The Briefing Book – Part 1
THE BRIEFING BOOK by J. Michael Strawn
(Part Two A)
This is a tape transcription. To obtain a copy of The Briefing Book, contact Dr. Strawn for copying and postage costs.)
What we want to take a look at in this segment has to do with the “Two Funnels”. And so we have this graphic here to try to help us deal with that. So here’s how we’ll look at it:
Page 2 — has “Complex of Phenomena at the top and “Laws of Nature” at the bottom.
The “Complex of Phenomena” is a term that we use to refer to the material order. It’s a complex, of course, because it is made up of more than one thing; and it is phenomena because it appears as a series of sensations in our heads. Now then, how is it that we choose to look at this complex of things? And almost immediately now we have to deal with what we’ll call the “funnel of science”.
If you stand at the top of the funnel, in the middle of the complex of phenomena, you want to try to understand what it is that makes things happen. Well, here you have this arrow protruding downward, which we refer to as the “arrow of discovery”. What is it then that we are looking for when we stand using this funnel? In the middle of all of our experience of these things around us, what are we looking for? Well, we’re looking for what are called “laws of nature”.
Now we understand that the laws of nature have to do with patterns and the recognition of patterns. And so when you have patterns and the recurrence of these patterns, you have to deal with statistics. You have to deal with “statistical regularities”. This involves the observation of data. This is what Francis Bacon suggested that we needed to do. Instead of operating on authority (which was in that particular historical period the authority of the Roman Catholic Church) to hand down certain dicta about how the universe operates, we will go to it and we will make specific observations. And we will discover what lies behind what we do see.
Now then, once you have done this reductionism – because you’re reducing it to something less complex, right? You have a complex of phenomena, and you’re looking down the funnel of science, it’s a reductive operation to try to find what is the one cause (or the fewer causes) that would produce all of these things that we see, and that would cause these things to occur. So now, if you’re at the bottom of the funnel, looking up at the complex of phenomena, you’re interested in trying to secure the “arrow of causality”, what causes things to occur in the middle of the complex of phenomena.
So this becomes rather fundamental. In so many ways we can say that this also is the funnel of human experience, because science in so many ways is human experience writ large. This is what we seek to. . . this is a habit of thought. It’s not just what we could refer to as scientific procedures (although they are), but it includes that, although it goes beyond that. This is really the way that we think, globally. (The Americans have a very global mind, and we tend to think in these terms, especially in the Western world.)
Next page. Now lets put side by side two other kinds of funnels. There is revelation, on the one hand; and then there is scientific explanation on the other.
We also stand in the complex of phenomena. And we decide that we’re not going to look from the complex of phenomena into the causes of things from the point of view of the scientific enterprise; but we’re going to look at it from this different funnel, which has been revealed to us. Then we come up with a very different picture.
So here we’re going to look down using the language of revelation, and what we’re going to find down here at the bottom of this structure are at least these three things. We’re going to find generalizations that are at the root of these ideas that are spawned by the Word of God.
For instance, as we have discussed frequently, I Sam. 17 when David faces Goliath, what we find there is we can generalize from that grammatical structure to this idea, this set of words. And we can say (if we generalize) that material circumstances do not determine outcomes. Now that’s a fact that is historically imbedded in our experience of the world here. It’s imbedded in specifically in this batch of language that we have. When you go back to that particular text, it becomes very obvious that material circumstances did not in any way determine the outcome. What did determine the outcome was David’s faith in God, and of course the reality of God, the Word of God, the will of God and the power of God. That was the determining factor of what was going to take place in the complex of phenomena.
Then we find these things also down at the bottom of this funnel structure that we will refer to as “variant structures”. And we call these variant structures relationships. Instead of saying that there are laws of nature which are statistically-dependent, or context-dependent regularities, we find it more to the point, and much in concert with the Scriptures to say that we’re dealing with determined relations.
Determined relations are very different than the laws of nature. The laws of nature are created by human conceptions. But we do see determined Scriptural relations presented very clearly in the text of Scripture. For instance, there is a relationship between certain toxins and the central nervous system of the human body. When Paul was on the Mediterranean being transported to Rome (because he had made this appeal to Caesar), the Lord brewed up this terrific storm on the ocean, and this little vessel was being tossed about. So you have a lot of physics and a lot of physiology going on in that particular occasion.
The relationship between physics and physiology is very well known. Bodies don’t do too well when we go past certain limitations. The extremes begin to take their toll upon us.
Now we find in that occasion that the Lord rescinded the relationship between physics and that boat momentarily. And He certainly severed, or suspended, the relationship between the physics that were going on in the ocean and the human bodies that were involved.
An angel of the Lord stood by Paul that night (the night before all of this began to take place) and assured Paul that the Lord was going to concede to him all of the lives of the people on this ship. He furthermore stipulated that the cargo and the vessel itself would be lost. I guess that’s the penalty for not having listened in the first place, because when they left port, Paul said this is not a good idea. He tried to suggest to them that they postpone it; but the ship-owner was there, the captain of the ship was there, and of course Julius the centurion. They all made this decision one would suppose in collusion. And so they left, and Paul later said to them, “I told you that this was going to happen, and it did.”
Now when they all end up on the beach, they’re gathering firewood, and a viper strikes Paul, and no doubt pumps all of this venom into his bloodstream. We find again, (because there are variant structures in the universe that are determined by God, not by the laws of nature), that the Lord simply suspended what He normally maintains as a certain kind of relationship between the toxins produced by this serpent, and the central nervous system of the individual in question. So he (Paul) simply shook this thing off and went about his business with no particular effect at all. And of course when the natives saw this, they were amazed.
Well, what does this tell us? It tells us that in this kind of a universe there are no such things as the laws of nature. Those are the creations of human rational thought and rational conception. It would be more to the point Biblically to say that we’re dealing with a number of determined relationships between things which the Lord can either maintain or He can choose to suspend at His pleasure.
Well, that’s very large news for us, because it means that we have to adjust our thinking about the nature of reality. What would that mean? It means if you go deeper into the causal side of things, as you get to the bottom of the funnel, what you ultimately find are not the laws of nature. Because when the fact finder looks for causation, what they do is they move back in time. They say, here we are today. . . what would have caused this; and they’ll say X caused that, and you go back in time to find out what caused X, and then finally by following a sequence of certain types of axioms, you lead back to what many have concluded to be the real beginning of space and time, which would have been the “big bang”.
Now, when we are going to operate according to the light of Scripture, and we’re searching for causation, we are not going back in time, we’re moving from one dimension to the other. Now, as you noticed in the first thematic, on this whole idea of the funnels, you’re moving from the complex of phenomena looking for these causative things – things that we consider to be causative, like the laws of nature and data observation which involves the method of reductionism. You have not left the material dimension behind. You’re still dealing with it, but you’re trying to find an increasingly more reductive causation of things.
Now in this particular idea here that we’re looking at, we are moving from the complex of phenomena which involves human experience into another dimension. We’re moving via Scripture, looking at causation not within the framework of place and time, or space and time. But we’re looking for causation somewhere else in an invisible world that although is not accessible to our sensorium, is in fact there and operational. And when you get to the bottom of the funnel, past the generalizations, and past the variant structures that we call relationships, you find the consciousness of God.
What is the relationship, then, between the consciousness of the Creator and the complex of phenomena? We say it is causation. That’s big news. Because not all of us who are Bible-readers actually believe that. Now we might be willing to say that God is causative over the destiny of the soul – that’s one thing; but to say that God is causal over the complex of phenomena, and then live and think and use language on that basis is an entirely different matter. And you come up with an entirely different range of explanations, an entirely different perception and conceptualization of what reality is. All depending upon what funnel it is that you choose.
Now then, let’s move to put the two side by side, so that we can begin to make come comparisons between these two. On the one hand, you have humanity largely involved in the project of looking from the complex of phenomena down through the funnel of experience (or scientific investigation), producing a series of reductionistic steps, trying to get back to a certain number of formulae (mathematical formulae; or formalisms) – things in the material world that can be expressed numerically in relationships.
You know when we were taking algebra in school they began to show us formulae. And we had to understand that every member of the formula had a relationship to all other members. So we could use these things and solve the problem. It was subject to mathematization, which is one reason physics is considered the queen of the sciences. They are highly mathematicized, chemistry following in its way.
And as you go down, you look at sciences from a more disparaging point of view. The less mathematicized they become. Or so one has been told, if you listen to the “hard” scientists, or the “bench” scientists, as they are sometimes called. And they are looking for physical reductionisms.
We are not looking for those kinds of things. When we stand up at the top in the complex of phenomena, and by an act of the will we choose to look through the funnel of revelation, we see something very different. We do not see a reductionism. What we see finally and ultimately is the consciousness of the Creator.
So you’re talking now about the presence of two different readings of Scripture running simultaneously. And it also means that you’re dealing with two readings of reality running simultaneously. And these two readings do not enter into a state of coexistence. It’s either one or the other.
When we go back to the desert experience and we see the Israelites there in that particular set of circumstances, what we find is they were looking down through the funnel to reductionisms, and it was very obvious to them how causality was going to function. They would be destroyed, they would be overwhelmed by physics and physiology. They clearly believed that matter and energy were going to determine the outcomes.
Joshua and Caleb, however, in Numb. 14, were looking down an entirely different funnel. And what they saw at the bottom, and through the means of this way of understanding, was the consciousness of the Creator. And so, Joshua and Caleb in that chapter when they would make this great appeal to the people not to go forward with this sin, were saying, you will find at the bottom, if you stick with the funnel of revelation, you will find the consciousness of the Creator. He is ultimately going to determine what happens on this occasion. So he appeals to the people, “If you will be faithful, if you will believe, if you will not turn back. . .” But, of course the 78th Psalm states in very fluid language that they turned back on the day of battle, that their hearts were not loyal to God.
So when we’re talking about these kinds of things, we’re hardly referring to things that aren’t important. This is at the core of what it is to be a believer, and what it is to use the Bible in a representational way.
Now then, let’s change up the language a little bit, and we’ll add some extra dimensions to this. When you’re standing in the complex of phenomena, and you’re looking down the funnel of science, we can also say and determine that we are looking down the “funnel of neurology”. This is the central nervous system of man. Everything that you know about the material world has to show up in your central nervous system. Here are people looking at things; here are using the 5 senses. So there is neurology involved.
The neurological system, then. . . I mean if you’re talking about the neurological system, you’re essentially talking about experience. That‘s what we use. We can fix it where you’re neurological system doesn’t work very well. In which case you won’t have very much access to the external world. We can fix it so that you end up in what is referred to as a vegetative state. We can fix it so you end up in a coma. In which case you’re not going to be aware of the things we presume are the things that are happening around you.
So when you’re talking about common sense, and you’re talking about doing what seems only right and reasonable, neurology is certainly involved. We cannot separate that. Now it is true that in the days of Scripture we didn’t know a great deal about the workings of the neurological system, or the nervous system. However, that makes no difference. It was functioning. And the fact that we know more about it now does not overturn Scripture, nor are we adding to Scripture. It certainly reveals more of the errors that were involved of the people who put their trust in neurology rather than in the Word of God.
When you find yourself dealing with this group of. . . this generation of Israelites in the desert out there, especially at Kadesh Barnea, obviously they were looking down the funnel of neurology. And they would say, “There’s a large body of water. Here are the chariots of Egypt. We have no possibility of escape. We’re going to end up dead here. And it won’t take very long.”
The same thing occurred when they got to various stations in the exodus, like chapter 15, chapter 17 and some other places where they will complain bitterly about circumstances. When the water is running out and there’s no food. The neurological system begins to cry out. It must be heard. It starts to make demands. Any time we are overcome with fear, we are looking down at the situation through the funnel of the neurological system.
Now, a question: Can we be faithful when we’re looking down the neurological funnel and saying that this tells us the truth about the situation? The answer, Biblically speaking, is absolutely not. So we say (someone might say) well, you’re making this more complex than it really is. I don’t think so.
I’ve got two pocketknives. One pocketknife has two simple blades on it, a long one and a short one. And I have a Swiss Army Knife; and that Swiss Army Knife has about 15 different functions. If we say which one of these is more complex, anyone is going to say it’s the Swiss Army Knife. If I ask the question, which can do more, which will give you richer experiences, obviously, it is the one that has this complexity to it is going to be able to do more for you than this thing over here to the one side that has only the two blades.
So to say to that we’re adding complexity only says that we are opening up the riches of what we’re dealing with. And we’re seeing really what goes on when a man says he’s either going to live by faith or he’s not going to live by faith. One of the battles that he has to pitch, and he has to win is the battle of the Word of God, and his faith in the Word of God, against faith in his own neurological system.
So if you see David in the Valley of Elah and now the giant, nine feet tall, comes walking into the valley, that’s going to show up neurologically in David’s brain, David’s mind. And he’s going to have to make a decision. Shall I believe what my neurology is telling me; shall I look down that funnel? Now he’s looking down it. The question is, is he going to put faith in what he sees at the bottom of the neurological funnel. And of course if he does that he cannot be faithful. Now he does that on other occasions. And the Lord makes it clear to him that this is not acceptable behavior. So we have to make these distinctions.
When we’re looking down the funnel, we’re looking for things that are much simpler than all of the stuff with which we must deal up here in the complex of phenomena. We’re trying to find simplicities. What causes all this complexity? Something more singular, we would say. Well, we’ll use the word, “simplicity”. And then we keep trying to go past those simplicities, through certain kinds of investigation, to finally come back to this one individual cause of things. And that becomes the agenda that motivates our particular set of procedures.
Next page. Now, here when we’re looking at revelation as a funnel, the complex of phenomena (we’ll just refer to it as “the complex”). . . We’re looking down that funnel, and what we find, what we discover, and what is shown to us about the nature of causality is what lies at the bottom of the funnel. This we have identified as “simple”.
Now we don’t want to say that God is simple in the pejorative sense of the term, that He is an “idiot”, if you will; that He is not intelligent. We don’t mean that. We mean simple in the sense that He is One. There is a unity of Himself. It’s simple in that sense as opposed to “complexity”.
This is a problem for us. For some reason, when human beings look at the complex of phenomena – see all of these actions swirl around them, look at the intricacy and the integration necessary between things – we find it rather difficult to simply say all of this can be appreciated on the basis of something much simpler (in terms of its causation): that is the consciousness of God. His mind operating in the universe apart from (that is to say, not controlled) by the complex of phenomena. He is there. He is the ultimate simplicity. He is causing all of this complexity to take place. We have a great difficulty in believing that.
It’s a test of sorts for the human mind to think in those terms. When we find ourselves with anomalies (for instance, pathogens – it could be a cancerous situation), people go to school for years to learn about what little we do know about some of these carcinogenic things that happen. And these pathologies it takes years for the human mind to master, even what little we know. Now it could be said we know a lot, but let’s suppose in a relationship to what there is to know, we don’t know all that much.
It’s very difficult to look down the funnel. In any circumstance, no matter what it is, standing in the middle of all this complexity – which we routinely do – there’s always one thing or another affecting us, one thing or another going on, over much of which we have no direct control. What shall I do? I could say, “Now I’ve got to stop here, and discipline myself.” I could wait, by an act of the will look down the funnel of experience, or the funnel of science (which are essentially the same thing in design, in function). I could look down the funnel of neurology. But I’m not going to do that. I’m going to use another funnel.
I’m going to look through the funnel. I’m going to look through the funnel of revelation, and I’m told there, what I’ve discovered there is this: God is operational behind the scenes preventing, causing, shaping, limiting or whatever other terms need to apply. That’s what I am deciding to do. This is what I am believing. What I found is the simplicity of His presence causing all things.
We can go back to all of the pragmatic exemplars of faith in the Old Testament and in the New, and we find people having to make exactly this same kind of decision about anything and everything that affects us. You can see that in Luke 24. What did the disciples decide to do when Jesus had been crucified and placed in the tomb? They made a choice. And, as the Lord states to them later (to two of their representative group) on the road to Emmaus, what they did was foolish and slow of heart. To not believe what the Scripture had said, to not in other words, look down the funnel of revelation, and find what was going on behind the scenes. And to understand it. To understand the complex of phenomena, not from being in the middle of it, but from being pulled outside of it through the means of Scripture, and finding what was the simple causation on that event.
They decided that they would look through the funnel of experience, the funnel of neurology, and when they did that, it brought them to a state of despair and discouragement. This is all the way through the Scripture. It never varies. So let’s suppose that you come across some people who are in a state of discouragement and despair. They have lost all hope. They don’t see how anything could ever be turned around; that there is no cause for a hopeful attitude; that there is no cause for joy in these matters. They simply resign themselves to the physicality.
Why would somebody do that, you might ask? Well, the answer becomes much more obvious: we do that because we have chosen to look down one funnel instead of looking down the funnel that has been handed to us, or indicated to us. Now let’s think a little bit about what this means. When we people in the church choose a hermeneutic, as the term is often used (a way of interpreting), what do we think the purpose of the Bible is? Is it a funnel that allows us to stand in the complex of phenomena and look through this funnel, and find out and discover what’s at the base here? What everything is rooted in? What causes reality to be what it is? We most obviously and usually do not do that.
We deal with it (Scripture) as if it was historical phenomena, and that if we could get back in time we could find out ultimately what this text means. You see, that looks awfully much like the scientific cosmology that starts in the present with a set of scientific axioms, and then moves back to a primal cause. It looks much like using historical axioms and moving back and trying to find out what was going on in the original setting.
We want to add a few additional thoughts to this business of what we’re talking about. When you look from the complex of phenomena down through the funnel of revelation, you find simplicity. It means, among other things (as you see on the right hand side of the schematic), we’re moving away from statistical complexity. We move to what we could call the “super simple”. The Lord always said, “I am one.” There is this unity of God, Himself. That we can refer to as super simple. He is the one cause behind all of (this).
So when we look through the funnel, we’re no longer impressed in such a way that the statistical complexity controls the way we think. We could say that this movement from statistical complexity down to the super simple is a kind of reductionism. But it’s brought about because of the place of Scripture. So we end up with two kinds of reductionism. One is experimental. The other is revealed. The fact that men like to “reduce” so that we get down to causation is not a peculiar thing for us. This is what we routinely do. But we have to take into consideration that there are two kinds.
So there is a movement here. When you’re moving from the complex of phenomena down to the super simple, and identifying what is super simple (this “oneness” as the consciousness of the Creator), you’re crossing dimensions. You’re not just going back in time. So there’s a fundamental methodological difference just in that alone.
Now let’s look at this thematic that has the statistical complexity at the top. We’ve put a line down through the middle of this thematic showing that there is a threshold difference, and that revelation forces you to cross the threshold. When you’re reading such authors as Ludwig Wichtenstein and other contemporary authors in the field of the history of science or scientific discovery, they are not going to admit that there is a threshold. Their business is dealing with everything above the threshold; dealing with everything that can be brought under the general umbrage of data observation. Then they’re going to numerically see what they can do to about the extrapolation of these numbers.
On the other hand, we’re crossing an actual threshold here. That’s what the Biblical funnel does. It moves us from the temporal setting to the eternal when we’re looking for causation, and we’re looking for understanding. In our case, we’re painted into a corner of sorts because there’s only one place to go to find understanding. It’s not in this world; it’s out of this world, in the eternal world. There’s only one place to go to really grasp the nature of causation, and it is also leaving this world behind.
How is this facilitated? It is facilitated by language. In particular, it is the language of Scripture. This is an amazing property that the Biblical record has. We’re not dealing with experimentation. It is something else. We’re dealing with the nature of language. This language that we’re using now, and describing as a sort of funnel (the “funnel of revelation”), allows us to look down to see what is the ultimate cause of all things, i.e. the super-simple God.
So, where does complexity originate? It originates in the character of God, and in the reality of God, and in the power of the Word and Will of God. So we’re standing here, seeking to cross this particular threshold. It’s very clear that the threshold is going to be monitored in part by the 5 senses. We can see up to that point, the threshold, and then we can’t see beyond it with the naked eye. Now the Scripture does say that vision does not cease when we come to this threshold. But we need another kind of seeing.
As Jesus would state in the Sermon on the Mount (in the beatitudes in Matt. 5:8), “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” So, is there a way to see? Yes, there is. It is provided by revelation. So revelation takes on the burden of sight. It takes on the burden of allowing us to see.
So often in the Scripture (both the Old Testament and the New) the Word of God, and the Will of God are described in terms of “light”. Light is essential for vision. Psalm 119, a lovely, intricate, variegated and rich expurgation about the nature of the Word, talks over and over about this quality that the Word of God has. So, it’s not just an historical document. It’s not just historically documenting, for example, that there was a Valley of Elah , or a certain kind of Cartesian coordinates in the Holy Land, and that there was a particular time in which this battle between Goliath, (a Philistine) and David (an Israelite) took place. It’s more than that. It’s a way of seeing. This is the version of God. This is how He sees these things.
So we’re looking at how He represents. The fact that we’re going to have to deal with representational phenomena is a foregone conclusion. We have no choice. So we’re crossing a sort of representational threshold here as well. We’re moving from the representations of the five senses (as valuable as they are, they “hit the wall”); and we’re moving to another set of representations (which have all the competence of sufficiency to allow us to see what needs to be seen).
When we’re dealing with the experimental world, this shows up very quickly in personal circumstances of crisis. Often in states of crisis (no matter what kind, whether health matters, economic matters or any other) there is a very strong tendency to not see the threshold, to stop where the “wall” is presented to our senses. Then we begin to make decisions sort of “north of” the wall. We refuse, in the state that we’re in, to cross the threshold. And some people have the Scripture, have always had it, but refuse to see it as a funnel that will allow them to cross the threshold. So we often find ourselves in these circumstances of crisis, whether planned or inadvertent, acting purely on the statistical complexity of things.
What kind of cancer do you have? Well, I have this kind. What is the statistical history of this cancer. Well, 78% of people who have it are immune to any kind of cure, and die within three years. We tend to operate on statistical complexity. Why would we want to do that? Why, especially when we have this well-documented record of the failure of that in the text? When people came to the threshold and declared there is nothing there for us beyond the threshold. (You can imagine that’s what happened that day at the Red Sea, when they looked at that obstructing body of water. They had no boats; there was a shortage of time; there were 60-plus chariots of Pharaoh within striking distance. Statistical complexity would have obviated, brought to an immediate conclusion, i.e. destruction, because of failure to use the Word of God as a funnel to see past the threshold.)
Pick a place in Scripture where this is not true. It shows up repeatedly. It is a well-known, well-documented failure of human consciousness. And we’re held accountable for it, no matter what it applies to. Experimental reductionism does not recognize such a threshold. We must be very careful about what we call faith. What does it mean to use this Book as a funnel in order to escape a problem?
Let’s turn to the thematic that has “Somatic Experience” at the top, and “God” at the bottom. We’re simply changing the words a little bit to give some flexibility in our thinking about how it shows up. One of the versions of this we’ll call “somatic experience.” Soma is the Greek word for body. Thus, somatic experience is corporeal experience. It is experience of the body. This gives us flexibility, in that we’re speaking about the same things, but using different terms. We spoke of the funnel of neurology, the funnel of science, the funnel of experience – these are the same thing. We’re showing the different ways it manifests itself.
When we have somatic experience, what goes on in our physiology often makes a very great claim on us as thinkers. When we use the revelation of God as a funnel, it allows us to go past the somatic threshold (what the body experiences) and see something beyond that. If we wanted to say that this is a kind of “super-reductionism”, we could admit to that kind of language. This is because we never stand in the complex of phenomena and just look down the funnel of experience and really expect to appreciate what’s going on. The body, if it doesn’t like something, registers disapproval. It shows up as fear; it shows up as anxiety; it shows up on occasion as outright rebellion.
Earlier in our discussions we were talking about a very significant issue, framed as the question, “to what am I willing to submit my body?” If we make decisions above the threshold, on the basis of credible somatic experience, then there are a lot of things we will not do that are particularly prescribed by Scripture. If we read the text in such a way as to look for only doctrines and ethics and soteriology, we never have to deal with this question. We never have to show that there is a contradiction between the claim that somatic experience has (what affects my body) and God. We have to get past the body.
Now, let’s suppose that we are in the same unenviable position as some of the brethren in the 11th chapter of the Book of Hebrews (especially the last half), and some of the brethren (who are going to be exposed to a great deal of violence) in the Book of Revelation. What do we find? In Hebrews 11 there is a list of faithful people who died in faith. The first half of that list is populated by a bunch of folks who were endowed with great power from the Lord over circumstances. They put to flight foreign armies, they received their dead back. There were tremendous noteworthy things happening. But the last half of the list is a group of people who suffered. They hid in the hills; they wore skins. It is said of them “of whom the world is not worthy”. These, whether they were greatly victorious over physical enemies, or whether they were victims somewhat, still all of them had to go beyond the control of somatic experience.
If we don’t go beyond somatic experience (what the body claims), it becomes the ruling ethic. It becomes the ruling heteronomy of life. This is what we will live on, what the body wants, what the body needs, what’s good for the body. And that can translate into other things. How we pursue money; how we pursue career; how see the bodies of others, including the ones that are most dear to us. (Wives, husbands, children, for example.)
Now we go back to reiterate the truth revealed in Chapter 1 of Deuteronomy. When they arrived at Kadesh Barnea, Moses (the leader of the day) said “Let’s unpack, get our weapons, and go to war against the Canaanites, so that the Lord’s promise can be fulfilled.” They objected to that. When the spies returned, having spent 40 days on a reconnaissance mission, their report (according to Numbers 13) was a bad report. It was built around somatic experience. (If our bodies go to war against these walls and against these mighty warriors, we will certainly be overcome and destroyed. Then the enemy will come and take our wives and our children and all we possess.)
They were looking down the wrong funnel. They were in a moment of crisis; and although there was adequate leadership (Moses, Joshua, Caleb), they still refused to look down the funnel of revelation and find God. They preferred to stay north of the threshold in statistical complexity, operating on somatic experience. Has that ever changed? No, it has not. We’re still facing the same kind of decision today, the same kind of dilemma. This is the substance of all crises.
We want to look beyond. If we use the funnel of revelation, we get away from the body. We look instead at God. This is what we need. What do we do to offset the claim of somatic experience? We must have a funnel, and we must see only what that funnel can provide. What that is, is the reality of God, His presence, His power, His Word, His will, and its relationship to everything above this threshold. We could call it a somatic threshold.
So what did the Lord mean when He said, “Pick up your cross and follow me”? The impressions that those words make on the mind are very grave. Consider Jesus’ statement to the crowd following Him in Matt. 6. “You must drink my blood; you must eat my flesh.” They knew what that meant. It meant entering into a covenant relationship with Him, relinquishing control and allowing Him to run the show. It meant becoming a “living sacrifice” (even as Romans 12 now commands).
This is some of what is involved in understanding what the Lord meant. For us it means that we dominate our own personalities. We do this by use of the revelation of God.
Let’s move to another thematic here. At the top we have the complex of phenomena where it always remains, and then we have this threshold running horizontally across the page. It segments the two dimensions. Now what do we have?
The follow of revelation here shows us the limitation of the funnel of experience. It must forever remain above the threshold. Does it tell us everything we need to know? Is it ultimately to be understood as revealing causation? We must say no. It reveals certain determined relations between things. When we release the rock, it falls. This is true. But that is not ultimate causation. Thus, what we do above the threshold, using the funnel of experience, is to collect data. We’re still looking at the temporal arena, so we’re collecting impressions of statistical regularity, statistical complexity. This is where somatic experience is felt in what are called sensible effects. (For example, hitting the thumb with a hammer causes an effect in the sensorium.) If we stay there we remain in the realm of unbelief.
So the funnel of revelation certainly trumps the funnel of experience and all of its multiple forms. (Science, neurology, somatic experience, statistical complexity.) It goes beyond these things, allowing us to put these things in their proper relationship one to another. The funnel of revelation carries us beyond that to super reductionism. It reveals Who the real cause is. It is a “Who”, not a “what”. It is not mathematical interrelation. It is the character and the reality of God.
Thus, it becomes obvious that without the funnel of revelation, we cannot cross the threshold. It is not possible to cross the threshold of experience. Experiment will not allow us to see the invisible. The routine effects of hands-on experience with the material world will never allow us to cross the threshold.
Now it becomes clear that there is only one way to cross the threshold and to see what we could not otherwise see. What is it? It is language! What language? The language that has been revealed to us by the work of the Holy Spirit, the words that originated with the thoughts of God, and now have been transposed, and put at our disposal.
Someone will say, “I don’t believe in God.” Remember when there was a great competition between the former Soviet Union and the United States for entering space. The first Russian cosmonaut went into space, opened the cockpit door and announced “There is no God. We can see no God, therefore He does not exist.” He refused to cross the threshold. He didn’t think it was possible to cross it. Many of us who do believe in God don’t believe that either.
What does the Word of God do? It carries us past this threshold. Only this language will do that. Thus we must say of the whole enterprise of scientific inquiry, guided by the brilliance of human data observation, statistical review and human experience writ large, that it reaches its point of incompetence. It cannot carry us past this threshold. If we don’t get past the threshold, we never discover what is true causation. We never discover what is the true relation of that cause to all the complex of phenomena.
Let’s turn to another thematic now. We have the complex of phenomena at the top, and the threshold still remains. What do we have dividing us now? We have two distinct areas of discourse. There is the discourse of experience that remains forever above the threshold. It shows up in a certain kind of grammatical structure.
Going down the funnel of revelation, we enter into a distinctly different area of discourse. We talk about the same things, but we talk about them in an entirely different way. Have we abandoned the complex of phenomena? No. We show a unity between the complex of phenomena and the ultimate causation, Who is God Himself. There are two different areas of discourse.
The world takes the position that God, the spiritual matters, the eternal verities, are not within the range of human language and discourse. The Scripture says otherwise. The revelation of God allows for us to see that the reality of God and the presence of God are within the range of language and discourse. But if we don’t use the funnel that He has given to us, and if we don’t use it to cross the threshold, we don’t understand these things. So there is a shortfall. There is no possible way for us to explore the unseen world. Therefore we must explore the grammatical structure given to us about the unseen world from the reality of God Himself.
What is happening here? We’re leaving one area of discourse behind, and entering into an entirely different area of discourse. The heresy is that we are not leaving the world of phenomena behind, but that we are bringing the world of phenomena into a different area of discourse. This is seen in all the great pragmatic exemplars of faith.
How was it that the Israelites chose to handle (through the means of discourse) the events at Kadesh Barnea? Obviously, the grammatical structure stayed above the threshold, and Joshua and Caleb were calling for nothing less than a change in the area of discourse regarding these matters.
If we go out and preach the Gospel, what does this mean to us (in bringing the “good news” to people)? It’s not just a certain doctrinal arrangement. We must show that there is an entirely different area of discourse with which, in which, and through which we talk about all of these things. (Things in the complex of phenomena.) It is not right for us to say that experience and science deals with the world that is, and the Bible deals with the spiritual world, and that’s the great distinction. That is never the case in any of the pragmatic exemplars in faith. The great heresy that people often see and object to is that Scripture talks about the very same things that science and experience and neurology and somatic experience treat. But it treats it from the point of view of the reality of God.
That creates a large number of problems. This is why we call this a “briefing book”. We’re getting into some of the vital areas that representational thought produces, and demands of us. It changes everything. We must learn another area of discourse, another way of talking. We must change our language. This one thing that human beings are often loath to do unless they think it is in their best interests. This is true probably because we are unable to see the other side of the threshold. We don’t think that it makes all that much difference. But what has actually happened is that we’ve locked the Scripture into hermeneutics and interpretive traps, and we don’t use it as a funnel to cross the threshold and to see what is there.
Thus, we’re talking about two entirely different visions of Scripture itself, and two entirely different appreciations of what reality is.
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