W W W W  World Wide Web Witness Inc.  Home Page   Contents Page for Volume  What is New

Endnotes to SECTION 1 (EN#)

2 Transformations are a specialty in the life and work of G.F. Dempster whose books such as Finding Men For Christ abound in examples, of the most striking and sustained kind, of complete character transformation wrought through the name of, and by faith in Jesus Christ, according to the gospel.

The constant seeming interweaving of events and details in ways beyond conception at a 'chance' level, such that these men are 'found' when often literally, they were lost to their families, needs to be read to be discerned. It is as though a great general, communications expert, psychiatrist and personal worker were labouring, an invisible team, often with the writer in pursuit of some soul. They would produce when the time came, alterations through the gospel, with that simplicity and depth found in the mastery of the sovereign Creator and sole Saviour, as His actual and operational monopoly and prerogative.

Such things not merely again verify the claims of the Bible, this time relative to Christ's personal predictions (e.g. Matthew 28:18-20, John 14:18, 15:26, 16:21-33); they exhibit the power of God in personal ways dealing with persons, as distinct from action in exclusively ideological ways, rioting in disregard of truth, as with cruel Communism, or without mercy, as in some free enterprise (the freedom can be distorted by the people in this, the difference being the system does not incorporate cruelty, though the people may themselves superadd it!).

Another fascinating and more recent record with something in common with the above delightfully sensitive and effective personal work, is found in The Old Lighthouse, a record by James Adair, a spiritual chronicle of sudden, and indeed sustained transformation of life. Like the work of Dempster, it closely documents the transformed lives and shows their sustained character in numbers of cases, with reference especially to careers, in spiritual work, sometimes of real distinction.

3 Components. EXTENSION on THE LIFE FUNCTIONS OF MAN : IN THE IMAGE OF GOD. (See Trinity, pp. 96-100 supra, 532-560 infra.) It is to be noted that *3 and *6 are dealing in various aspects, with the image of God in man.

Granted that man is designed by God with specifications that allow a certain finite, created correlation with the Creator in fellowship, so that the unity is one of concept and overall function, what are the
parts ?

We do not need to look at the biological, physiological, anatomical here, for this is not our point; nor at the complex syntheses involved. The functionalities of spiritual and mental kind are in view. The Bible speaks of the soul, the mind and the spirit of man. What is the inter-relation of these ?

The 'soul' is attributed, in Genesis, to any living sentient being: its life, its differentiation from the inanimate. In the case of man, of course, this life is, if you will, the hardware core and the vitalised total, fitting for man. It is the image-of-God structure, specific to man. As to the body, it is a resurrectable correlative of the soul: the design format for action.

What however of the spirit ? The Bible indicates that the spirit of man is the candle of the Lord by which He examines the innermost parts (Proverbs 20:27).

There is a spirit given to man, as we find in Genesis 2:7. Man has this distinctive image-of-God dynamic, this operative facility, this enquiring ability, this ability to review situations and make thoughts and review these thoughts and criticise one's own actions, and re-formulate and re-formulate again, verbally, acutely and conceptually, analysing and analysing analysis.

How then, as image-bearer, does man or may man relate to God ? God is independent and wholly uncontained; and in His image-bearer there is, despite vast and obvious limitations, this extraordinary facility for questing and imagination, analysis and discovery, perception and thought and interception of concept, and formulation.

This allows a measure of functional fellowship with God, who made man with such facilities and with the power to express in communication verbally, or to conduct ideational forays, pushing these into expression, to some extent, at will. These are some of the functions and facilities in the fellowship which the term,'made in His image' implies; in such ways (among many others), is found their fulfilment of this mode of construction of man by God: in His image. Without doubt, it is the greatest thing about being human, that one may thus relate to a Being so magnificent as God is; and derivatively, relate to others of one's race on such a basis, in such a setting of grandeur, which the Canadian Rocky Mountains, for example, merely illustrate in terms of the capacities of their Former. The spirit then, has its ranges; but also readily involves the special contribution of the mind, with the hinterland of understanding. (Cf. I Corinthians 14:13-15.)

The mind ? The expertise of spiritual entrepreneurship, if you will, is not left without an operative facility in the area of reason, processive and processing. These three, life, spirit and mind, interact and enact. Sometimes the entrepreneurial facility becomes inflated with the concept of taking over from God, displacing God, ignoring God and seeking instead sundry childish lusts. This is the vulnerability of its virtue, when misused. In I Corinthians 14:15, Paul makes it clear that the spirit and the understanding may in practice have some measure of divorce - substantially indeed they may be sundered. This is not desirable.

The life and the mind and the spirit of man are components of a design by which their joint operation as a trilogy is the way of choice function. They are far from being oddments, jostling with conceptual chaos together in an empty bag, which is ... not there, in a Freudian three-bits, irrationalist extravaganza. Here the pure naturalness of what we see, mutuality, has its meaning from the
embracive design, that design of which these are functional components: the image of God.The divine trinity has in man created a responsive triad which - sin apart, may be in spiritual harmony both with itself and with its Maker. (The cacophanies of misuse however are almost infinite!)

Mind and Spirit - A Synthetic Review

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What then? Thus man is deludable, confusable and manipulable; but responsible. Yet there is this too: he is answerable to God, the Creator and only Saviour (see Chapters 1, 7-10); and if REFUSING the covenant, the gospel, the offer of Christ, then he is doubly arraignable: 1) for sinning short of his stature, status and capacity, and 2) for rejecting the pardon, remedy and empowerment to do it differently. All this can occurwithout anything to offer but will in its own service, as though it were the centre of the universe, answerable only to itself: which is contrary to fact, and hence irrational.

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

4 Not merely is Jung's experiential finding that relativism is bad for patients something highly understandable, as an irrational impact in the area of psychiatry: That is, as a pathology-productive intellectual 'drug' tending to damage what it misrepresents. It is also rather easy to interpret as to possible origins ... when taken in Biblical perspective!

Thus it may tend to create evil results, but likewise it comes from evil beginnings.

Once one conceives man as in general, salvation apart, reconciliation with God apart, regeneration and acceptance through Christ apart, in his unredeemed psychologica1 setting: it is easy to see how some minds may proceed, consciously or otherwise.

The experience of no warm and loving Father, resulting from alienation from their Creator, may be projected into a philosophy, an induction if you will, from what they find emotionally. Like a separated wife, they do not experience the love and closeness and care and concern of the husband. If they could forget any such marital infelicity, they too might induce the concept that such did not exist, domestically, even, for an invisible husband, if such were the way things went: that he did not exist! It might prove convenient, and deafness may be useful for some in such a direction as it is!

Thus spiritual alienation as an unremedied condition of the heart, plight of the spirit of man can lead to illogical, but experientially driven concepts of... ? of what? It will depend partly on the imagination of the person: but it could well include just such concepts of a sterile, or meaningless, or uncaring or crushing or heartless or statistical universe as we have seen, though wholly irrational, to be common.

Thus while such concepts are self-contradictory, as exhibited in Chapter 3 supra, they are psychologically comprehensible. This they are, in very much the same frame of reference as delusive impressions of mirages are comprehensible when the tiring body and longing eyes see mirages; though here the projection is from the unsatisfied heart to the 'punished' universe, of the patient's alienation, one cruelly conceived of, in the absence of what the 'patient' by his own folly, rejects. This could be conceived of as the mud-puddle mirage, in which the alienated person takes his pleasure or revenge, or breathes his hostility and insatiable dissatisfaction into a punitive philosophy: sharing this with other psychological mirages, or their 'creative' engenderers... reason the while, dropped in favour of a partially and temporarily satisfying illusion. Indeed, in II Thessalonians 2, we see that when people do not 'receive the love of the truth', it may indeed become a judicial divine act in the end: God may send them an 'active delusion'.

5 Christianity declares from the start what Jung seeks in vain to find in the end. The perfect doctor is indeed basic; it is in fact one phase of the very basis of belief! His perfection is neither illusory nor idolatrously affirmed: it is natural because it proceeds from One whose 'understanding in infinite' as Psalm 147:5 puts it: ''Great is the Lord and mighty in power: His understanding is infinite.''

That is the Great Physician, possessed of the power at once to create - past - and to remedy - present, at will. While it may readily, through custom, be taken for granted, all these satisfactory articulations of concept upon concept constitute one of the most intimate and utterly amazing testimonies of the Bible to its origin. It is always competent.

If only some of Jung's flair had been matched by faith, he would have known personally, what is that 'medicine' which is the match for man, instead of moving in the deluded dimensions of frustrated perfectionism.

6 The provision of the perfect doctor, as the Great Physician, is more even than the solution of Jung's insoluble problem. It is both natural and necessary that this should be so. Jung's problem is predictable, and this is in itself, a further line of verification of the Bible.

Only God knows enough about the heart and motives and will of man to be assured of understanding in the complex oceans of human thought, psychic dramas and motivations, sometimes hidden both from comrades and the individual himself Jeremiah 17:9 is explicit in covering precisely this point, so that Jung merely verifies it, in the field of his experienced observation.

Thus psychiatrists may have not merely their own obsessions, anxieties, neuroses and fears, so that they may be driven to seek analysis from one another, perhaps belonging to different 'schools of thought' the while: they per se also, as limited sinners, lack the total comprehension which Jung rightly sensed was the desideratum. In so doing, they may be an infinitude away from the psychic realities, being blind to some for spiritual reasons, or disinclined to others for moral ones, and so on.

The provision of the perfect doctor is a systematically needful thing when one is moving in this level: someone without a speck in his own eye, and with the fulness of God. There is however yet another resolution which Christianity provides, that is, which Jesus Christ provides, through His people. In Him, it becomes possible for one imperfect sinner to be chastely helpful to another in such a sphere as this, in that the Great Physician stands by, ready and illuminating to the sober and spiritual heart, to prompt, enlighten and constrain, to restrain and alert, keeping the heart purified and the mind attuned to the dominant realities, which are His own.

7 Here, within the confines of the Creator as God, lies the soul of man. Here it gains its meaning, its significance, being, dynamism and the contours of its character. It is a product; but the product of a Person, creating derivative, dependent persons. It is in this combination that is the wonder and the scope for the woe of man.

Here is the intelligence, creativity, imagination, analysis, will and life active in, through and with a spirit that bears the insignia: God's personnel department.

The meaning of this creature, of man, is limited to inter-active response on a created personal base with God; and that meaning is fulfilled in doing this.

Without this, man becomes a degraded absurdity, vastly more poignant than the merely impersonal throwaway: as well verified by the squadron of anguished acknowledgements, made by the many high-flying philosophic atheists with their unyielding despair, accent on angst, even elevating the by-products of personal pollution into something lofty, if disturbing... and well disturbing, as is all discard from the functionality of reality to the bin of banishment. How well did Milton express the spirit of so much of this: Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven.

The word of God, focusing the Remedial Redeemer, God-as-man, who delivers from deserved (because denatured) meaninglessness that issues in judgment (Psalm 1:4-5, contrasting with vv. 1-3, 6), has a word here, from the lips of Jesus Christ:

For whosoever desires to save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. For what is a man profited if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul! Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul ? (New King James Version - Matthew 16:25-26.)

With what will a man buy back what is once lost when the loss is his life: and what will be the power of will when reality is gone, which houses it ? (Cf. Psalm 49:7, 15- here ie the prerogatives of God, whose way is as shown!)

Small wonder then that the same word of this same God, speaking in Ecclesiastes 12 this time, gives so deep an expression of heart, has such tones and overtones, when so much is at stake and so much has been given, so much so vastly misused:

Remember now your Creator in the days of your youth,
Before the difficult days come
And the years draw near when you say
"I have no pleasure in them" ...
Remember your Creator before the silver cord is loosed (spinal cord ?)
Or the golden bowl is broken (skull ?)...
Then the dust will return to earth as it was
And the spirit to God who gave it.

It is happily consistent with the creative power back of man that a resurrection has occurred and a resurrection phase for man is to occur, when the retardations of sin become the consummations of salvation (yes, and for the wilful discards, damnation is also available - for the 'gods' who desecrate what they cannot create).

Of this we read from the divine perspective, in John 5:24-30. It is in line with the love of God, that in the very passage where resurrection to damnation is noted, there is before this shown the path to salvation by grace through faith:

Most assuredly, I tell you, he who hears My word and believes in Him who sent Me has everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment, but has passed from death into life (v.24).

It is true that there is no reality without power; but this does not come out of the barrel of a gun, but out of the mouth of God who burns up civilisations which boast their immortality, from Egypt to that of the Third Reich, which fell somewhat short of its projected thousand years. What greatly impaired the guns, was the determination that freedom would not capitulate to a dictator, leading men with wills and minds to create 'atomic' fire in the brilliant bomb crusade in New Mexico. The motivation appeared far more to be based on their alienation from power-with shame, as found in Hitler, than in any lust for force, if indeed this figured at all in any. Not least, it was the love of freedom that moved them. They did not desire a race where crude power trod freely. The invisible took priority over the visible, so that guns did not blast, nor force subdue; rather industry worked in human spirits, made by God to love freedom: and the free did not yield to guns.

Men make guns, and their remedies; but they do not deliver from death. The death that smites man more surely than any gun, man has no power of any kind to avert. Beyond the human spirit, is the divine Master, and without His Spirit, misused power can flay the foolish, oppress and reprove the autonomous.

To deliver from death! it is God only, who made death as well as life (Romans 5:1-13, Psalm 49:7), who is able to deliver from it. As He began and created man, so in His conclusion to the significance of man-in-His-image on this earth: He provides for those associated by salvation with Him, a form that does not end! It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body ...The first man was of the earth, made of dust; the second Man is the Lord from heaven. As was the man of dust, so also are those who are made of Dust; and as is the heavenly Man, so also are those who are heavenly. And as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly Man...

We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed - in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye... for this corruptible must put on incorruption... so when this corruptible has put on incorruption, and this mortal has put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written: 'Death is swallowed up in victory...' (This is taken from I Corinthians 15:44-54.)

Thus is provided for man, goal, purpose and meaning; and thus exhibited from the power of creation, resurrection and remedy from Christ, the pertinent power man needs.

The word of God shows not only consistency, however, in its verificatory vigour and virtue. It also displays an enveloping development rather reminiscent of that of vast mountain ranges, as one climbs towards their depths and heights, something that justly evokes wonder; and there is constant verification of majesty of mind and grandeur of heart. When lopped off from God, man is logically and psychologically lost in illusions and frustrations, as is but natural for the unnatural...! but when linked with God, through faith and through the remedy sovereignly provided, just as our creation was provided, man finds the heights are higher than his highest, and the depths lower than his dreads.

When refashioned, he meets the Master who made him to sense, feel for, seek after and long for Him; though often through sin, man has groped in idolatries and those defeated illusions which breed delusions, both in hateful politics and oppressive 'care' from those 'carers' who neither know God nor understand Him.

With increasing 'knowledge', man is becoming a subject increasingly for a pity that is poignant, as he sits, drugged and deluded, very often, under a psychiatric care which, as with Jung, does not even know where the answer lies; but seeks to palliate the problem, sometimes thereby increasing its parameters for the breached individual, straying from his own Creator, and His goodness (Romans 2:4, Psalm 107).

On the other hand, finding Him, in Christ, man becomes a 'new man' quite open to experimental verification of the change, in the tests of life. These are internal, and at times involve the enduring of discipline and the cleansing of pollution; but they lead also to purity of thought, with the fragrance of heart through the abiding presence of the Lord Jesus Christ by His Spirit, generating an inexpressible joy, just as Peter says, one more verification, at the practical level, just as is the power to move those mountains which would afflict the man or woman or indeed child of God. This they cannot do, for what precludes godliness is removable by faith: and this again, is verification as the years of life pass for the Christian, in the way of life, and in that of others expressed in numerous ways. (Cf. I Peter 1:7-9, Mark 11:23, John 16:22.)

8 See EXTENSION: VERIFICATION THROUGH THE FATE OF MEN IN THE HANDS OF MEN, a section immediately preceding these end-notes.

Page 353 continued in the next section