The Briefing Book – Part 2
BRIEFING BOOK
Part Two B
J. Michael Strawn
(Tape Transcription)
To delve into what we will repeatedly refer to as a Biblical Lexicon, we have to learn a vocabulary. Unless we shake up our language, we don’t ever learn anything. So we have to piece together a usable, workable, practicable lexicon. And we’ll use the word Biblical, not because these words are drawn right of the text, I don’t wish to infer that. What I’m saying is these are words that would find themselves annexed to the Scripture, so to speak, that we can use, that the Scripture can be brought to bear upon them. And so we can lay out some ideas that have a great deal of influence on the way in which we see this task of trying to understand representational phenomena.
First page. We have this thematic that starts on the left-hand side with a text of Scripture, and a line to the right. And we’ll use that expression a lot, “line to the right”, meaning this is the flow of effect. What we often find in the contemporary world is that Bible users, Bible readers, religious people (I speak of course of the Christian religions), there is a great desire to retain credibility. Well, how can you do that? One of the ways that you can do it is to enter into a kind of social and cultural elaboration of the text. And that is in fact what has occurred. We have the Bible. What do we do with it?
Through one machination or another we try to socially elaborate it. In other words, the society and some of its ideas and what they think is prevalent now, and what’s really important (maybe contemporary ideas) will be brought to bear on the Scripture. And so we will elaborate, we will “work” the Scripture. Now I use the term elaboration like a craftsman would, when he has this piece of leather. And let’s say he’s going to build a saddle. And he’s going to hand-tool it. And all of these marks that he leaves on the leather is an “elaboration”; it’s a way of working it. In this exact same way, there is an attempt to elaborate the text. When you pick up books on the Scriptures – they don’t have to be commentaries, necessarily; but it can be; and there’s more than one kind of commentary, of course – there often is very much present a social elaboration, or a cultural elaboration.
So instead of bringing the text to bear on us, as a batch of patients over here, with the Word of God acting as an agent, what actually happens is quite the reverse. We begin to socially and culturally work on the text, and it becomes elaborated. And so often there’s no way to detect a great distinction between what the text is actually trying to convey and our social and cultural elaboration of that. Now we must avoid that at all costs.
The question is whether it is possible to do that. Well, we think it most certainly is. And in order to do that we have to go back again to the grammatical structure of the revelation. We are insisting in our approach (a representational approach to the text) that the truth is not in the history; there’s no truth in any kind of social and cultural elaboration of the text. But rather, the truth is in the grammatical structure of what we have there given to us by means of the Holy Spirit. And of course when we refer to grammatical structure, again we insist that subjects, verbs, direct objects, predicate nominatives – these types of things – that’s where the truth is. If we don’t get it there, we don’t get it.
Our thought is that if we go back to the grammatical structure of the revelation, then we can avoid social and cultural elaboration. Now we might point out that this type of effort of elaborating the text isn’t necessarily confined to academic circles. An individual who picks up the Scripture can do this as he goes into his quiet place of meditation and opens his Bible to read. Because he’s bringing all of his influences that he has picked up in the culture, and because of his presence in the society, he begins to read those things back into the text.
Now we could use the term, eisegesis; but I think that’s so very fluid, and so very elastic that we would be much better off talking in terms of a kind of elaboration. And so instead of the text coming to bear on that mind, that mind is representative of the society and all of the culture, and he or she begins to elaborate the text. Does that ever happen? Well it happens routinely. It happens regularly. And it can even happen in Bible class situations where someone says, “Now, Bob, as a farmer and you read this text, what does a farmer have to say about this passage?” Or, “Bob, you’re an executive in a business corporation. What would a man in your position have to say about this text?”
The point is, who really cares? That changes nothing. We don’t really need that kind of elaboration. What we want is the smooth fluid flow from the linguistic structure right over into the mind. I suppose that he reason why social and cultural elaboration are done is to try in some way to retain credibility with the world. But the cost is way to high for that.
Next page. Now of course what we’re doing here is we’re piecing together a lot of different ideas. That’s why we call this a Briefing Book. It’s to give us an overview of a lot of things that are going on, things we need to be thinking about. It’s, if you will, a set of entries of significant ideas that we need to know something about. So it’s not a smooth one-pieceness, as we go through this.
Now let’s talk about the value that revelation has for us. We are trying to find out what it means to have “pragmatic faith”. What we are talking about when we refer to something that’s pragmatic is this is something that we learn from somebody living in the material world exhibiting faith, trusting in the Word of God in the middle of their particular historical time period. It’s going to happen in a particular place, in a particular time and in the life of a particular individual.
When we read the Scripture, the Lord always says, “Find faith.” Well how do you define faith? You have to go back to the way in which the lives of faithful people were depicted, the way they were represented in the text. Abraham is called the “father of the faithful”. Therefore, to have Abrahamic faith means to try and comprehend the way in which this man lived by faith in his particular place and time. That’s what we mean by a “pragmatic faith”.
On the other side of the ledger, however, something exists that will try to contradict the development of pragmatic faith. The only reason we want to pursue any understanding of a pragmatic faith is because we intend to emulate this. We are going to live by Abrahamic faith. We’re going to press this kind of faith into the material world.
Now what is it that would stand in opposition to this (pragmatic faith)? Here’s one thing. It’s a formula: Causation plus time. People have learned in the material world, on the basis of experience, that there are things that are “causative” – physical forces. And if you add to that time, then that’s going to have to be a very compelling formula that will have some impact on the way in which we read Scripture. When you look at Abrahamic faith, you find people simply putting trust in the fact that God is real; and just because He’s real, doesn’t mean He’s present; but we do believe that He’s present. And we believe that the will of God, the power of God, are ever present factors operating in life. And therefore, the Lord causes things to happen.
This is the idea of spontaneity. Things just simply emerge in our experience without physical antecedents simply because the Lord says that they are to appear. This is why Abraham became the father of a great nation. When he was at an advanced age, his wife was also advanced, and they were biologically unable to have children. Why did Isaac appear? Because the Lord commanded that situation to develop.
If you live on the basis of pragmatic faith, you’re going to run into the contradiction of this formula of causation plus time. Because everybody now believes, living in this new century, this new millennium – as we go into the first quarter of the 21st century – that physical causation plus time is going to be the provocateur of outcome. This becomes what we could identify as a textual requirement.
We are given the suggestion that if we’re going to read the Bible, there is something that is fundamental. You’ve got to understand, we’re told in one way or another, that causation plus time is “the way things are”. This is a view of reality. So if you’re going to read Scripture, it becomes fundamental for you to understand that whatever you’re going to do, whatever you’re going to believe, it must not come into a state of contradiction with our belief in causation plus time.
That has a number of implications. For biology, how we handle physical issues, physiological issues, biological issues. In terms of economics, Jesus would make the statement in Matt. 6, “Don’t worry about what you’ll eat or drink or wear. I will simply cause those things to appear in your life. They will show up spontaneously. They will not be produced because of time or over time, they will simply show up in time. That’s spontaneity. So do not be concerned about causation plus time.”
When you’re in the position of Abraham, who is told that he’s going to have a son, and yet he has all of these biological and physiological factors stacked against him. If he believes in causation plus time, he’s going to have a great deal of difficulty in putting confidence in what the Lord has just revealed to him. So when we look at pragmatic faith as it is exemplified in the life of the pragmatic experience of Abraham, we find, say in Gen. 22, when he fulfills the command of the Lord to offer his son, Isaac, then he no longer puts credence in causation plus time. That is an irrelevancy, as far as he is concerned.
And so, we begin to run into problems like this when we read the Bible representationally. What shall we do? What shall we believe? What is going to be our position, how shall we represent causation plus time in the face of pragmatic faith? These things have no natural point of meaning. These two things exist in a state of outright contradiction. So that’s something we also need to bear in mind.
Next page. We need to think a little bit about the nature of intelligence. What is intelligence What is it to be smart? How do we gauge these kinds of things? Our society says something rather remarkable. The society that we live in takes the position that intelligence is an emerging social property. Meaning what? We have these small children born to us in these families. And we recognize that they’re going to have a case for the development of intelligence. Well what is intelligence?
In professional educational circles and in academia and in other places, intelligence is an emerging social property. What we mean by that is intelligence is something that the older generations will pass on to the younger. They will be told this is how to look at this particular situation. This is how you should handle these kinds of circumstances. This is what intelligence is. This will be something that you’re not just personally developing. It’s going to be true of you that you are a vessel through which what is socially defined as intelligence will flow. So we (the older generations) put them (the younger) into educational institutions. (Public education. And it could show up as well even in home schooling). We set up an arrangement whereby we can impose intelligence upon you. It can develop in the social mode; it can be a set of skills. But it all starts with society.
This is a pernicious problem for those of us who wish to live according to the grammatical structure of the revelation. Because, from what the Scripture has to say, it becomes very clear that intelligence is presented in the Bible as a shared conditionality with God. We could take, for instance, the Book of Daniel. Daniel is in a foreign land. He has witnessed the destruction of the city of Jerusalem, the tearing down of its walls, the dismantling of all of the things that meant anything to him. And he and some other young men are carted off into Babylonian captivity. This individual and the others like him (his three friends, Hananiah, Azariah and Mishael) are going to be bought into a trading program, they’re going to learn the Babylonian ways. What we find going on in the book is a case for what we have identified as pushed intelligence.
One of the things that happens very early on in the Book of Daniel – in the first chapter – is that Daniel and his friends are placed in a training program. They’re going to have to learn the Babylonian language, learn something about Babylonian ways and culture, and they’re going to have to eat Babylonian food, which they consider a disgrace. And so, they would beseech the Lord to help them in their quest to escape this. Later on in chapter 2 Nebuchadnezzar will have a dream. He will summon all of his wise men, and they are utterly incompetent to interpret the dream. And a death sentence goes out over the land for all the wise men. (This would have included Daniel and his three friends.) All were to be put to death.
Daniel prays to the Lord for enlightenment. And the Lord “pushes” His own intelligence toward Daniel and toward his three friends. So when the dawn comes up, Daniel has this intelligent response for Nebuchadnezzar. And their deaths are averted. This is very different. When you talk about intelligence as an emerging social property, they (society) determine what is rational, what is irrational. What we’re finding now as we read Scripture is this third layer which is the case for super-rationality. It is the mind of God, and it stands above the intelligence of man. This is what we seek.
We have a tremendous task in front of us in order to challenge what is taking place in the minds of a lot of kids today, who interpret intelligence on the basis of its reception from society. They have been shaped. They have been built; they have been elaborated (in terms of their intelligence) by the society itself. Now the Scripture says true intelligence comes our way from the Lord. True intelligence is existing in a shared conditional state with God.
What is intelligence? It is something that God is that God is willing to share with us. Now let’s look at I Cor. 1, where Paul goes to great lengths to talk about how men see the intelligence of God, and how it’s deployed. They think of it as weakness; they think of it as foolishness. And yet the Lord says He will destroy the wisdom of the wise; he will frustrate the intelligence of the intelligent. We’re talking about a state of contradiction between the two.
Next page. Here we entertain what we will refer to as the principle of spontaneity. (We made an allusion to that earlier.)
The principle of spontaneity shows up practically on every page of Scripture. When you think about the promises of God and how we’re going to be taken care of, we’re going to have no choice but to believe the principle of spontaneity if we are going to read the Bible representationally. It is this: Human beings have come to believe that you have to have physical antecedents for some particular outcome.
To delve into what we will repeatedly refer to as a Biblical Lexicon, we have to learn a vocabulary. Unless we shake up our language, we don’t ever learn anything. So we have to piece together a usable, workable, practicable lexicon. And we’ll use the word Biblical, not because these words are drawn right of the text, I don’t wish to infer that. What I’m saying is these are words that would find themselves annexed to the Scripture, so to speak, that we can use, that the Scripture can be brought to bear upon them. And so we can lay out some ideas that have a great deal of influence on the way in which we see this task of trying to understand representational phenomena.
First page. We have this thematic that starts on the left-hand side with a text of Scripture, and a line to the right. And we’ll use that expression a lot, “line to the right”, meaning this is the flow of effect. What we often find in the contemporary world is that Bible users, Bible readers, religious people (I speak of course of the Christian religions), there is a great desire to retain credibility. Well, how can you do that? One of the ways that you can do it is to enter into a kind of social and cultural elaboration of the text. And that is in fact what has occurred. We have the Bible. What do we do with it?
Through one machination or another we try to socially elaborate it. In other words, the society and some of its ideas and what they think is prevalent now, and what’s really important (maybe contemporary ideas) will be brought to bear on the Scripture. And so we will elaborate, we will “work” the Scripture. Now I use the term elaboration like a craftsman would, when he has this piece of leather. And let’s say he’s going to build a saddle. And he’s going to hand-tool it. And all of these marks that he leaves on the leather is an “elaboration”; it’s a way of working it. In this exact same way, there is an attempt to elaborate the text. When you pick up books on the Scriptures – they don’t have to be commentaries, necessarily; but it can be; and there’s more than one kind of commentary, of course – there often is very much present a social elaboration, or a cultural elaboration.
So instead of bringing the text to bear on us, as a batch of patients over here, with the Word of God acting as an agent, what actually happens is quite the reverse. We begin to socially and culturally work on the text, and it becomes elaborated. And so often there’s no way to detect a great distinction between what the text is actually trying to convey and our social and cultural elaboration of that. Now we must avoid that at all costs.
The question is whether it is possible to do that. Well, we think it most certainly is. And in order to do that we have to go back again to the grammatical structure of the revelation. We are insisting in our approach (a representational approach to the text) that the truth is not in the history; there’s no truth in any kind of social and cultural elaboration of the text. But rather, the truth is in the grammatical structure of what we have there given to us by means of the Holy Spirit. And of course when we refer to grammatical structure, again we insist that subjects, verbs, direct objects, predicate nominatives – these types of things – that’s where the truth is. If we don’t get it there, we don’t get it.
Our thought is that if we go back to the grammatical structure of the revelation, then we can avoid social and cultural elaboration. Now we might point out that this type of effort of elaborating the text isn’t necessarily confined to academic circles. An individual who picks up the Scripture can do this as he goes into his quiet place of meditation and opens his Bible to read. Because he’s bringing all of his influences that he has picked up in the culture, and because of his presence in the society, he begins to read those things back into the text.
Now we could use the term, eisegesis; but I think that’s so very fluid, and so very elastic that we would be much better off talking in terms of a kind of elaboration. And so instead of the text coming to bear on that mind, that mind is representative of the society and all of the culture, and he or she begins to elaborate the text. Does that ever happen? Well it happens routinely. It happens regularly. And it can even happen in Bible class situations where someone says, “Now, Bob, as a farmer and you read this text, what does a farmer have to say about this passage?” Or, “Bob, you’re an executive in a business corporation. What would a man in your position have to say about this text?”
The point is, who really cares? That changes nothing. We don’t really need that kind of elaboration. What we want is the smooth fluid flow from the linguistic structure right over into the mind. I suppose that he reason why social and cultural elaboration are done is to try in some way to retain credibility with the world. But the cost is way to high for that.
Next page. Now of course what we’re doing here is we’re piecing together a lot of different ideas. That’s why we call this a Briefing Book. It’s to give us an overview of a lot of things that are going on, things we need to be thinking about. It’s, if you will, a set of entries of significant ideas that we need to know something about. So it’s not a smooth one-pieceness, as we go through this.
Now let’s talk about the value that revelation has for us. We are trying to find out what it means to have “pragmatic faith”. What we are talking about when we refer to something that’s pragmatic is this is something that we learn from somebody living in the material world exhibiting faith, trusting in the Word of God in the middle of their particular historical time period. It’s going to happen in a particular place, in a particular time and in the life of a particular individual.
When we read the Scripture, the Lord always says, “Find faith.” Well how do you define faith? You have to go back to the way in which the lives of faithful people were depicted, the way they were represented in the text. Abraham is called the “father of the faithful”. Therefore, to have Abrahamic faith means to try and comprehend the way in which this man lived by faith in his particular place and time. That’s what we mean by a “pragmatic faith”.
On the other side of the ledger, however, something exists that will try to contradict the development of pragmatic faith. The only reason we want to pursue any understanding of a pragmatic faith is because we intend to emulate this. We are going to live by Abrahamic faith. We’re going to press this kind of faith into the material world.
Now what is it that would stand in opposition to this (pragmatic faith)? Here’s one thing. It’s a formula: Causation plus time. People have learned in the material world, on the basis of experience, that there are things that are “causative” – physical forces. And if you add to that time, then that’s going to have to be a very compelling formula that will have some impact on the way in which we read Scripture. When you look at Abrahamic faith, you find people simply putting trust in the fact that God is real; and just because He’s real, doesn’t mean He’s present; but we do believe that He’s present. And we believe that the will of God, the power of God, are ever present factors operating in life. And therefore, the Lord causes things to happen.
This is the idea of spontaneity. Things just simply emerge in our experience without physical antecedents simply because the Lord says that they are to appear. This is why Abraham became the father of a great nation. When he was at an advanced age, his wife was also advanced, and they were biologically unable to have children. Why did Isaac appear? Because the Lord commanded that situation to develop.
If you live on the basis of pragmatic faith, you’re going to run into the contradiction of this formula of causation plus time. Because everybody now believes, living in this new century, this new millennium – as we go into the first quarter of the 21st century – that physical causation plus time is going to be the provocateur of outcome. This becomes what we could identify as a textual requirement.
We are given the suggestion that if we’re going to read the Bible, there is something that is fundamental. You’ve got to understand, we’re told in one way or another, that causation plus time is “the way things are”. This is a view of reality. So if you’re going to read Scripture, it becomes fundamental for you to understand that whatever you’re going to do, whatever you’re going to believe, it must not come into a state of contradiction with our belief in causation plus time.
That has a number of implications. For biology, how we handle physical issues, physiological issues, biological issues. In terms of economics, Jesus would make the statement in Matt. 6, “Don’t worry about what you’ll eat or drink or wear. I will simply cause those things to appear in your life. They will show up spontaneously. They will not be produced because of time or over time, they will simply show up in time. That’s spontaneity. So do not be concerned about causation plus time.”
When you’re in the position of Abraham, who is told that he’s going to have a son, and yet he has all of these biological and physiological factors stacked against him. If he believes in causation plus time, he’s going to have a great deal of difficulty in putting confidence in what the Lord has just revealed to him. So when we look at pragmatic faith as it is exemplified in the life of the pragmatic experience of Abraham, we find, say in Gen. 22, when he fulfills the command of the Lord to offer his son, Isaac, then he no longer puts credence in causation plus time. That is an irrelevancy, as far as he is concerned.
And so, we begin to run into problems like this when we read the Bible representationally. What shall we do? What shall we believe? What is going to be our position, how shall we represent causation plus time in the face of pragmatic faith? These things have no natural point of meaning. These two things exist in a state of outright contradiction. So that’s something we also need to bear in mind.
Next page. We need to think a little bit about the nature of intelligence. What is intelligence What is it to be smart? How do we gauge these kinds of things? Our society says something rather remarkable. The society that we live in takes the position that intelligence is an emerging social property. Meaning what? We have these small children born to us in these families. And we recognize that they’re going to have a case for the development of intelligence. Well what is intelligence?
In professional educational circles and in academia and in other places, intelligence is an emerging social property. What we mean by that is intelligence is something that the older generations will pass on to the younger. They will be told this is how to look at this particular situation. This is how you should handle these kinds of circumstances. This is what intelligence is. This will be something that you’re not just personally developing. It’s going to be true of you that you are a vessel through which what is socially defined as intelligence will flow. So we (the older generations) put them (the younger) into educational institutions. (Public education. And it could show up as well even in home schooling). We set up an arrangement whereby we can impose intelligence upon you. It can develop in the social mode; it can be a set of skills. But it all starts with society.
This is a pernicious problem for those of us who wish to live according to the grammatical structure of the revelation. Because, from what the Scripture has to say, it becomes very clear that intelligence is presented in the Bible as a shared conditionality with God. We could take, for instance, the Book of Daniel. Daniel is in a foreign land. He has witnessed the destruction of the city of Jerusalem, the tearing down of its walls, the dismantling of all of the things that meant anything to him. And he and some other young men are carted off into Babylonian captivity. This individual and the others like him (his three friends, Hananiah, Azariah and Mishael) are going to be bought into a trading program, they’re going to learn the Babylonian ways. What we find going on in the book is a case for what we have identified as pushed intelligence.
One of the things that happens very early on in the Book of Daniel – in the first chapter – is that Daniel and his friends are placed in a training program. They’re going to have to learn the Babylonian language, learn something about Babylonian ways and culture, and they’re going to have to eat Babylonian food, which they consider a disgrace. And so, they would beseech the Lord to help them in their quest to escape this. Later on in chapter 2 Nebuchadnezzar will have a dream. He will summon all of his wise men, and they are utterly incompetent to interpret the dream. And a death sentence goes out over the land for all the wise men. (This would have included Daniel and his three friends.) All were to be put to death.
Daniel prays to the Lord for enlightenment. And the Lord “pushes” His own intelligence toward Daniel and toward his three friends. So when the dawn comes up, Daniel has this intelligent response for Nebuchadnezzar. And their deaths are averted. This is very different. When you talk about intelligence as an emerging social property, they (society) determine what is rational, what is irrational. What we’re finding now as we read Scripture is this third layer which is the case for super-rationality. It is the mind of God, and it stands above the intelligence of man. This is what we seek.
We have a tremendous task in front of us in order to challenge what is taking place in the minds of a lot of kids today, who interpret intelligence on the basis of its reception from society. They have been shaped. They have been built; they have been elaborated (in terms of their intelligence) by the society itself. Now the Scripture says true intelligence comes our way from the Lord. True intelligence is existing in a shared conditional state with God.
What is intelligence? It is something that God is that God is willing to share with us. Now let’s look at I Cor. 1, where Paul goes to great lengths to talk about how men see the intelligence of God, and how it’s deployed. They think of it as weakness; they think of it as foolishness. And yet the Lord says He will destroy the wisdom of the wise; he will frustrate the intelligence of the intelligent. We’re talking about a state of contradiction between the two.
Next page. Here we entertain what we will refer to as the principle of spontaneity. (We made an allusion to that earlier.)
The principle of spontaneity shows up practically on every page of Scripture. When you think about the promises of God and how we’re going to be taken care of, we’re going to have no choice but to believe the principle of spontaneity if we are going to read the Bible representationally. It is this: Human beings have come to believe that you have to have physical antecedents for some particular outcome.
For instance, if we want to do well economically, then we have to save our money. And if we’re going to have an adequate retirement, we need to go backward in time (years before retirement is to begin) and we take money from our paychecks and deposit it in interest-bearing accounts.
Over a period of time, if things go well, if the economy works to our advantage, this amount of money continually added to, will grow. Thus we start small, and hope to end up with something much larger. And when we come to retirement then, we hope to have a large batch of money, which is a product of a line of causation, a line of antecedents where we deposited funds, interest rates went up, etc. And so here we are at retirement, at the end of this process, and we have what we need.
Or, when it comes to physical illness (especially catastrophic illness) we might think the result we’re looking for (our goal) is to be cured. So what we must do is start back in time and lay a groundwork of causation, a groundwork of physical antecedents. In the case of cancer, it might be surgery, followed by chemotherapy, followed by radiation, and various modifications of those kinds of therapies. And that will produce the desired result.
Now the principle of spontaneity has none of that. The principle of spontaneity says that our well-being does not develop over time. This is a Biblical principle. If you look at the nation of Israel in the desert, their well-being did not develop over time. It simply showed up in time. At certain points, at certain places the Lord acted spontaneously. That is, there were no physical antecedents; there was no reason to believe that their welfare was anywhere in sight. There was no reason to believe that their well-being could be secured. Often, in fact, the Israelites were in very unenviable circumstances. They were often dealing with conditions that were unfavorable to their well-being.
We have this principle documented not only in the Exodus experience, but in other pragmatic experiences of faith. David found himself in an unfavorable condition that day in I Sam. 17 in the Valley of Elah. So, what are we to believe? When we live a life of faith, when we attempt to represent all human experience on the basis of Scripture, then very quickly, as a generalization, the principle of spontaneity shows up. This is not physical causation. This is the Lord simply causing things to show up at a certain point and a certain time, and for no other reason than that He commanded it to appear. There is great hopefulness in this.
You can imagine the immediate conflict that would take place in the mind of a representational thinker when he is afflicted with some kind of illness. How shall he respond to his illness? How shall he respond to his economic circumstances? Shall he hold onto this idea of antecedent causation: it’s far too late now; we’ve gone too long; we don’t have enough time; the necessary conditions are not in place for us to achieve this good end.
If you believe in the principle of spontaneity, which is a generalization attached to so many of the great pragmatic examples of faith, we don’t have to worry about that at all. The Scripture says, “Come to me.” Express your circumstances. Talk to (God). Make your prayers well known. Give (God) your requests and your petitions. “I will heal you,” says Scripture of God. He will respond from His place in heaven. This is depicted in no less a place than I Kings 8 when Solomon dedicates the temple. This is predicated on the principle of spontaneity. Things just happen. Things just show up. Why? You don’t expect it, and you don’t see any possible way physically, economically, physiologically for this thing to occur.
Why should there be any reason to believe? Why believe that redemption is coming, that changes are in the offing? It is because of the promises of God. This is how we begin to change the way we represent our experience. The principle of spontaneity fed the Israelites in the desert while they wandered. The water just spontaneously appeared from a rock.
Now some figures have been bandied about, for example, that there were 2 or 3 million Israelites. It would have required perhaps a minimum of 15 million gallons of water per day. How is it possible that 15 million gallons of portable water simply appear in the wastes of the Sinai Peninsula? There is no reason to expect that.
Now you can see the way in which this produces anxiety. When the people are going out into the desert, they perhaps have a certain amount of provision with them; but very quickly in a place like the Sinaiatic Waste, they are going to run out of water and food. This happened in Exodus 17 when the people arrived at Rephidim. There was no water. There was no food. They became anxious. They were worried. Why? It was because there was not enough time to lay out all of the necessary antecedents that would cause their well-being to materialize. So they came together to have a meeting with Moses.
They were quite angry. Their children were thirsty and hungry. And these things ignited anger in the camp. It was because the principle of spontaneity was not appreciated. That was unfortunate, because by going back just a little bit in time, to when they were actually leaving the periphery of Egypt (Exodus 13 and 14), the Lord led them down to the southern route where they camped across from Pi Hahiroth. Then they confronted an uncrossable body of water. By this time Pharaoh had changed his mind, had dispatched more than 600 chariots to the spot, had been monitoring the movements of the Israelites; and they believed that they were lost. They didn’t know where they were. Their leadership was muddled. They were ripe to be plundered and returned to their rightful place in Egyptian captivity.
When the chariots appeared, there was great turmoil, great fear. And yet, spontaneously redemption appears. This principle is deeply and profoundly imbedded in the Old Testament and in the New. In Luke 24 one of the reasons no doubt that the disciples were disconsolate and in a state of despair and discouragement (perhaps even some depression) is because their master had been killed in a most cruel way. He had been placed in a tomb, and the tomb was sealed. Why is it that the text indicates that the women came that next morning (the third day), loaded with spices? It is because they fully expected the body to still be in the tomb. They didn’t understand the principle of spontaneity.
If there is one thing a resurrection from the dead is a reflection of (and is certainly proof of), it is the principle of spontaneity. So then we look at our personal circumstances. We say we should have started earlier so that we could have more financial advantages. It’s far too late now. It’s too late to put aside money; it’s too late for the money to grow. And so is that the take we should have on our economic well-being? Certainly not.
The Lord makes it clear, in His economy, when He begins His ministry. In the very opening stages of His ministry, in the Sermon on the Mount: Don’t worry about these things; I will cause them to spontaneously appear. We find that very difficult to appreciate. In that passage in Matt. 6, Jesus uses, by way of example as He tries to prove this principle, two items drawn from material experience. He said, “Consider the birds…” They don’t make money, pay their bills, put some in a savings account so it will grow. They just go out and pick things up in a field. The Lord takes care of them.
And then He goes to the world of botany and says, “Consider the plants…” They don’t go to all of this effort that you human beings do. They are not at all concerned with where their next meal is coming from. When I read those passages, for years I was somewhat baffled by what the Word could possibly mean.
Because there is much more than a slight (we could call that a non-trivial) difference: The birds go out and pick up seeds and worms that are available. But I can’t go out in the field or the back yard and find canned hams and canned yams and frozen turkeys and 20-dollar-bills hanging off of trees. The plant has the ability to draw sustenance directly from the soil. But I don’t have the ability to stick my right arm down into Mother Earth and draw sustenance directly. I can’t eat dirt.
What is the connection? Because I would say to the Lord, “My argument with you, Lord, is that these things you are using as illustrations are not part of economic systems. I am. I am part of a systematized economy. I have to make my way in this economic system, or perish economically.”
Or do I? It would occur to me to think that the Lord has pulled us out of economic systems, if we are attempting to live representationally; if we are attempting to live by the grammatical structure of the revelation. He wishes us to know we’re going to be like the birds, like the lilies of the field that God nurtures directly. That’s very different than being part of an economic system. In other words, this all points to a massive generalization. And this is something that we term the “principle of spontaneity”.
What are the necessary conditions for several million Israelites to survive in the wastes of the Sinai Peninsula? Biblically speaking, there are no necessary conditions.
What are the necessary conditions for a young man much smaller in stature, certainly not to be compared to the volume, the mass and the physical prowess of Goliath, to survive a battle encounter with him? And the answer Biblically is there are no necessary conditions.
What are the necessary conditions for the people of Israel to displace thousands of enemy population, people who by the thousands represent the enemy? There are no necessary conditions. All of this will take place because of God’s will and His purpose expressed in the material world.
Now the Scripture, therefore, teaches us these things. The principle of spontaneity is certainly involved. So, we have no business now of thinking in terms of processes. It was not a process that brought the people of Israel out of Egypt. It was not a process that saved them in the desert of Sinai. It is not a process that will bring them into the land. It is the expressed will of God. And spontaneity is one of the tools in His bag.
Next page. We must be very careful about phenomenological expectations. We use phenomenological to refer to physical experiences, things that are going to show up via the five senses. Phenomenological expectations, phenomenal experiences stand in conflict with the Biblical nature of faith. We find no commonality between phenomenological expectations and faith.
One of the phenomenological expectations – one of many, as it turns out in the passage of I Samuel, chapter 17 when David is facing Goliath – is that David is certainly going to be destroyed. The reason why is that there is an enormous hulk of a man coming into conflict with this much smaller shepherd boy. The phenomenological expectation is death.
Phenomenological expectations had some effect on Abraham when he lied to Pharaoh, king of Egypt and to Abimelech, king of Gerar about the real identity of his wife. He believed that he would be killed; and so he put no real faith in the trust of God. Since the Lord had made him promises, it precluded the fact that he could die before he had a son. He was under the direct control and direct protection of the Lord. He didn’t believe that.
Phenomenological expectations certainly show up in the Israelite nation while they’re still in captivity, once Moses shows up. And things get worse, because Pharaoh is angry, takes away the straw, and yet their quota of bricks remains the same. They had difficulty consistently and persistently through their entire life. That particular generation is mentioned in the 78th Psalm as a generation whose hearts were not loyal, and who turned back on the day of battle. We ask ourselves the question, why was that? Phenomenological expectations run counter to faith.
So let’s be aware that in our own set of circumstances phenomenological expectations are going to make a type of claim upon us. We have to watch for that. Phenomenological expectations enter into a state of contradiction with faith. This is a good place to introduce this idea.
It seems rather routine that we read the Bible and we obviate this rather clear fact. The problem with such an obviation is that when we look at the pragmatic examples of faith, it’s faith in a string of words that have been given to us by the Almighty. That must stand in opposition to all phenomenological experience or phenomenological expectations. We’re only faithful, in fact, when we forge ahead on the standard that has been given: a batch of words, a string of words, as opposed to our experience of these phenomenological realities.
We’re not denying phenomenology. We’re not denying that these things do actually exist. We do not deny that there are physical and physiological pressures in the universe that can press upon us. But those enter into a state of contradiction always with the grammatical structure of revelation; and consequently, they must of necessity enter into a state of contradiction with faith in those very same representations.
So, we’re not going to be able to say such things as, “Well, Glen, God gave you a brain, and He would expect you to use it.” What that statement inherently conveys is that you have the Bible to deal with your spiritual needs so that when you face the Lord in final judgment, things will go well with you; but while you’re here on the earth, you’re expected operate to a large degree on phenomenological expectations.
The Children of Israel, that faithless generation in the desert, did operate on phenomenological expectations that very terrible day of that meeting at Kadesh Barnea, which is chronicled in Numbers 13 and 14. And so they opted to put their faith and their confidence in phenomenological expectations. This is the very thing that marks a generation as “faithless”.
In contrast, consider the Ninevites of the days of Jonah, who when they heard emitted to them through the medium of a prophet a string of words from the Lord Himself, within 40 days the entire structure of the culture of Ninevah became naught. This constituted a tremendous cleavage, a discontinuity in their history. And they had no reason to expect it, perhaps. There was no physiological reason, no economic reason. They didn’t have military imbalances, perhaps they didn’t have trade imbalances. Their economy was not in trouble. They were not besieged by a more powerful neighboring country. Everything was going as it had always gone. If they operated on such phenomenological expectations, they would not give heed to the words of the prophet.
What is so noteworthy, and so very rare in their case is that this entire generation of responsible adults, and especially their leadership at the palace level, did not put credence in phenomenological expectations. They believed a string of words. Phenomenologically they would have experienced the total destruction of everything dear to them in a little more than a month if they had not repented. It’s compelling to hear that their leadership proclaimed a fast, hoping the Lord would change His mind.
The Lord used that generation of Ninevites, saying to the faithless generation of Israel, “The men of Ninevah will stand up in the judgment against you.” So we must very early on begin to dispose of our experience. Phenomenological expectations are part of our experience. This constitutes a tremendous shift in policy.
Next page. There is an issue that we have identified that we call the “localization of Scripture”. Here’s what we mean by that: If we take the Word of God (this string of words, its grammatical structure) and we bring it captive to the world’s horizon (to the circumstances in which we live), if we submit it to the dynamics of certain situations, that is the act of “localizing Scripture” within that frame of reference. The effect of that is to “denature” the Word of God.
We use the word “denature” in its purest form. It changes the basic essence of something. We speak of denatured chemicals. They are not the same kind of chemical they were before they were denatured. The localization of Scripture (whether it be in history, in the cultural horizon, the experiential horizon, the social horizon – whatever the case may be, and how ever we choose to describe these terms), puts Scripture in a position to be denatured. What it intends to reveal, what it intends to import to us is not really grasped. This is through no fault of the Scriptures. We have simply created a mechanism by which we muddy the waters and muddle our thinking. In doing so, we eliminate the voice of the Scriptures. We override the authority that Scripture has in telling us how to live in the midst of our circumstances.
One might suggest that in many of the academic theological disciplines we have, in fact, attempted to localize Scripture in just this way. Theories of interpretation, certainly do that. Some very early work in hermeneutics made quite an impact on folks. For example, Anthony Thistleton’s book about the two hermeneutics, speaks of how you can “harmonize horizons” – the horizon of the text, and the horizon of the reader. This becomes somewhat the problem of localization. We’re trying to get past that. How can we accomplish this? We think it is by going back to the language of the text.
So is it possible for an individual reader to localize Scripture in just this way? Yes. One might even suggest that that is the most favored, and the most intuitive way in which Scripture is read. That is a problem that we need to be aware of, and that needs to be dealt with.
Next page. There are ways of thinking that we believe are very error-prone. For instance: the mind tends to believe that there is a symmetry, a perfect balance, within the situation in which we find ourselves. (Whether in the material order itself, or some subset of the material order: maybe a health crisis, an economic crisis, a decision-making crisis, or whatever the circumstances might be.) There is a strong inclination to believe that there is a perfect symmetry between the situation and the sensible horizon.
Every one of us has a “sensible horizon”. This has to do with the 5 senses. Something that is sensible to us is something that is detectable to the 5 senses; it is something that is to be noted by the 5 senses. The error is that this sensible horizon (our appreciation of it, our understanding of it as fitting within the sensible horizon) is in a perfect state of symmetry with the situation itself. This is another problem that repeatedly shows up in the lives of people in both the Old Testament and the New.
To go back to our favored illustration of David and Goliath: That day, when the Philistines were arrayed in battle formation, across the valley from the Israelites who had been forbidden for some years (because of Philistine hegemony over them) to practice metallurgy. They would have been facing well-armed Philistines with pitchforks made out of tree-limbs and insufficient weaponry. And they were afraid.
The reason they were afraid is because they believed – and it was a faith – that there was a perfect symmetry between the situation and what they were detecting in the sensible horizon. If that was the case, then obviously, the most rational and reasonable response to that kind of a situation was, to say the least, caution. To go up the ladder of consideration, it could be said that the Israelites ought to have been afraid, and should have even considered outright capitulation. The Israelites had done that on more than one occasion.
Why would hopelessness, despair and discouragement set in? Because there is a belief that what you see in your head is in the state of exact symmetry with what is out there. This is always a mistake. When we face great health issues, for example, this error most usually is resident. The medical community will marshal its language and say, “Here’s what we have discovered; here’s what you’re feeling; here’s why you have pain; here’s what this means. . .” In terms of the trajectory of this perhaps devastating catastrophic illness, it is showing up in the sensible horizon; and so we believe. In what? We believe in the symmetry. We believe that the symmetry is exact. We believe that there is a one-to-one ratio, more or less, between what is external to me and my conceptions of this situation that is external to me.
When Abraham is approached by Sarah, who it appears very much wants to accede to help this man of God and help the Lord fulfill this promise that He made to Abraham, she would have said “I’m an old woman, and biologically incompetent to bear children. But here is my much younger cohort here. And Hagar will be able to participate in the fruition of this promise.” It was because Sarah put faith in a symmetry between her situation as being aged and barren and this much younger and more fertile woman and the fulfillment of the promise. There was a symmetry between the situation and the sensible horizon in her head. Now unfortunately, this man who was later to become known in the pages of Scripture as the father of the faithful, also put faith in this supposed symmetry between the two.
When we have the Master, Jesus Himself, lying dead on a slab in a hewn tomb (there are no signs of life; it has been certified that He has passed away; He was prepared for burial; He was sealed in the tomb), we do believe there is a symmetry between what we are seeing and this actual set of circumstances. And we believe that it means something. It means that this is the end. There will be no further progress from this point on. We begin to question all the things that the Master has taught.
But were we right when we posited faith in this supposed symmetry? We were not. We were wrong on both accounts. The disciples in Luke 24 were in error. In fact the language that Jesus uses of their behavior and the ways they were thinking on that occasion is rather startling. He says they are foolish and slow of heart.
Now if we go on to the local congregational world, we need to question this faith that we automatically put in the situation and the sensible horizon. If you maintain that faith, you cannot possibly put confidence in the Word of God. This has to be overturned. It’s automatic; it’s intuitive. We don’t think about these things. Yet, is this symmetry somewhat helpful? Yes, but only to a point.
When you’re driving along in your vehicle, and the gas gauge reads “E”, you believe that there is a sufficient symmetry between that physical condition of the car running low on combustible fuel and the sensible horizon. It’s showing up in your head. It has meaning. You don’t want to walk; you want to make your appointment; you don’t want to be stuck out in the middle of nowhere. Therefore, you are going to do something about it. You pull over and buy gas. That’s very helpful.
David would have believed in a sufficient symmetry between where Goliath was standing that day when he confronted this behemoth, and his (David’s) own sensible horizon. He would have believed that Goliath was standing 30 paces from the big rock on his right; but it was (helpful) only up to a point.
The Israelites would have believed that there was sufficient symmetry between the sensible horizon and the external world. It (the external world) was not lying to them about the fact that there was a Red Sea, an impenetrable uncrossable barrier. That was truth. The water was there. When they got to Mara, they would have believed that there was a sufficient symmetry between the situation (the water was undrinkable; the water was bitter) and the sensible horizon.
We can not go beyond the limitations of the symmetry between circumstances and the sensible horizon. To do that would be to encroach upon the territory of faith. So we’re constantly fighting this battle between our potential belief in this symmetry and our belief in what the Scripture has to say.
What would serve as a corrective to that situation? It would be this: When we look at the pragmatic examples of faith in the Scriptures, we find that situations were always resonant with the word(s) of God. Whatever the will of God is, the situation becomes “resonant”. The word, “resonant” is a very helpful word. In physical sciences resonance has to do with the number of vibrations per second. We can use the term to describe the relationship between situations and the will of God.
When we look at Sarah’s barrenness at her age, we find that the situation resonates exactly to the will of God. That is why she becomes a mother of this child of promise at an advanced age. Why was it that David was able to kill the bear, and kill the lion, and kill Goliath? Because he was learning, and we are learning through his pragmatic example of faith, that situations resonate to the will of God.
This is why we pray, is it not? This is why we perform intercessory prayer. It is what happened in James 5, where a brother in the body of believers was gravely ill, and the elders were called. Questions were asked. Those people believed that the circumstances resonated to the full provision of will of God. In James 5, which is often considered to be rather anomalous, it is noteworthy that the author appeals to another pragmatic example in the revelation. And of course, this is the prophet, Elijah, one who is respected by the people of Israel.
Let’s read the text in this connection. This is James 5:13-18:
“Is any one of you in trouble? He should pray.” Why? Because you want a condition of resonance to appear between the situation that you’re confronting and the will of God.
“Is anyone happy? Let him sing songs of praise.” Why is praise indicated? Because there is this resonance between the situations and the circumstances on the material side and the will of God. We’re praising God because of it.
“Is anyone of you sick?” Now we’ve crossed into the territory of the biological. He’s indicating here that biological situations are expected to resonate to the will of God. This changes one’s perceptions, of course, about the supposed symmetry between the situation and the sensible horizon. The sensible horizon might say the biological condition is hopeless; it has gone too far; it is irremediable. We have no cure for that. There is no hope. This is all contradicted by the grammatical structure of the revelation. What should this sick man do? Here’s the prescription:
“He should call the elders of the church to pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord.” Well obviously there’s nothing magical in the oil. We’re talking about creating a condition of resonance. Or perhaps better said, we’re asking the Lord to create of resonance. This is why we pray. Remember, this is all conditional, because in James 1, the author makes it all conditional: “If you pray, you must believe, nothing doubting.”
Then, continuing in verse 15, “And the prayer offered in faith. . .” In other words, that kind of faith not in the symmetry between the situation and the sensible horizon, but faith that a state of resonance will exist between whatever the situation is and the will of God. And that prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well. The Lord will raise him up. So it’s not inherent in the prayer; there’s not inherent power to do this in the prayer. It is inherent in the power of God.
“and if he has sinned, he will be forgiven.” Now, what is sin? It is a breaking of resonance of sorts between the individual (his life) and the will of God. So why would you pray for forgiveness? It is because you want resonance restored. If he has sinned, he will be forgiven.
Therefore “confess your sins to each other, pray for each other, so that you may be healed.” What was the condition of healing? The remedy depended upon resonance established between the world you cannot see and the world that you do see. (And one of the manifestations of that world was this particular catastrophic condition of illness.) Resonance is proved by these texts. And so he says,
“The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.” Why is that true? It is because it is instrumental in the establishment of this condition of resonance.
Now, James makes an appeal to the well-known and well-respected prophet of Israel, Elijah. What does he state? In support of this position, he says, “Elijah was a man just like us.” Meaning what? We have the same frailties, the same limitations. We have a failure of access to the same things. We have a relationship to God that is provided by His grace. Elijah is just like us.
“and he prayed earnestly that it would not rain; and it did not rain on the land for three and a half years.” During those days, the people of the land, the people of God, were worshipping the Baals. One of the manifestations of the Baals was the rain god. So he (Elijah) said, “They believe that Baal is giving them this rain. I therefore ask you (God) to cause it to not rain.” And it did not rain for three and a half years. This means that there is a resonance to be expected between meteorology and the reality of God, His power, His word, His presence.
Then the author of James states, “And again he prayed, and the heavens gave rain, and the earth produced its crops.” Why did this drought change? Why was the drought broken? It is because this man of God had gone to the Lord requesting a different kind of resonance between meteorology and His will. And it became so. He says take this (meteorological) example and go back to the biological condition. Seek resonance. It is an error to put faith in a supposed symmetry (beyond its convenient limitations), between the situations of life (or our entire situation within the material order) and the sensible horizon. You cannot trust this.
Now again we are faced with a recognition. The nature of true faith doesn’t just depend on a certain select number of doctrines that we decided we will hold onto. Rather this is a far broader spectrum than that. It has to deal with faith in God as opposed to faith that we often put in our own experience.
Next page. What must necessarily occur is this: As representational readers of the text, we are committed to imposing textual conditions on all situations. (That’s one of the things that the Book of James would indicate is necessary.) This is what the Ten Commandments is all about. In our own contemporary period, there was a recent episode in the news about a monument to the Ten Commandments. There was a movement to have them removed from some state buildings in the state of Alabama. There were some who opposed that.
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