Spiraling Toward the Irresistible

Personally knowing an artist can provide invaluable insight into the artwork he creates. Art is a response to an artist's surroundings, the effect of the causality of his life, and the artist's interpretation of reality. For this reason, even reading a biography of an artist can help someone distant from the artist in chronology, geography and culture enter into the artist's world and better understand any meaning the artist is attempting to put into his work.

Yet, in order to really know an artist, one must know their artwork. How can one claim to know someone without understanding their most passionate, perhaps personal expressions of self? To many artists, to understand their artwork is to understand the artist.

But if one cannot know the artist without knowing his art, nor the art without knowing the artist, how can there be any understanding between artist and consumer? Is there an impenetrable, closed circle of comprehension that only the artist can enter?

If there is any common understanding, there must be a point of entrance. And if a point of entrance can be achieved, then it is not a closed circle, but a hermenuetical spiral, wherein increasing knowledge of the artist and of the artwork aid the consumer in better understanding both. Once communication has begun, understanding is only limited by revelation.

In Book VII of Confessions, Augustine of Hippo tells the story of the moment of his conversion. He recalls being in a garden and hearing a small boy's voice saying in sing-song tone, "Take it up and read it . Take it up and read it." Curiously persuaded by the voice, he picked up his nearby Bible. Falling open to the Epistle to the Romans, the passage convicted Augustine of his immorality and started him on the path to becoming one of the most accomplished theologians ever to live. 

This was not Augustine's first exposure to Christian Scripture—he had dabbled in all sorts of religions previously, and his mother had taught him Scripture—but previous to this moment of conviction, true knowledge of God and Scripture had been a closed circle to him. Augustine's entry into covenantally knowing the Divine did not come of his own discerning, but rather, through an act of irresistible Divine self-revelation,  an otherwise closed circle became an inward spiral.

Jesus says, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." The poor in spirit are those who realize that they come to God possessing nothing—with no claim to grace or favor, no special understanding. It is from this point of human incapacity that God calls his children to himself, inviting them to the inward spiral, that they might live their lives in order to know Him better and more intimately. And, when all things are made right and the Blessed live forever, we will realize that in God's infinite beauty, there is always more to know, more to treasure, more reason to give to God all the glory.

Random Quote of the Week

"Said to represent sensuality and longing, artists have long used the pear as a provocative measure of our innate desires. One of the most appealing and desirable of the fruits, it is exotic and sexy, sweet with its juices and endless in its appeal."

Discuss.

The Grace of Understanding

Modern biblical interpretation is moving to increasingly accept the role of the reader in interpreting the biblical text. To those who prefer to place the authority and meaning of a text in authorial intent, this is a particularly troubling hermeneutic, as it opens up the door to a much greater degree of subjectivity than the typical historical-critical method.

However, the historical-critical method is not without its own faults, as it inevitably leads to exactly what it claims to be: criticism of history. At this point, we hear the voice of Gerhard von Rad, who argues that the Old Testament does not see itself as a history textbook, but rather, a history of Israel's religion, or, more helpfully, a story of God's faithfulness to his people Israel. This does not automatically eliminate historicity, but rather opens up a helpful way to view biblical narrative.

Given that the Bible is the inspired Word of God and that it tells a narrative story, we can conclude that in the Bible, we are essentially given a history book from the perspective of God. Not only does it contain the meta-narrative of salvation history, but (particularly in the prophets) we are given divine interpretations of historic events. 

When confronted with difficult times of hurt or confusion, the Bible does not often have a one-to-one parallel that provides a pat answer. However, by seeing how God has responded to and interpreted events in the past, we can know God's character and discern the proper perspective for our own situations. 

There are no easy answers for the couple that has lost a child, or the mother facing cancer, or to those who lose loved ones to war, disease, disaster or age. But we do have a record of God's faithfulness, and thus, legitimate reason for hope. It is hope in God's word (Psalm 119:147)—and He has promised to make all things right.

Figures...

I buy a year's subscription to The Atlantic Monthly, in large part to be able to access all of their online articles. 2 weeks later, they do this. 

Figures. At least now I can link to articles there and people will be able to read it.

Holy Sonnet VII

At the round earth's imagined corners blow

Your trumpets, angels, and arise, arise

From death, you numberless infinities

Of souls, and to your scattered bodies go,

All whom the flood did, and fire shall, overthrow,

All whom war, dearth, age, agues, tyrannies,

Despair, law, chance, hath slain, and you whose eyes

Shall behold God, and never taste death's woe.

But let them sleep, Lord, and me mourn a space,

For, if above all these my sins abound,

'Tis late to ask abundance of Thy grace,

When we are there. Here on this lowly ground

Teach me how to repent; for that's as good

As if Thou'dst sealed my pardon, with Thy blood.

-John Donne

The Divine Culture

Be a good Berean (Acts 17.11)...

Suppose the economy of relationship between the members of the Triune Godhead can be described in terms of culture. In seeing the perfect God, we can assume the interactions between the perfectly communing persons of the Godhead to be equally perfectly loving —indeed, we see this typification in Scripture through the deference of the Son to the Father and the harmonious purpose of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

Can this culture be commuted into human terms? Though we can label in acts of God with our words, our descriptions fails to express the ineffable—and our comprehension of our words comes up all the more short. Yet in Scripture we see revealed a human application of the divine culture.

What was Eden, but man communing with God? Man, living by God's terms, partakes in the divine culture.

Though not doctrine to hang your hat on, ponder the Pentateuchal law as God's revelation of his divine culture to man: a means by which to live lovingly in relation to God and to one another. The failure of Israel to enact this is easily noted.

The Incarnation is the gate through which humanity becomes able to enter into the divine culture. As new creations in Christ, believers are called to the deep princples of love for God and neighbor—empowered by the Holy Spirit through the work of Christ.

The Christian dies to self and human culture and is made a new creation in the divine culture, communing with God through Christ. The Gospel transcends culture in that it brings a new, transcendent culture to replace the finite, fallen human culture.

et incarnatus est

It takes a measure of presumption to write about a truly great thing. Great ideas and truths resist expression; pithy explanations provide inevitably simplistic representations of a greater reality.

I confess to presume much in speaking of the Incarnation. So great is this truth that, in the act of looking at and considering the Incarnation, one inescapably neglects part of the truth—the mind can only ponder a small part of its profundity. To speak of it presumes to comprehend the incomprehensible; to explain it is to confirm one’s ignorance. Yet this truth must be spoken of: It is the Good News. The Advent itself is the reason one can speak of the Incarnation.

Yet worse than arrogantly approaching so great a truth as this is to fail to approach it at all, to settle for the trite aphorisms and emotional stories that are but trivial expressions of lesser ideas. To fail to reflect on the Incarnation—not just during Advent but at all times—is to neglect the single most important truth man has known. To fail to mull over it, allowing it to transform your life, is to remain a lesser person. We must approach such great truths as the Incarnation humbly, hoping to glimpse a small part of the whole in an illuminating way.

The patriarch Tertullian was best known for his statement, “What does Athens have to do with Jerusalem?” Tertullian was adamantly against attempting to prove propositional truths of Scripture through the logic and philosophies of Athens. In this regard, he may understand the Apostle Paul’s concerns in his letters to the Corinthians better than most. The Christian must ultimately realize, as Tertullian unwaveringly taught, that faith does not hinge on a rational consistency, but rather a fundamental absurdity: the Creator took on flesh. The single most important truth the Christian faith rests upon is entirely resistant to logic.

The Christ event is a radical reorienting of logic. To be truly great, make yourself small. As the Apostle says,

“Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knew should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

Phillipians 2:5-11

Inasmuch as Christ is modeling the transformed mindset of living (“have this mind among yourselves”), the Christian mind is to reject the call of the world to make oneself great, but instead, make oneself nothing. The ultimate end of Christ’s earthly mission was “the glory of God the Father.” So too, the redeemed Christian in humbling himself is restored to his intended function: highlighting the glory of God the Father.

Reflect on the lowliness of Christ: Almighty God taking on flesh, taking human form in the lowliest of states, growing up thought to be a bastard child, living a life of service to others, to the point of death, even the shameful, horrific death on a cross. The propositional truth we must realize is that apart from Christ’s salvific work we are more pathetic and hopeless even in our loftiest moments than the scoffers thought Christ to be. Embrace the objective reality of the sinner’s need for a Savior. Walk in the path of the Messiah. Have faith in the most absurd of realities; it is the only one that truly matters.