8 - Wisdom of the flesh

Summary

Osculetur me osculo oris sui

Quia meliora sunt ubera tua uino

May he kiss me with the kiss of his mouth

For your breasts are more delightful than wine

Canticum Canticorum

The primary argument I have presented in this book is that the deep reality which is at the root of the world is as much a divine reality as it is a temporal one and that it can be conceived of as a kind of Primal Text, which is to say a creative, ‘externalised’ self-communication of God (by analogy with the way that a human author produces a text). The Primal Text of the creation cannot be known in itself but comes into view in its function as a cosmic principle of intertextuality. This means primarily that all the many textualities which inform our existence are grounded in the one Primal Text, or primary text of creation, and receive their form from it. But it means not only that textuality itself is a product of the Primal Text, but also intertextuality, or the interaction between the different textualities, which is the structure that enables the emergence of world. This theory of a first, cosmic text plays the same role as that of analogy in medieval theology, which gave an account of how the successive orders of creation were linked through a common cause, in God.