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Thursday, June 27. 2013
Got To Be ... Rational ! ? Posted by Harald Kleemann
in Apologetics, Commentary, Evangelism, Holy Scripture at
16:18
Got To Be ... Rational ! ?
O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called: Which some professing have erred concerning the faith. (1 Timothy 6:20-21)
Christian apologists are typically at pains to demonstrate that their faith is rational. By this they usually mean that (1) it bears scrutiny by some canon of reason, and (2) that the tenets of Christian belief are consistent with an arbitrarily advanced state of scientific knowledge – to whit, the perceived present state. It is perhaps not usually admitted, but the inference is clear – science and reason represent a standard of verity and confer validation regarding the faith. Conversely, something is generally considered amiss where these two epistemological systems – religious faith and observation / reason – are perceived to be at odds. If at this point a suspicion arises that exegetes have the whole thing back-to-front – well, I suspect this suspicion may be entirely justified. We are beginning to glimpse just how profoundly – and, indeed, how subtly – the Christian faith has been subverted in a rational inquisition, which goes back at least to the ecclesiastical councils of Constantine. Christianity, originally, signified the ingress of a transcendent mind, incommensurate and radically at variance with the historic continuum. Then, within a relatively brief period, it was ‘tamed’ – co-opted – rationalised ... thereby loosing its transcendent charter and, indeed, much of its redeeming virtue. Whereas the humanist tradition, which we trace to the ancient Greeks, holds wisdom or intellectual achievement in the highest esteem, the gospel peremptorily informs that here is something altogether greater – something greater not merely by degree, but in a manner incommensurate. As Isaiah (55:8-9) states the matter – For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. Of course, modern biblical scholars have turned this around, confidently asserting that their erudite cogitations are infinitely exalted above the parochial and primitive conceptions of scripture. And their basis for this assertion ... is science and reason. We know better, they claim, than the superstitious ancients who wrote the Bible. While extremes of this stance characterise such liberal and revisionist conclaves of the higher criticism as the Jesus Seminar, it’s leaven permeates no less the biblical evangelical mainstream. Its theological articulations, while paying lip service to transcendent verities, implicitly and ineluctably, bow down and worship at the shrine of reason. The stance, indeed is reflexive – it is part of the academic good tone, and entirely taken for granted. Reasonable – rational – formulations are the sine qua non of scholarly discourse. By contrast, the mystical, the prophetic, the revelational, the intuitive, the visionary, the spiritual as a means of biblical understanding – these are inherently distrusted and banished to the outer margins of acceptable dialogue. As one respondent put it to me – anyone can lay claim to a revelation or vision. To which I answer – quite. Nevertheless, the revelational or spiritual attitude has a chance of being right, for it is the way of God enjoined in scripture. Whereas the rational approach has no chance of succeeding, as the scriptures, again, make abundantly clear. The carnal mind is enmity with God, as Paul informs us in Hebrews – and the carnal mind, we may unequivocally assert, is the rational mind. It is the rational mind – with its handful of explanatory variables, its grounding in the relative, its infinite regress of analytic elaboration, without a sure foundation anywhere in sight. Indeed we may recall that it was knowledge – carnal knowledge, referred to in Genesis as the knowledge of good and evil, and all knowledge, in this sense, is carnal – which precipitated the primordial fall from divine communion. This ‘fall’ – assuredly – was from a holistic, spiritual and intuitive, vision to the partial, relative and analytic apprehensions of the rational mind. Consequently it is by no exertion of the rational mind that the conditions attending humanity’s spiritual exile can be reversed – and here, in a nutshell, is the failing of the modern church: its substitution of scholarship for spiritual revelation. The rational mind cannot relate, in any adequate sense, to the unfathomed and irreducible complexity of the organic. As such it is inherently estranged from nature, as it is estranged from the divine. Being finite in its conceptions, it is necessarily reductive in its modelling of natural process, even as it is reductive in its rendering of scripture in terms of a rational creed. The mystery of godliness reduced to a creed – that, in essence, is the plight of the church. For it is the rational mind which is implicitly elevated to godhead in the realm of human understanding. ‘Rational’ is the new godly. The matter is addressed by Paul, stating that the Greeks require wisdom, while the Jews seek miracles, and we moderns are mostly among the Greeks. Yet addressed in this manner are the both epistemological systems – the magical and the rational – and the gospel submits to neither. Both paradigms are rebuked in that we preach Christ crucified. A stumbling-stone to the Hebrews and foolishness to the Greeks. Christ crucified means the sacrifice of the Word – the cultural understanding, whether rational or magical, must needs perish for the spiritual to arise. This in part is what we mean by salvation and the spiritual birth. This is not to advocate an anti-intellectual stance. Our characterisation of the rational mind as enmity with God does to diminish its efficacy relative to a fallen world. But when directed at the highest, when approaching the asymptote of its own conceptual foundations, it necessarily fails. The reason, in its ultimate function, becomes cognisant of its intrinsic and ineluctable limitations, as indeed mathematicians discovered in the early twentieth century. Yet our cultural institutions – the church included – have failed to imbibe this lesson. The rush to deify the reason continues unabated, and its apotheosis is, no less, that abomination of desolation, standing in the holy place, as spoken of by Jesus. In biblical terms, the Word of Life – the transcendent mind of Christ – is rejected. All redemptive efficacy of the Word is lost as the transcendent revelation is lost. The human mind is not raised to the divine, but the divine reduced to the human. This – again – is the crucifixion of Christ in our age. Saturday, June 8. 2013
It’s The Body ! - On The Irreducible ... Posted by Harald Kleemann
in Commentary, Holy Scripture at
15:57
It’s The Body ! - On The Irreducible Complexity Of The Word Of God
It’s the body – the Word of God. It is the spiritual body of Jesus Christ in abstract form and the information content which structures that form – the body inhabited by the Spirit of God. Contemporary philosophers of science, like Stephen Meyer, author of Signature In The Cell (HarperOne, 2009), recognise that it is information which distinguishes living organisms from inanimate matter, and the same holds for the spiritual body. It is the inherent information content, as appropriated by spiritual revelation, which distinguishes the bride of Christ from the religious cults and denominations. The spiritual bride is comprised of the Word – the whole of the Word and nothing but the Word, it is fitting to add. She is one with her Lord who is the Word – she, the bride and mystical body of Jesus Christ. And what distinguishes the living Bride from the dead denominations and religious organisations is this – that the Word of God has life, and as such it is characterised by organic depth and integrity.
This, again to emphasise, is also the hallmark of the natural body. Nature, the natural universe, is unfathomably deep in its workings. It cannot be reduced to a rational conception in terms of a finite set of variables. And if nature cannot thus be reduced, neither can the Word of God – the Word which is the logos of nature. The inspired Word of prophetic utterance, as the self-disclosure of a higher mind, is transcendent of all rational conception – as states Isaiah 55, exalted above the thoughts and ways of man as the heavens are exalted above the earth. Which further explains why, through the ages, the Word of God has been elusive. It explains indeed the historic failing of the church, insofar it is informed not of the Word, but interpretations of the Word – divisive creeds, each emphasising certain aspects of scripture to the exclusion of others. Although grafted into the Tree of Life – the denominational creeds – they are out on a limb, so to speak. Sooner or later they run out of scripture, and compensate by filling the gaps with rationalisations – extraneous notions which have no part of the body. This explains why the body is sick and all torn up. To illustrate let us consider again the natural body. Metabolism of the natural body is regulated by enzymes, complex molecules which act as catalysts for myriad chemical interactions. Many of these enzymes oppose each other in function, and the health of the body depends on their balance, their due proportion and interaction, as regulated by yet further enzymes. Too much of one, to the exclusion of others, will kill the body, even though each one is good and necessary in itself. This is a perfect analogy of the spiritual body. Religious cults and denominations typically run with some exclusive idea, turning it into an overarching doctrine. Sooner or later, as stated, they run out of scripture, eventually reaching a dead end of spiritual stasis. Which explains why denominational Christianity is dead – why indeed we have something called Christianity, which is not Christianity at all. While it might have qualified as such back yonder in the age of Reformation – under the anointing of the cherubic Man (see Revelation 4) wherein rational exegesis was the state of the art – this is the age of the Flying Eagle, an age of restoration and spiritual revelation. The healthy body, as described, is comprised of the synergy of myriad opposing agents, and thus it is with the spiritual body. It is comprised of the whole of the Word, with its often seemingly contradictory notions – a proposition by which the rational mind is altogether stymied. The rational mind cannot cope with the Word of God, and radical attempts – as it were, of putting new the wine into old bottles – in terms of their consequences, typically range from the ridiculous to the tragic. Indeed the carnal or rational mind, as Paul reminds us, is enmity with God. Only the mind of Christ can take this Word and make it perform as intended. And, indeed, we have the mind of Christ – if we are born of water and blood according to the scriptures. As for the rational mind, it looses itself in the abyss, the incommensurate gulf between the rational conception and the irreducible complexity of the materia mystica, the primordial substance, which is the Word of God. We see this exemplified in the increasingly abstract formulations of academic theology, as in the increasingly indirect means of natural enquiry in the physical sciences – both engaging in realms increasingly remote from the data of sensory experience. From the rational standpoint, as stated, the well is infinitely deep, such that the rational mind is, on analysis, is commensurate with the abyss. The Word of God, by contrast, for all its organic depth and wholeness, never departs from the nexus of immediate experience. This indeed is the hallmark of the visionary and mystical, that it is grounded in the embodied experience. And so ... it’s the body, the Word of God. It is not to be held at arm’s length – dissected, interpreted, doctored, explained – it is to be received by faith. As states the scripture, a body hast thou prepared me – which truth holds for the spiritual body as it does for the natural. Only the mind of Christ can cross the gulf and produce the body, which crossing is the new birth by the Cross of Christ – the crossing of Jordan, metaphorically, which is death to the self. This is one of the scary notion of scripture, the truth of which, however, is liberty, salvation, and the power of the Holy Ghost. And it is a dangerous doctrine, subject, like all great truths, to misapprehension and consequent radicalism. But again we can point to the Word as a sure corrective in that any misapprehension will, surely and in some signal manner, depart from the Word. But the mind of Christ, the Holy Spirit, inhabits, upholds and affirms that Word – the Word which is the spiritual body of the bride of Christ. Friday, June 7. 2013When is the Word of God ... the Word of God ?
Is the Word of God always the Word of God? Many of us are fundamentalists in the sense that we take all of scripture to be divinely inspired. And in this sense, I concur, we must be fundamentalists in order to apprehend in full the biblical revelation.
But when we hear something like, the Bible says ... therefore I must ... , here I would caution, be careful. Untold mischief has arisen because of zealots on crusades for the reason that ‘God told me so’ – because of ordinary individuals of goodwill, trying to perform a spiritual service without appropriate spiritual charter. Paul, in Ephesians 1:9, refers to the will of God as a mystery. A mystery ... Here I think of my own spiritual mentor, William Marrion Branham, who posited five conditions that must be met for the Word of God to be ... the Word of God. I cannot locate the original right now, so I will try to reconstruct the essentials of this message. The five conditions are these: 1. It must come by Gods designated messenger. 2. It must come to the person which God intended. 3. It must be in accord with scripture. 4. It must be the Word in season. 5. It must be vindicated. Let us look at these more closely. 1. It must come by Gods designated messenger. Clearly, not everyone who prophesies or quotes scripture speaks for God. There are the misguided and outright deceivers – the false anointed and, as WMB put it in his Demonology series, deceiving spirits ‘versing’ the Word of God. The prophecy, in other words, must come by the Holy Spirit, and the anointed messenger chosen of God. 2. It must come to the person which God intended. Firstly, the Word of God is not for everyone. Not everyone can receive these truths. More specifically, there is specialisation within the spiritual body – not every member individually manifests the whole of scripture. To each is appointed a measure of the Spirit and a portion of the Word to fulfil. The exception here, of course is Christ himself, who embodies the whole, as well a certain great redemptive truths which pertain to the body entire. But concerning the specifics of ministry, of gifts and personal calling, these are unique to the individual, as well as the historic age of spiritual unfolding. 3. It must be in accord with scripture. Among evangelicals this would seem a commonplace, but it is a principle that is violated all to frequently. It is violated on the basis of false teaching, as on the basis of impressions, of sensation and religious emotion. A powerful anointing, a spiritual manifestation – those are often taken as divine sanction, even when there is no scriptural basis for the phenomenon in question. In Amos 3:7 we read in this connection, Surely the Lord God will do nothing, but he reveals his secret unto his servants, the prophets. Stated another way, if it is of God, it is in the scriptures. Indeed, where a major doctrine is in question, the relevant truth must be seen to resonate throughout the entirety of scripture. We cannot build a doctrinal case on a few isolated verses, specifically selected to serve our end. 4. The Word must be the Word in season. This, to some extent, follows from (1) and (2), but it involves the greater truth that the Word God has divinely appointed seasons for its fulfilment. It must not be premature, nor should it lag behind – just as the seasons of the year relate to natural cycles of growth. As the Word God is the spiritual seed, it likewise has its appointed seasons. The Law of Moses was the Word God to Israel in the wilderness, but when that same Word, in the person of Jesus, stood before the Pharisees, the Word of Moses was superseded. Similarly, on a finer scale, we may consider the seven gentile church ages and the portion of the Word fulfilled in each. As in Israel’s wilderness journey, the spiritual manna needed to be gathered afresh every morning – with each new age of spiritual unfolding. Whereas the reformers Martin Luther and John Wesley brought such manna to their respective ages, the church of this age cannot thrive, let alone progress, on the doctrine of the Reformation Fathers. For this is another spiritual age, with a further portion of the Word revealed. 5. It must be vindicated. This is my personal favourite – the one which seems to me the most profound. Sure, the first four are significant, but essentially in line with what most biblical Christians would expect. Here learn we a deeper truth. God vindicates his Word by bringing it to pass – thereby showing that it is indeed his Word. In other words, it is not for mortals to interpret the scriptures – well, it says this ... I suppose it must mean ... – that kind of thinking is all wrong. The Word is simply believed by faith – in its entirety, without reservation – and God, by his Spirit, quickens the Word to make it manifest – specifically that portion of the Word to be fulfilled in the applicable season. God interprets his own Word by bringing it to pass – that is the interpretation thereof. So if something is claimed the Word of God, and it’s not happening – if it’s contrived, perfunctory and an all-round drag – that, of a surety, is not the Word of God. The Word of God is the Word in action. It is spirit and life. It is God himself. |
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