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TRINITY
CHAPTER 13
from
Biblical Blessings Chapter 15
INTRODUCTION TO CHAPTER 13
Here is an approach to man in terms of what he is and where he is and what he comprises, leading to whose he is and what the Maker wrought in view of all this, and how it comes to fruition in the action of the Trinity.
TRINITY CHAPTER 13
REST in REALITY
and in REDEMPTION
WAYS IN
AND THE WAY OUT
OF
THE CURSE
AT THE STRICTLY PERSONAL LEVEL
for man
in the midst
of the Universe
THE FASCINATING WORLD OF THE CHEMICAL
Chemical substances do not show a power to translate themselves into high order affairs. Their propensities, powers, capacities and characteristics are all what they are: true, there is no book of management, or servicing attached to each chemical, but there might as well be. What they do, when, how and (to the extent science discovers it) why, where, in what circumstances, it is all there. You find, collate, interpret, hypothesise, verify or otherwise, integrate theoretical notions and the like, sometimes with a saltation: that is, in your own mind, when you find that a new approach better covers all the facts. But the chemicals do not saltate their characteristics. They are substances, not acrobats!
Experiments exist which certainly allow the inherent capacities of simple chemicals to exhibit themselves under devised circumstances. Intelligence on material things can really do quite a lot, as any architect will tell us. The materials themselves may do some things too: as when copper roofs acquire verdigris, or flocculent precipitates show their wonders of design. However all this is inherent in, and forms part of the characteristics list of the chemical, as it were, from birth. It does it if you give it a chance. What, however, it does not do, is acquire a new design and device schedule in which a new set of listings appears. What it is, it does. That is the way it is.
Some chemicals, to be sure, when exposed
to a set of circumstances, rather like some computers which display important
bugs under certain sets of circumstances, will produce for you interesting
exhibitions of inherent, inbuilt capacities. Thus amino acids have a proclivity
to be formed in the presence of certain chemicals, provided you drain off
what would produce a negative reaction to the contrary part (see The
Shadow of a Mighty Rock -SMR -
pp. 129ff.,
171ff.).
Certain arms, proclivities, inherent actualisabilities if you like, are
there. Combinations can be quite interesting and illustrate the amazing
depth and delicacy which chemicals possess. Combinations, however, they
are, not new designs. They do not encode!
They do not proceed to make the necessary left-handed proteins, or indeed proteins at all. DNA does not fall effortlessly, or in any other way, from their growing shoulders. They remain the contrivances of human intelligence when chemical intelligence is used; but at that, they stop dead at the limit provided by that intelligence. They do not arise to become some new take-off machine of chemical engineering. They go back and forth as situations arise and depart.
The Second Law of Thermodynamics traces
out for us the trend of such overall reactions without external power-assist,
here, beyond the universe - down. The notations of our observations exhibit
the limitations of inbuilt reactivities.
THE INTRIGUING WORLD OF THE VITAL
Codes do not arise from non-codes;
contra-circumstantial elements like left-handed protein structure do not
arise by some magic; they tend to sort themselves out in terms of ordinary
non-selection statistics. Such is not to be observed, stimulated, stirred
without intelligence, which in man makes use of codes in this, that he is in no
small measure composed of them, though his spirit that codes things, is itself
SO uncoded that it even both makes mistakes and can will to do so, and to cover
up the process, and conceal this from itself, in its bifurcations, sophistries,
devilries and devices.
Life with its codes and specialised selection procedures of course is something else. It has provisions which - like any other machinery - are set up by what is adequate to utilise "nature", to obtain intelligent results, apt for a purpose, dependent on inserted structures. Programmable procedures lead to desired productions. This is nothing new. The latent potential for reaction in the materials and the patent program together do the architecture, whether in industry, computers or "nature" .There is no difference. It is just that apart from the living high-end, there is no intelligence in "nature": simply the evidence that it was used (cf. .SMR pp. 252E-N, 316D-G, 130-131, 135, 210-211, 224, 329-332H; and Magic Moments, in The Kingdom of Heaven...).
The structures, like human intelligence,
DNA and so forth, these do what they are good at, secure what they possess
attributes to perform. In our case, the misuse of intelligence vitiates
those effects rapidly. However, in the abstract, we do have intelligence
and what it can do, this we know. It can build on the basis of an understanding
of other things, so that in terms of the power of the intelligence to create
and conceive, and the materials to be used and manipulated - very strictly
in accord with their powers from 'birth':
this or that can be "produced" ...
or as in the case of war, reduced!
THE CRUCIAL WORLD OF THE MENTAL AND SPIRITUAL
The spirit of man can soar and deploy
intelligence in ever so many intelligent ways, depending on the vision,
the perspective, the understanding, the cast of thought. It can - and to
a large extent doubtless will - reduce designs here from 'birth' by a form
of anti-celestial madness. This is true, and is being experienced, like
a disease, in which not an individual, but humanity itself, is the recipient.
Not all have contributed directly to this destructive, non-developmental
warp; but all are in line to experience at least some of its ... products.
It is all so well summed up in that old verse: "That that is, is; that that is not, is not. Is not that it? It is." Matter has what is the unintelligent, reactive state, though the production of that state is riddled with evidence of intelligence. Mind has what that can do in conceptualising and analysing, though the way people's minds are used is in the case of millions, as much perhaps a measure of needless incompetence as of capacity. Such is the spirit of man. Spirits in turn do what they have power, from 'birth' to do: they turn and envision, probe and imagine, create and co-ordinate, sometimes displaying an insane desire to be like god, with results ANYTHING BUT divine!
That, however, is just what happens when you act as if mind, matter or spirit in any given display and array, is what in fact, it is NOT! The dream bites the dust and the dust bites the dream! Do the same in chemistry if you will. It will not change because high-minded notions are brought to play. The chemicals will go right on displaying their natures, as from 'birth' till its all over. That's how they were made; that's what they've got and so that's what they do!
For figs in nature, you need fig trees or seed, for intelligence you need mind-potential products, for spirit you need mankind, and above him, the intelligence producer who acted in the various phases of what is, which as we have noted, gets right on with being just what it is, for that IS what it is. Evolution in general, and efforts to gain life from non-life, or to get higher order from lower order always run into the same old downfalls. What is higher, in design and in intelligence input level from 'birth', is not obtainable by twiddling the dials of circumstances on something that is lower. You bring out its so very interesting features and qualities, its properties and propensities - and so ?
This is to display what it IS, NOT what it is NOT! And what it is, has been well enough named in the categories to which each kind of production belongs. Nothing has nothing to do with anything, and will stay that way, by definition; matter has much to do with inter-material actions, and will go on being what it is; life is fine in inter-vital relations, each according to the degree of height or craftsmanship with which it is 'born', and human life likewise, continues in its inter-personal relationships, which are usually far from being triumphant.
This is the only real challenge to thought in all this. WHY! Why should man with his exalted combinations in his trilogy of mind-matter-spirit, make such an incredible mess of inter-personal relations, when the personal is itself such a craftsman's paradise of invention. Making freedom, creating it
(cf. SMR pp 18ff., 30ff., 65ff., 88ff. - *22, 92ff. -*27, 254-302, 303-304, 307ff., 314-316B, 347ff, 403ff., 423-432),
deploying even limited but genuine liberty is a wonder, a marvel, it leaves computers as strictly utter child's play - though the children are so very wonderful, one is forced to admit.
In creating, then, some significant measure of liberty, God performed a complex prodigy
(cf. SMR Chs.1,3,10; That Magnificent Rock, Ch. 1;
A Spiritual Potpourri, Ch.4, section 4, pp. 34-39; The Kingdom of Heaven, Ch. 5).
But what has man done ? What moreover
is he to do!
THE WONDERFUL WORD OF THE DEITY TO THE WHOLE WORLD
The answer is however obvious, not because of intelligence, but through the grace of the Intelligent Spirit who made it all to be what it is, which it goes on displaying in those terms of WHAT it is. Man has to the most profound degree found it desirable to ignore God - not in theory, for it appears by far the majority of mankind believes there is a divine being - but in application and practice. IN theory, man tends to downgrade God to god, to various types of construable, conceivable and very often manipulable by-products of his own thought. That of course does not account for things and is merely a sort of ingenious game*1. Like all games, however, its results are real enough.
ANY failure to deal with actuality as it is, is fraught with peril. It is like driving blind at 100 m.p.h. on a highway that is not there, at night. Results are - to be sure - assured! When it is with the One who gave to what is here, its 'birth' - yes its creation, as distinct from not-being - when a person tangles with Him, theoretically and personally, by deriding, degrading or 'dismissing' Him, then of course the results HAVE to be profound. To have a tangled mess of thoroughly misconceived and utterly incredibly stupid human relationships at our own level is then virtually a sombre certainty. One says 'virtually', for it would not be at all amazing if this spiritual ONE saw fit, with intelligence, to quench the enterprise, limit the damage, or indeed simply damn the impudence of the voluntary madness of His liberated subjects.
That of course needs to be weighed. If this happens to anyone, there is really no excuse. It would not be unjust. However, the ineluctable evidence, as we have seen in SMR Ch.1and elsewhere, is that this ONE has had much to speak to mankind, just as His intelligence was likewise exercised in the construction of the chemicals, the matter, the universe, the mind, and the spirit of man.
The DNA CODE in man is speech in material format, and the BIBLE in language is speech in verbal format. Each of these forms of speech has symbolic significance which is entirely useless unless the receptors are governed by the necessary symbolism-interpretation means as affect the codal composition received, be it words or codes. This composition of components in a unitary double-edged system, to produce what is useless without meaning, and to receive meaning by what is useless without its provision, proceeds in its unitary logical mould. Just as the coded commands enable matter to matter instructions to be absorbed and utilised (coded matter to qualified matter), in a system of communication, so the Bible enables MIND-to-mind communication direct and in assured form, between God and man (SMR Chs.1,3,5,10).
This signifies the new position. It is well worth reading since one's destiny, what happens to the sort of being that one is, is as assuredly revealed there as is the outcome for any other field of verified observation.
Here the outcome is hell, or heaven. It is all inter-personal at this level. It is indeed a magnificent additive to the divine masterpiece in creating man, that even here there is creation.
The structure of salvation, available to man, has a beauty reminiscent of,
but starkly transcending the other beauties in the created universe.
This deals beyond the limited applications of mind-matter-spirit, in a fourth dimension -
Divine Spirit to human spirit:
the genesis and the essential outcome alike for man.
The Increate, eternal Creator,
having made for man a created format,
took one Himself,
to bring peace to all who receive Him.
He even descended to the womb,
and ruptured
the tomb.
THE INEFFABLE POWERS AND QUALITIES OF THE COMMANDER, JESUS CHRIST (Isaiah 54:6)
We have considered three dimensions for man: body, mind and spirit, each with its own functions, features, necessities and implications. There is a fourth. It is not just mind to body or body to mind, spirit to mind or spirit to spirit among our kind, though this last relates. It is in the further realm of code to the coded, and that in the specialised form of words to the verbal; for although we are more than codes, our composition nevertheless contains this highly enterprising systematics enabling it so much as to be, and be functional. To be sure, this is only when we are where so ordered and where the overall organisation is apt, not least in areas of our other functionalities. It is a cosmos of order, indeed, in man there are multiple cosmoi of varied forms of order and system, semantics and spreads of the psyche, domains of rationality and symbolism. In this must lie, as there does lie, the appropriate semantics and hermeneutics, whether coded in programs or caused into verbal communicative devices, apt for assessment, such as directly use intelligence, in words.
The fourth dimension is that of the Creator of codes, much of the physical constitution of man, directing words or intimations by whatever chosen means, by definitively chosen words to man. It is not just some communication; it is Creator-communication to creation, in this case, the one able to be engaged in analytically conscious, semantically investigable, purposively directed and volitionally inspectable communication. This of course involves all the features requisite for such a thing, such as personality and purposive response, including the direct and the devious, at will, the circumspect and the kindly, or the devilish and the self-centredly pre-occupied or even destructive, as currently in some Islamic bodies. This last, in function, it is a thing earlier in the minds of many Communist ones, and before that Nazi ones, of various nationalistic ones, autonomy-seeking ones, whether this be from man or from God in thrust, and in fact even in the hearts of some religious ones.
Leaving however man's use of such communicative and purposive devices, the thing in tandem, the 'dream' expressed, the force of harassment impressed, we move back to the essence of this fourth dimension, the communication of the code-creator, using intelligence in this time, not to make programs but to make direct contact through another form of symbolism, words.
These things are operational amid man, and for man; and when man ignores the communication from the coding source and spiritual institutor, his Creator, then of course his person-to-person communication amid his own kind, readily degenerates. It is then rather like an old car: it squeaks, and it groans, and it moans, and it stutters, and it lets you down, and when you expect things of it, it takes you up, it fizzes and it chugs, it thrills but then it relapses, it brings accident and it is not so good.
Of course not all old cars are like this; for some are serviced ...
God has, in this FOURTH dimension (cf. SMR pp. 348ff.) then, created a way to INTER-PERSONAL peace. It is so with Himself, the Trinity, and it is so with others to whom that communicated Being, the eternal Word of God, His Son comes, in fact to those who receive Him. It is, from the infinitude of the Creator, never Himself without trinitarian fellowship, like an export by incalculable grace, to the mere level of creation: an export of what ? Why it then becomes an export of the incomparable felicities which are His.
It meanwhile elevates man, in the persons of the redeemed, to such communion with God as was to be his, from the first, before he fell. It involves a DIRECT personal action on the LORD's own part, in which IN THE PERSON of His WORD, His SON expressed in human format, He provides for remedy, rectification, reconstruction of the spirit of man. (Cf. The Biblical Workman Ch.7, and Benevolent Brightness or Brothy Bane 87 and Repent or Perish Ch. 7.) This makes for peace.
In car terms, here was a mechanic and more than a mechanic is thus provided for the old car. This one has slaved to save it, and even been crucified to annul its PERSONAL products of guilt and shame and failure to perform, in Himself. With persons, it is a PERSONAL matter, not just the chatter of codes. In verbal form these may communicate it to those symbolically aware, and semantically instituted as to system and intelligence. In functional form, the communication was actualised into Calvary, the cross-roads of human guilt and divine mercy, culmination in Christ Jesus the Lord, of a life of humility and fearlessness combined, where truth sparkled like the sun on fresh stream-waters, and its warmth melted the ice of convention with the blaze of reality (cf. Christ, the Wisdom and the Power of God Ch. 8, Repent or Perish Ch. 2).
The design, in plan, as with so much of the DNA code, for its own part, is simple in principle, but profound in practice. The programmer of the plan of salvation did not make it incomprehensible, though old cars with personality, to mix our concepts for impact, often like to treat it as if it were, preferring their squeaks which for some give pleasure or fulfilment or even perhaps some sense of retribution in some obscure form against life, for daring not to be manipulable by their own wills.
God is not like that. Manipulation is a disease: for it makes the one man who manipulates the other, close to being a simple hypocrite. If manipulation were a mere mischance, then why is it purposed; and if it is really something else, as reductionists love to say of virtually anything in an anti-scientific relish, as if they were sick of thought and practical realities, then why is it not desired for oneself as recipient ? If one is not gulled by cleverness, then of what do we speak ? But if one is, then is deceit a purposive thing in its own right, and more particularly, in its own wrong. If it is unreal, how can you do it ? If it is not, then it is necessary to admit its guilt. Guilt ? Why of course, for then you are acting as if you were superior in importance to what you lower yourself to gull, your will constituted some kind of right or authority, to interfere with what you neither make nor can make, and which bears the evidence of intelligence. To do so is to confront that intelligence with your own, which being without limit lesser, a contrivance of His own, is presumption.
You don't care ? That NEVER makes any difference except to your guilt. The thing IS what it is, and results accrue as accords with reality, not with dream.
The Bible, that only verified, validated word of the Creator*2 of codes and mind and spirit in their synthetic speciation in man, directs our thought to why He has done it, what it has done which He made, this mankind, to what He wants to do about it and what are the results. The modernistic concepts of meaninglessness are meaningless in this, that they work on the basis of irrationalism for their construction and seek to be rational in their outcomes. Of course a bit of leg is close to meaningless if you see it somewhere, for its coherence with the rest of the body IS its meaning; and in this case, the rest is missing. Of course man seems meaningless when you separate him off, chop off a bit from the connective nexus which links him to his power base, purposive source and imagination Maker.
To be able to imagine is a great gift. To be realistic is another. Each has its place, and either out of place can deface.
Leaving however mere imagination - out of place dreams - we come to the demonstrable word of God*2. This solves all problems and shows the meaning, message and completion for man, without which he is mere displacement parts: mere ? Surely systems can still surge in him at the worst, but there is now a broken element which damages integrity, integrality, meaning...
This fourth dimension, communication from God to man, arising to a far greater inter-communicative wonder than man to man communication, but a necessary one, is in word in the Bible, That is the first. Then according to this word, it is also to be found definitively in history; for God did not sit back as it were and speak, but having spoken, DID. He sent the written, then the personal; and the latter was smitten because this being man's own desert, in Him it became man's deliverance. Here guilt is not repressed but placarded, not condign in consequence, except for Him, in the ultimate. This, it changes things; but then, as with old cars, they needed changing.
The person, whom history has found for due observation in Jesus Christ, was predicted, and His qualities were predicated of Him in prophecy for some 1500 years, or a little less. Then He came and did all He had to do, and not the most refined disbelief has ever then, or since, been able to show in any ONE detail, a failure to keep the specifications listed (cf. SMR Ch.6). This was made manifest, performed, despite the fact that there has from the first been enormous motive to prove some error, for God had been in confrontation with the Jewish nation in vast measure for long (Malachi, Isaiah 30) and had predicted their rejection of His Son (SMR Ch.9) and not only the method of it, the spirit of it, but many of the details accompanying it. This He did with just that relish for fact that makes communication compelling, and repudiation simple if it does not occur.
It was never repudiated for the obvious reason. It is this. Maximal motivation merely accentuates truth when it contests it, for the irrefutable becomes the more obvious, the more effort is made to seduce or suppress it. Its very incapacity to fall becomes testimony glaring to the unconscionable, and mocking to the manipulators. They fail because there is simply nothing else to do.
These identification specifications for Him included, amongst many others, such as the date of His death (cf. Christ the Citadel ... Ch. 2):
Christ died to save sinners is the simplest formulation at the outset (cf. I Timothy 1:15). Sinners are people who at the spirit and mind level are directly at fault before their Creator, and who, having bodily equipment to go with it all, doubtless have misused this as well, and in addition, one another. There is moreover only one variety of this being called man whose case is utterly, woefully hopeless. That is a variety of sinner. Let us look at this.
Christ said: "I have not come to call the righteous people, but sinners to repentance" (cf. John 9:38-41, where He said: "If you were blind, you should have no sin: but now you say, We see: therefore your sin remains."). In other words, those who are too good in their own eyes to need pardon and reconstruction personally, these are too opinionated and self-secured (albeit on nothing) to be savable. They refuse the necessary 'operation', and hence are not subjected to it, or to Him.
Now it is true that HE is far deeper than this might suggest. HE has a FOREKNOWLEDGE, as we reasoned in SMR Ch.1, and as we read in the Bible; and He KNOWS those who are His, and will ensure that these take the operation (II Timothy 1:9; see Love that Passes Knowledge, in The Kingdom of Heaven...). Such are HIS inter-personal capacities - indeed they are unlimited - that He is quite able to do this without either violating the reality of the will of the person concerned, or allowing mere circumstances to do it.
The ONLY ground cited for condemnation
in view of this available radical therapy, this death reversing arrangement,
is this: "LIGHT HAS COME INTO THE WORLD AND MEN HAVE
LOVED DARKNESS RATHER THAN LIGHT" (John 3:16ff., cf. John 15:21-23).
That is the beauty of it all: those who in HIS knowledge are so disposed,
get two things: WHAT THEY DESERVE AND WHAT THEY PREFER. Those who, despite
being to the utmost depraved, if so be, undergo this therapy, get what
HE GIVES. That ? It is eternal life (John 3, Romans 6:23, I John 1:1-4,
5:13, Romans 5:5-11).
YOU
It is like birth. YOU do not arrange
or organise it. It is FAR beyond you. GOD however it is not beyond; and
those who are His, He secures, making it very clear that HE WOULD HAVE
all to repent, turn to a knowledge of the truth of their Creator-Saviour
and be saved. Yet He is NOT prepared to void their liberty; nor yet to
allow it to act as if it were a god. HE secures what is appropriate, and
the magnificent irony is this: it is not even AT ALL, a matter of saving
the best. In many cases, it is in some aspects the worst (I Corinthians
1:26-31). It is a matter of leaving what prefers darkness where it is.
If that is to be the PERSONAL nature of those of this category known as
mankind, so be it. They were not made to be violated. He secures PRECISELY
whom He will, and leaves PRECISELY those who prefer darkness, and HE knows
the difference.
God is love (I John 4:7), gives it its name and provides from Himself its place. In this result, then, His love rests content - but not before it acted to the uttermost (Galatians 3:3-13, 5:1ff., 4:4ff., Titus 2:11ff., 3:4ff.) In the end, NO FLESH, no pretension, no self-exaltation in kind or degree at all will be suffered; for all have sinned, and the cost of reclamation is infinite.
AS MANY AS RECEIVED HIM, TO THEM HE GAVE THE POWER TO BECOME THE CHILDREN OF GOD (John 1:14)
You wish it? Receive Him for WHO He
is and receive with Him, WHAT He has done, so that personalised for you,
it gets within, He moves within, and you and your God are once again, together.
Peace is a glorious thing when it is with the right Person for the right
reasons...
*1
So much is said
so ineptly here, that it would be a good idea to use some definitions.
Thus cultural religiosity, man-made religions and so forth, could be called,
as now, religion, religions. On the other hand, God directed declarations,
intimations, announcements to our race, and all that concerns Him, could
be called:
"meta-religion".
These would be in the area where there is open test, clear evidence and impeccable logic, so that in nothing does it lack. This is the religion of more significance, beyond the intellectual pabulum of mankind, the imaginative temporary fillings in his mind. It is knowledge of God, starting from His word, His universe and His will as declared. (See SMR Chs. 1, 3.)
Here is the religion which
Here is the religion which
Hence it is the
religion where
it happens.
The ONLY ONE who could have this record is the One who does have it, God Almighty, declaring Himself and doing what He says; and none stops Him, for none is able (cf. Isaiah 43:11).
Meta-religion,
that which deals with objectivity, because objectivity deals with it, has
such criteria.
As for Him, He is flawless. HE
and THIS is the
condemnation that light has come into the world
and men have preferred
darkness;
and THIS is
the commendation, that those who receive the Lord Jesus Christ are accepted
in Him. (John 3:15-19, 5:19-23, Acts 17:31,Ephesians 1:5-6.)
It is not in some merely mental way to downgrade people who have manufactured gods, or who receive them. It is rather to remind them spiritually and in reality that this is what they are - and what their 'gods' are. Judgment, declares Paul, is "according to truth" (Romans 2:3, cf. Proverbs 1:30-31). It is effected wherever, on Christ vicariously in the love of God, or on those who refuse Him, for there is no other salvation under heaven given among men, by which they must be saved (Acts 4:11-12, cf. John 8:23-24). It is not to glorify God to imagine He is what He is not, or does what He may be demonstrated NOT to do. That is merely a lie. God is not fond of lies, being Himself incapable of lying.
{See SMR pp.
44-45,
88-89
(*22), 92ff.(*27),
313-315,
269,
580-583;That
Magnificent Rock, Ch.7, pp. 159ff.; Titus 1:2.
This is a glorious
incapacity,
for lying
involves a derogation of the minimal majesty that God Almighty necessarily
has,
and
voluntarily uses, as shown.}
Another definition of meta-religion:
That which is able to both challenge and withstand the strongest challenges of men: as from another category, before which their unaided thoughts melt like metal in the furnace.
One of the demonstrations
of The Shadow of a Mighty Rock, to
which may be added That Magnificent
Rock, is this:
that in any contest,
What so acts
deserves a name, without ambiguity.
See:
DEITY AND DESIGN, DESIGNATION AND DESTINY, especially but not only Section 8;
LIGHT DWELLS WITH THE LORD'S CHRIST
WHO ANSWERS RIDDLES
AND WHERE HE IS, DARKNESS DEPARTS
Bible or Blight,
Christ or Confusion:
The Comprehensive Resolution of Man's Intractable Problems
is Found Only in the Bible, the Word of God