I think he does it in a certain sense. If he were not doing this construction intentionally, he's not going to complete it with a kind of symbolic architecture. He probably wouldn't have done it himself. He came from much further than that. It seems to me, and this is just a personal impression, but I don't think anybody is any closer to the truth of scripture than Irenaeus when he's doing exegesis. You know, sometimes you'll find that he fools around too. Sometimes he plays games. We'll see that when he's doing this thing with Elisha and the axe head that falls into the water and so on. There's a little bit of play there. But if you compare him with Origen, I think he's extremely close to the truth of the scripture. So much so that sometimes the resonances that you receive out of his writing are not coming from plays on words, but they're coming from the reality itself. In other words, if he doesn't use the same word twice, and yet he uses a similar word, you get the resonance just the same, because the reality is connected, not just the words. It's not just a literary connection, it's a real, an ontological connection. I'd have to use some examples for that.

[01:22]

Okay, last time we did the man born blind, and in chapter 16, number 2, which is on page 544, he sums that up, and he has one of these recapitulations of his own, one of these summaries in which he compresses everything together and gives it a kind of crystalline shape, a kind of geometrical stamp. And here also he says that there are two aspects to this. This is at the end of 16, number 2. He both showed forth the image truly, since he became himself what was his image, and he reestablished the similitude after a sure manner by assimilating man to the invisible father. Now, frequently you find that kind of two-fold effect, that two-fold work of Jesus. He manifests himself and he does something to man, and the two are the same. The revelation and the transformation are the same thing, because remember that he is God made man.

[02:33]

So, this is continually happening. Remember, you can kind of think of this whole plan of Irenaeus in two ways. Olivier Clement talks about it as the whole thing is a process of incarnation. On the other hand, we're looking at it as a process of the education of man, or as being transformed into the image and likeness of God. So, you see, you can look at it from above or you can look at it from below. It's got those two sides. And looking at it from above in that way, you can also talk about it as being revelation. The incarnation is a revelation of God in human flesh. I forgot, in talking about that 16, number 2, I forgot last time to refer you to the letter of John, chapter 3. He showed forth the image and he re-established the similitude by assimilating man to the invisible father by means of the visible word. Do you see how intricate, how dense the composition of Irenaeus is? He really fuses those things together.

[03:49]

This is John's letter. Beloved, we are God's children now. It does not yet appear, but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. A convergence between man who becomes like God and the God who approaches him so that he may be seen by him. You've got the same thing happening in Irenaeus. It's very close to St. John. Okay, 16, number 3, begins the tree section. It's a curious thing that here you'll often find a section starting not with the chapter heading, but it starts one number before, one paragraph or one section before a new chapter. I don't know why that is. I haven't been able to find out where those chapter divisions came from originally. I'm sure it's somewhere in 6th of June, but I haven't found it. However, about those titles, the titles are often very disappointing, very poor. They don't really give you the richness of the content. And sometimes they don't even express what Irenaeus is talking about. They don't even say what he's interested in sometimes. Sometimes they do.

[04:54]

So don't be misled by them as if they've been put in there by the author himself, because they weren't. They're very old, but they evidently were not written by Irenaeus, the titles of the chapters. Not only by these things has the Lord manifested himself, but also by means of his passion. And now you get this contrast between the disobedience and obedience, the old Adam and the new Adam, and the two trees. Now this is characteristic of St. Paul. I don't think St. Paul talks about the tree, does he? Explicitly two trees. Perhaps Irenaeus is the first, but it's already in Christian thought before his time. But the two Adams, that comes from St. Paul in the Letter to the Romans. And the disobedience and the obedience. In fact, the whole doctrine of original sin that we have is based on St. Paul, that part of Romans, basically. That certainly is, it's a reference from the Old Testament, but where does he do that, do you remember?

[06:08]

Okay, now, what I mean is the two trees, you see? The comparison of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil with the cross. The two tree thing. See, Irenaeus is very symmetrical. He's continually doing this kind of thing. Even the notion of recapitulation is a symmetry thing, you see? He's an artist. And so he continually reflects one thing with another thing. He's interested in matching things and showing something reappearing in a new form. And so he does with the two Adams, so he does with the two trees. So he does also with the two eaves, you'll find later on. And he does it with the earth, that is, he talks about the new earth, and so on. One thing after another, he does everything. And that's because he's interested in, not discarding anything, but showing sort of the roundness, the fullness, and the kind of self-containedness. We don't have a word for it, but it's that thing of recapitulation. But it's always the same. It changes, but it's always the same.

[07:09]

Nothing is lost, in a way, nothing is added. The newness is simply the person of Christ, the person of God. And he's continuing upon this argument in here that it's the same God, and so on. There are different levels to that, and sometimes we have to move into maybe the deepest level of it. Because there's this Trinitarian proof of Irenaeus, that the basis of reality is the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And we get so bored when he keeps hammering away at the fact that God the Creator is the same as God the Father, and the same as God the Keeper of the Law, and so on. But there's a whole bunch of reality and of theology that comes to a knot, sort of, in that place. And sometimes we can try to go into that. You find it especially in the proof of the Apostolic Preaching, at the end, where he summarizes all theology in just the Creed, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. That's it. And the Creation. There are four elements in his thought. But that's beyond our scope right now.

[08:12]

Now, there's a possible reflection of the man born blind here. It's not really obvious in this, chapter 16, number 3. But he brings in obedience and consent and respects his word. And that's like a consciousness. It's like a sight. It's like a vision. It'll come up later on. It's like restoring sight to the man born blind. By which things he clearly shows forth God himself. Okay, chapter 17. This one continues on the theme of the Tree of the Cross. And the Tree of the Cross is the central symbol. I think it's the central thing in the whole work, in the whole of Book 5 at least. And chapter 18, I think, is the central chapter. We're approaching it. And in 17, it's funny, that last one of 16, last paragraph there, he talks about the Cross. Then he goes off, he digresses in chapter 17,

[09:14]

and then comes back to it in the last paragraph, and then the whole of 18 is on it. The chapter divisions don't seem to correspond with the content very well. Okay, I'm going to skip through chapter 17. He talks about this paralytic, the man that was sick of the palsy. You can recall two versions of that. One is in the Synoptic Gospels. I don't remember which one. Where, remember, the man is let down through the roof of the house. And then there's another one in St. John, where the paralytic is lying by the pool. And Jesus comes along and tells him to pick up his pallet and walk. And some of the other fathers remark on the fact that what he was born by, he bears. What he was laid upon, he then carries. There's a kind of reversal there. It may be implicit here in Irenaeus, but I won't press the point. But this bearing thing becomes very important later on. And he's connecting the paralysis and sin here.

[10:16]

And the fact that he who is the creator is also the one who gives healing. He who is the lawgiver is the one who forgives sins. And they're both the father of Jesus Christ, the one who comes and speaks the words. He heals him and tells him, it's simple for you. So he uses that miracle, like he did to one of the men born blind, as a way of tying together creation and here's the law. And he uses himself for it. Okay, number four. We're on the right-hand column of 545. Here we get into the cross. And we get into it in a curious way with the story of Elisha. The fathers love to do this kind of thing. It recalls also St. Benedict. The same miracle appears in the life of Benedict by Gregory the Great. He's got this goth, or barbarian out there, chopping with an axe or a similar tool.

[11:19]

And the head flies off and falls into the water. So Elisha tells him to put some wood into the water, maybe it's the handle. And the iron part of the axe floats up. So I wouldn't call this exactly one of his most, what would you say, his realist examples of exegesis. But it is interesting. So the iron comes back to the wood. The principle is that the word of God is the axe. The word of God is the axe head here, it's the axe. And the word of God which we had lost is recovered for us by the wood, by the cross, by the tree. We had lost the word of God and it comes back to us through the tree. Now he suddenly gets very deep here at the end of number four. For as we lost it by means of a tree, so by means of a tree again was it made manifest to all,

[12:20]

showing the height, the length, the breadth, the depth in itself. Now here we get back to this quaternity thing of Irenaeus, which we found a long while ago. The first time we came up with that, remember that four square image? This is when he talked about the four gospels, remember? And here it comes again. You're going to find it again and again and again. It's the tree, it's the cross, it's man who is made in the form of a cross. And somehow it's Christ, and in a way it's reality itself. It turns out to be the central symbol here. And even then, the plan of the making of the human person has its four terms, remember? The Father, his two hands, the Word and the Spirit, and the earth which he models into man. So that's going to be continually present. Or sometimes like this.

[13:22]

The earth, or man, God here. And the Word here, and Spirit here. As a precedent for this, you'll find in a couple of Fathers who are close to Irenaeus, Justin has a section about how the symbol of the cross, the image of the cross reappears everywhere in nature. Even in the human face, he says the human face carries the image of the cross. And the human body carries the image of the cross. And the sail of a ship, all kinds of things, tools that people use, carry like the axiom of Irenaeus, and so on. And also Theophilus of Antioch, who's not a very well-known Father, who seems to have died about 180 AD, a little before Irenaeus, has this paternity thing very strongly, too. He says that there are four things. There's God, his Word, his Wisdom, and there's man. There are these four things.

[14:27]

Now Irenaeus has picked that up in a basic way. It's like he's got that pattern in his mind all the time. Excuse me if I get kind of obsessive about that. I have a kind of geometry fixation in this. Okay, we lost... So, manifest to all. Showing the height, the length, the breadth, and the depth in itself. You know where that comes from, that notion? That comes from Ephesians, remember? Ephesians 3, 14 and the following, where St. Paul says that you may know the height and the length and the depth and the breadth. He's talking somehow about the dimensions of Christ, and St. Paul has got the image of the cross in his mind when he says that. I don't know who that certain man among his predecessors is. Through the extensions of the hands of a divine person,

[15:27]

gathering together the two peoples to one God. For there were two hands because there were two peoples scattered to the ends of the earth. There was one head in the middle as there is but one God who is above all and through us all and in us all. Now this is that basic stamp, that basic image that's woven through all of Irenaeus' thought, I think. It's always behind there something. As soon as he starts talking about God having two hands, I think that's already there. Now, one thing that is very clear in St. Paul, if you read Ephesians and Colossians you'll find this thing. And sometimes it's the two hands of God that are the two arms of the cross, and sometimes it's the two peoples, all right? Now, what does that mean? Basically the dimensions are at least four dimensions. This is God. This is creation for man. So here's this descent of God at the same time as the elevation of earth into man.

[16:34]

And what are the two peoples? It's as if these are the two directions of the movement of the whole thing. One is a downward direction which is also an upward direction. The other is a crosswise direction. And it's the Jews and the Gentiles. Now, usually when we find it, for a long time when I found that in the Scriptures or anywhere else, I'd be kind of bored with it and say, okay, fine, the Jews and the Gentiles, but that's over now, you know? But this is the direction of the propagation of God's life and of the Word of God in the world, you see? Usually it comes down and there it goes across. And sometimes they sum it all up in that. That's the shape of the process. This is the Incarnation, and this is the propagation of the Incarnation over the surface of the earth, you see? It's still going on. What's the meaning of Vatican II? That's the meaning of Vatican II. It's the kind of quantum leap in the propagation of the Gospel, the opening of the Church to the nation of Israel.

[17:38]

See, it's still going on. All the history is still going on in Vatican II. You can say that these two lines are the ontological line by which God becomes man and man becomes God, and the historical line by which this life becomes propagated through the world. You can think of it as happening at one point in Jesus, okay? The Incarnation in one man. And then it's being propagated out over the surface of the earth. And that's it. That's how they sum it up. And throughout that proof of the apostolic preaching, I think that the Qur'an has this thing, chapter after chapter after chapter, and you find there's four terms coming out of it. It's talking about God becoming a human being, and then the Jews and the Gentiles, or the two peoples. Sometimes you can talk about Herod and Pilate symbolizing those two people, the Jews and the Gentiles. Those two dimensions are two different things. And Irenaeus believes that this somehow is the figure of the Logos,

[18:41]

that this is the shape of the Word. So everything somehow is in this shape. The places in the New Testament where this comes out most strongly, it's implicit in a lot of places, but the places where it comes out strongly are in Ephesians and Colossians. For instance, whenever St. Paul gives you the figure of God, it's the figure of Christ on the cross, uniting heaven with earth, and uniting the Jews with the Gentiles. You see, you've got that figure. It's the same thing. That's where it comes from. For instance, in Colossians 1. For in Him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through Him to reconcile to Himself all things, whether in earth or on heaven, making peace by the blood of His cross. And you who were once estranged and hostile, He has now reconciled in His body and flesh on the cross. You see, it goes from the vertical to the horizontal. Okay.

[19:46]

The passage and the proof of the Apostolic Preaching that relates to this is chapter number 34. It's like the core of this demonstration, or proof of the Apostolic Preaching, which is divided into a hundred chapters, but Irenaeus didn't do that, is in these chapters 32, 33, 34. Let me read 34, because it's very rich. If somebody wants to read this, we have a couple of copies of it. And the sin that was wrought through the tree was undone by the obedience of the tree. Obedience to God, whereby the Son of Man... See, that's the tree. whereby the Son of Man was nailed to the tree, destroying the knowledge of evil, and bringing in and conferring the knowledge of good. Irenaeus wrote this after he wrote his five books against the heresies, okay? Now, he doesn't have... A lot of the symbolism that's in here, he doesn't have here, because it's kind of an abridgment, it's kind of a condensation. But the thought has been thoroughly reworked, and so sometimes it's pretty dense. Destroying the knowledge of evil,

[20:48]

which he referred to as disobedience before, okay? The knowledge of evil is disobedience, and that's blindness. And bringing in and conferring the knowledge of good... Remember the two trees, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, by eating from which the human being must have its eyes open, and instead it became blind. And the tree of the knowledge of... The tree of life, which is this other one, which is the tree of faith for us, okay? So we eat it in a kind of blindness, and it gives us the knowledge of good. All that kind of thing is in there. And evil is disobedience to God, as obedience to God is good. And therefore the word says to Isaiah the prophet, and he has a quote, So by the obedience whereby he obeyed unto death, hanging on the tree, he undid the old disobedience brought in the tree. And because he is himself the word of God Almighty, who in his invisible form, that invisible word, before he's become man, pervades us universally in the whole world, pervades us, pervades humanity,

[21:51]

and pervades the world itself, pervades us universally in the whole world and encompasses both its length and breadth and height and depth. For by God's word, everything is disposed and administered. But he means it's imminent in the world, it pervades, it's present somehow, in things. It's not just from afar. So this cruciform is somehow in the cosmos, and in us. The Son of God was also crucified in these, imprinted in the form of a cross on the universe. For he had necessarily, in becoming visible, to bring to light the universality of his cross in order to show openly through his visible form that activity of his. In other words, what he's doing all the time, invisibly, he showed it visibly when he hung upon the cross, as if he were holding all things together. Remember how St. Paul says that in Colossians, that all things constant in him, all things stand together in him. That is, it is he who makes bright the height, that is what is in heaven, the sun,

[22:53]

and holds the deep, which is in the bowels of the earth, and stretches forth and extends the length from east to west, navigating also the northern parts and the breadth of the south, and calling in all the dispersed from all sides to the knowledge of the Father. Do you see that basic pattern there? God, Earth and man. First his appearance, whom he views as his incarnation, and then spreading out through all of the dispersed. Okay, now chapter 18. Chapter 18, I think, is the central chapter in the whole thing. And here, the key word is this word, bear, B-E-A-R, which in the Latin is portare, and in the Greek is bastating, bastating, which would be... We said something about that before. Let's read through... Let's read through the first number there,

[23:56]

and then comment on it. We'll need to do that at some length, because of its density. He didn't bring this about by means of the creations of others, but by his own. There's Irenaeus' familiar argument. It's the same God who made it, and who saved it. Neither by, you know, things created out of ignorance and so on. Nor was he needy that he could not by his own means impart life to his own, and make use of his own creation for the salvation of man. For indeed the creation could not have sustained him... Now this word sustain is the word bear, okay? That's bastating, portare. Could not have borne him on the cross if he had sent forth what was the fruit of ignorance and defect. Now we have repeatedly shown that the incarnate word of God was borne upon a tree, suspended upon a tree, and even the very air takes to acknowledge that he was crucified. How then could the fruit of ignorance,

[24:57]

that is the creation itself, and the tree and defect, bear him, sustain him, who contains the knowledge of all things and is true and perfect? Or how could that creation which was concealed from the Father and far removed from, that inferior kind of overshadowed creation of the Gnostics, have borne his word, sustained his word? And if this world were made by the angels, how could this workmanship of the angels have borne to be burdened, how could it have borne both the Father and the Son? Because Jesus says, I am in the Father and the Father is in me. How again could that creation which is beyond the pluralism, that is outside of God's world, outside of God's reality, have contained him who contains the entire pluralism? There the word is another word. It's not bear, but it's contained. And the two are related insofar as, for instance, a child is contained in the womb and it's borne by its mother, okay? Carried by its mother and contained by its mother.

[25:58]

Well, we'll talk about the different senses of that word bear in a minute. Inasmuch then as all these things are impossible and capable, that preaching of the truth to the church is alone true, which proclaims that his own creation bore him, which subsists by the power, the skill and the wisdom of God, which is born, sustained indeed after an invisible matter by the Father, but on the contrary, after a visible matter, it bore his word. And this is the true word. For the Father bears the creation and his own word simultaneously. And the word borne by the Father grants the Spirit to all as the Father will. And then he goes on. After the manner to some, according to creation, that is, according to what is made, the Spirit even gives life simply to what is made. But to others he gives after the manner of adoption, that is, what is from God, namely generation. In other words, the sonship of God he gives to others. Two manners of impartation of the Spirit here. And he's got the word here,

[27:03]

it sounds close to the Filioque. And thus one God the Father has declared who is above all and through all and in all. That's St. Paul. The Father is indeed above all as he is the head of Christ. Now, remember that word recapitulation here, okay? Recapitulation means heading up. And in the Greek, it's got kapit in it. It's got kephile in it, just as it does in Latin, kapit. So it's obvious in Greek, you see, that the resonance is within, between the words. In English, it disappears. He is the head of Christ, but the word is through all things and is himself the head of the church while the Spirit is in us all and he is the living water. In another place, he says that the Spirit is the head of man. That Christ is the head of the Spirit and he's given the Spirit to be the head of man. And that's all intentionally related to the notion of recapitulation. Okay, now about this word there, I've got some notes on this.

[28:03]

First of all, the meanings. These are from that Greek patristic lexicon in Latin. First of all, simply to bear or to carry. These are the meanings for Bastadzin. The meanings that are possible for Irenaeus in using this word. Now the reason why I'm carrying on so long with this is because I think it's central. It ties everything together. First, to bear or to carry. For instance, of man bearing the image of God. See, that word is used, that's the basic source where, by reason of which, Irenaeus uses this word, the idea of man bearing the image and likeness of God. Of Christ bearing our weaknesses. Of the Christian bearing the cross. Now, Irenaeus doesn't use all these explicitly, but I think they're there, you see. They're in the back of his mind. Yes, yes. Well, for Irenaeus, you see,

[29:15]

he intends these words in a very, what do you call it, very comprehensive and not limited way. He doesn't circumscribe these words. He intentionally lets them flow and spread, OK? And also, that's our language. So, the Greek word, you see, can have a different boundary lines. No, the first, see this is from the Greek word and his first meaning is to bear or carry. So it covers both, OK. That's bear or carry in our sense. Secondly, to bear a child. Now, I didn't find the meaning here of bearing fruit, but that's also present, especially because it combines with the tree symbol for Irenaeus. To bear a child. This becomes very significant in the next chapter, but it's already significant here because the creation is bearing the word, you see. It's giving birth to the word as well as holding the word. Thirdly, to undertake.

[30:17]

Fourthly, to tolerate, bear with, or endure. Fifthly, to support or uphold. Now, the translator into English has usually used a word like sustain or support, something like that here, OK. But he hasn't given you the breadth of those other meanings. Von Balthasar has got a couple of pages on this. Let me read you the most important part of what he says. He's been talking about the certainty and truth which are key terms for Irenaeus. But certainty and truth are not guaranteed unless that which bears the revelation of God is also capable of bearing. To bear signifies at once the dignity and the capacity to receive a charge or a burden. The charge of God, the responsibility to bear it with oneself, to support it, to endure it, the strength to care for it within oneself as a mother or infant.

[31:18]

So it's like the life of God within you, as an infant within you. And every sort of aid which cares and concurs to bear. It is man bearing God which forms for Irenaeus the center of the concept. He has for that the aptitude, the capacity to receive a charge or a burden or mandate. The strength to embrace it. And then he quotes, portante homine capiente complectante filium Dei. Man bearing and embracing and containing the Son of God. And God habituates man to bear the Spirit of God. That's a quote. And even to comprehend or contain, capere, and bear God. This is more than the underlying biblical expression to bear his image. In other words, it is the fundamental power of the created being which consists in carrying the creator. The condition for which is certainly that man

[32:18]

be in the image and likeness of God. But it would be better to have said, not carrying, but bearing the creator. See, there's a whole theology here. There's a theology which has disappeared for a long time. I think it comes out again in Karl Barth who talks about the creation being put out there so that it can bear God. On Balthasar's heraldic title. We have a French translation of that which is called the Glory of the Cross. French. And you're welcome to take a copy or part of it. He's got a whole section in there on this. What that book is on Balthasar is a treatment of the theology of beauty. In other words, theology not from the point of view of proving something, just, I want to say, logically, or because, say, the goodness of God. The first two transcendental. But the third transcendental which is beauty. Truth, good, and beauty. Because he feels that's been neglected. It's a marvelous work. So he starts out with Irenaeus and he goes all the way through.

[33:19]

Like with Dante and St. Augustine. And an interim monotype with Peggy and Hopkins. He treats John of the Cross. A whole bunch. But each time from the point of view of the beauty of revelation or the beauty of God's work or of theology insofar as it's a work of art. He does it with John of the Cross and comes out with a conclusion that that's really where the message of John of the Cross is. We'll talk about that. Parallelocy means the glory of God. Glory. Okay. I've got some... Let me read just... I've got some notes on this. This word is a veritable nexus or a knot of meanings in the theology for Irenaeus. For example, the creation and the Word are born by the Father at once. See, the Father brings forth...

[34:19]

The key, the basic meaning and the root meaning of this thing is in the Trinity. That is, the Father brings forth the Son. The Father brings forth the Word. But he brings forth the creation in the Son and with the Son. And then the Word comes into the world, is born by the world, is born in the world, and gives birth to the world from the Father. So that the very generation of the Father comes into the world, you see. See, of course, it comes to Eckhart and his idea of the birth of God in the world being the sum of all theology. Only one thing that Irenaeus has that Eckhart doesn't have is his closeness to the earth all the time, see. He never lets go of it. The creation and the cross and the Virgin Mary bear Jesus the Word. In the next chapter, we find that the Virgin Mary is bearing the Word also. And one of the meanings of this bearing, one of the side meanings is obedience, you see. In Greek, the word for obedience is like upakoe or something like that. You've got all these words

[35:20]

which have hupo or hypo as a prefix which means under, which suggests bearing. And Irenaeus uses a bunch of them there as a kind of subtle reflection of this bearing. Jesus bears the passion and the tree, bears the cross, and remember that phrase we've got somewhere in the New Testament. It was the Lamb of God who bears the sins of the world. The Latin word is tolere, tolere. And sometimes they used to translate it carries away, but the real meaning is bear, bear carries the sins of the world. That meaning there is tolere and carries the cross and carries the sins of the world. And the tree bears Jesus its fruit. See, I think that's there. Man, the tree of the human being, receives its fruit when the word comes and becomes, as it were, its head, its fruit, its eyes. Gives its consciousness, gives it consciousness which is God's very consciousness.

[36:21]

And the tree of man is revivified by the Spirit and made able to bear fruit, fruits of the Spirit. He had said to that somewhere. And the fruit of the resurrected body. We talk about the first fruits and then the whole harvest, you see, at the end of the book. Having been trained by God to bear his spirit, bear his glory, to bear God. Thus, I think, Ferdinand asked this term, bear, recapitulates the whole meaning of the life of man, the human person. It's his discipline and the goal of the discipline, his affliction and his glory. It is the meaning of the human person as tree of earth which is raised up by the hands of God to bear the likeness of God in vision. Now, this term connects with the term of recapitulation. If you think about it for a moment. Recapitulation is being summed up

[37:23]

or headed up. And it's that in which history and creation and the human person receive their head. Their head is Christ. Now, they bear their head. But at the same time, the head that they bear, which is Christ, becomes to fulfill them, or complete them, and bring their fruit to them, bring them to consummation by making them bear their fruit. And he is their fruit. He is the Son of God and the Son of Man. But the creation which bears this head which comes to it in Christ and recapitulates all, those two dimensions of creation, ontology and history, is also born by him. Okay? It's carried by him. First of all, he carries it ontologically because it's created in him. It's created in him. So it's carried by him. The Word created, ultimately created in the Word, created by the Word. But then he bears it and he comes into the world and he picks up, as it were, the tree. He picks up the cross and he carries it. He carries the sins of the world, as it were. So there's that continual interchange of meaning.

[38:25]

Now, notice how far this term extends in two directions. One direction is the direction, say, of endurance or affliction or patience. And the other is the direction of childbirth, of the kind of happy dimension of this bearing, which is bringing forth something. There's the sustaining dimension, like the tree that bears the winter or like Jesus that bears hunger and desert and the temptation. And then there's the dimension of bearing food. Now, somehow, this word bear is able to bring them all together. I don't know why, but it's related to the image of the tree. In such a way, it's able to bring all these dimensions together. Here are some of the opposite dimensions that you find coming together in this word. Bear the pains of childbirth as you bear a child. You see? You endure the pain and you bear the child. Both in the same word. Bear affliction that you may bear fruit. Bear the suffering

[39:28]

that comes from outside so that you may bear what is born within you. You bear it and you give birth to it, too. Okay? So, for that reason, you endure the suffering which is outside. It's a contrast of outside and inside. Of outside affliction and inside fruition or growth or maturation, whatever it is there. Which you find in St. Paul's verses. St. Paul bear the light and momentary weight of affliction that you may bear the weight of glory. The word kavod in Hebrew, the word for glory, means weight fundamentally. The concrete meaning of that word is weight. And remember, St. Paul says we bear this light momentary weight of affliction so that we may bear the eternal weight of glory which is incomparable to it. It's in Romans. Bear the cross so that you, as a tree, may bear the fruit of life. And then you've got the sequence in Romans 5 where you bear suffering and suffering brings forth hope and hope brings forth love and so on.

[40:28]

Love or hope is for the glory of God so worthy. One sense of bearing, the negative sense or the dark sense, gradually opens into the light sense, the positive sense. Yeah. That's, in a way, that's the key, I suppose, it's the highest form of that spectrum of polarity or whatever it is. Also theologically. There's also this paradox of above and below because the head is the source, you see. The head is like the root at the same time. The tree is

[41:31]

almost, sometimes it seems to be an inverted tree. I've got some notes on that if anybody's interested. Let me put one diagram up here. I'm having two diagrams. One is horizontal and the other one is vertical. This sort of holds for the next couple of chapters, too. This is the horizontal. Here's this basic bearing which works both ways. Now over here, let's say we have a mandible or a rod. Over here we have

[42:36]

Jesus in the desert and his combat with Satan, you see. Now, he gives sight to the man who is blind. At a certain point in their lives he blinds Satan. He blinds him and he destroys him. The suggestion is also from Genesis that he crushes his head. And here's where he perfects man by giving him sight and by giving him his head. At one point he said that the spirit is ahead of man because it's the spirit which we see, we hear, and we know, and so on. Now here in the middle we have the bearing. Now the word is the head. And as the head recapitulates, the head of man, creation, in one direction, and mankind in the other direction, the Holy Spirit,

[43:36]

is the body, the historical body of the coming of man, the creation, and the birth of man. Jesus is born by the Father, by the creation, by mankind, by the Virgin Mary, by the Church, by the Tree, which has many meanings, including the meaning of Christ, and by the Earth. This thing is always a tree. The shape of the garden is always a tree. We can draw that tree in another way by the name. So this is either

[44:42]

where the head or the word, which recapitulates, and the word is also light, or eyes, which you fertilize. The earth has moved very clearly from image to more general eyes to light. It's the spirit of God. It's the fruit. It's the spiritual body. It's the harvest. It's the image and likeness of God, too. This is the earth, but in some way it reflects the Father's change. The thing is kind of reversible. The tree can be inverted in some way. The earth, which is the lowest or basest element, which both supports everything and out of everything, out of which everything comes, bears everything even under everything, everything stands on it. At the same time, it brings everything forth, the earth does. The same thing is true of the Father. The Father bears everything in existence ontologically, and then he brings things forth, and particularly when he sends his word. This in some way is where And this, now,

[45:52]

is the bearing, this here, which is the brotherhood of the tree. And in Christ, it's man bearing. It's the man who is soul and body. So he chose a tree, in a way. He's a microcosm, and he's the energy of God, of God. It's the creation, it's the Christian bearing affliction. It's marriage, bearing the word. It's the tree of the cross. So, I think this is the image of the reason he's got it in his mind. And this is behind all these chapters, and it remains as kind of the central image of the book. You'll find that even when he gets to the end of the earth and the harvest and the new earth, that this is present. And he may move from the image of the tree and its fruit to the image of the grain and the harvest of the grain. Or you can even talk about the sun or gold or something like that. Maybe we all think of one, but this is gold. Any questions

[47:00]

about that chapter 17 before we go on? Or chapter 18? I don't know. I would be sort of imposing this from the vantage point of 2,000 years back, but it seems implicit in the metaphors as to what's happening. It's as if God kind of impregnated the world in the Incarnation and that man on earth learns to somehow bear as a kind of divine pregnancy and that God No, that's true. It's true. He says that the whole training of man by God in history is to accustom him to bear God. Now...

[48:04]

Yeah, the resonance is certainly there. Yeah. Yeah, the resonance is the word impregnated. It's certainly there with the spirit impregnating Mary and she kind of being the incarnation of all humanity. And so, in some sense, we are still married with all the churches kind of married and converted to the greater Christ and second coming. See, the image and likeness of God to finally bear the image or the likeness of God, I would say, because that's a final issue of it, a final perfection. That is to bring forth God in the world. That's what a Creation could do First to God...

[48:43]

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