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THE BIBLE:

NOT THE DECLAMATIONS OR DISTILLATIONS

OF MAN,

BUT THE DOCTRINE OF DEITY

Chapter 5

PERSPICUITY AND PERSPECTIVE

You may recall in Chapter 4, the interesting discussion we had, leading to the conversion to Jesus Christ through the everlasting Gospel, of one who is now my friend, whom I shall call Frank.

We met again one day, and in this realm of imagination, we can once again hear our discourse.

╬╬╬╬╬╬╬

You know Frank, there is one thing that is not only matchless, even in survey outside Christ, but delightfully distinctive within Him.

What is that ?

It is perspicuity.

Yes, I have been reading Ephesians 1, where it speaks of the fact that Paul is praying for them in that Church. How was it again ... ? that they might be given

"the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him,"

wasn't it ? yes, that's right. Now how does it proceed ? yes, I have it, is it not

"the eyes of our understanding being enlightened,
that you may know what is the hope of your calling..." !

Yes, I believe it is, Robert. Are you then referring to the fact that just as light is a source of clarity physically, so divine light is source of clarity spiritually, in perspective, in realisation of how everything fits together, no, not in some monistic universe, where magic makes it, and then with arrant disregard to needs for thought and related action, sustains and orders its composition down to the most minute detail in massive and monumental kinds, physically, mentally and spiritually, while reason retires with a ghastly pallor from the sheer effrontery of this irrationality. No, not at all in that solipsistic manner, but all from the relevant, adequate, eternal source.

Nothing to it, this monism^*A. What it needs is something for ever to have anything ever.

And it is just such a Being that I have found, Robert, king of code, author of creation, ground of created being, agent of salvation, resource of reason and narrator of what is to be^*1. Have you read ... but of course you have, SMR Ch. 9 ? What a cornucopia of prophecy is to be found in this very Bible. Nothing like it! How could there be ? Beyond created being is its basis, and on Him nothing rests to constrain, being ultimate, and when He speaks, it is with the knowledge that has no limits. It is all an open book to Him, and He has put from this open book what He pleases to share with us, in this Book of the Lord, the only tested religious basis in existence!^*2

You have certainly been busy in the last six months, Frank. No, as to magic and matter and the dismissal of reason, it is a useless fabrication which removes its own power of rationality in order to remove God, but at the same time dismisses its basis for argument, a sort of self-made suicide squad by which they affect to live!

It all fits together, like a mosaic. Cohesive brilliance in code did not come from order's antithesis!

Yes, such a thing did not happen in THIS universe, where reason is needed even to argue, and its apportionment of evidence, even to speak intelligibly. What DID happen is that not only did God provide what we are, limited, delimited and summit products of organisation imposed (even in writing!), but He has provided more than a code and its information accessory (that is the so-called 'meta-information' found in the area once thought to be 'junk DNA' ^*3). He has provided a third information bureau, this time not for construction of the creation, through reproduction and the consistent marvel of narrated methods in DNA, but through a still more wonderful source, the persistent wonder of narration in the Bible, which presents truth to the mind, as the DNA presents body for its use.

I find it so in utter and complete detail, providing relish for reason with delight for the heart.

It is in the LIGHT of divine illumination that solves all, the authority of the word of God which satisfies all questions to the point, so that its satiety and joy knows no bounds, reason rests in its very basis, for after all...

After all, Frank, it is part of the image of God in which we are cast, and its resolutions are merely an application of the fact that the light of Him who made us, in us, brings to the light in good array all that there is. Revelation, the Bible, gives it God's gift, the way home for the human, just as reason insists that this is where it is to be found^*4.

I find it's like standing on a mountain top, and surveying scene after scene, for you realise afresh and anew everything in its inter-relationship, this hill, that stream, that hut, the other valley, until it is all a thrill of realisation, as you read the word of God, that summit for reason, that glory for truth, that basis for hope, that gift of knowledge and illumination of the spirit and heart of man, it is all seen in its place.

It is all gift: reason to our minds, evidence to our eyes and ears and touch and taste, perspective and orientation for our spirits and that perfect match of our investigatory tools and what is to be investigated, both in the same realm of thought, one able to investigate the other as if one were father of both... both contrivances of one ground, etiological source, sufficient for either, required for both.

Which correlation is precisely and on all sides, the case! Indeed, to the point of our last discussion, this is what I would term, in that realm as in each other, concerning the whole creation, the clear view, the transparent function aspect. I like to use the term : perspicuity, the opening up of the creation to the mind of man, in capability to see what it is in man's own conceptual, perceptive, cognitive domain, without antinomy or barrier*^4A, loss of failure at all.

Alas, not all see it, by any means.

This is because it is fashionable now for man to ignore the biblical perspective (which is warranted by reason), which gives not only what MUST BE, in terms of what Paul in Romans 1 calls the manifest, the obvious divine nature and power of God, but what IS, in terms of the mind and being of God, His plans and His designs for man.

Man actually has classes on disorientation, in culture, philosophy, biology and social studies. People pay to have them, and professions often include them in their necessary preludes and preliminaries. What sort of a world is this, and what sort of a defilement of reason and reality, revelation and above all, the very name of God is wrought in this way by His creatures who, for all their resultant writhing with problems insurmountable (they ARE this BECAUSE man is in this working in fantasy), will not repent. It is as in the end of Revelation 9: whatever comes, they WILL not repent.

Whose world, then is this, in its current course ? does it not lie in the wicked one, as I John declares in perfect rapport with what Christ said about the prince of this world, recorded in John 14:30!

Since it lies there, lies are one of the dominant factors in political life, in national security, in international discourse, in pretences and pretensions innumerable, in cover-ups even at presidential level, where for example, not the water of life but the Watergate of death comes like a flood. And it is quite useless to ignore similar affairs, at least as bad, in Germany and in Japan, and even worse in China and in the former USSR, in Zimbabwe and in Sudan, where vast powers, some more, some dependent on others, act or have in vast swathes of ruin, acted in despite of both truth and peace, grace and goodness, as if possessed.

What the devil owns, he does possess! not by right, but by function!

How then does this add itself to what we discussed earlier ?

It shows the negative of negation, that is the wrong way go back sign is meaningful! But this concord of investigatory power in man and what is to be investigated in correlation for comprehension ...

Ah yes, the perspicuity aspect ?

Yes. It is that the biblical perspective ALONE has not merely the answer to all questions concerning life and destiny and hope and reason, but it provides with this, additional information which makes for us a complete nest of necessities and actualities, made clear to the point that our WISDOM for thought and testing, and the AVAILABILITY of this world's gear for investigation are so well matched that it is like seeing the bottom of a pool.

Yes, I saw a case like that in which a photograph of a gorge had such a stunning brilliance for the BOTTOM of the pool that it looked almost as if it were on the ground, with no water covering it at all! There, that is perspicuity.

It is never found except where the revelation of God is presented; otherwise there are not just jaws and jars, but all the paraphernalia of the counterfeit in conduct, in heart, in psyche, in situation and in politicl ramblings with their philosophical buddies (cf. SMR Ch. 3). As to this revelation of God, the Bible with its incarnate word, Jesus Christ foretold and reported (cf. SMR Ch. 6), however, reason finds where this is, and when you get there, you can find that this is the case. In that sense, quite apart from its predictions^*5, it verifies itself immediately^*5.

I am finding this the more as I investigate the more.

It is to the point that there is NOTHING given which is not analysable, nothing constructed which is not comprehensible, there is no logic which fails^*6, no point which is obscured, all sits like the earth in space, sustained and yet distinct. In accord with this, the orders in DNA and their reception, the controls and their codes, the commands and their conceptions, these are at large, like a waterfall of concordant brilliance; while the minutiae and their magnificent magnitudes exposit prior expression, as in the case when, like water poured on that old-fashioned magic paper, you got lovely designs revealed. These did not 'arise', but were revealed, subject to revelation, because of the prior work done by the maker of the 'magic' book.

Magic is fun, but in science it is farce. Obsessions about the visible and the measurable, are mere fixations, for the theory to that effect, give me this or I die, is itself invisible. Domains are as numerous as reason shows and revelation confirms. The domain of the spirit of man is what we use when we argue, imaginative, error-prone, erecting dominions of thought and relating it to reality, or to surreality if this is the personal desire. Such is the role of spirit, and to ignore it is like the case of a baby, given a dummy, and increasingly in danger of becoming one when and if it refuses to dispense with it, when the dreamy time of early consciousness passes more into the light of common day.

Indeed! Our equipment, and its modes of expression: It was no magic, but deliberative design, worked to enable simple means to reveal and use it, at WILL. Do what you will, matter does not do this^*^6A, and mind for its own part, needs means, power, and organisation. Perspicuity is merely one more aspect of the need for competent means for actual results; but it has this rider, that it is one of the many works beyond necessity, which as in truth, come unsolicited to exhibit the robustness of actuality. The right path is like that: it confirms itself. It has the vigour of rigour.

Not only is there the logical necessity from such compositions in code, evidenced in the maxi-merging practicalities of each of the beings which result, but there is the direct parallel to our own derivative creations, in which we do just the same IN PRINCIPLE...

	For we think of an idea, its conceptions rollicking together with the means to create them; but the former is always master of the latter, for we imagine a result, we attune with knowledge to its attainment, we order things on many sides, parts, plans, drawings, sketches, preludes, preparations of all kinds, then assembling with singularity of intention, we make singularly apt means to apply. There is a singularity of kind in our creations, with an individuality of type, and sometimes of species.
	We keep consistent our means to the extent that nothing aborts something else, and hence organise the pieces with vision in mind and the virtue of the result for our prime purpose is the object of our attainment
	That IS creation. It is not another thing. This is what it is.

In the processive workings of our DNA and associated mini- and maxi- constructions as embryos turn to babes, there are means moved adroitly to ends, ends at length visible to the naked eye, just as the means to them are increasingly now being seen in the microscope. The contrivances which are NAKED to reconstruction in terms of concepts are NATURAL for the implementation of the same.

What we USE to investigate is what we find in MEANS to implement, the two having a perspicuity of MEANS of investigation and MEANING in what is investigated which is the ultimate correlation. Our mode of conception and its mode of working are partners in type, their mutuality in penetrability the signature of their partnership. We as a creation, are seeing creation as a KIND of thing, exposed so that the matrix of our own bodily apparatus and the meaning of our own mental creativity are so matched that nothing is obscured, the totality of probe and what is probed are close as intimate friends. It is so in principle AS we are created, as through procreative aftermath, the programmatic tidings take over, and it is so WHEN we create, when though we use many programmatic or semi-programmatic devices, there is an ultimate supervision and inspiration which directs the course of conception and its translation into performance.

Not only, therefore, in our DNA and its accoutrements, is there

	a highly sophisticated language, just as there is
	a receptivity to such commands to execute them, with
	a correlation of schema to enable

such execution,

create the energy,

assign its arrival in place, pace and time as needed,

control the arrangements,

the sequences,

a chronological correlation of ordered segments and procedures;

and not only are there

	commanded events such as to make integrality in the result through effective execution, as distinct from what would be still born , so that they do not lack most precise articulation and arrangements extending like stars in the universe:
	but over all, there is something more.

And that ?

It is that such a synthesis of command and its correlative execution such a timely sequence of organised events, where the same is not episodic but a characteristic used to command, with such an extra-ordinary complexity of kind, and such a fluency of style, that the integrality of the result in living ectypes with prevenient signatures in code presents marvels to the eye.

These, now amplified into macro-visibility wrought by micro-directives, have their due site as outcomes, products of programmatically installed vision, enabling us to be visited with those conceptualised container-units called, in our case, mankind.

This is the summit of all such visible sequence, all commands, all chronological orders, making life a building worked before our eyes by means accessible to observation and analysis, imprinted with a result as integral in type, macro-meaningful in style, as the means were brilliant in miniature device and effective in ultimate action, yes even if a million steps were needed.

When we even look at birds, page after page of a magazine can reveal such fluency of composition in the macro-unit, the product, the individual bird itself, such stylistic wonders of colour and art-design work making elegant combinations of tone and contrast, blend and composition, in such intricacies of pattern and such exuberances of vision that one is left almost gasping at the objective sheer wonder-creating power inherent in these PRODUCTS. Here there appear to be flung the visions of beauty, the styles of originality with a combination of freedom of thought and liberty from uniformity, matched by extreme discipline of coding to achieve this, just as in other art, with brilliant unveilings of vigour or imaginative differentiation, stamped in kind, kept in mind, produced like slides or tapes or discs in a video-evening, and allowing congratulations in heart on the achievement of such initiatives in so many ways, yet with such consistency of result.

Here is the sloth, emblem of laziness, the lion, of regality, the elephant, of ponderous wisdom, the eagle, of predatory power, the robin, of cheery colorfulness, the tortoise of mobility limited by safety, like so many congratulations or on the other hand, satires. In some, it is almost like a cartoon, in others, a piece of pageantry, in yet others, a sheer effrontery of beauty to make one gasp, and then again, as in the sea-gull a capacity for wind-adjusted flight manoeuvres which might well have inspired the Spitfire of World War II: for it seems almost to achieve the impossible with its wind relationships. This moreover, it does with such a fluent ease and untroubled supremacy in its melding with the elements with a technical skill which all but appals the intellect, that its unthought background - that is, not thought by it but by its Creator - comes leaping like waves into view^*7.

I love this discriminating distinctiveness, categorised into kind, yet spurting with a sort of mental blood, as if the very arteries of creation were opened without fear of loss of vitality.

But there is more, much more, and it will be good to look at some of this in the case of man.

There is the whole subject of the mini-workings of maxi-powers in the result in man, functions that are not programmed, not forged, but enabled. We move from body to mind and spirit, to examine their relationships, realities and functions.

It is just like introducing some learner driver to his instrument for expression when he travels, the one who uses to the item to be used: in that case, the car, in ours the body. It is dirigible, it is directive by concept, thrust about by imagination, an axe for the wood, a star for the darkness, a personal thrust into what is conceived, deploying what has already been conceived, in using the body for the doing of the free-thrusting desire of his spirit. Do you not agree ?

I ought to, since both the now well-known means, the body and its constructive codal devices, and the mind and spirit which are mine, are continually acting in precisely this way and have been since I was of most minor years. I have met the opportunity and the importunity of the body, and it needs help, and the aspiration and desire of both mind and spirit, and putting the one to the other, have gained results from the beginning. As my spirit has grown, so has understanding and capacity to recognise the conceptions of others, including those enshrined in code in my own body, and kept in the mutual relationships of its systematically functional parts, like a car, a thing total ready for exploration, exploitation or discipline according to will or vision or meaning conception.

Have you realised that the butt of will, its ajutment^*8 into otherwise organised events, can be alleviated or even implemented by the thrill of understanding, while on the other hand, this same understanding can redirect will to better and more elevated vision for achievement ?

I have indeed, for there are whole plateaux of spirit, realms of perception, conception, comprehension, there are valleys to be seen, mounts and there are views from the mounts, so that there is a whole world for imagination, a whole climate of conception in which to rove about, and there is a summit for all of this, an integral integrity beyond these donated means, which none of us can construct, the sublime Author of sequence for construction and meaning for what is constructed, the power plus intelligence plus will plus spirit that being without beginning, is the source of all, rather than nothing, which CAN BE the source of nothing.

Yes, it is He who beyond all things, who acts also as summit to their doings, so that vitality and power can cohere with precision and intelligence, even the manufacture of the latter, so producing not only vision, but enveloping its products with drawing power, not to be what they are not, but to seek what they are not, and cannot become, but must know. In Christ, this empathy became formatted as man, God Himself actually TAKING this form, the ultimate information to man.

Well said. But how do these plateaux of operation, with their resident motivations, affect our understanding of our overall construction, so susceptible to INVESTIGATION by our minds, just as it is useful for provision of an apparatus, the brain, for the usage of the same ?

It casts yet more light on it.

Let's look at the construction of the body, as a dynamic as if it were occurring before our eyes, as the child is being formed.

Good.

You see, there is in

this perspicuity of method,

deployment of language,

success of symbolism,

correlation of concept, the micro- with the -macro,
the one donating design,
the other receiving it at each level, and the whole in the single totality likewise,

this integrality of language and result,

this multitudinous series of exhibits

wrought by order,

moulded by meaning,

indeed, in all these things that are here at work,

you find a pattern for procedures beyond the limited domains.

You discover in your functional powers, not merely

the methods of mind,

the call of spirit,

the labours of organisation and the complexities which yield singularity, but

that moulding by imagination which is required to articulate concepts
to be exposed by command of ideas, and constrained
by envisagements of thought or application of spirit,
as an intrinsic intermediary between the vision conceived
and the means commanded. In concert with this, the results obtained by this synthetic operation of man's powers, may be watched with discrimination in turn, surveyed by the fluttering spirit of man, as it reviews, considers and matches implementation with vision.

That is all part of our action in creation.

With us, there may be choice products, when we manage to excel; with our Author, these include living results, brilliant in kind, expert in conceptual manoeuvre, productive as resource, investigatory by impulsion, original as to envisagement and cognitive with increasing comprehension and comprehensiveness. We get intelligence, imagination, visionary dynamic in our spirits, linguistic power, idea-language correlation, vision-idea fronts for implementation and testing ...

In other words, imagination is begetting imaginative persons ?

We come to that. Meanwhile, in all this, intellection, imagination, means to ends, composure of compositions into the meta-design fulfils not only the definition of design^*7 and that of intelligence^*8A but that of creation^*9.

We have seen the former two before, but what of the last ?

Creation is that designation of design, whether seen whole or in aspects from the first, that composition of events by will, that assiduity that acts to turn the mental, moral, spiritual, or the means for these, into objects, be they mental, physical or spiritual, which arrive as a result of this dynamic of direction. It is that complex of imagination, aspiration, information and will that, seizing on opportunity, turns non-being into being, using means, the envisagement preceding the actuality, and the actuality depicting the order of things first held in view by the mind, and illuminated by the calling of the spirit which animates the exercise.

The more empowered is the producer, the agent of creation within creation (such as man), the more obvious, the more accessible is the matter of means: for they can be stored in equipment to cover this and that contingency, and creation in the 21st century, for example in words or even in assembly lines, or through computerised technology, can economise effort and make more and more direct the channel through concourses of directions and equipment, to bring creative vision to practical function in this present world, at the empirical level. It needs to be realised, I think, that the empirical is only ONE mode of thing; you can have a whole world of ideas, of concepts, of themes and subjects. Material expression is one option only. Where the whole of material things, their principles, the sophisticated knowledge of systems included, light itself forcing man to probe more and more into this domain of technical brilliance, is in all things at the service of the Producer, as in the creation by God, then there is an ease for action which is hard to envisage, but easy to understand.

In a simplistic example: you have the paper (product of enormous activities with relevant resources), the computer (subject of vast intellections and imaginations flowing on with deep thought into the visible world), the thought (product of mind), vision (where mind and spirit meet, like tides in the ocean), the desire (product of will with its immensities of self-deposition), and how (relatively) easy is it to write a set of books. If in addition, matter is not only known to you, but producible and dirigible at will, then the case is simpler yet... and so on.

So where do we find for this thing creation, its relevant host ?

You find this then by watching the results, comparing these with the means, and considering this event, this creation, in terms of the other members of their kind (as all the books of a given author, all the bridges of a given engineer, all the buildings of a given architect). You see in it by reproduction as of a large slice of the spirit of the maker of the thing. The more you understand the POINT of the thing made, and study the MEANS used to bring it about, the more obvious are the qualities of mind and spirit of the maker, the creator of whatever it is one has in mind. So we are surrounded ...

So that when you are looking at the creation of this universe AND of the creativity of some of the creations, like man, you have a vast canvass to inspect, as you seek to gain knowledge of its Author ?

Certainly. Its overpowering majesty, its deep rebuke, its magnificent art, its volubility of utterance in many delicate, deft and deep designs, its potencies for continuation of products, its resourcefulness, its sheer ease of concept, its use of multiplied means for singular results, and especially its choice of creating man so that he might create not only means for life, but understanding of himself, and chaos when he seeks to divorce this from God, all simple empirical facts: all this is apparent in the creation of God. It is as we have seen before, His explicit word, not this time to cells and their construction, but to man AS a construction, the Bible, it is this which is the ultimate for comprehension at the interface of man and God. As God knows and we have only limited knowledge, this is more than coming to a vast, mountain and finding the lookout, even than looking down from space at the earth as a whole.

Rather it is like looking down on man as a whole, from the conceptual space, the vision, the point and purpose, the pith and schematic certainties of the Creator. All this is clear, but ...

But what of the creativities of man, and what you can recognise there ?

Surrounded by creation as we are, our own and that which has constituted us as able to have creativity, we have much to inspect. For each object in part, the logical principles of its kind are articulable, the correlative results of its operations are visible in myriad ways, and the assemblage of the latter relative to the former is an object of quite fascinating study. We become more and more expert in this, as a race, as we use up the workings of former generations in this same field, that of creation. As a logical exercise, it exhibits its minimum necessities, and as an observable one, it verifies its methodology in ourselves and in our observation of others.

Creation is an OPERATION with relevant powers over what is impacted, if this be made or called into being already, or in the case of what is invention entirely, where there be no other creation, with such powers over what is to be put into being and then impacted, while this may of course be done synthetically, so that being and impaction are concerted at the outset. Creation without a creator is like a factory without a formulator, an effect without a cause, a schema without a schemer, a reason without reason's deployment. It is magic as to method and miasma as to logic, The same of course applies to design without a designer, design being simply a facet of creation. Is it not fascinating ?

Yes, for BEING a creation on this definition, one finds it intriguing to see how it FEELS to be both limited (as to what is possible for such a creation - a building is not a book, but both have usable features) on the one hand, and enabled (a book CAN be read) on the other. It draws the attention to the point of the exercise, in the fearsome but delightful knowledge that one is ONESELF the point, in the midst of billions of others.

Yes indeed; for this creative episode, event, dynamic, dealing in making man, not only illustrates intelligence, but confers it. It not only shows imagination, but conveys it to capsules in vitality, each one a child, so that these constructions and energies may even be operated by persons. In this way, the integrality of the composure is not only visited by creativity through means, that is by the built-up body, in fact it is given the same, but also these very means themselves contribute to enable its own creative work to be effective in this particular universe. Divine creativity creates human sub-creators and creates means for their derivative creativity, which are part of the integrality of these creators, mankind.

Great! This creativity of man is a function in itself: it is not any more mere operation of means to achieve material organisation: but it is what it is, something in its own right, mode, style, manner and vitality, an operator and not an operable mass.

This is by direct transfer in the image of God, and there are even varieties of these living capsules. Animals, like the beaver, birds like the sea-gull, the eagle, these have ectypes, are print-outs from the imagination, which have their own integrality at their own levels. They are not mere assemblages of parts: they have integral meaning, capacity, organisational opportunities to express themselves. Impacted by living instinct, the sub-kind of spirit, they build dams, express a fluency of aero-dynamics by a control of delicate aerial manoeuvres, as the case may be. Thus they become a delight to behold, a marvel of integral construction and even this is gifted with an individuality in the operator, but not a conscious conceptual capacity to oversee with understanding.

This is indeed a marvel, and when you study, for example, the organisational complexity of the work of the beaver in the making of lodges, the adjustment to challenging environmental hazards which may afflict it, its ingenuities and determination, its concatentation of application in ways remarkable in engineering finesse, for example, you realise that what we have in conscious, conceptual capacity, it illustrates in the encapsulated gift of the same in the form of instincts, these themselves to a limited extent subjectible to desire and adjustments by the creature concerned. That is experimentally shown in the work My Beaver Colony, by Lars Wilsson, a thing that amazes in terms of the flexibility of instinct in terms of need, just like the flexibility of one's bodily musculature, in terms of usage and this in terms of challenge. It is all within KIND, there being limits of form and function. That is quite simply, what is found.

But what of man then ?

In him, the imaginative conceptual power is expatiative, consciously conceptual, intelligently directive in terms of perspective, logically investigable in terms of alternative modes, so that he becomes not only an expression of design, intelligence and creation, with defined mobilities of modules and application, and not only a user of what has been created, but a mini-model of the eternal Spirit, with power to review what he does, and to no small extent, what has been done in his own creation! Imaginative, conceptual, vision-directed thought can comb the conditions, estimate the needs, seek the inspiration and vision for priorities and principles, consider the moral objectives and in these various ways, illustrate by function the scope of the integrality that man is, that he constitutes.

Everything is what it is. It is no use having material or mental, or ideational fixations. It is necessary to learn what is there, at every level of life and articulation of capacity, and seeing each phase and entity for what it is, to note its forms of operation and logical requirements for existence, and then to compare these with its results, and to see that these are consciously assessable.

Fixations are the very stuff of philosophy, and what has given it a bad name (cf. Spiritual Refreshings ... Ch. 13, SMR Ch. 4 Extension E, Ch. 3, Ch. 10).

Here then is a model of the Maker.

A creative, created, delimited model!

It is limited in knowledge, the main access being to the Maker, where more can be found, whose is the universe, the Book and the way of salvation. Since few take it (as in Matthew 7:15ff.), much is mismatched between the words of man and the facts.

Then if man can judge with such felicity or facility at any rate,
how much more does his Creator judge!

Here is man's peril. It is a result of his liberty, accentuated by his USING it NOT ONLY to do wrong, but to judge others wrongly as well, sometimes even going so far as first to do wrong, then to assess the works of others, then to decide that if they do not do as he, then THEY are wrong, then to judge them, possibly putting them in prison or to death. It is very fashionable nowadays, but has a long history. They even tried it on Christ, but the resurrection merely mocked them. They have never been able to suffer it, or to dismiss it!

It is an awe-inspiring thought! If means of creation are so open to man, if there is such a perspicuity for our investigative powers in the creation which we investigate, each necessarily formed in the same mode, one logical and imaginative, conceptual and correlative to will and to command, and if understanding of our own ways is so open to our own assessment, how much more to that of the Creator!

Yes, it is fascinating to my mind, newly opened to Christ the Saviour, to consider Him as the Judge. I read the other day something in James 3 about the tongue when it is set on fire by hell! Man has no cover when he discovers himself, and tries the runaway act, first with life and then with tongue!

God surely knows the ways of His creation, its capacities, its capabilities, its enterprise modes and its powers to resist the pride which would make itself the master and not the model, as if it had made itself in the first place, and thrown in the universe while it was at it, before it was there to do it.

Asininity is never far from man, unless he is delivered by his Designer.

Why ?

It is because there is an obverse side to this perspicuity. In man, he is not forced by any mould of instinct to be wise, but given a liberty to laugh at his design, to belittle his Maker, to grimace at His pains, to moue at His majesty and to make wanton with his neighbour so that the very wonder of will, imagination and creation (including those of plans) becomes a open book for assessment!

Yes, the liberty that despises law yet must meet law, for without order there is no man, and without organisation there is no capacity in this universe of ours; and what is done with these things, it is assessable.

But why does this make asininity so readily available ?

Great power has great responsibility in persons who have both guilt and shame, glory and adoration before them.

But again, why is such great power so readily available, as if it were attacked by some spiritual virus, for things that even a dog might see to be foolish ?

Before I answer that, consider a case we saw some years ago. There was a man with a sheep dog in the environs of TWO paddocks. He wanted to put the sheep out of one into the other. The dog was his worker. The galloping piece of canine intelligence was working like an electric current, moving if I remember aright, this way and that, perhaps walking on the sheep's backs, rushing to head off this move, to counter that, to formulate steps from his plans so that they could first be made to go this way, and then, headed off, swept back in that, until they would be placed firmly in the correct paddock.

As the dog was doing this, the boss was calling out to him, at times with urgency or perhaps even exasperation. Then he suddenly told the dog to do it THIS WAY, and gave orders to the dog as to what its next step should be. It was almost as if the delightedly diligent dog was smiling derisively or at least tolerantly as it ignored the orders, took other steps, deftly put the sheep where they had to go, having a far better idea of how to get this than its boss did. The latter, again if I recall, seemed abundantly satisfied with the success of the dog, though you could almost say that it had defied him. After all, seeing the purpose, the dog had executed the manner in which to achieve it. THAT, it was a help.

Now a fallible master may be able in such a way to have his very much lesser servant excel him, and this may bring a good result. The more the dog understood of this level of operation, of how to handle SHEEP, the more it could see the situation and correct errors in the boss. If however the dog had become a sneaky, grisly, odious specimen, it might use the same powers in an adverse way, stumbling when it felt oppressed, or dodging trickily when it was being harassed, or felt it was. It could turn on the sheep at night, perhaps eat one of them, and in general scheme so that it could be having a grudging but somewhat satisfying time, based on its wits.

The more such powers of perspicuity exist, the more readily can they be abused. The 'teen-ager in a racing car can do more, and do it more readily, than one on a bike; and if the desire is the same, then then the results will be far more evident and notable, and this, the more readily. In this way, error can be magnified and folly exhibited; and indeed, once the flair of folly enters in, with extended personal powers, man can achieve much mischief in minimal time and with minimal effort.

But why should man be so ready to use such powers ? Why can't he be more pacific, loving, kindly, responsible, thoughtful, and having a perspective ...

Ah, that is it. The perspective. The perspicuousness of things available for a rightly, that is a logically ordered mind - in view of the Creator's mode of creation being investigable in such cohesion by our own creative capacities, both being operative in similar ways at this functional level, system meeting system like friend meeting friend - this has it openness to misuse. You can see in vast overview, perhaps with this or that error, so much that you can either exploit the power this knowledge brings, or distort it in order to be the more rebellious, or seek to smash it in some crevice of its workings, and then becoming alert to your own majesty, you can proceed down the highway to hell.

How ? is this a disease that gains ascendency once the taste is felt to be arresting ?

It often works like that. Seeing many things as they are, man may decide that he would like them to be different. Seizing the controls more and more, he may seek to misuse what is made, and his own being, and even try to alter this. He may seek to do this by adroit use of creative imagination and increasing knowledge of the creation all about him (and it encapsulates in atoms, for example, prodigious energy, multiplied almost to infinity). Drawn by desire ...

Yes, yes, excuse me, but WHY does he have such desire, and having it, so often yield to such obvious folly as to combat the designs of the Creator and seek to alter the very modes of his existence!

Well why did you sin in the first place ?

I suppose it just came naturally.

Why ?

I suppose I was selfish.

Why ?

I suppose the race must have fallen for we all seem to start the same way.

How ?

You mean, how did it fall ? The Bible tells us that. Given opportunity, it abused it for status lust.

By which you mean ?

It sought to achieve a comparability with the power and place of God. You adumbrated that, didn't you ?

Could you now extend it then ?

It wanted to have equality with Him, capacity to bargain, to be where He is so that not only could it receive orders about the prodigious creation of which it was part, but give them; not only have moral appetite to KNOW what was right, but be a philosopher, a savant, an engineer for his own life, up there, knowing for himself all about in himself, and hence comparable with God.

Why, would you say ?

We are told, aren't we ?

It was because the idea that God was USING him, deploying him for His own desire, in a self-aggrandising or unfair mode, was made to appear and was apparently accepted. He allowed himself to believe evil of Him who has all without exception that is His desire, as if He were a man in want, striving for this or that.

Yes, I recall, this was by Eve in particular, but Adam was responsible in following the point, that it was BAD that anything should be just bound, that he should receive prohibitions, be limited in any way, and that this was so because God was a glutton for glory. Such at least seems to have been the way of it. He wanted to be part of the action at the top level.

Is this not just like the workings of the nations now, without God, the EU without God, the UN without God, scientistic substitutes for thought without God, as man seeks to control, talk to, direct his own universe... but it is NOT his own! It was created. Hence man is just continuing Eve's unblessed work, and Adam's unblessed cohesion with it.

I see what you mean. Man is liable to such things because of the stature God has given him in creative imagination and conceptual correlation with the schema of things, to such an extent that he can even achieve significant perspicuity in his investigations of the universe, and so be misled into abusing his knowledge: being thoughtless in ambition instead of thankful in realism to the God who made him even ABLE to think in this way, or for that matter, in any other way! or even to be.

Yes, and man exercises this waywardness because from the first it was done (Romans 5:12ff.), so that NOW we have to RETURN to the God who created us, in order to be REDEEMED, and REGENERATED BACK to the image of Him who created us (Titus 3:3-7). Such is the case, that waywardness, like a warped piece of timber, should not control us any more, and realism should revisit the littered shores, and seeking that these be cleared, as they then are, find the restoration to purity of our defiled littoral, and walk there in the presence of God.

NOTES

See for example on this:

SMR Bk 3, Glossary, at 1013,

Repent or Perish Ch. 7 (including the 'nature of nature').