House of mirrors

Recently I was asked to comment on a Facebook post by a convert to Eastern Orthodoxy. The dilemma is that his post is not for public consumption. At the time I didn't know that. I read it and had some preliminary thoughts.

I'm a little too far along in the thought process to just drop it. In addition, I generally like to post my answers to theological questions. That's a better stewardship of my time. 

So I'll try to make my analysis as anonymous as possible, summarizing the argument. The original post attempts to link Mariology to the Eucharist (and the Trinity) in John's Gospel. 

1. The Beloved Disciple represents all Christians. All Christians are commanded to take Mary home. Mary is the mother of all Christians. 

2. The Gospel has a "dwelling" motif. The mutual indwelling of the Trinitarian persons. God dwelling in Christians. Dwellings in the Father's house for the saints. The Beloved Disciple taking Mary home.

3. In the marriage at Cana, Mary is the new Eve. The new "woman". The new bride. 

The wedding symbolizes Christ as the bridegroom. Likewise, the wine symbolizes the eucharist. Indeed, the transformation of water into wine symbolizes the real presence. 

4. The sour wine offered to Jesus on the cross is a eucharistic symbol. The hyssop is a eucharistic symbol. The Bread of Life discourse has a Passover setting, making it eucharistic.

5. The blood and water from the crucified Christ is a eucharistic symbol. It links to John 7, which is eucharistic. The river/water of life represents Christ's blood. Piercing Christ in the "side" evokes the creation of Eve from Adam. 

6. The True Vine parable is eucharistic. 

A few general observations before I comment on specifics:

1. If an incident in the Gospels has a practical explanation, then it doesn't require a special explanation. We don't need to seek another layer of significance. 

2. This hermeneutic treats sacred history as a detailed allegory. But that's something we normally associate with fiction, viz. The Pilgrim's Progress (Bunyan), The Divine Comedy  (Dante).  To treat each incident in the Gospels has having a symbolic meaning–or every incident in Bible history–with everything mirroring everything else, has an air of unreality. Where things and incidents aren't the way they are for mundane, utilitarian reasons, but must be signs. 

This is not to deny that things and incidents can have a symbolic purpose, but when we expect symbolism everywhere we turn, that's very artificial. God created a physical world with natural cause and effect.  Generally, wine is just wine, blood is just blood, bread is just bread, water is water, marriage is marriage. As a rule, they have no role over and above their functionality. 

3. For sacred history to be a detailed allegory requires a scripted view of history. Nothing is left to chance. No improvisation by human agents with libertarian freedom. Rather, everything belongs to a mutually referential system of symbolism. 

That might be possible given a strong doctrine of predestination and meticulous providence, but to my knowledge, Eastern Orthodox theology is committed to libertarian freewill. So how is God able to orchestrate events to coordinate the emblematic significance of everything in sacred history or Gospel history? 

And I'd add that predestination is only a necessary precondition for that hermeneutic to get off the ground. Even though, according to predestination and meticulous providence, every event has a reason or purpose, that doesn't mean every event has a symbolic purpose. 

4. This hermeneutic can lead to loss of faith. It may be persuasive when you're in the right mood, but when you suffer a personal tragedy, it may suddenly look suspiciously like make-believe. You were swept up in the momentum of the hermeneutic. It has its own logic. You were in a like-minded community where that mindset is reinforced. But then the real world comes crashing in. And you begin to wonder how much if this is your own imagination on overdrive. 

5. This hermeneutic is like entering a house of mirrors. As you move further into the house of mirrors, it's reflections of reflections of reflections. There's no exit, and you can't find your way back to the entrance. It becomes a hermeneutic increasingly distant from a foot in the tangible world. You lose sight of what caused the original reflection. Now it's just reflections bouncing off each other, like an infinity mirror. 

6. While grapevines are associated with wine, the metaphor in Jn 15 is not about the end-product of the vinification process. The parable says nothing about wine or the winepress. Nothing about fermented grape juice. Nothing about grape juice at all. 

There's nothing in the parable about harvesting the produce. To the contrary, these are living branches. The parable doesn't identify the vine as a grapevine. But even if it was, the imagery is about grapes that are still in process of fruition. Not grapes detached from the vine and turned into wine. So the eucharistic interpretation is carless, doing violence to the metaphor. 

7. Christ has a bloody wound because a body contains blood. 

8. In Scripture, blood and water are not interchangeable metaphors. 

9. Changing water into wine is not equivalent to changing wine into blood, even at a symbolic level. 

10. Every reference to a dwelling isn't code language. This hermeneutic that shoehorns everything of a certain kind into a uniform spiritual significance. But while metaphors piggyback on literal objects, that doesn't mean everything operates on both a literal and figurative level. 

11. Both the Passover and the Eucharist symbolize the Crucifixion.