The Fourfold Fast - Death, Jupiter, and the Father's Completion
Year: 2025
Type: conference-paper
Abstract: This paper argues that performing four forty-day fasts is not excess asceticism but a symbolic enactment of divine fatherhood. While “four” bears a cultural association with death in Chinese tetraphobia (sì ≈ sǐ), biblical symbolism consistently codes four as creation’s wholeness (four rivers of Eden, four corners/winds, four canonical Gospels). The apparent tension—four as death vs. four as fullness—is read as theological inversion: in the Father’s authority, the sign of death becomes an instrument of life. Scripturally, the project stands on the forty-day fasts of Moses (thrice: Exod 24:18; Deut 9:18; 10:10), Elijah (1 Kgs 19:8), and Christ (Matt 4:2; Luke 4:2), with patristic support (Irenaeus, Adv. Haer. III.11.8). Biographically, the author’s age 44 and a self-inscribed Jupiter-like “4” tattoo are treated as embodied confirmations: Jupiter symbolizes justice, kingship, and expansive blessing, reframing the tetrad as consummation rather than annihilation. The paper concludes that the fourfold fast operates as eschatological coherence: a paternal act that bears, reverses, and redeems mortality into generativity—“Behold, I make all things new” (Rev 21:5).
Author: MacLean, Ryan
Language: English
Subfield: Religious studies
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7080729015
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