On Sat, 24 Oct 2009 17:21:26 -0400
  Carol Kaske <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Dear all,
> Note that Berger's definition of "wholeness" is a social one integration 
>with society, whereas everybody else is using a psychological one, 
>integration of the parts of one's personality.
> Carol

This is perhaps not entirely true, if one is using wholeness in a physical 
sense as the wholeness of the body, and the body in question is that of the 
Church of which the Pauline Christ is the head, which notion is distantly 
implied in the title "The House of Wholeness" for a given chivalric hero's 
alma mater, and in the comparison of the House of Holiness to Sunday 
School.*

*The fuller text earlier quoted from is:

Thus Spenser's knight of holiness is often presented to us in terms of his 
health, or his wholeness: etymologically, holiness in Hebrew is 
set-apartness, but in English it is wholeness. The sins at the House of 
Pride are all unwholesome, running a gamut from narcolepsy to leprosy. 
Despair, with his imputation of sin, causes a man "to spoyle the Castle of 
his health" (I.ix.31). Aesculapius, if his allegorical function is priestly, 
must be one who tries to make holy: the healer of the dismembered Hippolytus 
"joined euery part" (I.v.39). In contrast to the reprieve for Sansjoy sought 
from this healer, Una conducts her despairing knight "where he chearen 
might" (I.x.13), the House of Holiness; Redcrosse left the joyless House of 
Pride "Not throughly heald," and afterwards was "careless of his health" 
(I.v.45, viii.7). Una's House—the Holy One's hospital—merits Cyprian's 
ecclesia-typology for the Paschal Lamb:

God speaks, saying, "In one house shall ye eat it; ye shall not send its 
flesh abroad from the house." The flesh of Christ, and the holy of the Lord, 
cannot be sent abroad, nor is there any other home to believers but the one 
church. This home, this household [hospitium] of unanimity, the Holy Spirit 
designates and points out in the Psalms, saying, "God, who maketh men to 
dwell with one mind in a house." In the house of God, in the Church of 
Christ, men dwell with one mind, and continue in concord and simplicity.
[Treatise, 1.8, trans, in ANF, vol. 5, p. 424. Cf. Irenaeus, Cont. Haer., 
I.x.1f,
(ANF, vol. 1, pp. 33of.), for the same doctrine.]

It is in such a place that Redcrosse is restored to health and wholeness, 
though Duessa has dropped out of the symbolism a canto earlier. The knight 
grows to a "perfection of all heauenly grace" (I.x.21); his "filthy blots of 
sinn" are washed from him (I.x.27); he becomes "perfect" in charity 
(I.x.45). His regeneration parallels his steady exposure to what the New 
Testament calls "wholesom doctrine" (I Timothy 1:10, II Tim. 4:3), 
"wherewith our soules are fed & mainteined in helth" (Geneva gloss on Titus 
2:9). He is healed by Patience; the Christian is enjoined to "let Patience 
haue her perfite worke, that ye may be perfite and entire, lackyng nothing" 
(James 1:4).
  
The idea of wholeness [in the House of Holiness and Book I] is naturally 
associated with the idea of perfection, and we need to appreciate the 
scriptural basis for this connection. The Geneva Bible glosses the wholeness 
or integrity required of Abraham (Gen. 17:1) and of Israel (Deut. 18:13) as 
meaning “without hypocrisy.” The priests who make the offering before the 
Lord must be “without blemish,” and the acceptable sacrificial lamb must 
also be without blemish (Lev. 21:17, 23:12; Num. 28:8—“without spot”). The 
Septuagint uses the New Testament word for “perfect,” telion, for whole, or 
unblemished, in its translation of the unblemished lamb and the spotless 
bride of Song 5:2 and 6:9. Likewise, the Lamb of God in I Peter 1:19 is 
“vndefiled & without spot” (Geneva Bible). In the New Testament it is Christ 
who “makes whole” (Mark 5:34) and “perfect” (I Peter 5:10), and the 
Christian is enjoined to “be perfect” (Matt. 5:48, II Cor. 13:11), as Israel 
is commanded, “Be ye holy,” and “let your heart be perfect with God.”  What 
is made perfect is “consecrated,” in the Geneva translation of Hebrews 5, 
and in this epistle the notion of the unblemished state is closely linked to 
sanctification. In Ephesians 5:27 it is said that the Church espoused by 
Christ is to be sanctified and cleansed and made unto him “a glorious Church 
not hauing spot . . . that it shulde be holie and without blame.” According 
to the Geneva Bible the likeness of man to God in Genesis 1:2b “is expounded 
[at] Ephes 4, 24: where it is written, that man was created after God in 
righteousness & true holines, meaning by these two words all perfection, as 
wisdome, trueth, innocencie, power, &c.”

And again:
Using alternative translations of the same words in Ephesians 4:24, we might 
say that Redcrosse stands for "true holines," while Una represents the 
"holinesse of trueth" (Geneva and Bishops' Bibles). Together they symbolize 
the edification of that Church in which "we all mete together in the vnitie 
of faith & knowledge of the Sonne of God, vnto a perfite man" (Eph. 4:13, 
Geneva Bible). This perfected man, we are told, "hath made both one," 
reconciling those "alienated from the conversation of Israel": "that he may 
create the two in himself into one new man" (Eph. 2:14, 12,15, Rheims 
Bible).

--Nothing is said here about the sacrament of communion, though it appears 
in the chapter-concluding paragraph that follows this last quote.
  

  

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James Nohrnberg
Dept. of English, Bryan Hall 219
Univ. of Virginia
P.O Box 400121
Charlottesville, VA 22904-4121