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Some years ago, I visited
Lourdes and
Medjugorje and was since then very
interested in Mariology because I hoped to find answers to questions like:
What is the role of Mary’s apparitions in salvation? Are they predicted by
Scriptures? Are all apparitions trustworthy? However, these
questions could only partly be answered by the books I read. Catholic theology is very
cautious and prefers to say nothing rather than something wrong. For
official theology of a Church considered infallible, this attitude is
certainly necessary. However, I am neither a priest nor any
official Catholic person. So if I am wrong with my theories described on
this site, this cannot be used to criticize the Church. This way I am also
without pressure, which is certainly a better situation to make any
theological research.
The fact alone in daring to do such research without
having studied theology officially at university was considered quit suspect and even heretic by
most Catholic theologians I met, although I have no doubt about the
infallibility of the Church and believe in its traditional teaching. This
clearly shows how rigid, distrustful and cautious present Catholic
theology is. Such an attitude is contrary to any learning process, which
implies doing errors. A man who stays at home and buries his talents in
the garden can pretend doing no mistakes, but he will not advance in life
either. A child who wants to learn walking needs to fall on his nose. This
is just natural and necessary. This is why I did not fear to do my own
studies about Saint Mary and her apparitions. It is true that I had to
work a long time on my text and to correct, redefine and adjust a lot of
things. Even in the present form there are still things that are not
perfectly described yet. But I do not have a doubt about the essential part
of my theory, which is worth to be read by any person interested in
salvation history, Genesis and Saint Mary.
The starting point for my studies was the following: the Jewish people was deported several times and
every time the temple was either destroyed or profaned, and then reconstructed
or renovated. This indicates a similarity between these deportations,
which is based upon four typical phases. The first phase is dominated by
peace, the second by sin (the negligence of the Jewish religion), the third by judgment (the deportations and
destructions of the temple) and the fourth by revival, that is to say by
the restitution of peace (the returns of the Jews and reconstructions of
the temples). These four phases, which together form a cycle, only differ from each other by their typical character and
not by a more or less equal duration, for the first phase is always
considerably longer than the three following ones. I then verified if the
full history of salvation as described in the Bible is composed of such
cycles, which is effectively the case (see Summary of Salvation History).
The apparitions of Saint Mary find their place within this cyclic history
by occupying the phase of apparition, which is associated to the phase of
beginning since the era of the spiritual kinship founded by Christ. During the first cycle of this era, this phase of apparition
was occupied by the Annunciation, and during the second cycle by the
apparitions of the Lord after his resurrection, as we are going to see.
The biblical historiography ends with the book of the
Acts of the Apostles. The last event described by this book is how
St. Paul was taken away to Rome in 60 AD and his stay in this town
(Acts 27-28). However, salvation history goes over all the period of
humanity. So it does not stop with the life of the Apostles but also
concerns the future of humanity. These future events are described by
the biblical prophecies. As for the distant past, that is the origin of
the world and humanity, it is
the book of Genesis that tells us what happened in that time.
It is well known that Genesis was severely contested,
even ridiculed, during the slow development of modern science. To exit
from this impasse, certain people counter-attacked science, others tried
to reconcile the biblical texts with modern knowledge or distanced
themselves from the Old Testament by only granting real value to the New
Testament. Still others minimized the historic content of Genesis by
reducing it to mythology or to other human beliefs.
As for my position, I believe that there is no
real contradiction between Genesis and science, but both theology and
science still have to make progresses. The
conflict Bible vs. science arose at the latest with Galilei and therefore is older
than, for instance, the knowledge about weather the primitive continent
emerged out of an ocean initially covering the whole surface of our planet
as described in Genesis 1:9. Today, one knows that it really happened like
this. So whether there is really contradiction between Genesis and science
can often only be answered with very young science. Another example is
space, which for longtime was considered to be nothing and thereby to
exist since eternity. This is why the creation of "the heavens"
(Gen 1:1) was inevitably linked to the atmosphere surrounding the Earth
like a vault because it was considered to be the only space that could be
created. However, one knows from General Relativity, founded by Albert
Einstein in 1914, that empty space is something being continually formed
since the big bang. The creation of "the heavens" does therefore
not necessarily restrict itself to the space surrounding the Earth. It has
a much larger meaning, that is it refers to the whole universe as
well as to the atmosphere and other things, as we are going to see. In addition, time only began to flow with the
big bang, which is expressed with "in the beginning". So time,
space and matter came out of nothing, which implies the most important
point: the presence of a Creator. This is why "In the beginning God
created the heavens and the earth" (Gen 1:1) is in fact a very concise
description of the big bang because space (heaven) and the primitive
matter (earth) came into existence in the beginning of time by the
intervention of God. There are many such questions that only can be
answered with rather young science. So the issue has to be re-examined
because of the enormous progresses science made since its first conflicts
with traditional biblical beliefs.
On the other hand, the interpretation of Genesis must go
deeper inside apparently insignificant details: we are living in an
infinitely complicated world, which we nevertheless try to understand. For
this purpose, we help ourselves with simplifications and abstractions,
which is natural, necessary and useful given our limited intelligence. God
created the world with full of images, prefigurations and analogies, which
help us to understand it. In his parables, Jesus often made use of this
property of the creation to make us understand the celestial things. This
is why Genesis is also full of such images and analogies because it tells
us about the creation of the universe.
These analogies, and the
similarity between the cycles mentioned above, which are based on
analogies as well, made me discover what I later called
multisignification or multireference. This resembles
the metaphor, which expresses a thing by another. The multireference however
is different because it gives importance to both things. The metaphor
only gives importance to the thing at which the sense is transmitted from
the other and mostly concerns isolated words only. The
multireference applies to entire descriptions and can even concern more
than two things. It can be compared to a blending of a circle
and a square. The resulting object would perhaps be a square with rounded
angles or undulated sides. Such an object only holds an
approximate resemblance with the original objects. So it equally
expresses dissimilarity compared to the circle and the square. The
multireference is similar for it is a textual blending between
at least two descriptions and thereby also only holds an approximate
resemblance with the reality.
This is why a multisignificant text inevitably deviates
from reality and manifests paradoxes, which are precisely present in the
first chapters of Genesis. There is for example the speaking snake or the
creation of the plants before that of the Sun. The snake demonstrates
the multireference in a exemplary way, for on the one hand it represents
an animal, but on the other hand it represents an
individual who is endowed with intelligence. This other individual is the
Devil. Hence we have to conclude that the speaking snake at least refers
to two different contexts, wherein the animal and the Devil independently
play their role on a timely shifted level. The paradoxes consequently can
only be solved by separating the various references. Thus, the text
becomes much more flexible and allows conclusions of an unexpected reach.
Another good example is Daniel's prophecy of the seventy weeks (Dan 9),
which not only apply to the time of the persecution against the Jews by Antiochus Epiphanes
but also to the destruction of Jerusalem and the tribulations
of a future Antichrist. So here we even have three different historic
contexts mixed up in the same description, as we are going to see.
By interpreting Genesis in this way, I effectively
believe that the few things it states on the cosmic and biological
evolution perfectly accord with modern knowledge. This does of course not
mean that modern science can be read out of Genesis. The account is very
fragmentary and only gives hints. So if we do not know from an independent
source, that is from a scientific source, how the world was formed, it is
impossible to interpret Genesis correctly. Yet, having in mind modern
knowledge, one can correctly fit together the fragments and therein recognize
how the world was formed.
The multireference is not only found in the first
chapters of Genesis, but also in the book of Revelation and other
prophetic accounts. It allows the establishment of an important part of
the cycles of salvation history and thus not only to understand the
apparitions of Mary, but also many other mysteries. The explanation of the
Marian apparitions are nevertheless my most important message and I am
hoping that it will also be taken to heart.
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