Mervyn was always most friendly to me and I thank him from
the bottom of my heart for because of him I was able to learn
the philosophies of the East and even came to teach the Gita.
John Mayer was born of a Jewish father and a Calvinist
mother and had no inclination in either direction but became
a Unitarian loving process philosophy and the thought of Buber.
John also studied the Hindu and Buddhist philosophies and,
like Mervyn, felt more at home with them than Judeo-Christianity.
At Brock we never had an Islamic philosopher but we did
have several Islamic students and some became majors.
As a Catholic I could be open to other religions and their
philosophies just as could John and Mervyn and they saw
and appreciated that as we debated and worked together.
Just as Augustine learned from Platonists and Thomas from
Aristotelians and the Franciscans from the Stoics so now
with John and Mervyn I was eager to learn from India.
In my introductory course I often taught the Bhagavad Gita
together with Plato, Augustine, Descartes, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche.
From the beginning I taught the philosophy of love and
many students came to love understanding how agape,
eros, bhakti, amor fati and the Works of Love could all
work together and compliment each other in a person’s life.
Many students came to love the love of wisdom and the wisdom
of love and became members of the Brock Philosophy Society.
Still today, Jews, Catholics, Moslems, Protestants, Secular
Humanists, Hindus, Buddhists, Taoists, and others work together.
Mark’s Good News
The Agapetos Reveals Trinitarian Love
Mark begins his Gospel with the Baptism of Jesus.
No sooner had he come up out of the water
then he saw the heavens torn apart
and the Spirit, like a dove, descending on him
and a voice came from heaven.
“You are my Son, the Beloved;
my favor rests on you.”
The original Greek word for “Beloved” is “Agapetos” and so Jesus’
new love is announced right away in this little statement.
We are told about the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit who is like a dove.
Then right in the middle of Mark’s Gospel at the transfiguration
again we read,
And a cloud came, covering them in shadow;
and there came a voice from the cloud,
“This is my Son, the Beloved, Listen to him.”
Again the Father refers to his Son with the word agape which is
what Jesus came to act out by exorcising the possessed,
healing the sick, forgiving sinners and caring for the poor.
The entire message of Mark’s Gospel is the good news of this love.
Mark’s Gospel nears completion with the centurion, the Roman
soldier saying, “In truth this man was a son of God.”
He came to see this because of the love and peaceful tranquility
which Jesus exhibited as he suffered the cruelest torture and death.
These three statements at the beginning, the middle and the end
of Mark’s Gospel emphasize the agape of Jesus which he came to
preach, teach and exemplify to his disciples and to all persons.
Right away we learn of the love between the Father, the Son,
and the Holy Spirit and this love is the basis not only for
the equal dignity of the Divine persons but also for all humans.
From Son of David to Son of Man to Son of God
The Jewish people were already expecting the Son of David
or the Messiah or the Christ to come and let them have a King
and a great kingdom again and even to drive out the Romans.
They were also expecting the Son of man who would come to be
a judge of heaven and earth but they never expected a Son of God.
The point of Mark’s Gospel as Jesus performs his miraculous
works of love is to slowly convince them that he is Son of
David, Son of man and also Son of God and those who became
his disciples, both men and women, saw him as Son of God.
Mark wrote his Gospel to let the agapetos convert, edify,
infuse faith, enlighten it and defend it against various opponents.
Jesus shows himself to be the Messiah or Son of David but he
is not the kind of King anyone expected for slowly they see
that his is a kingdom of love in which he and his followers
will love others, even their enemies, as more important than self.
He also taught them that he was the son of man but in a way
that they never would have thought and at Mark 9:31 he says,
The Son of Man will be delivered into the hands
of men; they will put him to death; and
three days after he has been put to death
he will rise again.
They did not understand what he meant and they were afraid
to ask him why he would suffer and die out of love
and they could not understand his talk about a resurrection.
The Kingdom of God which Jesus, the Messianic King, taught them
had to do as we see at Mark 10:29 with leaving
house, brothers, sisters, father, children
or land for my name sake and for
the sake of the gospel . . . and not
without persecutions.
Jesus made sense to them but his teaching about suffering did not.
The Reconciling Love of Mark’s Jesus
In revealing to us the agape of Jesus Mark’s Gospel
shows us how that love can bring about reconciliation.
The logic of reconciliation, the physiology of reconciliation,
the doxology of reconciliation and its mysticology all
become clearer if we think with Bataille about Mark’s Jesus.
The Kierkegaardian Bataille does bring out the logic of reconciling
as their Jesus loves others as more important than himself.
The