external linksHoly Scripture Searchable Online Bibles And Other Resources Biblios Bible Gateway Blue Letter Bible Christian Ministry Text and Audio Messages of the Prophet / Evangelist William Marrion Branham ChurchAges.com Living Word Broadcast Literary Resources Texts broadly relevant to the Christian heritage and worldview Christian Etherial Classics Library |
Tuesday, February 3. 2015Refuting Einstein With A Flashlight
When I think of secular critics of the Bible, such as the so-called new atheists, I am reminded of a cartoon depicting popular incredulity concerning Einstein’s theories when these first gained cultural currency. Demonstrated with a flashlight (in the cartoon) is the fact that light doesn’t go round a corner; it travels in a straight line. Einstein is therefore refuted.
My point is that an appreciation of relativity theory requires a measure of scientific literacy, along with at least an intuitive grasp of the subtle concepts involved. And so, of course, it is with the Bible – in that a certain qualification is required for its spiritually meaningful apprehension. The scriptures themselves are quite overt and emphatic on this point. Mathew 11:25 At that time Jesus answered and said, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes. John 8:31-32 Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. Isaiah 28:9 Whom shall he teach knowledge? and whom shall he make to understand doctrine? them that are weaned from the milk, and drawn from the breasts. Isaiah 55:8-9 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. It is revealed to babes – to those, according to John 3:5, born of water and spirit. In Isaiah this is qualified somewhat, showing that it is not exactly the newborn who accede to doctrine and knowledge, but those that are weaned from the milk and drawn from the breasts. John again concurs, Jesus stating: If ye continue in my word ... ye shall know the truth ... Truth, in other words, is revealed to those who persist – not to those who set out, or merely take a dip. One can only wonder then at the brazen confidence exhibited by our critics in the altogether unfounded assumption that they are able to read the Bible and pontificate concerning its content. Yet from their perspective the matter is clear. We moderns are infinitely more sophisticated than the primitives who wrote the Bible, and what with a liberal arts education, or some comparative religion, anyone is suitably equipped to deal with the relevant texts. It is noteworthy that even C. S. Lewis fell into this error – namely in the belief that he, the self-confessed layman of the Church of England, should be competent to pronounce on diverse aspects of holy scripture. But this, of course, is consonant with the intellectual culture of our age. The emphasis, the basic assumption, within our modern seminaries is that Christ is apprehended through scholarship – that it is doctorates and ordinations which enable a man to pronounce on spiritual truth. Yet as the quoted passages indicate, this assumption is false. If thus the 'church' cannot get it right, it's reactionary critics are - inevitably - twice confounded. So concerning our dialogue with the kind of militant and vociferous atheists cited, it suffices to observe that they have no idea what they are talking about. Tuesday, February 3. 2015God Hiding In Plain View
This thing was not done in a corner, it is stated of Paul in Acts 26, concerning the passion of Christ. Effectively the whole world bore witness, although the tremors registered but faintly through the halls of worldly power. It is no different today. The image of the Crucified is a universal icon. Whether by divine foreknowledge or accident of history, this image and its surrounding narratives have become intrinsic to what we call the Western canon. They are in our face, so to speak.
It is ironic then that spiritual seekers – in ages past no less then today – disdain the transmission in plain view, and seek for knowledge in realms of the esoteric, the hidden or occult. The Bible cannot be trusted, it is claimed – it has been edited, expurgated and contrived in accord with a sinister agenda. At best its asseverations pertain to the shallow and exoteric, to the outer courts of conventional understanding and myopic religion. For the real spiritual meat one must enquire among hidden and secret documents, among spiritual lineages suppressed and persecuted, among Hermeticists and Gnostics, perhaps in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Nag Hammadi texts, in the writings of the Essenes and the perennial lore of the Grail. Such is the claim. While we might welcome this broader historic and cultural perspective, we know the essential claim to be false. Our biblical source documents, extant in thousands of manuscript copies, are remarkably consistent. Variants do occur, likewise in their thousands, but these are mostly transcription errors, such as the occasional word being omitted or misspelled. There is nothing to call into question the essential purport of the documents. Concerning biblical critics, one has the impression rather that such as seek to undermine the integrity of scripture are motivated by ulterior considerations. They are offended by its content – that content or purport, as they perceive it. As to the other claim, that of extra-biblical wells of the sublime and profound, one might ask what sublime and profound which is not also intrinsic to biblical scripture? The problem here is that no-one understands the Bible, and the majority of would-be critics – here one thinks of the so-called new atheists – do not even know its content. The churches are beholden of their non-biblical creeds, and secular critics have the overt historic church in their sights, thus being twice confounded and removed from the spiritual heart of the matter. Concerning the biblical transmission then, the God of the Bible is indeed hiding in plain view. The biblical legacy is ‘out there’ in the public domain, its text ubiquitous in millions of copies. It is hailed, expounded, debated and derided. And yet ... its purport is a mystery. This legacy, this presence, is rather like a beacon or ensign. It is saying, here I am, here is something ... But beyond that all is conjecture and confusion, a melee of claims and counterclaims, of creeds and sects and cults and traditions – namely insofar as the public eye and mind is concerned. Spiritually speaking, we assert hat God is hiding in his Word – that the Word (i.e. the canon of scripture) functions as a spiritual veil. The Word is also synonymous with the spiritual body – that is, through the sacrifice of the Word the spirit is released and God is beheld face to face. This is the significance of the atoning death of the cross, and of the new or spiritual birth. But, as the apostle further observed, there are none that understand. Saturday, December 21. 2013On Self-Refuting Materialism
An injustice, no doubt, to Geber – the 16th century alchemist, distinguished for his cryptic style – is the characterisation of anything as gibberish. But such is the English usage, and it remains to consider some modern gems of the genre, as uttered by self-confessed rationalists in support of naturalism or materialism.
As statements, these examples are analogous in form and content, and thus characterised by the same self-refuting logic – or illogic – typical of such arguments, showing not only that they cannot possibly be true, but that they indeed are void of meaningful assertion. They are, in a word, gibberish. 1. States philosopher John Shook: Naturalism is the view that the only reality is the physical universe of energy and matter as gradually discovered by experience, reason and science. (In debate with Christian apologist William Lane Craig, and on his website, naturalisms.org – although the statement now appears to have been removed, Shook perhaps realising its absurdity.) Physical nature here is defined as the putative object – as the one thing real – whereas experience, reason, and science, these things are gratuitous. The whole subjective apparatus, as ultimately grounded in consciousness, is simply taken for granted. It surely exists – insofar as it does the discovering – but in a curiously abstract, primary, and unacknowledged sense, which is not itself subject to scrutiny. The thing to be explained in Shook’s universe are energy and matter – the only thing real – whereas mind or consciousness, although surely an equal mystery, are evidently not within the field of vision. An analogy, for better or worse, is that of a man at the cinema. He is focused entirely on the big screen, not considering that the enthralling images he beholds are dependent on a projection apparatus – an apparatus pertaining to an ontological order entirely other than the objects of his attention. On a certain level he knows it’s there, but his focus is the movie. In a curious sense he, himself, has become a character in a secondary reality – abstracted and idealised – of exclusively physical entities. He regards the movie as a dynamically closed and independently existing system – entirely unaware of its secondary and contingent nature. 2. States eminent physicist Victor Stenger in an article entitled Quantum Quackery (Skeptical Enquirer, February 1997): Quantum physics is claimed to support the mystical notion that the mind creates reality. However, an objective reality, with no special role for consciousness, human or cosmic, is consistent with all observations. The jewel here is obviously the retort – an objective reality, with no special role for consciousness, human or cosmic, is consistent with all observations – no doubt uttered with a straight face, and oblivious to the massive self-contradiction it contains. Let us consider the elements in this formulation. Again we encounter objective reality – we encounter no special role for consciousness – the whole of which is said to be consistent with all observations. The decisive benchmark in this formulation is, clearly, observation – all observations. It is observation which reveals an objective reality, without any special role for consciousness, either human or cosmic. But what is observation, if not an event in consciousness? Any observation presupposes the ground of mind or consciousness as an intrinsic primary given. So we may paraphrase: An objective reality with no special role for consciousness, human or cosmic, is consistent with the intrinsic primacy of consciousness. Self-evident nonsense! The assumed emphasis in both examples is upon the empirical object – the physical or material universe. The fact of apprehension of such an object, by which alone it is manifest as an observed phenomenon, is entirely taken for granted. The observing consciousness – the fact that there exists a conscious expanse, a luminous window upon reality – these are considered a side issue, of no special significance or interest. Although ontologically fundamental to all human experience, they are placed outside the observational frame of reference, namely in deference to the sacred object – the idol of materialism which they disclose. Whereas in human experience the ostensible subjective and objective form an inseparable whole, this integral whole is denied in the context of these formulations. As thus exemplified, the materialist worldview is maintained by dividing the universe into two, discarding one half (arguably the interesting and significant half), and constructing its epistemological edifice of the half remaining. The materialist conclusion is thus a necessarily consequence which follows trivially from the myopic focus employed. Significant and revealing in these formulations, however, is the implicit primacy of consciousness as a gratuitous primordial given. As outside the observational natural / material frame of reference, it is implicitly accorded transcendent status, however inadvertent the attribution may be. Similarly transcendent in this regard is the observer, a being which hovers, ghostly and godlike, in the pure ether of Platonic abstraction. Indeed, like water to a fish, it would seem that mind or consciousness is too basic a phenomenon, at least for some observers, to seriously weigh in the empirical balance. As to the objective universe, it subsists, suspended within the hermetically sealed hypersphere of epistemological isolation, a bubble within the transcendent void which is the ground of observation and rational thought. What can we make of such skewed perceptions? One might think that the phenomenon constitutes a rare psychological disorder – and perhaps indeed it does, so that its seeming prevalence in the academic sphere is merely a matter of the disproportionate amount of noise it tends to generate. The simplest explanation I can adduce is that of cultural conditioning. In short, the materialist creed is hammered with slogans, with unexamined rationalisations, which conceal a metaphysical axe to grind concerning any notion of transcendence. The result is ideology – the inability to see what is plainly before one’s eyes. Monday, July 15. 2013But Is It Science ? - Intelligent Design And Other Controversies
The reactionary brigade in any field of science, given its usual intellectual constraints, adheres to fundamentalisms that often coalesce into slogans. It’s not science! they are wont to exclaim concerning any field, hypothesis or concept, which challenges their categories in too radical a manner. One area of enquiry thus dismissed is that of Intelligent Design – briefly, the idea that the highly ordered complexity observed in nature is best explained by an intelligent cause. Here it is mostly the pro-Darwin lobby, with moral support from philosophical materialists in general, which maintains the charge that ... Intelligent Design is not science.
Let us then examine the statement (as a class of assertion of the type described, and with specific reference to Intelligent Design theory) ‘such-and-such is not science’. What can we make of the statement, ‘X is not science’? Well, it’s firstly not saying anything profound in the sense of engendering insight or fertility of ideas. It’s more like, X is not science – end of story. The implicit meta-statement is of disengagement, of keeping the matter at arm’s length. Thus already we see some dissonance between the overt statement and its implicit purport. Prima facie the claim is of an analytical nature, purporting to say something about its object – Intelligent Design. What it rather discloses, however, is its own inherent stance, saying in effect, I cannot / will not engage with the matter. But even this is all quite immaterial insofar we are dealing with what, on closer scrutiny, turns out to be a non-statement. That’s right – the assertion ‘X is not science’ is quite meaningless. And let us be emphatic here: It is pure gibberish. For let us consider what its champions would needs be implying, namely that conceptual entities such as fields of enquiry – ideas, conjectures, theoretical constructs – come ready-labelled, as the case may be, with the appropriate designations – such as science, non-science, and of course pseudo-science – and that they (bold, dauntless, and independent thinkers that they are) can detect these labels. But this, of course, is pure nonsense. Nature does not come thus ready-labelled for the convenience of ostensible sceptics, whose intellectual horizons preclude engagement across paradigm boundaries. It is not that ‘science’, as a mystical quality, somehow adheres to fields, to theories and ideas. It is whether the question at hand – whatever it is – is engaged in a scientific manner. This would seem elementary. Yet it continues to elude our self-appointed vigilante guardians of permissible ideas. Thus, in stating that such-and-such is not science, they are saying in effect that it is they who lack the ability to consider the matter scientifically – whether for want of the requisite intellectual tools or, as is more typically the case, out of philosophical paradigm constraints. The deficiency, as per our example of Intelligent Design, thus does not inhere in the field under consideration, but in its critics. Sunday, July 14. 2013
Faith Is The Rock - On The Human ... Posted by Harald Kleemann
in Apologetics, Commentary, Holy Scripture at
16:45
Faith Is The Rock - On The Human Need To Believe ... Something
The stability of the mind is predicated on faith, where by faith we essentially mean that intuitive synthesis which unifies our myriad thoughts and impressions into a coherent worldview. This is why, in scripture, faith or revelation – the terms are synonymous – is called the rock, the foundation. ‘Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona (Mathew 16:17-18): for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven. And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church ... It is the revelation, according to the saviour, which is the rock, the foundation, of the Christian worldview – specifically, the revelation of who he is that is speaking ... namely, the Christ.
The present example, along with New Testament usage in general, thus speaks of a specific faith – that informed by the revelation of Jesus Christ. This is what is meant in scripture when it is spoken of the faith. But, as modern usage also has it, there are many ‘faiths’ – persuasions, worldviews, paradigms of the real – such that the concept should also be understood in the larger sense outlined above – the faculty of intuitive synthesis by which the mind reaches a resultant, a conclusion, concerning the nature of reality. Religious critics, of course, claim that it is reason – not faith – which rightly occupies this place of chief organising principle in the realm of mind – or that at least it ought, as it does for those sober, right-minded individuals, whose self-defined identity is of a vaunted rationalism. But this is simply not well observed. The reason is undergirded by faith, by the implicit assumption that reality is such-and-such, where that assumption involves a quasi infinitude of constituent beliefs, most of them so properly basic to human sensibility and culture that they rarely come up for scrutiny, let alone any serious questioning. Faith is accordingly the primordial substance of experience – it goes to the root, as indeed it is the root – and it fills the vast expanse of awareness, delivering a universe out of chaos. The reason, by contrast, arrives late on the scene, as a graft implanted into the tree of faith. It proceeds to analyse on the fractal edge of cognition and proclaims, aha, aha, I can explain ... not recognising for the most part that all reasoning is circular, a closed entropic sphere, suspended without support in the illimitable void. Where the reason gains purchase, harnessing electricity, for instance, and conjuring a glittering techno-sphere out of the void, it is only because it is nurtured, sustained, imbued with substance – the substance – which is faith. When thus understood we see that faith – what we call faith – is not narrowly religious in implication, although it is indeed religious in the broad sense of a binding or covering of the nakedness of the soul. In Genesis 3 it is spoken of that covering – as fashioned by man, and as provided by God. Both are ultimately of faith, although differing in the way they are informed, such that faith is prior, foundational and intrinsic, to any worldview one comes to espouse – whether materialist or mystical. It is this broader understanding which is basic to an appreciation of the nature of faith, although scriptural usage is typically more specific with implicit reference to the good faith – the faith of God as conveyed in the revelation of Jesus Christ. Faith, in this more specific sense, is thus typically distinguished from wisdom of knowledge, where the latter refers to that relative and partial knowledge – of observation and reason – as it were, an extraneous shoot, grafted into the Tree of Life – that primordial Tree in the Garden of God, which is of the nature of faith – meaning the good faith, unalloyed by knowledge or reason. It is in this specific sense, as per the Pauline asseveration, that faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. However, not all faith is thus positive, given the broader use of the term. There is such a thing as faith or intuition gone awry, and here we speak of superstition. Clearly then, the intuition, although primary to the reason, is not infallible. As stated, it is a question of information – of how a mind is informed. It is the quality of information which determines the matter – in the religious as in the scientific domain. And here the reason, to render its due, may serve as a corrective. Indeed, it is here that the essential function of the reason is apparent – that of criticising ideas. It is intuition which generates ideas. Without intuition – or faith – there is are no ideas, and so, no universe. All would be chaos as the reason undermines itself in the conflagration of radical doubt. There would be no world, no sensible cosmos – no self, no other, so subject or object – nothing upon which to base a single proposition, which demonstrates that faith is indeed the rock – the core and foundational principle in the realm of mental organisation. The mind or soul must needs believe something insofar as its very existence is predicated upon, and comprised of that, something. The madman – the insight, I believe is due to the psychiatrist Russell Meares – has not lost his reason; he has all but his reason. Herein moreover lie the grounds for entrenched pathology of belief – for ideology, superstition or faith in the negative sense – that the soul thus misinformed would rather cling to its dysfunctional beliefs, than face existential annihilation in the exposure of rampant all-consuming doubt. It is called the abyss and the dark night of the soul – this radical dissolution of all certainty – and as a passage if initiation, of individuation, of spiritual transformation, it is universally recognised as central to the formation of a viable soul. As also observed Carl Gustav Jung, psychosis is the most direct, if the most perilous, path to individuation. It is perilous indeed, considering the weight of cultural sanctions that are ranged against it. And yet, the experience, in the nature of things, need not be traumatic. It may be of blissful rapture, as per the example of the spiritual birth which is the true Pentecost. The relative ease of the passage is determined by the soul’s inherent disposition as by the spiritual agencies supervening. And whereas the assignation is primarily for the perfecting of the saints (as on this side of the grave), in the greater cosmic context it is the destiny of souls universally. The reason for this is that culture is a lie – a contrivance, an accommodation – namely in its formal institutional conventions. In the cosmological and spiritual asymptote which is the singularity – the biblical Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end – the soul confronts the ground from which it arose, and thus its original and authentic nature. All contrivance, all that is of artifice, falls away in the disclosure of that which is intrinsic. There is a faith then which is natural and uncontrived. It is the rock, the foundation, as the Bible states, and it is the faith as once delivered to the saints. As states Deuteronomy, the book of the two laws (33:27): The eternal God is your refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms. 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. 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! |
QuicksearchArchivesCategoriesCalendar
Syndicate This BlogArkangelArkangel is the weblog of writer Harald Kleemann, specifically regarding his work on biblical Christianity. Readers’ comments are naturally their own and their appearing on this site should not be taken to signify approbation by Arkangel, which is to say, its author. The same applies to linked material offsite, which should be taken on its own merits.
Readers may note that comments and trackbacks are not presently enabled. |