Introduction

Thirty-three-thousand-eight-hundred-and-thirty — that is the stunning number of different Christan churches and denominations in the world of today, actually, to be precise, ten years ago [2001]¹.

Almost thirty-four-thousand! — is that not a sign of a vibrant and healthy faith, which apparantly takes so many forms and appears in so many fashions. There seems to be a church, a denominationon, a ministry, a mission, a sect, for every personal taste and private need, for every preferance, for each indigenous situation with regard to history, etnicity, language, culture, geography. The more, the merrier? Or?

And, yet, in the basic Christian confession, the Nicene creed, which epitomizes the Biblical revelation and the Apostolic preacing, Christians, after having confessed their faith in God, the Father and Creator, God, the Son and Saviour and God, the Holy Spirit, also confess their belief that there is one, holy, catholic [universal] and apostolic church.

Not a church (in general), but one church. So according to the Christian faith and confession there is one Church, and one Church only. And Jesus himself prayed for the visible unity of the Church and grounded it in the eternal unity between the Father and the Son.

Almost thirty four thousands! Of course, there are churches and denominations, which triumphantly claim to be this one and only church, excluding others, or, at least, relegating them to a inferior position and status by not fully recognizing their preaching and teaching, their sacraments and ordained ministry.²

It is an easily verifiable fact that there exists no visible unity of those who consider themselves or identify themselves as Christians. From the outside they can be distingusihed and numbered together as belonging to the same religion in contrast to to other faiths and religions, but there is no common body, nor is there any visible institution or organisation comprising all Christians.

No visible unity, true, but is there a unity of some kind, at all? I believe, there is, and I shall in the following try to show the foundation, the prerequisites and conditions of such a unity.

I shall use two concepts: anamnesis, rememberance, and epiclesis, invocation, as two basic dimensions, which in the worship of the congregation, the ekklesia, realizes its identity and manifests the visible unity of all Christians.

Ananmnesis in Platonic, Jewish and Christian thought

Plato

Already the ancient Greeks were familiar with and used the term anamnesis. In one of Plato´s dialogues, Meno, he lets his mouthpiece, Socrates, present the theory of anamnesis as a response to what has become known as the sophistic paradox, or the paradox of knowledge. Meno poses the question how knowledge can be gained at all:

”How will you look for something when you don´t in the least know what it is. How on earth are you going to set up something you do not know as the object of your search.To put it in another way, even if you came right up against it, how will you know that what you have found is the thing you didn´t know”³.

Is the search for knowledge then futile as sure knowledge seems to be impossible? Socrates answers objections like these by referring to the theory of anamnesis, the idea of recollection. The human soul, he says, ”since it is immortal and has been born many times, and has seen all things both here and in the other world [it] has learned everything that is.So we need not be surprised if it can recall the knowledge of virtue or anything else which, as we see, it once possessed.” ⁴ What we call ”learning something”, is essentially a recollection of what the soul already knows. The teacher is more like a midwife. Why have we forgotten? The trauma of birt makes the soul forget what is know, but it all there within us. Hence Anamnesis.

In the dialogue Phaedo, Plato further develops his theory of anamnesis, recollection, and combines it with his ideas of Forms. The soul is preexistent, eternal, immortal, and through anmnesis man can gain knowledge. The way via anamnesis to knowledge is by disregarding the body, purifying oneself form the bodily senses; it is through this purification—katharsis– and through philosophical thinking, one is tempted to say, through ”pure reason”, that man obtains knowledge. But why is the soul immortal och and what kind of knowledge is it that the soul obtains? The answer is, that ”the soul is immortal because it can perceive, have a share in truth, goodness, beauty, which are eternal”.⁵ And through this participation, the knowledge that the soul gains is a knowledge, a knowing of the Absolute. The soul has its identity and its content of knowledge from its participation in the Absolute: in Goodness, in Beuty, in Truth. Thus, in other words: ”man can know God because he has in him something akin to the eternal which cannot die”.⁶

In Plato´s thought anamnesis, recollection, man can through his soul know eternal truths which in his immortal soul have been there from eternity. This knolwledge or even participation in the Absolute does not, however, include man´s total existence as it excludes his body and his bodily existence; it a purely intellectual, spiritual thing. It is the immortality of the soul. Plato´s view is, therefore, a-historical. It is not concerned with what is going on in the ”real world”, things, physical connexions, historical events beacause the ”real world” is not the real world. The real world is the world of Forms, of the Absolutes.

Jewish thought

Zikkaron is the Hebrew word for the Greek anmanesis, recollection or rememberance. The difference between the Jewish zikkaron ond the Platonic anamnesis can hardly be exaggerated: they represent two different worlds, two different modes of understanding human existence.

Zikkaron is ”a sacrificial term that brings the offerer into remembrance before God, or brings God into favourable remembrance with the offerer.”⁷ It refers to something given in time and space, which is the point of reference and contact between man and the Absolute, between man and God, in this case, man´s action in form of a sacifice, offered in a context of liturgical celebration.

This element of commemoration of something which has happenend in space and time becomes clearly visible in the in the Jewish celebration of Passover. It is a memorial set up to be observed as a liturgical remembrance of Sacred history.

At the celebration of Pascha, the youngest participant asks the questions why this night is different from all other nights (Ma Nishtana), and in an elaborate liturgi the Exodus from Egypt is not only remembered, commemorated; it is re-actualized, re-presented through retelling of the Exodus story (Maggid) Those present are not only remembering something in the past, as if they were witnessing the event from afar, but participate in the actual Exodus through the liturgy . Their celebration is a part of Gods ongoing saving activity not only in the past, but here and now, concluding with the expression of hope that the Messiah will come and that the next clebrationof passover will be in Jerusaliem, the Holy City. In the present, the celebration looks back to something that once occured, and it looks forward to something that hopefully will happen sometime in the future, and all is encompassed in God´s mighty and liberating deeds for his people.

We can say that the reason for the Celebration of pascha is man´s reaction to God´s action. Celebrating pascha is no end in itself, a nice tradition to strengthen the Jewish identity; that may come as a byproduct. It is God´s initiative, his action, which ”is the reason for the season”. The zikkaron of Pascha points towards two other fundamentals in the Jewish faith: the Covenant and the Confession.

At Mount Sinai God makes a covenant, sealed in blood, with the people of Israel by giving the Ten Words, the Law. It is very important to notice how the ”covenental text” is introduced; it does not start with: ”thou shalt not”, i.e., what man is supposed to do. Rather, it begins with what God already has done: ”I am the Lord, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage” (Exodus 20:2, KJV); then follow all the thou-shalt-not, starting with the First word: ”Thou shalt have no other gods before me”.

Also in the Jewish Confession of faith, the Schema, the final paragrarph contains an exhortation to remember God´s commandments and be holy unto him, ending with the words: ”I am he Lord, your God, which brought you out of the land of Egypt, to be your God: I am your God” (Numeri 15:41). The ground and reason for the confession of one God, is God´s own saving action, the salvation history, which, the confessing person recalls, makes present, is drawn into and participates in.

The Christian view

In the Christan understanding, the anamnesis is, expressed in a very simple manner, that the congregation, the ekklesia, reminds itself of what God has done, and also reminds God of his actions and promises, just as it was in the cause of the sacrifices in the temple. The Christian understanding of anamnesis, zikkaron, is, therefore, as one may expect, intimately connected with the celebration of the Lord´s Supper, the eucharist. It is an integral part of almost all Anaphoras (Eucharistic Prayers). The Words of our Lord in the Institution of the Last Supper ends: ”Do this in rememberance of me” and the anamnesis ususlly continues as it, for instance, does in the Divine Liturgy of Saint John Chrysostomos:

”Remembering, therefore, this command of the Saviour and all that came to pass for our sake, the cross, the tomb, the resurrection on the third day, the ascension into heaven, the enthronement at the right hand of the Father and the second, glorious coming…”.

In the Western Roman Canon the wording of the anamnesis is like this: ”Father, we celebrate the memory of Christ, your Son. We, your people and your minsters, recall his passion, his resurrection from the dead, and his ascension into glory”.

In the liturgy of the Chuch of Sweden, there is in one of the eucharistic prayers a kind of ”double anamnesis”. After the words of institution the priest prays or sings: ” Therefore, we, celebrate this mystery of faith”, and the congregation answers: ”, Your death, Lord, do we proclaim, we confess (acknowledge) your resurrection until your return in glory”, and the priest then continues: ”Holy Father, we celebrate this meal in commemoration [åminnelse] of your Son´s passion and death, resurrection and ascension. You have given us the bread of life and the cup of blesssing to eat and drink until the day he will return in glory”.

There is no verbal conformity between the various prayers of anamnesis, but the substance remains the same. It is in this case easy to recall the Rule of Faith, regula fidei, which is flexible in its wording but constant in its content.⁸ It is also quite obvious that what the anamnesis recalls is nothing but the content of the second article of the Creed (or for that matter the central part of Te Deum). This should not surprise anyone, because the events from the Annunciation to the Ascension is the culmination of the divine saving action, that started at the Exodus (or even earlier in the calling af Abram or even with the Protogospel in Genesis).

In one sense Jews and Christians remember and recall the same divine saving action, celebrating the same sacred history, the main difference being that the Jews still are expecting the Messia to come, whereas the Christians confess Jesus of Nasareth as the Messias who has come and who once will return. In this latter sense both Jews and Christian share the same hope and expectation: the coming of the Messiah.

Even a superficial knowledge of the Jewish maggid, the retelling of the sacred history at the celebration of Pascha, will prompt a Christian to say that this is a part of his history too. It is a part of God´s great saving economy for the world that he created, Gods oikonomia. And in this economy of salvation the coming of the Messiah, the incarnation of the Second Person in the Holy Trinity, the Son of God, the Divine Word, Logos, and divine Wisdom, is the culmination and apex.

The blessing which God promised to Abraham, the promise that he would be a father of a people as numerous as the stars in the sky, as the grains of sand a the beach, has been fullfilled in the sending of the Son, not only for the restoration os Israel, but for the salvation of all mankind. The Messiah is through his circumcison truly a member of the God´s people, but by reason of his true humanhood, his genome, he belongs to humanity,⁹ and it is also with regard to humanity that his mission, his person, his work is to be interpreted and understood.

The Christian ”Schema” agrees with the Jewish confession of one God and of one God only to be honooured and worshipped. But Christian have taken God´s words at the epiphany at the burning bush for Moses seriously, when God reveals his name in the sending of Moses. It is a majestic and enigmatic name. God reserves the privilege to be who he is without revealing his identity entirely: ”I am who I am”. God is there, fully present in what God does, but God´s identity remains open: ”you will learn who I am by being with me, listening to me, obeying my commandments, by seeing what I am doing now and will do in the future!”

Christians must stand this humiliation, that they cannot present their God as something or someone easily and without any difficulties understandable. Christians have to talk about God as one God, and, yet, they have to come to terms with and try to express their experience of God as Three hypostasies,”persons”: Father and Son and Spirit, in a Trinity, a oneness in communion.. This is not something that is revealed through a philosphical meditation after an anamnesis of the immortal soul and katharsis of the senses, as would have been he case in Platonic thought. God has himself revealed in his actions, that he is Father, Son and Spirit. This is the only way–humiliating as it may be to human logic–to express the Christian experience of God´s action in the world.

In the third article of the Nicene Creed, the concise and precise summary of the Biblical revelation, the Holy Spirit is confessed as the one who exercises Lordship and gives life; it is also confessed that the Spirit proceeds from the Father [alone] and is worshipped and glorified together with the Father and the Son. This means that the Spirit is as much God as the Father and the Son.

There is one special activity confessed about the Spirit:”who spoke [spake] through the prophets”. The Holy Spirit certainly does a lot of things, but why is this particular activity highlighted. The answer is, that this passage gives the reason and justifcation for the Christian reading and interpretation of what we call the Old Testament. There is in Holy Scripture patterns, typos, and prophecies, hat have their perfection and fulfilment in Jesus Christ. He was the foretold and promised One. In Jesus Christ, the God, who revealed his name I am who I am, has pleased to reveal more of his essence through his actions. From God´s oikonomia, we may draw inferences as to God´s essence; from God´s actions to God´s being.

The Christians have to say, that you cannot talk about the God of Abraham, Isac and Jacob, the God of Moses, the God of the Exodus, the Covenenant at Mount Sinai, the God of David and the Kings, the God of the temple and the prophets, without talking about Jesus at the same time. Godtalk without Jesustalk is for a Christian nonsense.

God´s saving action, which is at the center of the zikkaron of pascha, is the sending of the Son, and once you say that, you have to go on with the Christian maggid (if I may say so). This retelling of the Christian Exodus story for the whole mankind coincides with the content of the Second article of the Creed and the anamnesis prayer at the Eucharist. If it is true what is said about Jesus Christ, and what the Christians claim – that the Jesus-story, who he is and what he did, is true–, and, if it is true that God the Holy Spirit has inspired the Holy Scripture and given his stamp of approval of the Christian interpretation of the Old Testament, then we have arrived at God´s ultimate saving action in the oikonomia. Or, if one likes to recall Plato, the Absolute, with that very important difference, that the sending of the Son, the Incarnation of the divine Logos pertains to all that is, seen and unseen.

The Word became flesh – body, spirit and soul!. God became man. God, the Creator, entered in the Son, through whom everything came into being, into his own creation, sharing its conditions, and by doing this, he did not only give his approval to all that is created, but also in a cosmic act of deliverance, liberated it from all the kinds of bondage in which it was held: sin, devil death. This is the great exodus for all mankind. No part of what Jesus says or does, nothing of what he is – true man and true God – may be detracted from the confession about him, because the confession expresses the truth, the ontological reality. Or, to put it in other words: doing that, would be the same as taking out the the efficacious agent in the medication, the effective antidote against the snake venom.

The Cross at Golgotha is the apex and the visible culmination of the Incarnation, and as such it may stand as a pars pro toto, a part representing the whole. At Golgotha the Old covenant in blod meets the New Covenent, also in blod, but in this case not the blood of rams and bulls, but the blood of the Lamb of God. At Golgotha, various parts of the Old Testament imagery meet and blend as in a photgraphic double- or even triple exposure: the whole sacrificial system of the Temple, the Passover Lamb, the bones of which were not broken, the Lamb that was eaten at a meal in the eve of the Exodus. Jesus himself consciously intepreted his death in sacrificial and in exodus terms, which was clearly evident i his last meal with the disciples. He is the new way to God, not only for the Jews in the Old Testment, but for all mankind. His words are very clear: do this–take and eat, take and drink–in remembrance of me—this is the new Testament, the new Covenant in my blood.

What happens here is the work of the triune God according the triune premise in Christan doctrine: opera Trinitatis extra Trinitatem, indivisa sunt – the work of the Trinity outside the Trinity is undivided and common to all Three. The God who created is theGod who atones and liberates, and the God who liberates and atones is the God who gives life and sanctifies. The salvation history in the Old Testament, is the work of the Triune God.

In the Church order of Hippolyt from the beginning of the third century, the eucharist is celebrated in connexion with the consecration of a new bishop. It is instructive to see how the episcopal ministry and the eucharist are tightly knit together. They both belong to God´s saving action and provision for man. There is in the liturgy a reference to Abraham and to those who minstered in the temple, as well as to the apostles that were sent by Christ. They all belong to God´s oikonomia.

In the anafora it becomes even more manifest. The bishop of the congregation prays:

We give thee thanks, (eucharistomen), o God, through thy beloved Servant Jesus Christ, whom at the end of time thou didst send to us a Saviour and Redeemer and the Messenger of thy counsel. Who is thy Word, inseparable from thee; through whom thou didst make all things and in whom thou art well pleased. Whom thou didst send from heaven into the womb of the Virgin, and who, dwelling within her, was made flesh, and was manifested as thy Son, being born of [the] Holy Spirit and the Virgin. Who, fulfilling thy will, and winnig for him a holy people, spread out his hands when he came to suffer, that by his death he might set free them who believed on thee. Who, when he was betrayed to his willing death, that he might bring to nought death, and break the bonds of the devil, and tread hell under foot, and give light to the righteous, and set up a boundry post, and manifest his resurrection, taking a bread and giving thanks to thee said: Take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for you. And likewise, also the cup saying: this is my blood, which is shed for you. As often as ye perform this, perform my memorial. Having in memory (italics mine), therefore, his death and resurrection, we offer to the the bread and the cup, yielding thee thanks, because thou hast counted us worthy to stand before thee and to minster to thee.”¹⁰

The whole anafora is, relly an extended anamnesis; it recalls God´s savings deeds in history: the oikonomia with its culmination in the mission, the person and work of Christ. It is a zikkaron, remembrance, a reactualisation, a representation of whom he is and what he has done. And those partaking are not only witnessing something in the past, they are themselves drawn into to God´s present action through the liturgical action and participating in it, through the celebration. God is talking to, acting with, and even feeding his chosen people at this very moment.

Epiclesis

In an immediate conjunction with the words and instituiton and the anamnesis in a narrower sense, follows in Hippolytes´s liturgy the prayer for the Holy Spirit, the epiclesis, in which the theme of unity of the believers is an integral part:

”And we pray thee, that thou wouldest send thy Holy Spirit upon the offerings of thy holy church, that thou, gathering them into one, wouldest grant to all thy saints who partake to be filled with [the] Holy Spirit, that their faith may be confirmed in truth, that we may praise and glorify thee”.¹¹

The epiclesis in an Anglican version: “And we offer our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving to you, O Lord of All, presenting to you, from your creation, this bread and this wine.We pray you, gracious God, to send your Holy Spirit upon these gifts

that they may be the Sacrament of the Body of Christ and his Blood of the new Covenant. Unite us to your Son in his sacrifice, that we may be acceptable through him, being sanctified by the Holy Spirit.”¹²

In the Church of Sweden the epiclesis (or one of them runs): ”Send your holy Spirit into our hearts that he may kindle a living faith. Sanctify also through your Spirit this bread and wine, gifts of the fruit of the earth and man´s labour, which we offer to you, and let us through them partake in the body and blood of Christ”.¹³

The anamnesis referes to the fact, and the epiclesis (or rather the Holy Spirit as a result of the supplication in this prayer) makes this fact a living reality here and now for the participants. It is like the situation when Elia asked God that the fire would fall upon the altare in his contest with the Baal prophets.¹⁴ The Spirit kindles faith and and with Christs´s word of institution (the anamanetic element) brings about the ”transformation” of bread and wine into Christs Body and Blood.¹⁵ It becomes a living reality for us here and now in the celebration of this congregation.

Epiclesis and unity

There is in the Swedish Church order for the eucharist a part in the anafora, which takes up and carries on the epiclesis. There is a anamnetic petitIon with reference to the Christ´s work on Golgotha: ”We pray to you: behold his perfect an eternal sacrifice with which you have redonciled the world with yourself”, and then, the epicletic element reoccurs: ”*Let us all through the Holy Spirit be united into one Body and perfected into a living sacrifice in Christ.*” ¹⁶

The theme of the unity of the believers is also an integral part of this prayer; through baptism they are already incorprated in the msytical Body of Christ, but it remains something to pray about: a deepening realization of an already existing fact.

Before the the Agnus Dei and the Greeting of Peace, the priest makes this procalamtion, holding the consecrated wafer in his hand: ”The bread which we break, is it not is a communion of the body of Christ”, and the congregation answers: ”for we being many, are one bread and one body: for we are all partakers of that one bread”.¹⁷ The physcial partaking of the one broken bread of those through baptism incorpoarated in the Body of Christ is a participation in his sacrificed, resurrected, glorified, ascended Body, anf this participation means a communion between the participants and Christ and in Christ a communion between all the participants.

The Eucharist is the focal point and the locus of the visible unity of all Christians. There is in the epiclesis an explicit prayer for unity. The Spirit is asked to make the believers one body united with Christ in his self-offering and sacrfice. Union with Christ in his self-offering and sacrifice is the ultimate unity.

If the anamensis is what it is supposed to be, referring to the second article of the Creed (because that is the content of Gods saving action, the Absolute truth in Platonic though), and if the congregation through the celebrant in the epiclesis invokes the Holy Spirit in their liturgical celebration of Gods mighty actions in his oikonomia, asking the Spirit to come, make living, ”light the fire”, then surely the congregation in its worship, with the eucharist in the center, manifest the tangible and visible unity of the Christian church as they all are a part of Gods ongoing exodus of God´s humanity. There the Church is as visible and tangible as the Incarnate Son of God and Son of Man was, when he sojourned on this earth.

The scope of Salvation

Plato´s mouthpiece Socrates believed in the immortality and possible return of the soul in transmigration, he also belived that the sould through anamnesis and katharsis could realize its participation in the Absolute in forms of Truth, Goodness and Beuty. But that was only for the soul. The rest of the words in its bodily reality, createdness was excluded. It was purely docetic.

In the Jewish view, Gods people through a recollection of the Exodus re-presents Gods mighty deeds in God´s salvation history with Israel: freed from bondage in Egypt to a Promised land of their own! The focus was on Israel. In the Christian faith, God´s action in history is taken one step further through the Incarnation

According to the Christian faith, God´d saving will and action was for the whole man: body, sprit and soul – not only for an immortal soul. God´s saving will and action was not only for one chosen nation, it extended through it to the whole of mankind. And this is grounded in God´s creation of man. The Creator is the Liberator and the Consummator of a redeemed and perfected creation

God´s original will and design for man was that he who was created in the image of God (imago Dei), should have attained to God´s likeness (similitudo Dei). If man had obeyed God and remained in his will, he would eventually have reached that goal. But man prematurely wanted to grasp this Godlikeness on his own conditions; man wanted to be be like God, without God. This is the Fall, which brings disaster over God´s whole creation. Through his disobedience and pride man´s identity and character are deformed. The process growing into Godlikeness was thwarted and had to be realised in another way. This is where God´s redemptive plan and action starts. God recapitules the story not in Adam, man, but now in the Son, Christ. Christ, the incarnate God, who reaches and rectifies what man perverted and missed.

Through the Incarnation of the Son of God, the whole history is set right in and through Christ, the perfect man. Through his life and death, his sacrifice, mankind is liberated from the bondage of sin, death and devil. Man´s guilt has been atoned for through Christ´s perfect and eternal sacrifice. This sacrifice stands in the middle of cosmos and occupies in a manner of speaking the place of Plato´s Absolute (which I think is also included in the Person and Work of Christ). From Adam to Abraham, from Abraham to Israel, from Israel to the Church, from the Church to Mankind – that is the scope of God´s oikonomia.

Coda

No church, or any other instance for that matter, has the authority to deny, or question, the ”validity”, the legitimacy, the efficacy of the prayers, preaching, practices, sacraments, orders of other Christian churches or denomination or whatever they may call themselves. They are all involved in and parts of God´s saving action in his oikonomia. All who confess their faith in the Triune God (according to the substance of the ecumenical consensus in the Nicene Creed—if not, they are not Christians), are dependent upon Gods honouring of his promises, reminding God what he has promised, as they are also totally dependent upon the sending and action of the lifegiving Holy Spirit. Without the quickening, the life giving activity, of the Spirit, the Church is a rattling skeleton, or a heap of disorganised bones, a deserted bulding, a soulless machine, a selfsufficent machinery. Every one is dependent upon the life- giving activity of Spirit. All stand with equally empty hands. The Roman Catholic bishop in Stockholm, Anders Arborelius, has expressed this epicletic attitude towards the Holy Spirit in a succinct and truly Catholic way: “Come!” and ”More!”

The Christian anmnesis is the ”claiming” of Gods mighty salvific work in Christ. And the epiklesis is the humble prayer, that this fact will become a living reality for the ekklesia, and for each beliver in the celebrating community through the lifegiving acivity of the Holy Spirit.

At the the celebration of the Eucharist, the breaking of the one bread, when Christians as the Body of Christ gather in worship to do what Jesus did and say what he said, recalling God´s mighty deeds in the anmnesis, and invoking the Holy Spirit in the epiclesis to come as the Lord and Lifegiver, the visible, spiritual, but real, unity of the Church is manifested:

”One holy Church is to continue forever. The Church is the congregation of saints, in which the Gospel is rightly taught and the Sacraments are rightly administered. And to the true unity of the Church it is enough, satis est, to agree concerning the doctrine of the Gospel and the administration of the Sacraments. Nor is it necessary that human traditions, that is, rites or ceremonies, instituted by men, should be everywhere alike. As Paul says: One faith, one Baptism, one God and Father of all, etc. Eph. 4:5-6”.¹⁸

A final chord

At the eve of his execution Socrates talks with his friend Simmias about his imminent death as nothing to be feared but rather to be welcomed; he compares his situation with that of the swans; they sing more beautifylly than ever, when their death is approaching, ”becuse they know the good things that await them in the unseen world ”.¹⁹ Simmias is far from convinced. It is impossible or extremely difficult to obtain sure knowledge of these matters in this life.Yet, one must try and do one´s best, sailing though the waters of life on the raft of words that one has ”unless we might make the journey on a securer stay,–some Divine Word, if it might be—”.²⁰ <br><br>B. F. Westcott, a 19th century Anglican bishop, writes: ”The Word for which the wavering faith of Simmias thus longed, has we believe, been given to us; and once again Plato points us to St John”.²¹

And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father), full of grace and truth” (Jh 1:14, KJV).

Notes