Saturday, July 28. 2012
Heaven, hell, angels, devils – when it comes to spiritual categories, for many evangelicals these tend to be vague and nebulous conceptions. They are deemed supernatural and thus inaccessible to direct observation. Or what of such entities as the tree of life in the midst of the paradise of God, the tree of knowledge and its fruit, and the fiery sword of the cherubic guardian? Could some theologian please point them out? Or the garden of Eden, and the serpent of Eden – where are they in natural history? The list could go on, but the reader will get the point.
The typical theological response is to invoke the language of symbol, metaphor and allegory – to readily explain, or explain away, the mystical aspects of the Bible. The tendency is to spiritualise, to mythologise – to deny the literal or straight-forward meaning of applicable texts. Opposing this tendency is the fundamentalist school which insists on biblical literalism to the extent of attributing the fall of humankind to the eating of a piece of fruit. Both contingents are living in fairyland – by which I do not mean the Celtic dreamtime, but a realm wholly imaginary. Both in their respective way are living a fantasy – their Bible is a fairy story (in the derogatory sense). As there is confusion concerning the concept of biblical literalism, let us examine this question.
The literal meaning of anything is not an objective universal given, as fundamentalists seem to surmise. Rather it depends on one’s dictionary, which in turn is a product of usage – common or idiosyncratic. If, for example, by shepherd we mean a herder of sheep, Christ cannot be called the good shepherd in any literal sense. If the term, however, is inclusive of meanings such as keeper, protector and guide, a literal reading is entirely justified. We are mistaken, therefore, to infer that biblical writers did not mean what they wrote – literally – on the grounds that our modern analytical and reductive semantics does not resonate well with the holistic and inclusive language of the ancients. Indeed, insofar as reality is a construct of language – and nowhere in literature is this point made so clearly as in the Bible – it is appropriate to reflect that the ancient prophets and seers inhabited a universe quite different from that of modern Cartesian objectivism. They truly inhabited another world – with different referents concerning the actual and real – as readily apparent in their nonchalant conflating of the natural with the mystical or spiritual. Clearly they did not impose the categorical distinctions to which we moderns with our post-Enlightenment sensibilities are accustomed.
For asserts Paul (Romans1:19-20), as I never tire to reiterate ... that which may be known of God is manifest in them [in man]; for God hath shewed it unto them. For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead. St Paul, in other words, was emphatic concerning an experiential faith. The prophets and seers of the Bible spoke of realities, of things directly experienced. It is not enough to believe in a God out there somewhere, to assent to an abstract and ephemeral spiritual world on the basis of hearsay. It is necessary to see for oneself. As states Job 42:5, I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee.
So unless today’s Christians – fundamentalists and professors of the higher criticism alike – enter the mystical world of the prophets, in spiritual fairyland they remain.
Thursday, July 19. 2012
It is a boast among evangelicals that out gospel is supernatural. Philosophers and theologians likewise use this term, as if it were well understood what it means.
Hmmm ... supernatural.
I must confess I have always found this concept problematic, even though my own revered teacher made use of it – with reference, broadly speaking, to phenomena beyond conventional human understanding, such as the mystical and miraculous. Far, therefore, be it from me to deny this aspect of the biblical faith. A mystical and miraculous conception is primary to our sacred scripture.
My contention, rather, is with the metaphysical theory which it – the term supernatural – seems to imply. For the idea is that the ontological plenum – the all there is – comprises two constituents – the natural and the supernatural, riven by a transcendental chasm or divide. By this construction the natural world comprises the universe of conventional human experience, whereas the supernatural refers to the spiritual realm, inclusive of God, the angelic hierarchies, heaven and hell.
What I would firstly notice here is that the distinction is somewhat vague and arbitrary – it is not always clear where the boundary lies - and it conveniently reduces the spiritual to the conjectured, to that which by definition lies beyond mortal apprehension. Even more to the point – and here I emphasise my commitment to an experiential faith, with spiritual categories a matter of observation and direct experience – when we consider the divide between these supposedly separate realms of the natural and the supernatural – well, it is nowhere to be found. At least I have never been able to discover it. No matter how far we travel – whether in mind, space, or time – it’s nature and more nature, world without end.
And yet, as concerning God, the poet, David, wrote (Psalm 139), Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; Even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me.
God – the supernatural – is thus likewise everywhere, at least to the mystic with eyes to see. The indication is that these supposedly disparate realms are contiguous, coextensive, interpenetrating in ways both subtle and profound. Indeed this notion is consistently sustained in biblical narrative, which is typically matter-of-fact, nonchalant, offhand, concerning the incidence of the ostensibly supernatural, such that it meshes seamlessly with the natural. Not infrequently a close attentive reading is required to discern that something extraordinary is in fact transpiring. (Life is like that, it just occurs to me. The miraculous passes unremarked, the phenomena of experience disporting themselves without such labels as the supernatural.) So from an appropriately spiritual perspective it is all equally mysterious, the metaphysical distinctions – as of a natural and supernatural realm – being grounded in cultural convention, rather than scriptural axiom.
Yet this is not to deny some such distinction in scripture. While the term supernatural is not itself scriptural – which is to say, it has no conceptual equivalent in the original source documents – there is, of course, the primary distinction, established virtually from the outset, of heaven and earth. The Bible is indeed emphatic in distinguishing – heaven, earth, the firmament, the primordial waters, the dry earth – on and on – to the Pauline distinction of soul and spirit. Yet the overall context is one of extensive concourse and organic continuity between the various orders, domains and kinds of divine creation. Where Genesis states that the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters, it speaks of creative interaction between these separate orders of being. Not only does the creation – heaven and earth – constitute a seamless organic whole, it is moreover continuous with the Creator. For, states the Revelation, unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write; These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God. Who is that faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God, but Christ the Word, which is God. (See in this context my previous entry concerning another theological invention – creation ex nihilo.)
The idea of a supernatural contradicts these prophetic truths with the implied notion of something beyond the experiential plenum – beyond that which we call nature, the universe, or existence as such. Indeed it is a subversion of language to suggest there could be something outside, above or beyond the universe – namely if by universe we mean the whole, the all there is. By definition there is no outside, above or beyond. If anything, the beyond is the province of outer darkness, in scripture, the negation of all things. Thus, failing to discern the ark of God, theologians mused that his dwelling is where he cannot be seen – in the supernatural. And thus it is apparent once again that the spiritual categories of theology – up to and including the projected deity himself – are not the experiential verities of prophetic scripture, but figments of the imagination.
Thursday, July 5. 2012
Okay – that’s a provocative title, but to miss the mark by a little is to miss it by a mile. With doctrine it is like that, and the more I look at evangelical doctrine, the more I see it for what it is – a fabrication. Now here I don’t mean biblical doctrine. I mean the Nicene synthesis as interpreted by the Reformation teachers. I mean that the received doctrine of the church is not biblical. It is not the doctrine of God’s apostles and prophets. That’s essentially my axe to grind.
A fabrication, a contrivance – call it what you will, orthodox doctrine is the result of 2000 years of theologising the scriptures. And the point of theology is this – that the carnal mind cannot receive the scriptures as presented. It must theologise, construct a creed, a rational summation – effectively an interface between the prophetic legacy and the human understanding. It is not God, by the Word of God, which is the object of the faith – it is the creed: Latin credo, I believe.
It is written that Adam made himself fig leaves to cover his spiritual nakedness. And so it is with theology and moral philosophy – more fig leaves, mere human effort of spiritual self vindication, in the stead of the divinely provided covering of the blood atonement in Christ by the revealed Word of God.
The reason for all this is simple – no-one understands the scriptures, they are full of hard sayings, they make us uncomfortable – something has to be done about this, and the answer is to theologise, to rationalise, to explain the scriptures and explain them away.
And here is one further aspect, I have noticed, which has informed the theological enterprise – and which has become part and parcel of the Christian cringe. It is that we must distance ourselves by all possible means from the pernicious evil of heretical belief. We cannot countenance that the pagans or gnostics may have it partly right – or that they may have it right in some sense. And in the resulting spiritual pogrom it is our own nature and biblical doctrine which becomes deformed. This is not to invoke theological liberalism, ecumenism or syncretism. It is to admit that the Bible inhabits a natural, mystical and magical universe, which has more in common with the archaic worldview of paganism than with the rational, reductive and sanitised mindset of modern – or medieval – Christian theology. The mind of conventional Christianity is thus curiously estranged from nature, as it is from scripture, inhabiting instead a kind of Platonic realm of merest fancy.
Okay – examples: They are numerous of course, what with the trinity, eternal hell, supernaturalism ... here I want to focus on just one little gem – that of creation ex nihilo, which means, out of nothing. The idea that God created the world ‘out of nothing’ has been reiterated so much in theological discourse that it even found its way into statements of creed. But – of course – it is entirely without scriptural basis. There is no statement in the Bible to the effect that God created the world out of nothing. While this, in itself, does not make it untrue, more fundamentally I am doubtful as to whether it even qualifies as meaningful statement. I mean, it’s surely not like God took some nothing and made from it the world. So, on analysis, it turns out to be mere gibberish – earnestly asserted and insisted upon.
Briefly then, a look at what the scriptures actually state:
Hebrews 11:3 – Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.
John 1:14 – And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us ...
So not out of nothing, but not made of things which do appear. And the Word was made flesh, made substantial or material – the Word of God, which is God. So if we may posit an origin for the world, in the sense that the world came from it – that origin clearly is God. So, for instance, the desk I am writing on I take to be the Word of God made material. We are looking in effect at a mind-created universe, where the Word is the mind of God expressed. This is meaningful – as well as elegant and profound. So if there is anything created out of nothing, it would seem to be post-biblical theology. The world was created from something – and that something is the mind of God.
And this takes us further into controversy insofar as the biblical view here outlined implies a sense of immanence – of God as present in creation, and indeed one with creation. Here again we may cite scripture:
Acts 17:28 – For in him [God] we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, for we are also his offspring.
Ephesians 1:10 – That in the dispensation of the fullness of times he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth; even in him.
But wait a minute – are we not now indulging the heresy of pantheism? Or perhaps of an incipient unitarianism? No ... we are in the scriptures, and pantheism in some sense is indeed scriptural. Not in the sense that all and everything is equally God – for why then would one pray for the Holy Spirit – but in the sense that everything is an attribute of God, as my limbs, for instance, are an attribute of the person that is I. The church is called in scripture the body of Christ, so the mind-body analogy seems entirely appropriate. It is not the form or material veil that is God – it is the God within the veil of appearance which is God. This holds even concerning the Christ of God. God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, wrote St Paul – and, why do you call me good, said Jesus, there is none good but God. Here then is the elegance of the so-called modal doctrine, which recognises that the attribution of godhead is contextual. Worship is referred upstream, so to speak, in the direction of pure spirit – from prophet or angel, to the Christ, and thence to the transcendent God.
So it is not that all and everything, without distinction, is equally God. Oneness with God, as a given, is predicated rather on the fact of redemption. The redeemed soul is one with God and his Christ, even as God and Christ are one. Ultimately that oneness may be said to extend to the whole of creation. As cried the Seraphim (Isaiah 6:3), Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory.
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