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Two thousand years ago Jesus introduced

his new teaching and practice of agape

which commands us to love one another

as he loved us in self denial and sacrifice.

Each new age has emphasized a special aspect

of loving God with our whole heart, mind, and soul,

and of loving our neighbor as our self.

In our postmodern age at this millennial turn

the new emphasis is upon agape as reconciliation.

Jesus gives us the command:

If you are offering your gift at the altar

and there remember that your brother

has something against you

leave your gift there before the altar

and go and be reconciled with your brother

and then come and offer your gift. (Matt 5:23–24)

Of course, reconciliation has always been important

but given the new communication technology

of our global village it will here be argued that

it has become the focal point of our postmodern times.

In this first volume of our millennial meditations

I will reflect on how I learned faith, hope, and love

from my mother’s reconciling life as she went through

her eighty-one years of personal growth through love.

Second, I will explain how the strategy of reconciliation

is at the heart of Kierkegaard’s philosophy of loving persons.

Third, I will show how the gift and task of reconciliation

is the main theme of Paul’s seven authentic letters.

Fourth, I will examine the history of agape and personhood

in the West from the perspective of agapeic reconciliation.

The point is to let the four perspectives enlighten each other.

Mother

Dear David, Oct 13, 1995

Sorry I’m so late in answering your letter.

I pray the Rosary three times a day.

I offer the Joyful Mysteries for myself:

The Annunciation for humility,

The Visitation that I can help people

come closer to the love of God,

The Nativity to help me realize

my dependence on God for everything,

The Presentation for perfect obedience,

and The Finding in the Temple for a more

perfect understanding of God’s Holy will.

I offer the Sorrowful Mysteries for my family:

The Agony in the Garden that each one in my family

be truly sorry for their sins,

The Scourging that each in my family obtain the purity

that they need and the graces to love and serve God,

The Crowning with Thorns that each one ban

all impure thoughts, suspicious thoughts,

and uncharitable thoughts and get rid of

their pride and selfishness;

The Carrying of the Cross that they will

be patient in their trials and sufferings,

and The Crucifixion that it will not be

in vain for anyone in my family.

The Glorious Mysteries:

The Resurrection I offer for you for the faith you need

and for true sorrow for your sins.

The Ascension I offer for my grandchildren

for the graces, helps and protection and faith that each one needs.

The Descent of the Holy Spirit I offer for my Godchildren

for the love and charity, the faith and protection

and graces that each one needs.

The Assumption I offer for my brothers and sister

and their families and for my relatives and In-Laws

for the faith and help that each one needs.

The Coronation I offer for our Parish,

for the faith, love and protection that each one of us needs.

We had a real cold night. It was 28 degrees this morning.

Looks like we’re going to have an early and cold winter.

I really enjoyed your visit and hope you can come more often.

Bette Jo and Bob are moving to Hagerman in November.

It will be nice to have them close.

Tell Josje “Hello.” I’m glad he is taking some

more courses in college.

Love and Prayers

your mother

Mother identified with the sorrow of her mother whose mother

died when she was but eight and with the sorrow of her father

whose mother died when he was but five and she identified with

their identification with each other for shamans often do lose

a parent when they are children and thereby learn of the spirit world.

From her mother, mother learned to pray the Our Father and

from her father’s Mormon community mother learned that

our Heavenly Father loves us and is with us especially in sorrow.

Then from her husband who lost his father when he was but five

mother learned how to pray the Hail Mary and the Angel of God.

Mother grew as her prayer took her into the five dimensional universe.

Mother lived most closely throughout her whole life with three

prodigal sons for her father was a prodigal son, her husband

was a prodigal son, and her own first son was a prodigal son.

And yet unlike the elder brother she never for a moment needed

to reconcile with them for each of them knew how she loved them

and from her they even knew how God would always love them.

For surely God’s love would have to be as affirmative as was hers.

Her father dear became the town drunk and began squandering

the family fortune so that her mother had to divorce him even

though she proudly loved him and her father sobbed when he saw

his wonderful daughter, Sissy, and even though he could not change

and died in an insane asylum he always knew how loved he was.

Her husband dear who was a proud and gifted gambler was shot

in the ankle when hunting and became an alcoholic garbage man.

But with her help he knew that he was cleaning up the town

and unlike so many punk-kid adults he kept the faith,

put all his children through college and with her constant love

eventually quit smoking and drinking and was shamanic right

to the end as he taught his children how to love their mother

just as she taught them to love him forever more and more.

Her first son became the worst sinner of all for he was both

an habitual adulterer and an hypocrite who professed to be

religious and yet hurt his wives and children more than did

her father or her husband who never broke the commandments

but drank, perhaps, to fill the void of their dead lost parents.

But her son who had the best of educations and even prayed

with the various women he loved forced his wives to leave him.

And their children suffered so much to see their mothers so hurt

and to be separated from their father for living ghosts can be

harder to live with than dead ones who do not haunt you so.

Her first son knew his mother’s love who saw all so clearly

and it let him feel like King David after whom she named him.

Mother’s four noble truths

I Mother as a person in relation suffered the sorrows

of those with whom she was most closely bonded

II and her greatest sorrow of all was losing her loved ones

for love wants to be present with those whom we love.

III But mother’s Rosary and Mass taught her that Christmas

can be every day especially on Good Friday because of Easter Sunday.

IV And this became real for mother as she journeyed

on the nine-fold path of her life with

(1) her Anglican mother from whom she learned of

joyful service not only for family but also for community

(2) her Mormon father with whom she learned hard work and for whom

she always prayed as he became her broken, sobbing dad

(3) her Catholic husband who knew she was the perfect wife and mother

and who was the alpha male for and with his alpha female

(4) her son, David, who still prays with and for her every day and

Father Dougherty who taught her of the sacred heart of Jesus

(5) her daughter, Bette Jo, who still identifies with her in all

of her mothering and Father Heeren, her spiritual director

(6) her son, Robert Brian, who has her gentle heart and

Father O’Connor, her Irish priest with his sense of humor

(7) her son, Clifford Scott, who like her daughter is like her

husband and Father Waldman, that true Idaho priest

(8) her son, Tommy Joe, who like his two namesakes is

wise and strong and Father DeNardis, that saintly priest

(9) her grandchildren and great grandchildren for whom she

still prays everyday and the new priests of Post Vatican Two.

And so mother is there now with Father, Son, and Holy Spirit

and with the Blessed Mother of God and with all of the Angels

and with all of the Saints and she is praying for and interceding

for all of us here now just as she did when she was here.

Since she lived in these five dimensions in her prayer

for her last fifty years she must still be living as she lived.

Kierkegaard

The greatest good, after all, which can be done

for a being . . . is to make it free.

In order to do just that Omnipotence is required.

This seems strange, since it is precisely Omnipotence

that supposedly would make (a being) dependent.

But if one will reflect on Omnipotence, he will see

that it also must contain the unique qualification

of being able to withdraw itself again

in a manifestation of Omnipotence in such a way

that precisely for this reason that which has been

originated through Omnipotence can be independent.

That is why one human being cannot

make another person wholly free . . .

only Omnipotence can withdraw itself

at the same time it gives itself away, and

his relationship is the very independence of the receiver.

(Journals and Papers 2.1252)

The entirety of Kierkegaard’s existential thinking could

be interpreted as reflecting on this Omnipotence that

stands back in order to let the other be free.

In the last three chapters of his Works of Love Kierkegaard

explains the agapeic strategy for accomplishing reconciliation.[NL1-3]

(1) We need to love the other as more important than ourselves

that he or she might be graced to love others as more important.

(2) We need to recollect the dead in praying for them and in asking

them to pray for us that we might see a context that is big

enough in time and space to let this impossible task happen.

(3) We need to praise Love which is God that we might

praise all others as members of his Incarnate Body.

In humility Jesus taught us how God stands back to free others

and thus sacrifices his omnipotence for the potency of others.

In part two, chapter eight, of Works of Love: The Victory of

the Conciliatory Spirit in Love, Which Wins the One Overcome,

Kierkegaard poses the problem clearly when he writes:

Let us suppose that the prodigal son’s brother

had been willing to do everything for his brother-yet

one thing he could never have gotten into his head

that the prodigal should be more important. (338)

If the prodigal goes to the altar to thank God he will be

commanded by the Gospel to go to his elder brother and

to seek reconciliation in accord with Matt 5:23–24.

When the prodigal came home after squandering his money

his brother took offense at him and was resentful because his father

threw a party to welcome home the prodigal and did not seem

in the elder brother’s eyes to see him as important as the prodigal.

It was as if the father thought the prodigal to be more important.

So for the prodigal to properly love the elder brother he has to

not only forgive him but to go and be reconciled with him.

That might be no easy task for the prodigal would have to treat

the elder brother as more important and the elder brother would

have to think of the prodigal as more important if there is

to be true reconciliation according to the model of agape.

The point of Kierkegaard’s authorship is to show how the brother

can be brought to love the prodigal as more important than himself.

How will the elder brother stop taking offense and being resentful?

It is the task of the prodigal to be like Stephen for Paul.

He has to stand back in self denial to free his brother.

In resentment the brother may not want to become freed

from his taking offense that he might be reconciled.

So the prodigal has to have faith that it will happen

in his brother’s and in God’s good time and even if

it doesn’t happen in this life time the prodigal must not

despair, but he must pray always even for the blessed dead.

In the middle of his chapter on Praising Love Kierkegaard

gives a summary of how reconciliation can be achieved:

This is inwardly the condition or model

in which praising love must be done.

To carry it out has, of course,

its intrinsic reward, although in addition

by praising love in so far as one is able,

it also has the purpose to win people to it,

to make them properly aware of what

in a conciliatory spirit is granted

to every human being-that is, the highest.

The one who praises art and science still

shows dissention between the gifted and ungifted.

But the one who praises love reconciles all,

not in common poverty nor in a common

mediocrity, but in the community of the highest. (365)

For Kierkegaard the prodigal might remain an aesthete for whom

the beauty of the party immediately pleases “me”, but if so

he will come to the common poverty of me-centered prodigals.

Or the prodigal might become ethical and reflect upon “my self”

but in simply avoiding the dire consequences of prodigality

with gifted insight he might be just as mediocre as his brother.

The prodigal might go beyond the common poverty of the pre-

aesthetic me and the common mediocrity of the reflectively

ethical myself and become the “I” who is thankful to his father

and to God. But, this “me,” “myself” and “I” can become other

centered in a praising love that lets even aesthetic petition,

ethical repentance and religious gratitude become praising.

This is the seven step logic of reconciliation that is demanded

of the prodigal and which is the core of Kierkegaard’s philosophy.

We will now examine how Kierkegaard applied this logic

throughout his authorship in reconciling older brothers and Jesus.

Kierkegaard’s four noble truths

I We humans bring each other into the suffering

of boredom and fear and trembling

II through the sin of taking offence at God’s

existence in anxiety and despair

III from which we can be creatively freed by following

the God-man’s loving self-denial and self-sacrifice

IV along the nine-fold path of his conciliatory love that

recollects the dead in the praising love

of humankind’s highest affirmation by moving

(1) from the irony of Socratic skepticism

in which love is a matter of conscience

(2) to Abraham’s knight of faith who follows

his duty to love the people we see

(3) to love’s renewing repetition that is a duty to remain

in love’s debt to one another for Job and to Regina

(4) and from Plato to accepting truth’s paradox

(5) and from Hegel to holding fast to objective uncertainty

in a true love that believes all things and yet is never deceived

(6) and from Adam and Eve’s anxiety to a love

that hopes in all things and yet is never put to shame

(7) to the Works of Love that do not seek their own

in the wisdom of the logic of the like for like

(8) and which delivers us from the Sickness Unto Death

by leading us through the journey of self reconciliation

which lets us live on all three floors of our house

(9) and by the Training in Christianity that lets us abide

in the love that never takes offence at any offence.

Kierkegaard clarifies this with nine key definitions of (1) love,

(2) person, (3) the stages on life’s way, (4) the double movement leap,

(5) repetition, (6) truth, (7) sin, (8) despair, and (9) taking offence.

St. Paul

For Christ did not send me to baptize

but to preach the Good News

and not to preach that in terms of philosophy

in which the crucifixion of Christ cannot be expressed.

The language of the Cross may be illogical

to those who are not on the way to salvation

but those of us who are on the way

see it as God’s power to save . . .

While the Jews demand miracles

and the Greeks look for wisdom

here we are preaching a crucified Christ;

to the Jews an obstacle that they cannot get over

to the pagans madness

but to those who have been called

whether they are Jews or Greeks

a Christ who is the wisdom and power of God.

For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom

and god’s weakness is stronger than human strength.

(1 Cor 1: 17–25)

So the Good News of agapeic reconciliation is contrary

to any human philosophy and works with the logic of the Cross

which in order to reconcile with other logics is contrary to them.

Kierkegaard’s existential philosophy in treating the absurd logic

of the incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection, ascension, and pentecost

goes beyond the old logics of the categorical syllogism,

the disjunctive syllogism and the hypothetical syllogism

to the modal logic of contingency and freedom that has been

revealed by the Cross of Christ in the power of sacrificial love.

Paul shows how the problem of evil can be the mystery of suffering

for when we offer our suffering with the suffering of the God-man

the evil of suffering paradoxically becomes God’s loving suffering.

Logic for the Greeks is related to the verb legein which means

to gather the parts into an orderly pattern and reasonable whole.

Logos is translated into Latin as ratio and into English as reason.

Logic in its basic meaning is related to theology because it is based

upon the necessary law that something cannot come from nothing.

What we call collecting in English is in Greek a syllogism.

It is the gathering of the logos of legein together or into

a collection of parts with each other into a coherent unit.

Logicians arrange their reasoning into syllogistic forms

based on three kinds of whole part meaning or relation.

An example of a categorical syllogism is: (1) Whatever is

caused is caused by another. (2) St. Paul is caused.

(3) Therefore, he is caused by another. An example of

a disjunctive syllogism is: (1) Either St. Paul is caused

or not caused, but not both. (2) But St. Paul is caused.

(3) Therefore, he is not not caused. An example of a conditional

syllogism is: (1) If St. Paul is caused, then he is caused by another.

(2) But he is caused. (3) Therefore, he is caused by another.

The Greeks thought that everything is held together in necessary

relationships based on whole part relations and logic makes

clear the necessary order of Being (ontology), of the world

(cosmology), of God (theology), of the living thing (psychology),

and of knowledge (epistemology). The faith of the Hebrew people

believed in a God that defied this logic of necessity by

deifying the Divine Will that could freely bring something

into existence out of the nothingness of a formless void.

But, when that omnipotent creator absurdly became a creature

and was both all powerful and all weak at once, that defied

both Greek logic and the Hebrew faith and when Paul experienced

the weakness of God that is more powerful than the power of men

he had to make sense of both the Greek and the Hebrew irrational.

The basic miracle in which the Hebrews believed had to do with

The Mosaic Covenant and The Davidic Promise by which

they were delivered from slavery in Egypt and as God’s

chosen people given a law that continued to save them, and

by which they were promised a land flowing with milk and honey

and that they would be a nation more numerous than the stars of the sky

and that they would be a blessing to all the peoples of the earth.

The Mosaic Covenant gave them their meaning from the past

and The Davidic Promise gave them their meaning for the future.

Abraham, their father, kept his faith as he was tried over

and over again with threats to all three parts of the promise.

But then came the worst when God seemed to contradict himself

and demand that he sacrifice Isaac in an absurd move which

would keep God from keeping his promise if Isaac through whom

the promise was to be fulfilled would be cruelly taken away.

But Abraham had faith and God came through and put an end

to child sacrifice at least for his chosen family of Abraham.

However, what Paul witnessed is that God sacrificed his

only Son in an absurdity that was without visible miracles.

The mystery of love was such that Paul actually witnessed

in Stephen no visibly resurrected Christ, but instead

a look of love on Stephen’s face that made more sense to him

than any logical meaning and it could fulfill The Davidic Promise.

Besides the look of love there was a voice so loving that it

called Paul to go forth and be a blessing to all the peoples.

In Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians, chapter five, he

put it all very simply: “For anyone who is in Christ, there is

a new creation; the old creation has gone, and now the new

one is here. It is all God’s work. It was God who

reconciled us to himself through Christ, and gave us the work

of handing on this reconciliation.” It was now Paul’s work

by suffering in love with Stephen and Jesus to reconcile all.

St. Paul’s four noble truths

I All sentient beings suffer including God in the God-man.

II So the problem of evil becomes the mystery of suffering

which should be embraced.

III For loving suffering not only builds character

but also in a reconciliation process saves others

with self denying sacrifice that loves them as more important

IV as St. Paul found along the nine-fold path

of his journey of reconciling love

(1) which began when he was touched by the loving face

of Stephen revealing the loving face of Jesus’ Mystical Body

(2) and along which he progressed for his beloved Thessalonians

by teaching them how agape is increasing love for the whole

human race

(3) and for his beloved Corinthians by teaching them that

agape is the love feast and the Lord’s Supper

(4) and again for his Corinthians by showing them how

agape is the suffering which consoles others

(5) and for his beloved Galatians by showing them how

agape is the freedom to serve one another

(6) and for the Romans by teaching them how

agape is the love of God made visible in Jesus Christ

(7) and for Philemon by teaching him how

agape loves the slave as a brother

(8) and for the Philippians whom he taught how

agape is the love that prepares us for greater glory

(9) and all the while pondering more deeply with the Romans

that what proves that God loves us is that Christ

died for us while we were still sinners. Having died

to make us righteous, is it likely that he would now

fail to save us from God’s anger? Now that we have

been reconciled, surely we may count on being saved.

The history of personhood

Shamanism can be defined as a group of techniques

by which the practitioners enter the ‘spirit world’,

purportedly attaining information that is used to help

and to heal members of their social group.

The shamans’ way of knowing depended on deliberately

altering their conscious state and/or heightening

their perception to contact spiritual entities

in ‘upper worlds’, ‘lower worlds’, and ‘middle earth’.

For the shaman the totality of inner and outer reality

was fundamentally an immense signal system,

and shamanic states of consciousness were the first steps

towards deciphering this signal system.

Homo Sapiens Sapiens was probably unique

among early humans in the ability to symbolize,

mythologize, and, eventually, to shamanize.

Although the term ‘shaman’ is of uncertain derivation,

it is often traced to the language of the Tungus

reindeer herders of Siberia where the word ‘shaman’

translates into “one who is excited, moved or raised”.

An alternative translation for the Tungus word is

“inner heat,” and an alternative etymology

is the Sanskrit word ‘saman’ or ‘song.’

Stanley Krippner1

For the first fifteen hundred years of Christian history the paradigm

of persons in relation was worked out in progressive stages.

But 500 years ago when modernity began with Luther, Calvin

and Henry VIII and then with Descartes, Hobbes and up to Hegel

the new paradigm of rugged individualism went through its stages.

Now with the postmodernists there is a return to persons

in relation with a communal emphasis as with the shamans.

The history of personhood in the West might be thought of

in its simplest form in the following three stages of three:

I Praeparatio Evangelica

1) with hunter-gatherer and agricultural shamans

2) with Greek vegetative, animal and rational souls

3) with Mosaic and Davidic tribal spirit

II Guiding definitions

1) with three persons in one God

2) with two natures in one person

3) with an individual substance of a rational nature

III Three traditions of agape and personhood

1) with the tradition from Augustine to Aquinas

2) with the tradition from Francis to Luther

3) with the tradition from Descartes to Kierkegaard

Agape is the gift and the task of a love for all persons

who as the brothers and sisters of Jesus, the Son of God,

are believed to have unique singularity and equal worth.

Agape is a universal love that is not based on equality

at the level the lowest common denominator, for even though

particularity does imply an exclusivity that destroys universalism,

the singularity of the incarnation is able to have a logic that

unlike particularity is able to go out affirming all differences.

When the Son of God became flesh we received the gift:

“That all flesh shall see the salvation of the Lord.” (Luke 3:6)

The task of this gift is that we spend our lives promoting

the highest and the best in all persons and even all flesh.

Agape can affirm all other attempts at reconciliation

and all other ways of love and models of subjectivity.

The point of studying the history of love and personhood

is to see how the model of agape goes out to all others

and learns from them the worth of their different ways and

in loving service of them promotes individualizing differences.

Western culture with its own special religion, law, politics

and economics has developed out of the theory and practice

of agape and personhood which today is being everywhere considered.

Even if Chinese, Indian, Islamic and Eastern Orthodox cultures

do not embrace the agape of the West with its view that all persons

are equal under the law and even if they do not embrace

the implied democracy from the election of the Pope on down

they all want to get in on the technological and economic success.

Once they begin pursuing the economic fruit they do slowly

come to see the implied political blossoms and then the

legal branches and then the trunk of personhood and then finally

the roots of agape or the three persons in the one true God.

In this first set of meditations we shall examine the history

of the notion of personhood in the West as it grew out of

the new reality and concept of agape which Jesus introduced.

We shall not yet focus on the legal theory and practice

that developed with it but we might notice two systems

of the theory and practice of law which developed in the West.

There was the code law of the Continent with Justinian

and with Canon Law which gave rise to rational science

and there was the Case Law of England and its empirical method.

Already with Jesus and with Paul the new universal agape

for all persons was bringing forth a new approach to the law.

Of course, the Ten Commandments were still of utmost importance

but the practice of Jesus towards foreigners and sinners

and his Sermon on the Mount and many of his parables

extended the love of Jesus to all with the Good Samaritan.

Paul saw immediately that in Christ Jesus there is

no longer Greek nor Jew, master nor slave, male nor

female for they are now all persons equal under the law.

In these meditations we shall ponder together how agape

and person developed during their first two thousand years.

Each loving creature’s four noble truths

I Each person and each loving creature suffers and will die

II and will weep and wonder why for that is a mystery

which none of us can understand unless we believe

III in that Divine love that so loves us that it became flesh

and died and rose again from the dead that there

can be hope for all loving creatures who belong

to the Mystical Body of Jesus.

IV And the Holy Spirit of the Risen Lord Jesus has

revealed to us a nine-fold path toward the salvation

for all flesh, both for persons and loving creatures

(1) for hunter-gatherer shamans across the face of the earth

knew of persons and creatures in relation in spirit form

(2) for the five Greek and Roman schools debated the plight

of all souls and spirit: vegetative, animal, human, Divine

(3) for Hebrew Hesed which became Christian Agape promised

an everlasting Kingdom, for love is stronger than death

(4) for God is the love between the three Divine persons

which was revealed for all persons in the incarnation

(5) for Jesus is one person equal to the other two

and unique in his Divine and human nature

(6) for in accord with the idea of Divine persons humans

were seen as individual substances of a rational nature

(7) for from Augustine to Aquinas the Caritas Synthesis

embraced and learned from all persons of eros, affection, friendship

(8) for with the Franciscans all loving creatures, and

all do love, were the brothers an sister of Francis

(9) for from Luther and Descartes to Kant and Hegel

the human rights of all persons became law.

By meditating on this nine stage history of personhood

we will bring ourselves up to the brink of postmodernity

and be ready to appreciate Kierkegaard’s love and personhood.

notes:

1. Stanley Krippner, “The Epistemology and Technologies of Shamanic Sates of Consciousness,” Journal of Consciousness Studies 7 (2000) 93.