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Chapter 1
THE
DIAGNOSTIC SYNTHESIS
Prelude
It is not really the case that it is
necessary to commit intellectual suicide in order to have faith. Indeed, it is
necessary to do just that if you reject the biblical faith; for faith in itself
is confidence or trust, assured conviction, but faith in a bathtub when you need
an ocean liner is mere mysticism, or worse. It is the same with gods of
naturalism, truncated idealism - a mine minus metal - one's own power or
appointments, idols of this or that, human courage and hope, optimism, or other
groundless exercises in subjectivism.
With the God who made us and our
privileges, appointments, opportunities, minds, logic and insights, liberty to
despise Him or ourselves or our neighbours, to will to embrace willy-willies of
imagination or not, there is the unique fit. Here it is not in vain to have
faith, for its object is right, realistic and even expressive, not surprising
since we humans are so VERY expressive.
Intellectual suicide ?
With God, the precise
opposite is the case. There is NOTHING left in the dark when you seek Him, find
Him and apply His principles. They cover as the waters cover the sea. However,
you must first find Him. It is all very well to say, to take a human
illustration, that E=MC2 is simple. In one sense it is. But you have
to FIND it, and at that, see it in its setting, and apply it and find if
it works on all sides.
With God, it is
as with all things real. You cannot just throw
words or hearts or heads at things, as if it were some sort of existential
calisthenics. Care is needed as a mode, and truth as a conductor.
As with any operation, you need
to know what you are doing. Man as a race does not know, and hence his various
quasi-infantile actions and reactions that mock sanity, mar wisdom and shuttle
folly as if he were commuting to endless destinies of ruin, rampaging and riot - the
description is not over-done, at crucial times, whole nations seeming to act rather like a child of three years in the
driving seat of a car. Trouble is predictable, predicable and persistent; and
that is an under-statement. The world does not know what it is doing. Some do;
but they do not control it. God does and He supervises its learning, its remedy,
its ruin as the case allows, enables and fits with His provisions. This world is
a lost cause, and long has been (John 14:29-31); for its prince as Christ
declared "has nothing in Me!"
Since Christ is the exact
representation of the brightness of God's glory, and he who has seen Him
has seen God (Hebrew 1, John 14, the "I am" before Abraham, the Lord of glory,
who in the form of God took that of a servant to show and present salvation for
any in our race, what follows ? It is this. The leader of this world has NOTHING
TO DO with GOD! That, it is what follows. It does not look like it, and that is
because this is the case. Intricate in contrivances of magnificent understanding
is our body (methods don't matter here, for brilliance in product you need it in
mind: there are no exceptions, none is ever shown), amazing in facility are our
minds, remarkable in the scope for imagination is the spirit of man; but when it
comes to understanding of heart, wisdom of ways, picking the just cause of
conflict and heeding the provocateurs of ruin, man has scarcely the wisdom of a
cat.
There is reason for this.
Ability astray, like a sports car driven by a young boy, is more dangerous than
mini-mind!
Man is a would-be maestro who,
rejecting his origin and seeking a destiny at odds with reality, is not merely
prone to accident but bent on it. But what of this wonder that he is ? How will
we categorise, capture, occasion understanding concerning man as a product
? and find health for his soul ? What is available to will as we seek ? Effort
is not the answer; effort must be applied effectually where it may find its
object of search.
Consider.
Diseases of the body, and in
measure of the mind, are commonly designable in terms of syndromes. You have
this and that symptom, they form a camaraderie, a group, like a platoon, and you
seek the platoon commander - or organising active or intrusive agent
or agents - in terms of this or that bacterium or virus, chemical
deficiency or surplus, misaligned or dysfunctional organ and so on; or in some
composition of inter-related causes.
Then it is found, and there it is: the result and the cause,
connected and if all is well, verified. Both may be multi-form, but each exists
as a characterisable kind.
What does not work has a basis,
and sickness has a ground, even if at times it is hard to find it; and
what it DOES work, or confer, such as delirium or disorder, that it ought
not to work in good health, this has as descriptive name, a sort of countenance.
It is called this or that and has an associated set of symptoms, variable
perhaps about a norm, but there. Such is the trend.
Diagnosis on the basis of
knowledge and aspiration for more, here is at work.
The procedure is not limited to
medical practice.
In fact, our current interest is in what produces social,
economic and moral diseases, spiritual disease and decease. Our topic concerns itself
with what are the combinations of symptoms, and grounds on which their
deteriorations are based, operationally as with medical symptoms, and then the
finding of the
basis of those grounds, the underlying or impactive thrust that has led to this
depletion, disorder, disturbance or disruption of what is available.
Thus, to pursue the parallel,
iron deficiency might be an underlying cause of an infection which might
otherwise have been successfully fought; and in turn, an operation with blood
loss might be the cause of the iron deficiency, going up the scale in ultimate
causation, while festering or fungus, inflammation or pain, skin disrepair or
nail loss might be within the syndrome for the infection itself, as one goes
down the scale to results. We can move up to causes, and down to consequences,
and in the latter, move in breadth to what is generated, the results in any
pattern they may have, or potential patterns; and one might even finesse into
subsidiary causes of differentiation in practice, in terms of which particular
pattern has come into effect. The movement in the exact result may perhaps come
through incorrect medication, means of its use, or accompanying conditions which
complicate the normal syndrome, or of course, simplify it in death.
Medical diagnosis can engage in
such matters with the human body, and to some extent, mind.
However, our concern today is
with something parallel. It is not DISEASE which is our current interest, but
NORMAL functioning, in which power and not problem, potency and not dysfunction
is in view. Yet in seeking the substitute for the term 'syndrome' to
indicate the healthy combinations in view, we have no easy task. Let us begin.
As with the syndrome, so in the
positive case of health, there is a
collection of items of FUNCTION. They work together in a characterisable manner.
Again, there are causes to be found, in the instrumental or operational level
(such as blood deficiency in iron, in our above case of disease), and causes of these more
remotely (as with the operation leading to blood loss in the same example). As
with the negative, the sickness case, so with the functional, the health case.
There are associations of functions and causes.
Such is he collection of neural,
organic, systemic, correlative features of focus in the human body, down to
cells and their chemical participants, elements in the realm of DNA and its
informational requisites. as we move down. Then again, the human mind, one can
here also search downwards in structure, down to what it deploys, the physical
organics and cerebral agencies in the billions of cells serviceable like a
piano, to the player who uses their information content and kinetic capacity for
instituting motion, through messages, or storing data, for memory./
This alongside the human spirit, with its power to engage or
disengage from the data and its varied formulations wrought by or for that spirit,
within the mind, which may even protest at demands, may be an object of quest.
Where are the allied functions and collations of categories and active agencies
and how do they provide ? Sometimes a person may act with foolish patterns and rationalisations
of a man's spirit, which he may even recognise in some madness or rash flush as
such; and at others the action may be with
brilliant organisational and motivational skill.
These three dynamics, body, mind
and spirit: they are like a positive
kind of syndrome, a collection of functional correlatives. We cannot however, as
we saw, use a 'syndrome' for such healthy associations, since the term has other
work to do. We must invent a term to convey this positive
parallel to syndrome.
Fields
Now there is here, certainly diagnosis
in mind. You are to look at facts and find features and connect these to the
field in view, here operational capacity and its grounds. You are to find out
what the facts are (as in diagnosis), see in what more and less causal
conditions they take their ground and so become operational, and then look
further to find what overlay of causes is operational to make the entire
situation of the kind we classify, to be as it is.
In THIS diagnosis however, while
in common with the disease type, we are looking at what goes together and how it
is working together to make one overall characterisable and describable unity, we
are nevertheless looking at positive function, not dysfunction. We are as there, seeking for
what is a pattern, an overall collection, and its causes; but on this occasion,
it is not the pathological but
the operational in norm.
We are then to be
putting
together for review a collection of items that function together, and to seek to
find in what manner they mutually align and operate, so that the total might be characterisable in some way, by some term we will select
and its cause sought: the positive
equivalent or at least parallel of scarlet fever or cancer and its terms of
origin.
This is a form of synthesis, so
our chosen term for this positive parallel to syndrome signals concerning set
diseases, will be given the notation: DIAGNOSTIC SYNTHESIS.
Syndromes, as was noted, may be
related to higher and higher designations of their causes, even to what is basic
to their arrival and arising. So in diagnostic synthesis, we look to what is
basic to the functionalities of body, mind and spirit to which we give
attention.
Such syntheses, co-operative
collations with man, come TOGETHER as a rule. To be sure, just as disease
is sometimes lacking in the body, so is it in the positive case, sometimes
present. This however is not the current point: we are looking at the scope of
unimpeded operational success in the human being, the synthetic entity.
It is of course not entirely
synthetic, any more than is a disease. It is not only the syndrome which may be
discerned. It has a nature and a ground for that, to which we move.
Here, then, our concern is not
with what might be called a
pathological anti-cornucopia, but a healthy cornucopia of facilities and
functions, with its basis, background, current causes and
ultimate operative causes; and it too has a character.
Thus and much more is the
positive case and situation; since the function is far more than the
partial dysfunction, so that the diagnostic synthesis background is to be richer
than the pathological intrusion. There is an underlying HEALTH, operational
synthesis dirigible by volitional impartation. You want, you have, you use, you
get results.
What results particularly do you
however get ? You get mental results firstly, in the comparison between your
wish and your attainment. Secondly, they occur in your peace of mind WITH it or lack of the
same; thirdly in your correctness or otherwise in having chosen this objective,
relative to more distant and important objectives (such as honesty as background
to filling in a form). Then, as we move onwards, honesty, in turn,
it itself an outcome in no small part of your
objectives for life itself, and then these appear as an outcome of what your life is
believed to be made for ...
While, indeed, confusion
can come if you consider your life made
for nothing, hence making a variable series of drifting principles and
perceptions, by definition deprived of point and purpose, yet for the limited
self, it can have some purpose or other, like someone who has been given a fortune for no
stated reason and wondering what on earth to do with it. You can make up your
mind to SOMETHING. It may be inept; but the scope is there. It may lack depth,
but the capacity is inherent.
If you are overcome, as someone
morally adrift (because without God there are only subjective and hence variable
morals, misnamed as such*1 ), by a desire to be kind, even if you hold to a philosophy which makes it
unkind to be kind because this is held to militate against an improvement in our
kind, and this leads you to further self-contradictory confusion, still, you CAN
make up your mind to some meaningless meaning, however oxymoronic or morally
moronic it may be: or put otherwise, resolve to follow unvalidatable
preference for the moment.
Thus there are these various
levels of results and causes, going back into mind and spirit, and these are
part of the totality which is a member of the kind called mankind. Diagnostic
synthesis looks for what is the cause of all these mutually co-operative but in
the end, hierarchically decided objectives, with their correlative results, good
(for the cause and purpose) or bad as the case may be; and good or bad in
themselves, whatever one may think, since God is and morals are as He prescribes
and preference is not another name for being God!*2
Associations
There is about these a certain
unity, for your thought and morals (and if you have none in intention, yet you
have some in fact, for instance, that it is right not to have morals becomes the
moral! ludicrous as that is - but then, being apart from the living God of life
is ludicrous and it is meaningless to question things with displeasure when you wilfully remove the all-explaining basis and cause*3).
There is the ongoing unity about
the extent to which your cerebral capacities provide you with correct storage
units for your purpose and your imagination of spirit endues your thought with
correct means of achieving your purpose. Then there is the extent to which your
body implements your thought from the mind which implements the thoughts and
desires inspired by your surging or questing spirit, and after that, the extent
to which you were judicious in applying the means, both mental and physical, to
the moral, surveying or imposing desires of your spirit.
With all the variabilities,
there is assessability. Each part of the synthetic whole did or did not operate
in a manner to fulfil the purpose.
What however is the basis of the
purpose ? Beyond the synthesis is the unity, just as in a disease, beyond the
disease and its immediate cause is the condition of the body as one whole, with
one totality in pattern and function, to which various conditions relate well or
otherwise.
It is not enough to state simply
that your purpose is to enjoy yourself and make others endure you, or to deploy
yourself and make an impact, or to be serviceable to your fellow man with a vast
quandary in terms of what parts of their desires you will serve, and which not,
and why so or why not, leading to why you are alive (cf.
What is life for ?).
We are looking at causes, and
not mere consequences. If you say, I am a cynic ? we need to know why (cf. SMR
pp. 257ff.), or a sceptic (cf. SMR pp. 292ff.),
the case is the same: this in itself
is mere datum, for why do you desire this ?
In the end, we seek a cause in
your TOTALITY with its HIERARCHICALLY disposed unity, that of your assessing,
imaginative, roving, envisaging and comparing spirit, which finds its rest, or
quest, or conundrum as the case may be, in this or that ultimately. If it finds
it nowhere, then it is in itself it rests, but then, which self, in what
condition and on what day and at what changing phase ? and if it denies a cause
for the self, this is mere opting out from thought. So be it. That is
anti-reason and so dies that part of death.
Causation
Realistically, however, as we
have seen all but innumerable times, there is no way you can obviate causation.
Nothing is no cause of anything and as a basis explains and is descriptive of
... nothing. What is inadequate for results is similarly self-defined out of
relevance. What is adequate for the diagnostic synthesis observed, and its
ultimate actuality and so the resultant responsibility, is readily found. There must be the
capacity for all the cosmoi, the modes of being, that are composed into a
synthesis in man: such as the physiological, psychological, moral,
imaginative, spiritual, intellectual, rational. It must include the conceptual power to make beings with - in
their own turn - conceptual power, and the mathematical power to make bodies
built on such modes, and the information-creating power to instruct those bodies
through DNA and related modes, what to do in order to be, and then through
pro-creation, be again and again and again ...
It is not hard to find God, as
He is a necessity for our being, the source of information in its cosmos of
conception, through intelligence. Ignoring Him does nothing to delete either
Himself or our responsibility to Him. Some may see this but opt to mock and
despise or revile or ignore Him; but this too, like a disease, is merely a
logical dysfunction, built on a spiritual desire, perhaps, as with the devil,
for infinite autonomy. It may be a spirit of rebellion which is never going to
be satisfied with any god or with God, since on this basis, the only thing worth
having is being IT!
So be it. You cannot as a
derivative being in mind and spirit and body, beginning through the office of an
eternal cause (nothing never gets anywhere for anything so it can never be, so
something has to be, and it has to be proficient, efficient and sufficient for
us to be), hope to replace it.
If it were imperfect in power,
this would be a limit imposed by what is beyond it; and so on, until you come to
what to compose anything (and we ARE) must have no limits and just be, so that
anything else can be composed. In BEING without any constraints from any other
source, it is limitless and changeless, time as we know it, with its limits
being of necessity a mere creation (as in the end of Romans 8). It is therefore
vain and futile, a pathology of spirit, to seek to be IT, and this is no reason
at all for refusing to recognise God.
You do not have to be reasonable
of course, and can decide to disregard reason; in which case, naturally, you can
never argue in terms of reason or seek to use it, consistently, in any phase of
life. You could try to segregate reason to this or to that, of course, but not
with reason! If you decided to squirm into the case where you disjoin yourself
from reason about yourself, your diagnostic synthesis and its causes, then
wishing to making causation internal and subjective, you cannot consistently
apply it outside yourself, or even inside yourself, since the self-imposed
limits you put on it are without reason or cause. You are then a walking piece
of irrationality, not according to the functional capacities of the diagnostic
synthesis to be found in you, and being pathological, suffer as many sick people
do, with the results of dysfunction so formed.
Voluntary
Disease (S.I.W.)
In this case it is a case of
voluntary disease.
All efforts to subjectivise
reason BY reason fail. If you try to account for it by this or that method, it is
either irrational, or by reason. If you USE it to establish its subjectivity,
then of course you are ASSUMING to be false the very thing by which you are trying to
provide prove, in
your very method. For a cataract of confusion, this is hard to excel!
On the other hand, all these
antilogies and antinomies fall to the ground, liberating the spirit when you
come back to the point that the trilogy called man has a variety of minimal
causes, not only of each of the three phases, but of their synthetic
composition and joint functionalities. Then both truth and meaning, purpose and
morals, plan and individual participation are readily answered without lapse or
hiatus of any kind, and the bodily condition, now translated to ultimate cause,
stands clear as in Romans 1:17ff., both as to its production and its seduction.
But what if you say that you
acknowledge all this, but love love more than God loves love, or some such
schismatic point of divergence as this ? As we have shown, not only God but the
Bible as His only authorised word to man is demonstrably the case, and
perpetually continues to verify this fact as His word is fulfilled in detail all
the time*2. But could you love more than He ? Is it possible ? You could try ...
Let us be practical. Try having
dogs. You love them. One falls sick. You spend your entire life savings on
it, but it is about to depart. You allow someone to use your own body as a basis
for making drugs to save the dog. You become sick to death. You die... Was there
something you forgot in your love then ?
God made us - we are considering
consequences. He loved us. He WROTE for us via persons*4, at great and sacrificial
cost on their part very often - murder and the like being the repayment for
services rendered to mankind by mankind in such cases - and He acted via
power as in Egypt and the Exodus and the deliverance and the day of Joshua.
Voluntary
Cure
Not
satisfied with this, He laboriously installed a sacrificial system SYMBOLISING
the point of our death because of dissidence and sins of inequity and greed and
cardinal selfishness, cruel blindness and so forth - many meanwhile ignoring the love of our
source for us, and despising love to Him. In this, He moved by prophets to tell
of His ultimate plan of taking human form, not indeed as a laboratory style
drug-making episode in order to save our lives, but being perfect in knowledge
already, acting otherwise. Indeed, instead of any such thing, work of ignorance,
in wisdom and love He became man in a life-GIVING satisfaction to justice and exhibit of His
wrath for such folly so long and extensively persisted in, insisted on and
developed. So acting, as man He died.
It was not sudden death. Hatred
lingered; contempt smouldered; good deeds of healing and raising the dead by His
power, enough to demonstrate it, not enough to make it a be all and end all of
life, as if to follow Him for nice health and the like: these human
atrocities directed at God, continued. Scorching
rejection made of Him a "man of sorrows and acquainted with grief"
and worse, He
was esteemed to have been stricken by God EVEN WHILE AS GOD He was being struck
in substitutionary selection, to satisfy the realities of wrath and the impact
of justice, in love! That, it took self-control (cf. Isaiah 53:1-5).
Thus, in delivering a man or woman, God was delivering not only
from death, that result of sin. He was also delivering all from subjectivistic
oddities and quirks such as dictators often love. He acted in truth and with
truth, in mercy and for lovingkindness. His love was categorical (cf.
Colossians 1:19ff.), to mankind, to any in heaven or on earth, and it was
sacrificial, and it would have all come but dictates to none. It pays for those
who do (Romans 8:32, Isaiah 53:1-6: for those whose sin is laid on Him are those
healed!).
Love that is so emptying of
desire, in order to be, so satisfying to all criteria, that being might be
blessed and not an arbitrary assemblage of some specious syndrome merely called
life, is unsurpassable. Love on the part of a sinless being is already
categorically different, and on the part of an eternal being more so, and on the
part of a Being ultimately sensitive to sin, detesting it more than man does
cancer, is yet more so; and the escalations
can only continue.
No, there is no ground for
preferring oneself to one's Creator, or to one's offered Redeemer, or for
complaining that as most of the world does this, is wilfully blind or
belligerent, paralysed in a truthless trance or something parallel, it is
unjust that it is does not smoothly work. If you put sand in your oil, what can
you expect ? If you laugh at the whole concept of your manufacturer, what can
you hope ? Do you know more than he ... than HE ? NOT in this case!
Let us rove a little, as to the
extent of what He has created in its particularities of conceptual engineering.
An excerpt from another work on this site is to be taken for this purpose.
THE SCOPE OF THE
SYNTHESIS
History,
Review and Overview Ch. 5
It is all or nothing. It is not only
irreducible
complexity, but
indivisible
integrity,
indissoluble
co-operation,
inter-and
intra-systematic proliferation,
coherence of
logic and symbolic notation with
executive receptors, skilled to catch meaning and execute orders,
continuity of
sequence from
connotation, to
denotation, to implementation,
in a series of
systematics incomprehensible except in totality.
(Indeed see SMR pp.
332Gff., Stepping Out
for Christ Ch. 9, Repent or Perish
Ch. 7, in End-notes, for
further considerations! See The Bible ... Ch. 4 -
5, especially the later, on Perspicuity,
another feature and Bewilderment ...
Beauty ... Ch. 3. on
Exuberance, a further one again.)
The path of true reductionism, false to
science, of course, is always to ignore what you have got, and to explain what
is not there. It is however the essence of the challenge to meet the case as
it is, in all of its sequential, symbolic, integral and mutually intimate and
pervasively singular procedures, whether in code type, implementation,
co-ordination or exuberance of methodology; and to do so in a world which
likes energy for construction and time for destruction. The other point about
the construction ? it is direction. The third ? something to do as directed.
In this world, and by any form of valid logic, the specifications of life
parallel the requisites of intelligence with available power.
The result, life, it matches nothing but mind,
requires nothing less than something as far beyond mere genius as the heavens
above the earth, requisitions an artist, artificer and maker down to the last
electron and the least of the biota. Paintings do not paint themselves,
Raphaels do not come by omission of the artist, and life is as far beyond
these things in what it demands, as a genius beyond a talented toddler.
The perspectives and nuances of art, its
undertones and its overtones, its sentiments and its modes of communications
to receptors called human beings, who may decide to pretend not to like it as
a competitive device, such is their programmatic liberty of will in certain
arenas: these do not arise from what does not cognise them; but only in what
goes far further than that. It must with enterprise not only appreciate but
perform, and not only perform, but meaningfully perform, and activate the
executive elements of the body of the artist to ensure that the result
actually appears; and that the way in which it does so can be 'read'. Art is
merely one facet of life. ALL functions must be accounted for in any reputable
endeavour to present its basis.
As soon as one discovers one phase, feature or
facet of human life in particular, there are realities within, meanings
beyond, there is all the grooming of a thorough-bred horse, all the intestinal
reality of a cathedral, the coherence of a great speech, the intricacy of
superb mathematics, the intimacies as of love, such is the subtlety and the
inter-dimensional as well as intra-dimensional sophistication, as if
intelligence were easy, and brilliance a manner of life.
As if ? THIS is the testimony.
If someone places a new Boeing 747 on your drive-way, it is not as if
it had been built! It is not the nature of life, or logic, to give output
without input; and what we see now as the centuries progress, is
no more input, but the same residual decrement. In design terms, there is to
be found, as Gould emphasises, DECREASING residue. The progress of centuries
in this system is the regress of design types. What is needed is simply NOT
NATURE. It needs its author.
There is vast loss of the remains of output,
one not now to be found, as is natural in creations, which tend to dissipate.
As with creation in this world generally, on the part of human participants,
this decrease follows the vast effort of bringing things to be; and as that is
distanced, forces work to the detriment of what one has made. All this is
precisely as the Bible depicts (Isaiah 51:6 for example), and it is simply
anti-scientific to dismiss the enduringly correct, and uniquely present
solution, while appealing to the calamitously non-verified imaginations of the
heart, which dismiss the eyes and dispense with their testimony.
That is quite literally anti-science, what is
biblically called knowledge falsely so-called, one of the chief dimensions of
that falsetto spuriousness, which infects much of modern 'science' to its
profound detriment and everlasting shame. Do not misunderstand, science
has not done this, for on its method as shown in SMR pp.
149ff. and TMR
Ch. 1, this is the result: creation
is indicated irrevocably by all the criteria of scientific method. It is the
work of some who name 'science' as their trade or profession.
Scientific method is clear, and delightfully
sure in its results in creation; but since science lives in culture, a
pathological culture can even constrain it till the point comes that argument
is substituted for admission, non-reality is explained by reductionism and
pathetic propositions are constantly presented, which neither logic nor
observation ever sanctioned.
In the intimacies of ever-more unravelled
marvels in life's visible provisions, we find increasingly that everything
provides for something else, and the more we dispense with ignorance, the more
simplistic substitutes for empirical observation surge into the farcical.
For centuries now, man in his growing
secularistic conceit, sham imaginations and shameful self-fulfilments, mere
ferments of disorderly imagination, has tended to under-estimate all of
creation, except himself.
What we are facing then, is not only all the
above. It is also
directional dynamic with integral meaning,
once exceedingly fast-moving, now long arrested. As well have spare tyres and
spanners and gear levers in incomprehensible confusion lying about, as think
of this or that chemical as if this were at all to the point. The electrons
have their partitions and procedures; the atoms likewise; as do the molecules;
the compounds are characterisable; the genes have their task and the DNA its
blueprint. Each is a construction. Each has required the art of the artifice
and the power for the presentation. ALL require a totality of systematisation
to render coherent their interaction, univocal their meaning and practical
their interaction.
The meaning indeed is even heightened by
considerations to be found in
THE DEFINING DRAMA
Ch. 2, from which a further excerpt is
taken.
╬
DOMAINS OF DISCOVERY
This, then, is as distinct from
FUNCTIONS of REALITY. This is where it is, not what it is, except for the
measure of meaningful designation. Here we have a surprisingly long list.
There are some 16 of these readily
apparent, and these we shall seek to arrange in an acronymic format, to aid
memory.
First let us simply look for them
There is such a list as this.
 |
1. PSYCHIC
|
|
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2. PHYSICAL
|
|
|
3. INTERPERSONAL (including
friendship, hostility, and the political, social, economic)
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4. RATIONAL
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5. EMPIRICAL
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6. AESTHETIC
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7. MORAL
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8. SPIRITUAL
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9. EMOTIONAL
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10. NOETIC and INTELLIGENT
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10. ASPIRATIONAL
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12. IMAGINATIVE (including
both the creative and creativity itself)
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13. METAPHYSICAL
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14. DESIGN DOMAIN
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15. MEMORY FIELD
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16. DIVINE |
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The order of the
listing above is in some ways a functional one,
enabling one to
trace the more readily a series of actions leading to results.
Putting this in the form of a
menomic acronym, we gain SPEARS' NAMED,
in the following way.
SPIRITUAL
PSYCHIC EMOTIONAL
AESTHETIC RATIONAL
IMAGINATIVE (for the apostrophe, a converted 'i')
SOCIAL NOETIC
ASPIRATIONAL MORAL
EMPIRICAL DIVINE.
First, we are to be considered,
ourselves the obviously active agency of discovery:
the PSYCHIC.
Soon we find that there is another entity, which we can only partly manipulate,
the PHYSICAL. It is unlike ourselves, does not speak, and seems sub-stratum to
some things.
Some entities are able, however, to
return our speech, and where this is at our level, these are often found to be
like ourselves, and are personal, so that we readily move into the realm of the
INTERPERSONAL.
All this may occasion thought,
description, depiction, reflection, and we soon find that we possess an
instrument of thought, which has its own ways, its own fallacies where logic
speaks, and is RATIONAL.
We begin to formulate. Now we find
that we are able simply to see what happens, especially where it is visible to
the eye which is set below our forehead, and that this provides one species of
vision. We look at the EMPIRICAL. It is not limited to that kind of eye, but to
the observation of occurrence. It does not have to be measurable, the very
proposition that the real is measurable, being unscientific in that it
presupposes a material measurement, so delimiting to one field, the enquiry into
all. Put differently, the proposition that all is measurable is itself not
measurable, and hence if what is not measurable is not real, neither is the
theory to that effect.
For these and similar reasons, the
empirical is best regarded as what is able to be shown to occur, as distinct
from what thought constructs. Then of course, one may say this: Thought occurs.
This is true, and to that extent, can be subjected to empirical research; but
that is to regard thought as an object, whereas the crucial consideration is
rather what it SHOWS. Thus a car can be investigated as an object, or used to
get places. Both aspects are valid. When however your interest is in this, what
the car IS, this is not the same as where the car will take you. The empirical
as such is not designed as a mode of research into the nature of things, but
merely as contributing what happens.
Next there is the sense of the
beautiful, which includes ethical assessments as well as those of form,
depending ON the ethics which the person, psychically and rationally, discovers
or simply endorses. This is the realm of the AESTHETIC.
The MORAL field is soon found, for
here there arise questions of what really IS beautiful and ugly, ethically or
physically, or indeed for that matter, rationally, in terms of INTERPERSONAL
relations and one's own use of one's equipment, and this sends out signals for
further rational work. What is really good, and good for what and why good: what
is right and why it is so, and how this differs from what is merely desired by
this or that party, this is the arena of morals. Thus if you found a method that
works empirically, in aligning information, this does not make it morally right,
merely procedurally useful. In fact, it could be found that this method injured
people, for example, and then the moral question would arise.
What ought to be done, what shines
with that summit of reasonable acceptance, indeed of utter purity, goodness.
Obviously, without God it could not be, since there would be no compelling
design, only compelling desire, no legislation from this or that party or
resource, opinion or desire, everything would depend ... That in turn would
provoke the difficulty that the human recognition of goodness so far transcends
the merely useful, that it would make madmen out of the race; but not all have
lost their reason! When you come to know God, then you see the basis of the
design, the basis of our hopes, the basis of our judgment, and it is
comprehensive of all things for the simple reason that this is the purvey of His
creation, and it is from one mind. What however of those who do not like God ?
Does this make a moral disapprobation of God to have some validity ? Not at all,
for if there were no God, as often shown, neither is there ground for absolute
truth, so only in ignorance would the protester be able to protest; and ignorant
protest is invalid where wisdom is the objective.
Further, there is no available
ground for dissatisfaction with the God of the Bible, since firstly, creation is
a gift which we inherit, sin is a disease that ruins, from which we are given
ground for escape, compulsion is not the way of it, at that, any more than is
the offer of service by a life-saver, and past all that, God is able to know
beyond our moods, our mode and where we may justly be brought, this is done
without our contribution, except of negation. If we reject Him, we have the
opportunity to show what happens, both here and hereafter, and it is perfectly
clear why this is, for if you are free to dispel reality from your mind and
life, is it unjust that it should not be there, in the end ? Time, it must be
recalled, is a temporary construction for life, but destiny has its own rules.
Now comes the SPIRITUAL, for one
discovers that there is by no means a correlation with things material, in this,
that one may disapprove of what does in fact happen, or even wish to prevent it
from doing so, or to help it to do so still further, for the reason of desire,
delight, morality and various other formulations or informations which come to
the psychic being. The spirit of man moves with very considerable freedom, both
as to the facts (as shown in the intense proclivity for lying in the race), and
as to desire, and it may do this with or against its own design. This, as far
from material programming as air is from treacle, looks back on material things
with their limits and laws, with amazement. Gratitude for this elevation however
is not always present; but when it is, then the point of showing it by using the
other gift, that of eternal life, becomes apparent.
Now as to the spirit of a man, what
of his various thoughts and desires, models and choices, purposes and
intentions, thoughts and their harvest ? These may occasion repugnance or
rhapsody, and much in-between, so that we arrive at the EMOTIONAL, the work of
feeling and innate, inward response, with or without reason, a psychic threshold
to the innermost being.
Hard on the step of this enterprise,
we approach the NOETIC, the polished performance of the intellect in seeking out
with zeal, not reeling, an intellectual activity which is more than reason as
such, but less than purely spiritual, for it relies heavily on reason, but on
more besides in its constructions, and is in fact a hybrid of imagination and
rationality, with a feel for aspiration. Further, it involves and indeed
requires INTELLIGENCE which is able to act with mental vigour, ceasing from
things, or teasing things, seeking what they do in various ways, in which aspect
some people specialise, now here and now there. Through this, taken in
disproportion, many are so specialised that rather like owls by day, they work
but little in some of the fields and see little of them, their flights becoming
more and more in the dark.
In fact, the ASPIRATIONAL is next in
line, and refers to the innate human desire, especially with the young but not
lost in many who are quite old, to find what is the best, not merely for this or
that society or person or family, but in fact and in reality, and why this is
so, seeking likewise to discover how it is knowable that this is so, and what
the case would be if it were not. While some violate logic in this field, and
others feeling: yet neither is necessary as we shall plan to present, since all
fit in one only perfect model.
Realisation that this is so, as far
as man by himself is concerned, undoubtedly requires the IMAGINATIVE, as does
likewise all development in science, as is universally acknowledged, for if you
cannot, like Einstein, like Newton, develop the inspirational, the visionary,
yes even the perspective which commands, how can you find what is not of itself
visible! Understanding is neither quantifiable nor visible, measurable nor prone
to such management. Yet it is sought and found, and in this imagination, stirred
by many correlative findings or prohibitions of reason, excels.
Next we find ourselves in the realm
of the METAPHYSICAL, for here, outside mere slavish material formulations,
expressed in visible action, and some of its inferential side-kicks, there comes
an approach to the non-visible
(such as continually moves each
one of us, in purpose, courage, vision, desire, will, inspiration, truth
relish or other and so on, none of which has any quantifiable or even form-moulded
nature (cf. It Bubbles...
Ch. 9),
and the visible, to the spiritual
and the emotional, to the nature of man and of the universe, to its construction
and its ground, to its cause and its consequence.
Before long, we objectively find
that DESIGN (cf. SMR pp.
211ff.,
224ff.) is a
necessary ingredient of our thought, and indeed logic itself is a kind of design
of words and correlation with that to which they refer, enabling coherent
thought. Whence is it, why is it, what is it and what does it do, and indeed,
how may it be formed and to what extent is this within our own powers, and why
is it beyond our own powers in the very action and structure of those powers
with which, astoundingly, we meanwhile investigate at all! (cf. SMR pp.
114ff.)...
We find, moreover, that design is not merely statically what IS to be found, but
something which one can formulate in terms of purpose, and that one's very
purposes can constitute a species of design. This brings on further thought on
the spiritual, that psychic height, that domain of will and purpose, beyond the
mere analysis and cognition of mind.
But how is all this to be conceived
together, and how are all these fields and indeed, these methods of discovery to
be integrated, resolved in their total impact, found out in their overall
constitution and construction ? It will require MEMORY, that fabulous cohesive
constraint which enables the very ground of the mind to consider many things
either simultaneously, or nearly so, as the eye can do with distances and areas
so swiftly, and to compare them all without losing the clarity of any. How is
this found, why does it work, and what is the constitutive basis of its
operations, so imbued with the personal, yet in some ways so aloof from our own
persons, providing for them both exhilaration and inspiration in the process ?
This is the domain.
Finally, all these things being
considered, and the spirit of man itself being integrally and in a specialised
way operative, just as reason, emotion and memory can operate: there is the
realm of the DIVINE, that causative adequacy, that design sufficiency, that
dynamic of institution - vastly beyond our own limits, that ground, cause and
origin, that cause of order and system, of spirit and creativity, that provener
of sequence and meaning, of multitudinous and myriad diversity in integration,
of integration into operation, of thought into comprehension, of perspective
into conformity to reality, that provider of solution to mystery and user of
words to confirm His mind, beyond all human contrivance or power to produce,
that prophet of history and organiser of the power to realise the same, in man,
that instituting and organising dynamic and mind, thinker and proposer, whether
of the one or of all. (Cf,
SMR.)
How does this Being consist, WHY
does he make others exist, and what is the PURPOSE of his planning, so
conspicuous in its detail, that one is almost blown as by a typhoon's sheer
elemental power and force, into oblivion by the light which shines. That nothing
ever was, is obvious, since it is has no future, and we are future to the past.
That what is adequate always was, is necessarily so, or again, we would not be.
That it did not develop is obvious, since then we are merely missing the point
of the creation of all, in looking at a way-station. What does He desire ? This
brings us to biblical studies, in terms of biblical apologetics, through reason.
What reason there finds is revelation. ALL THIS is in the realm of the
spiritual, since God IS a spirit and man HAS a spirit.
This then is the initial look at the
METHODS OF WORKING and the FIELDS OF DISCOVERY.
Now let us consider a little their
totality, their joint concurrent testimony and where they lead us. This becomes
for our own Age, as for millions in it, a voyage of discovery vastly more vital
than that of Cook for the British Empire. Indeed, for nation or individual, for
rich or peasant, this is the most exciting and essential outcome of any
discovery at all. One of my relatives has cited his desire as WHAT I WANT, as
MUCH AS I WANT, WHEN I WANT IT, HOW IT WANT IT, and so on, and has in some
domains gone far to obtain this, in others scarcely appearing to move at all.
For my own part, I found early in
University life, that there was such a confusion, a clamour, such undignified
folly, such irrational presumption, such reductionist madness, such almost
inebriated lust in the realm of scholarship, that though ardently besought by
the Professor of Philosophy to make a career of this field, I decided not even
to seek Honours in it, lest I should become a superficially brilliant fool; and
sought rather to respond to a divine invitation to find the truth and honour it,
indeed simply to accept it in Christ Jesus.
His embrace of all truth is more
than this: it is not as His child, but as His very own Person that He is
empirically found to be: all of it is found assembled and meaningful, harmonious
and exhibited in Him. This is found personally, in understanding,
propositionally in logic, historically in prophecy, morally in operation and
consistency, and meaning, in beauty, which starts as the beauty of His holiness
and ends in all kinds of displays of elements in His creation which show His
imaginative design. Sin is the opposite, and mars anything, excluding beauty,
but not glitter, glamour and deception. Metaphysics before Him becomes
childishly simple; ontology finds it start and finish, design its sufficiency,
love its domain, courage its reason, creation its resource, personality its
height, and shame its warrant.
Quite as important is this empirical
finding, that there is NO QUESTION, there is NO AREA, NO ARENA, NO PROBLEM that
He does not answer, intellectually, morally, factually, in realisation, in
understanding, in harmonious relationship of all parts, and utter coverage of
all elements.
This has become so amazing, so
astounding, as all things attest Him in every domain, in every method of
discovery, that not so share something of this would be churlish. It is for this
reason that the Gospel of the word of God is so thoroughly promoted by so many.
To do otherwise would be like being a life-saver watching someone drown, out of
shyness.
╬
On these topics, see also
*2 and *4 below.
Comparable with the positive logical
landscape of functionalities is the negative pit of dysfunction, where efforts
to bypass God resemble moving from a highway to an adjacent pit, created by a
radioactive meteor, at high speed. For this we take a third excerpt, this time
from
Dizzy Dashes, Head Clashes
Ch. 6
What on any naturalistic or
monistic ground
 |
in metaphysics is mere discord
(cf. SMR Chs. 3,
10),
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in aesthetics mere mumble (cf.
SMR Ch. 5,
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in ethics platitude without
meaning (News 19),
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in epistemology mere vacuity
(cf. TMR Ch. 5),
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in politics defeatism (cf.
Questions and Answers Ch.
7), or else towers built on invisible clouds,
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all reductionist, irrational
or both (cf. What is the Chaff to the Wheat Chs.
3 and 4 ),
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now on the supernatural origin of
the regimented and volitional natural, becomes
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meaningful,
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in essence predictable,
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and assuredly verifiable on
the ground of the creator, whose verified word is without inhibition
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exhibiting the fitting
conclusion, like a thunder-clap to a murder. |
In all things on such a basis, it
leaves nothing in the least difficult, whereas on the other model, there is
nothing but failure, for there is never explanation for knowledge, existence,
division, beauty or morals, but only tired reductionisms, without power,
without ground and without the necessary result . It is simple fact that
creationism in general, but more specifically biblical creationism with the
creator who has acted and declared Himself verifiably in the Bible (cf. SMR
Chs. 1-3, 10, 8-9, 5), accounts for
everything as nothing else either does or can (cf.
Reason, Revelation and the Redeemer).
Thus created man, in one mould but
with spirit in an actual universe of knowable kind with a Creator who made
him, rather than some glorified incapacity, can believe in culturally
sanctified myths (cf. Secular Myths and Sacred
Truth, Delusive Drift or DIvine Dynamic
7, 3, SMR p.
252I)) without too much trouble. This phenomenon can come from the
consequences of will in his mind and in his spirit, so that he can readily
believe the deluded and childish concept of organic evolution, by which he
affirms whatever it is that he thinks he is in order to become more of it,
whatever that is, though he never finds it making the substance of what-is,
that great experimental absentee in any naturalistic viewing, nor does he
discover the grounds of it, nor the way of it, but rather explores delusion in
battling camps*1B. He may even talk of
principles*1 as if they were
powers to do, not mental conceptions to cover with words what actually happens
- which, sadly for naturalistic man, this does not manage to do*1
.
The Bible however speaks of
diversification within kinds only, from the Creator in His initial impact,
formation and formulation; and as to creation, it is over, as the evidence
continually attests while man tries to prod, curse, bless or induce it to do
some more, to which it responds rather like a dog having its toe-nails cut by
someone with aspirations to be a surgeon. (Cf. The Defining Drama
Ch. 10, TMR
Appendix I,
Ch. 1.)
Thus it is mere routine
exemplification of the supernatural schema when we find that naturalistic man
wills to be what his position voids in operation, both in its very statement
and in its performance criteria, as well as performance exhibits; and this, by
sheer exuberance of imagination, in one of the choicest pieces of ludicrous
cant this world has ever produced; this while he is born and dies and is given
his genes and is faced by his God, whom he ignores as if his very life
depended on it. That is what will is about in a creation which
has it, and is placed in a natural climate with supernatural access.
It is moreover, precisely what Romans 1:17ff., tells us about,
a further verification in the specific milieu of the Bible. Further, it is
precisely there that the remedy for this consequence of such a creation is
presented, with its own verificatory testimonials
(cf.
The Meaning of Liberty and the Message of
Remedy, It Bubbles ...
Ch. 9, Repent or Perish Chs.
2, 7).
Accordingly, the ensuing centuries depict in history the
developing dynamic, what Romans 1:17ff. shows as a systematic prognosis.
Moreover, time in our Age thus fulfils the specifics of Romans 1 in detail,
just as the thrust nears its consummation (Romans 1:28-32). Let us see this so
that our eyes may rest in this ancient word, as if written yesterday; and it
is so, because this is the end of such things, apt, accurate and acrid, divine
in depiction, just in outcome: and to this we proceed.
"And even as
they did not like to retain God in their knowledge,
God gave them over to a debased mind, to do those things which are not
fitting;
being filled with all unrighteousness, sexual immorality, wickedness,
covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit,
evil-mindedness;
they are whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, violent, proud, boasters,
inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, undiscerning,
untrustworthy, unloving, unforgiving, unmerciful;
who, knowing the righteous judgment of God,
that those who practice such things are deserving of death,
not only do the same
but also approve of those who practice them."
It proceeds to the logical
inadequacy of other forms of synthesis.
THE FORMULATION WHICH
UNIQUELY FITS
WITHOUT FIDDLING,
FUNCTIONS WITHOUT INVALIDITY
AND IS ALWAYS VERIFIED
is more then formulation, as all good laws
should be, and all discoveries of scientific method, as an initial
basis, must be. It must OPERATE in the field in view, in a consistent
fashion, relative to the model.
In this case, the requirements of the
formulation do not need to be requisitioned by thought alone, but rather
indicated by this; for in His OWN formulation, God shows that it is HE who
MAKES formulations, and we but strive to continue such work as derivatives;
but HE HIMSELF is as source of formulative power, an informer, on Himself,
in a testable revelation and a much tested TRUTH as Jesus the Christ. Thus, He
conducts His own expression and constitutes His own answer, beyond it all,
participating at pleasure (like any author), fulfilling His principles and
stating them so that this may be seen. He participates at will, and has so
willed to a glorious extent, to which the inglorious predicament of the
nations is the result by irresolution, by abstraction of God Himself from
the ground He made, on which we walk.
Here our point is very simple. If
you go with the God of the Bible, ALL aetiological considerations are met
without exception, in cohesion, complementarity, unity, and validity. Nowhere
else is this so, nor is verification on the one side, possible, and in others,
forthcoming. Starved gods are used to feed humanity; but they themselves can to
NOTHING, even to the point that one prominent professor of Physics, for a
diminuendo phase of his career, elected 'nothing' as the basis, before letting it go,
since it was nothing to lose. Then, outfacing chance, that guru deemed it for
the origin, to be without relevance,
at the same time (cf. Ancient Words ... Chs.
9 and 13).
Not satisfied with total logical
irrelevance through the use of slide words like this one, many go on to further
depths, as though there were earth planes, which dived instead of soaring. They
seek to exclude what they cannot see BY what they cannot see, that is, their own
thoughts and purposes (for of what colour is the truth, and of what size is
peace, and of what calibre purpose ?), as if to unman themselves in order to
phase out God., This indeed is close to the reality, for in denying Him they lose what
they are, becoming lost when founded, and foundering most visibly as a race,
when confounded by truncations and exclusions which are mere myth-exercises.
Mythical mysticisms shorn of rationality, inert to evidence, deprived of
verification, these become the philosophically fungal substitutes for the
clarity and infinite resolving power of the living God, a light to those who use
it.
But no! comes the godless clamour,
based on nothing. Indeed, you may NOT under any circumstances move into any such
field, say many scientistic fellows of the Unroyal Society of Disscience, which
unfortunately does not so name itself, but seeks to inhabit ordinary scientific
endeavour, even when engaged in such negatively authoritarian pursuits.
The cult of the forbidden is
a name for this. It is one
of these endeavours (cf. SMR 150
and 200, with
330-331), in which the sensitive
spirits and mental tics of some wish to exclude the immeasurable (such as the
nature of their own ardour), though once again, using it to do so, and so become exclusivistic non-scientists, philosophically disallowing what things science is
by authority from thought, excluded from reviewing or considering.
Consider it. The very
METHOD of science is not
measurable; yet by it, measurement is made where applicable! The concept of the
exclusion of this or that rationally investigable field (or the inclusion for that matter) is unmeasurable. Such antics in
pseudo-antinomies are measurably scientistic, conforming to the definition of
that term.
It
is
 |
abuse of experimental method
(such as prediction enables in its purview and purvey),
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exclusion of available fields for
investigation,
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an activity making a narcissitic plant out of science, improperly so-called,
interested only in its own easier fields of review,
and cutting this down to
self-contradictory proportions.
|
However, such palpably ludicrous
authoritarianism is
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the opposite of science properly so called,
and indeed for that matter,
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the contrary of KNOWLEDGE
properly so called,
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a crush of assumption,
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a prize of presumption, and is
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mere
question-begging; and indeed materialism itself is a rich field of
self-contradiction
to the point one wonders why it is not normatively seen as a
comedy for amusement!
(cf. Repent or Perish
Ch. 7 with Christ Incomparable, Lord
Indomitable Ch. 2 and
Index).
|
Straight to whatever testable terrain,
territory or cosmos we can, to whatever ordinate or inordinate sphere or space we can find, we
proceed, to check, compare, consider, evaluate correlations and contain thought
in the midst of what is valid and verifiable, not what is mere antilogy and
antinomy*2, fretful with its own presumption.
We need freedom, not containment
by what cannot even be at peace with itself! WITH freedom we find the basis for
it, and so the method to explore it to the uttermost, so becoming mankind, not
truncated by philosophic presumption, snipping for its prejudice, sniping for
its desire, but open to
the light that men seek, and then foil by their wilful blindness and inventions.
Limiting God by human inventions has been for millenia a great flirtation with
grief, which alas, lives down to its name (cf. Psalm 78:41ff.).
While on this topic, it is only
even-handed to point out that the truncation of truth to what fails test, as in
evolutionism (cf. SMR pp. 140ff.,
TMR,
The gods of naturalism have no go!), is
one extremity of imprisoned minds; but the ignoring of tests is the other. Alas,
man seems determined either NOT to test in subjectivistic frenzies, or not to
test certain areas, like not fishing the sea because of some inhibition; and so
the stringency of truth being forgotten, man wobbles along, provoked and
provocative, until the world vast as it is, would become too small to contain
his self-aggrandisement (cf. Matthew 24:21-22).
The verification of the Bible is
not alone; for it is paralleled by the implementation of the results of its
avoidance as well as shown through the composition of its commands, called creation.
Unless -
said Jesus the Christ,
speaking of the prelude in history to His return as a quantum leap in hatred and
wars and disturbances, false christs and foolish contests, rumour and fear,
this
period was 'shortened'
NO FLESH could be SPARED. In
other words, man would remove himself, if left to himself.
By what however would this
period, this unruly and ruthless seeming period, BE shortened ? In context, He spoke of His coming return in an event He
compared to the coming of lightning from East to West in Matthew 24, in a
continuing, focussed context, paralleled in Luke 21.
How near this is now ?
We are finding
 |
North
Korea, godless in leadership,
playing with atomic possibilities and prospects
and missile conveyors,
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Iran bombastic in belligerence, speaking via its
President of carrying on (in effect)
the work of Hitler and destroying Israel,
this later repository for much of that afflicted race,
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Russia via its PM and President,
speaking of armed force
to protects its aspirations in the Arctic,
and of return to methods of the Cold War (which indeed, wasn't so hot),
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various Islamic groups appearing
to covet some haven
in some heaven they have invented without testable grounds,
where sexual pleasures appear to be in view, while physiological disasters are,
by their hands, visited on the race from which they depart,
making the grandeur of their anticipated joy
the exact opposite of the grim and grievous evils they impart, apparently to
gain access!
|
It is a twirly world in much, and
in more as the days grow longer toward the darkness, which only the light of
Christ can illumine, just as logically, and where only the light of the perspective and
content of the Bible, standing analysis with accuracy and contributing acumen,
can endure, being verified and valid*2.
Returning from the cult of the forbidden, to the conquest of data
with consistent meaning and coherent applications of reason, we accept the
constraint of verifiable reality and validatable presentation, and consider what
actually happens, researching the causative continuum, and the institution of
causality itself, with its limits and delays, from the ultimate discontinuity,
that of deity in making what has a continuum aspect, being in all things
dependent for form, information and format on His originating power. In
meta-causal power, He has invented the causality of this universe, derivative
and delimited, as an author invents pages in a book. As the LOGOS*5
is instructive of all creation, so is it imperially and ontologically ultimate,
but its works are everywhere.
What then is to be found in our
diagnostic synthesis, and the unity which as mankind WE each one of us, have,
and from which we draw our existence ? It leads to the cause of health, of
function, of synthesis, and of unity within us, with a simplicity matched only
by its adequacy. Thus we add to our list of systematic wonders in the
creation:
irreducible
complexity, but
indivisible
integrity,
indissoluble
co-operation,
inter-and
intra-systematic proliferation,
coherence of logic
and symbolic notation with
executive receptors, skilled to catch meaning and execute orders,
continuity of
sequence from
connotation, to
denotation, to implementation,
in a series of
systematics incomprehensible except in totality.
(Indeed see SMR pp.
332Gff., Stepping Out for
Christ Ch. 9, Repent or Perish
Ch. 7, in End-notes, for
further considerations! See The Bible ... Ch. 4 -
5, especially the later, on Perspicuity,
another feature and Bewilderment ... Beauty
... Ch. 3. on Exuberance,
a further one again.)
that of
diagnostic
synthesis.
This means, that if you take the things separately and group them functionally,
then your cause-seeking missile of thought finds comprehension not only of the
synthesis that is man's inheritance, but of the being who man is; and with
this, of its cause with a mutual-involvement from its eternal Source, both
Personal and written, that is so forcible that it answers any question to be
put, and has no quavers as to conundrum or failure. It all works at every level
of application and investigation, once forged, formulated and then objectively
found. In passing, it answers every foible of philosophy and covers every
sink-hole of folly, as the track of truth passes it by, delivering with peace
from a gaping sound in the soil for the soul.
The Bible is
inveterately attested as that verificatory book, Jesus Christ as that
determinative LOGOS*5
, that Creator who becoming man showed deity in His power to heal, raise
the dead and BE raised on the day stated. He showed it likewise in providing
salvation for desecration and redemption for rebellion, peace for war and mercy
for dissidents brought back to truth.
GOD IS. All the
rest works according to HIS SPEECH. With our speech, an inherent potential so
strong that where man is not taught it, he invents it, we attest this: truth
does survive, without seeking its own sustenance, being eternal; and though
crucified, it abounds. It has come and walked and spoken, been killed and
resurrected, and it is not an 'it' one must add, but a Person so profound that
His actions cannot be contained, though they may be characterised. In His bounty
and superb proficiency, efficiency and marvellous kindness, one that will - for
all that, not forsake the purity without which there can only be pain, and that
justly, He is to be worshipped in the mellow meadows of joy.
NOTES
*1
See for example
News 19, where the situation is analysed. In
general, people may be judged stupid, but it is very often so, as intemperance
assumes what investigation does not reveal. To be sure, man may be gulled in
particular cases, and nations misled, but one major reason for this is the
simple fact that man is out of order, seeking consciously or unconsciously very
often for the resolution of reality, the actuality of his case, his place before
authority and power and the constructive and creative work which he represents;
and hence he falls for this or that pit. He is like someone with eyes on the
stars, ignoring the road. This is by no means to pretend that man is generally
idealistic, far from it, though some are.
It is to say that there is a certain
restlessness which leads to the pompous parade of power such as Russia appears
recently to have made relative to the Arctic, as if NO lessons from history not
only ARE learned, but that none even COULD be!
Will Russia have Canada, Norway,
Denmark and the USA with concerns for the Arctic (as they do have we read in
The Australian, May 15, 2009), and then talk first of force for their
resolution! The rumbling of military 'solutions' already appears in an
announcement from the Kremlin. "In a competition for resources it cannot
be ruled out that military force could be used to resolve emerging problems that
would destroy the balance of forces near the borders of Russia and her allies."
It sounds just like prelude to World
War I psychology, balances, forces, allies, suspicions, plans, protections,
distrust, machinations.
This does not of course mean that
the parallel is complete, merely that there appears to be an obfuscatory
officiousness which looks to grabbing, ramming, forcing, pursuing balances and
powers and making assertions, with no apparent interest in justice or equity or
wisdom, or self-control or anything which could relate to the Source of
resources, the cause of actualities, logical and material, psychic and
ideational, inspirational (or its reverse). Instead, the movement appears to the
option for grossness and NOT that for peace and understanding. What have three
World Wars taught ? It seems some students are all but perpetual repeaters of
the year ...
In this Russia is blatant, and
patent; but doubtless, and often to be seen, there are other and not wholly
dissimilar rumblings of aspiration and conquest, overthrow and arrogance,
self-will and determination for what it is that takes the eye of man, a city,
family or nation; and the next step increasingly ? of the world!
There is a restlessness which seems
to despise reasonableness, even when it reasons, and to think force and not
reality, thrust and joust and not justice, being outstanding and not
understanding, being self-righteous or self-willed and not responsible, that
this is the way. It is not. The more force man gets, the more futile is his
overall performance while the philosophies of force, naively ignoring the source
of force, continue their rampancies.
Man is gullible because he is on the
whole, ungodly. Made for God, when he opts out, he is vulnerable to every folly
of unreason, inequity, imaginary forces and actual autocracies that can fill the
gap. One of these fads is to try to make morals subjective, as if they were the
impress of society or culture, when in fact it is almost fashionable, where God
is ignored, to have other morals, different ones, chosen from near or far,
from old times or imaginary times to come, and all without ground.
Man is not mad. He is merely very
often maddened. Rejecting truth, in many cases he even begins to imagine that in
some epochal folly, he has been unable to discern between society or culture or
authority MAKING USE of him by PRETENDING morals are objective, and profiting by
this, and goodness itself. Such atrocities of thought CAN be done. Peculiarly
hypocritical power seekers can try all but anything in their propulsive
fascination with rule and exploitation.
It is more than a little foolish,
however, as you look at man and his ways, to imagine that he would be
duped for millenia into thinking there is a basis for good and evil, beyond his
passing thoughts, or those of someone or some body. In fact, people very
frequently are found SUSPECTING evil when good is present, and are very
far from taking someone's word as the SOURCE of goodness, as if it were merely
the pleasure of the one in power. Rebellion and revolt are almost the nose,
sticking out, in the physiognomy of man in the 21st century.
Everyone is right; right is found
here or there and not in the other; appeal is made to THIS VERY THING
constantly, but rarely in actuality. It is the code word, the cover; and however
distorted, it is given attention because it is there. Men gravitate to it or
from it, but recognise it and are most vociferous about it, often with ludicrous
distortions, since having rejected its source and place, man's own Source, for
man the answer then CANNOT then be right.
The French Revolution seemed, like
the American experiment, and the British way, to bespeak something rather
different. That it was not so, in more or less degree, does not remove the
extent of approximation, and the result.
The Russian revolution, in an
extreme case, was hot in words that deceived; but the reason they COULD
deceive was not that men were suddenly lunatic. It was rather than man is
disordered, and despite a remarkable provision of mind, IF HE CHOOSES to lose
his perspective and ignore his situation as made by God, then he is apt to put
someone else, consciously or not, in the place of God and so to become expert in
being deceived. It is however the propensity for deception that makes him
vulnerable, BECAUSE of the intensity of his inward construction which LOOKS for
what is right for the magnificent structure which is his body, the amazing
logical powers of his mind and the staggeringly imaginative facilities of his
spirit.
Because he looks where the answer
CANNOT be found, being in rebellion against God, truth and the paths of peace,
therefore in false hope he becomes a maestro, in defeat, most experienced, in
folly an expert.
Yet it is assuredly not because he
is so infantile as to imagine power equals right, dynamic equals goodness, that
this is so; for he revolts in heart continually against such abuses, insisting
they are there whether this be the case or not. Such anti-moral concepts amount
to mere human reductionism of man by himself! or of some ...
It is because he is always looking
for that to which he belongs, and avoiding the truth, that he is finding false
answers, hope springing eternal in the human heart, as the proverb has it, and
this because there is repository and there is a way. It is just that man
in general declines to find it; and so declines.
Even to that, there is an end.
*2
SEE for example:
Deity and Design
esp. Ch. 8,
LIGHT DWELLS WITH THE LORD'S CHRIST
WHO ANSWERS RIDDLES
AND WHERE HE IS, DARKNESS DEPARTS
See also *1
in the Introduction.
*3
See
Causes, SMR Ch. 5, Predestination and
Freewill Section 4.
*4
See
-
SMR,
The Meaning of
Liberty and the Message of Remedy,
REASON, REVELATION and the REDEEMER.
*5
See Ch. 8,
Spiritual Food and Spiritual Drink.