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Tuesday, May 28. 2013The Trinity And The Hound Of Hell
We know something is amiss when apologists are compelled to sound the depths of absurdity. In Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview (2003) authors J. P. Moreland and William Lane Craig confront the unenviable task of explaining the Christian Trinity. One explanatory model which they offer is ... Cerberus, in Greek mythology the three-headed hound of hell, a spectral creature guarding the gates of hades. That’s right – an imaginary three-headed dog to explain the nature of God.
In a more recent podcast Craig explains that this was never intended as an analogy, as indeed there are no perfect analogies for the Trinity, but that it nevertheless conveys something significant regarding the essential idea of a tri-personal being. Where the analogy fails, Craig elaborates, is that, if Cerberus should die and his form dissolve, the three minds of God would detach and fly off into space. States Craig: God is an immaterial substance or soul endowed with three sets of cognitive faculties each of which is sufficient for personhood, so that God has three centres of self-consciousness, intentionality, and will. … the persons are [each] divine… since the model describes a God who is tri-personal. The persons are the minds of God. and: … just as Cerberus is a single dog with three consciousnesses, so God is a single spiritual substance or soul with three self-consciousnesses. I submit that, far from being an elegant contrivance, this sounds as atrocious as it is, and we see exemplified the impotence and conceptual absurdity to which trinitarians are reduced in defending their model. We see the unfailing need for extra-biblical referents, concepts and constructs, to maintain what is clearly not a scriptural given. Why – oh why – must theologians conclude that, when God took on human form, this means there are two of them, and when again relinquishing this form but leaving his Spirit, this makes them three? I mean, the Bible explains itself. Jesus said, I am the root and offspring of David, in answer to the very controversy as raised by the Pharisees – how Christ could be God and yet walk the earth as a common man. If only theologians would take the biblical image – that of man – to show forth the nature of God – instead of a three-headed dog or whatever else – the lamentable trinitarian idea would have never arisen. We see, further, the carnal and regressive notion of God as substance, and this quite apart from self-contradictory notion of an immaterial substance. Indeed it appears in the above example that a forth entity is being postulated, i.e. the dog proper supporting the three heads, constituting, as it were, the container or glue, holding together the persons of the Trinity. Not the biblical Spirit – or consciousness – but a spiritual substance constitutes the Godhead by this account – as indeed I always suspected of the trinitarian conception. Without question, the trinitarian reifies his God and, evidently, the more of them (up to a point), the better. While this may seem a reductio absurdum, I have observed it in countless conversations. Faced with the unitarian conception, the trinitarian feels deprived of two thirds of his deity, showing that the trinitarian glasses remain in place, even while an alternative is ostensibly being contemplated. But such is among the consequences when the cart is before the horse with respect to spirit and substance – when there is failure to understand that God is Spirit. Why, finally, the need to theologise? Why the need for argument? Did not Jesus also say, blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God? Why then, and for whose benefit, the intellectual acrobatics of theologians and Christian philosophers? I mean, no-one will argue at consummate length that the sun gives light or that water is wet. Insofar then as their recourse is biblical scholarship – textual analysis and the light of reason – they admit in effect that they have not seen God. From which we can reasonably conclude that they – meaning, the greater majority thus engaged – have no idea what they are talking about. Of course this is shocking to contemplate. Let me state for the record my essential respect for Moreland and Craig as leading lights of Christian academia. Scholarship, however, is no safeguard against theological error, especially when the greater consensus is a stake. Our example illustrates the badlands of absurdity into which even the erudite plummet when compelled to defend one of the many misconceptions in which enlightened modern evangelical Christendom abounds. Is it really so difficult to countenance that the church may have it all wrong? As a writer myself, I am further aware that one wrong-headed idea – and here we may definitely include the three-headed hound of Moreland and Craig – when elaborated or defended, leads to a cloud of obfuscation, an exacerbation of confusion, and before long one faces the fact that one is writing gibberish. Of course, without something more than mere erudition, one may never come that far. Friday, August 10. 2012
On The Life Of The Soul Posted by Harald Kleemann
in Apologetics, Evangelism, Holy Scripture at
17:51
On The Life Of The Soul
O God – if there is a God, save my soul – if I have a soul !
Called the agnostic’s prayer, the above is attributed to Ernest Renan (1823-1892). It poignantly conveys the estrangement of the modern and materialist mind from the consciousness and discourse of spiritual things. The soul – much has been conjectured concerning this mysterious numen, and yet the matter has remained elusive. It is something of a mystery even among the religiously minded, and the secular verdict is that it does not exist. The problem, I suggest, is due to confusion concerning spiritual categories in general – that they are considered otherworldly and ephemeral rather than tangible. The soul, according to this view, is the subtle, rarefied, immaterial essence of personhood, perhaps intuitively placed in the region of the heart – for Descartes it was the pineal gland – and deemed to survive the death of the physical body. If it exists, it does so as an article of faith – not as an entity directly experienced. My purpose is not to contradict this conventional notion, but to suggest that it misses the point in significant part – that the soul is indeed the most obvious fact of existence. While it may be viewed as a kind of spiritual singularity – and I think the simile is singularly apt – in manifestation that singularity unfolds into a world of experience. It is not, therefore, an entity within the ambit of experience which may be objectively distinguished; it is experience as such – the whole of it. And thus the soul is ‘it’ – it is all. The soul – and only the soul – is the sole and singular fact of human experience. It is the point of view, the subjective nature of the self within the realm of experience. Waking or sleeping, from the cradle to the grave, it is the soul which is the singular fact of human awareness. Conventionally then, the soul is psyche or mind – the magical theatre of human experience which illuminates the worlds. While we might consider the soul the vessel of experience, the distinction is essentially a formal one. We do not observe a vessel as distinct from content, a ‘mind’ as distinct from thought and sensation. Yet it seems appropriate to speak of an entity – a whole – which comprises the subjective, and therefore the essential, nature of human individuality. Souls, therefore, are rightly deemed precious insofar as each soul is unique, and that comprehended within each soul is a world or universe of experience. Indeed we may speak in this context of worlds, of innumerable universes as the portent of the soul. And yet, while the whole may be considered one from the standpoint of the individual self, there is nevertheless a twofold aspect – a dual nature – to the soul. In manifestation there is the ‘tangible’ stream of human experience, such that the individual self or soul is comprised of that stream. It is identified with the world of its experience. Yet there is also that which beholds, and in this regard the soul partakes of the transcendent nature of spirit or consciousness. Genesis 2:7 states: And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. From this I conclude: A soul is the intersection of spirit or consciousness with the material realm. (We note that the breath of life, the Hebrew ruah, also means spirit.) Indeed the principle may be observed in the creation of the world, where it is stated: (Genesis 1:2) The Spirit of God (ruah) moved upon the face of the waters. And again (Job 38:7) When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy – in other words, where the world was sung into existence. Here it is spoken of Christ, the universal or great soul, which is ruah elohim, the breath or Word of God – he who is called the beginning of the creation of God, in whom all lesser souls have their being. The transcendent Spirit moves upon the primordial waters, which is the manifest Word and mind of God. And as the Word is mixed with faith – which is the substance, according to Paul, the primordial substance of which all things are made – when God said, let there be light ... there was light. Christ Jesus, who is also called the faithful witness – he who bears witness of the light – further said of himself (John 5:19): The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he sees the Father doing, that does the Son likewise. The soul of Christ is the dwelling of God. The same indeed holds for the adopted, or redeemed, son – or daughter – of God – in accord with the biblical principle that man is created in the image of God. Spirit or consciousness moves upon the primordial waters and conjures a reality, a world of experience, in accord with individual faith. As the scripture aptly states, be it unto you according to your faith (Mathew 9: 29). We see in effect that the act of universal creation is re-enacted in the life of the soul. Insofar as there are two creation accounts – Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 – we notice concerning the second that it is centred upon the human experience. The first, by contrast, appears Platonic or abstract in being seen through the eyes of God. Yet the soul partakes experientially of both events or phases of creation. The spiritual soul, as created in the image of the elohim, the transcendent self-existent being that is God, bears within it the knowledge of universal creation, which knowledge constitutes the ground of apriori apprehension, whereupon is added, in the course of a life, the knowledge of human experience. This indeed is the mysterious part, and what distinguishes the human from the sentience of animal life. Whereas animal consciousness is comprised of the natural given in space and time, the human soul apprehends from a transcendent vantage. It views the actual and given through implicitly all-knowing eyes, whence the God-like faculty of abstraction – of imagination and reason – as the universal human aspiration to regain the divine image. The so-called unconscious, accordingly, is not limited to elements of Freudian repression, nor is it altogether explained in terms of Jungian archetypes – ideas and images which inform the human soul and are independent of experience. More essentially, what the soul has forgotten, but for the occasional spark of genius – artistic, scientific, or prophetic – is its function as primordial image-maker and as the very fount of language – as the creative vessel or ark of God. Devine creation, accordingly, should not be considered entirely an event in the remote past, but also an a-temporal or timeless process in the eternal present of divine apprehension. While indeed it is spoken in Genesis of a beginning – in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth – it is a metaphysical contradiction to assert that time was created at some moment in time, albeit the ostensible first moment. Time, rather, is the concrescence of eternity, just as space is the instantiation of the infinite. Of these concepts – the infinite and the eternal – neither is found in nature. They are characteristic rather of the transcendent, of the creative Spirit of God which intersects and informs the space-time matrix at every point. The soul, as we have seen, is the focus of that intersection – the Spirit of God moving upon the primeval waters – such that the soul partakes equally of the immanent and transcendent. The soul is indeed one with the Creator, as it is one with all creation, insofar as consciousness and mind – or mind and thought – comprise the unity which is God and the creation of God. As states John 1: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And thus within the human soul resides the power to create worlds. Space and time, as indeed the entire universe of human experience, is the unfolding of the mind of God in the context of the human soul. In that boundless creative capacity, however, also lies the potential for evil. We recall, concerning the soul in primordial Eden, that placed before Adam was the tree of life and the tree of knowledge – the knowledge of good and evil – and of death. The soul that sinneth, it shall die, states Ezekiel 18:20, where sin is that knowledge, which separates the soul from the tree of life, which is life, and the source of life, which also is Christ, the empowered Word of God. Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect, admonishes Jesus in Mathew 5:48. Indeed, given such unbounded creative potential, when projected upon eternity, it is apparent that even a slight deviation from the perfection of God would inevitably result in atrocity. For the evil of a mere six thousand years has weighed upon many souls to doubt the very existence of God. And thus God determined that sin shall have an end, and that end is death. It is for this reason, finally, that the soul requires a redeemer. And we understand that God, in his mercy, has provided the perfect redeemer. We saw above that Christ is the embodied Word of God, and it is Christ himself who became the sacrifice for sin, so that confession of the blood of Christ restores the soul to its primordial purity in the original creation of God. Indeed the blood of Christ not only vanquishes sin – which is unbelief in the Word of God – but the very effects and consequences of sin. This, in effect, is what we mean repentance – the soul in faith turning to Christ, understanding that Christ, the Word of God, atones for sin, restoring the soul to oneness with God. And although it does not yet appear what we shall be, given the gradual unfolding of the spiritual seed, the soul indeed bears the image of eternity. It goes all the way back, and all the way forward – past and future – transcending time while yet partaking of time. Transcending space while inhabiting space. And partaking of knowledge, while established in the creative fount of omniscience – in the Alpha and Omega, the mystical singularity, the ark of God. Oh, how wonderful! How mysterious and profound! And, oh, what a life – what a magnificent life of the soul! Tuesday, May 29. 2012The Bible – A Holy Book ?
Christians today take the Bible for granted, as a fact of existence, like it was faxed from heaven – authoritative, whole, the pure Word of God. Yet on the surface at least its history tells another story. Written over some two thousand years, by some forty authors, widely separated in time and culture, it comprises a collection of texts, compiled into something like its present form only in the sixth century AD, centuries after the apostolic age had come to a close. Two questions thus arise. How did these texts come into being? And how were they selected for inclusion in the biblical canon?
Readers are aware that the source documents of the modern Bible are historically and culturally embedded within a much larger body of literature, which includes the so-called apocryphal and pseudepigraphical texts. We may cite the Dead Sea Scrolls and Nag Hammadi Texts – writings of the Essenes and Gnostics – among them exotica like the Book of Adam, the Secrets of Enoch, and the Apocalypse of Abraham. In content and style these resemble the canonical texts at least superficially, such that a categorical distinction becomes a matter of perhaps quite uncommon discernment. Varying compilations appeared during the early Christian era, and to this day the Eastern and Western orthodoxy adheres to a different canon. The canon, as this term has come to be used, denotes the standard, the rule, which, in the case of the Bible, signifies a text divinely inspired. But what distinguishes such a text that its heavenly imprimatur should be evident to mortal eyes? And when we consider the range of literary genres and styles represented, the matter becomes even more perplexing. Who, by any rational surmise, would have included, say, the Book of Ruth – a pastoral romance about a woman who makes a good match. Who would class the mystical prophets with the logician Paul – Leviticus with the Song Of Songs – or Proverbs with the Apocalypse? And what of the possibility of other divinely inspired texts, which, for reasons only known to God, were not included in the final authorised version of the Bible. Only a transcendentally guided mind, I submit, could make the relevant determinations. Even more fundamentally, what does it mean to say a text is divinely inspired? Opinions differ in the latter regard. There is the plenary school which holds to something like literal word-by-word dictation of scripture. Opposed is the visionary school, as I will call it, which holds that God’s prophets were subject to insight or understanding, typically received in exalted states of consciousness, which they expressed in words of their own. Which of these is correct? Let me be peremptory here and state that the plenary school is essentially mistaken, namely if indeed it posits something like a disembodied dictating voice and a perfunctory scribe. Except for relatively rare instances which record actual angelic dialogue, such a scenario would be discontinuous with the observed order of both nature and scripture. Visionary or mystical experience is such that the seers mind is quickened, exalted to partake of a heavenly vision, as born out by interior testimony of the texts in question. Further evidential is the observed variety of individual styles, as indeed by the more elementary fact that God does not personally crank the lever which turns the world. Natural history should be our guide, and thus the elegant, non-coercive, non-interventionist style which characterises the God of creation. Yet it is possible nevertheless to posit the divine perfection which evangelicals demand of their holy book. We shall return to this point in regard to its compilation. Essentially it is this, that in the providence of God his purpose is accomplished, as it were naturally, namely where his Holy Spirit holds sway. Inspiration indeed may be so profound, as artists and mystics are aware, that the agency of a higher mind appears immediate and direct. The question, to some extent, is addressed in the Bible itself. 2 Peter states that the prophecy came not in olden times by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. In this essential respect then, irrespective of the mechanism involved, the Bible is not the word of man, but indeed the Word of God, in that the inspired prophet does not record his own thoughts, but reflects some aspect of the mind of God. We thus confront the intriguing fact that the universe, as an opus of divine creation, is accompanied by a book – a manual so to speak – providing a conceptual interface to accompany the physicality of sensory experience. To some extent also the question of the biblical canon is addressed, the internal testimony of scripture comprising both historic and prophetic accounts regarding the reception and preservation of the sacred texts. The Bible, therefore, in these respective ways, is what we call self-referential – like a post-modern novel containing itself in quasi holographic fashion, or the genetic language of DNA specifying the protein structures by which it is stored and transmitted. This internal mirroring extends outwards in that prophecy is a contextual phenomenon within human consciousness and culture. Like a spiritual seed – and this is the principal metaphor – it is contextually embedded within the larger experiential sphere to which it also gives rise. We are speaking in effect of a living, conscious, creative current of which scripture is the fixed physical form. We might adduce that the Word of God, like the atomic particle, has field properties. It exists as a seed in the letter and concept of the word. Yet it also has the potential to unfold into myriad worlds of experience. It may be, furthermore, that implicit in the paradox of a seed which generates its own field is the very secret of existence. From a perspective of sceptical scholarship, needless to say, all this is fraught with difficulty. The documents of assumed divine authority, as stated, take their place within a wider body of relevant literature – as one seed, so to speak, among many. In this class are superficially similar texts with ostensibly comparable claims to divine provenance. Indeed among the historic compilations a significant few, such as the Luther Bible, include apocryphal texts. A distinction, however, has become the norm. Luther defined the apocrypha as texts not divinely inspired, but nevertheless edifying to the devout reader. If liberal theologians moreover call into question the very fact of divine inspiration, the process of biblical compilation must appear even more dubious, being often the outcome of rivalling factions in a secular rather than spiritual context. The Christian answer – necessarily, implicitly – is that of faith in divine providence. The God who can create living creatures, it is argued, can also put a book together – even if the process appears to us as a series of historic accidents. Scriptural allusions are here relevant which speak of divine omniscience. Not a sparrow falls without God’s apprehension, and the very hairs of your head are numbered ... as the Saviour himself remarked. The notion is of an infinite God, boundless in apprehension, from whose transcendent vantage all mind-space-time events appear as a unified whole. This should be born in mind when we reflect on the seemingly indirect means by which the divine purpose is accomplished. (For we have seen how rationalists stumble at this: If there was a God he would ...) We need, in effect, to assume the mind of Christ. Indeed from that transcendent vantage the entire redemptive opus is an accomplished fact, even while, from a relative perspective, it would seem a precarious process, contingent on endless imponderables, each improbable in the extreme. One thus comes to suspect that a principle is involved – from the babe cast adrift on the waters of the Nile to the crucifixion and beyond – God accomplishes his purpose not despite, but by and through, the seemingly random, chaotic and adversarial. From this perspective it is immaterial whether the Bible was compiled by enlightened sages or ecclesiastical bureaucrats. Though the seed is sown into the earth and seemingly abandoned to the elements, the greatness of God is such that his purpose prevails inexorably. And so we have, in consequence of this imponderable process – the Holy Bible, exceedingly improbable and yet, by divine providence, inexorable in its specificity, not unlike the living creatures on the face of the earth. Mystery is here, which we might call the mystery of the actual. Why is it thus and not otherwise? And though the spiritual seed represents the power of creation and eternal life, in the realm of creation it is but one seed among many – as it is written ... out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden ... (Genesis 2). The seed of God is distinguished therefore in that it is an excellent seed. It is called the incorruptible seed, not being subject to the fall which otherwise affected all nature. But cherubim and a fiery sword guarded its sanctuary until the guardian was satisfied by the blood of the Saviour. It is therefore Christ alone who can open the scriptures, and so the way of the tree of life. The true and inspired books of the Bible reflect all this – in every part, and as a whole – bearing witness of the One, for those who have eyes to see: Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today and forever. A sacred mystery indeed, which should be treated with the utmost reverence. Friday, March 23. 2012What Is The Word Of God ?
When Christians of the English-speaking world refer to the Word of God they conventionally mean the sixty-six canonical books of the King James Bible of 1611. It is considered the Word, the whole Word, and nothing but the Word – complete, nothing lacking, nothing superfluous. It’s statements are taken as the inspired, veritable, infallible utterances of the Almighty. Very truth of very truth. And that settles it, as some are wont to say.
But wait a minute. The devil, too, can quote scripture, as well we know. In his mouth then surely it’s dubious – it might be the truth. Or it might be misconstrued, subverted to satanic ends. This might readily explain the many conflicting ideas about the meaning of scripture, even where approached with best intentions. Meaning, in turn, is taken to be a matter of interpretation – of biblical hermeneutics as scholars call it. And this verily may be the problem – the idea that the Word of God needs to be interpreted. Of itself the Bible states that ... the prophecy came not in olden times by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. In other words, it did not come by human intellect or rational surmise, but the intimation of a higher mind. This being so, can we expect the human intellect to be its arbiter of meaning? Can we expect a rational interpretation of the mind of God? Can rational interpretation be the basis of the Christian life? Or would the reader need to be similarly inspired, at least to embark upon the same holy ground, as when the prophet encountered the burning bush and a voice that spoke from it? Spiritual things are to be spiritually discerned, St Paul admonished the Corinthian church and, again, we are to compare spiritual things with spiritual. Addressing the same community, he asks rhetorically, who has known the mind of God, stating that we have the mind of Christ – the Holy Spirit which, according to the Saviour’s own words, will lead us into all truth. Similarly to the Corinthians, who evidently were carnal in understanding, Paul put it that his preaching was not delivered in word alone, but in the demonstration and power of the Spirit. This is made even clearer in that the Spirit spoke by the prophet Isaiah: So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it. The metaphor is that of rain upon a seed. Here is the entire passage from Isaiah 55: Seek ye the Lord while he may be found, call ye upon him while he is near: Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. 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. For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater: So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it. For ye shall go out with joy, and be led forth with peace: the mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree, and instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle tree: and it shall be to the Lord for a name, for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off. Let us take this literally and posit that the Word of God – when it is the Word of God – speaks directly to the heart, and in such a way as to be not merely incontrovertible, but producing of itself the desired result. To use a systems metaphor, the Word of God thus understood is executable information, transforming of itself the human soul, its reach necessarily extending into realms which far transcend the intellectual grasp. For what says the scripture – Job 28 – Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom; and to depart from evil is understanding. How does this differ from the scholarly idea of understanding which is right interpretation! What indeed is theology, but an intellectual placeholder in the absence of revelation. All this is perhaps inconsequential where the Bible is considered no more than an ethical prescription, a kind of spiritual education program to transform society. But understood for what it is – the information abstract of the spiritual body of Christ – its necessary transcendence of the merely human grasp is fully apparent. For it is not by human intellect that the natural body is formed in the womb, brought to maturity and sustained in its organic functions. Neither is it within human ability to construct the temple of God, the spiritual body which is in heaven. Yet the information is in us. It is in the seed, and in every cell, encoded in the genetic language of DNA, to speak again of the physical body. Similarly it is the spiritual DNA in the Word of God which produces the spiritual body, the theophany or dwelling of God, which is eternal. Herein then is apparent the necessary agency of a higher mind, which mind is the mind of Christ. This is comforting in that it takes the burden out of the Christian life. For, if we are born a human being, in the providence of God, we will possess a human body. So likewise, if we are born a Christian – born of water and the blood according to the scriptures – our spiritual birth will produce the body of Christ. Saturday, March 3. 2012Arkangel - The Foundation
Christ is the angel of the covenant, the messenger of the most high God. He is also the ark, the dwelling and manifest presence of the most high, the transcendent and invisible God. In biblical scripture he is referred to as the Son, the Tree of Life, and the express image of the Father, which latter is the origin and transcendent ground of all being. He is, in a word, the same God, making himself known in the realm of his creation.
Christ is also deemed the logos or Word. John 1:1 states: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The Greek term logos can also mean thought, idea and creative intent. As such he is the embodiment of meaning. Meaning is intrinsic to God’s creation, and principally apparent in three diverse domains – in the realm of nature, in sacred scripture, and in the abstract domain of number, mathematics and geometry. Each represents a reflection of the essential canon of meaning which originates in God – which indeed expresses the very nature of God. The Creator may be known, therefore, by his creation, the universe as apparent to the senses, and in the disclosure of ideas, whether through the poetic inspiration of scripture or the rigours of rational enquiry. Scripture states that God is [a] Spirit, and a modern equivalent for spirit is consciousness. This is consistent with the above in that consciousness is the ground of mind and thought. Indeed nothing is more basic or fundamental in the realm of experience than consciousness. Consciousness as such is wholly immaterial. It is only with the advent of mind or thought – the creative logos – that we move toward the tangible and material. The Word was made flesh, the scripture further states. In other words, the creative idea became clothed upon with form, thereby becoming substantial. In Christ both polarities – the spiritual and the material – are united. He is called the root and branch, the root and offspring (as of David), in whom dwells the fullness of the godhead bodily. Further referred to as the Alpha and Omega, he is the head, the beginning and summation of the creation of God. The full embodiment of the godhead, as referred to by St Paul and other New Testament writers, was presented to the world in the man Jesus of Nazareth, whose historical appearing is principally set forth in the four gospel narratives, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Reference accordingly is made to Jesus Christ, or Jesus, the Christ, where the term Christ (Greek christos, also the Hebrew messiah) means the anointed one (i.e. the anointed of God who has the Spirit of God). Thus when God brought himself into full material expression, he took the form of a man – a perfect man. This is significant in that the essential form of God is man. God has no other form. Another way of expressing this truth is to say that man is the living temple of the Spirit of God. But this is still not all. Christ, besides being the universal creator, is also the universal prophet, priest and king. While numerous prophets appear in the scriptural, the cultural and historic record, they are prophets – if indeed they are prophets – by virtue of the indwelling Spirit of Christ. Insofar as Christ is the logos or Word, and thus the very essence of meaning, each of the historic prophets reflects some particular aspect thereof, usually as specific to the age in which he appears. The revelation of God is thus cumulative, with each major prophet extending the edifice of the spiritual temple by building upon the lineage preceding him. This is consistent with the organic metaphor of the Word of God as a spiritual seed. For inherent are the ideas of life and death and cycles of growth. The seed is sown into the earth, in its perishing bringing forth new life, going through various stages of growth, finally to produce again the original seed. The analogy is nigh, among a wealth of explanatory nuances, to the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, the Christ. The seed is sown into the human soul as the prophet speaks forth the Word (the capitalised singular is here employed to denote the living spiritual seed of God), thereby imparting life – spiritual, eternal life – to the hearer. It is Christ, the Word, which brings forth Christ – namely in the fullness of the season of life, and in accord with the divine decree that every seed promulgate after its own kind. Speaking then of Christ in his office as priest, we must invoke the further doctrine of universal fall and redemption. Humanity is conceived as in a fallen state, estranged from God and the authentic human calling, such that a redeemer is required. (Man, in his fallen condition, cannot repair his own estate – redemption can only be effected, so to speak, from above.) Christ is that redeemer and, in the words of St Paul, the high priest of our confession. A priest, traditionally, is one who effects reconciliation between God and man by offering the appropriate sacrifice. Indeed the notion of redemption through sacrifice is inherent in all human culture, throughout all societies – not only the archaic, but also the modern. However, the spiritual sacrifice as set forth in holy scripture is distinguished and wholly set apart from its carnal imitations. As revealed to the patriarch Abraham, it is characterised by the words Jehovah jireh – the Lord will provide – that is to say, the Lord will provide for himself a sacrifice. Christ, thus in keeping with the themes here developed, is not merely the presiding priest, but he is himself the sacrifice. The profundity of the incarnate Word, and the eternal God no less, as the sacrifice is such that it can never be exhausted. Suffice it here to say that his is the perfect and all-sufficient sacrifice – the sacrifice to end all sacrifice. It is the atonement and salvation of God to the soul that ‘believes’ – that is cognisant of its atoning virtue. Finally then we may speak of Christ as Lord and King. While being surely no less, namely as the universal creator and saviour, his kingship, likewise, is infinitely exalted above its earthly examples, to whit, the secular potentates who rule by force. His earthly ministry, as in Jesus of Nazareth, was rather characterised by the role of a servant – a trait which ought to distinguish his ministers yet today. As Philippians 2 puts it: Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name: That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Totally misplaced therefore is the attribution, as of a renowned atheist now deceased, of God as cosmic dictator. For Christ is the very heart of God, and the Spirit of Christ, symbolised in scripture by a dove, the most submissive thing in the universe. Indeed a principle is here established, such as was intuited observationally by the pagan philosopher Lao Tse, as to what constitutes authentic power and might. Many more things might be written of the one who is both God and intimate kin with humanity. His name, as wrote the prophet Isaiah, shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. He is the comforter, as the indwelling Holy Spirit, as also the divine physician, the healer and assuager of all affliction. Away therefore with the mythic and fictitious Christs of biblical revisionists. Exalted be the Christ of scripture as revealed to his prophets by the Spirit of God – Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today and forever. Harald Kleemann Arkangel Inauguration New England, March, 2012 |
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