So, what did the final redactors intend? Establish Trinitarian stochastic structure? Yes ... . Answer Marcion? Yes ... . But there's more to it than this. The most important motivations of the final redactors were those which are least complimentary of them. The truth is, the final redactors were not satisfied with what Providence had wrought one and two hundred years before their time. They had not the faith in the sufficiency of the Divine Self-revelation which is Jesus of Nazareth as Jesus of God, the Christ. They felt an improvement on the Divine Economy had to be made by means of a literary invention, an inflation of Jesus' persona to the status of Godhead. Then, they decided to define their fabricated Persona within the rubrics of Greek philosophy. Choosing the rubrics of Stoic Logos Theology, they pushed the envelope of those rubrics in creative and salutary ways.

At issue, as always, was soteriology: how do I get out of this mess 19 that I got myself into? What is the piety by means of which I can earn peace? What is the discipline I can do to merit Grace? What attitude can I adopt that will draw God near to me, to save and to comfort?

These questions are all subsumed in the fundamental search for the Name: Whom should I call upon for help? Which name is a Name of God? Which Name of God is the one I should use to bring Him close to me, to save me from distress and to ward off troubles? This is the central concern of living. This question, which is integral with human nature, makes man a spiritual being. Only humans ask this question.

Who will bring me back home? What is His Name? All will face the issue of soteriology sooner or later.

The final redactors did not trust that the Name of Jesus had soteriological power just as He was. They felt that Jesus' stature had to be inflated to make His Name soteriologically effective, or at least, culturally attractive and preeminent. They were not confident of Jesus' ontological stature as that was given by God and remarked by Jesus, Himself. They wanted to be able to revere a God on earth. 20 So they invented one. They were infected with pride (hybris in Greek). 21

There is a correlate of this with some self-styled devotees of Swami Bhagavan Sri Sathya Sai Baba who live in the United States. They felt that the Sarva Dharma Symbol which Swami made was not complete. So they added to it!. They improved upon God's handiwork! The banal and colossal ignorance that drives this vaunt one does not know whether to laugh or to cry over. It is a tendency of weak minds which Mrs. Eddy, also, had experience of. Self-styled good-deed- doers -- ignoramuses, in fact -- presume to improve upon work produced by the great, work they themselves could not perform.

The Theology and Piety of the Name of Jesus is the live battery of Christianity. It is the core of the Religion, its breathing soul. For now, we just need to observe that the Theology and Piety of the Name of Jesus survived in the Christian Canon because of the spiritual excellence, the personal force of the seminal redactor, who was a monastic and, so far at least, anonymous.

Let us return now to the importation of Trinitarian stochastic structure to serve as the base of Christian Religion. Even though it is not in what Jesus had in mind, we should approve this importation. A Sage decided that it was necessary. No subsequent Sage has derecommended its use. And at this late date, the possibility of its being derecommended by a Sage, the only authority competent to do such a thing, is remote. Trinitarian stochastic structure is the standard of Christianity and will abide so. The final redactors employed it, and, notwithstanding some errors that they made, they rightly asserted the decisive fact of the principle of Threeness. A benefit of Trinitarian stochastic structure is that it continually reminds us that Christianity, a Hellenistic Religion, is a species of Vedic Culture, of Indian Spirituality. 22

We should correct, so far as we can, errors made by the final redactors. We should try to grasp and to implement the wishes of the seminal redactor. The wishes of this Sage are the ground of the Canon and the Tradition. In this sense, they are the Charter of the Church. Trinitarian stochastic structure can be the standard of Christian Religion without an inflation of Jesus' ontological stature. Christianity can be a Trinitarian Religion without having Jesus as one Person of the Godhead. The Name of Jesus is effective unto salvation just as He was. Jesus' Name is soteriologically effective just in the stature that He had, an ordinary man, born, died, resurrected and finally departed. The placing of Jesus in the Holy Trinity is a prevarication.

Then there is this curious phenomenon: One reason the final redactors expanded Trinitarian stochastic structure, inflating Jesus' stature to the level of Godhead, was in order to preach single-pointedness to the Gnostics. This was a worthy purpose. If ever anyone needed to be remonstrated with regarding the urgency of single-pointedness, it was the Gnostics. Like New Agers of today, Gnostics were awash in babble. They alternately steamed in circles or drifted before wind and current. The final redactors were right to single them out for forceful lessons. But they misread the Gnostics. They took Gnostics at their word, as being interested in God. In fact, Gnostics were not interested in God at all. Like New Agers, Gnostics were not religious. Their interests were in matters Religion aims to lift humanity above and to free it from. Gnostics were interested in body consciousness. God had nothing to do with their activities.

If folks really had known what was in the hearts of Gnostics, they would have wanted not to be anywhere near them. This could be said, also, of the Gnostics' New Age descendants. Trinitarian theology went in to answer a problem that did not exist, the need for Gnostics to be single-pointed. Gnostics did not believe that they had such a need. They liked their babble. They called it true ecumenism. They still do ... .

As the final redactors imported Trinitarian stochastic structure to serve as the base of Christian Religion, a new Religion emerged. We call this Religion Christianity. But this Religion we call Christianity and the Religion that was in the mind of Jesus and unitarian Christians who lived prior to the Third Century are not the same thing. Some augmentation and attenuation have occurred, some during the years between Jesus and the seminal redactor and the rest during the years between the seminal redactor and the final redactors. The Christian Canon is not really Christ-ian. It is Alexander-ian. Of course, Alexander was called Son of God and Christ, too ... .

Should we feel badly about this? Ashamed? Doubtful of our ground? Worried about being criticized or found out? Should we say we are adherents of a phony Religion, one that is so bowdlerized as to be unrecognizable and a joke? Have our ancestors merely been misled for two millennia? It would not be correct to answer, 'Yes,' to any of these questions or to any like them. Christianity is one of the great Religions of the world, true, stable, steadfast and effective. We have the experience of countless aspirants to vouch for that. The Name of Jesus was given for the purpose of achieving plenary salvation and It remains entirely puissant to that end.

What has changed is not our Religion but our context. We grew up in a context of religious and cultural hegemony. We assumed that this hegemony was coextensive with religious and cultural theonomy. Whether or not that assumption was justifiable, 23 the point is that we held it, usually unexamined.

Now, we live in a context of religious and cultural heteronomy. We see that without religious and cultural hegemony we cannot assume the existence of religious and cultural theonomy. We are wondering, therefore, if there is still possible anything which resembles religious and cultural theonomy. We feel intuitively that without religious and cultural theonomy we are wasting our time here. And we are right about that.

So the problem before us is to find religious and cultural theonomy which is not linked to religious and cultural hegemony. We have to be religious (theonomy) without thinking that ours is the only way to be religious (hegemony). This is a very difficult thing for us to do. We were neither reared nor trained to see and think this way. It is a sea change for us to undergo along with our other mid-life and mid-cultural crises. As if we needed another one! But we are obliged by the facts to find a way to assert the validity and vitality of Christian Religion -- and to practice it -- without also asserting that It, exclusively, is valid and vital.

This amounts to saying that we have to find and practice a Christianity which is not based on the Creedal formulations and not derived from some elements of the Canon, either. For, our Creeds and, to some extent, Canon were formulated on the assumption of religious and cultural hegemony and also on the assumption that this hegemony is coextensive with religious theonomy. Heavy assumptions! Our Creeds and, to some extent, Canon speak from a condition we do not have and perhaps from one that never existed at all excepting as an assumption made independently of the facts.

Nor may we fall back on the Vatican 24 retrenchment: you don't know what to do? ... well, just do what the bishops and their clergy tell you to do ... they are ordained by the Holy Spirit to lead the Church ... so whatever they tell you to do is the Holy Spirit telling you what to do ... so you can always rely on the bishops and their clergy to tell you just what God wants you to do ... life is so easy ... and the collection plate is on your left as you go out the door. This, of course, is an assertion of the very hegemony which exists not now and maybe never did. We will not itemize the errors in the argument. They can be obvious to any possessed of an intellect and accustomed to using it. The point is, we are in a religious and cultural context which is well beyond the one contemplated by the Creedal formulations and by some elements of the Canon. We must find a base which is more true than the Creeds and more fundamental than certain elements of the Canon.

19- The world. Return

20- Really, they wanted to enhance their own prestige, following the special weakness of students. Return

21- There are five kinds of pride. All other kinds derive from one of these five. They are: pride of youth, pride of beauty, pride of strength, pride of wealth and pride of scholarship. Students face a special danger related to their work itself. They are the only people whose very calling entails the risk of deadly sin.

Since students are at the center of the Magisterium, the authority to teach, which is the Church and the Synagogue and the life-pump of Culture, this means that the risk of fatal infection is always greatest right at the key organ of the society. Students and all others, especially governerors, therefore, must engage in unceasing vigilance that the Magisterium be free from crookedness or stain. Culture depends on the Magisterium before it depends on the Imperium. Man is a spiritual being before he is a political or an economical one. Thus, the paramount importance of a clean Magisterium and of vigilance against professional arrogance.

Our schools today are mightily infected with unrestrained hybris. This is the reason for the unhappiness that afflicts our people. They are violently disserved by their students and their teachers. Return

22- The language of Greece is derived from Sanskrit, from the Vedas. It is only one of the European languages having this ancestry. Alexander, Pythagoras and Apollonios of Tyana all traveled to India on pilgrimage, Going Home knowingly. So did Jesus. So must we. The reason is, India is the spiritual heart of this planet. We are sons and daughters of this Holy Soil, this Womb, Mother India. Return

23- We may not have been justified in assuming, previously, that we lived even in a context of religious and cultural hegemony, much less one of theonomy. We were taught to assume these conditions, but they may not have existed. Demonstrations could be produced to show that we only wanted to think we had these conditions whereas the truth was that we did not. If may be that we were taught to believe in cloud castles, not in facts. These things happen. Return

24- The Catholic Churches are the Roman, Greek Orthodox and Anglican Churches. Return