and then a little synthesis, a few remarks, including remarks about the apostolic fathers, and then we'll go on to Justin. Isaiah has worked up something on Justin. And then next time, I hope that we can continue with Eruditus, and we'll spend a little more time on him. He'll be the figure in the study of the British Conflict. And then we'll pass on to those very interesting people in the East, Clement of Alexandria, and Origen, and Herodotus. Barnabas is one of those perplexing people that nobody knows quite who he is. This seems to have been written sometime around 130 A.D., in the second century. It's a rather Semitic thing, which is very Gnostic in a sense. In fact, they used to accuse him of being tainted with Gnosticism, but the fact is that he comes across very Orthodox, because he's always stressing the fact that Jesus came in the flesh, that Jesus suffered in the flesh,

[01:06]

and the physicality of Christian salvation. So he's not a Gnostic, but he's a representative of a Gnostic kind of Christianity, to use the word in its not negative sense. In fact, the editor here picked out all of the terms that he uses to indicate knowledge, to indicate perception. He's got about 26 of them. He's got several pages, a whole vocabulary of terms that Barnabas uses. To express those realities, he covers two and a half pages, 26 terms. Now, some of them are not solely concerned with knowledge, but he looks at everything in that way. That's what he's doing. In fact, in the beginning of his letter he says, I'm writing this so that in addition to your very solid faith, you will have perfect Gnosis, you will have perfect understanding. Now, this is pointing to what his Gnosis really is for the early Christians. I think, in a sense you can say, it's sort of a circle around faith.

[02:12]

In other words, it's the kind of emanation or radiation of faith which everybody is supposed to share in some way. We don't think in those terms, because how do we think? We think that somebody knows his faith, but that's not Gnosis for us, is it? If somebody is well catechized, he knows the catechism, he knows the book. But they meant something else, didn't they? They meant that there was some kind of an experiential understanding in which you simply saw how things fit together. So it was not knowledge, it was understanding. It was an understanding which developed from faith and within faith. It didn't go beyond faith. And it was very much connected with a bunch of other things. We'll see as we go on through Barnabas. Barnabas requires a bit of patience, because he's one of those people who likes to play with the scriptures, with the Old Testament. And he carries things to, they get pretty far-fetched sometimes, as you'll see when he interprets the 319 and then the Grand Baptist. It sounds like it's St. Augustine beginning.

[03:17]

A couple of things about, a couple of little summaries about Barnabas before we take some texts from him. This is Boyer. Boyer is, because he passes through all of these things three times, and you have to look in two places to find all these things. Here's his first summary of Barnabas. The Epistle is in agreement with the Apostolic Fathers as a whole in locating the focus of Gnosis in meditation on the scriptures, at the school of the Apostles, centered on Christ and his cross, and in considering it not as a mere intellectual effort, but as a living grasp of the realities of salvation. Okay, number one. Number two. As the Epistle of Pseudo-Barnabas shows with a thoroughness leading to some extremist oversimplification, this Gnosis consists in finding Christ, his work, the way of justice that he has opened out to us, behind the whole teaching of the Bible.

[04:21]

So in Barnabas you find very strongly this thing that Gnosis is the finding of Christ in the Old Testament. Okay, it's finding Christ in all of the figures of the Old Testament. Every image turns into some kind of type, into some kind of figure of Christ. And so it's as if the whole art of exegesis is to squeeze or distill this Gnosis out of the scriptures. Remember, the scriptures originally were just the Old Testament. It's only after a certain point that the New Testament itself becomes considered a scripture that's known in the letters of Peter that it comes out. And this has a lot more depth than you may think. It seems like an intellectual exercise. Or it seems, even that's not saying it right, it seems like a kind of game. Why keep doing it? Is that an amusement? Or is somebody trying to prove something rather futile? No, there's a principle under that Gnosis. There's a principle underneath this. It's not the individual type that you interpret that counts. It's the kind of growing insight that Christ is the center and the meaning of everything in the scriptures, okay?

[05:29]

It's not an accumulation of different figures or different types. Or it's not some kind of structure or system. But it's the gradual realization and the gradual seeing, actually, through all of the figures of the scripture, through the whole of the scripture of the Old Testament and the history of the Jews, to see Christ in the center of it, okay? And then that passes on to the other areas of the Bible. It's not only the scripture that you do it in, but you do it in your life. That's the idea. And it's parallel also to the Eucharist, the external bread and wine of the Eucharist, which, as far as we see it, is still bread and wine. And then underneath it, the body of Christ. That parallel comes out, I think, more strongly than the original. But it's already there in a strong way, in Ignatius. I didn't find the parallel with the Eucharist here in the Bible. Then he's got a longer treatment, on pages 249 through 251 of that first volume of the History of Christian Spirituality.

[06:35]

And there he goes, point by point, through what he feels to be the meaning of Gnosis in Bibles. I won't do that now, but if you want to use it as a summary, after I've gone through Barnabas, it's quite useful. I'll just give you the line of summary that he gives at the end. This is at the bottom of page 251. Here we see the fusion of the various aspects in his final quote on Barnabas. That of the loving knowledge of the loving Father, and that of the penetration of the Scriptures, the purpose remaining always our progress in that knowledge of God, in which the prophets had summed up the whole of religion. We're surprised and somewhat put off by their preoccupation with the Old Testament. I think they hang on to that and reinterpret for it. They seem to us sometimes to be belaboring something which is dead. So we have to be careful. Actually we have a real problem in finding out what the Old Testament means for our lives.

[07:39]

But I think the Old Testament relates to the outside of our lives. It relates to the history of our lives. And as we find Christ in the history of the Old Testament, we find it also in our own lives. The meeting point is Christ. But in a sense, the meeting point between Christ and us, our meeting point between Christ and us, is the Old Testament. Because that's a history which is God-directed, which is God-guided. It's just got God inside it. And as we find its center, as we find its unity, we become able to discover the same thing in our own lives. So it's not really a thing. It's not really outside the center of Christian life. I have to keep defending it. Here's a summary from the article in the Dictionary of the Spirituality tape on Gnosis, which is pretty useful. This is what he says about Barnabas. In brief, the Gnosis, that is, of Barnabas, is knowledge of the mysteries of Christ. Now that's familiar to us from St. Paul. Revealed in the Scriptures. Actually it's the mystery of Christ in St. Paul.

[08:42]

Revealed in the Scriptures and the full development of the Christian life. All that is essential in the future evolution is already there. Notice it's got two sides. One, it's an interpretation of Scriptures. The other side is the development of life. Remember that Haggadah and Halakha that we had in the Jewish exegesis. The Haggadah being what we are more apt to call Gnosis, that is, the understanding of the depths of the Scriptures. The Halakha being the understanding of the way of life of the commandments, as it were, which is indicated in the Scriptures. So when the editor of Barnabas here gets to discussing Barnabas' exegesis, he says there are two kinds. The first he calls, it's biblical exegesis. Gnosis for Barnabas is not an end in itself. The term is used technically to refer to two closely related ideas.

[09:45]

First, exegetical Gnosis, which enables the recipient better to understand salvation history. Okay, that's this allegorical or spiritual or symbolic interpretation of the Old Testament. Secondly, ethical Gnosis, which is the correct understanding of the Lord's requirements for conduct. Sometimes these two aspects of Gnosis become so intertwined as to be indistinguishable. Okay, so that's Haggadah and Halakha. We'll be appearing once again in another time, for understanding and life. I'd like to put something on the board, which we'll come back to later. I'm trying to figure out the relationship between these different ways of... This is James' work. There's different ways, different dimensions of Gnosis. Here we've got faith, which is the basis. And you've got different directions you can go and undertake this.

[10:46]

This is my case of Orleans. The underwriting just leads me to another case, which is taken at very much rigor and splendor. This is what you've got. Modern theology is probably the commonest. At a certain point, theology is understood as the reasoning for God's effect. The reasoning on the basis of it. And notice that reasoning is very objective. If you reason something out, you can tell somebody else to compare it to the same process. But I would say it's pretty difficult to do that aside from science. And that's why science sort of accumulates. Because it's objective and because it's completely tangible. And what I'm interested in is the most subjective way of making a case for experience. We've been talking about experience. Which is really, I mean, completely incommunicative.

[11:53]

You can't tell somebody exactly what you experienced. You've got to give it a word, and by the time you get it into a word, it's something else. And the way that you use that word is something else again. But there's something else in between these two. And this word is a different word. And that's understanding, which can be a broad word. But I say an intuitive understanding, which is somehow experience and intelligibility, or experience and rationality at the same time. The gnosis that we're talking about is very much in that central area. There's somewhere else you can go, but it's the life, the living, the real. That's the ethicalness, as you've spoken about. This may not be the right way of putting those things together,

[12:58]

but it's good for us to try to analyze a bit and pick out the various threads, the various dimensions of what we're talking about when we talk about gnosis. This will come back again and again and again. We can revise that ad infinitum if we want to. Now, they don't seem to be sure whether Barnabas, the writer of the Episcopal, was really the Apostle Barnabas, or belonged to perhaps a school of the Apostle Barnabas, one of the companions of St. Paul, or not. But it's very hazy, the background of Barnabas. He's connected somehow with Alexandria, there seems to be some influence there. It seems that Clement of Alexandria was an admirer of this particular writer. And he, you know, is a great writer of the Christian Gnostic, in a sense. For him, the advanced Christian is the Gnostic Christian. Okay, let's take some of these texts and see what we can get out of them.

[14:02]

First of all, the reason for his writing the letter, I mentioned that before, I hasten to send you this brief communication so that along with your faith you might have perfect gnosis. In other words, the purpose of the letter is gnosis, so you can expect that he's going to be sort of pulling it out. He's going to be full of gnosis as far as he's concerned. And this directs us once again, reminds us once again, we can't just look for the places where somebody mentions gnosis. Maybe the whole thing he's doing is gnosis. So we have to be more sensitive in that. There are then three basic doctrines of the Lord of Life. Hope, the beginning and end of our faith, and righteousness, the beginning and end of judgment, and love, a witness of the joy and gladness of works done in righteousness. Three basic doctrines of the Lord of Life. Hope, righteousness, and love. That's a strange combination, isn't it? There's some kind of a punitarian pattern behind it. I was surprised to find them called doctrines.

[15:05]

I didn't look up every word to see exactly what he says. But obviously this has a lot to do with his gnosis. Now he's saying we have to seek out what the Lord wants and do it. The auxiliaries of our faith then, the helpers of our faith, and he's got four of them, are fear, that is fear of the Lord, and endurance, patience and self-control, also quite a long last time. They remind us of those four cardinal virtues of the Greeks. They're not the same. They're similar. I don't know where this comes from. Thus, while these allies remain in a pure state in relation to the Lord, they rejoice with them wisdom, understanding, knowledge, and gnosis. So you've got two sets of four virtues here. Four of them have to do with your conduct of life, it seems, your whole attitude of life. The other four have to do with your understanding. The parallels of those two kinds of gnosis that we were talking about. Okay, he spends a lot of time on wisdom, understanding, knowledge, and gnosis.

[16:17]

You can see how obsessed he is with this. Those are four different Greek words. And he relates them then also to the times. He says there's gnosis of the past and knowledge of the presence and understanding of the future, that's the way it goes. Here we are. We ought, therefore, to give heartfelt thanks to the Lord because he has both given us gnosis of the things which have come to pass, knowledge of what's in the past. So the gnosis, very often, is the interpretation of the Old Testament. It's finding Christ in the Old Testament. He's given us wisdom in the present events, nor are we without understanding, concerning about what is to happen, the promise, the prophecies. I don't know whether he's consistent in that or whether he just does it too. He's absolutely obsessed with gnosis and understanding. Therefore, since we are not without understanding, we ought to perceive the gracious intention of our Father. He talks about the true sacrifices.

[17:20]

So here's a typical thing where he passed from the sacrifices of the Old Testament, which were bulls and goats and so on, to the true sacrifice. The true sacrifice is, first of all, a broken heart. A sacrifice to God is a broken heart. An odor well-pleasing to the Lord is a heart which glorifies its Creator. So he interiorizes the sacrifice. And then it's also a merciful heart. And he quotes Isaiah. This is a fast which I have chosen. Loose every heart and give justice. So there we see the movement of the whole letter, which is moving from the Old Form to the New Form, from the shadow to the reality. He talks about the First and the Second Covenant. The New Covenant is in Jesus, is in our heart. Moses understood, and he hurled the two tablets from his hands,

[18:22]

and the covenant of the tablets was smashed to bits, so that the covenant of Jesus, the Beloved One, might be sealed in our heart, in hope of his faith. You get the idea? You'll find the other Fathers talking about it. Moses smashed the tables the first time he came down, down the mountain, and he found the people, remember? And they bowed their heads and smiled. He interpreted it as the First Covenant being broken. That's right in one of the Prophets. He broke my covenant, so I'm making a New Covenant. And this covenant is in your heart. So this is right in the line of Ezekiel, in Jeremiah's Ezekiel. Now, he talks about these two ways, the way of real wisdom and the way of those who are wise in their own eyes, and understand in their own sight, and so on. He's got a long passage about why the Lord endured suffering. We wonder why he puts this in here. It's like confronting that koan on the cross

[19:26]

and trying to explain it, trying to justify it to people who are baffled and scandalized by it. Maybe this is the heart of Gnosis, is to understand the reason for the Lord's suffering. He picks about four reasons for it. The Lord suffered to purify us. And here, he shows himself very un-gnostic in the heretical sense, because he emphasizes so much the fact that the Lord suffered in the flesh. He suffered to purify us. He suffered to fulfill the promises so that sinners could see him. And finally, to complete the number of Israel's sins, whatever that means, because it was written. Then he's got a very kind of fascinating exegesis on Genesis and Exodus and the good land. Let me just read a bit of this,

[20:26]

and see how dense it is, and also how deep it is. This is the kind of interpretation, something that he put into this section on the suffering of the Lord. What does Gnosis say? In other words, what does the interpretation, what is the understanding? Hope, it says, on that Jesus who is about to appear to you in flesh. For man is land-suffering, for Adam was formed from the face of the land. And then he talks about the land and the good land, the new land. Man, Adam, see Adamah, the word, the name Adam is the same word as the name of the land. It says man is land-suffering. Remember how the land was cursed, and Adam had to suffer in order to extract his bread from it, and he's exited the land of suffering at the same time. I don't know why exactly he can say land-suffering. It fits together in a general way. Does he say that? Well, actually, no.

[21:27]

That's right. It groans in childbirth. That's right. Notice how that connects with the other curse. Because for Adam, the land was cursed. For Eve, her childbirth was cursed, in the sense that she would give forth in... It's very interesting that you mention that. Yes. And it's both a question of bringing forth, isn't it? The land is to bring forth in the sweat of man's brow, but also somehow... The land itself is cursed, and so it brings forth, as it were, the difficulties of groaning, the things that man is to eat, instead of just pulling it off the tree and going to find it pleasant. And at the same time, woman herself has received a curse so that she will bring forth her children in pain and in groaning. And these two come together in Romans 8, as Fr. Weber points out, where the whole creation... If we picture somehow a globe, we can't help it. We picture the whole cosmos as if it were a round, whatever, you know, Earth,

[22:32]

giving forth with groaning and so forth. Now, in the words themselves, in the roots of the words, I don't know how one would put it in this context, but the general notion is quite deep, actually. The relation of man to his Earth, the relation of man's labor and woman's labor, even if I could use that word labor for these two things, we use it for the sweat with which you extract your food from the Earth, and we use it for the pain with which woman brings forth a child. And woman and the Earth are both bringing forth. ... I guess there are areas where you can pick the food out of the trees,

[23:33]

where food gathering itself is not the problem. This is like a light. ... Yes, but I think that that is in life. I think that even if they can pick the food out of the trees, the same thing emerges in another way in life. ... ... ...

[24:50]

Well, one question, okay, is the question of whether this curse is to be interpreted literally. And commonly enough, it is. That is, the work tends to be a fairly disagreeable thing, at least for most people. There's a kind of a slavery to work for most people. But the other... ... [...] I think the question underneath the curse is a question of original sin, a question of whether there is a kind of curse on our existence, a question of whether there is a kind of... whether a natural paradise is possible in our world as it is now, okay, or whether a natural happiness of no kind is possible in our world.

[25:55]

In other words, a satisfactory existence without a change, without a fundamental change in the condition of existence. ... [...] .... Well, I think that's true because the whole tree of life thing is concerned with wisdom and so on. Even the fruit. Remember, the fruit was to give wisdom, the fruit that even infested Adam. Remember, it's the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. But that's true before, but afterwards, what happens? Even in the myth. Afterwards, people are bent down and they have to grow their food from the earth.

[26:59]

So that would be the state, kind of, if whatever happened didn't happen, if it were ideal. But the point of the story is that we're not in that ideal order. Something like that. You can interpret it a number of ways. But, as you know, it was terrible, because you have to find out how to deal with it. But it seems to me that something's found a bridging point between what you find in the Torah and what David said. It sits much more like a branch, which has various dimensions. You never begin to get used to these branches until you've been around very long, which have various dimensions. That's why you have to deal with it. Is there a difference in man's state?

[28:04]

Man's state has been changed, but with man's state, the whole state of the world has changed. Well, it doesn't, you know. For example, the evolution demands of man. It builds up, and just to explore some more, is man's role also in this? What does he do? It's very difficult to pick it apart, you know, because man does something to the earth before our eyes, which ruins it and curses it. But also, that's already there. It pre-exists. It's not that he thought of it right now, but it's been going on all the time. And the earth, in certain places, is obviously cursed, because it doesn't bring forth enough to feed us as we'd like. And all the natural catastrophes. We'd better not get too far into that, because we're getting beyond minds. These questions, we'll hit them again tomorrow. There you go. Blessed be our Lord, brethren, who has placed in us wisdom and understanding of the secrets.

[29:11]

And see, he puts, he interpolates these little things about Gnosis right in here, when he's talking about this. So he does want you to understand it in a deeper sense. And yet, it's not just wisdom, and it's not just bread, or material things, but it's everything that he's talking about in that land cursed. And Jesus himself is the land, is the man who must suffer. And then Jesus himself becomes transformed through his passion and resurrection, so that he's the promised land, he's the good land. The land which flows with milk and honey. He's even got an interpretation for the honey and the milk. It seems that they used to introduce babies into taking milk, or giving them a little honey, and then they adopted this into the baptismal ritual, so that they'd be given honey and then milk. Now, for him, thus also, in a similar way, when we have been initiated into life by faith in the promise and by the word. So the honey is faith in the promise, and the milk is the word.

[30:15]

And Peter was in a similar situation. And then they talk about bread, that's what we're going to talk about. We will live exercising lordship over the land. So this is the thing about the new creation, you see. Now notice the different layers. We've got one on top of the other. We've got the layer of new creation, and then we're going back to Genesis. And that's the one that's also in Romans, chapter 8, of the land giving forth, giving birth. Then you've got the layer of entering into the promise land. The Exodus experience, entering into the promise land under Joshua. And continually find the same promise, and possibly elevate it to the chapter 11. Since then he renovated us by the forgiveness of sins. He made us to be another sort of creation, that is, as though initiated into life first by honey and by milk. Understand, therefore, children of joy, that the good Lord revealed everything to us beforehand,

[31:24]

so that we might know whom we ought to praise continually. Remember he says in Isaiah, I'm telling you about these things before, before they happen, so that when they happen, you'll remember who it was that told you, and who it was that did it. It won't just have happened. So happenings come from somebody, just like the explanation comes from somebody. Okay, then he's got a lot of other Old Testament things that he interprets in terms of Jesus. Jesus is the true Sabbath, or brings the true Sabbath. Jesus is the true temple as well. And the heart inhabited by the Lord is the temple. Then he talks about the circumcision of the understanding. Where again he speaks concerning the ears. He's continually quoting the prophets. How he circumcised the ears of our heart. I think that's in Jeremiah, isn't it? The Lord says in the prophet, by listening with the ear they hearken to me. And again he says, by hearing those who are far off to hearken, the things I have done will become known. And circumcised, says the Lord, your hearts.

[32:26]

Then he talks about circumcising the ears. Therefore he circumcised our ears so that when we hear the word we might believe. To have ears circumcised is to have ears ready for faith. And he sets aside the old circumcision. So one figure after another. Then the food restrictions of Moses. Moses says, don't eat the pig, nor the eagle, nor the hawk, nor the crow. This will probably not exactly... fascinate you the way... win you over the way he interprets that. For this reason then he mentions the pig. Do not associate, he is saying, with such men. Men who are like pigs. That is, men who forget their Lord when they are well off, but when they are in need they acknowledge the Lord. The pig hunts. Whatever a pig does when it's hungry. Just as when the pig is feeding it ignores its keeper, but when it is hungry it makes a din, and after it partakes it is quiet again. Nor the eagle, nor the hawk, nor the kite, nor the crow. Men who do not know how to procure their own food by honest labour and sweat,

[33:28]

but in their lawlessness they plunder the possessions of others. And they keep sharp watch as they walk around in apparent innocence and spy out whom they might despoil by plundering. Well, it's not exactly the towering peak of Petristices of Jesus, but maybe there is something there. Maybe those things are all in this book. And then more food laws and stuff like that. Then the foreshadowing of baptism on the cross. References to water in the Old Testament. And references to water and wood together. Here is another deep one. And again he says in another prophet, And he who does these things will be like the tree planted by strings of waters, which produces its fruit at the proper time, and which has leaves that will not wither. And everything he does will prosper. The impious are not like this. Remember this is in Iambulus. This is in Psalm 1. Perceive how he referred to the water and the cross together. The water being the water of the spring of waters,

[34:30]

or the flowing water, and the cross being the tree. For this is what he is saying. Blessed are those who, having placed their hope in the cross, descend into the water. For the reward, he says, comes at the proper time. This is taking a word from the psalm. Their leaves will not wither. He is saying this, that every word which flows forth from you through your mouth in faith and love will be a means of conversion and hope to many. And be a tree of life. Then what does he say? And there was a river flowing from the right side, and beautiful trees came up out of it, and whoever eats of them will live forever. He is saying this. You must see the Ezekiel elevation. That we go down into the water, full of sins and vileness, and we come up bearing fruit in our heart, having in the Spirit fear and hope of Jesus. So, the tree is Jesus and the cross, which are one thing somehow. And the tree is then the believer. It's as if the tree changes.

[35:30]

We become, somehow, that same tree, coming up out of the water of baptism. Now, that sounds kind of clumsy when you hear it, but there is something deep here. And this is typical of the way that they pray. And then the images of the cross. One of them is when Moses had his arms stretched out. Remember? When they were fighting Amalek. Another one is the serpent on the pole. He's got that same Greek word, semeion, which means sign and which means standard. So, for the serpent to be lifted up on the standard, as in Ezekiel, is for the serpent to be lifted up in sineo, in semeio, in a sign. And the sign is Jesus. And that's the great sign, in the same time, that Jesus was lifted up. That's it. And access to Amalek through the Scriptures. You want to hear about those 319 men?

[36:36]

Abraham, circumcised. You even have to search in two or three chapters to find 319 of them. No, no. He didn't mention any numbers at all. No, this would have closed their hearts. They would have kept going on, being on numbers. He didn't do it this way, actually. He didn't do it with numbers. No. Well, that's true. That's right. Thank you for that word. As long as you do it, you know. Now, here are the 319 men. What then is the gnosis which was given him? Now, this gnosis is pretty kind of elementary gnosis.

[37:40]

The 18 men... In one place it says he circumcised 18 men. Now, number 18 is comprised by two letters. J, which is worth 10 in Hebrew, and E, which is worth 8. So there's your 18. And 300 is the letter tau, which is the cross. So you've got J and E, which are the first two letters of the name of Jesus, but the cross. That's it. IH? In Bibles? How could that be? IH? Oh, yeah. We're talking about Greek letters, okay? Greek letters. So it comes in the same thing. This is making it more American, okay? It's making it more... Okay. Because the Greek... Etet, isn't it? It can be translated either I or E, but to make Jesus out of it, you have to translate it E, perhaps. I didn't look at the original.

[38:56]

Okay. Then... Okay. Then the two peoples opposed. Esau and Jacob in Rebekah's womb, and Ephraim, Manasseh, and Moses breaks the tablets again. The true Sabbath, the true temple, and then the two ways. There's a passage which is almost identical. It's not almost identical. It's parallel. To Didache and Barnabas. And this is where he turns to the other kind of interpretation, the real moral interpretation, Halakha. And then finally, the conclusion. This is chapter 21. Once more and again I urge you, be good lawgivers among yourselves. Persevere as faithful advisors to each other. Remove all hypocrisy from among you. And a God who has dominion over the whole universe

[40:01]

will give you wisdom, insight, understanding, gnosis of his ordinances and endurance. So he keeps those four knowledge virtues. Just keeps the one from his other circle, endurance. Be taught by God, seeking out what the Lord seeks from you, and act so that you may find in the day of judgment. So that's it. I made a list of those things where he has an Old Testament type and a New Testament type. But this is the common thing, of course, with the Father's. The only thing I want to stress here is that don't interpret it just in a narrow sense, a one-for-one sense, but see it as enlarging to the whole of the Word in some way summed up and centered in Jesus. And then carry that over to the whole of life, the whole of reality, which is, I think, what you're doing. It seems like one of your questions is important. How will Christ's interpretation of the Scriptures say to the disciples on the 21st? Different from this, it seems quite possible he would get mixed up

[41:03]

in things like the pig and the bear and the eagle and so forth. No, he certainly wouldn't. They may be there, though, huh? And yet he does mention signs. I mean, like in the Gospels themselves, he talks about the sign of the serpent being lifted up. And you could see Wellesley mentioning the suffering servant, Isaiah, bringing that in, and what's in Christ's third book, the sign of the serpent. You can be very certain of that in the Old Testament. If you read the Gospel of John, and if you take the words that John uses that he gives to Jesus as being Jesus' own words, it's unmistakable, okay? Remember the sign of Jonas and the serpent lifted up, and there's so many. I don't think the sign of Jonas is the only one. So that's uncontestable, okay, that Jesus did, he did speak in terms of signs. And the opening of the Scriptures that he did along the road to Emmaus, you don't know whether it was signs or not. He didn't have to speak certain signs. He could have interpreted it in other ways, just prophecies, straight prophecies, like the serpent and so on. It must have been in that line, too.

[42:23]

He says you search the Scriptures because you'll find life in them. You think you'll find life in them, but you don't come to them. But at the same time, he says that, I think, in chapter 8 of St. John. Now, you read chapter 8 of St. John's Gospel, and in order to understand what he's saying, you have to go back to the signs. You have to go back to the Old Testament. In other words, what I'm defending, actually, is the necessity of the Old Testament, really, to fully understand the New Testament. You can understand it, you can understand it sufficiently for salvation and for all kinds of things without knowing anything about the Old Testament. But to understand it the way it's meant to be fully understood, you have to understand it in terms of the Old Testament, because that's the language. The language of the New Testament is the Old Testament in a certain way.

[43:33]

Especially in the Gospel of John. It's more and more convincing all the time. Because he's walking through these things of the Jewish religion, and if they don't mean anything to us, all he does is kind of generalize things. Now, the general sense is enough for the impact of the Word, and for salvation. For some people, it isn't. But for the monk, I don't think it should be enough. Because it shouldn't be all for the monk. Because the Scripture should not remain, to that extent, a closed book to him. Because he's given too much time, too much space for him. Yes. He's emphasizing that all the time. So, Gnosis for him is the Christian understanding of the Scriptures, the Christian understanding of the Old Testament. Now, we don't start out thinking that that's very important. When we begin, we learn about Christ, we don't come through that same channel.

[44:36]

So the Old Testament is not important for us. It becomes important when we begin to say, oh yes, it's a proof thing. At a certain point we say, right, he really was foretold. It somehow gives a nudge to our faith. But this is something else. To keep discovering, to have a kind of steady process of discovery of Christ going on, first in the Old Testament, where it's most literal in the Word, but then everywhere else. It's supposed to be that kind of initiation. I didn't want to take so much time this morning. Barnabas is... It's hard to get just a few quotes out of Barnabas, you see, to make it very complex. I wanted to make a few observations about the apostolic orders in general that we're forecasting on to St. Justin. Here's a first definition of gnosis in the apostolic order. Saving knowledge in Jesus Christ.

[45:37]

Okay, saving knowledge. We say that we're saved by faith. But faith for them was almost identical with knowledge at a certain point. Faith can be so powerful that it's knowledge. And then at another time it's much less illuminated. At another time it's much less powerful and clear for us. Instead of... I'm just going to say I'm just reading some things I wrote and I'll come back. Instead of finding that gnosis is part of the gift of salvation, I think that for these Fathers, it is the whole gift under one aspect, the cognitive aspect. The kind of the primordial gift, which is gnosis. Now this, admittedly, is a biased aspect, but it's true. I'm continually focusing and emphasizing this aspect. It is there, but it's not the only aspect, and that's why it's so exciting. In other words, salvation, grace, new life, fullness of life, come through the gnosis, the knowledge of God in Jesus Christ. And Ignatius would say that knowledge of God is Jesus Christ. But it doesn't only come through the gnosis,

[46:40]

but somehow the gnosis is the experience or the realization of this salvation. So the gnosis, in a way, faith is the door to salvation, is what salvation comes through to you. And so is gnosis, in a way. But perhaps even more, gnosis is the experience of that salvation, insofar as you can experience it now. It's their word for it. We would say experience, but a twentieth century person would say experience. Here we are face to face.

[47:11]

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