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EXTENSION E: ON GREAT BURIALS

1. Short Summary on the Mesmerism of Monism

Second, the concept of series, of events of which human events are merely a set, is itself a priori quite impossible. See here Ch. 3 on David Hume, infra. If all were simply series, then the VIEWER which, that, who ? ... says so is simply series. How does a series overview itself and all series in order to rightly proclaim what they are and what their significance is ? For such an action, you see substance, a coherent viewing whole which is and has a standpoint under the countenance of which all series pass in order to be evaluated as to their real significance. You need in short, a reality-meter. This overviewer, reality-meter, if simply series, would again simply (this is in order for the whole concept is simplistic) be doing its things, acting its series, which is quite different from putting a value and a reality tag on all series, including itself. (Cf. footnote references at 422G & 422J.)

The theory forgets its maker - man. He is implicitly elevated to the godlike position of KNOWING WHAT THINGS REALLY ARE, and indeed, whether they are things, and if so of what kind and of what significance. To reach absolute truth, however, you need to evacuate the very premises to which our materialist, monist preacher is assigning us, by an act of his will. Yet on this premise, there is no such place to go. Hence the theory is impossible. (Cf. pp. 299-308, 997-1002C, 1012-1022.)

Those are the first three reasons why the theory is simply a presumptuous piece of reductionist aberration, forgetful of its maker, and useless in what is made.

The next and the fourth reason is this. Matter is irrelevant to error. It simply does what it does, and its actions are noted. ERROR implies purpose, so that the actuality, the target, the attainment may be contrasted with the intention, the purpose. The term "purpose" applied to matter, is void of significance. The term "error" applied to matter is mere anthropomorphism, and irrelevant. Hence matter and man are as far apart as slavery and enterprise. To subsume both under one title is an abuse of words, functions and description. (Refer Index: Error.)

The fifth reason is this. We proceeded earlier to build up the concept of mind, matter and spirit. This occurred in Ch. 1, and was extended somewhat on pp. 348 ff., (1995 Edition). What these logically REQUIRE for their construction is worked out in serious detail, not in dilettante monism mesmerism. The LEAST productive CAUSE for all is itemised, and His name given. That argument remains, and any attempt to escape the already insuperable presentation on causality there (for it is shown to be integumental to speech and thought as such, so that its denial as objective removes the validity of both, and hence any ability to frame significant theories), is dealt with rigorously in Chs. 3, 5 and 10. The careless, carefree construction therefore of hypotheses which implicitly deny the conditions of their own discourse ... use what they abuse, or account causatively for the arrival of causation ... is merely of psychological interest. It has no place in logic; and so falls monism, materialism once more (cf. e.g. pp. 284-290 supra, 424 ff. infra). Indeed the crux of 'causeless' flux is that it is undifferentiable from non-existence (pp. 264-288 supra).

The sixth reason follows. Logical positivism, positivism in general is keen on talking of description, of what you find ... and on seeking to bury the fact that the person with procedure who is doing the "finding" is ... there! Description requires one to describe. If ALL IS DESCRIPTION, if we know ONLY what we describe - a sort of experientialism aligned with method - then the theory is necessarily false. The reason ? Submerged assumptions ("we", "know", are antecedents in all this) ! Not only that, but because it contradicts itself. The theory that all is so, is itself not a description of anything perceivable, unless a wallowing in the pure and unordered subjectivity of what is currently flashing on the mental screen. Even that however does not include what everything else is! Further, description is not prescription or proscription, ideas are not ideals, eventuation is not obligation and the resistance to such realities is not observation. Such reductionism is like a two-dimensional model of a four-dimensional fact - except that they do not blend. The trip back from theory to fact is like a move from stage and scenery... to actors. They relate , but what they are in concept is not at all what they are in proximity: close (cf. p. 416 supra)! They are not only diverse, but divergent.

In short, if all is description, then the theory to this effect is not; so that if the theory is true, the theory is false. Similarly if etiology (the constraint of causal interaction) is false, so is the reasoned, cause-conceived statement that says so. In effect, man in a sort of lunar madness from time to time would dismiss causation causatively, insist and rely on description, undescriptively, irrationally "legislate" out God despite the irreversibly necessary results for man and the universe, in their witness to their Creator-origin; and then magically instil (install ?) himself or his people as a race into the negated post of interpreter, and take up the reins again as a causally reasoning person. Having dispensed with God by one device - the chaotic courtmartial of causality by causal thought - man would use the same (contradiction of reason and of all causation) to implant and establish himself (herself ? ...): on nothing. (Cf. pp. 264-269, 284ff., 313, 424ff. infra.)

Then, having defied logic, to evacuate 'god', our fine friend uses it for himself and his own convenience. For now there appears 'out of the blue' one who having defied logic, would use it to add to the logical pandemonium. Our human god may then selectively dispense with reason (oh yes! often for reasons, and always with the language which presupposes and uses it), in a grand sweep, like a political dictator. Having come "in" on one platform, this potentate, this micro-missionary would act on another... then flit a bit.

In fact, there is an end result, and Paul delineates (II Thessalonians 2:4-12). For this, the preparations are painfully obvious already, as a new East-West religious synthesis (cf. pp. 999; 866ff. infra) prepares for a political ventriloquist to " listen" ... and speak!

Such is modern religion in many of its phases, correctly prophesied as a matter of having "itching ears" (II Timothy 3:7-8, 4:1-4), a significant spiritual slab of the populace "turning aside to fables"; and what more so than the suspension of reason in order to interpret by reason.

It really is a waste of time to deal with irrational rubbish as we consider in this sixth point; but since some fall into that pond, it can be helpful, despising the flesh in the sense Jude has, with compassion, to send in a rope as we are doing here. Detail, further elements and development are found in Ch.'s 1, 3, 4, 5 and 10 of this work.

The seventh reason in our series on this topic of monism ? In a "flux" or surveyable concourse of inter-related components, not merely is there no absolute (cf. pp. 254-255 supra); there is equally no independent person. The search for the "meaning" in such a poignant position is a priori, by virtue of these assumptions, a search for what (in that case) is not there. (Cf. pp. 264-290 supra.)

Subjectivity is de rigueur. The subject is subjected, intercepted, inter-active: sequenced not sovereign; submitted, not in autonomous composure; overseen by events, not lord of them; of them, not over them. Fragmentary persons, in line with the monistic hypothesis, react, experience, adjust; have esoteric "meaning", desires, frustrations, short-term expedients, preferences ... but the actual meaning ? There is no adequate Being, in this model, to give it. ¹

Man "dies" by hypothesis! The death is still unpleasant, unnecessary and a testimony to man's spirit: albeit one that moves to pity (cf. pp. 348 ff.). THAT in turn is a testimony to God (Ch. 1 supra), who is avoidable by will (for a time); but not by reason.

2. Intellectual Escapism and the Mesmerism of Modern Monism

A "grow your own" immanentalist "god" hidden away conveniently, and in some way, perhaps, controllable in some "medium" or other, is a multiple-use method. It has proved extremely popular both in philosophy and "religion".

Thus Descartes had a method-god, implacably releasable in the program which, with very much the same omissions as in the illusory intellectualism of the "Big Bang" (which one ? their name is legion) ... led on to the cosmos by the serious-minded steps of a grave fairy tale. Bergson far later had a vital-force god, secretly assigned to the tissues of delightful life, another drop-in. Of course we must carefully distinguish between the name and the function of a "god". The term is apt where the function is performed, though it is not always used, possibly for some form of convenience ... In fact, each of these simply trifled with aspects of the creation - its government on the one hand, and its power-design elements, on the other.

The latter obviously fascinates men like Professor Fred Hoyle who, perhaps, influenced Paul Davies, both being keen on the design elements also. Davies (cf. Ext D supra) simply invents an implausible and, as we have shown, both unnecessary and impossible physics base for it, while Hoyle with no less virtuosity, has space intelligence(s) as the source: but how does that cause itself in this domain ? or how does it achieve componential status in the system: itself a greater prodigy than the creation! (Cf. pp. 332E-G, 315A-316G, 80, 20-28, 80-85, 121, 131 supra.) Even less conceptualised, the almost Buddhistic view (q.v.) of Davies shuts any ... god up into a sort of physics equivalent of the "roaring silence" (cf. pp. 1008-1113 infra, and Hindu correlatives, 996-999 ... 1002C) where the poor ... component is confined, as if in prison.

Named or unnamed, yet the "god" - the operative functionality who makes the intelligent, creative, multi-mode, imaginative, correlated, contrived design input (acknowledged at all, indeed, or not) has a hard time of it. It is rather like Alexandre Dumas' The Man in the Iron Mask (*1), a confinement of the contained dangers of reality.

God, however, is no subject of man's intellect in ways contrary to causality; He is not inbuilt into the furniture of the universe which depends on Him. The obfuscatory follies of all Monism (cf. Index and supra) like the necessities of logic (Chs. 1, 3 supra, 5, 10 infra), the robust realities of reason, the inevitable compelling of causality, extinguish such very convenient confinement of the God with whom man has to do.

Just, however, as biology (in the time of Western dreamland) breaks its wings on its self-imposed cage of chance, inventing abrupt creation as if at last challenged by the facts into schizoid submission to some of them, while waving the flag of Empire convulsively, on ground no longer even NOTIONALLY there: so now a school of physics would have god-in-a-medium. The former grasps seemingly hysterically at the facts, for so long in so much overlooked (cf. Professor Løvtrup, 252A-C, Dr W.R. Thompson 199 ff., Professor Heribert Nilsson, pp. 109-111, and 315 ff. supra), while idolising an incompatible theory; the second pines reverentially at an irrational theory, without noticeable concern about the facts. Neither the history of science, scientific method, the strictures of causation, constantly employed in all discourse nor the actual macrocosmic findings seem sufficient to restrain uninhibited extrapolation in defiance of all logic, all system and any need. Need however ?

Somewhere to bury Him, historically(*2) that is the need. It seems to impel and propel past all reason. Indeed, it has been the question ever since the crucifixion: Where to bury the body of truth; as earlier (John 11:42,48) how to mask His almighty power, a desire still relentless after His resurrection (Acts 4:25).

It never changes.

God however as we have shown, is competent, eternal, non-self-contradictory and as such the unique purveyor, the Creator of the universe - not a component of it; and has a face that must be faced, despite the crucifixion, and cannot be buried away, the bodily resurrection of Christ detailing the ... difficulty, just as reason systematically has required that it be so. No mere essence, no chaotic confluence of contradictories, no quietus for sidestepping causation, He cannot be distilled or instilled. He made distillation, as logic warrants, the logic used by those who would wish to escape it.

Aristotle put 'god' into something like a cage of (untouchable) contemplation; Plato into forms without creative power - though he had flashes of insight; the Romanists have a wafer for Him (cf. pp. 1046-1053, 1086-1088D infra); Darwin had a Cheshire cat smile residue for Him, evanescent amongst the "real" action; Freud an unconscious for His confines and Marx a class-clash directorate for His time, though failing to acknowledge the directorate that programmed all this.

Time ? Davies seems almost to have time for "god", or the criterion of understanding man. In his About Time, he avers: "Elucidating the mysterious flux would, more than anything else, help unravel the deepest of all scientific enigmas - the nature of the human self", as he looks at man playing a part in "the great cosmic drama". Indeed, he seems to feel time can go either way:

Try, however, reversing it when you're killing a rooster (cf. pp. 882-884 infra) ... or have just done so.

In fact, whether they be economists, chemists, physicists or others in philosophic mode, the utterly ludicrous becomes 'natural' and 'obvious', as the normal specialist-without-God syndrome drives mind to imagine what reality fails to connive with. Political philosophers do it with the blood of millions; others merely do it to the mind of the modern youth, inculcating without logical premises, their positivistic jet-propelled substitutes of stagecraft for acting.

Thus the spirit of man, in these very exercises, denies what it is and who of necessity constructed it, while as a component, 'declaring the truth' . This it does, as if being lost in the immensity of elements gave ground for gaining sight of what it is that is lost. This, however, demonstrably relates by contradiction - in the milieu of multiplied components - to its stage and setting ² .

Indeed, does eventuation ... mean ?

The Davies-type normal smuggling-suppressing syndrome - it is not the purpose but the product to which reference is made - what is it ? It is a case, ideationally, of popping some kind of something into an all-encompassing monistic continuum, variably constructed; it has obvious appeal to some. It seems to give to many physicists a pleasure (like a keyboard to an intellectual computerist - the sense perhaps of having it all "there"), so that it can become an hypnotic substitute for living in reality, a subsuming of the real status of the wholly independent GOD into a nice, manipulable form which has interest ... but no command! You might question that.

Is it manipulable ? Yes. For although there are some limits to the attitude of someone at least using physical reality as a starting point for speculation, yet these are his/her own limits, for in the making of theories and their rebuttal there is almost no end. The history of philosophy shows that. Idiotic substitutes for the true God are one of the chief employments of philosophy, which, while it has other and sometimes reasonable uses, has a service to perform for a rebellious race. Thus, whether they be Christian or other, thinkers regularly show the error of predecessors, but someone will constantly come up with some other error. In the interims, some try to live apart from God with a semblance of non-irrationality. However, in fact, what is new ? The Davies approach is merely one more impossible section of the smuggling syndrome. As shown in Adelaide University, moreover, even students will flee from facing the facts, when given the opportunity in an available medium. The truth is by no means desired by many; and for this we mourn.

Such things, however, are in the hands of God, and we continually offer the truth, and opportunity for it to be "overthrown" by the current devotees of the latest in speculative escape. There is no escape; and a quarter of a century of dealing in this area continually shows in practice, what is asserted by faith, with the unending accompaniment of reason. And thousands of years have a like testimony (cf. pp. 882-884 infra).

3. The Futile Burial - in the Scenery, while the Scenario goes on ...

Is this so ? Of course not! Time is merely one of the numerous elements of inter-relating functionalities that relates to the composed universe platform on which man sits, currently rather like a volcano, with eruptive force. Not all are in this degenerative phase; but it is culturally acceptable. IF one knew ALL mysteries about real relativity, the ultimate, the final word of what relates to what in the field of law-composed elements of the physical reality, one would be an expert craftsman indeed; but nothing more. One would not even then have so much as touched the character of man. His environment at the least of levels would be known; but neither the interstices of his mind nor the quality and calibre of his spirit. The latter in whole and the former in substance will not and can not be known (they indeed relate) until their design is realised. THIS can never be understood at all, until their DESIGNER is known. THAT can never be done until one repents of one's sins and receives not a mere intellectual remedy (we die of these pretences constantly in politics), but a spiritual one, that covers the spirit and invests the mind of man.

What then is needed in order to understand man is his Creator. Those who wish to bury the same in the muck of mere intellectual rovings (or at times, alas in the history of philosophic, ravings), have then NO POSSIBLE WAY of understanding.

What is it like ? It is like some spoofed psychologist, hypnotised by his/her own specialty (alas another specific of guideless humans), trying to "analyse" out the precise reason - tooth-ache was one suggestion - for genius or other psychic phenomena. Looking among the props, such "philosophers" are merely besotted with their specialties, roving into fields they do not understand, imagining the REAL role of an actor is the stage scenery, or the platform or the lighting equipment: haplessly immune to reality.

When we REALLY understand these, they say, then the actors and the play will be clear. "Time" will tell, says Davies. Wonderful stuff! says an admiring archbishop or some such dignitary! So it is that prophecy is fulfilled, and the "falling away" (q.v.) helps itself to the race, the human race, become so inhuman, as in so much else, so inhumane: denying its form and losing its life.

To the race ? It is not all in this plight. It is still possible, in the grace of God, at the instance of His loving kindness and in the movement of His hand, to come to the One who in Himself has the answer to the partial, bespectacled, blinkered race which wanders with such zeal, and at time such venom, from what it is, while engagingly or sadly making such earnest endeavours, without the truth, to find something that will do.

It doesn't; it never did; and it never could.

Let us summarise a little. God then has many muddled, quasi-suppressants and smugglers (suppressing as they smuggle, smuggling ³ as they suppress - cf. Romans 1:18-21).

 

	Aristotle hid "Him" in a contemplation casket, untouchable, untouching;
	Plato (q.v.) in forms, archetypes with occasional glints from beyond;
	Kant (q.v.) hid "Him" in the unknowable noumena, about which he was so knowledgeable ...
	Bergson (q.v.) in vital force (living what ? "force" accelerates matter, but bears no mind - see 'Potential');
	Davies seems to act similarly with - a vanishing god, as if disassembled - in the multi-faceted monism, which he inspects like a doctor, to see if perchance dissolved mind is somehow secreted in the self-contradictory "it" (pp. 252A-N, 263-270, 284-297, 300 ff, supra; 422Q-W, 425 ff. infra); while -
	Buddha (q.v.) seems as if he really wants to forget "it" (cf. pp. 996-997, 999 infra); in this, being like a primordial version of ...
	David Hume (q.v.), who for his part proceeds without subject, cause or ground for his "description only", contradicting both his criterion and his results with his procedure. So -
	Hoyle* (q.v.) more consistently put "it" into the system's innate 'intelligence' bureau, complete with virtual information library. But of this nexus, the composer and the cause ? He merely removes the necessities one step, in transit to God. (Cf. pp. 127, 225-226, 112, 207, 80, 302 supra.) Attributing to the universe a facility it does not manifest, he ignores the demands of the creative action it incorporates. (Cf. pp. 80-88, 121, 131, 252C-N, 265, 293-299ff., 313ff. supra.)

The collation of results however with causes (Ch.1 supra) inexorably (Ch. 3)
leads to God, the God of the Bible (Chs. 1, 10).

4. There's a Time to be Timely

It is a sort of cross-word puzzle joy to some, it seems, to fiddle with "possible answers". Alas the mind is not the foundation of the universe but an instrument for its realistic assessment, albeit in frustration without its own founder. It founders without foundation, and makes unfounded presumptions in intellectual hyper-tension as if to twiddle the speedometer dial were to alter the speed of the car. THAT is on much stronger foundation than unfounded extrapolation of partial comprehension of unbased man in his febrile substitutions of thought for reality. (Cf. Supplement Ch. 2, S1-S33 supra.)

The problem with "possible answers" is enhanced when, as here, they don't work. Distillation of theoretical components of an observable world, worked by the cause of man, of serial causation and of man's mind and spirit in their unique and impervious distinctiveness (though so readily debased when misused); distillation, then followed by splashing this distillate into the fabric of thought, and binding this into patch-work fragments of mental fabrication: this may be fun. When God however is brought in, the game becomes both blasphemous and confused. It is not with reality either logically, or physically, it then has to do. It is like children playing with dolls' houses, imagining their antics will affect the construction of what they live in. (Cf. pp. 413, 421-422A supra.)

It is all too human how man is mastered by what he thinks he masters; nor is woman exempt. This has occurred with an historical repetition bordering on obsession. When man saw the mechanical side of the University (despite godly Newton, Faraday, Maxwell), he would often act like an adolescent, with small knowledge "mastering" all. So we had the "mechanistic universe" against which Freud, Jung and indeed existentialism reacted with such quite normal exaggeration, into other phases to compensate for the illusory "specialisation". The pendulum swings, and nothing it brings, but the need to proceed past commotion.

In such a style has man likewise proceeded in the case also of biology, psychology (cf. Ch. 4 supra), economics and now physics - they ponder a part, exaggerate, distort, extrapolate, possibly with deterministic, anon autonomous display. The clangour and the clash breed inevitable contradiction, confrontations, disputation and dissatisfaction. Alternate extremes exhibit onrush. Confusion, as Shakespeare has it, has then its masterpiece. The philosophers have had their day, now more often, in laboratory dress.

But what if we find two, ten or two thousand new data of the dynamics both of equilibrium (stasis in part) and degeneration (flow in part) of the phenomena of the universe ! Is the human race determined to disgrace itself perpetually before God who made it, by bypassing the Maker and the method, the Almighty and His actual works, now one, now another: some, meanwhile, fascinating an escape clientele with reductionist abstractions, as filled with knowledgeable ignorance as equally empty of rational ground ?

Till the End, when God calls the bluff and gives cause for judgment according to the word of this most Expressive being, it seems it will be so. As the wind moves the waters: so, playing on the mind, philosophy has as little permanent effect - except on the souls of those withered or slaughtered within, by its ... ministrations.

Interesting certainly, the historical study of the Great Burial, of which the crucifixion and burial of Christ is a focal expression, when God came to earth in person. Interesting, but sad; poignant, pathetic.

Unfeeling indeed would he/she be, who did not rejoice therefore, in the resurrection which not merely focuses the divine power that humans can molest yet never control; but the divine freedom from the follies of man, and capacity and will to avail our race of this power, which however, it more normally despises, even to consummation: the end. There is a sense in which the verse 27 of Daniel 9 puts the prospect, prognosis and underlying sadness of these foolish dealings of this misled race.

It is, by contrast - and indeed we ALL have gone astray as Isaiah tells us - of the utmost cause for delight that God has not forsaken man any more than left his current stable, platform, purlieus with all their inter-relationships, on which we do well to expend careful thought. HE ? He is as available today as in Paul's, as in the days of Christ on earth. This however is not the case forever. There now is the day of salvation! Then however, will be too late to turn back - or to turn the clocks back, these being no accomplices - as if the eventuations which God commands could be annihilated; as if the play were really altered at all by the dismantling of the stage, or the febrile ferments of man "interpreting" it, or seeking to assign from it, a "place" for the actors. For all that there is a prophecy ...

There will be no lack of effort in this direction. Forecasting the colour, condition of the final stages of evil as it pursues its unsavoury romance for and with man, the prophet Daniel (the one who also - 886 ff. infra - predicted the death date of Christ) gives this intriguing item:

He shall speak pompous words against the Most High,
Shall persecute the saints of the Most High,
And intend to change times and law ... (Daniel 7:25).

But the court shall be seated,
And they shall take away his dominion,
To consume it and destroy it forever (verse 26).

His kingdom is an everlasting kingdom,
And all dominions shall serve and obey Him (*3) (verse 27).

5 The Creator of Cosmos, Father of Freedom, God of Eternity and
Lord of Glory

Indeed:

There is no salvation in any other: for there is no other name
under heaven given among men, by which we must be saved
(Acts 4:12).

With this in view, let us listen to the music of the praise of the Lord from the Messiah, in the Hallelujah Chorus (Web Version only).

End-notes for Extension E: ON GREAT BURIALS (EN#)

*1 If man once sought to export God in a tomb, now the metaphysical surgeons would try it in another format. At this universe's creation, God exported from His own creative power, time - in part as a convenient container-unit for natural sequence; but now these would turn it into a coffin to export God from the very creation which logic demands: rational orphans.

*2 See Excursion into Culture, Supra-Culture and Supernatural, pp. 422Q-T infra.

*3 Here we might observe in the Bible, more of the divine perspective. Isaiah 51:1-6, like Matthew 24:35, indicates the grand refurbishing of all things (Acts 3:19-21) to come... when the movable, indeed the heavens themselves (II Peter 3:12-13) are moved; and the immovable (Hebrews 12:25-28) remains. And this ? It includes the very righteousness and the inseparable salvation of the covenanting God.

*4 Obviously, serial time does not commence at a point in serial time. The specialised serial time of the physical universe, with its limited and varied contraints, is not the set within which the Creator acted, in order to institute it! That would be simple self-contradiction. You might as well ask an author whether a question-mark in a book is his ear or his eye. The passage and processes of time in his book and for his characters, in any work he writes, have constraints which relate to him, for he made them; but they assuredly are no limit to him. If they were, they could not be his creation. (See also *5, p. 422U.)

The Creator of the system INSTITUTES its components, which while possibly cognate to His ways in some things, are far from identical. Even our own minds and spirits have liberties that matter cannot equal... and we are merely a part of HIS creation.

The time-space elements of the physical universe, so readily surveyed by mind, instituted by Spirit, express but by no means contain His realities and His operation. It is a work-bench. Of far more interest and brilliance are:
  1) what He makes on it, and
  2) He who does the making.
The first is thoroughly startling, the most amazing design with its power to transcend mere time and space in significant ways: man. The second, the Creator of both bench and man upon it, can send out times and spaces, reasons and races, gifts and graces in teeming, multitudinous complexity and variety, with that glorious freedom which even our own creativity can momentarily touch at times. Beyond all that, however, is His image-making power, by which in time and space, but neither by it nor for it, He set man who, with the varied implements of intellect, spirit and heart, can commune with Him, reason of Him, relate to Him, and find His provisions for him: alone able to explain with logical consistency, all that is.

That ? It is fellowship indeed, for mind, spirit and soul.

*2  Excursion into :

CULTURE, SUPRA-CULTURE AND SUPERNATURAL:
  A Grave-Diggers' Fiasco

Vulture Culture

Culture has sometimes been given a sort of religious signification, as if the mere mention of this vocable, the mere writing of this word-symbol in some way rubbed out almighty God. Actually, in some of the many books written, the term 'culture' is merely a satisfying symbol of satanic spiritual power, allowing all manner of enormities to masquerade as the truth.

As shown in this trilogy, God is, is the omnipotent, is sovereign, is not in the least interested in learning His ways from His creatures - "Who, being His counsellor has taught Him!" says His word, at Isaiah 40:11-14. On the typical, topical social studies culture, however, the opposite is affirmed in this relationship. There MAN is (planning) to continue, and has no interest whatsoever in learning his ways from any creator or other being, real, imagined, hypothetical, sincere or hypocritical.

On the latter approach, commonly called humanism (q.v. - "measuring themselves by themselves, they are not wise" - II Corinthians 10:12, as Paul puts it), the deliriously satanic pomposity of it all has God (in all His ways) relegated to a human side-show, an epiphenomenon of man, if you will (ridiculous as such a concept⁴, upon analysis certainly is found to be). The 'argument' for such a position, in essence, in outline, is this; MAN has manners, clothes, religions and all that; God is part of the religion side of things. It is something man wears... and makes. More sophisticated versions may make it a libido expression over time, and so forth; but the case is essentially still the same. Divine existence is contingent on man, this devout scenario affirms.

It is quite common for such an approach to be logically without any stated ground. It is all assumption. Perhaps one good reason for such an approach is one Hitler seemed to know almost instinctively:
a) if it is too amazing, just thrust it out upon the people fearlessly; and
b) always be sure to weave and to interweave it everywhere you can. Another reason for it is this: it presupposes what is demonstrably wrong, so is best not made to rest upon reason, which, as shown earlier, disengages from and disowns the humanist preconception and misconception altogether.

What is Culture ?

What then is culture ? It does have a place. It can be defined in such a way as not to be a sort of bibulous, and implicitly, anti-Biblical oration. (See Logical Positivism.) Culture, in a descriptive and non-prescriptive format, is this: What people tend to do and say and think, and how they tend to behave and speak and express themselves, in a given place, nation, race or station. Since people vary enormously, even within the same race, in their morals, manners, loves and distresses, religion, acts and attitudes, culture needs to be defined with modest realism rather than philosophic and arrant presumption.

In any given people, it becomes this: that combination of concepts, manners, modes, customs, beliefs and exercises of diverse human powers, which while it may have political outcomes from time to time, in this or that overall direction, is yet heterogeneous, with spiritual and mental cleavages that may be total, irreconcilable and only sometimes clearly perceived.

Where is Unity ?

On humanist basis, 'culture' is often subjected to a philosophic preconception of some underlying essential unity; and in terms of military dangers or defence, it may be given thrust into some such unity. Unity however is neither assured nor necessarily desirable, for a given set of sub-groups in a society, for their ideologies, values or pursuits. Some may be right; some wrong; some distorted, some possessed of a distorting dynamic, some careering to ruin, some in stages somewhat past even that!

Abraham perceived the culture of Sodom, but shared neither its performance nor its destiny. To Jesus in Jewry, the same applies in the first century A.D.. Many transcend their cultural trends mentally; and in many, through supra-cultural origins in Jesus Christ, comes the power and the perception by which they transcend them spiritually.

The very concept of culture-as-unity pre-supposes man as the ultimate, and disposes matters of great diversity or even irreconcilable contrariety as one, in the blind interests of philosophy, and in particular, of her spawn: religious pretension masquerading as scholarship. God of course is in fact as supra-cultural as the heavens are above the earth - "My thoughs are not as your thoughts!" He says - Isaiah 55:8-11. Those who are His have an environment and heredity of the Creator's direction, association and disposition (Ephesians 1) - one which is far removed from what the creature may derive from within its own ways, which are frequently in active divorce, derogation or distancing from God.

Divine Diction

Not only is this so, but through the everlasting grace of God, His people have His own diction, His words. As a master violinist can use the simple strings that others ply with comparative 'pain', so God is abundantly able to teach what He wills through language: amplifying, refining and indeed creating a whole series of mutually related definitions, conditions, super-imposed 'harmonies' of intelligibility, until an environment of connotative, comprehensible diction is present. So He speaks, and so the word of God to mankind is declared. That, as demonstrated earlier, is the Bible.

Thus the Bible is a supra-cultural implement sui generis. Over millenia by many agents, it was provided with so intense a relay system of meanings and message, that it resembles in ways both astonishing and refined, the work of one author through different offices. This it does not only in its matter, but in the connotative complex which is so individual to God.

Naturally this is, while a prodigy, also an exercise in proportion. Man himself is partly programmed, partly free product of God; and his proclivities of speech and comprehension have been, at the first, moulded by God. Any difficulty (apart from deterioriation through man's misuse of man) lies therefore not in the very concept of divine communication to the creature called man; but in the divesting of digressions from truth, the removal of rubbish from the presuppositions, assumptions and avenues of thought. Like a giant dredging operation, it can be done. The harbour is for ships and the ships lie well in harbour; it is just a matter of cleaning it up.

Resolution of Unity

What then is the actual unity ? Fumbled for in cultures, lusted for in States, sought in the irrationalities of existential confusion, it is in fact that of design derived from deity, one which in its full complement has will. And will ? This can mock sin, deride the deity who made it, guffaw at the design under which it operates without licence, only to inherit thought which distorts and folly which fractures.

Structurally, then, the unity so missought and mistaught, is one of design; but it is also (potentially) that of the love of the Redeemer, who restores the heart. Nor is He dumb, though few there be who listen; and many deaf become cynics in the traumatic sadness of the actual fact, that without the Redeemer, unity in this race is no more. It is as well for this race that God has in the person of the Redeemer, Jesus Christ, provided a salvage operation called salvation. Its relevance is as broad as the race, and as narrow, in the end, as those who receive Him in reality and in truth (John 1:12-14, 3:16-21).

The Majesty of Communication

When, accordingly, the majestic communication of the everlasting God comes into harbour, there is just that combination of wonders that attest it: its coherence of contour, its clarity and challenge in concert, and the wonder of its performance. Never does that communication clash in form or force, from one century to another, over the 1500 years of its composition, or the 2000 years since its completion, as events unfold to confirm it, apply it and to verify its witness. The system of thought, the system of speech, the profundity of understanding; it is communicable to man as God desires. Its draught is deep; its structure is clear.

The ship of divine communication comes to the harbour - to use our image, as God dredged it in the first place. It comes as a cosmos of its own - sent from afar, now near at hand. Its motion is beautiful. It is of magnificent strength and everlasting stability.

Thus neither is there any question of incomprehensibility - except through the ever-attendant churning of sin; nor, on the other hand, is there anything of a captive communication, fashioned by human culture into impurity or ineffectiveness. It is all within the scope of the mankind God made. The adjustments needed to walk, work and wonder within this sublime, divine communication relate in that other wonder - called 'man': to his degree of freedom.

That however is an entirely separate wonder (see Appendix B, pp. 1113ff., infra on WILL), and it has its own divine mode of dealing and disposition, so that neither is force offered to the will of any creature, in the scope of salvation, nor is inability through sin a detainment centre for the will of God.

The form and the function of the mankind God made, do not in the slightest degree remove man's responsiblity or God's ability to confront the race, or any individual within it. On the contrary, these create it! In our days of little human wonders, as mankind increases in knowledge just as Daniel predicted, there is this enduring divine wonder: God has bundled up the history of man before it happened, and discovered it to the race by means of the text of the Bible, informing it what He has in mind.

In that sense only, the twentieth century is the century of vision; what the many rejected may nevertheless... be inspected. God has done, as He will do: just what He said - and He has done it multi-dimensionally. In this, history has now turned preacher! Indeed, every high thing (of sickening, or wanton pretension), God will abase, be it culture, philosophy, pagan politics or the delusion of autonomy.

He says so (I Corinthians 1:27-28). He does so.

*5 MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING, in a bubble with CAUSELESS EXERCISES
IN CAUSALITY

Paul Davies has made some remarkable howlers in 24 HOURS (8/92), duly blending with 'time': spontaneous generation, limits for God and misconceptions imposed as a priori compulsions.

Thus we read: "This 'quantum cosmology' provides a loophole for the universe to, so to speak, spring into existence from nothing." Quite an accomplishment! Again, "The fact that the universe can create itself..." and "The argument ... that ... something or somebody ... must have set the universe going initially - has now been well and truly discredited." These manufactured pearls need just a little look. They should be considered in their mutual relations.

There are indeed a few problems here. First: nothing is not actually the same as something with a quantum in order to fluctuate: in that a quantum is after all, something. Again, a fluctuation is actually something which varies in certain ways. It must be there - and not nothing - in order to vary. Nor is their inter-relation nothing, since it depicts what is - not what is not.

Hence a 'quantum fluctuation' cannot on 3 grounds be nothing: that is a simple contradiction in terms, and a repetitious one: not permissible, for a physicist, or for that matter, anyone else interested in establishing anything. (Cf. pp. 18 ff., 332E ff.; 200, 252H ff., 264 ff., 284 ff., 379; with 112-113, 213, 229, 286 supra; and 1017 infra.) It is useless to try to 're-define' nothing (q.v., as in the case of some who fail, trying to succeed by 're-defining' success). Such is mere semantics, verbal manipulation, use of terms in a confused and propagandist way, self-contradiction leaving no one in any need of further contradiction. As has been noted elsewhere in this work - if one contradicts oneself: enough! There is no need for anyone else to do so, logically... Such cryptic cosmologies come from and amount to - nothing. For what does not ... see Chapter 1 supra.

Then there is the misconception on time, in which a straw man is removed quite irrelevantly from the creation situation. That of course makes no logical difference, as such is not a component except in the imagination of the attacker. The concept then that the 'supernatural' cannot invent a system with a time element, component or aspect of its matrix - define it how you will: this is merely a vapid reverbalisation. It simply restates the assumption that the God who created our kind of time, serial time in material aspects (though our minds can surpass it in some retrospective and prospective ways, and our spirits may meet with God) is not there. Read then: because God is not there, therefore God is not there. This however could as well have been omitted without any noticeable difference. It is simply an identity statement establishing nothing but a desire to say twice the same thing with not once a reason for either. Repetition however, while it may be good propaganda, does not constitute a logical sequence.

If you grant the first, you grant the second, but both stand on nothing. Actually, as to the anti-model assumption, the notion which twists and distorts Biblical Christianity (and as shown earlier, the logically demanded position that God created space-time and matter as well) into a merely immanentalist substitute: it is merely of psychological interest. Davies' voiced concern that God could not start time in time - by which he acts as if to demolish creation - is one of the most jejune and simplistic upheavals of misconception one could wish.

In fact, it is precisely impossible, if one is dealing with the Creator, consistently to hypothesise that GOD would have, far less would be required to have, the same sort of time or system as we do. This, our whole limited kind of time system, did indeed start, as Davies appears appropriately to discern; not however by paradox of inchoate phrases and nugatory nothings, but by the very particular and adequate power of God, for whom such a chronological stage is simply a species of construction, an instituted aspect of His chosen creation, limited and delimited at His pleasure.

Indeed, an author is not incorporated into his novel's time-schedule, and if it could enforce itself on him, he would not be its author. The positions are not merely different, but mutually exclusive! That is some error, to demand of a model what it prohibits, and then to dismiss it because one's demands are not met!

Even Augustine dealt with this point: that time was itself instituted at creation, God creating not in time but with time. (Cf. pp. S31-33, 422P supra.)

Just as we cannot think in non-characterisable terms, or account without using causality, so any endeavour, as here, to wed irrationality and reason is doomed. It violates the ground rules it uses, breaks the universe of its own discourse, and gives causal grounds, causally conceived, for non-causality. Actually, it is not even possible to think of a categorically non-causal area, for this would demand disappearance of rational characterisability, hence of specifiability, hence either of expression, designation or description itself. (Cf. pp. 284ff. supra.) Nor is it possible to account for causality dis-causatively, since the very effort to find the ground of it is an exercise in causality; and endeavour to get categorically beyond it, assumes its operation wherever it goes. (Cf. pp. 113ff., 158-159, 284-287, 422Aff, and see Index: Kant, Causality.)

Christianity, in the Bible, very simply indicates that GOD created our type of causal nexus with an eternal operative, creative power, neither serially limited nor subjectible to processive, progressive stipulations as condition or essential mode. It is time to cease trying to fit the author into his book. It is true that it proceeded from him, but they are in totally different dimensions.

In terms of this intense and uniquely valid harmony, it is indeed time to realise, as Paul for example, makes clear in Romans 8:38-39, that time itself is a creation of God; and that creation is His institution of what was not there. Being created, it proceeds in its mode, God acting in His own illimitable freedom, and also within His creation, doing so at His will, discretion, and according to His purpose. God who is the beginning and the end of all creation, is no captive or component of what He makes. It is indeed impossible to weave in and out of the reality of the logically demonstrable God who is, bringing in alien and incompatible thought at whim, and to devise anything but a morass. From that self-contradictory bog, the beautiful and serene logic of the Biblical faith is wholly divorced.

Not from empty words, ignorant imaginings, delusive conceits, barren beliefs has that trilogy of mind, matter, spirit, called man come. The inaugurator of this magnificent system, this all but incredible creation (man is hard to believe, a prodigy, but we must believe, for we see), the One who has wrought its vitalisation, its capacities has Himself created these things by a mind of exceeding majesty. To this Being belongs a power so subtle yet massive, a wisdom so profound: He is indeed a Spirit so infinite in understanding that from Him has man not only come, but been planted together with the universe - like a gigantic toy, a gift of youth, an encyclopedia unwritten for man to probe - tossed in.

That this GOD from whom all has come, through whom and to whom are all things - as Paul puts it so magnificently in Romans 11:25-36 - has written... not only in the wonder of architectural code in our body cells, how we are to be produced, generation by generation: but through scribes, prophets, whom He has led, declaring why, and for whom, and with what understanding of mind, life and will of our Creator, man is made: this is the archway to the divine splendour. It is an archway indeed through which everyone of this race must pass for such a destiny. That He has visited us - as shown in His book - condescending without panache, to our form, surpassing our ideals, deputing His beauty, and calling us to it via the Cross of our ugliness, in Calvary: this is the copestone of that arch. As to that, He did it in time, and not at all for nothing.

The excellent harmony of all things seen from the word of God continually ridicules the evasions of jagged unbelief, its much ado about nothing, irrational, restless. Neither sin nor creation is nothing; nor indeed, is nothing to be its reward.

Footnotes:

1. Cf. pp. 664, , 580-581, 1009-1014, 1020-1021 infra, 207, 253-269, 284-297, 303 supra.

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2. Cf. pp. 136, , 262-269, 284-291, 308, 313, 315A-316C, Ch. 1 supra; 424ff., 1002A, Ch. 10 infra.

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3. The hidden, buried 'god', shorn of divinity's form and function, donated metaphorical existence - like "deep throat" in the days of Watergate tape enquiry, hard to identify - is able to be 'interpreted' at will ... by the simple act of voice projection from the reigning theories of the day, as they rise to their appointed hour.
As sounding board for the antichrist, this so often clandestine, hidden and obscure "he" would be a marvellous mystique, manipulable as a puppet: an illogical concoction prepared for the overpowering and devastating light of the coming Parousia - the brilliant appearance of Christ, the Word of Truth. (Cf. pp. 750B-E - esp. The Thrills of Contemporary Rills and The Stage, with 843-847, 995, 999-1000 infra; 304-306 supra. Also refer: Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Kant, Nietzsche, Hegel - esp. pp. 125-128, 230, 307-308 supra; 451-453, 684, 837-839, 843-844, 911 infra.)

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4. Epiphenomenon: a non-systematic, vaguely related event, precariously situated outside 'the web', and with no visible (or invisible) means of support. As shown in Ch. 3, serial causality is not susceptible to such irrational and nugatory nebulosity. There is of necessity for this nexus a Creator, with a gulf between them, one which He can and does readily cross in ways both varied and fascinating. He is the ontological cause of serial causation.

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