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CHAPTER  3

CAUSE, CASUISTRY AND COFFINS

ROMANS 1:16-21
 

 'The Power of God to Salvation'

ITS PRESENCE

Let us look at this enthralling possession to be gained by studying with meditation, the word of God in this passage from Paul, by the Spirit of the living God.

Paul states that the good news from God is nothing of which to be ashamed. As in I Corinthians, it is unpopular with the mighty, undesired by most of the great, but it nevertheless is a tempered, temperate and true substitute for the vapid, rapidly passing, intemperate, irrationalities of this world, as it defends its alleged right to do what it likes, without limit, though its very physical apparatus, its bodies, declare and shout, at birth, at death and in disease this clear message:

And this ? 'You neither control your origin nor your destiny, nor the meaning of knowledge nor its power to stand. You merely imagine and that vainly.'

Through wisdom of its own ladling, this world could find nothing but meatless soup, did not know God, and the wisdom of God, even when He paid the bill  to cover all who freely come to Him, has left as a mere, milling muddle the clouded thoughts of man as a tasteless sediment. This is true as shown in SMR Ch. 3  and Spiritual Refreshings Ch. 13, compared with SMR Ch. 5 for example, and multiply since in vast detail.

'WHERE IS THE WISE ?' Paul here asks, in I Corinthians 1, paralleling  Isaiah 19:12. Where indeed! Philosophy without God so far from being a love affair with wisdom (Colossians 2:8), is witless, in great profundities finding nothing, and in great controversies, solving nothing, proposing disposable waste philosophies, throw-aways which need only to wait a generation to become degenerates of the past, past thoughtful acceptance.

On the contrary, what God speaks in His words, works. Indeed, "It pleased God through the foolishness of the message to save those who believe." Some want miracles to hook onto events of power as adequate (and they do help), and some want philosophies of presence of mind to show might, but neither work, cover reality or make history flow to their order or insight.

Power ? yes, but not that of man. Wisdom ? yes, but not that starting from the heart of man, rather only that which requites it with its needs, and suffices it for its rationality and truth. Power comes from God who made the instruments for its transfer to man, in the form of his mind, body and spirit, on stated premises. It is when man tries to make himself, in thought, action or personality a replacement for his Creator, now as from the first, that the puniness of his power mocks him, and his estate on this earth becomes rapidly ruinous, as now.

However vainglorious is the disdain with which man tends to view his diagnosed condition. it neither secures nor solves it. If you have cancer and can't stand cancer cells, or their study, then you have a problem; and further, not facing it makes it potentially irremediable. ALL WHO HATE ME LOVE DEATH, is the word of divine wisdom in Proverbs 8:36. It is a funereal courtship with death! To 'hate' indeed, not merely means to entertain an emotion, but to render what is indispensable intolerable, a normal mundane attitude to the power of God to salvation for man. Hence as a race being unsaved, he becomes increasingly unsavoury with time, like rotting flesh. To be sure in mercy God sends ever new generations, but with massive overloads of philosophic folly and political pollution, these are degenerated like meat left out in the heat.

God has mercifully provided us with examples, and that of Israel is propositionalised in the Bible, in many phases.

Deuteronomy tells us that the fault shown by ancient Israel in particular, was this, that although both knowing and being aware of the power of God, in practice as well as in principle, they worshipped vanities. The root word in Hebrew refers also to idols! That, it is a matter of things of no reality or substance, mere imaginations as they are sometimes called, nothings, and indeed, even 'lying vanities', mouths without minds that ventriloquise follies from the empty profundities of evil, puppets of folly (cf. Psalm 31:6, cf. Jeremiah 8:19); and these have a rationally elegant and derisive title: that which is NOT GOD (Deuteronomy 32:21).

These new-boy gods, gods risen up from the muck of men's minds (Deuteronomy 32:17): they are disdained for their fraudulence by the Maker of man, ät some length in Deuteronomy.

Again, 'Let them  deliver you!' God says of these imaginative and derelict inventions of man's mind, in Judges 10:14. What is not there is as useless as was the nature god, Baal, in the day of Elijah (I Kings 17): Perhaps he is sleeping, chiding the prophet, as his priests in vain called on his valueless name.  Like the evolutionary variant of that nature god, he can do nothing. It is always a criterion of the idol, that despite many words and much worship, it can DO, SHOW directly, NOTHING. There is hope, there is talk, there are many words multiplied in excuses and preparations, but to actually DO the thing stated so that it might be seen: in vain does one seek this! (cf. SMR pp. 140ff.).

That is what nothing does, nothing: and this is the fruitfulness of worshipping the wind of desire instead of the worker of man's creation.

In this, we are reminded that there are in this field but two categories:

 GOD and NOT GOD.

When you take the latter, it is ridiculous, for not-God can do nothing in the way of creation. Without God, you have nothing. With 'nature' you have only a logical abyss, where the ground for it, with its laws and limitations is missing. Nevertheless it is appealed to, as if it were an entity you could call up and make work, and observe and see in action. Yet it does not stir, cannot be even provoked into action (Delusive Drift or Divine Dynamic Ch. 3), and rests in dreamland, where the fidgety philosophers entice man to come, as if reality would follow the gossamer webs of idle thought

(cf. Secular Myths and Sacred Truth, The gods of naturalism have no go! Deity and Design ... Ch. 3,  Ch. 8,  Light Dwells with the Lord's Christ).

With God, you have, and there alone, what it takes for nothing not to be the case; and if it is not adequate, then you will not get what we have got. Since it is, as it was, adequate for the invention of mind, matter and spirit in the field of not God, that is, creation when it does not merely pretend, but takes its due place, then the worship of this GOD, as distinct from NOT-GOD, is in order.

ITS ROBUST REVELATION

Start with nothing and you get nothing; start with what is inadequate and you get no matching result. You need the creator of mind, matter and spirit and their synthetic involvement in man, with all the domains and dynamics of each with its slavish, conceptual or creatively directive powers, or you might as well have nothing. Drawing on such creative powers in bits is no more help than drawing on a bank account that is not there, in sly dribbles (cf. *2 and *3 below). It does not alter the case, only the integrity of heart of the one whose hope is in nothing, who tries to do something with it. It will not go; nor will it respond: nor does it.

If you do not WANT to worship your Maker, and you certainly CANNOT be wiser than He, who has no limits and and for whom time and its 'experiments' are merely a creation of His own mind, this time-product in itself a system of His devising whose is eternity: what then ? Then you will be worshipping what is unworthy of worship, since the worship implies what is worth it, what is fitting for it, and when it is directed either at nothing or at what is merely a parallel or partner in creation, that is misplaced, inept, ludicrous, shameless, a logical shambles and psychic self-deceit likewise. It CANNOT be right, since it has neither the wisdom nor the power nor the priority to deserve it, but represents merely a tangle of mind and a wrangle with truth.

Now of course, someone might not WANT to worship God, acknowledging this direct. This then merely finds out in the end what the loss of creator, support and destiny giver means; but when you WORSHIP what is not God, or as is parallel, hand to it the robes of divine office, call it what you will: this in itself, is not mere foolishness, it is fiasco. It is as God indicates, not only to deny fresh waters but to use cracked wells! (Jeremiah 2:13,  18:14).

Romans 1:17ff., then, tells us that there is a suppression of the knowledge of God, that this is foolishness, unrighteous, a matter of using psychical force and spiritual strength to repress and wrestle with truth. Obvious indeed are the works and is the nature of God in His invisible reality, ever since the creation, Paul rightly declares. Man's power to make a fool of himself has been abundantly used, by licence of liberty in the fouling of truth (Romans 1:18-19), even when both psychically and logically, man is unable to avoid the truth.

Without excuse, hung on his own hooks, shown false by his own gifts, man both refused to glorify God and to be thankful. I am wise, he chided, but in this became a fool. Like a child, a little goes a long way, and a large will dominated a small heart, is shrunk by wearisome wrestling into tachycardia. They changed the glory of their Creator, the incorruptible God (even beyond time which gives a chance for such things), into corruptible things, as if asininity were the vogue, fashion, chief calling and command for man. Romans 1 does not spare the truth: it is not rationed.

As a result, lusting in spirit became loathsomeness in mind and horror in body, till all design and designation was replaced by decrepitude of heart, arthritis of spirit and morality became a red card for exclusion. Having dishonoured their God (Romans 1:22ff.), they proceed in logical as well as historical sequence, both to abuse their bodies in meaningless associations contrary to the nature clearly given, and their minds in capricious nastiness towards each other, such as they had already resolved on showing to God, even Himself! (Romans 1:28-32).

Lost to lust, they made a welter, a feature, a romance of adventure in it, till their profundity of horror coming of age, leads only, as at the flood, but this time more ultimately, to judgment, which is according to truth (Romans 2:1).

OTHER PRINCIPLES AND PRONOUNCEMENTS 

FOUND IN THE BIBLE

BEARING ON THE TOTAL DIVINE OVERSIGHT OF THESE AREAS

WITH Romans 1:17ff., we have:

Genesis 6:5,

Deuteronomy 13, 32:14-22, 32:36ff.,

I Chronicles 28:9,

Psalm 1:5, 49:7, 50:16-23, 33:11, 99:8, Proverbs 8, 18:2, 23:7, 28:26,Ecclesiastes 7:29,

Isaiah 31:3, 32:14-20, 40:12-31, 41, 42:19, 43, 48, 49:7,

Jeremiah 2:14-27, incl. 14:27, 3:17, 7:24, 10:11, and 10:1-16, 13, 14:22, 23:16-19 incl. 23:26, 

Ezekiel 14:4, Hosea 5:15, Amos 3:7-8, incl. 23:26, 

Zechariah 4:6,

Matthew 5:17-20, Luke 1:51, John 1:1-3,

Romans 2:12ff., I Corinthians 1:18-25, 2:6-14, II Corinthians 10:5,  

Galatians 1:6-9,  Ephesians 1:11, 2:1-12, 4:17-23,  Colossians 1:10-22,  II Timothy 1:7, Titus 3:3-7, 

I Peter 1:22-26.

These sections of the word of God are merely illustrative of what He has to say in these fields, but they do provide in groupings some of the intensity and immensity of His spiritual declamations, declarations and exclusions, relative to the logical, emotional, spiritual, moral and perspectives that relate with divine vindication, to the self-willed dereliction of man. As with many diseases, once it is started whether in individual or group, its extermination is far harder than its inception, and its results can make resolution humanly impossible.

The Bible has the solution, since God has not left it to the meandering thoughts of ambitious man, or the sedition of logic found in philosophers so broadly. It is placed in His own teaching (cf. I Corinthians 2:9-13), guided, girded and governed by Himself as any speaker in depth (I Peter 1:10ff., II Peter 1:16ff.),  and originality must seek to do, in opening up a subject and relaying it with integrity and understanding.

The Bible however is an open book (Isaiah 45:19), and contempt for it does nothing to imperil it; for impugning this sovereign source merely shows, as with laboratory experiments on proven principles, the enduring character of their truth as time passes. In the case of lab work, however, false formulation may vitiate its results over time - as when Einsteinian specialities entered into certain of the Newtonian areas under special circumstances, and the knowledge of man in detail often has to be grossly and even drastically amended.

This, however, is not so with the Bible. That, of course, is precisely a verification and vindication of what comes from the God who, having made time, has no difficulty whatsoever in declaring for it and in it, before it happens, what is to be (Isaiah 46:8-10).

Some conceive or consider that there is some difficulty about what can be expressed in human terms of the mind of God, but this is mere illusion. If GOD WANTS to say it, it is sayable; and nothing in our linguistic-logical structure forbids or prevents it; for we are made in His image.

As much as He desires in our knowing in part, to divulge, it is this which is divulged, and this includes even the DEEP THINGS of God, as He states ever so clearly in I Corinthians 2, nor is there vagueness or lack of clarity (Proverbs 8:8ff.); for God knows what to write, and how to induce research, rebuke carelessness and expose fraud, a teacher to excel. To be sure, he used men, but then, He knows them, having made them and not least, with just this purpose in mind. Moreover it is integral to the relationship, as in any father-son bond; and this one is spiritual and so involves the mental, so that however much He towers above, there is the cognate.

 It is a vain procedure of man to try to excuse manipulation of the word of God by imagining He has any trouble articulating His mind for the areas and events of man, even for his understanding.

The precision of what happens with His word in history, on the contrary,  is simple enough attestation of that, covering as it does the spiritual, the moral, the psychic, the psychological, the imperial, the behavioural with facility and exactitude. Thus, for example,  in dauntless disparity from the thoughts of those who would reduce 'Israel' in the New Testament systematic theology to 'the Church', in the wildest departure from contextual fidelity^*1, Israel HAS come back and has done PRECISELY what God said it would! God means in EVERY context in both Testaments, just what He said, and this must be found with all the normal consideration of the text and perception of the intent of the passage, without either special pleading or gross conflict with the specifications which God has seen fit to provide. Ignoring these, can turn divine truth into human gobbledegook.

So is it in every sphere.

THE SPHERES OF VALIDITY^*2
AND VERIFICATION, RATIONALITY AND REALITY

We may consider validity in terms of an overview of rationality. That is, if you affirm rationality while removing any possibility either of reaching or there being absolute truth, then you are irrational. You affirm what contradicts the availability in your model. But you are also invalid: the sort of thing that affirms what it denies is invalid, for not only in the particularity of its error, but in the general nature of it, it fails. If you HAVE to use what you CANNOT, on your own model, then this is an invalid approach. If in particular, you abuse reason, by deploying it in your endeavour to reach a conclusion, then you are  irrational. Abusing method is invalid; abusing reason is irrational. Even if you did not abuse reason, you would still be invalid for entering the sphere of operations where you affirm ANYTHING which you deny. If YOU contradict yourself, who else need do so!

There is far more to it, but not less, than this.

Thus, if  access to truth be denied to truth, its affirmation is invalid. This has an additional facet.  If the thing you both affirm and deny makes your work invalid, how much more does it do so when truth itself is the thing in view. If you both affirm and deny truth, the one in theory and the other in practice, then not only are you invalid, but invalid in the very area and arena of truth. It is truth which is your downfall;  you become a specialist in its mismanagement, thus doubly derelict.

It is in addition to this, that one in this plight is irrational, since you cannot use reason aright if you use it where on your own model, it does not come. If reason  DEMANDS truth, the failure to satisfy it while using it, is not only invalid, but specifically a violation of reason. It is self-contradictory but also contradictory of reason.

From Design and Deity ... Ch. 3, *3, the following pertains. Indeed,  the entire Chapter deals with diverse elements of the entire concourse which surrounds creation and rationality, empirical and testing concerns at every level, showing the multi-partite irresolution of each phase on any basis other than that of the absolute truth, causative objectivity and adequacy of causal basis.

*3 See Barbs ... 7   and    6.

A subjective, relativistic entity not only has no access to the truth of the system, since there is nothing but what internally relates, each part or aspect to the other, but on that model, there IS nothing to which so to relate. Any logic which seeks to be valid, cannot use this model to determine the truth of the system, what it is in truth.

Further, not only in such a case is both truth and access to it, beyond mere operational happenings, unavailable, and non-existent, so not usable in discussion or debate, so requiring immediate failure on the part of any debater or contestant of this character on this topic: but the competence of logic in any sphere is then ALWAYS subject to doubt and scrutiny, to confirm even that part of its operations.

However, to evaluate REQUIRES the objective validity of the method, which, being the point of the exercise, is not available. It is a question begged. It is logically inept, its exponents without either resource or recourse.

Hence validity of logic is impossible without God. Moreover,  causation is ONE of the elements of logic, seeking what does and what does not have an adequate basis of explicatory kind, and without its  use, logic itself is failed on this model, and this is a third ground of failure in the validity of any such logic.

It is failed thus both in general and in particular, and on a multiple basis, even at the outset. Logic without causation AND its necessary result in God, as shown in SMR, is inoperable on the first count, and invalid on the second.

Just as effective language without logic is impossible, so is logic without causation, and that multiply.

See also The Bright Light and the Uncomprehending Darkness Ch. 7.

It is time to explore these features in other domains, in order to find the extent of the validity, here similar to verification but also present. That is, SINCE this is where reason goes when it is followed, and is what validity requires when it is satisfied, can we not and ought we not to investigate further, to find the various levels of non-self-contradiction, whether perceived as empirical exhibits at any given level, of what is presented as required, that is the Bible, or as integral and internal aspects. If such be the way, then that way ought to evidence itself coherently in the domains of its operation AS there.  Seeing the harmonies is as useful as finding the dissonances. To this, then, we look.

In fact, all things are explicable on this basis, as sphere after sphere is considered; just as, on the dissident basis, nothing is explicable, in the same way, thus providing  multiple verification of what in the first place is shown both uniquely rational and valid. Nothing else in the entire field where rationality and validity avails materially, is to be found, far less what is rigorously testable, but the Bible; and it is eminently, provocatively, and personally so, not merely giving mouth to the personal intelligence required, but using this mouth to validate itself still further, by explicit discourse in this very field of rationality, validity and verification, while providing the elements of the answer in each case in a way nothing else either does or can do.

The Bible does not ask man to believe it by itself alone, as a product of something ascribing deity to its origin (as it does for the origin of other things, such as the astronomical system, and the human one), but as in Deuteronomy, Romans and Isaiah for example,  insists that denial of itself is denial of reason. It is deemed without competitive evaluation, having no parallels or substitutes, as is the case. Avoidance techniques are found invalid in seeking, in principle, to use what has its own limits and constraints operative beyond itself,  what is made, as its own source; for that is to seek the cause in the consequence, an evasion of reason and a contradiction of one's own valid principles of calling to account. 

THE PERSONAL ELEMENT

Moreover, not only is there irrefragable reason for believing, there is exclusion of illicit misuse of what is so reasonable: faith is required, not as opinion merely, but as a trust of heart which is neither dependent on outcome, nor entertaining doubt of it, but accepting it with assurance, the very heart of faith (cf. for the negative, Hebrews 4:1-3). What dog eyes his master suspiciously, who trusts him! Does not even a dog know what it is to trust, and show it!

But as to reason, there is clarity here also to the point: for if you want to account for things, so be it, do so; and if you do not, then let this too be your mind: but let these attitudes never be confused or the victim may at the personal level, be confounded.

For one may either call to account or not; but if not, one is irrational and irrelevant to the point; and if so, one cannot affirm the consequent in order to establish the protasis; one cannot merely look at the thing to be explained, in terms of finding where lies its origin in each of its depths and dimensions. This is contradiction in kind.

In illustration, take a piano. You do not check out the existence of note-correlation in order to find what makes music in conceptually analysable profundity, for these are not the point. It is what uses them that is to the point, and why and how it contrives to produce what in addition to HAVING notes, is notable for entirely transcendent regions of action and creation. Moreover, the positioning of fingers and the consequence of sounds does not build either the piano or the art of music, in the first place. Use may be profuse, but of what use is this, as it is all examined. You do not obtain pianos by using them; but use them only when they have been built. Confusion here constantly is creating disorientation of the godless; and while it is asked for, the pity of it is not decreased in that way.

Examining the navel, either of one's body, or of any production, that is pondering its constitutive elements, is a good and wise procedure, in estimating the scope of the work; but only a commencement when its creation is in view. From this you assess the minimal character of the cause; you do not avoid it.

What is used is interesting; but the product is the point, together with all the facets of how it is used, by what and for what. In addition, of course, when the universe is the question, rather than a piano, the notes are themselves accountable, as also the system in which they inhere, the results of their use, their capacity to be articulated into meaning, and this to be investigable by what ascertains meaning, system upon system and sphere wed to sphere, till you come at length to what you are talking about:: not bits^*3, but what produced them, with their susceptibilities and systematic coherence, on the one hand, and what they are used to produce, that is, the product as it is, on the other.

The universe has for its part, spheres of matter, mind and spirit, each with its dynamics, directives, principles of operation, meaning and mutual relationship. Using the one to dismiss the other is mere an art form of avoidance. However, let us proceed rationally, and consider the necessary task of accounting  has been accomplished.

When this has been done, you come to further tests of validity, for truth has no limits, no fear. Thus, SINCE God is, and is personal, where is a consistent index of His purpose and oversight ? Since He sustains man, what is the reason, since man spoils and assaults himself to a ludicrous degree ? What is the result for man as a person.

The answers is in the Bible, that it is there, with a solution and a ground and a reason and a remedy (cf. SMR Ch. 1, Let's Be Reasonable for God Is, Ch. 2). The speech is rational, as is the construction of laws and spheres of integrally responsive action in the creation; it recognises what our created minds seek, and provides answers to the needs which show us as rational beings in a rational universe, one which is fact, for all its all but illimitable finesse of thought and engineering, highly vexed and often writhing.

The REASON for this, its current condition,  is direct, original and sustained violation of our reasonable service to the Creator, as persons, and as a personally constructed race; and the remedy is double. First it requires repentance for this state of operation, since no remedy is going to act on a self-willed sore (if such could will). Secondly, it is reception of a gift, since what is writhing or wrecked, spoiled and soiled AND created, lies in need of what produces it, in order to overcome what is a spoliage of what is not self-sufficient: that is, man as a person, himself. Thirdly, it requires such reception to be overseen, since the will is itself part of the spoliage.  Fourthly, the remedy provided is applicable in the mind of the Creator, just as, a thing common in creation, the thought for this also preceded its very creation (cf. Revelation 13:8, 14:6, Ephesians 1:4).

The Creator knows what He is doing. He knows how to apply it, interpret in integrity what is soiled and spoiled, and without violating the will, despite its condition, to secure the free result in a liberty which sin cannot remove in principle, and God can operate in practice.

The Creator here in this same Bible affirms love, having no need in Himself, being eternal and not constituted, the ground without which nothing, being all, would have remained just that.

Thus in love He seeks and in love He finds, knowing all, even what He has produced better than in its defiled estate, it knows itself. Since the Creator IS the truth, illimitable, defining all, then what He seeks in love, continually affirming His overall wish to save all, while showing He refuses to compel in breach of preference duly understood, then in truth what wants Him, has Him! This is by no means to substitute the analysis for the action; for this all the more stresses the necessity to act when knowledge if provided, when that Gospel which is the power of God to salvation, is preached, taught, provided. The reality does not remove the necessity of action, but prescribes it.

Sin makes it seem hard. It is not so. The Lord KNOWS HOW to secure that what seeks Him with all the heart finds Him (Jeremiah 29:13). Naturally, having authored time, He knows its sequences, potential seductions through sin and how to overcome pathology with wisdom. Before all time, He affirms, He has known whom in love He reaches, who are His own. He  WOULD have all, He no less affirms (Colossians 1:19ff., I TImothy 2, Ezekiel 33:11), and has no pleasure in the death of the wicked; and so being without impediment, He will have all except those who, in His own perfect knowledge and thus foreknowledge, He has so found to be His own (Romans 8:30ff.). If He does not need process, yet in the essence of the matter, the case may be so seen, as He presents it.

In practice, indeed, there are elements. There is the filter of the repentance and the reception of the gift which cannot be either created or applied by differential merit in man, in the Gospel, which is the power of God to salvation. He interprets His love to be sure, but then, it is HIS love and not man's love of himself-in-sin which is to the point, since this is the problem, not the solution. If you asked to receive free chops from one particular house, when in a famine, it is pointless to disdain the house; and in fact, it may test your realisation of your need, and hence sincerity of desire! The Gospel is that house, and Christ is its door (John 10:9), and once one so enters, by faith in Him, that is that (John 10:27-28, 5:24). Flirtation with faith, on the other hand, can be fatal (cf. Hebrews 6). Like antibiotics, it should be used well or not at  all.

Thus any person on this earth, who wants God-as-He-is, the I AM of the Bible, may indeed have Him; and in any approach, there is none as zealous or as self-controlled as God is. The preference for darkness on the part of any person, that is, for the absence of the creative light which constituted that person and thus is constitutive of the meaning and fulfilment of the person in mind in that same creative One: this is to befoul the fouled. This may be grasped and found in its dark integrity.

Thus, man is not forced, screaming into heaven, despising it as a limiting hell, nor shoved screaming into hell, desiring the HOUSE, the DOOR of God, by faith. The desire for all is statedly in God; but force HE will not, and confused He is not. With salient clarity He both speaks and acts; nor is there any mystery in inclusion. The responsibility resides in man (John 3:19), however deep the way God causes it to have its integrity; the knowledge (Romans 8:29ff.), is in God. Mistakes are zero. Calling on the name of the Lord in faith is not so very rigorous that one need faint to do it! (cf. Acts 2:21,37ff.).

NOTHING can separate from the love of this same Creator (Romans 8:36ff.), therefore, except this one thing: such negative preference, known to Him who knows all. ANY desire, He fosters; ANY seeking has the vast highway to finding, and in seeking it encounters the WAY, which is always useful in seeking an end! It is no different here. It is HIS way.

That is the whole point. Man as a race has in effect decided on SOMETHING ELSE (a something which often becomes, in the depths of degeneration,  ANYTHING ELSE). If so be, then so be it. But the Creator, richly aware of the detailed dynamic of what He has made and its multiple artifices and integral realities, is also rich in wisdom. If you do not want life, what He has made you for, then so be it. It is not required. It is only the result which is required (John 3:36). Thus instead of the love of God being illusory, it is the hatred of, indifference to or aversion from God which creates illusion, confusion,

Since the  level of human action is here of a high order, with turbulence not only against truth, but against peace and order and mutual relations, the thing outwits man;  for what jars in itself, is ready to jar with others as it does so, disorientation developing collision in mind, body and purpose.

But it does not outwit God. He even has many ways of bringing man's mind to account, his heart to a taste of reality.

RESULTS OF REALITY

War is a certainty to be found in any such dissident setting; and in recent history,  revolution after revolution seeks by endless violence to bring up schemes from the navel, that is, plans proceeding from the nurture of nature, brought up in the deluded and febrile mind of man,  without regard to what created it. Since its basis is, on the other hand, quite crucial, then its omission involves endless crosses, noughts and crosses, often poignant indeed, vacuities of thought and agonies of body, not omitting angst of spirit and anxiety of soul.

Verification and validity are found on every side, as divine principles and truth are applied; while rationality smiles as its God-assisted penetration, being itself just one of the pertinent products of God, not in this case AS a person, but FOR persons.

It works. And when man works to solve his problems by his works, it of course does not, since it cannot work. He then does not smile, but merely avoids the joy of what can and does, even from the Spirit of God, who seeks for man, the Gospel the way, Christ the crux; and it is no wonder that there is more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over 99 in no need. To reprieve from collision with reality, it is delicious; for it is more than the surgery of the soul, it is the regeneration of the heart, renewal of the spirit and restoration of the peace of the mind.

The heart, mind and will of man, this IS the problem, in the sphere of sin and violation of creation. When he makes religions dependent for remedy on his own works, in little or in much,  it is the same. It cannot work since only the work of God can bring him into line with reality.

There is,  indeed, NEED for work; that much is often seen rightly. The work however, before trying to put right the smashed up vehicle of personality called man, the thing needed, is not that of trying to make the thing squeak and screech along the harrowed surface of the road. Rather is it a case of having work done on it to make it fit and ready for this. The Creator worked the thing called man in the first place, and is ready to work on it (John 6:29, Ephesians 2, Titus 3, Romans 3:23ff.). Without this, there is mere work in working out what is at the outset presumption, and this an addition to irrationality, not only in setting, but in its very setting out! The gift of God is not in this case the repair shop, but of necessity, the regeneration hospital, where wisdom alights and the model of access to the accessible God is re-forged and founded anew (cf. John 3, II Corinthians 5:17ff.).

Indeed, as in some garages, if the client wishes to help, the cost is greater. If it is so in small things, much more is it so when it is the personality itself, will and all, which is derelict, defunct, dysfunctional and caught in the dynamic of declivity from its Maker.

This, the Gospel, the power of God to salvation, this then is a possession to be possessed, and only in the Bible is it to be found traced, and only in Jesus Christ given face and personal place. God is not like a variety of sandwich spreads to be chosen at will. HE made us; it is vain to try to make Him up and apply Him by one's own thoughts and designs. That way is mere illusion, subtly mixed with presumption, sailing for the land of arrogant disregard to reality, not to say likewise, to courtesy and contrition.

These then are some crucial applications of what revelation from God, to which reason irrevocably points, and the results which history indefatigably attest.

It is found as to the rationality and verifiability and validity, in such texts as

Romans 1:17ff., Isaiah 41, 43, 48, Jeremiah 10:11, and 10:1-16, Ezekiel 14:4, I Corinthians 1:18-25, 2:6-14, Jeremiah 2:14-27 incl. 14:27, Deuteronomy 32:14-22, 32:36ff., Psalm 50:16-23, Isaiah 40:12-31, John 1:1-3, Romans 2:12ff., Jeremiah 13, Proverbs 8, Amos 3:7-8, Jeremiah 23:16-29, incl. 23:26, Ecclesiastes 7:29, Genesis 6:5, Psalm 33:11, I Peter 1:22-26, Ephesians 2:1-12, 4:17-23, Titus 3:3-7, Colossians 1:10-22, Psalm 99:8, I Chronicles 28:9, Proverbs 18:2, 28:26, 23:7, II Timothy 1:7, Deuteronomy 13, Psalm 49:7, Jeremiah 14:22, Ephesians 1:11, Galatians 1:6-9, Isaiah 31:3, Zechariah 4:6, I Corinthians 2:9-13, Jeremiah 3:17, 7:24, 13:10, Luke 1:51, Matthew 5:17-20, Isaiah 49:7, 42:19, II Corinthians 10:5, Hosea 5:15, Psalm 1:5, Titus 2-3, Romans 1-3, I Corinthians 1, Galatians 1-3.

The word of God comprehends and operates

at the level of the mind,

in its desires to know,

in its backfires from false knowledge;

at the level of the heart,

in its vagrancies and their by-products, and

in its inventions;

at the level of history,

in its forecasting and in its control, even in its leaving alone for a time to a degree,
to evidence its character and the simpler forms of cause-effect
at the spiritual and moral level,

in the field of the vexatious experience of the psyche,

when its basis, is not only intellectually deprived,  but founded on nought in thought, so making a vanity out of its underlying basis, like one who suddenly has the ground removed from under his feet, and is evocatively in space, provocatively falling (Isaiah 8:19-9:2);

as in the persistence of his form amid the canons of rationality while he defers to oddities, vanities that have no substance, and sowing the wind, inherits the whirl-wind as is normal when you sacrifice principles of any order in any field, at the outset (Hosea 8:7ff., Proverbs 1).

It is from the Bible
that the entire structure of understanding of these things is derived,
with its entire testability, its word being as the DNA for the body, the basis for comprehension.

 In man's comprehension and comprehensibility, itself a prodigious gift to himself, lies the requirement of deity as source of insight and oversight, being beyond all and over all, and not limited to any or by any or anything. In His own word is its basis found, Himself, the Father of lights and the source of light that knows, understands aright, is informed of truth, not as a desire for the impenetrable by nature, but for the ready in heart to find in its Source.

In man's will and heart lies also the proclivity to do otherwise.

Thus, he flies empty-hearted into vacuity,
instead of  finding that deity is the necessary and necessarily unique source
of his apprehension and ability

	to mirror the understanding poured into creation with understanding of it;
	to match its genesis from God with its contemplation through His gifts;
	to complete the attestation outside in the illumination inside, the physical with the psychical, the spiritual with the material, the mental with the visible, the beginning with the end, both as objective and destiny.

Here only does and can man find out what he is, where he is from, where he is going, how he is astray, how it is remediable, and who God is in His own nature and personal being, testably, verifiably, validly, coherently, assessably, rationally. At the same time, here is the practical TEST for the practical outcome. It is as in all things created:  what it is is  has as a designable need. For man, who is personal,  it is not merely the logical, epistemological necessity, the metaphysical certainty, the canons of validity and the assurances of outcomes, which are required. These are pointers and containers. It is necessary to find the food laid out upon them.

There is also the provision for the psyche of its integral needs, not as a bitsa^*3, but as an entity.

These include understanding of its place, of divine grace and where to find it, submission to the Spirit of God as undertaker: not as an undertaker to the morgue, but as One undertaking to bring one far from this, in spirit and for eternity (Hosea 13:14, Isaiah 48:16ff., Ezekiel 33:11, John 6:47ff.). These needs of the spirit, so often thwarted, aborted, when so mistreated, naturally lead to eminent pathologies, the very stuff of modern society, as through information its deformations become more uniform, and its myriad follies become more subject to overall false perspective.

Thus its course comes more to a conformity which brooks no enormity, but in assiduous aggravation, like final stages of a cancer, produces from reluctance, rebellion and thoughtlessness, what is almost unthinkable: that sort of effusive wreckage, not just visible but invisible, which one can contemplate in a multiple car accident. It is not lack of order; it is dynamised disorder, unnecessary but assignable for driving ... like that.

.

NOTES

*1

See for example, concerning Israel:

Great Execrations ... Ch.   4 (man  and God concerning Israel,

The Divine Face ... Ch. 4.

 It Bubbles Ch.  1,   10,

The Defining Drama Ch.  10.

Journey to God Ch.    6, Red Alert Ch. 10 (List of Non-Favourite Actions.)

*2

Validity, rationality and verification, not to say, vindication is an area which repays facet investigation. Here a short coverage is added with slightly different emphasis, but virtual identity of concept.

Part of the validation of the sole rationally coherent approach to God and reality (cf. SMR Ch. 1), found in the Bible, comes in this way.

There is an intellectual-rational penetrability in the realms of matter and mind, which mirrors the rationality of its composition in the first place. It is hard to read 'maps' in direction-notation, when the winds write them, and covers them with the grit of sand; but not so when a mind makes them, using dirigible fingers. The apparatus which infinitesimally fits into its place does not arise from waiting on the winds of time, but from precision; and if this is so physically, so much more so mentally. What you can penetrate successfully with mind is of that milieu, mentality and realm of discourse and operation. Flowers are not a type of sand nor is a factory a type of wind. Things operate according to their kind, and as Christ put it, figs do not grow on thistles.

Whatever man's magnificently made imagination might think, this is the world we are in, and it operates and is investigable THUS, and not in some other way (cf. SMR pp. 284ff., 396-424A).

It is this realm that commands. Concepts and conspectus are not particulate in character, made with only the disciplines of geometry and rigidity for their working, but mental, parts of symbolism being used in speech or its cognate, with overview, implicit in language, at various intimately correlative ways. It is a matter of imaginable thought, and actualisable contrivance, where logic rules and language, to be intelligible - its chief function, is ruled by it as a mode.

Thus here there is what is cohesive in meaning with oversight for command in its usage. In that God is discovered in the Bible, as in nature's course as a consequence of His actions, personal and capable of thought, symbolism, command in language, then these things are validation of the conceptual area. A conceiver has created the conceptual, and in commands has ordered the elevation of means to ordinances of appointment, readable by those discerning enough to do this. The mind that makes the conceptualisable, conceived: it is one milieu, alike available for the Maker and the minds made, in a commonality of rationality available for discourse and discursive investigation. You find what it is put in, with what is given for the doing of it.

The DNA is a course in commands, and a scenario for symbols, for the body; just as is the Bible for the mind of man, and for the disposition of his heart, which without instruction, perishes in endless squabbles as ludicrous as unwise, prompted by servitude to the scenarios of sin, rebellion and implausible self-elevation where man does not belong. It is rather like dropping out of an aeroplane without a parachute; but acting as if your imagination, being mightily fertile, could surely invent one as you fell.

Here then is rational, meaningful association of concepts, not mere geometric congregation. That it is necessary to find; and being found, it is validation. it must be realised at last, in this declining period of the end of our Age, that the innumerable ways in which expectation from the biblical depiction of man, creation, synthesis, perspective and point and purpose is presented MIGHT have been different. It continually evinces that this is not so; it evidences the requirements of reason, person and concept as it has done since the creation; except in this, that it now does it more and more, ad nauseam for those in the storm-breached ship of illusion, yet delightfully for those who have for long delighted in the rationality, verification, validation and coherent, un-time-warped nature of biblical truth.

How delightful indeed is it to penetrate to the rationality and laws within creation with the conceptual apparatus fit for their discovery, codification and thus confirmation of the parallel rationality of their construction! Man is so busy, in this ailing generation facing near to judgment, trying to invent ways out of his being invented, which in fact is a remarkable testimony to the liberty with which he was formed, beyond all mere control of mind, in personal format, that he lacks the delight which is there to be found, when the heart is ready to learn, and the mind to acclaim the fact, and thus to find the inspiration and the joy.

In particular, the scope of conceptual command is not only integral in kind, ideational in force, and indeed expressed in only one (biological) language, so that what is required is not only a matter of maintaining a language against every onset of circumstances, and applying it without disruption, but building it in the first place in operational terms of functional resultants of its deployment, and THEN making sure it is the ONLY one in view, that there are no other 'languages', dissonant, diverse, in disparity and ambiguity ruining all. In the word, moreover,  must be the wisdom which makes of symbols signification, and of signification information, of concept command, and of command architectural fidelity (Jesus Christ, Defaced, Unfazed ... Ch.    4, Deity and Design ... Ch.   2, News 82, End-note 3). Further, , the linguistic system is not merely for large things: it is paralleled by minute commands.

There are principles of command, sub-species of command, correlations of command, and physically, contrivances for ensuring information about information is coded into the sequences, as if a ready dictionary were on board (cf. Waiting for Wonder Appendix).

System upon delicate system, symbol and semantics wrought in multiplicity of direction attest not the drift of indifferent dynamics, but what is utterly diverse in kind, indeed creative of all kinds, being delimited and intellectually diversified items, set in systems, set in other systems, to the point of the overall combination and complex, not nascent but 'nature', a prodigious enterprise. What is needed for it, is not dream, but discipline.

What is both needed and attested is:

	the discipline of ordered control,
	symbols signifying what conception determines, and in turn determining what meaning requires,
	while time provides what action needs in a combination of symbol, significance, signification and activation
	which is the lot of multi-systematics,
	wrought by organising ability and mental agility
	with creative capacity to secure
	each symbol-meaning path,
	each system-to-system connection, and of course,
	the concept of system by which it is even nameable, as likewise
	the legislation of law, which can be considered as occurring 'naturally' only when 'nature' is a smuggling term of 'God', whose powers are not according to wind and sand, dysfunction and incapacity, but the making something in the first place, and then determining what kind it is and what powers it is to have, in the second.

It is no use saying,  'See you around.' We are around only because He and not nothing has always been there: otherwise we would not be around in order to talk about it.

Thus there is a minuteness of particular commands, both for the body of man in DNA and for the mind of man in the Bible, both checkable by events, in the former case, for the running of the body, and in the latter, in the sanctions of logical procedure for the mind. All this might have been other and assuredly would have been, if the exacting modes of mind had not ordered material units or their kind into being, and then commanded them, being available, into conceptual conformity with the purpose in view.

This fits. All else junks. Even the so-called DNA 'junk' has been found to contain this tertiary information, that is, not only is there information as a type of procedure, but there is information as specialised commands and there is information as a coding of the way it is to act and react. It is like Midas' touch turning everything into gold (to his considerable embarrassment); but here, to embarrassment rather more of the naturalistic Midas, that whatever is found, does not founder, but conforms. Its very decay FROM that state is also as in the Bible, the result of a command, that of judgment on sin, on departure from the necessary base and basis in God (Isaiah 51:6, Romans 8:17ff., 5:1ff.).

Even in genetics (cf. Mini-Messages with Maxi-Impact Ch. 6), it is now found that not advance but deterioration is what is occurring with man, as in any design intricately made and subjected to various and long-term action in a world of rushing events, such as this one (codified in the Second Law of Thermodynamics as in TMR Chs. 1 and 8, and Wake Up World! ... Ch. 4). It is precisely the same with Harvard's Gould, who was appalled to consider the efforts to find why basic designs had increased were to match the FACT that they had over time vastly decreased, on his reading of the Cambrian deposits in the Burgess shale in Canada (cf. Wake Up World! ... Chs.   5, and   6).

FACTS DO MATTER, and chatter about matter both ignores its foundation and its plight.

In this way, we come to what is in some ways comparable to a command deck, not only in the blue-print for the body in DNA, but in the provisions for the WAY in which it is to be arranged, organised in operational felicity.

It is like a flotilla, with standing and impending orders, all organised and automated, with variable input as part of the program in determinate areas, an ideational flotilla, where the idea for it is inscribed, and then the issuance from it, an increasing fleet of vessels, is circumscribed in its fleet organisation, so that it also is penetrable by the command type and control nature, complete with information about how to use information, codifying the conditions independently of exercising the command per se, a studious undertaking complete with ancillary aids.

This, incidentally, is not merely information requiring by information theory, intelligence for its construction, but more of it; for the instruction about the mode of working of what has been constructed, in terms of the commands themselves, is a system over system, as distinct from lawlessness over it, already miraculous in conception, but simply minus,  for philosopher's own personal sakes, the DOER of the miracle.

Indeed, here is a knowledge based system, covering and conjoining many systems, metaphysically insusceptible to irrelevant bits coming around to do their oddments from time to time. It works only when information is, and only when information is available about what information may and may not do.

Making it far greater even than this, is the point that this is the least of the nature of the ships which arrive. Each one has a captain of its very own, with no power to speak of for dealing with what his ship is; for he is appointed to it, but with a whole shaft of bright light, available, for concerns about what to do with the ship AS a ship. What is it for ? to what does it move ? and why ?

These questions are in unique validity answered in the Bible, which alone declares that man is responsible BECAUSE given freedom from the sovereign and all-sufficient God, and while in sin blinded, is yet summonable because there is a provision which enables freedom to spout like a fountain from the sea.

This is at the power of God in His dealings with personalities, and to move to the resolution of bridge questions, whether or not the admiral be recognised. Part of the mission of the fleet is disclosed in the Bible to be this: WHO is the admiral for YOU ? irrespective of the fact that there is no other. You are free to disown him, not in violation of His sovereignty, as if to annul it, but as an expression of it, since this is how He wants it: thus explaining all human responsibility in coherence with His own lack of need, psychical or other, and goodness.

This has no parallel, no counterpart, and is validation of the prime facts of man's placement before God, and state. There is no salve for philosophy; there is no place for human wisdom in derogation of deity's wisdom. Indeed, wisdom has no more place to be found by what lacks it, than has a whale to find a space station. You need it to find it; and man's overthrow has made it now a matter of finding its source, so that this particular necessity for his life, might be restored to him. He has capacity for it; but the actuality, like food imagined in famine, that is another matter. As to that, you have to find it where it is, and in this setting, mere imagination can be the worst of foes.

In psychic and material nature, man has the continual caveat, that while the way to truth is rational in outline, being revelatory in content, it is not for ignorant minds to penetrate idly. Man learns continually of the rationality of events in their various orders, principles behind principles, all formulable, as the further he goes the more he finds, with interlocking, like controls within controls. The mystery is so deep that he is like a child learning; yet its explanation in increasing measure is so wonderful that he is like a 'teen learning that things can cohere, with wonder. Its outline moreover is in the greatest degree simple and eminently comprehensible.

In fact, the Bible makes the perspective so categorical, that once used, it is found to answer every feature and facet which one can summon,  in coherent, harmonious, effectual coverage; which works as nothing else does. It resolves all categorical problems, answers all aspirant mysteries but one: how God COULD be so utterly loving as to bother with us at all. But that, supreme above all other wonder, is what once found, must be digested, and this, with relish.

This point is given special attention in :

 LIGHT DWELLS WITH THE LORD'S CHRIST

WHO ANSWERS RIDDLES

AND WHERE HE IS, DARKNESS DEPARTS.

Indeed, it is the intensity of conceptual apparatus discoverable in the universe which makes man the MORE responsible for the untried, untested, irrational assertions he makes, and in fact follows to his increasingly near doom; as predicted would be the case (Matthew 24, Revelation 6-19). The continual assent of what is discovered to intellectual penetration parallels the continual ascent to spiritual interpretation which coheres also with this, making ever new syntheses of correlation possible, not for the identity-merger of realms of action in the creation, but for coherent symbiosis, and meaningful integration of the operation of the whole.

It is not bits. It is a scheme with a schema made far greater by allowing significant access to man within it, in a limited but intensely significant way, either coherently to understand, or in confusion to  imagine things that he cannot solve. This too is verification; for it is exactly what you would expect with error at so high and vast a level. Man thus moves FOR God, to become through the Redeemer, Jesus Christ,  part of a partnership of Father and adopted son, or daughter, or AGAINST God, in spiritually morbid rebellion.

Thus particulate misconceptions, and wave ingestions are continually made the more ridiculous when these are intellectually used against all information modality, to make units of manipulation into the creators of their kind, even ignoring the very extraordinary wonder of mind as in so doing. What mind may do, is this, when it is set to receive what is necessary for the task:  it even penetrates the material, organises thought on the subject, and so unless irrationally derailed by will, finds the matrix from the anterior and eternal mind that made not only the material but the mind of man to discern its intellectual controls, character and brilliance of disposition.

	But bits! the building blocks,
	themselves in materialism, without basis (Repent or Perish Ch. 7),

orphans of the universe, itself an orphan of schematic brilliance,
ready for them,

in a world of magical formation, information and correlation,

what of them ?

They are bits of what ?

other bits or dynamic forces,

and how 'bits',

capsules of meaning,

units of order,

correlatives of each other,

assemblages of conformity,

and this, by what ?

bits ? except for the

association by command and concept,

to become elements of creation

to conform to creation,

at the command and conceptual level,

penetrable as such as to operation,

without which creation and control,

they are results without a cause,

associations in defiance of reason,

confirmations of that irrationality

with which the materialist first started,

contrary to truth as existent, then,

as contrary to it now:

 

while being affirmed as true, where for this model,

no absolute truth either is or can be:

so that now they are distrained

in the end

from reason

as their makers abandoned it at the first.

 

Ah but they came from this, are submersible as that ?

but what of this ?

it is only the further and yet greater testimony of order,

organisation and multiple provisions within law; and

this simply makes the whole the more insistent on its total explanation,

not as waifs from nowhere, for this has no being,

nor as products in principle of what is not there,

since this is vacuous.

It is what the Bible has for millenia, this naturalism,

called vanity, and lying vanity.

Its pretensions are as numerous

as its explanations at this level are void.

It trades on its minutiae, while blind to meaning,

using causation while aborting it.

 

If you want to reason,

you must first be rational

not irrational in approach;

lest using what you abuse, you become invalid before you begin.

It is then necessary

to be rational

in dealing with the validity quest,

just as necessary to be valid in the rationality pursuit:

even if, as here for materialism

in its question-begging ends,

this merely confirms

by inadequacy and antinomy

that failure first found.

 

Biblical creation is unique

in rationality and validity

and is confirmed at every phase

of the multi-stage journey

and affirmed by its brilliant excesses beyond

requirement of reason and validation,

in the empirical field matching the rational as if obsessed with it,

being in fact created by He who is.

 

Whether in principle, coherence, total explanation,

match of expectation and finding, here is to be found

the splendid majesty found from the Maker and His word,

of the composure of reason, result and ground, cause and effect,

as the work of His Spirit acts in and upon man,

dignifying his mind with light,

delivering his soul, when he repents and believes, with salvation,

The Lord being as specific in will as in ways,

as man is, but infinitely more profound.

See also 

TMR Ch. 5,

Let's Be Reasonable for God Is, Ch. 2

Design and Deity ... Ch. 3, incl. *3.

*3

See above in *2 as marked. and Reflections ...   Ch. 4.

See also:

Message ... Chs.   5,   4,

Christ Incomparable ... Ch. 2,

The gods of naturalism have no go!  14

Evidence and Reality Chs. 2, 5, 6, 7

Spiritual Refreshings ... Ch. 13

Impossible for Men, Open to God ... Ch. 3,

Dig Deeper, Higher Soar Ch.    1,

The Kingdoms of This World and the Kingdom of Christ     8,

The Holocaust of Morality Ch.    3,

Glory, Vainglory and Goodness ... Ch. 1,

God's Gift of Grace in Christ Jesus Ch.      7,

Helpless Hitches ... and Divine Dealings Ch.     5,

It Bubbles ... He Calls Ch.    9,

Spiritual Food and Spiritual Drink Ch.    4,

Repent or Perish Ch.     7.

(See further, more broadly:

The Majestic Might of the Merciful Messiah Ch.  5,

The Track of Truth  ... Ch.   1, 

The Bible: Not the Distillations or Declamations of Man ...Ch.   4,

The gods of naturalism have no go!  1,

Spiritual Food and Spiritual Drink Ch.   11.)