1 Peter Lesson 3– The Relocating Gulf
1-peter-lesson-3-relocating-gulf
FIRST PETER: THE RHETORICAL UNIVERSE
BY J. MICHAEL STRAWN
PHASE 2: EMBRACES TRANSCENDENT MEANING (AND THE RELOCATING GULF)
INTRODUCTION AND TERMINOLOGY
One demand that the world makes on believers is that they conform to what the world would define as “realism.” However, non- believers would define something as “realistic” if it either conformed to the world’s context; or alternately, fit smoothly into the context. That context, of course, would involve data observation, quantification, statistical regularity and its attendant patternism–all those things that the Cartesian partision would characterize as “self-evident truth”.
Human observations about self and surroundings aren’t inherent to the thinking process, nor do the “spring out of Mother Earth.” The human brain makes observations according to one of two planes of meaning: that which is derived from human observation and subsequent interpolation, or that which is revealed–imported from the mind of God.
Peter calls believers to a product of that imported thinking: an inheritance that will not spoil, fade, or perish. This promise, and the point of view that it would engender if embraced, must lead to conclusions about reality that not only are not supported by statistical regularity and other elements of human observation–Peter’s conclusion would actually militate against such contextual conclusions. All the great pragmatic examples of Scripture, in fact, are in direct opposition to statistical regularity and what non believers would see as self-evident, natural patterns of this world. After all, people don’t achieve deliverance from floods, armies, sterility, giants, even death by natural patterns. These are acheived, as Hebrews 11 teaches, only by faith.
Peter’s observation that this inheritance is “kept” elsewhere suggests the idea that the gulf that exists between us in this temporal existence and eternity can actually be moved over and relocated between us and those who operate on contextual intelligence. Believers accept a different, imported meaning for their circumstances than the contextual observer would acheive. Since such meaning is revealed from outside of human experience, it would naturally be expressed not in contextual sociological language but in a different, hierarchal language. Just as eternal meanings can’t be subjected to “loaded” contextual language, they cannot be subjected to assessment by other human conventions either.
The gulf that originally exists between the eternal (the intelligence of God, revelation) and the temporal (intelligence of man, experience) relocates. A believer is embraced and subsumed by the etenal, even while he continues to live in the temporal sphere. But this is not an automatic action–it is acheived by an act of the will, by figuratively throwing contextual thinking over one’s shoulder and putting distance between one’s own thinking processes and those of the world.
What changes does a relocated gulf bring about? Peter asks that we both achieve and maintain the new position of a gulf between us and contextual thinking. Not just actions and lifestyle change when the gulf is relocated–but all understandings are subject to change as we join God and put the gulf between us and contextual thinking. A person with a relocated gulf would make no attempt to create unity between Scripture and what he’s always thought–he would earnestly desire to impose truth on the world of experience.
ELEMENTS OF THE THEMATIC:
The large thematic shows that we can observe two planes of meaning. One is the world of experience and appearances. This is where we would feel the universal effects of earth-life that Peter talks about: disappointment, decay, dissolution that he calls those things that “perish, spoil, and fade.” In the uninformed world of experience, such things can only be defined and understood by their context.
The believer is surrounded by what we might call a “cordon of relativity”–a mental zone in which circumstances become relativized. The embrace of eternal meanings in what we would call our “world of phenomena of concern” (the arc of circumstances that touch and concern us) causes a believer to want to place a gulf between himself and worldly understandings, not between himself and God.
That’s because in heaven, the origin of the other plane of meaning, there is a great reward, an inheritance. It is removed from and not subject to human conventions and influence. It fits no known earthly patterns, and obeys no “statistical laws” such as are supposed to operate on the other side of the gulf. Far from being verifiable by empiric means, this inheritance and all it stands for is anomalous in an earthly sense.
Such an “untestable” quality would lead some to think that embracing this plane of meaning would be equivalent to some sort of gnosticism or mysticism. It’s true, such revealed meaning can’t be extrapolated from earthly contexts and is non-relativized in that sense. But just because a contextual thinker does not recognize the analog thinking does not mean that it is based on the gnostic/mystic nor on character flaws (the “pridefulness” of a believer whose convictions can’t be empirically tested.)
Relocating the gulf inherently and invariably leads to conflict. Inner conflict within the mind of the struggling believer is to be expected, because he must enter into mental battle with his context and all the ways it tries to inform him: “realism,” data observation, quantization, patternization, “self-evident truth,” and even the process of description when it is enmeshed in self-referential context.
Other results are more external: the necessity of deciding how one will read the Text (devotionally? In a socio-historic context? For doctrinal “cues”?); as well as in the frequent familial conflict when parents or spouses or children decide to act on non-contextual, revealed truths.
However, if believers permit the promises of God to be subjected to human understanding and contextual meaning, then in a crisis we will be unable to deal with the situations from the heavenly plane of meaning. In a marriage, for instance, if one or both partners’ planes of meaning are embedded in human experience, such must be abandoned in favor of the higher plane.
It is illusory to suppose that the act of baptism places on in the higher plane of meaning, embracing transcendence. An act of the will is required, one in which one consciously places the gulf between self and the informing of the contextual world. It is even more foolish to suppose that the world will reward Christians for embracing and acting upon this higher plane of meaning that is so incomprehensible to it.
INSERTION THEMATIC:
This thematic illustrates how there can be no mutuality or compatibility or even complementarity between the words of God and those of men; the eternal and the temporal; revelation and experience; nor analog intelligence and contextual intelligence. That is because in each case, the human mind will allow one to overrule and subsume the other.
It is popular these days to ascribe to Bohr’s Quantum Complementarity theorum which looks for opposite yet complementary aspects to all things. Such is only a function of contextual intelligence: it removes all gulfs of disparateness, and of course this theory has had great impact upon sociological studies in which even good and evil can be seen as “complementary.”
Our task as students and teachers of the Bible is to look for ways, in our own lives and in the lives of those we teach, that indicate an operation of contextual intelligence which is overruling the supremacy of Scripture in the mind of the believer.
BIBLICAL TEXT:
“. . .and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil, or fade–kept in heaven for you.”
1 Peter 1:4
GENERALIZATIONS DERIVED FROM THE TEXT
- The embrace of transcendent meaning–the adoption of revealed meaning–moves the gulf that has would have existed between the believer and heaven. By adopting analog intelligence of God, even though we live here in the temporal sphere, we are included with Him as we adopt His points of view. He, quite literally, adopts us–and provides what every parent wants for a child: a lasting inheritance.
- Our understanding of faith, then , is in need of revision. Faith must be redefined as an act of the will in which the believer moves the gulf between self and context. Far from being a theistic acknowledgment of the existence of God, or a sloppy emotional response, true faith requires that the unseen world of God be given true ontologial status.
- Believers throughout history have been accused of being “crazy” because the world saw their actions as irrational. However, such definitions of mental health were derived from context, not revelation. Moving the gulf another degree, placing it firmly between revelation and experience, will seem unnecessary, unrealistic, and even irrational to those on the other side of the gulf.
- The crossing of the gulf is, like all actions, an index that links one with the eternal. In the case of the believers to whom Peter wrote, they had already received the gospel (1:12) and made act-of-the-will decisions to embrace another plane of meaning not supplied by their context. Persecution had followed, and subsequent decisions arose.
Persecution, crisis, and temptations are all situations which have the uncanny ability to call into question where we have placed the gulf. Eternal meanings would demand that we keep the gulf between us and the acts–or even thoughts–of sin. We are called on to stay within the cordon of relativity by an act of the will. Romans 8:31-39 shows that we can’t be pulled out of that cordon by any outside force. On the other hand, Paul spoke sorrowfully of those who had “shipwrecked” their faith by stepping out of the protective cordon.
In teaching children, we don’t just biologically father bodies, we are called on to parent souls. We must teach children to embrace transcendent meanings and reject that which comes only from the natural context of their surroundings. In training preachers, we must challenge them to examine in their individual minds where the gulf is located, and on which plane of meaning they are operating.
Later in 1 Peter we will see that Peter shows that the persecution his readers were undergoing was not a result of their “niceness” but because they insisted on clinging to meanings that were beyond worldly understanding. Their attitudes and behavior reflected operation from within a cordon of relativity; a place where a gulf existed between them and the world.
- Such a relocated gulf will manifest itself in ways that are far beyond just a change in morality and behavior; will necessitate an examination of all traditions (contextual or from the eternal plane of meaning) and all forms of doctrinalization. At issue: the sublimation of the will.
- An examination of the relocating gulf will necessitate that we re-examine as welll the character of knowledge itself. The world teaches that knowledge is culmulative–a process of accruing information and skill. That may be true in some processes (like learning how to build a boat) but it can never be equated with the acquisition of knowledge from the eternal plane. We all know people who can “data you to death” with facts from the book of Acts. But of more importance is calling into question where we have placed the gulf in each of our thinking.
The model by which many young preachers have been taught to teach is one in which they are taught “encoding and decoding” of information (a psychological model for transferring knowledge.) However, the job of a preacher should be that of indentifying the gulf, determining its location in his own thinking, and then challenging his listeners to do the same.
QUESTIONS FOR THOUGHT AND DISCUSSION:
- What are the two planes of meaning?
- Why will eternal meanings not “fit” into contextual language and understanding?
- Give at least four Scriptural examples of people of faith whose experiences violated laws of statistical regularity. (Example: we expect the sun to move across the sky because in our experience it always has. But because of Joshua’s and Hezekiah’s prayers it did not operate according to those “laws” of nature or statistical regularity.)
- What is the relationship between relocating the gult and the definition of faith?
- On what basis do people say that certain things are “self-evident”?
- Why do some people think that the acquisition of knowledge is culmulative? How can it rather be defined as the movement of the gulf?
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