1 Peter additional study — Rules of Containment
1-peter-additional-study-rules-of-containment
IN SEARCH OF RULES OF CONTAINMENT
BY J. MICHAEL STRAWN
INTRODUCTION:
In 1 Peter, we see that the Holy Spirit serves as a link or index between the unseen eternal world and the seen temporal world where we live. As the only independent element in the index column (which also includes revelation, faith, and the manipulation of symbols), we have seen that all functions are ultimately built upon the presence of the Holy Spirit.
The realm of operation of the Spirit today is primarily through symbols. Language itself is symbols, and since nothing the Spirit does or has ever done was arbitrary, let us attempt to see the ways in which He has indexed and operated in the past to see if we can derive generalizations from these which would help us to understand the rules by which He has always operated in the use of language. One way we could do this is by understanding the concept of containment, seeing the operation of this concept in Scripture, applying these operations to language, and the formulation of some guidelines or rules of containment. Of course, any rules we discover we can expect to be contingent, not causal.
THE CONCEPT OF CONTAINMENT
One way we can understand containment is by seeing a second-story office. Before the walls and floor of that office were built, the space inside it was “contained” by the imagination of the architect. He indexed that contained space by action: putting up the walls and floor and roof made his representation a fact.
All indexed space is expensive. The office space you pay rent on is much more expensive than the unenclosed air it was before. High-pressure hoses, the hydraulic brake systems of cars, automobile tires: all index space or substance. Indexed or contained things are inherently valuable.
CONTAINMENT IN SCRIPTURE
In the Old Testament, the Tabernacle (and later the Temple) were indexed space. The Tabernacle, for instance, indexed some of the qualities of God onto space and made it holy. By so doing, it became the antithesis of self-reference because its function was to point to the Presence of God which it enclosed.
This indexed space was so important that the Kohathites were told that they should cover it before moving the Tabernacle. The implication was that dis-contained space was dangerous (see the example of Uzzah.) Another example of uncontained space was the mountain that Moses ascended. People, even animals, would be destroyed if they approached it.
However, the emphasis was not on the containment, but on What filled the contained space. In the example of the Tabernacle and Temple, it was the presence of God. This was demonstrated in a physical way by the smoke that filled the Temple after its dedication.
Another element of containment is that it creates incongruity with its surroundings. Wayfarers in the desert would never expect to see the ornateness of the Tabernacle in the barren wasteland. Its beauty must have been a startling contrast to everything that surrounded it.
There are many Scriptural examples of the process of indexing containment. The body of the young girl Mary was a containment, the site of the indexing of the will of God onto the physical world. We will look at many more when we examine some tentative rules of containment.
APPLYING PRINCIPLES OF CONTAINMENT TO USE OF LANGUAGE AND GENERALIZATIONS
Containment in the Bible was inherently opposed to the self-reference of man, and always pointed to God and to His work. The Church today, as a symbol of containment, should do the same. If an organization or group of people manifests self-reference and worldly thinking, then its identity as the Church would certainly be suspect.
The submission of women, for instance, would symbolize not only containment but the submission of the human race before God. A husband’s love for his wife (very much an issue in 1 Peter) would result in the containment of fulfillment for his wife, while his abuse of her would result in bitterness. An unbelieving husband could be won without a word because his wife would demonstrate a containment of the unseen in her life. Our modern theory of psychotherapy, on the other hand, violates the principles of containment because of its basis in self-reference: what t will result in “happiness” or “feeling good.”
Paul in 1 Corinthians calls upon us to take all thoughts captive, and to demonstrate containment by acting as a temple of the Holy Spirit. Such discrete space calls for discrete language: hence the search for rules of containment used by the Holy Spirit in His use of language.
Structures like the Tabernacle and Temple, as well as the Church, show containment, lack of self-reference, and model such for us. They demonstrate the indexing of the abstract onto the concrete; the idea onto the physical. The call of God in 1 Peter to “be holy, as I am holy” implies all of these things in human life–the exclusion of outside influences, the containment of the presence of God within each of us. With the concept of indexing firmly in our minds, can we move to trying to ferret out the principles by which the Holy Spirit operated in His use of language when He conveyed the deep things of God into human language?
RULES OF CONTAINMENT
By way of introduction to these rules, we acknowledge that there are apparently three types of logic: induction, deduction, and what Charles Peirce called “abduction.” Einstein, Peirce, and others have struggled with this third type which they have termed inexplicable. Perhaps this can be equated with the rules of containment which we can extract from Scripture.
Rule #1: In deriving generalizations from the text (if we are to operate in the way the Spirit operated in moving from the thoughts of God to putting them into human language) we cannot permit free associations. The Spirit made choices: He said certain things and did not say others. He chose some details and did not choose others.
We can see this mirrored in the way that God chose patterns and symbols for the Tabernacle and for the Temple. There was a complete absence of, and encouragement to, human self-reference. Therefore, we cannot arbitrarily through language chose to connect linguistic symbols to temporal situations. This is both a structure and a protection for us.
Rule #2: Human abduction is an analog of the work of the Holy Spirit. If the index position of the Holy Spirit is one of abduction (it certainly does not reflect either induction nor deduction), then as we indexes as well serve as analogs of the work of the Holy Spirit who brought the deep things of God (1 Corinthians chapter 2) “across the hinge” into the temporal sphere. Notice the parallelism: the Holy Spirit is index of the deep things of God onto human language as revelation; the craftsmen of the tabernacle, Bezalel and Oholiab (Exodus 31) were used as indices of the intentions of God as mapped by the Spirit onto the raw materials that became the tabernacle; we index (and thus serve as analogs of the Spirit) the intentions of God as we manipulate symbols.
Rule #3: Scripture is to be read as a symbolic universe–it teaches us how to symbolize. Scripture is itself “a work of symbols on symbols.” Thus from it we learn to symbolize (manipulate symbols linguistically as well as permitting our lives and demeanor to be symbols to the outside world).
Rule #4: We must, as the Holy Spirit does, mark antipodes. Antipodes are opposed things, opposites. We see them throughout Scripture: disobedience, loss of faith, perdition–all consequences of human beings who decided to make “free abductions” about their situations (conclusions that were not analogs of the Spirit.)
Some examples: The book of James in particular draws attention to antipodes: Abraham, Lot, and Rahab had to abduct and make decisions on the basis of conclusions that were opposed to “reality”–what others thought, what had worked in the past in their own experiences, anything that would have resulted from a tallying of their own “resources.”
Rule #5: We must disregard contextual, human-based symbols in favor of those supplied by the Spirit. There are several reasons for this. First, since we serve as analogs of the Spirit as we read Scripture and manipulate symbols, we must be free as the Spirit was of self-reference. Secondly, we cannot make connection of the eternal to the temporal except through symbols, and those of human thinking are by nature functionally degenerate. Thirdly, no assessment of anything can be accurate when based in the temporal given the fact that we have the superiority of God’s panoramic knowledge available through revelation.
Rule #6: Violation of containment has real space-time implications and consequences. This rule is most clearly seen in the Old Testament book of Haggai. In chapter one, God confronts the people for the way that they have neglected that ultimate symbol of containment, the temple. Because the temple was lying in ruins, the people were suffering financially. They never made the connection that because they were violating containment, God would withhold the rain and the fruitfulness of their crops. Not only would they not gain financially, even what they thought they already had would be blown away (1:9)–even their plans.
SOME APPLICATIONS AND OBSERVATIONS:
Just as the space that the tabernacle enclosed did not become holy until contained by the timbers, coverings, and other materials designed by the Spirit of God, in the same way language marks out containment spaces of meaning when those symbols point to an eternal reality. Put another way, the absolute symbols of the Spirit were indexed by the craftsmen onto responsive space; the intentions of God were indexed by the Spirit onto human language–symbols on this material side of reality.
We as humans are powerless to link the invisible to the temporal except through symbols. By the process of abduction, we can become analogs of the Spirit. The only way that abduction can function is if the universe truly is rhetorical: that is, if it is truly responsive to God. Any Christian can abduct if he eschews free associations, if he sees his position as index as an analog to the Holy Spirit, if he sees the universe as a symbolic one and reads Scripture accordingly, if he marks antipodes, and if he disregards all contextual representations of the universe: the rules of containment.
Rahab’s speech to the spies and her subsequent actions show that she abducted and followed these rules of containment. The erection of the Tabernacle showed these rules: the craftsmen followed a pattern (no free abduction), served as analogs of the work of the Spirit, saw the covenant and revelation as a symbolic universe, marked antipodes (didn’t do certain things like make steps that went up to the altar, all saw antipodes in the “do not”s of the 10 Commandments), and had to disregard contextual elements (didn’t make Tabernacle according to the Egyptian styles they’d seen for 400 years, etc.)
Without containment, you cannot know what is holy and what is not. While some of our powers of reason can be useful (concluding that the exit to a building is through a door since all other exits you’ve seen were doors) but even such “knowledge” must be subjugated to eternal knowledge. In the case of the craftsmen, they were told where to put the acacia poles for indexing a space that would become a door.
In 1 Peter, the believers were not permitted free abductions (conclusions about why they were suffering or how they should comport themselves in the midst of suffering), had to serve as analogs (LIST HERE), saw the universe as symbolic and responsive to God, marked antipodes (could act and think only in certain ways and not in others), and had to disregard human symbols in favor of what God told them was reality.
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