If Only One of Anything

We human beings are connected by our commonalities.  This might seem a trite statement, but its crucial nature consists in its being an expression of a necessary condition in our relationships with one another.  No matter how much we might claim to value differences and individuality, we are drawn to our commonalities.  This matter resides—timewise—in our clouded past of Creation.

This past of Creation is an example of what I gather the experts call a true “mystery”—not an unsolvable or yet-to-be-solved question, but rather a representational display of a truth that can only be partially displayed and partially grasped.  The mystery of our creation as a species goes back in Genesis to the original state of Adam—described as an individual creature who required (the moral implication being an even greater “mystery”) human fellowship.  Adam needed other Adams or Adam-like creatures.  The direct implication of it not being “good” for Adam to be “alone” was it being—at least provisionally—"good” for Adam to have more of his kind.

The mystery here is us being in need of others of our kind, however “kind” is to be reckoned.  In the larger sense, I suppose, this is a question of—as I gather the ancient Greeks postulated—existence consisting not of individual entities so much as consisting of the “ideas” that underlay them.  A “kind” is represented necessarily by a typology, even if that typology resides in such an earthy conceit as “flesh of my flesh and bone of my bone.”  Actually, the flesh and bone in question belonged to Eve, but it is either the pre-moral or supra-moral (the distinction is academic) fact that we—as so many other creatures—are drawn to our own “kind”.

The notion of “kinds,” however, is something that we are as likely to forget as to remember.  What underlies the concept of any “kind” is the idealized type that characterizes it.  Remembering the connection of the type to the kind to the generally-characterized individual to the particularly-described individual to the named individual can often elude us.  For example, God has messengers who are often earthly messengers who are often prophets who include desert-dwelling eccentrics including John the Baptist.  At any stage of this declension of descriptions a commonality can be drawn, for the purposes of any commentator, and when the commentator is Jesus in the gospels then the very idea of individuality can be exploded.  John, for example, was the Elijah who was to come—and nothing but the typology of the ”messenger” need be in play for Jesus to make his point.

This brings us to the recurring gospel topic of there being only “one” of anything.  There is only one Father.  There is only one Teacher.  In practical terms, of course, such statements are not universally binding.  There will be fathers and teachers (for example), but when “practicality” is applied as an approach to religion, the most “impractical” (in earthly terms) of applications can be held to prevail.  There are examples almost whimsical, such as Anna and Simeon.  In their temporary and localized functions in Luke, they are the mother and father not just of Jesus but of the nation of Israel—one might even say the mother and father of mankind.  That their functions in this regard are informal merely strengthens them, for the dancing, organic quality of such typologies is their recommendation, in that they draw us to the mysteries they represent.

In John, the disciple who Jesus loved ends up taking Jesus’ mother into his house.  We can say that this course of events occurred at Jesus’ direction, but we can never know whether or not the narration of the episode in the gospel is determinative, or (as Jesus would admit to elsewhere) it was performative.  After all, was anyone described as the disciple Jesus loved (indeed, the typological disciple) going to leave the mother of Jesus—the mother of the king, the mother of Israel—unattended in her grief?

All of this discussion of there being only “one” of anything has implications of even greater practicality.  The nature of Jesus’ relationship with his disciples (along with their individual fates, and perhaps any lessons to be drawn from them) is bound up with the potential of typology as a crucial factor.  There are the particulars of any narrative (to return to the above episode, hinging on the practicality of “the disciple who Jesus loved” being in the proximity of Mary, as an example), and such particulars can often cloud the larger picture.  Or to put it another way, the story can get in the way of the “Story” to be told, because we tend to look only at the explicit fates of named characters.

Jesus was betrayed by Judas.  That is the story.  Jesus was betrayed by a disciple.  Let us consider that—Judas notwithstanding—the ministry might have continued until the will of all Twelve of the Apostles was worn down, or a circumstance might have occurred to each that triggered a certain fatal flaw of character.  Perhaps Jesus might have been betrayed by all Twelve of the Apostles, or by any other disciples, and it might be of greatest salience to apply “the rule of one” and say that Jesus was betrayed by “his disciple” as a type.

But was not Jesus betrayed by “his disciple” as a type?  Did not all of the disciples, protesting at one point their determination to stick with Jesus, fail at the crucial juncture?  Was not Jesus “Judased” by all of them?  Would any of them, consigned on that fateful night to trip and fall to their deaths (as in the contorted version of Judas’ demise in Acts) have fared in the Judgment any better than Judas?  Would any of them who died in their headlong flight have less than the betrayal of their Savior for which to answer before the eternal tribunal?

As I wrote above, there is a potential for great practicality in considering the application of typology to the gospels.  Jesus said to Thomas that blessed were those who had not seen, and yet believed.  The story of doubting Thomas, however, if it is considered as a story involving individual disciples, tends to show him in a less flattering light than the others.  But would the others have behaved any differently than Thomas, if they had been absent on the first display of Jesus’ resurrected body?  Are we not seeing—in the description of the collective disciples on the one hand, and Thomas on the other—merely two permutations of experience occurring to “the disciple?”

If there are distinctions—then as now—in how Jesus’ resurrection is considered by individuals, such that the faithful might be distinguished from the rest, might not those distinctions differ from what might be seized upon if only a narrative-based interpretation of the resurrection appearances is viewed?  Jesus did not actually congratulate the initially-convinced as against Thomas.  Jesus said, “Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.”  Presumably, there were disciples who had not yet even heard of the Resurrection, and there was a time when all of the disciples had heard only of the Resurrection as a future event.  They had Jesus in which to believe or not to believe, and he said before his passion that he had overcome the world.  His Resurrection, in substance, had already happened—or at least that is the implication of his pre-Crucifixion demand for his disciples to believe in him.

And so, of course, the argument about the “historicity” of the Resurrection is a silly one, and it serves only to degrade faith in Jesus.  Historical import might only be attached to any attempts to prove that the Resurrection did not happen, and Jesus saw to it that the actual, momentary event of the Resurrection (as distinct from reported post-Resurrection appearances) was seen by no human.