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CONCLUSION  Genealogical Preface I have undertaken the analysis of Boehme’s visionary discourse armed with the conviction that this post-Reformation discourse is still worthy of our attention in its struggles as well as its accomplishments. In this sense, I could not agree more with such great commentators on Boehme as Benz, Grunsky, Koyré, Stoudt, and Weeks. There is much to admire, since there is much that is profound and original in Boehme’s vision of the dynamic of the being of beings, much that is philosophically probing in his questioning of Why something, why not nothing?1 And why evil? And there is much that is theologically challenging in his elucidation of the living God of the Bible in developmental and agonistic terms that carry more than rhetorical freight.2 If my analysis of Boehme’s discourse does not exactly repeat any of his illustrious commentators in an exact way, nevertheless it is informed by them. It is so, even as I insist in a way that they do not on particular facets of Boehme’s discourse—for example, on its inhabiting of an Eckhartian form of negative theology and its decidedly tensional relation to the thought of the Reformer.3 At a structural level, however, my analysis differs from all previous accounts—with the possible exception of David Walsh’s—in its fairly relentless pursuit of the proper characterization of Boehme’s discourse. In this sense, Part III of this text, in which I line up and examine the merits of the four viable candidates for a taxonomic characterization of Boehme’s discourse—that is, Valentinianism , apocalyptic, Neoplatonism, and the Kabbalah—and decide in favor of Valentinianism, represents the telos of interpretation. Relative to this end, Part I essentially sets the table by suggesting that Boehme’s visionary discourse, which is at once itself and more than itself (since it represents an Aufhebung of Paracelsian alchemy) has at its center a six-stage inclusive narrative that is the objective correlative of a self-certifying reason that transcends ratiocination and its argumentative responsibilities. This six-stage narrative mimics the biblical narrative but has as its subject matter divine self-development and its ineluctable narrative conditions. Part II contributes toward the taxonomic question in general, and 211 the Valentinian taxonomic conclusion in particular, by arguing that whatever the orthodox elements in Boehme’s discourse, and whatever the deviations from the common theological tradition it shares with minority pre-Reformation and post-Reformation traditions, ultimately this narrative discourse represents a radical and comprehensive disfiguration-refiguration of the biblical narrative. Part II brings us to the threshold of Valentinian ascription, since it is disfigurationrefiguration , or metalepsis, that Irenaeus believed to be the peculiar mark of Valentinian haunting of appropriately biblically-informed Christian discourse. I admit the complexity of my analysis, but plead that it corresponds to the complexity of the subject matter—that is, Boehme’s visionary or apocalypse discourse. But even if this is granted me, I still have some explaining to do. Why deploy a sophisticated conceptual apparatus of general constructs such as Valentinian narrative grammar, rule-governed deformation of classical Valentinian genres, metalepsis, and Valentinian enlisting of non-Valentinian narrative discourse, and more specific constructs such as apocalyptic inscription, apocalyptic distention, narrative deconstitution of negative theology, and aporetics of representation on such a relatively arcane discursive specimen as Jacob Boehme. Even if we listen seriously to Boehme’s commentators, hear what genealogists such as Baur, Staudenmaier , and Walsh have to say, and recall what Hegel said about the importance of a speculative thinker who with Bacon and Descartes contributes to the formation of specifically modern philosophical discourse, deployment of this conceptual apparatus looks like serious overkill.The style of interpretation in operation seems to amount to taking a machine gun to swat a fly. Although accurate characterization is a true good, Why hard-pedal in the way I do the following conclusions? Boehme’s apocalypse discourse (1) represents an instance of Valentinian narrative grammar, (2) represents an erotic, kenotic, and agonistic deformation of classical Valentinianism that allows for much more positive estimates of world, time, history, and suffering, and (3) illustrates the phenomenon of Valentinian discourse sharing discursive space with three nonValentinian visionary discourses—that is, apocalyptic, Neoplatonic and Kabbalistic discourses—but enlisting them for Valentinian purposes. Boehme’s apocalypse discourse, I believe, is intrinsically interesting. But is it interesting enough to justify the kind of conceptual as well as interpretive attention I have lavished on it here? If...

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