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CHAPTER FIVE
HOW MANY ARE THOSE WHO SPEED ON HIS
MINISTRATION OF MERCY!
One Ultimate Message, Infinitely Grounded
In his work, Without Excuse, the notable Professor Werner Gitt, testifying in the field of information science for some thirty years we find, has a work of system, in his approach to Christian Apologetics. His special interest is science and clarification, review of method, classification and consequence; and in the process, it is to remove confusion and mixed methods from varying sources, which confuse science with indefensible presuppositions or unsustainable limitations, just as with merely sensationalist extrapolations.
In this way, he is a specialist in system and with his vast scientific labours, he is able to cover a large volume of applications and considerations in the scientific field.
Especially keen is the very just notification of the existence of the information provider, God, whom he approaches in this system within certain initial limitations of approach which he has chosen*1. In so doing, he provides an array of steps relative to information which helps it to be defined accurately (though intentionally, not comprehensively) so that he might isolate a crucial feature and apply it securely to its source, the process identified as to its category and aetiology, This is carried out with some rigour*1A.
It is necessary to at least clarify one point among some, however. In the constraints of chosen system, which moves from intended purpose of communication through systematic means to intended result in the receiver. Thus there comes on p. 70, a definition which might be extended. While the communication from an intelligent sender to an intelligent receiver is crucial indeed, in information science and law, the purpose of such communication and information is not necessarily some response in a given receiver, or indeed any response at all, though it would include that possibility.
Take a case, which occurs in someone like myself, where one might write in hope of removing obstacles to faith, showing categorically the demonstrability of the truth of the Bible and its testimony concerning God, against many, and look for the deliverance of many through the Gospel and their growth in the knowledge of God's word. Such contributions include giving a reason for the faith and clarifying what it is and how it applies, and where it leads. Yet as with Jeremiah, the time comes when it may include this element: whether they hear or whether they forbear: it comes whatever goes with the possible or actual receiver. We have CERTAINTY that this is the TESTIMONY. It is to or for or concerning someone or some beings. It is sent, receivable, ignorable; but it IS.
Even if there could be a certain rambunctious and cloven-footed running away from such testimony, in a very ecstasy of revolt from the Lord and truth, yet there is here a TESTIMONY to His righteousness, goodness with no evil, but instead wisdom, justice and truth, just as there is an exposure of sham and the transference of shame from the allegations of the unbeliever, saying he lacks evidence or actually imposing judgment on God, back to any such unbeliever in such unsustainable revolt. It applies whether read or not, noticed or not, cursed or not, taken for cure or not.
It is certainly AVAILABLE notably for response by the recipient; but even if this were to be omitted through dedicated revolt and obsessive avoidance, the PURPOSE of the sender is not only that some be reached, delivered and brought to the kingdom of heaven, released from layers of misty dubiety, impassioned though this be; but it is that contrary ideas, ideologies, imaginations to the truth of God, be exposed, met with due intransigence, and destroyed. It holds within it, this, that their unreason exposed, their factitious follies demolished, like pits of snakes, action is taken so that "every thought might be brought into captivity" to Christ (II Corinthians 10:5).
This is a TESTIMONIAL purpose, not bypassing recipients, but not limited to them. It relates to the fact that the God who made information and its means of application may not only be spoken to, and His recipients among men, equally addressed, but He may be spoken about, as a faithful ambassador should declare (Proverbs 13:17), for His honour and truth, glory and wonder, be there response or no response; and whatever use may be desired for this, can then occur as He sees fit. Definition 9 then on p. 70 (Gitt, op. cit.) might therefore add, to conveying the expected action(s) and the intended purpose(s), something expressly to cover this. The differential here not so much a matter of the precision in of the definition as its amplitude. It might be extended: conveying the expected action(s) and/or accountable testimony and the intended purpose(s).
While this may be part of the purposes, there is no limitation in empirical fact to an expected action: it does not have to stop there. Abstractly, it could even omit that. There is a purpose to be attained, and there MAY be expected action, or provision for the same. In such a case as this, there must however be an amplitude about the purpose relative to the expected result.
This expectation may not relate to the receiver at all, though it is likely to include this. It may be concerning the maker of the transceiver, or the creator of the equipment physically constitutive of man's body and its host of integrated information and commands, of the entirety of man and his spirit, by which he in turn has a species of creative thrust; and it may be an attestation concerning Him, like the stones of Joshua beyond the Jordan (Joshua 4). It may be irrespective of any creature's response, though relating indirectly to it, in that it exposes responses to the level before God, that is sustainable. If any should see those stones, left by Joshua, markers of the miracle of the crossing, there is a testimony. Yet even further, even if none chose to look, there is STILL the testimony. Hiding from it does not reduce its actual and significant presence. Such is our own case in this Web Page, now of some 208 volumes, for it is not a mere abstract conception. It is one that has already a particularity and a presence. Let people come or go, and it is delightful when they come; but the purpose still has the ingredient of the testimonial, per se.
Put differently: there is not necessarily any intended action by a communication-information receiver, though the case may cover this contingency, and it may be intensely desired. Should it however not be noticed, or systematically occluded, the testimony is a work of embassage, of an ambassador, and if all forbear to read it, then it is not frustrated, or rendered obscure or ineffectual, in that one of its options is still fulfilled.
Consider the case, amid various possible purposes, this one, which could conceivably be isolated: to give a testimonial to the Truth, before the Creator, and concerning Him, to all and for all. This may be done whatever the contingencies which might arise, however great the aversion, however systematic the turning of the eyes, however beneath notice it may be made to appear, or deemed. It is a just thing, a testimony to truth, and that it stands as it has stood is a testimonial with many implications. Whatever be the response, if any at all directly, it is to the honour of God, its focus, so to do, so that it does not all depend on will in any created recipient, as a limitation, but on reality. If the Creator use it (since this testimony comes through constraint from Him, through His own agency and illumination*1B, in the one who writes), then that is good, but it concerns Him, rather than being specifically addressed to Him.
While then such a message, a communication, a provision of information is available to created recipients, and it is not addressed to the Creator, yet is it secure in its purpose even if none respond, in this, that it COULD be received or perceived and the Creator will do with it what He pleases. It MUST in honour be articulated and made public, whether it be like a tree you never notice, or not. It is THERE. You may do much to make it noticed, but even if there should be neither response nor attention given, yet one isolable aspect is fulfilled.
This provision, which concerns expectations and their variable nature, does nothing to inhibit the point or thrust made by Dr Werner Gitt, that there is a backing to the very limits of science, by these means, for the testimony of the Bible. When the criteria of his UI (Universal Information, stringently defined) may have an even broader scope, as here noted, and in this level of expression, they are here merely amplified. It is indeed if anything, even more purposive than mere interchange expectation, since the purpose is not just reciprocal, but universal, expressing more functional aspects before the Maker and for Him to deploy at His pleasure.
Materialism is indeed defunct, God Almighty, eternal and omnipotent is demonstrable and the corollaries of the Gospel and the definitive expression of God in His only begotten Son Jesus Christ the same, His own testimony the apex (cf. SMR, TMR, Repent or Perish Ch. 7, Christ Incomparable Ch. 2).
Moreover, responsibility of man is profound
(Ch.1 above, Predestination and Freewill cf. HEPTAD,
ON PREDESTINATION and FOREKNOWLEDGE, LIBERTY and NECESSITY, RESPONSIBILITY, DUTY and CREATIVITY).
Indeed, organic evolutionary ramblings are the very acme of the unscientific (cf. The gods of naturalism have no go!) and the usurpation of the dignity of science by quasi-religious dramas, often surreptitious or not even realised in their proponents, who may merely react, is a confusion for which the very devil might snatch for glory, as cigarettes for lung cancer. It is great to see more and more modes of approach to the presentation of grounds for these things, and praise God for the ample exhibits, like this one of Dr Gitt, of stern discipline and methodological fervour with immense special knowledge of science. From all, through many, to all, His patience continues, His word continually confirmed, never rescinded, amended, or even rationally challengeable competitively.
There is none else, and nothing else but He, whose Son was sacrificed, to cover sin as amply as need be, for all who receive Him, to attest the truth in information and formation, in word and incarnation, as personal witness and propositional testimony, all in one, of One and more than a merger, an integrality of wonder.
Who would not want it! If they do however yield to arbitrary will, at the ultimate level, it is their choice and doubtless even heaven would have the savour of some hell to those, who in the very presence of divine light, shut the eyes. What is too much for their deliverance, if for any such may be secured through obedience of this kind or that and abiding in Him (Acts 5:32); and praise God once more, force is never the alternative to faith, and liberty with love is super-abundant, mercy not only efficient but proficient, and goodwill from God, not only available but inundative. There is time. He invented it. It is vast; but it is limited. It is wonderful, but it goes. Testimony of many kinds is ordained*1C.
How many and how gifted are many amid His disciples who attest the truth, how glorious is He who so instructs us who serve Him and those who receive Him, in so much for so many in such variable but concerted ways, so that the shadows cast, small and dainty, are of considerable bulk, as there is a very forest of spiritual trees. These, like a host of pines, green with His goodness, are found looking up to the Sun of righteousness, and growing and showing what He has prepared for those who love Him, the called according to His purpose.
Under the hedges, out in the highways, how many are His searchers, and how great to be able to say, HE IS searching. It is NOT only interminably probable that He is there; it is not merely scientifically necessary that He be there, within the domain and field of science as in "Without Excuse" in its delightful rigour; NO, it is also logically both inexorable rigour2 and inevitable that one God is, eternal, immaterial, source of truth and of remedy provision for man
(cf. SMR, Reason, Revelation and the Redeemer, The Meaning of Liberty and the Message of Remedy, Sparkling Life ... Ch. 4, Barbs 6 -7).
This is not found just a priori, but a posteriori, and both verified and validated in the existence and nature of His word, the Bible (It Bubbles, It Screams, He Calls Vol. 9,* 1A, Possess Your Possessions Vol. 9, Ch.2).
See also What is the Chaff to the Wheat! Chs. 3 and 4.
This His own testimonial in word, wisdom, proposition in the Bible and Person in Jesus Christ, is not only great, but glorious; it is so because He is.
NOTES
See SMR pp. 26 - 47. Sparkling Life ... Ch. 4, Barbs ... 6 - 7, for example.
Gitt exercises the liberty of using normal scientific method, which involves study of what is occurring and attests occurrence, and building up successively from the inter-relating results of such investigation the causative features, emblems, fixture and interplays which account for them, at the various levels. It is not an exhibition of preconceived ideas, or desires, but quite simply, an exercise in the inventory of human ability, of observing, categorising, characterising, seeking explanation, testing, ramifying tests in various fields, correlating law with law, and building up from this field of actual occurrence, with the symbolisms apt for and required by these things, what is ultimately a descriptive apparatus.
In the field of information, he selects acute aspects of the uniformities involved, the characteristics of these and the types of action demanded and found to be operative in such cases, and with careful definition reaches the normal TYPE of conclusion for scientific work, that when these things are done, these things are UNIFORMLY found to be present. In the case of information, it is simply like other scientific laws, the case that intelligence is found to be universally operative, when information comes brand new into being. It is not doing so now, thrust invisibly into the maw of 'nature'. This conforms to the biblical statement of some 3500 years standing, that the particular Intelligence which created man, the universe and life, started it, completed it, and stopped. Its stoppage is one of the empirical acts. In the scientific realm, Gitt points out the nature of actualities to be studied, in the field of information, defining what is meant to prevent confusion, in the normal way in scientific types of endeavour, and formulating universal laws from this, shows that it is only when scientific method is tossed aside, that science can face information without the chaste acknowledgement, that here is a field of intelligence.
It is scarcely surprising, even at this level. After all, to form words is a mental work of creating symbols for realities, or imagined considerations; and their appointment is a mental species of categorisation. To form sentences, is to inform words with syntax and meaning, and meaning is in the field where symbol-signification occurs, not found in the parameters of matter, or relevant to its operational self-attestation. It cannot be found. Meaning is CERTAINLY found in the laws under which matter operates, brilliant in specificative brio, a fact of great fascination for Einstein. But the laws are IMPARTED, not impartative, they are results of what makes laws, not causes of themselves, not items self-generative of themselves before they are there, as if this could account for them. They are the piece of chocolate wrapper found in a walk in 'nature', where not for one instant does one doubt its cause, ultimately for its existence: namely a species of information producing, matter-manipulative intelligence! That is simply because this is DISTINCTIVELY the field of operation of such things, and entirely without attestation from any other source.
After the word-fact-symbol creation and the sentence diversification, more types of meaning are required, to indicate the direction of thought, the perspective overall, the things required, the things attested. All of this is an individual operation of mind (whether or not there lay behind even this, any cognitive colloquy of discussion, merely an amplification of the point). It has nothing to do with what keeps laws. It may make laws, it may reject them, rebel against them, love to do so or do so reluctantly, but it is not in the domain of material existence in law-girt martiality. The terrain is different. The functionalities are diverse. The results are not concordant; though from the point of view of one actually pursuant of scientific method, it is fascinating to find the differential characteristics of this domain of meaning, symbol and language.
They universally involve an intelligence which in turn, to be operative in creative activities of innovative technologies underlying augmentative results, such as ant and man, requires thought and consideration of possibilities, choice indeed in order that the programmatics be not neurotically wandering or wavery, but marvels of precise, disciplining brevity. In short, it is what is called on the basis of performance, personality.
That is the basis of information, ultimately, whatever be the marvels of programmatics added to this, to make it a routine instead of a mere happening. Such routines are found only where what is adequate for their causation is present, and this is found as above. Any endeavour to make it otherwise would require an entire differentiation from reason, and hence its relevance in discussion on the topic. The position is not an option, but both in the scientific area and in the more general logical one, a necessity (cf. Scientific Method ..., The gods of naturalism have no go! and Deity and Design, esp. Section 8).
See Ephesians1:18 for example.
Expression, Expressiveness and Programmatics
An Excursion
This raises the whole question of the nature and purpose of communication in general.
Gitt expresses a consideration that the most intelligent information deposition is the briefest. This is not essential to his thesis, but incidental to his conception; except in a special case, normally that of programmatic. It must be realised that the sort of environment in which Dr Gitt chiefly speaks is coded information. For a program to be lengthy admits of certain extravagances, more to break and fail in the transmissions or multiple transmissions, more bulk, less streamlining, more complexity and so on. And in all normal terms, what is the programmatic gain to offset or to balance ? Here brevity has place.
When it comes to communication which is not programmatic, however, there is another consideration. In this case you are speaking not merely to intelligences, or programmed recipients of what intelligence has made, but to persons. Outside the ambit of the indirect attribution of intelligence, to that of direct intelligence addressing in PERSONAL manner, other persons, there is a vast arena of considerations which is specific to that case, as distinct from DNA for example. That in no way is adverse to the requirements of such programmatics, and is not specific to them, but moves into other realms, such as befit man in other situations.
In this direct mode of communication, person to person, for completeness let us add, there are areas as varied as the colours of the rainbow, and as graded. Thus Paul sometimes has lengthy sentences, and one sentence can reach 70 or so words. The apostle Paul may repeat concepts in different forms on various occasions. Hosea 12:10 states specifically that God used MANY images in conveying what He had in mind. This divine conscientiousness, variety and persistence, making long the list to the listless has vast point and purpose. This related to His patience and enterprise, since man has proved often more stubborn than the worst nut, full of potential but exceedingly hard to get at! Again, long and prima facie rather indirect parables may be used, because of the hardness of their hearts (Matthew 13), to entice their wilfulness to the reception of seed, which may in this format, grow in their all but intransigent minds.
Again, in this other mode, the direct person-to-person one, you could, if Shakespeare, write a play which has vast amounts of information, numerous persons, an enticing variety of developments, interplay of subtlety and deception, all producing various desired impacts, such as the elevation of certain features or foci or aspects of human life, and the exposure for what they are worth if anything, of certain others. People may pour out their thoughts with anecdotes, explications, intimations of varied kinds for teaching purposes, for impact, for arousing interest, or engrossing the mind, for awakening the spirit, giving fresh orientation to the roving, as with Mark Anthony's famous speech concerning Caesar; and yet their objective might have been expressed in one sentence. This, in this case, is not in the least degree, inefficiency but deft in thought, like a 6 hour operation with great delicacy in body, dealing with the personality and problems, pathological or other, of man as they come.
Further, discourse may be so arranged as to instil light where custom has made obscurity de rigueur. An entire perspective may be needed, and require much in seeking to induce even a willingness to hear, or audit, or arouse if the Lord so will, inspiration even, so that the mind may be released from its restricted ambits to wider understanding. The obstruction may be will, but the difficulty may be as simple as comprehension of a whole realm of thought from the outset, and often the one has contributed to the difficulties of the other.
Again, steps may be needed to enable custom to help mind to grasp themes, and repetition to reinforce it in its glide through perception to conception to comprehension, as in much teaching. Analysis of the area or arena of any step may be needed to familiarise with the perspective in view, and ramifications may have to be considered if there is a critical lustre in the audience, an appetite that needs sating, or a reluctance to proceed in new territory unless there is total comprehension of some part and its consequences, duly considered in place, in situ. In the image of God in his construction and enduement, man is not to be taken lightly, as if some glorified auditory device, with a few other additions. Empirically, he is no more like that than logically such considerations cover the case, where even to know truth, such as is often spouted by deriders, only for them to be routed, you need a different model than that of intensive reactions in an embroiling milieu. That is merely an operational fantasy, denying the conditions of its own discourse, relative to truth, which it still perversely pretends to present.
In man there is thought, there are ideas, there is a psyche in a world of its own, which may inspect, reject, seek to intimidate or trifle with what he finds, there is logic by which he reasons and there area its rules which he cannot alter, there are results which he cannot change, for in his mind he is very creative, but in his universe, he has no power to reconstitute it, though he may come close to obliterating it as blindly he ruminates and activates and tries this and that, with a narrow understanding and a wild wilfulness.
Man has this creative power, limited though it is. Hence in meeting with his mind, Imagination may indeed be needed, even excursus into contraries, in order to dispel them, or exposure of clashes in concept may be assembled, which could require much to bring the underlying aspects to sight or even to mind. Routes of unreason, wild in irrationality, may be so embedded in the mind of man, with his very groomed ways of thinking, he may be so immured, in his headstrong and insupportable hypotheses he may be so immersed, that the ways of the Great Physician of spirits and healer of broken minds may engage in matters both deep and seemingly superficial, expected and unexpected, with that same brilliance of mind revealed in the constructions and constrictions, the information and information about the use of information, enshrined in the divine publication of the DNA, not in a few lingering phrases of possible significance, but in the equivalent, it has long been submitted by some researchers, of some 1000 large volumes. It is hard to ignore such a library, its point, purpose and the wonder of its works of institution. It is with that mind what we are dealing.
In human to human speech, communication, as distinct from brilliant programmatics of distinctive code to achieve engineering marvels, equipped with symbolic meaning as in DNA, the case may be very different, and it is not of course it is not in the relatively simple but yet highly demanding field of inter-code facilitation at the impersonal level as in the commands for our bodily construction, which invade and dispose the regularities of the material world and its laws, with imperial instructions, and intrusive commands which do not make themselves out of vagaries of the anythingness of loose imagination, but sufficient and evocative mental outthrust and purposive will. It is rather lilke entering a motel unit; there are the things made, and you have them to live in; but on the wall is a hand of like intelligence, but actual informational formulation with its constraints, constrictions, restrictions, rules, semantic, grammatical, symbol-substance, sightless but with insight. It tells you when you can enter and leave and where to put the dust bin, for example. One is the production of the container, the unit; the other is the instruction of the intelligence of construction with the will of instruction. Neither produces the other; and nothing produces nothing.
Institution and instruction overlap and inter-relate. Overall therefore, there needs therefore to be consideration, according to the current purpose of the intelligence in view, not only to handle broader categories, itself a vast and imposing field; but in the more confined arena, to show by contrast the brilliant singularity of what IS code-to-code communication, its lean efficiency for a chosen purpose. For such a limited if brilliant purpose, brevity may indeed be a marvel, prepared to weather centuries.
At times, person to person communication may also require brevity, such as "Get up quickly, your house is on fire!" Pointed and direct, this covers that case. If there were children, it might require a little more, in order to overcome apprehension, lack of comprehension, startled psyches, fear and the like. When the child grows, it may involved a lecture course, or nowadays more than likely, another to expose the follies of the first. The depth is very great and the communication requisites and desiderata most varied. As the wind on the waters of the sea, so is the liberty and perception, the wisdom and the understanding required, to meet each case.
There is, then, outside the more narrow purposive limits, an entirely enlarged and more intimate series of considerations in communication and it is good to investigate it a little, for perspective and appreciation of both and all.
The very way and directness of speech can be considered by persons along with what it says, in almost unbelievable perversity, so that steps may be taken to avoid misunderstanding also, at the purely personal level. When it comes to person to person communication, it is as in architecture. While concrete and glass constructions may be simple, relatively brief in mode, with little variation, and while this has much value in SOME circumstances; if it were all to be so limited on efficiency grounds, the very spirit and soul of man, his imagination and inspiration and understanding and joy would all be ignored. As Tennyson has it, such and such action should be taken lest one good custom should corrupt the world. Just as flippancy, flightiness, caprice, can become snarls in the fabric of liberty, so the self-assurance of quite custom may inhibit thought, and even in good measure substitute for it.
When you are communicating with a certain sort of being, you have to keep in mind what that is, and as far as may be, its current mode, in the area of personalities, a spiritual arena which may be both complex, and ill-complexioned through misuse of past opportunities, very due guilt and anything from hopelessness to false hope. Accordingly, where art and soul and joy and inspiration are concerned, then complexities may resist or admit perspicuities, for darkness is no normal friend of light (cf. John 1:5). Even attitudes, grounded in reductionist perspective, may abhor the light, a personal equation of resistance for preservation of pride or pleasure, being operative. Yet appetite may come to the sedated, who begin to resist imposed sleep. Then communication has more choices and facilities available: that is, the very design of communication, both inherent and in terms of purposes, may conduct thought, appreciation, stir appetite, bring amusement or inspiration, encourage relaxation or stir by variety, depths in man which may be on the point of superficiality or boredom, by custom long prolonged.
Again, in direct instruction, there may be a distinct tilt away from the truth, as has often happened, as in Paul's day, and the correction of this may be a matter of profound depth, communication following need as medicines follow a disease. One case is of peculiar interest. Sometimes (as suggested by the statistics in the July-September issue of Answers in Genesis pp. 84ff.), people who teach may have BELIEFS different, even quite different from what they actually TEACH. Should you elect to teach a subject where the truth that is defensible or demonstrable, is clear, and omit it for survival, salary or honour purposes, that is, the honour of this world. Not if you are clear in absolute commitment to the Lord. For my own part, in practice, the consideration includes this: my tongue is not for sale. If I teach, the word of God has its place, and if some come who do not expect to be indoctrinated, fine, but they must be taught with grounds apt for thought, and in a disciplined manner which does not stop short of clear enunciation. Is the truth for sale ? Are children of God to be ambivalent ? Is guile to play the wanton with truth, or is the command of men to be more ultimate than the word of God, whose ultimate expression has told us that He is a man who told the truth, and they yet wanted to kill Him.
If only teaching were governed by truth, surely with discretion as to its mode of relating, so that logic is to the fore, and disciplined method is given full scope, then much of the present plague of insincerity, fantasy philosophy and fraud which dominates much of society intentionally, would have had far less help in its self-promotion! In this way, in communication, sickness of heart or slovenliness of spirit, or accommodation to contrary cultures can lead to a public intoxication which becomes a plague, a spiritual plague like the Black Death in its day. All such considerations require attention when there is person-to-person communication, so that things are weighed by the recipient, rather than just weighted for the programmatic speciality which might in other domains, or for other purposes, be in view.
It is thus not only the sort of being but the state of that being, of its thought and desire, valuation systems and customs, sleepiness of heart or hyper-activity of spirit that relate to interpersonal situations. Communication between persons is as deep as persons are, and the considerations are as broad as are the natures of persons. When as is the case with man, the persons are made originally in the image of God, that is, in terms permitting and even enabling communication with God Himself, then the depths are awesome.
These variables and absolutes being in place, the possibilities for the best sort of communication, even the most efficient, for DIRECT utterance or writing mount as do the skies. The purpose, single or multiple, simple or deep, is poised like a boulder, over the communication scene below. Brief communication of an underlying point may not by any means, be the most inefficient - "break it to me gently" being only one of the elements. Some speak, again, in pithy, short sentences, but not Milton in his famed essay on freedom, Areopagitica. Sentence length in this, for example can be impressive, one appearing around 120 words in its divulgements!
Paul has often very long sentences. It is indeed true that crisp, mechanisation type of communication has many advantages, as in war, when ACTION at once is in view. This is but one case. Here, it can stir the mind, enliven the heart, bring appreciation to the thoughts, relieve a tiring spirit by the consideration of brevity, or revolt it by the appearance of the simplistic! Man can be very perverse, as may neglected machinery; but with man, it is his own neglect.
What then ? Inter-personal communication can bring hope to the weary and help to the troubled. It can promote reflection, induce meditation, or tend to do so. Yet it can be brutish and arrogant, bring disaster to the reckless and boredom to the unenlightened. It all depends on the person, the situation, the setting, the need, the sort of persons involved, the depths of their understanding and the extent of their involvement in decisions. It relates to the considerations of the spirit and mode of the person, the situation in which it is placed , as to the condition and current movements of heart in those who speak and those who hear, and their current situations. As with other art, variation is one of its most ingenious and ingenuous delights. As in the parallel of athletics, on the other hand, where speed is essential, simplicity, many things taken for granted and in no need of rehearsal or exhibition, times come when short-cut direct and truncated speech appeals. "On your marks!" may be an inter-personal communication very different from the long hours of study and coach's instruction, and practice with pause for variation and ascent.
We are not robots, and need not act as if we were. Some of the greatest works of art are not brief, not condensed, not direct, not lacking in intricacy; and simplicity can be communicated by understanding, which may take long to attain. Just as in mathematics and physics, when E=MC2 is brief, yet the obtaining of the understanding to appreciate its derivation is not brief! It may involve many lectures covering many facets, functions, ideas, testings, refinements, thoughts on basics and the like.
Cathedrals are not simple, though some elements may be, and may involve constructions of prodigious effort and manpower, to obtain a certain simplicity, or on occasion complexity that betokens an underlying simplicity, or even a message that it takes much to achieve understanding, so that this HAS much, moving the mind by many peaks or pinnacles, mouldings or inclinations, to various lines of thought which inspire.
Communication is thus a broad field, in which the needs, desires, thoughts, heart, situation, personality and dangers of man, as well as his potential may come into view, complicated by various types of personal pathology in mind or spirit or emotions: these all come into play, and may need work. Like water, here in a brook, there in a pool, there out of all runnels, water is running rapidly down a hillside, here moving tranquilly through meadows, here in a electricity generation system, there irrigating. There it is in delightful cascade, here it is still as Winter snow lies in quietness, speaking depths: communication is an expressive flow and has multiple purposes and modes for its various application.
Any fixation on one mode for ALL purposes is merely obliterative. Indeed, often people grow weary of certain elements in life, and want them derided or over-ridden, for political or spiritual reasons, as in Nazi Germany, or George Orwell's novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four
(cf. http://www.sysdesign.ca/archive/berkes_1984_language.html),
where vocabulary excisions were made as an aid to thought control!
A whole generation may seek the luxury of boorish brutality of thought, as if despite what we have in liberal profusion in mind and in spirit, we all HAD to be subjected to irrational reductionism. That resembles leaving only the nave in a cathedral and removing the entire superstructure, in acts of incredible seeming blindness. This can become either fashionable or forced by Authority.
On the other hand, a fixation on one mode for one purpose when it is programmatics is indeed a signal of intelligence, and the more the better in general. It is always best to differentiate purposes and modes for various realms, and to avoid homogeneity beyond the case: thus homogeneity to a large extent in grammar and vocabulary help language to function at all; but Shakespearian originality in various forms is far from damaging. It can stir thought, provoke understanding, delight creativity, establish new modes of facility, enrich opportunity and so forth. All the elements have their place in communication for various purposes, as broad as the meadows, as high or low as cliffs and gorges. The net result can be gorgeous; or effectual; or uplifting, or humbling, or merely dissipative of energy, or again, challenging to the heart to awaken and live, where it had become almost defunct.
It is wrought by imagination, conceived in symbolic attributions of meaning, implemented in concordant receptors, the whole embraced in one system of information acrobatics and instrumentality, coded, contrived with mutuality of concept, unity of result, conformity to definitions of language which are enforced, so that it is a mental operation, in its domain of symbolism and meaning, one of will in its determination so to act in creative modes, and of protocols and paradigms making decisive the decisions which underlay them, in the field of language. Accordingly, in the world of informative symbolism and command, the will through interpretive means in its own domain, secures modes of action so that its desire might be effected.
As this phenomenon (cf. Jesus Christ, Defaced, Unfazed ... Ch. 4, SMR Ch. 1) is on the one hand instituted for inspection, and on the other hand, regarded, we come to the personality which achieves the acme of constructing communication into programmatic format, and so shows the intensive side of discipline of thought management and application, in the field of creation. This creative prodigy means that the continuation of life is subjected in this organic field, entirely to this unifying and discretionary, but complexly conceived world of symbolic code and performance, and works through it. This is the side where brevity can assist accurate continuity, and miniaturisation, staggeringly past all men's best efforts, can facilitate continuance, before as in the Second Law of Dynamics (cf. That Magnificent Rock Ch. 7), and the findings of Professor Sanford of Cornell University (Waiting for Wonder Appendix), the actual nature of creation is shown, in its deterioration even of the genome itself. What would you ? There are laws for mind and for matter, and for deterioration over time of design. Life keeps to these, and what is contradictory of this, occurs only in man's mind, and in eternity, where for and before man, this kind of universe has end and what endures, continues for those who personally relate, in the way provided.
Such is the broad differential of inter-personal speech, where command makes the body for it with man, command can be expressed by the mind in it, forged by man, and can impact to the deletion of life by the same imagination which, awry at rules, makes rules of its own, which reality meets unremittingly, for man is no god, though only the Maker of information could construct him, or give him the liberty of spirit in total divorce from the ultimate slavery of all programmatics, with which to deride Him, seeking to grab His construction by communications of revolt, confusing enablement in review and thought, with power to contest with the Maker of all order, law and communication, what is after all simply His gift. Gift-wrapping it after reception with sin is not going to change or elevate what is within; just as denial of it will not delete it, but merely exhibit the guilt of pretence, and possibly, pretension. What is eminent as a step before the fall never changes. So great is the creation of man, that his liberties are awesome, his results appalling, and his opportunities uplifting, while the discipline of reality does not retire because of the liberty of spiritual, moral or physical licentiousness. Gods only in name are really no good at all in conceit and confusion, or the various marriages of the offspring of these things.
As to man, he is informed, in format, and in mind, as to his place, and as in the soaring case of Satan, corrupted by his own brightness we learn, misusing more brings even less for the result, till positivity in superficiality, confidence in corruption, breeds ruin in profundity. On the other hand, the information to the mind, uniquely attested BY evidence and verificatory modes, as well as logic as enquirer, found in the Bible (cf. SMR), this enables man to find the ultimate place in grace, by which he also was created (John 1; 3:15-19), not in the profundities of diversion and contortion (Ephesians 4:17-19), but in the realities of the Creator. He, as in the creation, so then in the redemption, has acted: not despising the results of liberty (Romans 5:1-11), but in love enabling restoration to the situation before the crash, in which this world groans (Romans 8:17ff.), and better, to the assured knowledge of the redeeming God (John 5:24).
In Possessing your Possessions, Vol. 9, Ch. 2, we have a review. An excerpt is presented below. When reason requires a result, here as in SMR, the eternal God and His word, in this world, and that result is found and is independently testable as to its unique criteria, then the verification of data becomes a validation of the method of reason, gift of God. What HAD to be, is! Not only is it unique, testable, verifiable, remedy-containing, but as having such qualities, and myriads more, it is THERE. It is like a particle or planet being indicated, and then the discovery: it is there! Here however, it is not the product merely of variable data, but of the very structure and nature of reason that it is both forecast and found, in one bundle of triumph.
Part of the Ch. 2 review noted appears below.
THE BEGINNING - when GOD ACTED
Nothing produces nothing*1. Nothing is not the product. Nothing cannot be the cause, when you consider it as the original and till creation, eternal state. Void at the first is the mother of nothing.
Matter is not the product of nothing, so it had a precursor. It was a matter producer. Matter cannot produce itself when it is not there to do it. It cannot be a non-product since it is not sufficient for itself: it has laws, limits, traceable procedures. It is not self-sufficient. To imagine it eternal is to abandon logic, which ever demands a cause, just as causality cannot be dispensed with, without dispensing with logic, by which argument is made (cf. Causes). The only logical possibility*1 is a self-sufficient source, eternal and not subjected to imposition or contrivance, free. Then causality, and then alone, is satisfied, by an eternal causeless, unconstrained and unrestricted Being. Then only is the demand of scientific method for cause adequate for result and interface for its occurrence, to be met. The thought process does not stop because the universe is big, as though grandeur made its origin irrelevant, or its magnificence eliminated institution, as if magic rules where operation of scale occur! The opposite is true.
It is merely an issue of total, self-explanatory basis for everything. It is the ever-vernal reality.
It cannot be material, since matter has the aforementioned liability to reason's demands. It must be free therefore to make what it wishes, and not be any type of constricted, constrained, contained and directed being, by program (who made that ?) or other grounding.
Reason requires this Being and when reason is followed, it finds the testimony, testable to an exceedingly great degree, of the Bible. Thus reason requires God as in SMR, and a unique validity is attested for the result of reason, in this, that when you get there (as with a scene of a crime with finger-prints), your work of investigation receives its confirmation. You not only find what meets reason, but what confirms it, the ultimate validity. What reason insists on, God has given. What of this testable book claiming His Almighty origin ? (cf. II Peter 2:19ff., I Corinthians 2:9ff., Matthew 5:17ff.). In detail, it is verified, making the investigation scientific in those aspects of scientific method applicable, and a number of these are. There are many other lines of testimony leading to God, but in this case we are looking at one only.
Scientific method*2 insists that if a thing be deemed to be so, there must be no contrary testimony in the areas of verification, and there should be convergent testimony in those areas. As shown in many volumes, this is the case. There is hence a ground for the reality of God found in logical, causal, scientific and validation areas. There is no other option. The way to test lies open; and it shows that God has not left this world to roam like children at a nuclear control tower, with no adequate ideas about the powers, privileges and duties of being here. He does not allow the ruin of young lives, active minds, peaceable people by the artisans of war and crime, cruelty and dishonesty as a systematic gift to innocent man (cf. Repent or Perish Ch. 2, Barbs ... 6 -7); but has told mankind so often, so much, in so many ways, summed in the Bible, personified in Jesus Christ, that the mere continuance of this race at all, is a miracle of mercy. But its term is set, known only to God (Matthew 24:22).
Signals of its end, as a period of grace, with the remedial Gospel of grace purchased in Christ (cf. Romans 3:23ff.) are numerous (Answers to Questions Ch. 5).
He gave the time for the arrival of the Remedy, in the Redeemer (Christ the Citadel ... Ch. 2), but it is a matter of having the signals only for the arrival of the Royal Sovereign, who having suffered is to reign. It is a testing time, and why not ? Indeed, in this second case, that of His return, there is point in not telling, for that is part of the test. In mercy however, he does give multiplied signs and signals, when the time is near, as now (cf. Answers to Questions Ch. 5).
Let us review. In this, a number of somewhat parallel formulations will be given, enabling nuances and aspects to be keenly visualised, felt and discerned with considerable care.
Shortly: reason requires, unique validity attests, scientific method attests (and it refuses organic evolution - cf. SMR pp. 140ff.), results singularise (multi-faceted correlation of cause and consequence with the appropriate scope), and verification consummates. It is not necessary to distrust reason; it is necessary to use it and find its testimony at the level of attestation, of things done and explicable, and then to verify. In that sense, verification is icing on the cake; and its breach, as for other ideas, is fatal. There is nothing outside the God of creation and revelation, in the testable Bible, which conforms to its Author, to meet these tests. There is no competition; what reason requires, only this gives. Not only does it confirm itself, but provides what attests, in perspective and approach, everything else demanding explication. It is not so hard when convention and rebellion die down, like an evening fire, at last. It is not so very hard to find the Lord ...
This is so, however, since we are not free minds roving in space, but sinful people, keeping to no totally perfect moral code, for the simple reason that divorced from God, man can find no such thing in the first place, but only subjective intimations, variable greatly. That of course is a predictable result of his rebellion, just as the degree of convergence, on the other hand, is a testimony to the underlying structure of man, in the image of God, but now sullied.
Thus the realm of the empirical merely confirms what reason requires. Without God, the absolute truth available, in any model of thought, no finding is possibly true. In any such case, theory then requires, but when the status of any such alleged finding be examined, the model insists that absolute truth be not available, so on this model, its affirmations are void. Instead, all things being mutually self-limiting, and in totality, self-inhibiting by the lack of an objective perspective: what is needed, is not there. It is a perpetual vacancy for such a model. If truth by your own model dies, then your own model cannot be defended. Omit it and you logically omit your talk.
With God, this impasse is avoided, and the positive features are confirmed. There is no problem. Since the Bible is essential as a ground for absolute truth (a non-communicative God does not improve man's position re truth, to have it, to speak it, to present it), and is utterly confirmed empirically and logically, and since it has no competitors at the validation and verification level, as has been presented numerous times, there is nothing more to be concerned about, but receiving the God of the Bible, His diagnosis of our affairs, world and universe and getting on with the remedy provided, which means Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour.
· This is the ultra-presuppositional method:
· rational, heuristic, investigatory-confirmatory,
· competitor-exclusive, consummation-inclusive.
It is as with Elijah at Mt Carmel: put things to the test. See what your gods can do, and we will show you what God does. The reason why it is NOT presuppositional, in any aspect, or does not depend on negations, in method is the great action of God in providing direct an d directly testable testimony, found uniquely in the Bible.
This He has provided, step by step. First, then is the Bible; then in it, the predictions of Christ to come; then thirdly, Christ, within this world, testable then and indirectly as well as vitally, now; and fourthly His own Messianic word, like that of a relay runner, who is also the King, constraining history to do precisely what He has said, just as wind and word, life and death were in His power while here He lived (cf. Christ, the Wisdom and the Power of God Ch. 8).
Nothing else can validate past negation, with the affirmations of efficacy as reason applied. This is the point where the pursuit of what reason requires, proceeds to the point where empirical reality confirms it, and of course. The course of reason is confirmed in the findings when it is applied, in its ramifications. Thus this is not merely empirical, for it is systematic as well, leaving no confusion in its internal testimony, major gap in its coverage or alternative to the use of reason but incoherence, nor any blemish or irreconcilability, but the precise opposite in a honeyed harmony, not always so sweet, but not so sour either. It is the sin bin which as rubbish, tends to smell, and its odours are not purely olfactory... but significant!
Thus reason has no other testimony; revelation has no other testable path; logic has no other avenue; and the irrational is incapable of defence. THEN revelation provides the crown, the truth, the positivity in practice, the confirmation of intractability of reason, the conquest of the orientation need of man, and the knowledge of the very heart of God. Then all is explicable; not that there is nothing more, for when we see God, who know Him, then it is like noon after the dawn. However, even now, nothing systematic in principle, lies unresolved.
Here, at the gift of God, is the ultimate in self-consistency, since when it is found, not only is it attesting its rightness as a finding of reason, so that man is not a muddle of inconsistency (cf. Deity and Design ... 8), a self-obliterative void, but is given his place, diagnosis, prognosis, grounds for it, and testimony of its developments, often predicted, over the millenia. It has been a long, long day at the lab, but a good one, a nicely proportioned few thousand years, as shown in SMR Ch. 7.
In principle what then do we have ? it is yielding to reason, and an adornment with meta-reason, reason at work on the systematic self-consistency of what it has found, which also verification confirms. Reason to find, revelation as a finding, self-sufficiency of the word of God as testable, directive and testable again in that, as in the performance level of the crucial Word who came personally, and of His bequeathal of words about what would come, which has done so in large measure already, and is completing the tour as told, at a very fast clip at the present time. Instead of a query, it is a tour de force, like the Tour de France, each phase presenting the champion, always the same one, the whole sequence ending, this time not in Paris, but in objective, demonstrated, multi-tested truth.
As to the detail, the coverage, the fields of application, the verification crop: That is as found, for example, in the two-volume, over 2 million word work:
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.
What then ? This method of Christian apologetics is not presuppositional but operational.