remain restricted to this alone. Most of the symbolism of The Apocalypse is polysemous. So indeed, I conjecture that she must figure relatively to the eschatological epoch to which I have just referred; the first, which is antecedent to the incarnation of The Word. The latter denotes the second. This construal fits the heaven-earth binary, restating the paradigm transcendence : immanence. Her connection to samsaric eschatologies and to the concept of the body is thus ensured. The latter is guaranteed by the recurrence of the imagery of the Day 4 rubric. So a yet further challenge awaits feminist theology: namely the examination of, and engagement with just those eschatologies I refer to as samsaric.

Two further examples of similarly failed critiques of the presentation of gender in biblical theology more generally, and of The Apocalypse in particular, will suffice to introduce the next stage of the argument. The first is Mary Grey's interpretation of the vision to which I have been referring. Her hermeneutic to some extent, squares with my own. Moreover, it engages the heaven : earth binary, the closest of any scriptural equivalent to the categoreal paradigm, transcendence : immanence. Grey regards the symbol introduced in chapter 12 as 'an epiphany of Sophia', (Grey, Mary, Wisdom Of Fools?: Seeking Revelation For Today, SPCK, London, 1993, p 141.) But she is unable to account for the placement of the vision as central to the book as a whole, and the cosmological symbolism. Her assertion that 'Heaven and earth, good and evil are depicted as in total opposition to each other.' (Ibid p 142), makes no impact on the semantic of this binary and its far-reaching intertextual ramifications. This gormless cliché undermines her own and otherwise justifiable claim regarding the woman that 'She is an epiphany of the connectedness of creation: the desert receives her and is experienced by her as a place of nourishment.' (loc cit., emphasis original). It exposes the thrust of her approach as barely more than ideological.

The scriptural connectedness of The Apocalypse itself reflects the theology of immanence, the theology of 'the earthly', in juxtaposition to the theology of transcendence. It stands as 'end' to 'beginning', and the cause of the latter it accepts. It is finally and fully, the vindication rather than the condemnation, of the 'symbolic feminine', which is the 'male and female' of the creation rubric. True to the intertextual as well as extratextual nature of The Apocalypse, with which Grey like many of her colleagues, deals in piecemeal fashion at best, the stars, figured in number as twelve, are recursive to the enumeration of the sealed tribes in the Christian eschatology of the first numbered series, just as they are precursive to the later mention of the 144,000, 'the redeemed of the earth'. This cross-referencing demonstrates the difficulties surrounding the book's interpretation. Its opacity and hypertextual quality make it arguably the most hermeneutically challenging member of the canon. Her own remonstrations leave next to no impression on the quest for its meaning. This is the best and simplest advice I can offer to any aspiring hermeneut, feminist or otherwise, wishing to broach the last book of the bible: begin at the beginning, start with the first.

The second reference to the 144,000 shares the same connection to the vision of the woman crowned with twelve stars. It is still more, even if differently from the first, closely allied with themes of death and sanctification. It has readily prompted the opprobrium of one of the most risibly perverse responses of feminist outrage, that of Tina Pippin in Apocalyptic Bodies: The Biblical End Of The World In Text And Image. Her primary target is precisely this second vision of 'the redeemed of the earth', which I see as an obvious reference to the religious pluralism of the work; the same pluralism such as is intrinsic to the fourfold gospel, pregnant with its own hermeneutical possibilities for engagement with religions other than Christianity, particularly those to which I refer in terms of their shared eschatologies as samsaric. The most apparently reprehensible text against which Pippin fulminates is summed up in the following sentence:

It is these who have not defiled themselves with women, for they are chaste; it is these who follow the Lamb wherever he goes; these have been redeemed from mankind as first fruits for God and the Lamb, and in their mouth no lie was found for they are spotless. (Apocalypse 14.4, 5.)

Many commentators gloss this by resorting to the proscriptions of sexual gratification required of militia before battle in the Tanakh, as a precedent. That might be more apt to the previous vision, that of the same number constituting the twelve sealed tribes. But there is no battle involved here and certainly no military imagery which might justify the argument. The 144,000 ' ... sing a new song before the throne and before the four living creatures and before the elders.' (Apocalypse 14.3.) Should one then not expect of a work in which sanctification is a major thematic pre-occupation, some consideration of celibacy? Moreover, does this aim to provide an albeit Christian theology of religions not fit with ecclesiological element of the book, an aim begun in the sevenfold series of letters to the angels of the churches? In passing, it is necessary to note the total absence in Pippin's work of any corresponding derogation of the doctrine of the virgin birth of Christ, common to two of the four gospels. Nor is there any satisfactory account of the compensatory trope of the eschatological, nuptial banquet in The Apocalypse, which features as part of its own dénouement, pursuant to the final series, the series of bowls.

The occurrence of the same religious impulse within the Christian tradition has been outstanding, particularly within the first millennium of the common era. So too, celibacy was, is and will be, routinely practised by adherents of religions other than Christianity. It has also been, is, and will be, routinely espoused by women, as well as men. Thus, just as there are necessarily males who wish for and pursue procreation, and the consolations of family life, which are subsumed under the 'symbolic feminine', there are women who require independence from the legacy of their gender; childbearing and its resultant demands. But the author of the pericope cannot refer to such celibate and generally homosocial manifestations of collective identity, whatever its pursuits, under the guise ('symbol') of the feminine. The two primary social exemplifications of the symbolic masculine, as of the innate motivation for 'fraternal' identification with one's conspecifics which humans share with animals, above and beyond the familial, are the military and the monastery, as juxtaposed as they are. Both are envisioned in turn in these two references to the 144,000. Both formulate one of the central, thematic keynotes of The Apocalypse, war and peace, which even though they remain utterly contrastive, identify in part, its Pneumatological-eschatological purposes.

I will expand yet again, on the significance of the conceptual forms of unity, symbolic masculine and symbolic feminine, before passing to a review of the questionable impact that compulsive concentration on the second creation story has had on the doctrine of imago Dei, which in the Tanakh, is exclusive to the first creation narrative in its purposive, albeit, as yet incomplete form, and which is vital to its other two theological objectives: Christology and Trinity. It is arguable that this influence has entailed that 'the story' does in fact begin and end with 'sin'. In other words, that it is about evil exclusively, not 'good and evil', as just noted. If this is so, it is so because of the Pauline appropriation of the J narrative and the inflection he superimposes upon it, a bequest which was endorsed by a number of commentators from Augustine to Luther and Calvin, and which has survived well into the last century.

As prefatory to the reiteration of the hermeneutic of the Pneumatological rubrics, Day 3 and Day 6, I return briefly to the previous discussion in which we noted the feminine qua immanent characterization of the three Eucharistic miracles. The main points were the mentions of 'women and children' in Matthew's two recensions of both miracles of loaves and fish; the exchange between Jesus and his mother in John's account of the first messianic miracle, and its ironic implications; the prior exchange between Jesus and an obviously amatory, and so 'guiless' Nathanael (e)v w?]? do/lov ou)k e)/stin) under the fig tree, whom Jesus has observed with evident equanimity; comparable to which are the exchanges between Jesus and two of the disciples Philip and Andrew in The Feeding Of The Five Thousand, containing the equally ironic, and equally telling verb 'test' (peira/zw, John 6.6). Perhaps these textual allusions have been too nuanced for us to notice; or perhaps we have been obtuse, deaf as well as blind to the actual narrative meaning, and the systematic nature of the feeding miracle stories and their analogous counterparts. These are certainly mutually inclusive. The point is that three men, Andrew, Philip and Nathanael, are here listed in connection with the symbolic feminine, as was Jesus himself in 'the first of his signs'. This is the Johannine literary foil to the portrayal of the three figures recurrently highlighted in the synoptic accounts, Peter, James, and John, who bear similar links with the symbolic masculine.

Ultimately, it is not the fact that the disciple lists consist wholly of the names of males that matters. We know from Luke that Jesus had women disciples; they figure just as prominently in the resurrection narratives as do the men. What counts in the gospel of Mark are the seven messianic events, which divide according to the ratio configured of the P creation narrative into three of one kind and four of another, further to the opening inclusio 'the heavens and the earth'. This is anything but a simple Procrustean formulation which rigidly sorts the Days into two sections, so uniform that neither has any relation to the other. I have already considered the forms of antithesis in that narrative: they are three in number, corresponding to its lucidly triadic contours. And we see that the creation of the 'earth' itself takes place within the first ('heavens') section. In the messianic miracles, we note in conjunction with this that there is a Eucharistic miracle attributable to The Transcendent, namely The Feeding Of The Five Thousand. In other words, there is what we may call an 'earthly heaven', the subject of the Day 3 rubric, just as there is a 'heavenly' form of immanence, acoustic memory, defined categreally in that miracle story.

More to the point, what also counts in the gospel of Mark are the twelve healing miracle stories. These recapitulate the categories deposed in the two sixfold series; creation and salvation; beginning and end; Genesis and gospel. Their relationship to the individual disciples is part of the theme of the failure of the disciples, which we see clearly outlined in the repetition of the details of the two feeding miracles involving bread and fish. Inasmuch as those twelve episodes are assignable to the twelve male disciples, to whom he frequently refers as 'the twelve', and inasmuch as the final summation of the twelve categoral forms delivered in the healing miracle corpus, those twelve individuals are systematically catalogued according to the final distinction between pure and virtual transcendence on the one hand, and actual and virtual immanence on the other, it is obvious that the Pneumatological categories, which centre the arrangement of each of the four taxa vis-à-vis the annual, spatiotemporal template, with its four clearly articulated seasons - let us not forget that this category, space : time, is a governing conceptual concern for this particular gospel - are to be read against the same structure. Thus the former are codified as 'symbolic masculine' and the latter as 'symbolic feminine', pursuant also to the initial inclusio. The Markan miracle narratives of both series, messianic and healing, thus override consideration of the twelve disciples as uniformly male.

To which same effect, consider the second miracle story in John, The Healing Of The Official's Son, in the light of what was affirmed regarding the symbolic feminine, and the role of husbands as fathers in the 'household', (h( oi)ki/a, John 4.53). This narrative comes directly after that of Jesus And The Woman Of Samaria (John 4.1-42). The gender typological cast of this section of the gospel beginning with the first sign story up to, and including The Feeding Of The Five Thousand, John's final Eucharistic miracle narrative, is catalogued in virtue of the symbolic feminine. Immediately consequent upon that fourth sign narrative there is a dramatic shift in tone with the paired episode, The Walking On The Water. The last three miracle stories, like the first four, are of a piece. Only these latter denote what that very miracle at sea itself denotes, 'crossing to the other side', since there is only one such transition in this particular gospel, to which the miracle narratives are organized accordingly. Thus the organization of the gospel follows upon the sequence of signs narratives, with its pivotal event of 'crossing to the other side', which is nevertheless paired to the previous Eucharistic miracle.

The counterparts analogous to the three Eucharistic miracle stories are sorted together in the second and 'earth' section of the creation story, Days 4, 5, 6 and 7. It abounds with living entities, enjoined to reproduce, hence the roles of male and female, just as it does with references to consumption. The Markan catalogue of the same three conceptual forms of unity, namely, mind : body, the somatic; space : time, the spatiotemporal; and male : female, the anthropic, consistently presents them by means of female personae: Jairus' Daughter, (Mark 5.21-2.4a, vv 35-43); The Haemorrhagic Woman, (5.24b-34); and The Syrophoenician Woman's Daughter, (7.24-31). Could the text itself, no less than its organization, be any the clearer concerning this matter? The twelve healing miracle stories are of greater significance than the names of the twelves disciples, about whom the gospels provide little infomation. And these miracle narratives are divisible according to their sorting relatively to pure-and-virtual transcendence : actual-and-virtual immanence. As for Pneumatological categories, to the former belong symbolic masculine~optic imagination, and to the latter optic memory~symbolic feminine.

The Pneumatology in the P story of 'beginning' is announced in the paired rubrics, Day 3 and Day 6. These occupy the final section of their respective halves, corresponding to the relatum 'earth' of the inclusio 'the heavens and the earth'. Since 'the heavens' is clearly articulated as the subject of the Day 2 rubric, the pattern for each section of the narrative is the same: Christological - Days 1 and 4; Transcendental - Days 2 and 5; and Pneumatological - Days 3 and 6. Thus even though the same meristic inclusio is operative in distinguishing the first half from the second, according to the simple ratio 3 : 4, since the Sabbath remains sequentially ordered as belonging to the latter, it nevertheless serves this same distinction. Even the rubrics themselves, as individual units, bear something of the same structural aspect. This is clearest in the second half which describes the qualified incongruity of (1) day and night (Day 4); (2) aerial and aquatic creatures (Day 5); and (3) male and female (Day 6), predicated of both animals and humans created on that same day. In the last case there are of course two creative fiats ordered in the same way. There is firstly a distinction forged between ('ground'/'land', hmd)h) animals and humans, so as to secure the imago Dei the exclusive property of humankind, and there is also the following distinction established between male and female. This follows the precedent established by the Day 3 story, which depicts firstly the sea and the dry land ('earth'), and subsequently the two different kinds of plants. (Notably, only the two members of the former binary, dry land and gathering in one place of waters, are identifiably named.)

But even if we attend we first part of the story, consisting of the first three Days, the same pattern occurs, that of the categoreal paradigm, transcendence : immanence. Thus the Christological components are light as against darkness; the Transcendental components are waters above as against waters below; and the Pneumatological components are as have just been mentioned. One question arising from all of which must therefore concern the relation(s?) of the two things ordered antithetically to one another in each of the six (eight?) cases. This makes the story in its entirety like a fractal; with a recurring pattern at each of both its inner and outer limits.

The Day 3 rubric was augured in Genesis 1.2, which refers to the state of the earth antecedent to creation:

Now the earth was without shape and empty, and darkness was over the surface of the watery deep, but the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the water. (Genesis 1.2, ESV; Mymh ynp lc tpxrm Myhl) xwrw Mwht ynp lc K#xw whbw wht htyh Cr)hw
LXX: h de gh hn aoratov kai akataskeuastov kai skotov epanw thv abussou kai pneuma qeou epefeto epanw tou udatov)

We should not fail to notice the reference to the 'Spirit of God' as well as the mention of movement which is characteristically used in this theological context. I cite the Septuagint version here because of the final reference in the canon to the sea-earth divide, which occurs in The Apocalypse, and its use of the expression abussou ('abyss') - Apocalypse 9.1, 2, 11, 11.17, 17.8, 20.1, 3. That reference adopts the same binary vis-à-vis two beasts, which follows the vision of the woman in chapter 12, and of the subsequent war in heaven; one from the sea, and the other from the earth. They act in concert with 'the great red dragon', who is responsible for the war. All three are antagonists of the woman and the child. This further demonstrates the conflation and adaptation of the J and P creation narratives by the author.

Page updated 19.02.2023.