I'm coming in late on this thread and see only two notes from Smith and a like number from Jones, arguing. Jones claims Smith's exegesis is not substantiated by the Ur-language texts. He does not support this assertion. Jones is being sarcastic at Smith and employing a usage which, ironically, justifies Smith's point.

Sarcasm (tearing at the flesh) is an ancient weakness which many Anglican clergy regard as a routine tool of their office. It gives one the feeling of being clever but actually makes one stupid -- as well as immoral. Hoisting oneself on one's own petard, such as Jones has done, is another ancient weakness. It is a recoil of the use of sarcasm.

Now, the point of this discussion, as I see it, is an enormous complex of absolutely vital theology: Real Presence, ... Incarnation, ... Eucharist, ...Soteriology, ... Historicity, ... Canonicity, ... Polity.

For example:

Smith's point, I think, is that the words of institution are unequivocal and aiming to state a precise identity of the elements with Jesus as the Christ. There is a baldness and a boldness in the identification which Smith is trying, I think rightly, not to lose or to miss.

By way of elucidation, I am going to try the following. The word paradox is taken, in common understanding, to mean something which is non-rational or irrational or even absurd or nonsensical. This common understanding misses the meaning of the word.

Doxa means commonly held view or the way ordinary humanity views a thing. Para is a prefix which can mean against or serve as an intensifier. It's origin is the Sanskrit prefix, para, same thing, same meaning. Greek is one of the European languages which derives from Vedic Sanskrit.

All of the paradoxes of Christian religion are of this kind: they are views which stand against, evaluate, and ultimately, discern and then either reform or condemn the commonly held views of ordinary humanity. All of Christian theology, and par excellence the Personality Who inspired it, is a Paradox in this sense, that it stands against commonly held views of reality.

Jesus said that these common things, bread and wine, which He is indicating, are not common. They are the New Being which He is. They are evidence -- and not the only such -- of the unity of God and man and, therefore, of religions.

Jesus insists on taking the elements in a manner against the common way. They are He. Smith insists that this way of seeing is paradoxical, not ordinary. Jones says only a common view is necessary. Jones sees no New Being in Jesus.

It is absurd to say that Jesus or Christ or Jesus Christ is present in the consecrated host in any way whatsoever. The bread is bread and the wine wine. There is nothing else there, no matter what the incantation recited over it.

Right? .... Well, not exactly.

The problem with the traditional language for describing the nature of the Sacrament is, indicating a priori states. States cannot be indicated by language and do not exist in the sense meant by that word, states, sub specie aeternalis. In the realm of history -- which is the meaning of sarse, flesh, as in Logos sarse egeneto, Word became flesh -- essence (state, structure, male aspect) and existence (operation, effort, female aspect) commingle, and essence cannot be neared or cognized except as commingled with existence.

God is known only as encumbered in the exigencies of history, of life. God is seen only under the aspect of the conditioned. This does not mean He is conditioned. It means He is cognized only by means of qualities, or, under the aspect of conditions.

The Form-less, the Quality-less, the Name-less cannot be worshipped. To be known at all, God has to take on qualities. He has to envelop Himself in Characteristics, condition Himself in Existence or Life, wrap Himself in Womanhood, in Illusion, in Tangibility, in the Inseparable Other, if He is to be known and enjoyed at all.

God voluntarily takes conditions so that humanity may enjoy His Company, His Parousia. Humanity, and indeed the entire Universe, is the conditions God voluntarily wraps Himself in so that He may be enjoyed. The Universe is Feminine. The world is neither good nor bad. It is a mixture.

All life is One. God and man are an indissoluble unity. Or, as Jesus said, speaking as Ur-Mensch, I and My Father are One.

This fact is visible only to the eye of faith. Servatus ergo video: I am saved therefore I see.

To the faithful, the consecrated elements both symbolize and are the very (Real) Presence (Parousia) of God. The bread and the wine are still bread and wine, but how they are taken is not ordinary. It is the taking, the cognizing, that makes the Real Presence real.

So, we can speak of a Real Presence in the consecrated elements only as faith takes the elements -- and every thing !!!-- as evidence of the unity of God and man in history, as the New Being which Jesus of Nazareth is as Jesus the Christ. If we say the Real Presence exists apart from the faith of a believer, we are delving into magic or trickery, mere assertion without basis in fact. Faith, alone, makes the Real Presence, the Parousia, real as the consecrated elements.

Faith is the sine qua non of spiritual cognition. Credo ut intelligam, says Augustine: I believe in order to understand. Before this add, Servatus ergo video: I am saved therefore I see. Finally, place Descartes' Cogito ergo sum after Augustine's Credo and we have this active symmetry:

Servatus ergo video.

Credo ut intelligam.

Cogito ergo sum.

or,

Dualism (Christ)

Qualified Non-Dualism (Father)

Non-Dualism (Holy Spirit)

Faith is not what makes the Real Presence present. But it is what makes the Real Presence real. On His Own, God is Present. Faith does not determine this. If it did, we would be strapped to an entirely nominal world. But faith does determine whether God is real, whether He is subsumed in experience.

The world is both nominal and real depending on which way we are coming at {aiming to cognize} things. These classical approaches, Nominalism and Realism, often disrupt our society, as they do today.

Neither is entirely true, both are partly true and both contain palpable epistemological dangers. However, Nominalism contains more of danger than Realism does, although this is relative and incremental.

Both are right and both are wrong. Realism has more of right and Nominalism more of wrong, but both comprise necessary and verifiable descriptions of the world.

So, we cannot describe states -- pure Realism -- unless we talk absurdities. We have to describe multi-dimensional interactions, or, operations. Our approach, our cognizing and our semantics all must reflect phenomenology. We cannot say what things are. We can say only what they do. And even at that, we can say only part of what they do, not all of it, because what things do is relative to what we say they are doing. The observer, the observed and the observation are a unit, constantly and mutually affecting. Observation can never reach a conclusion because all life is One, all activity is Circular, such that any one thing brings forth every other thing, which is also every one thing.

There are five dimensions we have to be describing: Length, Width, Height, Motion and Elegance.

The intent behind our creedal and dogmatic traditions is correct, but the language used is not commensurate with the intent. The great weakness of traditional creedal-based Christian theology is that it says what it does not mean and means what it has not the capacity to say. Arians gleefully pointed out, for example, that homoousias, the key word in the Nicene Creed, comes to the same thing as homoiousias, the proscribed Arian preference, in the field of operations, in practice.

They were right. It does. The word homoousias does not indicate the identity of nature of God and Jesus which, presumably, it was meant that it indicate. It cannot do this because a nature cannot be described, not as identical, disparate or anything else. Any description of a nature automatically posits a disparity -- which does not exist -- between it and whatever else is being talked about.

Another way to put this is, a thing and its nature is one and the same. A thing and its nature (its state) cannot be distinguished, one from the other. The world is a mixture of essence and existence. The mixture cannot be separated into components. It is integral.

Arians claimed that orthodox theologians shot themselves in the foot with their creeds and traditions. They were right. Orthodox theologians did shoot themselves in the foot, and the church has been limping from the wound ever since.

Ignoring the Arian needle, orthodox theologians savor the thought that the difference between truth and heresy is a single syllable, i. But the orthodox creedal and dogmatic formulations, presumably, on their face, aim to indicate states, an absurd intention which produces its own kind, namely, absurdity.

The truth is, the intent behind the orthodox creedal and traditional formulations is not to indicate states at all. It is to indicate operations, and indeed, a functional or de facto identity of operation and state. The aim is to indicate the unity of God and man in history. But the language employed does not do this. The language indicates numerous disparities and differences between God and man when it is meant to indicate unity. This is an irony.

Orthodox Christian creedal and traditional formulations are, almost all of them, examples of how very often in human affairs there is a substantial difference between what is meant and what is said, between what is intended and what is done.

This is what Arians said orthodox theologians did to themselves: they shot themselves in the foot with the language they used. Their language betrayed their intent. It said the opposite of what they meant to say. They intended unity, their language said disparity. They intended immanence, their language said distance. They intended purity, their language said confusion. They intended God, their language said doubt. They intended Truth, their language said absurdity.

We have to take the theologians for what they meant, not for what they said.

The intent of the theologians was to indicate the unity of God and man. They chose to do this by identifying a particular man, Jesus of Nazareth, with God, intending that he serve as an Ur-Type of humanity. Their intent was to say that man, himself, is divine. Jesus of Nazareth is Jesus the Christ, they said, and this is evidence of the unity of God and man.

The creedal and traditional formulations are not about the nature of Jesus. They are about the nature of humanity, and indeed, of the entire Universe. Jesus is an Ur-Type, not a single instance. The creedal and traditional formulations are not about him. They are about every being whatsoever. The Career of Jesus of Nazareth is the Destiny, the telos, of every being. This is what the creeds and the tradition are saying.

Jesus of Nazareth as Jesus the Christ is Ur-Mensch. Better still, He is Ur-Ontos. He is what is. And, He is showing that human nature is Divine Nature. In looking at Jesus, an aspirant's attention is on themselves, not on someone else. There is no one else for an aspirant's attention to be on. God has no second.

The theologians said that Jesus as the Christ means the unity of Providence and History. He means the indissolubility of Essence and Existence. Jesus as the Christ means the sublimation of nature in power and of state in functionality. Jesus demonstrated the unity of all religions.

We must have functions. Operations. Phenomenology. Seeing, thinking, speaking and acting in five dimensional stochastic structures -- assumption sets, cognitional operating systems -- heals the self-inflicted wound we bear on account of the unable language of our creedal and dogmatic traditions.

Flesh in the Christian Canon means not skin and bone but history in the sense of everything that is subject to decay, decline, disease and despair. The technical term for this, from the First Century, is instability or mutability. That which is contingent, conditioned, subject to devolution, finite, estranged, etc., is flesh.

The fact of the Christ is the eternal unity of what is unconditioned and what is conditioned within the realm of the conditioned, within history, on that altar cloth and in that chalice and as that wine and bread all of which is rotting away. This is the Great Paradox, the New Being.

The most common epistemological off-tracks, throughout history, are Docetism and Monophysitism, which reinforce one another. Docetism is supported by the Marcionite canon, which is the foundation of the Synoptic Gospels. Monophysitism is supported by the non-canonical gospels, such as that of James, and in particular by the insistence that Mary is necessarily a physical virgin.

Monophysitism is a tendention of homosexuals, who deride the flesh in order to hide their revelry in it. In the realm of ethics, Monophysitism and emphasis on a physical virginity of Mary -- that is, on a dirtiness of marriage -- produce concupiscence (concupiscentia, kama in Sanskrit), which is the character of homosexuality.

Concupiscence is desire. It operates as follows. The mind goes out through the senses. It attaches to objects. It tries to have those objects by consuming them. Meanwhile, it represents to the personality's stochastic structure that the body is the Self. The stochastic structure is supposed to accept that whatever the body {actually the mind} wants it is entitled to have because, being the Self, it {actually the mind} is always right.

Concupiscence is body-consciousness, attachment to the body. It is desire surging through all five senses. It is unrestrained consumption. It is anti-human logic. Homosexuality is an anthrophobia.

Historical and other criticisms of the Bible texts have produced a profound and un-met challenge to and within the church. The challenge has been addressed but not met. Since the challenge is going towards a century in standing, and still without being met -- so far as most people are aware -- most people have simply swept the problems under the rug and reverted to nostalgia for something that does not exist except as figments of their own imaginations. Clergy and laity are masturbating before works of their own hands, fantasies of their own fancies -- ravings is Calvin's felicitous word -- things without transcendent conviction or significance.

My credentials are what I do. Truth is self-evident to Truth. It is not self-evident to what is not Truth.

Having failed to meet the challenge of historical and other criticisms of the Bible texts, clergy and scholars are now empty-handed. Their own laziness has thrown them back on insisting that something is so just because they say it is so. This, of course, is superstition. Their premise is that, being ordained or scholars, they are the Mind of Christ and entitled to control. Their assertion is that they are Christ and omniscient.

The premise is evidence of insanity. Having lost their way, our clergy and scholars have redoubled their effort. The clinical term for this disease is paranoid schizophrenia. Anglican Divines and Reformers called it popery.

What makes a Bishop and any other clergy is an invisible and holy consecration in the heart aggregated by Providence as an aspect of predestination. This consecration establishes the personality with the telos of guarding and instructing the community of the faithful and the world-at-large. Telos means aim, design, intent, destiny, paradigm, plenary activity, fulfillment, develop-ment, call-ing, fullness.

Bishops and other clergy understand what I am saying and recognize the authority with which it is spoken. There is no question of the Source for those who know the Source.

In the same way that those who are innocent need no defense, those with authority do not assert what they have. One who respects authority recognizes and acknowledges it. One who does not recognize authority does not respect or have it, either one, and is lost.

As the saying goes, it takes one to know one.

Adwaitha Hermitage
July 14, 1993