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Chapter 7
WISDOM, ITS ENCLAVES, SLAVES AND FRIENDS
SURVEY
Schopenhauer was strong on the WILL, but his will did not prevail, since being willing is not enough: your will must find the till. That is, power is needed, without which progress is nil.
Hegel sought to find a METHOD by which power might mount. The thesis of thought would be met by the antithesis of reaction and the synthesis of resultant would 'arise' and progress be made. But for this too, you need the power. Synthesis is mere ideational correlation; it creates thought, not its implementation ? That is another affair. Moreover, correlation even of ideational structures is far from true synthesis, where actualities, not mere mentalities, become conjoined in some schema of pre-fashioned wisdom to make some adjusted envisioned sympathy of art. Creation is far more than moderation, and if it were not, it could never begin.
Marx sought to materialise the affairs of Hegel, and made social dynamics the ingredients; but though these have power to persecute and impose, theirs is not the power to create any more than is the case in the ideational realm. They may conspire, construe, imbue, they may execute designs, they may confront, affront and to a marvel insist in effrontery on this or that front in their pseudo-imperial push of will, and try to make history pick up the tabs as responsible. Yet this it cannot. It is the will of man pushing in power structures to get its way, and though there be combinations and assassinations and persecutions, yet there is nothing of progress in mere syntheses of wickedness, combinations of corruption or issuances of eruption.
Moreover, for none of the systems of meddling thought, pushing God aside as if a child his parents when considering what he is, only infinitely worse, is there verification. There is no consolation in history, whether of ideas or of deeds, in mere vagrancy, whatever may be its cumbrous verbal loadings*1.
Wisdom is higher than these, as God is above history with its shoddy deals of imperial might, royal right and ruinous persecutions by the least of men in the greatest places of power (cf. Acts 17:26ff., Daniel 4:17, Isaiah 4:25-45:6).
In fact, what IS seen over time is this. There is in reality, a fascinating wisdom in the very cells of the body. Denton has majored on this, pointing out that the very concept of intermediate, on-the- way cells, is ludicrous, empirically negatived to the uttermost. Cells come with no ephemeral majesty of conception and construction, from the first, but with condign wisdom and unabbreviated compositive grandeur. So as Dr Denton declares, the continuity so dear to the evolutionary heart, is found only in the evolutionary mind: it is not so in nature*1A, either micro-biologically or empirically in grosser structures. What DOES come in fact, it is this.
The cells SHOW a wisdom in their construction in which they share as composite and composed entities not at all. They exhibit, but do not contribute. The multicellular productions are no better, being merely on a vaster scale of complexity, with more organisational flair shown, but no consciousness of their condition, though they are more equipped with response procedures.
The forthcoming creatures of instinct go much further, and without in the least having power to conceive, they have power to react and at times, to respond differently according to the stature of their ectype (the term here used for their unitary and integral nature in terms of the endowments by which they are knowable, citable and characterisable). Instincts, as in the case of dogs for example, and beavers, can be adroitly used for pondering, probing and selecting with other processes of estimation at work synthetically.
More equipment makes for greater complexity of options, and more individuality of action.
When we come to the more advanced classes, such as beavers mentioned, there is a veritable prodigy of engineering skill directly imparted, which may be pursued, not merely programmatically, but with persevering persistence, and in times of trouble, artful determination and no small intelligence.
The WISDOM which from the first was IN the cell as an EXHIBIT, but in no way as an available commodity for individual action, now is becoming more manifest, and the interface between Creator and creature is becoming far richer and more meaningful in its inter-relationships, through higher and higher orders of conceptual impartation, with increased participatory potential. In the special case of dog or horse and man, there is even provision (nothing happens without its basis) for an increment of heart, understanding and procedural sophistication in the animal, in its co-operation and knowledge of man, so that there is room for ideals, derivative rather than thought out it appears, and yet not merely programmatically so, but ectypally individualised. We have here what might perhaps be called a pseudo-personal function in the animal, a potential activatable by the actual personal reality in man.
With man, we come to a cognition which is able consciously, and purposively to INVESTIGATE the nature of the wisdom inherited, embraced and displayed in his physical construction, and to some extent, in the underlying equipment used in the operations of his mind, that organisational marvel, the brain and central nervous systems, with their varied sympathetic additives (cf. SMR pp. 316Dff.).
Moreover, desiring to be wise, through his adventuring spirit and roving, imaginative realiser of realities, he is able to select actions - which to him seem to possess this feature in terms of his own dissertations, information and purpose. Political purposes sometimes ensue, and here at a yet more aggregate level, man may display a conscious desire for wisdom, inventing laws that do not exist and fail to display themselves, as in Communism*2, or authority which fails to justify itself from its own stated source, as in Romanism (cf. SMR pp. 1032-1088H), or precisely the same, as in Islam (cf. More Marvels Ch. 4). These three PHYSICAL scourges to mankind (as historically they have in fact been) are among men, as was Nazism. There is a cherishing some dream, such as man in his ideal-seeking, parameters-investigating, soul-solace seeking, spirit's master desiring mode, all derivatives of the actual God who made Him, through misadventure. For this, then, those so induced, for this or that perspective that they may feel to be true, insist on thrusting it into the midst of mankind, so that earth's billions might be re-made after the image of the dream.
Millions have died in the process, many with torture, either social, or physical, or financial, and at times mental, as when in the Inquisition, people might be afflicted with priestly ministrations, wrought by those seeking to subdue their spirits even in their misery, to invest their minds with their dreams and control them.
Communism has done something not far different, while the use of terror by some in Islam, is a at this point, a psychological weapon even at the political level, and this tests the reality of reason in some, and the liability to treason in others, who may capitulate to force, just as did some in the days of the Inquisition, and in those of militant European and Chinese Communism (cf. News 37,98, 97, SMR pp.971ff.), where traitors as in other cases, could arise to help betray a nation, a counterpart to the Quisling mentality, relative to Nazism, in the case of that Norwegian.
Prescriptions for man through the use of the potential for rational thought and investigation of wisdom through glazed lenses, distorted by will, greed, pride or dominating desire have made of many epochs times of horror, the invention of cruelties and enormities of ignominy and sheer devilry, where wisdom is defaced, man is defiled and arrogance bears children in mazes of short-circuited mentality, for a time progressing and prospering in wickedness through immoralities which are the substitute for immortality.
Yet man's power to consider wisdom is all the more obvious by these distortions, abortions and contortions of what is displayed in his own construction. The liberty at man's hand is shown the greater by the mankind-hater, who imagining himself lord, acts the fool with imperturbable irrelevance to truth, founding himself on himself or on his self-induced parameters (cf. II Cor. 10:13), until the eventual fall of the dream-founded system saves many from thralldom, and leads some away to look from a little distance.
Thus, for the time are they delivered from being enthralled with the hypnotic-seeming powers of earth's tormentors. So may some escape from being embroiled in the interminable seeming passages of the towers of untruth which man is so often making, ever since Babel (Genesis 11).
The counter-God culture*3 thus proliferates, multiplies, becomes despicable, dies and re-authorises itself as man seeks to oppose the declaration in the Bible, of the wisdom seen in his cells, in modes suitable for his ectype, for his spirit*4.
REVIEW
Thus we have moved over time from the mere implicit wisdom of the cell, that is, as seen in its construction by us, though the cell itself be witless of it, to compounding premises in which this wisdom is more and more complexly exhibited, then sensed, then applied differentially in terms of more and more adventurous ectypes, until at last, man comes into the possession of an analytical instrument, his mind. By this, he proceeds to seek to find the verifiable evidences of wisdom, and to some extent, to copy these, as in the case of avine flight and many chemical processes (photosynthesis involving much of this type, for example). No less his is a spirit which can at will rebel against his own findings, or using them confirm his passage to the only verifiable book of declaration of the will of the Creator for man, the Bible *5.
Thus has wisdom visited this globe, and does it display itself at the microbiological level in secrets even now being progressively unlocked, and in degrees staggering to contemplate, when any attempt to duplicate them is sought (as in the case of the human spirit, its ideational syntheses and symphonies of creation, in art and literature, engineering and politics). It is that spirit which displays itself in interface option for man, to an astounding degree, even to the point that the Creator is willing to act in the presence of the man who acts in the presence of that unseen but impelling Power and Mind, Grace and Beneficence of the Creator. Seen from afar it is one thing; experienced in co-operative humility, by which He condescends to be friend and director both without conflict, it is by its very intimacy, more noble than the magnificence of the starry universe, cleaner than the lake in the hinterland of the Alps, more splendid than the sunrise.
So has there been a movement over time, in a progressive but discontinuous series of creations at phases and stages of exhibition of wisdom, leading on to stages and phases in turn, of its availability for consideration. It is that, and not deployment, which is in view, for God remains God, and man is the one invented, albeit made in the image, as a derivative, of the Lord. Hence his fashion of empty passions, when he opts for alienation from God and hence from realism, and His bliss when like a cat by the fire, anon by the mouse, he finds his place: and such a place it is!
Thus is man mastered, and then does he deploy his gifts (cf. Psalm 68:18) in a conscious co-operation with Him who is both sublime and divine. In this, naturally for the supernatural, it is wisdom who remains in charge, being a phase of the functionalities of the Creator Himself (cf. I Corinthians 1:30, Proverbs 8).
As with persons, divine wisdom is not available by itself, though it is possible to consider it to some extent as above, in isolation for the purpose of considering its movements. The personal God, the Creator whose wisdom in these upgrading displays becomes more and more available to man, first as he surveys the scene before him, and then considers himself in terms of the Maker of the scenario: it is He who needs to be known as in Jeremiah 9:23ff..
Wisdom may become a way towards Him; but just as man has shown horrid hiatus in wisdom in his blasé and blighting mischiefs of misconception in philosophy (cf. SMR Chs. 3, and 10, SMR pp. 422Eff.), of personality*6 and of politics as above, and of self-conception, some imagining themselves machines in the relevant industrial revolutionary Age, and some as gods, in the illusionist Age now in progress: so there is need both on the national, yes the international and the personal level, for man to repent. He has in general little inclination to do so; and would quite often seem to prefer the lingering death of his partial and peculiar prejudices than repentance.
Naturally, it is only then that the supernatural God can be known; for since He is a Spirit, whose wisdom gives matter its internal natter, discipline, functionality and emplacement, form and feature, limits, imposed constraints, law and interface machinery internally, and then externally with mental and spiritual enduements in man, there is need for man in spirit to reach out for Him. It is no small thing when the infinite God is concerned; but then, when He has bent His mind to make man so clearly in His image, in co-ordinate capacity for fellowship, it is a design feature which though sin has wrecked it, and man has found vengeance for his inventions in his desolations and desolatory actions, yet God has restored it on His own terms.
This repentance is not only emotional, but practical. You CANNOT do right by simply PURSUING the WRONG WAY, GO BACK path in the face of its wisdom. You HAVE to turn back; and the more total is the wisdom of the power which places the wisdom, the more certain is the need to repent.
In point of fact, God commands all men everywhere to repent (Acts 17:30-31), and this is the preliminary in logical sequence, to finding. The next step, as in all finding, is to look where HE IS. In the quest when it is for the Lord, this is a spiritual rather than a geometrical matter, and as we read in Isaiah 55, it is a question of looking in the place for visiting to which He has summoned man and of which He has made declaration (Isaiah 52:7 cf. SMR pp. 611ff., 582ff.), even Jesus Christ the righteous, the Prince of Peace and the Saviour from sin.
The construction of man was in wisdom, and the reconstruction for the human spirit is no less so; and as the first is correlative to clever encoding to ENABLE LIFE, so the latter is confronted with verbal code, to ENABLE ACCEPTANCE by the Author of life.
This former being the physical structure for man, into which spirit is poured for operational reality, the latter is in parallel, the Bible.
APPLICATION
This there is need to follow to the Saviour, Jesus Christ, and Him through the penal and substitutionary sufferings (Galatians 3, Matthew 20:28) for those who receive Him, and thus to pardon (Isaiah 61, Luke 4) and so to procurement as an adopted child of God (Ephesians 1:5 - His plan, as is our creation in the first place). As God is a spirit, this involves a change of spirit in man, to relate harmoniously and functionally: a regeneration as it is called (Titus 3, John 3); and that brings on a newness of life which is the spiritual equivalent of a heart-transplant, except in this, that it is total (Romans 8:3-14).
Thus has wisdom her flower and bower; and then is the wisdom which in man came with opportunities for contemplation of his Maker, brought to the consciousness of its Creator. With this, finding Him as Saviour with the sensing of His presence, the knowledge of His priorities (rather like a pilot who belatedly becomes aware of the instruments in front of him whenever he climbs into the cockpit), and the power of His spirit now moving within him, comes rest. It is rather like a man's spirit communing with his loving and faithful hound, for whom he moves or reproves. With God and man, it is far deeper, for man is thus stabilised (truth in man - Isaiah 33:6) and mobilised for meaningful action according to His design and Designer (Ephesians 3:16, Acts 16). Error meanwhile is destabilised, causing growth by grace, in knowledge and wisdom.
With what a beautiful aptitude and realism does Job 28 deal with this topic. Wisdom is not to be found in this or that place, never so deep, high or abstrusely hidden. Death and destruction have heard of it (no doubt, not seeing it too often, in the madcap slaughtering capers of man); but no, it is not there. It is found in the God of creation, whose diversities of disposition merely exhibit by multiplied methodologies, the brilliance and ease of His power.
So is it too with the Gospel: its brilliance lies in its simplicity; its wisdom in its profundity, its grace of the fact that the main burden bearer is God, not man. That is part of its liberty; and the Spirit of God is another (II Cor. 3:17), who moves in, moulds and brings increasing mastery to man in a submissive spirit toward his Maker, a friendly companionship irrevocably interwoven, and a bold and fearless disposition to his own domain, where he is commissioned, first to discover, and then to subdue, and lastly to bring the marvel of the Gospel.
Thus does any doctor, when nothing but antibiotic will do, specialise on it in the case of such a type! There is, says Peter (Acts 4:11-12), no other name, by which salvation is to be obtained; and it MUST be obtained. What else ? is the name of the Lord to be taken or not ? (cf. Isaiah 48:16, John 8:58). There is no other. There is no other Saviour (Isaiah 43:19-45:12).
God as Christ IS the only Saviour and as such has He manifested Himself definitively (cf. Luke 2:11, Isaiah 53,Philippians 2, Colossians 1:19,2:9, Revelation 2:8, Isaiah 44:6).
How marvellous are God's creative dispositions of wisdom, how vast is His enterprise, and how prized is His grace for the human race; yet how realistic His judgments, as Amos 4 portrays with a simple severity amid magnificent mercy; and how keen the call to find this wisdom. Proverbs 1 is one of the most evocative of such calls in the Bible, while Proverbs 8 shows the wisdom behind it!
Gracious in all His ways, the Lord has much scope for grace in the disgrace of His image-made creation, man! The extent however of this creation's follies is so great that it the more multiplies, as in composite lenses, the more magnifies as in bright light, the wisdom of the Lord's grace and the wonder of His provisions which do not limit themselves to words, as in our DNA, but are found in deeds. It is not a mere architectural or verbally released plan; but it is realised and relased, it is so placed and emplaced as to become operative (like the CEO's decision to build cars becoming operative in a most astutely built and organised factory).
Nor is it limited for our spirits to words to understand, as in the Bible, though this is the total extent of the authorised, written declamation of deity to mankind (cf. SMR Appendix C and D); but it extends to the power to implement them, both promises and principles, both judgments and pardon.
Praise the Lord! Why ? there is every reason to do so, that is why!
END NOTES
Christ's Ineffable Peace and Grace Ch. 7 (esp. *1 on historicism)
Dig Deeper, Higher Soar Ch. 2, *4A
Bon Voyage Chs. 1, 2 - 3.
See The gods of naturalism have no go!
See SMR pp. 422Qff..
*4 See Licence for Liberty Ch. 6, Dizzy Dashes ... Ch. 6, Gracious Goodness Ch. 5, SMR pp. 348ff.. See also *6 below.
See SMR, TMR, The Meaning of Liberty and the Message of Remedy, Reason, Revelation and the Redeemer.
See: It Bubbles ... Ch. 9, Little Things Ch. 5, Tender Times for Timely Truth Ch. 10, Deliverance from Disorientation Ch. 8,