As Is The Feeling,
So Is The Result.
Julia Lindenlaub, 07 January 2019: J. Louis Martyn: Fifty Years On — A ‘Two-Level Drama’ of Scriptural Interpretation in John 9
I commented, edited here:
I sat for Dr. Martyn’s NT classes in the late 60s. On two-level drama exegesis of The Fourth Gospel he lectured.
That exegesis struck me then and still as an essential insight regarding which Dr. Martyn grasped the fact of levels but not their natures or actions. This lapse, I believe, precluded accurate examination by him of the levels’ effects in soteriology and piety, the very purpose of seminary learning.
I think Dr. Martyn had half a loaf, without the yeast to make it rise, so to speak. What he had was true: the literary and soteriological structure of the Fourth Gospel comprises a two-level drama, one level physical/historical, one level spiritual/transcendent.
He did not have simple and therefore graspable articulation of the dynamic natures and interactions of the two levels, pondering the which would have helped many, the sincere of whom found it for themselves — at personal cost of forcement to endure ecclesial and social drift.
While not necessarily untoward, that forcement necessarily helped the student consider that they spent three years and good money to get cheated, and for what, a paper diploma witnessing that one knows what one is doing? A three-year perfect safety record driving public transit is far more of an accomplishment as well as useful in both secular and religious affairs.
The two levels of drama in The Fourth Gospel intermix. They weave in and out amongst each other, aggregating, sublimating, conjugating — whatever metaphor for dynamics one prefers, and best of all is all of them at once — in mediated experience, tangible, physical, and direct experience, intangible, spiritual.
Ultimately the two levels of the Johannine Drama must be seen to unite, as they do in its opening strophes. Incarnation Doctrine — Johannine to the core — attests no less.
These pietistical considerations may mean nothing or worse to contemporary scholars of biblical literature. I am retired now and raised my family on the earnings of a public transit operator (bus driver), which in USA are generous. I graduated Union in 1969 with the BD degree, since restyled, as you know, as MDiv. My career-wise inspiration was and is St. Paul and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin: worker priest, so to speak. My theological mentor is Paulus Johannes Tillich.
There is only one Masculine (Purusha) in creation; all the rest are feminine (stri). There is no fool too; that is only a role played by that particular manifestation of the embodiment of spiritual knowledge, i.e. the Supreme Self (Paramatma). Remember this and do not tarry on your journey to God. You fill up the petrol tank with fuel for the journey that lies ahead, don’t you? If you were to keep the car in the garage, do you go and fill the tank everyday? Well, your body is also fed with fuel so that it may go on a journey: the inner journey to God. That journey is through good karma, pure activities offering its results to God (nishkama karma). Carefully discriminate and perform duties related to the body with the goal that the exertion of the body must be to liberate the soul imprisoned therein! Remember, not all raindrops that fall from the sky manage to reach the sea. Only those that flow into a flowing river attain the goal, for even though all drops come from the sea, only few yearn to return to the source!
- Sathya Sai Baba – Divine Discourse, September 15, 1963 / Daily Email, Sai Inspires: Subscription
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