Truth V

Don: Last week I said we would look at Romans 1:18-25, which gives an explicit definition of the truth about god:

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.

So one of the issues is what can we know about god, and this tells us we can know his divine nature and eternal power, whatever they may be.

For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures.

Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them.

Here’s the crux:

For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.

How are we to understand the truth about god in the context of a creator and his creatures? Is the truth of god rooted in the creation of god? The creator/creature theme permeates scripture. Genesis 1 is of course the primary example:

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters. Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness.

This passage brings together the theme of creation with another core theme of scripture: Light, whose theological and metaphorical import we discussed at length three years ago, concluding that Light reflects the nature and the personhood of god. In the very first chapter of the bible the Creation and the manifestation of Light together convey a certain truth about god.

Indeed, this concept of the creator and the creation being the source and the manifestation of Light is seen from the beginning to the end of the bible, from Genesis to Revelation. In Revelation, we see the creative power of god going back to work to create a new heaven and a new earth—a new beginning.

In Genesis (chapter 3 primarily) we see that eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge undoes the relationship between the creator and his creation. God said “Behold, the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil.” We have spent much time in recent weeks on the relationship between knowledge and the truth about god, and how knowledge (particularly the knowledge of good and evil) makes up a sort of dataset that may or may not reveal the truth about god. Romans 1:20 seems to appeal to that dataset: “For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.” In other words, man has had a sensory experience of something that reveals something about the truth about god.

The 2nd Commandment forbids our creating images of god, including (in my interpretation) not just physical idols of stone and precious metals, but also imaginary, mental constructs of god. We anthropomorphize god, making him just like us only bigger, faster, smarter, and so on, but otherwise he is enough like us to share our points of view. The commandment warns us against this, but we do it anyway, and we often use our knowledge, our datasets, not only to build imaginary gods that make sense to us but also—worse—to impose our image of god on others (distressingly, often forcefully) as though god were speaking through us in order to get his word out to others.

To know good from evil appears to be god’s prerogative. An argument might be made that Man can discriminate somewhat between the two, but good or evil cannot be adjudicated from a moral code. It requires omniscience and perfect understanding of the truth about the universe from the beginning to the end of time, from alpha to omega. Lacking those attributes—not being god—we risk making grave errors in judgment of good and evil. Last week we looked at several stories that illustrated this point. Yet the data points do seem to have some value, as Job 12:7-12 suggests:

“But now ask the beasts, and let them teach you;
And the birds of the heavens, and let them tell you.
“Or speak to the earth, and let it teach you;
And let the fish of the sea declare to you.
“Who among all these does not know
That the hand of the Lord has done this,
In whose hand is the life of every living thing,
And the breath of all mankind?
“Does not the ear test words,
As the palate tastes its food?
“Wisdom is with aged men,
With long life is understanding.”

So does Psalms 19:1-4:

The heavens are telling of the glory of God;
And their expanse is declaring the work of His hands.
Day to day pours forth speech,
And night to night reveals knowledge.
There is no speech, nor are there words;
Their voice is not heard.
Their line has gone out through all the earth,
And their utterances to the end of the world.
In them He has placed a tent for the sun,…

It seems there is something in the creation that may say something specific about god and his invisible attributes of eternal power and divine nature. The creation concept relies on the centrality and the creative power of god. Scripture and particularly the teaching of Jesus emphasize the father-son relationship. The father is the creator of the son. The son is the creature of the father. Jesus taught what that relationship means. Most revealing was the parable of the prodigal son, which involved not just a creation but also a re-creation (of the relationship when the son returned.)

What do the concepts of the creator and the creature, of father and son, of god’s creative power, and of man’s reliance upon god’s creative power, teach us about the truth about god?

Alice: All the scriptures Don just read affirm God as creator. That attribute alone constitutes the whole Truth to many believers. But it is just one attribute among many the bible describes, such as god the redeemer, god the father, god the replenisher of faith, and so on. So is “Creator” sufficient to describe the whole Truth about god? Does it encompass all his other attributes?

Charles: If, taking the context of the Fall, one applies to the Creation of the universe and the Creation of Man the attributes of invisibility, eternity, and divinity, we begin to see the process whereby the acquisition of knowledge led Man to creature-worship (in a sense, self-worship) and worship of things of form in general. Lacking the godly attributes, the worship of our visible, impermanent, profane world of forms must inevitably lead to suffering and ultimate death.

The process of understanding this began with the switch from total trust in, and surrender to, the will of a divine god, to total surrender to the will of Man, which took place in the Garden of Eden. Most of the stories in the Old and new Testaments point towards this misplacement of trust, but most instructive of all is the example of Jesus who, in his human incarnation, had physical form and was therefore subject to its limitations of impermanence and death. But through surrendering, through giving his complete trust, to the will of god, after death he was able to transcend the physical world of form and manifest the divine and (as a spirit) the invisible nature of god.

I constantly return to Jesus’ statement in John 14:2: “In My Father’s house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you.” I used to think of it as preparing a place in heaven for each of us, but now I wonder if “house” does not mean the divine spirit and that the life, teaching, physical suffering and death of Jesus were in preparation for the divine nature, the spirit of Jesus, to become manifest within us to the extent that we accept the suffering and impermanence of our human condition and surrender our wills totally to god.

So the image of the creator, the father, the son, the permanent, and the divine are juxtaposed against our world in the story, the life, the example—the Truth!—of Jesus.

Sylvester: The Catholic Church has fought over the doctrine of Christ being a creation as opposed to a creator. The Catholic Church has concluded that Christ was an Original Creation, that the Trinity existed at and from the beginning. But it’s not exactly clear. Are we saying that Christ was created because of and therefore some time after the Fall?

Don: I think you are referring to the conflict in the early Christian church between the Arian concept of Christ as one created by god the father versus the Athanasian creed in which the equality of the three persons of the Trinity is explicitly stated. The church came to adopt the Athanasian view, and in our discussion of the Truth about god I am not trying to revive the dispute. I think essentially of the creator as the godhead, and the creation as mankind.

Sylvester: It seems to me as if the creator left something in our brains to reach out to him, to yearn for him. In Psalms 1:19 there is something, some element, in the creation that yearns for the creator. C.S. Lewis called it the Moral Compass. It is universal, and it crosses all religious and non-religious boundaries. It was given to us by a being external to our physical world. It can be and is denied, but it is there all the same. Lewis uses this as evidence for the existence of god.

Jay: When we studied the theology of light, we spent a lot of time on the Genesis creation story and especially the “Let there be Light”, whose creation preceded the creation of the sun and the moon and the stars so it must be a different. God’s acknowledgment of this Light as good and the separation of Light from Darkness on Day 1 of creation makes it foundational; it is no mere collection of photons. It seems, like the yearning we all feel, to be part of the Truth about god.

Ecclesiastes 12 reminds us that the older we get, the more knowledge we get, the harder it becomes to connect to the creator. Hence the common call to become as a child in order to regain our connection with the creator.

Remember also your Creator in the days of your youth, before the evil days come and the years draw near when you will say, “I have no delight in them”; before the sun and the light, the moon and the stars are darkened, and clouds return after the rain; in the day that the watchmen of the house tremble, and mighty men stoop, the grinding ones stand idle because they are few, and those who look through windows grow dim; and the doors on the street are shut as the sound of the grinding mill is low, and one will arise at the sound of the bird, and all the daughters of song will sing softly. Furthermore, men are afraid of a high place and of terrors on the road; the almond tree blossoms, the grasshopper drags himself along, and the caperberry is ineffective. For man goes to his eternal home while mourners go about in the street. Remember Him before the silver cord is broken and the golden bowl is crushed, the pitcher by the well is shattered and the wheel at the cistern is crushed; then the dust will return to the earth as it was, and the spirit will return to God who gave it. “Vanity of vanities,” says the Preacher, “all is vanity!”

In addition to being a wise man, the Preacher also taught the people knowledge; and he pondered, searched out and arranged many proverbs. The Preacher sought to find delightful words and to write words of truth correctly.

The words of wise men are like goads, and masters of these collections are like well-driven nails; they are given by one Shepherd. But beyond this, my son, be warned: the writing of many books is endless, and excessive devotion to books is wearying to the body.

The conclusion, when all has been heard, is: fear God and keep His commandments, because this applies to every person. For God will bring every act to judgment, everything which is hidden, whether it is good or evil.

Don: Ecclesiastes 3:11 is also relevant here: “He has made everything appropriate in its time. He has also set eternity in their heart….” And John 1:9 talks about “…the true Light which, coming into the world, enlightens every man.” This is the god connector, the “something” that Sylvester describes as having been put into our brains by god.

David: Mother Theresa is a perfect example of how one’s connection with god seems to weaken with age, as Ecclesiastes 12 predicts. When she was young, that connection must have been very strong indeed to have led her not just to a life as a nun but to life as a nun serving the poorest of the poor; yet in her late years she expressed doubts about god, in letters published after her death.

Robin: Perhaps when we are young we are unconcerned about the evils in the world and more wrapped up in selfish, superficial and frivolous things such as how we look, how others perceive us, in material things, and so on. But as get older, we become more aware of the trauma in the world, and perhaps it’s this that shakes our faith.

Don: That’s the transient, suffering part of life that Charles has alluded to.

Romans 1 outlines in fairly general terms the notion of what we can or should know about god, of what our sensing of the natural world should tell us about god’s abilities and attributes of invisibility, power, and divinity. It strikes me that we don’t spend much time talking about this. We’d rather talk about what god wants us to do with a whole variety of very specific things such as war, abortion, poverty, capital punishment, and so on. These are issues about which god is most often used or abused, to try to make points supporting a position on an issue. Yet Romans 1 says that what we can know about god through the creation is only his invisibility, his eternal power, and his divinity. If we were to limit our understanding of god and speak on god’s behalf concerning these three attributes, how would that affect our discourse concerning god? How would it affect how we share our faith about god? Would it change a lot about how we practice what we know about god?

Kiran: It would lead us to the simple notion of Love as the nature of god.

Sylvester: The famous Christian apologist evangelical Ravi Zacharias has declared that four things—wonder, truth, love, and security—are what give meaning to life at different stages as we age. Children start out with wonder about the world. Youth seeks truth, and soon after seeks love and a family. Finally, we are content just to have security. If all of these are fulfilled, then in theory we have lived a fulfilled life. But in practice we still want wonder, truth,and love at all stages in life. He concludes that our sense of wonder can only be fulfilled by the mystical power that is god, who wants to interact with us. His invisibility and his power and divinity are the source of wonder in those of a spiritual bent who are prepared to acknowledge them. When I was younger, I longed to witness the power of god as Moses saw it manifested, but we tend not to seek this manifestation any more. It seems to be something missing in us.

David: Perhaps Romans is telling us that god cannot be perceived, cannot be known, cannot be manifested to us as he was to Moses. We can perceive and know god only indirectly, reflected dimly, vaguely, in the things he has created. In that sense it seems a fairly simple message.

Robin: Paul keeps addressing this, as in Corinthians 1:18-31:

For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written,

“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,
And the cleverness of the clever I will set aside.”

Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not come to know God, God was well-pleased through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. For indeed Jews ask for signs and Greeks search for wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block and to Gentiles foolishness, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

For consider your calling, brethren, that there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble; but God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong, and the base things of the world and the despised God has chosen, the things that are not, so that He may nullify the things that are, so that no man may boast before God. But by His doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption, so that, just as it is written, “Let him who boasts, boast in the Lord.”

To me, what this passage means is that God’s wisdom is the opposite of what we think it is, of how we think the world should work. God considers the least informed and foolish-seeming among us to be the wisest.

Jay: What we as human beings perceive as weakness relates to the messages of Jesus to turn the other check and do other things that in this world seem foolish in the extreme. But god wants us to be foolish in the extreme!

Sylvester: Romans 1 is cloudy. It seems to suggest that one ought to be able to “clearly see” god’s invisible attributes, an oxymoron!

Heaven: This invisibility, this divineness of god is very mysterious. 1 Corinthians 2:7-16 talks about the holy spirit, the spirit of god:

…but we speak God’s wisdom in a mystery, the hidden wisdom which God predestined before the ages to our glory; the wisdom which none of the rulers of this age has understood; for if they had understood it they would not have crucified the Lord of glory; but just as it is written,

“Things which eye has not seen and ear has not heard,
And which have not entered the heart of man,
All that God has prepared for those who love Him.”

For to us God revealed them through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God. For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so the thoughts of God no one knows except the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may know the things freely given to us by God, which things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words.

But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised. But he who is spiritual appraises all things, yet he himself is appraised by no one. For who has known the mind of the Lord, that he will instruct Him? But we have the mind of Christ.

Don: Does that mean that things of the spirit cannot be apprehended by data points?

Heather: Spiritual things are spiritually discerned. In your natural state living life as a carnal human being divorced from and not even seeking a spiritual life, then you will not be able to discern things of the spirit, even if they are easily seen.

Jay: It seems that spiritual discernment is easier the more childlike one is. This is contrary to the worldly discernment that comes through the acquisition of knowledge. So, somehow, one needs to find a way to remain in a childlike state even as one ages.

Heaven: Humility goes along with wonder, but not with knowledge. The more humble one is, the more one will be inclined to wonder, to marvel; whereas the more knowledge one acquires (including even bible-based doctrinal knowledge, not just scientific knowledge) the less humble one tends to be. Pride is a road block to spirituality. It makes one think one has arrived, when in fact one has regressed.

David: I maintain that we can see goodness and that goodness=god, therefore we can clearly see god. But in all humility, perhaps we only think we see goodness. Perhaps god views goodness differently.

Don: Next week we’ll explore more about the father-son relationship, and the necessity for a childlike state, which has the virtue of simplicity but seems to reduce the understanding of god to some insignificant and simplistic ideas.

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