God’s natural transcendence: common and specific
10/December/2008 13:07 Filed in: Weekly Column
Volume 10, Issue 49
PDF copy
Contrary to what you may have heard in church, sound Bible exposition requires a young earth. Your pastor may say that the age of the earth really doesn’t matter as long as you have Jesus and the cross, but that is really a logical argument from ignorance, because if the creation story is not essentially a story of somewhat literal days, and instead is gapped, or evolved into millions and billions of years, the whole Bible logically becomes a book of fables and myths.
There are a rapidly growing number of creation scientists on this earth who believe the Bible as written. Sadly there are very few theologians and pastors to which this “debate” makes a difference. Furthermore, as in the recent movie “Expelled”, which stars a Jewish Ben Stein, these creation scientists are being kicked out of their professions, not because they are so much Bible thumpers, but because they promote a view called “Intelligent Design.”
So where did these scientists learn their wild, primitive, knuckle dragging, unenlightened theology?
They learned it from the transcendent nature of their work in the natural or common field of science in which they had chosen to study. Not only is creation too complex to have happened by chance, evolution by it’s core presupposition denies the truth of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, except for quantum leaps of faith and complexity, to bring us miraculously to this ancient but present completely natural state.
In the quest of where did I come from and what is my destiny, Intelligent Design is no better than evolution in answering these questions. However, theologians and pastors for some reason think this is an intelligent response to the problems that are facing this world. I suppose the logic goes, “If people believe in a Designer, they will search for Him and they will find Him in Jesus in the Bible and church, then they will ask Jesus into their heart and will be saved, and the world will be a better place.”
This of course assumes the evolutionary presupposition that we are all good people evolving to a higher level of good consciousness, and denies the reality of another Bible Genesis theological principle and that is sin, in the form of Total Depravity. This is best codified in the words of Julie Andrews from a song in the “Sound of Music,” “Nothing comes from nothing, nothing ever could, so somewhere in my youth or childhood, I must have done something good.”
Thus we have the prime theological construct of all human religion, whichever handle you choose to place the spin, including the religion of evolution. “I am good, and I am getting better, but I’m not too sure about you.” (Because in my worldview I am superior to you)
The deep crisis now facing the world is only externally connected to subprime housing, or of financial speculation gone contrary to good and increasing wealth intensions. The problems facing the world are that we have defined the natural world and religion, including dumbing down of Christianity, in only natural terms. The transcendent nature of creation, or religion(s) are just myths from our pre-enlightened history.
One of the results of this dumbing down process is the current “Christmas Crisis” taking place in the Capitol Building in the Great State of Washington. Briefly for those unaware, as of this writing, there is a sign next to a nativity scene in the Capitol Building stating essentially that all religious people are stupid and primitive, there is nothing more to life than what you see.
The former Attorney General of the state and now completing her first term as governor, Christine Gregoire, just can’t seem to understand why not only are Christians, but all theists are so upset about the presence of this essentially “hate speech placard” being present in this season of Christmas and Hanukkah, as light is supposed to illuminate the darkness of the human soul.
Actually in that total context, it is a quite impressive reason for the season. What the unenlightened governor may learn is that by this time next year she will have faced impeachment proceedings. That would be a good thing to illustrate not karma, but transcendental truth.
Going back to the Genesis creation story.
If the earth really is only thousands not millions and billions of years old, the construct of all humanity drastically changes from a really boring undefined history of time, into a dynamic construct of rapid stupendous change, not only in the natural creation sense, but also in the world of human culture and civilization.
Probably the most shocking is the fact that Adam and Eve were probably pretty smart people, and we the highly evolved citizens of the 21st century are really pretty dumb in comparison. After all, according to the Bible, Adam was created out of the dust of the earth, but in the image of God. That is by definition a pretty complex transcendent happening.
Now the argument to counter our inherited stupidity rapidly becomes, look at all the stuff that we have surrounding our lives, which we hope will truly bring meaning to our dreary existence. But if you look carefully at the stuff what the stuff really says is that stuff is all there is. By definition transcendence does not exist, therefore there is really no reason to look beyond the stuff to find any meaning to life. You can call that highly evolved and enlightened if you like, or you can call it pathetically inadequate and entropic to understand the complexity of humanity. Furthermore, the governor of the state of Washington as volunteered to be the poster child of this truly sad movement.
However, what is really being stated in either case is simply a worldview which must be verified from without, to find the underlying truth if it exists at all.
To state that absolute truth does not exist, because I have defined my worldview as such, is really an argument from ignorance not enlightenment. Furthermore the error in that presupposition makes all the difference in the results if absolute truth exists, whereas an error that absolute truth does exist externally to the self, really has limited consequence because it is a guide not only in the present but an external hereafter.
To put this new century in the proper context, we all believe to some extent that here God’s transcendence does not exist, either in the natural law or common grace, or in specific revelation of the church and the Bible. All empirical evidence points to this truth, and also verifies that this truth is the reason the world looks like a world without transcendence.
Furthermore to be specifically redundant, the disconnect between God’s specific revelation in the Bible and His visual revelation in natural law and common grace have never been more disconnected. Consequently when you look at a world that seems absolutely chaotic, that is not myth, nor is that simply religion, that is also science. Chaos proceeds from order without a specific design. In absolute terms, the results of absolute entropy is (sic) perfect chaos, which by definition cannot exist philosophically without an absolute Perfect.
If you look at the Genesis creation story you see that God created chaos, perfectly chaotic in all forms. Here we see the first verbal illustration of specifically revealed transcendence. Furthermore, we see God creating order out of that chaos, which culminates not in stuff, animals and plants, but in mankind created in the image of God. Mankind therefore is the zenith of creation, or in another way, humanity is the ultimate purpose and destination of God’s transcendence.
Going back to our current lot in life, to say, preach and teach that human transcendence does not exist, is the height of stupidity, or probably more accurately the depth of depravity.
Now the lack of transcendence in church or understanding of transcendence in created nature is not a recent phenomena, it can be found throughout history, especially in ages which typically celebrate human enlightenment above all other forms of wisdom. However we here will just look at what was called the Transcendental Movement of the middle to late 19th century.
In New England at that time we find the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. Both men were well trained in the Holy Scriptures, Emerson an ordained Unitarian minister, but for complex reasons both rejected both New England Calvinism and Unitarianism, seeking instead a deeper more internal enlightened view of human nature and external nature, which was not accepted within the established church.
We carry this concept into the writings of the man who had more influence on the founding and the present environmental movement, Scottish born John Muir. Muir’s father was an extremely devout Calvinist who was responsible for literally beating that faith into the developing Muir. However as you read Muir’s writings he continually talked about God and finding His presence in nature.
In our context continued deism or theism must be contrasted with the atheism that you find derived from the early theological training of Darwin, Stalin, Hitler, and a whole host of philosophers and other leaders, who rejected and became hostile to Christianity.
Once a person has experienced God’s transcendence, either common or specific, they are drawn to that communion it cannot be rejected. However once one receives that gift of grace, it will reject any and all false manifestations, within the context of personal education and discernment. That includes religious hypocrisy within the church beyond the revealed transcendence. The conversion to atheism is the result of never experiencing the true nature of God’s grace and rejecting the false piety of religious imposters of truth.
Taking this into a broader context, it must all be interpreted within the inherited context of truly sinful fallen man. In that context we strive to personally develop a system of meaning for our lives. In other words we do everything within our power to make the transcendent nature of God, creation, and human nature, completely natural. Hence we falsely think we have chained and conquered our own savage beast, either within or without.
The complexity of these struggles makes way for not only true-life adventure stories and novels, but also passive acquiescence to the way things are and mundanely develop. In short we are, or attempt to be masters of our own destiny, even if that mastership is really just an allusion of fiction, for life for all intents and purposes is dominated by personal narcissism.
However, God’s natural transcendence; common and specific, is by definition an absolute that is not so much comprehended by the individual, but is passively apprehended through faith and grace. In that regard when naturalists communicate, “In Wildness is the Preservation of the World,” that reality is not the result of conquest but of rest or Sabbath.
So we see in the American confrontation with nature from pioneer days to the present, we bring American ingenuity and technology to conquer the natural world, for by definition, if we don’t, that scary reality will overwhelm our natural and specific insecurity. That takes place by using our toys whether that is a four-wheel drive vehicle or the most expensive outdoor green equipment.
In a similar light the Christian gospel is external to this human striving to be what we were created to be, but never can be obtained on our own merits. That gospel reunites the human created personality with that of our Creator, through the finished work of Jesus Christ, His death on the cross of Calvary for the sins of humanity, and His resurrection from the dead three days hence. In that same concept, to be the gospel, it cannot be achieved through the reality of human conquest, but only through the rest or Sabbath of God’s grace.
Just as in the wild, we bring toys and our understanding to save ourselves, through music, teaching, or experience, when in reality God’s saving grace must be received, essentially through what is considered Communion, the Lord’s Supper, or the Eucharist. That external symbolism brings transcendent rest, through it’s true mystery, we today utilize only in odd times and places, because we want only power we can control through out efforts.
In this complex communion, apprehended wildness and Communion both point to the rest of God’s transcendental revelations, each separate but unique, combined into the unity and diversity of the creation and of the Christian triune Godhead.
So the reason the world is currently going to hell is the fact that that is what humans have desired and God is giving us our wish. Our once proud organizations are disintegrating into chaos and we are wondering, why our desires, hard work, and wishful thinking are not achieving our desired goals, because they simply are not Divinely inspired. Our work is temporal only and does not even believe in transcendence in any form.
As a consequence our sowing to material stuff has yielded a temporal harvest of more quantity of less or no substance. It is only natural. While the world may want to change that reality, as the frozen chosen of God, the church is going to have to acknowledge that their place in culture, civilization, and the world is uniquely defined by God along certain guidelines.
Those guidelines focus upon changing chaos into order through the transcendental gift of the Christian gospel, external to human achievement. Until the church again offers true temporal and eternal security through the gospel, not her humanly wise programs, the United States and the world will be in for a long cold economic winter, and Christmas is just a little over two weeks away.
The American experiment was founded upon the noble and Christian principles of freedom and liberty. Along with these principles came some completely natural baggage, which can best be described in our new century as “noise and toys.” Noise and toys are not in anyway passive in their nature, but in their nature are they by no means transcendent. Noise and toys have, much of the time been promoted by the American church and those two specific idols are part and parcel of the Christianity we have exported around the world.
Noise and toys are commodities. If you listen to the news about what is now happening in America and the world economically, it is a lot of noise about how we can keep our toys. Church no longer practices a Sabbath, but has become a one hour plus a little, so that we can cram in two or three services, filled with essentially noise, so that people can go out and play with their toys. In the Christmas season, we add the stress that we need to by some toy for someone who really doesn’t need anything.
If you listen to sermon illustrations virtually all of them are relevant to our lives because they deal with noise and toys. Rare are the exceptions that deal with the nature of God, especially His transcendent nature. Consequently evangelicalism is now failing, just as did liberal Protestant denominations before that, and activist revivalism before that. In church, the peace of God that passes all understanding, passes only in the benediction if at all. All in all, God is absent, because we don’t come to worship God with any godly means, we come to attempt to ask or beg God to bless our lifestyle.
Seek quiet and peace this week and set aside some quality time to be with, or think about God and His place in your life. The essential element in that time is that noise and toys do not dictate the sacrifice. That is the beginning of transcendent wisdom.
PDF copy
Contrary to what you may have heard in church, sound Bible exposition requires a young earth. Your pastor may say that the age of the earth really doesn’t matter as long as you have Jesus and the cross, but that is really a logical argument from ignorance, because if the creation story is not essentially a story of somewhat literal days, and instead is gapped, or evolved into millions and billions of years, the whole Bible logically becomes a book of fables and myths.
There are a rapidly growing number of creation scientists on this earth who believe the Bible as written. Sadly there are very few theologians and pastors to which this “debate” makes a difference. Furthermore, as in the recent movie “Expelled”, which stars a Jewish Ben Stein, these creation scientists are being kicked out of their professions, not because they are so much Bible thumpers, but because they promote a view called “Intelligent Design.”
So where did these scientists learn their wild, primitive, knuckle dragging, unenlightened theology?
They learned it from the transcendent nature of their work in the natural or common field of science in which they had chosen to study. Not only is creation too complex to have happened by chance, evolution by it’s core presupposition denies the truth of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, except for quantum leaps of faith and complexity, to bring us miraculously to this ancient but present completely natural state.
In the quest of where did I come from and what is my destiny, Intelligent Design is no better than evolution in answering these questions. However, theologians and pastors for some reason think this is an intelligent response to the problems that are facing this world. I suppose the logic goes, “If people believe in a Designer, they will search for Him and they will find Him in Jesus in the Bible and church, then they will ask Jesus into their heart and will be saved, and the world will be a better place.”
This of course assumes the evolutionary presupposition that we are all good people evolving to a higher level of good consciousness, and denies the reality of another Bible Genesis theological principle and that is sin, in the form of Total Depravity. This is best codified in the words of Julie Andrews from a song in the “Sound of Music,” “Nothing comes from nothing, nothing ever could, so somewhere in my youth or childhood, I must have done something good.”
Thus we have the prime theological construct of all human religion, whichever handle you choose to place the spin, including the religion of evolution. “I am good, and I am getting better, but I’m not too sure about you.” (Because in my worldview I am superior to you)
The deep crisis now facing the world is only externally connected to subprime housing, or of financial speculation gone contrary to good and increasing wealth intensions. The problems facing the world are that we have defined the natural world and religion, including dumbing down of Christianity, in only natural terms. The transcendent nature of creation, or religion(s) are just myths from our pre-enlightened history.
One of the results of this dumbing down process is the current “Christmas Crisis” taking place in the Capitol Building in the Great State of Washington. Briefly for those unaware, as of this writing, there is a sign next to a nativity scene in the Capitol Building stating essentially that all religious people are stupid and primitive, there is nothing more to life than what you see.
The former Attorney General of the state and now completing her first term as governor, Christine Gregoire, just can’t seem to understand why not only are Christians, but all theists are so upset about the presence of this essentially “hate speech placard” being present in this season of Christmas and Hanukkah, as light is supposed to illuminate the darkness of the human soul.
Actually in that total context, it is a quite impressive reason for the season. What the unenlightened governor may learn is that by this time next year she will have faced impeachment proceedings. That would be a good thing to illustrate not karma, but transcendental truth.
Going back to the Genesis creation story.
If the earth really is only thousands not millions and billions of years old, the construct of all humanity drastically changes from a really boring undefined history of time, into a dynamic construct of rapid stupendous change, not only in the natural creation sense, but also in the world of human culture and civilization.
Probably the most shocking is the fact that Adam and Eve were probably pretty smart people, and we the highly evolved citizens of the 21st century are really pretty dumb in comparison. After all, according to the Bible, Adam was created out of the dust of the earth, but in the image of God. That is by definition a pretty complex transcendent happening.
Now the argument to counter our inherited stupidity rapidly becomes, look at all the stuff that we have surrounding our lives, which we hope will truly bring meaning to our dreary existence. But if you look carefully at the stuff what the stuff really says is that stuff is all there is. By definition transcendence does not exist, therefore there is really no reason to look beyond the stuff to find any meaning to life. You can call that highly evolved and enlightened if you like, or you can call it pathetically inadequate and entropic to understand the complexity of humanity. Furthermore, the governor of the state of Washington as volunteered to be the poster child of this truly sad movement.
However, what is really being stated in either case is simply a worldview which must be verified from without, to find the underlying truth if it exists at all.
To state that absolute truth does not exist, because I have defined my worldview as such, is really an argument from ignorance not enlightenment. Furthermore the error in that presupposition makes all the difference in the results if absolute truth exists, whereas an error that absolute truth does exist externally to the self, really has limited consequence because it is a guide not only in the present but an external hereafter.
To put this new century in the proper context, we all believe to some extent that here God’s transcendence does not exist, either in the natural law or common grace, or in specific revelation of the church and the Bible. All empirical evidence points to this truth, and also verifies that this truth is the reason the world looks like a world without transcendence.
Furthermore to be specifically redundant, the disconnect between God’s specific revelation in the Bible and His visual revelation in natural law and common grace have never been more disconnected. Consequently when you look at a world that seems absolutely chaotic, that is not myth, nor is that simply religion, that is also science. Chaos proceeds from order without a specific design. In absolute terms, the results of absolute entropy is (sic) perfect chaos, which by definition cannot exist philosophically without an absolute Perfect.
If you look at the Genesis creation story you see that God created chaos, perfectly chaotic in all forms. Here we see the first verbal illustration of specifically revealed transcendence. Furthermore, we see God creating order out of that chaos, which culminates not in stuff, animals and plants, but in mankind created in the image of God. Mankind therefore is the zenith of creation, or in another way, humanity is the ultimate purpose and destination of God’s transcendence.
Going back to our current lot in life, to say, preach and teach that human transcendence does not exist, is the height of stupidity, or probably more accurately the depth of depravity.
Now the lack of transcendence in church or understanding of transcendence in created nature is not a recent phenomena, it can be found throughout history, especially in ages which typically celebrate human enlightenment above all other forms of wisdom. However we here will just look at what was called the Transcendental Movement of the middle to late 19th century.
In New England at that time we find the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. Both men were well trained in the Holy Scriptures, Emerson an ordained Unitarian minister, but for complex reasons both rejected both New England Calvinism and Unitarianism, seeking instead a deeper more internal enlightened view of human nature and external nature, which was not accepted within the established church.
We carry this concept into the writings of the man who had more influence on the founding and the present environmental movement, Scottish born John Muir. Muir’s father was an extremely devout Calvinist who was responsible for literally beating that faith into the developing Muir. However as you read Muir’s writings he continually talked about God and finding His presence in nature.
In our context continued deism or theism must be contrasted with the atheism that you find derived from the early theological training of Darwin, Stalin, Hitler, and a whole host of philosophers and other leaders, who rejected and became hostile to Christianity.
Once a person has experienced God’s transcendence, either common or specific, they are drawn to that communion it cannot be rejected. However once one receives that gift of grace, it will reject any and all false manifestations, within the context of personal education and discernment. That includes religious hypocrisy within the church beyond the revealed transcendence. The conversion to atheism is the result of never experiencing the true nature of God’s grace and rejecting the false piety of religious imposters of truth.
Taking this into a broader context, it must all be interpreted within the inherited context of truly sinful fallen man. In that context we strive to personally develop a system of meaning for our lives. In other words we do everything within our power to make the transcendent nature of God, creation, and human nature, completely natural. Hence we falsely think we have chained and conquered our own savage beast, either within or without.
The complexity of these struggles makes way for not only true-life adventure stories and novels, but also passive acquiescence to the way things are and mundanely develop. In short we are, or attempt to be masters of our own destiny, even if that mastership is really just an allusion of fiction, for life for all intents and purposes is dominated by personal narcissism.
However, God’s natural transcendence; common and specific, is by definition an absolute that is not so much comprehended by the individual, but is passively apprehended through faith and grace. In that regard when naturalists communicate, “In Wildness is the Preservation of the World,” that reality is not the result of conquest but of rest or Sabbath.
So we see in the American confrontation with nature from pioneer days to the present, we bring American ingenuity and technology to conquer the natural world, for by definition, if we don’t, that scary reality will overwhelm our natural and specific insecurity. That takes place by using our toys whether that is a four-wheel drive vehicle or the most expensive outdoor green equipment.
In a similar light the Christian gospel is external to this human striving to be what we were created to be, but never can be obtained on our own merits. That gospel reunites the human created personality with that of our Creator, through the finished work of Jesus Christ, His death on the cross of Calvary for the sins of humanity, and His resurrection from the dead three days hence. In that same concept, to be the gospel, it cannot be achieved through the reality of human conquest, but only through the rest or Sabbath of God’s grace.
Just as in the wild, we bring toys and our understanding to save ourselves, through music, teaching, or experience, when in reality God’s saving grace must be received, essentially through what is considered Communion, the Lord’s Supper, or the Eucharist. That external symbolism brings transcendent rest, through it’s true mystery, we today utilize only in odd times and places, because we want only power we can control through out efforts.
In this complex communion, apprehended wildness and Communion both point to the rest of God’s transcendental revelations, each separate but unique, combined into the unity and diversity of the creation and of the Christian triune Godhead.
So the reason the world is currently going to hell is the fact that that is what humans have desired and God is giving us our wish. Our once proud organizations are disintegrating into chaos and we are wondering, why our desires, hard work, and wishful thinking are not achieving our desired goals, because they simply are not Divinely inspired. Our work is temporal only and does not even believe in transcendence in any form.
As a consequence our sowing to material stuff has yielded a temporal harvest of more quantity of less or no substance. It is only natural. While the world may want to change that reality, as the frozen chosen of God, the church is going to have to acknowledge that their place in culture, civilization, and the world is uniquely defined by God along certain guidelines.
Those guidelines focus upon changing chaos into order through the transcendental gift of the Christian gospel, external to human achievement. Until the church again offers true temporal and eternal security through the gospel, not her humanly wise programs, the United States and the world will be in for a long cold economic winter, and Christmas is just a little over two weeks away.
The American experiment was founded upon the noble and Christian principles of freedom and liberty. Along with these principles came some completely natural baggage, which can best be described in our new century as “noise and toys.” Noise and toys are not in anyway passive in their nature, but in their nature are they by no means transcendent. Noise and toys have, much of the time been promoted by the American church and those two specific idols are part and parcel of the Christianity we have exported around the world.
Noise and toys are commodities. If you listen to the news about what is now happening in America and the world economically, it is a lot of noise about how we can keep our toys. Church no longer practices a Sabbath, but has become a one hour plus a little, so that we can cram in two or three services, filled with essentially noise, so that people can go out and play with their toys. In the Christmas season, we add the stress that we need to by some toy for someone who really doesn’t need anything.
If you listen to sermon illustrations virtually all of them are relevant to our lives because they deal with noise and toys. Rare are the exceptions that deal with the nature of God, especially His transcendent nature. Consequently evangelicalism is now failing, just as did liberal Protestant denominations before that, and activist revivalism before that. In church, the peace of God that passes all understanding, passes only in the benediction if at all. All in all, God is absent, because we don’t come to worship God with any godly means, we come to attempt to ask or beg God to bless our lifestyle.
Seek quiet and peace this week and set aside some quality time to be with, or think about God and His place in your life. The essential element in that time is that noise and toys do not dictate the sacrifice. That is the beginning of transcendent wisdom.