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CHAPTER NINE

MAN AS MAN,

BEYOND THE SYSTEM

THE ACTUALITY OF THE ECTYPE

 The Message:

EASTER MESSAGE 2008

"Oh Lord, how manifold are Your Works! In Wisdom, You have made them all." Psalm 104:24

Wisdom is a feature in creation often effaced to the mind of rebellious man
by the inclusion of the devastating antics of various follies,
and the effecting of the divine curse (Romans 8, Genesis 3),
itself resulting from the inane self-elevation, that man sought,
as still in much of his society he seeks, even to become AS GOD.

However foolish man becomes, as in the design fiasco where he designs to delete it,
where the greatest visible exemplar of the definition of the term is in fact man,
engaged here in the wrong sort of self-denial, still unyielding,
nevertheless, the wisdom in his design remains, a silent but evocative testimonial to truth.

The wit and wisdom of God is surpassing, and of course infinitely surpasses that of man,
as in fact the work invested in  man attests,  compared with the work of man. 
It is only when man appreciating this, takes the course the Almighty requires,
that of repentance and faith in Christ as Lord and Saviour, His word inscribed in the Bible, that the wisdom which is from above, pure and peaceable flows to man (James 1).

HENCE there is peace in the heart and mind, the soul and life of the Christian,
for his aims are then overflowing as loving gratitude in action, dwelling in the power of God, who is love, and Almighty, so that he/she cannot fail once saved, to have His savour.

Yet the results accrue no less where God being mocked, Christ being derided, abased, trifled with, contained in revised versions made in the mint of the mind of man,
peace is excluded and at best, superficial substitutes are in vogue.

Yet these are dross.

Man at war with God is unsightly, like a parade of concentration camp guards, in uniform, while those whom they tortured and killed walk beside them,
in silent mockery of their strutting. Strutting in faith in your own works is like that,
a drab delusion of pride. By God's standards, our best scarcely reaches the horizon,
and His grace does not elevate our pretension, but shows His humility.

The latter, the negative response is vast.

HENCE war in this globe is endemic, horror is most natural and child-slaughter or abuse,
in body or mind or spirit or any combination, becomes more like fatness,
just 'one of those things'.

All means to alter this fail, whether by force, compulsion or myths of the mind of man.
NOTHING satisfies - though much ministers false hope -
nothing fills the heart of man but truth.
This is nothing less than God, manifest in incarnation as Christ (John 14:6).
When man, diverted,  ceases seeking truth, his manhood becomes a lagoon,
where poisonous snakes idle between strikes.

Even when more compulsion is used to harass, contain and arrest the race,
it merely defaces man,
as in any other prison system, visible or invisible, be it Tibetan by invasion,
or this or that land, by threat of it..
This power path leads to further human political abuse, which is to come
(Revelation 13,17),
and in large parts of the world has come, or is coming.

Hitler and Stalin were European and Russian prototypes. New models pine to arrive.
If you don't want God, power with parade, panache and self-will lusts to replace Him.
Man dissatisfied with the curse on nature (Romans 5:1-12, 8:18ff., Genesis 3:15ff.)
which causes travail in labour and mocks man's preoccupation with power,
provides whips, the one nation, section or person, for the other, and in part in this way disciplines himself: but it is evil on evil, folly added to folly, distemper dynamising yet more. Nor is this all. The physical is but a structural base for space and time; the spiritual supervenes: WHY you use the physical, for what and how! Ignoring the deliverance presented with the curse (Galatians 3), man finds in revolt there is more to inherit than physical trouble; and if man has not seen that in Hitler and Stalin, blindness is total.

If the Good Shepherd is not to your taste, the Evil Shepherd trembles to arrive
(cf. Zechariah 11:16-17).

It is but a step from this back to God, the Creator, Designer and only Saviour for the man He made.

Before we proceed to continue our topic at one level, let us finish it at another.

Easter is simply the name for a season taken from the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ: it is the honour Him, but is it preoccupied with other things ?

Even in this, some would make a convenience of Him; but as a mere convenience, He is not interested. Thus He avoided those who wanted to make Him king
after the feeding of the 5000, even those who were willing to rest on miracles without saving faith,
to which the miracles were to minister (John 6:29).
What then is the work of God ?
they wanted to know how THEY could do such things.

THIS, said Christ, is the work of God that you believe in Him whom He sent.

That is a delightful play: the work of God, to do it ? they pantingly ask,
impressed by His power.

BELIEVE in Me, is the answer, this is the work of God.
How could they set about things themselves ? by resting through faith in Him,
IN HIM! Whose work is this ?
It is the work of God who alone can open the festering heart of man
and bring it rest (John 6:62,65).

Yet it is no mere operation in a mist: God KNOWS who are His, but SEEKS ALL,
in love (Colossians 1:19ff.), categorically!
Such a work must be wrought
and it must be wrought by God;
yet for all that, it is the work to which man must look.
It must be DONE, just as the miracle was done.

How simple is Easter's message then: Who died ? Christ did.
Who was resurrected ? Christ was.
Whose is the power and who used it on earth ? Christ did.
Then rest your trust in Him, and this is the work of God.

Whose was the flesh given ? His, and whose the blood ? His.
What is the result of receiving this in spirit (John 6:63),
taking Him inwardly as the Lamb slain for the sins
of the world, offered to all (John 1:29, 6:47-55) ?
It is this: it must be received as food is, and taken to heart,
not to stomach in this case!

Sacrifice for sin is His, once only (Hebrews 9), and SO to receive Him,
not in figure but in fact, so once to ingest His work and His offering
of His very self into your being and spirit (John 6:51), this brings eternal life,
so that you are raised up on the last day. John 6:54 assures you of that.
 

Whoever by faith receives this work of God, this saving work in Christ,
this sacrifice for sin, this true Life, resurrected and realising itself in His children:
this is the one who lives for ever, just as He loves forever.
He is not another christ or bread or social systems: HE IS HIMSELF,
from everlasting to everlasting (Psalm 90-91, John 8:58).
HE ONLY is Master (Matthew 23:8-10), and all we are brethren.
So to receive Him brings a change of STATE,
for we are transformed into the children of God (John 5:24).

This is great! It is not however, any more than is a plan for a house,
something done in a sketch, the house itself. So life itself must be received,
not merely nominated, outlined.

It is wrought in life by the power of God, precipitated in repentance,
consummated in faith, constrained in life, fashioned in grace.
Small wonder John was so overwhelmed
(I John 4:1-4). Knowing Christ (John 17:1-3) IS an overwhelming thing!
It is like a giant wave, soaring above you. It is good to move with it,
and to know the life that is His.

Without it, life is an abortion, an absurdity,
a squandering of restoration, a dim-witted meander in sin.
In Him there is grace and nobility and faithfulness and
knowledgeability and reliability and power and wonder.
He who made the earth (Colossians 1:15)
CANNOT lack the joy of discovery and the uttermost wisdom for faith!
He who died, cannot lack the love that is unbuyable, indelible.

He who rose from the corpse condition of the dead to the resurrection reality,
to whom some clung, with whom others ate, who Himself ate:
He is the live source of liveliness. Praise the Lord. God knows bodies,
minds and spirits and is the sole source of salvation for the same!
Have then your Easter season's fill! or that for any other season!
His word and will and salvation is here through any season, until He comes!

See later the final Message for this volume.

We now resume our concerns at the state of the race, which in large measure, follows another way, one of its own devising, excitement, frustration and failure, in many ignoring the testimony to truth, and the irrevocable certainties of the faith^*1.

WISDOM IN THE DIVINE WORKS

Such is a fallen race. It is our own. It is mankind. Pride of grace (MY Christian works are better than yours - in itself an admission that humility languishes), of race (some are more energetic than others, but none IS the individuals who vary), of face (I have done 'better' than you , or as one pastor put it, "Look at me, look at you!" with evident  self-congratulation): of such kinds are the sins of declension from deity.

Such on the other hand is the divine grace, all for nothing (Romans 3:23ff., Isaiah 55), but not FROM nothing! It is from  the love of God who paid at the Cross and all its enveloping tempests, and through all the incarnation meant to  Him who in the form of God, was far from mere form  as a man! Rather He cried with agonising cries to His Father, as He faced the sheer affront of evil, which He had to bear vicariously (Hebrews 5:7)

The one has only a step to the other. The abyss to God is one motion apart, as if one either did or did not enter a spaceship, which then  TOOK one to a new world. The flight is free. The spaceship is constructed by, of and IN Christ (who built it in His own physical devastation, and spiritual anguish, which removed the junk yard by gracious construction of redemption). That is the glory of it, and it is free (Romans 3:23ff.). If you do not want it, you have nothing to feel frustrated about, for frustration is then inherent in your persona! If you do, there is nothing to repine about, for the ship is ready and waiting. The provision is beautiful, apt and ample for any, for all.

It is a sacrifice ON BEHALF of all (as was the case in Israel, though not all by faith took it, and shared any deliverance - (Deuteronomy 29:18ff.); but it is in the place of many (Matthew 20:28), and those for whom Christ is thus effectually delivered up (Romans 8:32), even HEAVEN itself as that context shows, is a gift, inalienable, undeserved but deployed by deity in Christ. It all fits like the tones on an Old  Master painting, deep, integral, instructive, exact and for this result, exacting: but that is the business of God, whose word the Bible is. It is He who speaks.

The precision and profundity of the word of the living God is exactly in conformity with the precision of His works and the stated and verifiable profundity of His purposes, which He announces and fulfils, in the Bible^*1, with routine splendour.

Thus it is indeed WISDOM which is seen in His works.

In the last Chapter, attention was paid to the many omissions in the reductionist parody of science which is presented in organic evolution. So many features of the vital dynamic of life, its ordered spheres of correlative operation and its commands into the interstices of systems, are omitted in the ludicrously simplistic notional ideas presented, that it is, as was reasoned there, like a child accounting for things.

In fact, there is even more than was there noted. Let us examine such a feature.

Thus in this site the term 'ectype' has been used to refer to a type of creation, not in mere analysis of certain external features, though these are not at all irrelevant, but in terms of its issuing AS something in its life orientation, presentation and operation. More than that, even, there is the vitality of its integrity, the tigerness of the tiger, the magpieness of the magpie. In the former case, there is the lithe, sleek, coiled spring sense of watchfulness and potential action, lodged in a certain sense of survey and estimation. In the latter, there is that almost inimitable combination of dignity, discernment, readiness to act and an almost emotional readiness to relate to kindness.

It is to this aspect, to which one might refer rather blandly as the consequential vitality, but much rather as the vital specifications of its nature. The term 'ectype' used in this site with definition in its place, for this feature, has this advantage that it is a type (a SORT of thing, magpies in normal circumstances without vast stress tend to be like this) which comes OUT FROM the hand of the Creator. It is not seemingly a psychological or environmental or some similar thing: it proceeds out from within, where it was placed. Its ingredients are correlative, characterisable and as compact together as a novel, with its characters.

Thus, not only in life, is there, depending on how far up the available aspects created you wish to go, a structure of kind-assimilation with variation around a base central feature, but there is a combination of another type, that of the nature per se of what is created, be it ferocious in curse, or feeble in slothfulness, aridly grim in its disposition or gloriously on parade, like a pageant, as with the peacock, which has more to it than the capacity to parade: it actually DOES it.

Any collation of characteristics, first the electronic, then the atomic, then the molecular, then the bio-molecular, next the organic, then the overall design (as has been defined in the last chapter, with its references, a term with a meaning precisely applicable and so used without apology as in any other disciplined field of thought), is not primarily a hotch-potch of things to be conceived as arriving chaotically on scene in order to see if bits can happen to have some sort of rapprochement into defensible cells, then molecules, then life forms and organs, all mutually dependent, then neural circuitries, then behavioural characteristics, then ectypal nature and vitality  aspects to its being.

It is a combination of means and ends, inputs and outputs, systems on systems, structure by stricture, collation by command, instinct governing myriads of lesser systems with discernment, both with ectype nature. It is NOT ONLY design, irrefutable by definition, but it is creation.

That is the name given to design which has collation of this kind. Its ONLY feature that is most manifest is its design, but the ONLY feature IN the design which  is most manifest is its vital characterisability: not mere sub-systems such as the anatomical, but the ectypal overall integrity of what it is.

This is the peak.

In ANY design, the peak, the resultant commerce, the vitality (if living) and the dynamic (if not) is the apex of observation, the criterion of the adequacy of the mind back of the supra-systematic whole. In a 100 million dollar aircraft, it is

	not only the many miles of wire in it, not organising itself AS wire, and then as FLEXIBLE wire, then as INTEGRATED wiring and then as CONNECTED wiring to electronic controls, and this with interface for the operator to give extraneous input by command for desired consequences;
	nor  the radio links correlative, supplemental or integral as the designed case may be;
	nor the fuel input and usage systems;
	nor the after-burner provisions (if in place),
	nor the cabin pressurising systems,
	nor the ejection systems,
	nor the correlation of all of these so that instructions in one are not to be confused or misused for some other system by some communication fiasco or failure, nor the weapons systems,
	nor the automatic stabilising systems where weaponry exit is heavy and likely to jolt,
	nor the automatic pilot provision, nor the electronic survey specifications,
	nor the automated response systems if and as activated
	nor the programmatic correlation of each to each, and each to all, through notational integration and conceptual activation:

it is far more than all of this, though the outline of it should take a thousand pages.

THE NATURE OF THE VITAL DYNAMIC AND  OF MAN

The Ectype

The criterion of the design is the performance, the NATURE of the aircraft, seen as ONE WHOLE with OF COURSE all that basic, and underlying system, since one layer of creation does not pander to another, but requires interface with elaborate specifications, such as mind with body, spirit with mind, body with organs, organs with intake and output and the like.

What is the bird LIKE ? this might be a reasonable question when two pilots are discussing the first advent of one of them, and his findings, as pilot of that craft.

If it were biological, which of course it is not, for the aircraft is non-living but exquisitely adapted to correlation with the pilot who is, then we would use the term 'ectype', something which has come out of the mind of the designer, who has had in mind just these RESULTANT and CREATED overall characteristics of the machine as a whole, and not only so, but these in a team where a living agent of such and such capabilities, as set at the controls, in order to make myriads of micro-systems operate towards the higher and higher resultant intentions of the planner, and plans of the pilot as he flies it.

THIS is the outcome of intelligence, of planning and of creation: the EFFECTIVE correlation of systems WITHIN the ectype which is its nature.

Of course, the human body has far more than a thousand pages of instructions, estimates normally seeming to range to 1000 volumes of Encyclopedia Britannica type of size for specifications. It is far more than what we have attempted, rather briefly, to indicate in very general terms (each of which would require mathematical or symbolic representation for its working when out of the mind of the creator of the aircraft, it must now act on his programmed and structural emplacements).

As to the human body, its visible equipment,  involvement is not only far greater in detail, in specifications, but it includes specifications for replication according to fixed rules of combination when male and female chromosomes have the work of the design implemented for this purpose. It is like an aircraft containing specifications to have other aircraft issuing from itself. Nor is this all in this most magnificent design, this wise creation of the Almighty.

This creation, the mankind one, with its ectypal potential and realisabilities profound, has inescapable consequences in this, that many systems may be so abused during or after gestation, with enormous results, rather after the mode of aircraft production, so that amazing INABILITIES may arise because of slight confusions brought about in micro- or macro-systems, through intrusion or misuse. In man, this may be psychic as well as physiological, and moral as well as mechanical, spiritual as well as structural.

Not only are there physical expressions of mind in man's construction, there is MIND ITSELF as PART of the ectype, and this is directed, pathological contusions apart, by SPIRIT and this has the imaginative and commanding presence which is so optional in its flair, that it may decide to deceive, and even to deceive itself, and that in various degrees of the esoteric, the hidden or the furtive; or to deliver itself to destruction with patent courage, because of what it sees in itself and before its Creator as its mandate.

In fact, matter is no more the operative reality of mind (though it may be configured, as a tape-recorder for a voice, to record and store its performances), the two being related as expression and expresser, than is mind the operative reality of spirit (though it may receive, transmit and provide for the desire of spirit); and the systems in man are no more his ectype, his actuality and dynamic, vivid, personal reality in this case, than the enquiring, receptive, intuiting, charm of a child is the simple equivalent of intelligence. In the invisible as in the visible there are vastly important and wholly differentiable differences, divergencies and natures.

While many things may be set in train by programming matter, or to some extent, even mind (as in due expectation, or cultural whips and the like), or breaking spirit until it is the maw for some master or Commissar, to some  extent: yet these are the intruders; and the rude realities of mind and spirit and ectype, personality and will are as integral in their own domains, have as much vitality and force in their own actualisation, as any other system or feature in its own. To the extent they become personal, then intentional duplicity, complicity, comprehension, apparent incomprehension and the like, are mere elements of the forte of the functions given.

Confusing all or any of these is one of the most important preludes to the total confusion which is the 21st inheritance of civilised man; though, as with some old and draughty Irish castle, by no means all accept their inheritance! The cultural muddle is too costly, too wrong, too wrong-headed, too open minded to vacuity.

To Transmute Verbally can be Fun,
To Attempt it Practically, You need Relevant Resources:
SUFFICIENCY
 

It is not only bizarre but brazen to seek to manufacture transmutation by chance as king. This is merely a verbal substitute for logic. 'Chance' is the uninterrupted, the undisturbed operation of a system or scenario so that some of its impacts and results have effects not directed to a particular person or phenomenon, but nevertheless as a matter of fact impacting thereon. This signifies it was not a purposive act relative to the person, situation or object in view. It simply resulted from the status quo of the operational realities in which that person was placed.

You see this reflected in Psalm 1, where the wicked are as chaff. While the Lord MAY decide to act (as in Psalm 2, when the Messiah is to be obliterated, by He raises Him from the dead as in Psalm 16, and indicates that by no chance will the King be subdued by such means, since the sovereign God will effect His own purposes direct), yet there is as in Psalm 1, a simply scenario which often is used as effective, yes, and at times ironic.

To let the blustering wicked, whose tongue walks throughout the earth (Psalm 73:9), simply inherit the inherent shame in their position, so that the operation of events exposes their folly, so that without foundation, like chaff, they are 'blown away' by natural forces, cultural conditions, historical results or their own folly more directly: this can have an educative value for those who behold it! It also has an impactive force on those who experience it!

To try to use 'chance' to create (cf. Ancient Words, Modern Events Chs.   7,   9), to transmute a slave system into a slave-resistant system, a menial one with forms and laws imposed, characteristics set, into one which not only creates new characteristics exclusively in the mind,  in solemn imagination, but breaches, by delight in very wilfulness, the operation of what is set at levels to which it can attain,  calling it anything other than creation, is simply an abuse of terms.

To provide

	what is neither empirically,
	nor experimentally,
	nor systematically,
	nor qualitatively, within the very framework and function of a given style of system;
	what is void to all observation,
	exempt from all practical provision,

by massive, blind mental earthworks,
based on desire, fixed in nothing,

ogling it as ostensibly suitable and sufficient source

for something of outrageously other and in much, amazingly uncontrolled, creative dimensions,
though exquisite control is a major aspect of it:

what is this ?

It is the nadir of science, the obloquy of reason and the passage of logic to its opposite,
dreams without foundation, effects without cause, and above all, effects without adequate, researched, reasoned, indicated and demonstrated and validated cause Deity and Design, Designation and Destiny).

.
Causelessness as has often enough been shown, is a mockery of logic, a violation of language (cf. News 122) and a state of myth. Indeed, myth precisely is the attribution of results without adequate cause, in a scenario that belies reason and assumes what is not operative. That is why it has such a name. Imagination has focussed to the detriment of reason. It is part of the fantasy of Kant (cf. SMR Ch. 5, Predestination and Freewill, Section 4), the antinomy of Hume (SMR pp. 262ff.) and the hope of those who use what they subsume, and abuse the reason with which they present their case, before they present it, so making it systematically unpresentable (cf. Barbs ... 6 - 7).

Characteristics presuppose order, and form visible or invisible, and relationship to stimuli and varied operations, so that this produces or operates towards the production, not of this but of that. Language enshrines such things and presupposes them. To speak is to invoke logic and law, meaning and its characteristics, causation and its qualities. If anything were to seek to find the basis of causation, how would it be done ? There would be an inquisition in which it would be sought to show that REALLY it is not what it seems, but that 'cause' is MERELY the result of this and that force, illusory.

But what is the basis of this explanation ? It is this: that the cause of the notion of causation is this or that selected action, dynamic or phenomenon. How then does it CAUSE with what is not there ? (cf. Causes 1, SMR Ch. 5, Predestination and Freewill Section IV)  for if you delete its operational reality, then nothing can CAUSE causation as a concept. There is NIL that stands in that domain. It is therefore impossible to devise means for its demise. It operates in language, thought and in this world which yields constantly its secrets as the concept of causation operates. All cynicism presupposes it in its accounts.

Apart from the obvious, there is another even more obvious facet to this issue. To transmute what LACKS a quality (say, capacity to consciously cover the principles of logic in verbal units with symbolic meaning so as to systematise that field), that is to say in this case, matter into mind, and to transmute what has not this symbolically systematising power into what has, by saying 'it happened' is past the inane, the inchoate. It is a precise and systematic antilogy (cf. Deity and Design ... Ch. 8).

What lacks a dimension of functional operation as to defined SCHEMA and FIELD, not merely in degree, gains it from nowhere except the system which lacks it (Glory, Vainglory and Goodness Ch. 1). Nothing is its author. Contrary constraint is its origin. This is antilogy in clothes of fancy, aflame with fiction.

HOW - forget it. WHY - ignore it. By what inventive operation ? none. By which causative adequacy ? Foregone.

This is worse than mere nonchalance, that 'arising' concept which in chemistry is so justly and has been so often condemned by informed pedants who want to know  by what action, reaction, through what ingredients, at what temperature, in what interchange, reversible, irreversible, in what context of balanced forces and outcomes, is such and such a chemical to come.

It does not 'arise' : how our chemistry lecturer despised this unscientific pretence. It must come for a statable, equatable reason. Nor does information quietly codify itself in selected, effectual symbols for implementation by 'arising' interface and 'arising' means of effecting the plan 'arising'. It is something contrary to logic as to empirical fact (cf. Gratitude for His Glorious Grace Ch. 4). It comes from a satisfactory source for such things, thus in this field, having inherent the power to formulate, characterise, forge meaning with speciable symbols (such as DNA - cf. Jesus Christ, Defamed, Unfazed: Barrister of Bliss
Ch. 4).

Ignorance may be bliss for the guilty for a time; but it is no solution to a reasoned enquiry concerning creation, the existence of what was not (as to type), into what is.

	Imagination is to 'arise'  from what is impelled ?
	logic lectures are to come comprehensibly   from what is mere illustration of its demanding impact ?
	morality (such as the attack on creation as wrong, undesirable and   to be removed without rebuttal) is to happen from what is merely descriptive, an event,
	and invest itself with the prescriptive, arising by magic  from the merely operational ?
	'ought' is the child of 'does', just as coherent thought issues from thoughtlessness ?
	and spirit and resistance to truth are embryos from what IS, born from the wind!
	And as to all of this romancing,  what is it ?

It is a devious defilement of what is sound, rational, ratiocinative, adequate,  by what is diseased and defective, wild and without wit, occasioned through jealousy (cf. The Kingdom of Heaven Ch. 8). That is its cosmic place, issuance of the rancorous assailant of truth, who as Christ declared, was a liar from the beginning (John 8:44). This is the wilful product of nescience of will, exemplifying multiply, the antilogy of antilogies. 

Not merely is this to pre-suppose rather than reason, it is to dispense with relevance in the interests of the uncognate, the unproductive, resistant to exploitation, never attesting itself, a nature hidden in nothingness, secreted with all the futile force of vacuity in that witless idol,  ’Nature’, as obvious as light in total blackness. This is more than error: it is the wildness of irrationalising will and the futile furore of romantic fiction, seeking to expropriate the name, the power, the morals, the provenience, the wit and wisdom of God, in part or in whole. Such is the biblical description of it (cf. Ephesians 4:17-19, II Thessalonians 2, Jeremiah 2:5,13,27, 5:3-13), and such is the empirical testimony which it presents, almost as if designedly,  to fulfil even the biblical depiction of its pathology (Romans 1:17ff.).

Let us however return from this impressive misuse of imagination (a good thing when used in its own domain, and not aggressively in others, as if to abort their integrity), to the world of the actual, the factual, which attests itself.

The world of matter is one; that of mind another; that of morality is a third (News 19, Glory, Vainglory and Goodness Ch. 1); that of spirit a fourth; that of the ectype, the personality of the creation so that it acts with a certain force and simplicity of nature, which is not so bound that it has no meaning, nor so free that it has god-like powers, this is a fifth: these are dimensions in man.

To try to make matter a form of spirit, or vice versa, mind a form of matter, guilt a form of delusion, deliberative decision making a form of witlessness: it is all a parody of truth. It is an exemption of descriptive analysis, a loitering in the irrational while appealing to the rational, an institution of an idol (an all-encompassing something or other to cover everything), an inadequacy to provide for the actual. It is embarrassingly simplistic, totally unscientific, and indeed, the very opposite of the painstaking care and concern for cognates and the diverse, subject to experiment, which gives it any standing at all.

It is better to treat things in their own operative realities than to be forever trying to make them JUST such and such a configuration of something which in no way resembles them, but is in fact  merely a useful supplement for the expression of their owns spheres of dynamic. It is just as deadly a erraticism to imagine that the DVD of some speaker IS the speaker, and that its confines in system which are precise and wholly managed, are the confines of the speaker himself, and that this mode of material supplement for a purpose requires that the speaker be himself programmed, as to think that spirit or mind or the personality inherent in the ectype of man, are in fact subordinate to and extant because of their servers for recall, remembrance, deposit and survey.

The confusion of operation and its record, impetus and its registration, action and its memory store is as fundamental as one can get; and eminent in the history of philosophic blunder are those who make such transformations without reason, realism, operational empirics and conceptual justice.

There is not even any similarity in some cases; and in others, there is a diversity so prodigious that it is apparent that the wholly unscientific maw that wants to chew all up together without allowing consideration of their operational realities, is merely victim of a philosophic disease, taken by pseudo-scientific will and erroneously implanted. It is then that we get the 21st century blues,  as if the MOST contrary things conceivable are REALLY the most appropriate to present in seeking to understand any given sphere or cosmos.

Anything further from scientific method it would be a labour, perhaps impossible, to find!

What then of the personality, vitality, exuberance, flights of fancy, surges of splendour, rushes of understanding, contemplative address of man ? All this is part of the ectype of man. It is part of the design, the most amazingly proficient, efficient and manifold that is available in the realm of the visible, for inspection. 'Pilots' using such equipment often discuss its performance criteria, and how the 'ship' works, and ponder the manufacturer's handbook, or disdain such subjection of so amazing a contrivance and potent a creation that it can even probe its construction, and while often making ludicrous assumptions with appalling results, seek to find more and more of its potencies and modalities of machination within its design.

Man's mind can recognise and participate to some extent in the types of thought and concept, control and symbolic sovereignties apparent in its structure, and available in its function. It is an enticing prospect: to survey what one is made of, and seek to see how this can be produced by examining how it IS produced.

As with other design, there is one supreme place to look, the architect's office, the factory, at the nascent phase; and another at the operational (cf. Repent or Perish Ch. 7, Stepping out for Christ Ch. 9, Dig Deeper, Higher Soar ... Ch. 2). We have the operational on the one hand; and the architect has given us a manual concerning what He desires us to know of its construction. In particular^*1, He makes it clear that the MIND is not a subject system, though it can suffer acutely from lower systems, but an attribute linked to SPIRIT in this, that it can analyse and revile even itself (cf. I Corinthians 14:15, I Thessalonians 5:23, Proverbs 20:27, Psalm 51:17, Proverbs 17:22, Galatians 13:5, Psalm 51, 1).

It can find its capabilities and apply them, it can turn these for or against it Maker, and this with or without the Handbook. It can deploy cosmoi of operational power within its own total being, to rifle or consummate others, to degrade or fulfil them, to mistranslate facilities into woefully inept abuse, to register dissent rationally or irrationally, violently or gravely, irreverently or irrelevantly. There is a vast liberty in man ( SMR Ch. 4, esp. pp. 349Aff.^*1A); and in nothing is it more apt than in odious, self-serving misconceptions, misconstructions and reductionisms by which man seeks to make himself what he is not, either individually or as a race (Bon Voyage Ch. 1). To repent is a first requisite for man, spirit to the Spirit who is God cf. Repent or Perish Ch. 1, Luke 13:1ff.).

To lie is one of man's lesser facilities, consequent upon an aptitude for and access to truth. The handle can readily be turned either way, in principle. TO lie THE lie is to turn this facility against God Himself; and in doing so, one can deny His nature, His works, His creation, His past actions, His verified word, His commands for one's ectypal operation, one's personal actions, His people, His book, His benevolent desires for man, His discipline or the doom for the lie.

On the other hand, in the grace of our God, man may affirm what is true, deplore what is false, find the designed salvation of God, this sixth dimension to be added to those featured in the focus on man, above, and following His word:

	live by it (Matthew 4:4),
	find the power of the Maker by co-operation with Him,
	the peace that is His by not grieving Him,
	the joy of His life by living it as it is presented and
	the power of His salvation by receiving it, reading of it, and noting the entire consonance of what is written and what happens.

It is a marvel what is done for man; but nothing is MORE so than the Cross of the Lord Jesus Christ (Galatians 6:14), by which He provides a way for nailing the pathologies of this world's appeals (Galatians 5:24), and sin's lust in its multiple dimensions (Romans  6), the vagrancies of will and the life of deadened facilities, while  transferring guilt to Himself vicariously, transferring righteousness, His standing to those who receive Him, and substituting eternal life for the feeble machinations, the moral disputations and the fickle cerebrations of mankind (I John 1:1-4, Titus 2-3).

COSTS AND PRIVILEGES OF THE ECTYPE

Madness and Man's World
Spiritual insanity is not the asylum kind, but its results are comparable

Hosea 9:7

Vast is man's power to choose, and to deceive himself or others, and he uses all this, from man to man in variabilities sometimes obscene and what rational people deem insane, and sometimes noble,  good, kind, understanding and most wise. This is part of the design, that man can even make designs of his own, to implement designs of his spirit, agencies in artful collaboration; and in practical or personal terms, he can try to implement them.

Design and designation are as close to the spirit and mind of man as are sea and air to the sea-gull. Designed, he designs, designing he seeks, seeking he uses what he designs, and designates what he needs. He is not without what in computing terms is regarded as the identification of the programs, the interpretation, definition and modes of deployment. To omit these specifications can be most troublesome.

	When one actually thinks, ceases the diversionary antics of disquietude and reasons in terms of causation,
	then the sufficient cause for operational causality -
	that is a correlative chain of internal sufficiencies in a sphere of operations, whether mental or material (avoiding the casual reductionism of materialism - Repent or Perish Ch. 7, and those of spiritual vacuities, SMR Ch. 10, Massifs of Pure Splendour Ch. 1*1B, but pursuing realities which evince themselves cf. Evidence and Reality ... Ch. 6),
	then one comes to the inventor of mind, matter and spirit (SMR Ch. 1),
	in their disparateness and various correlations:
	the Being apt and able for such a world of such sequences and occasions, to delimit, define and order, to legislate and speak (as in DNA) into it, and to create logic in the consciousness created (cf. Glory, Vainglory and Goodness Ch. 1).

Adequacy requires something so exceedingly far beyond the specifiable, spiritual, moral, physical and mental powers of man, including his creativity and his free capacity to distort, unintentionally in error or intentionally in vicious assault on truth, which deceives him into feelings of anything up to omnipotence, and gains only delusion, as to be ORIGINATOR of it. To create imagination requires in ordinately more than imagination, but not less: it needs power of perspective and analysis to know precisely what it IS, and how it operates, and to engender those things needful for it, such as a liberated mind with access to but not control by logic, susceptible to analogical fantasy and humorous conception, as well as transmutative ideas, formulable but in no need of actualisation. It has to have the capacity to turn itself into a posse of pathology, without being required to do so, as a created function, operative for one, in man.

That is merely on illustration of the abundance of power of the unlimited Lord of creation.

This Lord must be eternal, since nothing has no future, and what is inadequate cannot by definition achieve the desideratum, what-is. The term "God" is well-known, that eternal adequacy, that creator of multi-dimensional marvels, that Lord of logic, that contriver of wit, that exquisite source of imagination, including the fabrication of that found in man. There is literally NOTHING else (for all else envisaged to the point at that level,  is nothing), and this is rationally requisite. Try nothing ? No future. We are that future. Hence wrong. Try something by magic, just there, all delimited: no logical ground. No go. Try what IS, eternal by nature, the ground and cause of all things temporal and temporary and all problems are gone, all needs are met, all antinomies are resolved (Deity and Design ... Ch. 8).

In addition, you are talking of what is necessary as a minimum for man. You HAVE to have what is not imposed on with system, but is able to create systems, what is not limited by time, but able to invent it, what depends on no anterior system (which would simply remove the logical necessity and replace it with that). It is independently attested not only in words in DNA, but words in the Bible, which like the former, are verifiable, testable, validatable uniquely and always on show^*1, even for millenia, immutable, needing no change: for why change what is regulative and endlessly correct in every situation.!

Indeed, not being limited by time, and hence able to know all it contains, is one of the logical pre-requisites for the inventor of the temporal, the tidied, the controlled or contained, the delimited and the devised into being, not of its own ability, but for its own agility.

Further, it is not only a matter of NOT making mistakes in plan, perspective, announcement, prediction and so forth, but of HAVING THE PERSPECTIVE which counts, which SHOWS the capacities are not limited as are man's, to time and its delimitations and defections. That too as has been shown previously^*2 is precisely what is to be found in the Bible, never 'embarrassed' by failures, never utilising double-talk like politicians (one of Australia's most famous having admitted change in what he was saying, declaring something like this: I said that then; this is now!).

God did not invent man in order to ignore him, or give him such huge powers in order that they might be abused, aborted, contorted, distorted, as if He were in need of a distorted kick, thrill or disastrous lapse: for all such things pre-suppose a system inside which is not sated except by contrariness to His own creation, rendering him inadequate for his resources, inept for his purposes, a contained and construed being, subordinate to system, and hence not God (cf. Sparkling Life ... Ch. 4).

We are speaking, however of God..

God has omitted nothing. Here it is the Bible, the sole verified, validated and comprehensively cogent array in the name of deity on earth^*1, as presented for the whole world, from the only God, with no change of mind, nor any allowance for error.

This Handbook is always true, myriad-fold in verifiability, staggering in resource and precise to the point in its forecasts for man, nation or king, as it makes them. It is also generic, in its coverage of the progressive regress of the human race in wisdom, and increase in knowledge.

We are not then really, if reason has any place at all, considering whether or not the ectype called man is a design. That has already been done in earlier  chapters.

It is something here relevant, but in passing. Thus, he is far more, and not at all less than what is so defined. The important point, far beyond that contemptible clatter of irrelevant words, is this: that the designer has made man as an ectype^*3 with spiritual significance, able in some ways to distort the ectype performance characteristics, though not the criteria. This makes it verbally possible to deny His Creator, though not logically; and to join with others of like mind, and to subjugate youth to the ideas of rebellion by other names, so that man as a whole (not to the last example, but in major mergers and works amid a distorted and distorting race) then looks for taking the works of the Creator, on whom all the designs in their ectype proliferation and combinations rely, and assuming control over them.

This is humanism, naturalism and science in reverse, ignoring the facts and seeking solutions neither workable in practice, evidenceable in laboratory, attested empirically, nor taking into account the whole nature and structure of man, or of course, the nature of his Creator (cf. Sparkling Life ... Ch. 4, SMR Ch. 1, Glory, Vainglory and Goodness Ch. 1.

What is it like ? It is like ignoring an employer's instructions, refusing a military commander's order, despising a scientific finding,  violating a clear call of conscience, following imagination in preference to reason, participating in violence against God. What are its results ? They are individual, social, educational, fiscal, military and in the end, a simple matter of judgment, like the icy cold but red mark on a French essay which simply means: WRONG.

It leads naturally to the antichrist figure, declaring, after some self-appreciation (II Thessalonians 2), that he is God. He thus simply assumes the status of figurehead, allowed to have access by whatever electronic or other means appeal, to whatever man can manage to correlate and potentiate, so that his power may seem almost super-human. Since it is not so,  this is merely an ultimate abuse of definition and science and truth and an arrogation of wisdom as a birth-rite and power, rather than having search for it as an aim and the gift of it as a goodness of God.

It is to become non-dependent, non-responsible, non-moral and non-rational. It is what is in fact the ultimate foolishness: confusion of gift with giver, grant with greatness and brightness with being the light. Thus as to this antichrist, epitome of the epic started in Eden ?  he is destroyed, a fitting end to what seeks to destroy both evidence and logic (II Thessalonians 1-2, Revelation 19-20).

The intimate irony is this, that as man seeks, consciously or otherwise to hold down the most manifest and multiply demonstrable truth of God (cf. Romans 1:17ff.), the almighty and omniscient, revealed in nature and in man's nature (despite its fallen condition), in His word, the Bible and in His works in terms of that volume, made directly investigable by man: then results flow.

Then he is himself imprisoned in his own default at the qualitative realities of truth. Confusion, delusion and misled dynamics then mount like waves, or sink like some acid into the vaults of the soul. Society disrupts, power abrogates righteousness and self-centred plans for the individual or racial 'self' become as shallow as denial of basis requires, and as readily fractured. Man as divorced from the obvious is a masterpiece of miscreancy, his guilty conscience and fallen equipment, in eminent need of service, subject for infections innumerable, philosophies most ludicrous, behaviour most captious and results in pride and puniness mixed ... as we now see writ large in century 21.

Thus, in addition to the considerations of Ch. 8 above, we have this:

Thus, in addition to the considerations of Ch. 8 above, we have this: that man as design is

	not only a compilation of highly diversified systems,
	of material existence, material direction, material repository for information,
	of mind with its inherent symbol-actuality facilities and
	of spirit with its directive and entrepreneurial potencies.

He is

	not only a design,
	not only a design by the Creator,
	not only a responsible design, having means for this,

but he is an ectype with a nature as distinctive, yes and far more so, as that of any vastly expensive and expansive aircraft or spacecraft.

This nature is the acme of the epic called man. It is this which is his most fundamental design feature, created characteristic, apparent potency, and it is ENTIRELY personal, not derivatively linked to any other or lesser order of being, but to itself and to God alone. Like other created things, its design can be aborted, and because of the magnificent conceptions in its creation, it is subject to flaws and follies correlative to its eminence and faculties. The epic of wonder thus becomes the emblem of catastrophe; but there is deliverance, albeit on a person by person basis, this in turn, becoming a basis for broader settings. As liberty is the path to ruin, so it is the necessity of truth, since force has no part in truth, being oblivious of it; and without truth, man's freedom becomes slavery to error, the will which was an emblem of freedom becoming the gaoler of confinement.

THE ULTIMATE DESIGN

SALVATION

Repentance and Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ
is the Safeguard Provision for Erring Man:

Never absent in the Divine Mind,
Present to this Hour for the Human Heart

Manufacturers make provisions, sometimes, for various kinds of malfunction, with occasionally very easy ways of rectifying a fault by programmed internalised procedures, merely needing activation.

The Creator of man has made what is fitting for the human ectype, with a provision of felicity and freedom for remedy for fault. It was extremely hard to do: it is always hard to pay for other people's mistakes, unless of course you have a great love for them, and conceive of them as so much of yourself, that it is comparatively indifferent whether you do it for yourself or for them. Love is like that. It sacrifices freely.

Hard to do though it was, as if a mountain purity of snow were to become suddenly conjoined with the basest slime of some oily and polluted industrial residue, yet the very wisdom and power of its provision and the love of its performance by Jesus Christ, the payor, has made it the very opposite in usage. It is a GIFT to be received. Is it hard to receive a Christmas gift ? Perhaps, if Uncle Alex has sent you a cheque for $100,000 it may be hard to receive, if you know that he despises you for a total cretin who needs help. If however he loved you, and sought good for you, and had a heart neither scheming nor surreptitious, you might feel differently as you paid it in to your account.

To be sure, there might be an implicit understanding that it is for you to use to fulfil your sacred duties in life; and if you don't want to, then it is well not to try to pay it in. Just ignore it, as not for you. So is it with Jesus Christ. Without that repentance which MEANS that you HATE, recognise and seek severance from the control in any way of what is sinful, there is no place for you to find this gift of eternal life. Christ said this: EXCEPT YOU REPENT, you will all likewise perish (Luke 13). It is a cardinal requisite, not as a performance of power in you, since it is a work of the Lord in you (Acts 11), but as an expression of reality, cordiality and contrition for the contrary.

Thus Christ took the hard and provided the easy in FORM; but in fact, the result is a life of discipline and joy, of duty and diligence, of peace and labour. The gift is the admittance into the kingdom of heaven; the result is the love of living in it!

It is important then to know the nature of God. His power and greatness are apparent in His works. What of His heart ?

The inward nature of God is known to those who have read His book and following its error-correction mode for the model called man (cf. The Glow of Predestinative Power Ch. 4). This is known as salvation, since it saves man from a distorted ectype, a ruined soul: and indeed, the better the spirit of mankind was, the worse its defilement becomes.

It is not merely what any individual has done which is in view:  because of the reproductive marvel given to man, there is trouble there also. The combination and correlation of the physical and the spiritual, the social and the moral, the domestic and the inter-personal with child and adult, child and society and so on to the various and diverse domains of interaction: all this has a result. It means that children arrive in a spoilt condition. Man's initial fall changed the physical, social, personal and spiritual environment and normal human gestation itself is soiled (Psalm 51).

It still has some of the lustre of relative innocence, because learned behaviour and concepts take time. Yet it has an inherent apartness from God which is part of the nature now of the race as such (Romans 5). This becomes apparent more or less obviously, but babies do not normally consider their mothers before complaining...

Thus both the endemic failure and the individual variations on the theme are in view in what is required for this salvation.

It requires nothing short of repentance, since man is in the image of God, able to consider, conceive, correlate or co-operate, damn or bless. Man is gifted with spirit to conceive rebellion and it is gifted with facility to repent. To be sure this is itself a work of God and part of the salvation (Acts 11:18), but for all that it is a responsible human approach.

It is enabled by the foresight and foreknowledge of God before time began (Ephesians 1:4, II Timothy 1:1-10), but expressive of the heart of man itself to the ultimate degree, within the confines of divine knowledge. Hence man is responsible despite the love of God (as in Colossians 1:19ff.), and is held so. Love is no enemy of truth! (Psalm 85, I Corinthians 13).

If anyone takes this salvation, he or she is saved (as in Ephesians 2:8, and II Timothy loc. cit.), and the provision is eternal and effectual (John 5:25, 6:47,50ff., II Timothy 1:8ff.). Then the love of God is reciprocated and the power of God is available.

Man then appears as a saved sinner with eternal life and a pilgrim in a visible world guided and governed by the invisible God according to His visible word. This is an entirely new situation, and is of the nature of an ambassador to another 'country'. Hence Christians are often assailed, assaulted, slandered, harassed; but sometimes admired because of honesty, fidelity, courage and the like. Their path historically has been one of the most productive imaginable for the race; but it has also at times been horrendous in suffering, and more of this awaits, as is indicated  in Revelation 12:10-12 (bold added). 

^"Then I heard a loud voice saying in heaven,

'Now salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of His Christ have come, for the accuser of our brethren, who accused them before our God day and night, has been cast down.
And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb
and by the word of their testimony,
and they did not love their lives to the death.

^"Therefore rejoice, O heavens, and you who dwell in them!
Woe to the inhabitants of the earth and the sea!
For the devil has come down to you, having great wrath,
because he knows that he has a short time."

These words act to essentialise in the future, the spiritual crusade of Christians, undivorceable from truth, and the humanistic-mystic anti-crusade in calamitous but withering physical power to oppose; and as to those who stand in testimony and in truth, amid the blast, Revelation 7 is their celestial correlative.

Even in the New Testament Church, from Stephen (Acts 7) on, there has been blood; and there has been grace in reply, perhaps one of the chief means by which the Roman Empire ostensibly at least, and formally, became Christian. It cut deep into the heart of man to see such flair for spiritual reality and such direct cognisance of deity, in such disciplined and beautiful ways - such as the events of the plague, when Christians notoriously helped those suffering, at their own risk. So too hearts are softened and God works in thousands even, by report, in places like China week by week and day by day, through His word and the testimony of the saints.

Man without God is a double defective: he lacks the code, control and companionship for his spirit, and the saving grace in place from the Saviour, whose is wisdom, not only to create bodies and minds, but spirits and destiny also. Miscreancy is precisely the word for what is contrary to creation; but what term shall one employ for what declines, and then declines again, this time the means of remedy ? Irremediable (cf. Hebrews 10:29, John 3:19): and that is a term never to have hung justly around one's neck.

How entirely transporting is it that there is no need! God WOULD HAVE ALL to repent (I Timothy 2^*4), and if you are someone, and outside Him, it is time to become someone else, the saved version of your individual self (John 3, TItus 2-3, Romans 3:23ff.; 5; 8). Here you can see it and have it, a NEW CREATION (II Corinthians 5:17ff.).

NOTES

 *1

See, for example:

SMR,  Light Dwells with the Lord's Christ,
who answers riddles and where he is darkness departs and
Reason, Revelation and the Redeemer,
TMR,
The Meaning of Liberty and the Message of Remedy.

*1A

The SMR excerpt below,  from pp.349Aff.,  gives certain aspects in useful summary.

See also

Trust God, Mate!  Forget about 'Fate' Ch. 1

 with Bon Voyage Ch. 1,

Little Things Ch. 5 and

It Bubbles ... Ch. 9

Repent or Perish Ch. 7,

 and Indexes on Freedom.

Mind and Spirit - A Synthetic Review

Some elements to consider. First, mind is able to err, in that purpose and performance may be a mismatch. Matter, a merely descriptive entity without arbitrary powers to range freely, has no power to prescribe. Prescription is a facet of purpose, and poor prescription is a facet of error. No prescription is not a facet of mind. It is one of matter. The GAP between purpose, prescription and performance is another aspect of mind: that is error either in comprehension, apprehension or execution or some medley. The respective entities are not only diverse, they are contrary. Reason dies when contraries are identities.

Further, mind can estimate conduct in terms of general principles either intellectual or moral or spiritual or all three, or in some variable combination. It can discern consequences and weigh them. This involves not only analysis of which matter exhibits no sign, but synthetic analytical power, in discrete diversity. Mind is also able to make a sort of intellectual counterpoint, in which major and minor thrusts are pondered, and interlaced. Levels of operation, analytical, principial, preferential are able to be compounded, analysed, synthesised, in hypothetical models and so forth, involving creative thought, and planes of operation dependent on the power and scope of the mind concerned.

After this, there is a separately construable series of functionalities with an integral base; so much so, that if this is lost, mental disease is often clearly present.

These include WILL (not WHAT would seem best, but what the person desires). This could be wholly irrational; lustful involving known error in the vice-like grip of clamorous passion, which could be despised either at the time of following it, or later; or both.

Also included are INSTITUTIONAL considerations, as distinct from OPERATIONAL ones. Thus here is the plane for moral ACCEPTANCE, as distinct from moral application: forming one's beliefs as distinct from using them. Basically the mind is a resource of analysis and comprehension intimately allied with the spirit as a fund of will and personality purpose. The mind is capable of infusion and intrusion from the spirit, in that its clear dictates on normal parameters may be arbitrarily, passionately, or imaginatively invaded and compromised . . . or recast.

Matter lacks all this, and is in fact, known primarily as: a theory of the mind, which is the immediate consciousness, and a disposition of spirit, in which it is conceived. All of man's own thought about matter depends on the prior assumption both of the validity of mind and the correct cast, perspective or alignment of spirit per se. It is therefore a derivative thing, conditioned by man, and secondary in his line of operation. Materialism is thus not only a reductionist mirage, but a self-contradictory one.

Human responsibility is founded partly on the above; partly, as shown in its place (e.g. Chapters 1, 3, 4, 5) on guilt, shame, blame and universal proclivities in the race - if not often too readily to feel the former, then incessantly to allot the latter! It also relates to what Franklin (q.v.) refers to as the disposability of the will, in which propositions, proclivities or pursuits may be pondered in dubious apprehension and tendential assessment, deliberatively; a matter at the kernel of conscience, that not wholly disciplinable resident - if not active for oneself, then most often, on behalf of others! As noted elsewhere, man in his aspirations for and conceptions of 'good' (his criteria for it indeed, and in association with this, his conscience) can rove contra-culture, para-culture, and indeed, supra-culture and sub-culture; can survey the scene of centuries and opt way back, or assume things and opt far forward. Man's conscience can be altogether a most imaginative facility; and yet not, as much psychiatry (Jung e.g., q.v.) asserts, as manipulable as many would wish.

What is not thus variable is not responsible; nor what is set, assessable in such terms. What is, is so, and is so construable. In this function, man is wholly divorced from matter. To make contradictions identical is to abort logic.

We have also seen that man has such great facility in these spheres, that not only may he act responsibly, but irresponsibly; indeed, he may relish acting irresponsibly even while formally acknowledging that it is indeed irresponsible, before, during and after such actions! He may do so with or without rationale; and the rationale may vary from wholly lunatic ravings of proud paronoia, to deluded idealism which despatches millions with ultimate cruelty (like the Khmer Rouge) while alleging splendid ideals, and not self-interest; as indeed, was the case with Himmler also, on the other side.

Man then has liberty but not autonomy; possesses responsibility but not always responsibly; can assault conscience but not always successfully; can rationalise, but not always with logical rationale and is altogether, in potential the pertest piece of goods, able to lie, deceive with variable lashings of self-deceit, to strive, squall, bawl, protest too much and too little, be fanatically deluded, ecstatically deluded, ecstatically inspired, ideationally fired, idealistically driven with pro-or anti-life 'ideals', listen to reason and abuse reason, synthesise the process and show such a spurt and spawning of capabilities, facilities and functionalities in this sphere that to ignore them, is merely one more illustration of the fact . . . that they are there. Such arbitrary caprice is the very stuff of philosophy, using the very facilities it would often deny in the very act! In so doing, it merely illustrates them.

This edifice of formulation, inspiration, dedication, degeneration, aspiration, compilation of components, penetration with survey and incisive oversight, this spirit of man, integral - in possibility - ramifying and dedicated to illusion or reality, and to illusion in the name of reality and even touches of reality in the name of illusion: it is far too blustering and anon beautiful to ignore.

In Jesus Christ you see of what it is capable; and few there be that criticise the Christ in the Bible. In multitudes of others, you see this too . . . but in a negative sense. You even see some who would WANT to be conditioned and controlled, to escape with noise or constant work, or appetite, or friendly pursuits, or unfriendly pursuits and contrivances, and so to go on a sort of auto-pilot without thought, without pain and without utilising what is there. On the contrary, in Russia, you see in one of the wild characterisations revealed in the writings of novelist Dostoevsky such wild ravings of philosophy that one party USES the deluded ramblings of another, in order to gain something which he himself desires (designs) - in a case of gross manipulation. In a sense, and in view of recent revelations on Lenin, this almost encapsulates what the Communist Party was to do to the nation!

The spirit of man is alive - but not well. This is not a universal statement; but it is one of vast application.

Where however is human responsibility ? What if culture coding wreaks havoc with reason and reality (see Ch.'s 1-4) ? What if deluded education, as in S.A. Schools in their religious State indoctrination sessions in aspects of science, as in Hitler's Germany and in who knows how many other deluded States who know no answer, but know what they want - what, I say, if deluded education shanghais the children and drowns reality in the wash ? Yes, that limits responsibility (on the part of the children), but it does not entirely remove it. Christ said WOE! to those who made children (who believe in Him) stumble; but there is no question of mere determinism here. Children are quite capable of heroism, as are university students, when treated to insidious, irrational and surreptitious philosophies, which appear routinely in much economics, biology, physics and the like. Sharp young minds, or even discerning personalities may see through the smog of social deception. This however is merely one instance of many.

The position declared in the Bible neatly cuts the cord of bewilderment and substitutes clarity, system and competence in covering the facts of the world system, and man in it. WHERE is he ? Answer: He is a sinner, without God, who yet should know Him; without Covenant, who yet should have the one divinely offered; and without hope, which cuts the throat of much of the sacred and visionary in man, leaving him like a loose gun, and often acting like it, whether at the highest levels of finance, or the lowest of menial levels. The philosophy of survival of the fittest, in particular, has passed any biological use in terms of arrival of the fittest, and has become a sort of parasitic philosophy about self, how to maintain it without regard to its worth. For my part, I would rather be a slaughtered saint than a living rat!

It is not that choice is not proper; that is, as shown, a domain of the human spirit. It is just that so many imbibe such irrational philosophy and act as if science had shown it true. In fact (see Chapter 2), creation is the way it came; and how it goes is up to the individual. IF he or she desires to continue without regard to the quality of what continues, THAT is a decision, one for which a person is fully responsible. It is the OPPOSITE, just for example, to what Christ showed and did and taught (cf. II Corinthians 8:9, Matthew 26: 52-54).

The world moreover is not lacking in information, as its system spirals to shame. While the living race of mankind in millions assaults the ways of the living God, His property, proprieties, necessary principles and His being, deriding His greatness, caricaturing His life, mocking His power, flagrantly, or deliriously, anon imperiously: God with much patience, visible and declared, for an interval provides a remedy that preserves His integrity, meets the need of the flailing, failing race, delivering many. This remedy, long announced before it came and right-protected through prophecy (cf. pp. 873, 1002A, 1110 infra) and power, both inter-personal and predictive, and stamped with the personal presentation of Jesus Christ, works precisely as specified, while history is led like a lamb by the predestining power of the God who declares His mind in advance in His word (cf. pp. 633-643 infra). All this verifies the Bible just as it was at the first demonstrated (Ch. 1 supra). Moreover, its own statements further resound (see: Amos 3:7, Matthew 24:35, II Peter 3:9, Isaiah 59 esp. last verses; and Ch.'s 8-10).

Meanwhile, the created spirit of man either surrenders to such a compassionate sovereign, far more profound than the petty dictates of men: reconciled in, with and through the remedy, Jesus Christ; or with quasi-autonomy, anon comically, anon raucously, exhibits the wonder of its created spirit, though through folly. The world, not run by force, proceeds in its demented divisions precisely as Christ predicted.

What then? Thus man is deludable, confusable and manipulable; but responsible. Yet there is this too: he is answerable to God, the Creator and only Saviour (see Chapters 1, 7-10); and if REFUSING the covenant, the gospel, the offer of Christ, then he is doubly arraignable: 1) for sinning short of his stature, status and capacity, and 2) for rejecting the pardon, remedy and empowerment to do it differently. All this can occur without anything to offer but will in its own service, as though it were the centre of the universe, answerable only to itself: which is contrary to fact, and hence irrational.

Some may say: It is NOT irrational! But this is merely further illustration of the FACT of will, that it WILL have its say, even if being 'God' is the implication; or being autonomous, when in fact it is born by another, dies without consent and is fashioned amidst a multiplicity. One last word: it is this. THAT particular delusion (matter is not deluded) exhibits the Biblical reality that man is in the image of God: Hence he feels or may feel answerable to none, even while in fact depending on many!

*1B

Examples of the vanity or inanity, the sophisticated urbanity and irrationality of such reductionisms are to be found on many fronts. They are not only principial and inordinate, but particular as shown below in this excerpt from Massifs of Pure Splendour. Conclusively, on the other hand, when the logically requisite course of initiation not from nothing or the inadequate, but from the builder of all the cosmoi of human  action and thought, will and spirit, symbolic logic and words of command, then immediately apparent is the meaning, significance, ground and conceptual concurrence of the many fields which are inherent in human life.
 

What on any naturalistic or monistic ground in metaphysics

	is mere discord (cf. SMR Chs.   3,   10),
	in aesthetics mere mumble (cf. SMR Ch. 5),
	in ethics platitude without meaning (News 19),
	in epistemology mere vacuity (cf. TMR Ch. 5),
	in politics defeatism (cf. Questions and Answers Ch. 7), or else towers built on invisible clouds,
	all reductionist, irrational or both (cf. What is the Chaff to the Wheat Chs.   3 and 4  ),

 

now on the supernatural origin of the regimented and volitionally active natural realm,  becomes

	meaningful,
	in essence predictable,
	and assuredly verifiable on the ground of the creator, whose verified word is without inhibition
	exhibiting the fitting conclusion, like a thunder-clap to a murder.

*2

See Light of Dawn Ch. 2, The Glow of Predestinative Power Ch. 4,
Let God be God Ch. 6,
The Wit and Wisdom of the Word of God Ch. 3

SMR Chs. 8-9

The Pitter-Patter of Prophetic Feet Ch. 4.

*3
It is time to clarify and extend concerning the 'ectype' concept.

In the case of man, there is little difference between this term and the meaning 'personality', or more precisely 'person', the former being used in the sense of the outward appearance of the inward reality of the person as such.

However, this is the case because man, being in the image of God, or if you will, having that capacity to think discursively about God, communicate with Him, hear and comprehend communication from Him, appreciate Him and delight in Him, to rove in His holy premises and to worship Him with awe, there are consequences.

Man is derived from God, a divine derivative but by no means equal to his Author, being deposited into created form, shrouded in time and inserted into space. From God he comes as design, but more than this, person with a designated equipment and spirit, capable of astonishing and amazing relationship with God in thought, word and deed. That is the reason for his facility and faculty, both, in considering the creation, his own,  as also the things of God; and likewise, this status quo has another derivative. It is this. When he ignores his created state, which gives him this splendid aperture, he is of all things the most foolish.

Not from floating ideas, lofty in unoriginated causelessness, but from God has man come, from whose heart and mind the nascency exploded from thought to fact,  in one stroke of brilliance, at His word. Thus he was able to operate, replete in function, not foundering in loose ends, but equipped for the multitude of correlative tasks, impelled by meaning. OUT OF this, comes man, the ectype.

Thus, the Deity's shadow or liberty or spiritual enlivenment brings him to a prodigious eminence relative to Him: that is, though wholly derivative and utterly dependent on God (whether by the modes of his created assemblies, spirit or mind, or ultimately, simply directly), man is enabled to act and behave, live and understand as a CHILD of God. This singularity means that his 'ectype' - a term used cohesively of all that part of creation which has any degree or mode of individuality  - and 'person in God's image, restored to fellowship' are one. That is the case in the visible realm, ONLY with mankind.

If it were not for the lower creation within this field, there would therefore be little use for this term. However since the dingo and the dalmation, the golden retriever and the cocker spaniel, the quiet horse of love and the spirited horse of dash and flightiness, the tiger and the hippopotamus, the fox and the squirrel, to take a few, have a very special entityship which seems often ignored, or unformulated at least, the term is used. It does not in itself require the inclusion of an inter-personal developmental aspect, but it does exhibit a sense of individual response and development in terms of apprehension and impression which can be both creative on the one hand, and expository of the nature of the beast on the other.

Thus, to take a spaniel, black or golden may make a difference even within the Cocker variety, and again heavily dependent upon the type of relationship with man, with family which has an elicitive stimulus and a character forging effect of great weight and significance, what can be said ? It is this: there are features which are far beyond mere instinct, and are nothing less than a MEASURE of inter-personal relationship. Within this, there are bounds and bonds, features such as conscious if somewhat less than cognitive fellowship leading to sacrifice and love, a sort of derivative and secondary stamp, a dynamism of attachment which gives something which, though less than the attributes of personality in height, has significant relationship in breadth.

It is far more than the integral reality which is the Spaniel, as distinct from an assemblage of systems. It is far less than an analytical relationship, in which active and cognitive review may be pursued, assessing and amending, emending or deleting the relationship as with humans. It is however something definitive:  creatures lower than man, some more, some less,  can become individual to a degree, even with some birds indeed, that is to be seen and savoured fully to be appreciated.

In this latter respect, fascinating indeed are some of the accounts of relationships which can be gained even with a lyre bird, and such has been given detailed description in an utterly fascinating manner by at least one author living in the Dandenong Mountains near Melbourne. It is again even something that can arise, to a more limited degree, with magpies. I have seen how to talk to them in such a way that they become far more tender and friendly, less hostile or timid; and how to regard, respond to and envisage them. That as with dogs, is a creative relationship, though far more profound with these than with most others of the lower creation; though horses can develop not a little of this aspect of their natures. This could be called beyond type, the dynamic entityship in action within its bounds, with its potentials for inter-relationship, in a pseudo-conceptual manner.

There is a signature on many of these creatures which gives a measure of inter-creature significance; and inter-environmental poise. It is in a way like cars, envisaged by the enthusiast, or airplanes. They can take on something of the personality of their owners; although of course, this is an extrusion of human personality into a mould, a mode of usage, a fashion of envisagement which indeed has functional relationship scope; whereas with the living creature, it is more than envisagement. It is complete with life to life association and development, a character becoming not only species-wide, but individually intensive. Even this is within the poise and provision for it, a dynamic drive and lively vitality which is different from that of other creations.

In man, the ascending scale of possibility in this realm, and the enlarged space for signature merges into truth and reality, because of spiritual soaring, scanning and even meeting with God, on His own basis and premises, the Cross of Christ, His resurrection and gift of immortality, repentance as an entry form, and access by grace forever. This is a mould which is more than a mould: mould is its announcement, but friendship is its acme, as with Abraham who, as James reminds us, was a friend of God. This has developmental and dynamic results!

*4          EXCURSION ON LOVE, LIBERTY, TRUTH AND MAN AS MAN

See especially, The Glow of Predestinative Power  Ch. 4, and To Know God, the Power of Christ’s Resurrection and the Fellowship of His Sufferings Ch. 1.

This is the FINAL MESSAGE FOR THIS VOLUME

"Therefore you, O son of man, say to the house of Israel:

'Thus you say,

"If our transgressions and our sins lie upon us,
and we pine away in them, how can we then live?" ’

"Say to them:

‘As I live,’ says the Lord God, ‘I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked,
but that the wicked turn from his way and live.
Turn, turn from your evil ways!
For why should you die, O house of Israel?’ (Ezekiel 33:10-11).

 

Indeed He says,

That You should be My salvation

to the ends of the earth’ "  Isaiah 49:6, cf. Luke 2:31.

 

Such is the love of God toward man (Titus 2). It is undifferentiable in scope, foreknown in result, citable in its end or in its thrust of desire, chaste in its holiness, choice in its purity, certain in its results, immutable in its beauty,

Irremediable, pariah of the hospital ? Is this then the solemnity of spiritual pathology ? Not at all. Love is far greater, mercy far more incandescent than that. This is a case instead of death by choice! It is the sought but abortive sinner who secures this hanging of such a sign! (John 3:19). Just as God knows the result, so He leaves nothing undone to avoid it, even SO loving the world that He came into it, that whoever believes in Him should be saved. Judgment ? Not at all the aim, He discloses, but that the world might be saved (John 3:17).

How entirely transporting is it that there is no need for the fatal sign! God WOULD HAVE ALL to repent (I Timothy 2), and if you are someone, and outside Him, it is time to become someone else, the saved version of your individual self (John 3, Titus 2-3, Romans 3:23ff.; 5; 8). Here you can see it and have it, a NEW CREATION (II Corinthians 5:17ff.).

This too shows with emphasis on deity Himself, Man as Man.

Of great interest is the fact that of necessity, ONLY in the Bible do you have the resolution of the predestination and freewill, the determinism and the voluntarism, the sovereignty and responsibility conflicts of philosophy. This is because in this book alone, there is a sovereign God who can control as He will, who has made man as He will, who has given to man a meaningful responsibility in allegiance or lack of it to the meaning, issuance and character of his life which, while not deleting its generic character, makes for culmination or disruption.

Here also is there the love which is not interested merely in self-serving will on the part of the sovereignty, or mere impulsion on the part of the direction taken towards and those brought to salvation. Here you have the only real choice, that of a different life, for a given life has its own parameters, and even given opportunity, may fail from pathological blindness even to be able to appreciate it (cf. Matthew 13:15ff.), and is bound to its own parameters.

Thus here there is indeed the occlusion of sin, which blinds, but the eye of God which sees, and is not limited by the sinful obscurations of the fallen creation, man, just as He is not merely seeking His own will by compulsion for His gratification. Love seeks the lost. As lost, they are not attractive (Romans 5:8ff.). Thus while HE chooses His people, HE also desires all, and so desiring, secures what is His, those who come,  without disturbance of the reality of the image-of-God status of man.

Thus is man given that freedom which is ultimate, by the operation of Him who is ultimate, dealing with the penultimate personality of man with knowledge, not mere will. Indeed, this means that God may be grieved by man, and for him, but man being so understood, and THUS so placed, is indeed responsible, so that no one may inhabit hell without if you will, having to tread over Christ's dead body to get there (Colossians 1:19ff., John 3:19). It is no deficiency of love on the part of God, but the reality of man's liberty which is in view. NOTHING which savours of propulsion, compulsion, programming could ever make man's love of God be real. It would always be a militant substitute for love, a programmatic substitute at some point. That God gains some and none fail to find Him, who are His, nor is any lost except through the utter and ultimate departure from the seeking God of free grace and salvation: this is the marvel.

It is a fact, but it is also a logically cohesive fact, without antinomy or antilogy of any kind, nor has this world its logical equal. That is precisely why secular philosophy is ALWAYS bogged down in this issue. Given air is necessary, it is like saying this: How can I have breathing without air or its equivalent ? The answer is: Don't waste your time trying. Get air. The correlative of air in this case is the Gospel.

Liberty and love thus are wed, responsibility and realisation are friends, compulsion is never substitute for comradeship, whether artificed or finessed. Reality rules, and God being the ultimate reality, the everlasting personal Being, in His rule, justifies His own claim, that He is love, light, truth and filled with everlasting lovingkindness. It even reaches as far as never compromising truth, with people or events, with propositions or principles, procedures or peace. Peace is intrinsic, since it is for sinners like man, the result of truth in mercy and love in liberty.

Nor is this all. God not only STATES His heart in this crucial aspect of man's salvation and the extent and NATURE of His love, not based on merit or lustre or achievement, but in its purest and original character, on its own divine desire for good and kindness and eternity for mankind as in Titus 2:13ff.. Statement is the beginning (as in Genesis 3:15). The Lord God also ACTED. Nor was His action limited to that of sending some worker to do good. He CAME (as in Ezekiel 34, Hosea 13:14, Micah 5:1-3, Psalm 45, Psalm 2, 40, He said He would).

Nor was this in any aspect like a presidential visit. There was no acclaim pre-arranged, nor was there any stooping from the chariots of power. He came in such a way that He Himself had to endure what man endures; even to the humblest beginnings, and the most agonising exit from this earth. He did not even condemn the adulteress in the public forum, though He delivered her and directed her clearly enough. His office was to give, and at times, He gave correction to the mighty (Matthew 23), and often help to the helpless. He gave Himself. That is what love is about, not merely acting at a distance but being involved as required.

Not only that, He gave Himself not in a path which reaped reward in securing the most glorious of humans, the most attractive, but those who were renegades with the rest, those deeply fallen along with those drawn before such had overtaken them. He made it clear explicitly that God loved the WORLD but those whom He did not take were exponents of preference. They preferred darkness (John 3:19). He WOULD have liked to have Jerusalem repent and continue, BUT THEY WOULD NOT! (Matthew 23:37ff., Luke 19:42ff.). His death covered in extent of offer and sincerity of grace ANY who would come, and while the take related to His Father's will, it was also to His own (John 6:62, Matthew 11:27). It was not His will that any of the little ones, for example, should perish (Matthew 18:14): such was not a select purpose of the Father.

The closed eyes (Matthew 13:15) were responsible for the lost sight. They were closed because they did not RECEIVE the love of the truth (II Thessalonians 2:10). What God has said in conjunction with what the Lord has done means this. His love would (as in Ezekiel 33:11) save the wicked (cf. Isaiah 55). He exhorts, He entreats and in the last resort, He exposes the judgment of truth on unforsaken, uncovered sin (Proverbs 1, 8), as well as the felicity of faith in Him, to take His gift. He acts to PRESENT the cover, even to those who resent it. He dies to make life available from the uttermost to the uttermost, in sincerity, in demonstrated integrity of its depth and purity; and He arises from death as foretold both as to timing (3 days,  as repeatedly foretold) and date (as in Daniel cf. Highway of Holiness Ch. 4), making asses of Rome and Jewish authorities, who cannot so much as present the body they found it expedient for safety, to kill.

Meanwhile His Church arose in the very place of so many of His miracles of grace, kindness, mercy, healing, testimony and action, which had seen Him and could see with their eyes the truth of His life and His power over death as all else: in Jerusalem (Acts 2-6).

Hence what He has said in word concerning His entreaties and willingness, and what He has done at Calvary, in cover as large and as late as the thief ON the cross, or the lunatic from the tombs, gives verified expression to His heart. Since this is His desire, and all power and wisdom is His capacity, and this is the EXTENT of His desire, shown practically in the cover of the Cross offered to man (I John 2:1ff.), as wide as humanity, though the payment is as little as for those who come to take it, as deep as death, and since the selection work on this basis has been done FOR man BEFORE the foundation of this world (Ephesians 1:4, Romans 8:29ff.), as sure as the life of God: then there is here found the only offered, sustained, verified and vindicated way for man to have liberty, to find truth.

God is back of it. Action is at the front of it. Statement and action confer in it. A different life is the result of it. It does not depend on the sinful occlusions which distort, but on God whose will is known and this includes avoiding force and ignorance as criteria (as in John 15:22ff.). IF they had not heard His words or seen His action they "would not have sin", He said. Since they had both heard and seen and had rejected it, then "they have no excuse for their sin". In some way to HIS satisfaction, exclusion from salvation for anyone is not by lack of love, of spread of it, depth of it, of concern, nor is it in any failure in coming, in action, in presentation, in desire, but in persistent, informed preference, be its mode what it will. Treatment of man in His image proceeds with that restraint which love has. Love never forces; for if it did, it would change its character and not even BE love!

Thus man as man is here given unautocratic, undespotic, unforced, deep and abiding meaning not as a controlled unit, be it by sin or other, but as a divinely sought person, with ample facilities past all the conditions inner and outer of his life, which might make a foregone conclusion of eternity. Here and here only is this to be found, and as history is so largely spent, in the life of this world, only in the Biblical Christ, the Lord's Christ does man come to fruition, his liberty sustained even in the constraints of sin and his God his lover and seeker.

Without these pre-conditions man can at best start to realise what he is, and being in sin, this is occlusion. This glorious collusion of charity and clarity in the mind of God Himself, and profusion of grace and love toward man brings not merely the only STATED way for man to have freedom, to be what God made him to be without systematic loss and exclusion, to be meaningful, but the only VERIFIED one; and in fact, it is the only one in existence logically.

Hence we rejoice that there is a way, that it is only one, that it is clear, that it is practical and that there is no excuse for man. What man misses through the lack of missionaries, or access by them, God does not miss. This no more makes missionaries unnecessary than does air make oxygen needless. Love does not falter because of fail-safes, but acts because of WHAT IT IS. If it does not, it is not there!

Christians were chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world (Ephesians 1:4), so that eternity does NOT depend on circumstances alone, but on a knowledge both above, before and beyond time. In this way, we do not have the oddities of 51% pass rate making all the difference for those who want to impress God with works, a defiling enormity, nor the X-factor which APPEALS to God in those who ignore the Bible to the extent that they make almost hideous caricature of the love of God, as if He did not SO love the WORLD and desire that none should perish, yes in heaven or on earth (Colossians 1:19ff.), as Spurgeon also attested (A Time to Praise God, Appendix I).

Rather, from the Bible, we have the love of God

	whose heart churned at the tragic result even for autonomous Moab (Jeremiah 48:36), even though it had severely harassed Israel,
	whose affirmation reaches like a net over the wicked with beautiful longing, clear outreach and explicit depth in Ezekiel 33:11, with tender yearning for all as in Isaiah 55, with unspeakable passion as in Isaiah 48:17ff.,
	who - as in Matthew 23:37ff., Luke 19:42ff. - wept at the results of resistance even to His personal and predicted coming to save, an event oblivious of all cost, fraught with determination extreme, explicit and wonderful as in Ezekiel 34, Hosea 13:!4, and guiding them almost as if each was a child as in Hosea 14, was telling them precisely what to do!

In this, while He is seen as  sovereign over obfuscation and unchanged by rejection by any, it is also stressed that this negative response by man is something vastly and categorically undesired by Him; for judgment according to truth becomes inevitable when mercy is manoeuvred away by this His creation, a divinely deplored negation even in the face of Him who went the whole way to the Cross in His kindness toward man as in Titus 2, the offer being to all the world (I John 2:1-2).

Thus NOT ONLY is there a whole series of domains in man to which God in His word addresses Himself with precision and patience, with word and deed, with love and appeal, but there is at the side of salvation, the provision for that relationship to God which is to be sought and expected when the Creator is acknowledged, just that coverage which is elemental, universal and yet not compulsive. What man is and what God has done for him match like bars in a tartan of select quality and amazing beauty.

There is no limit to the testimony to truth, at the levels biological, physiological, psychological, moral and spiritual, from the divine to the human empirically, logically, testimonially, in exhibits for the mind in words, and for the eyes in deeds. There is no limit to the responsibility of man, or to the felicity of being saved by the God of creation.

All this is its own testimony, added to the inexhaustible supply of verification, confirmation, attestation and cogency in Jesus Christ, the Rock of man's salvation, however many may slip from its sides, never mounting it, or move from its strength, leaving it undesired.

See also:

What is the Wheat to the Chaff Ch.  4 (A), 

Deity and Design ... Ch.  10, esp. *1

Marvels of Predestination and the Ways of Will

Ch.  6, *2, will and meritless operation;
Ch.   2 (selections); 

The Pride of Life, the Prince of Life and the Destiny of Man Ch. 3,    *1

Tender Times for Timely Truth Ch.  11, esp. pp.172ff.; 

Great Expectations, Great Enervations and Greater Grace Ch.  9;

His Wounds Opened Eternity Ch.  4 (also contrasted with Islamic deficiencies);

Sparkling Life ... Ch.   7,

Earth Spasm, Conscience Chasm and the Renewal of Life Ch.  6;

Scaling the Heights, Scanning the Depths, Spanning the Breadth:
Jesus Christ the Answer Ch.   5;

Gratitude for His Glorious Grace App;

Downfall from Defamation ... Ch.  3.

It is indeed part of the majesty and glory of God that He solves the questions that vex the minds of men by His own reality, neither grasping nor manipulable, neither yielding truth nor compromising peace, neither fierce in expectation nor lax in love, neither failing to love all in heart, nor ceasing to discipline any requiring it, neither adjusting the truth to desire, nor indulging desire to distort love, neither disguising the end of disobedience nor deterring the onset of final justice, yet delighting in mercy, sovereign in His Gospel, impervious in His grace which admits of no substitute in salvation, at any point or in any part, glorious in holiness, effectual in the consummation of His love without violence, worthy of worship, who makes His servants a flame, and gives His Spirit to His children.