"Ministers in Skirts" - Break off Discussion

Ok, so I've been involved in this discussion about this article over at a friends blog. The article is about men in the church slowly but surely abdicating their responsibilities to women, or adopting a feminine posture in their roles as leaders. It's been a very good, and I would say "healthy" conversation as many, including myself, have had a chance to hear and consider other's points and observations. I had a thought that I believed would be better placed as a comment on my own blog, rather than take up an inordinate amount of space in the ongoing conversation over at Jason's. (If it wasn't already obvious, I have no problem taking up inordinate amounts of space on my own blog). That, and I find myself shamefully jealous of the activity on Jason's blog, so this is somewhat of a half hearted attempt to generate some chat over here.
Though some of us may have never physically dealt with female, effiminate male, or homosexual clergy, consider this:
I think the fact that any church, even if it may be the most liberal of denominations, has women and homo-sexual clergy gives us first hand experience. They claim the name of Christ, and in doing so identify themselves with us in our Saviour. It is plain fact that such denominations as the PCUSA, the Episcopal Church, the various Methodist camps, etc., have surrendered their obligation to the word of God for political posturing and correctness. They all participate in a blatant disregard of God's inspired word, divine purpose, and created order. Despite their individual teachings and beliefs, they bear the name of Christ and are part of the visible church along side the numerous denominations that do not practice such things. Does this not, therefore, personally involve every person who claims the name of Christ and give every one of them, every one of us, first hand experience in this issue? It is our God that they are attacking through the perversion of the form and function of the church, not some false idol. I think we see this phenomenon every time a female pastor is seen in the news or on the book stand. Turn the TV on to the "Christian Station" and look at the growing number of women standing in front of mega-congregations. Each one of them, in the paper, on the news, on the best seller list, on the television, bears the name of Jesus Christ, as member of the visible church, and represents us before the world. If we say nothing, if we do nothing to address this perversion, then I would dare say we participate in it. I believe that we deal with this issue daily and that it is truly a very personal problem for all of us.
What do think?

Responses...#6 (Two for One!)

So this is actually a response to two books. The first was entitled "I am My Body" by Elizabeth Moltmann-Wendel, the second "The Healing Path" by Dan Alendar. Now, I didn't write a response for Wendel until after I read Alendar because Wendel kind of disturbed me. She had an interesting blend of mysticism and feminism that, quite franlky, weirded me out. It wasn't until after I read Alendar's book that I was able to go back and pick out some decent concepts from Wendel; Alendar "illuminated" rather than "elucidated" in this case. Alendar's book was chiefly about suffering as a Christian. Let me ask this: Why do we think suffering a bad thing? Are we not told that we will suffer? Was not our very salvation accomplished through suffering? I think this is why I have such a problem with the modern evangelical "health and wealth" teachings that say if you're not making money and living comfortably, then you must be in sin. (The Mormon church, incidentaly, is having a problem with younger generations filing for bankruptcy because they got in over their heads trying to keep up appearances.) As you will read, I believe suffering to be a clear sign of obedience, of identifiation with God. Anyway, here's my response (Sorry, it's a little long):

I had to do these two works together. I was at somewhat of a loss of how to comment on Molttmann-Wendel until I read Allender.
OK, so I’ve got more circles. Actually, this time it’s more like those magic linking rings that you would see an amateur magician use. He has three or four solid rings that he somehow makes pass through each other and become linked. The trick is that there is a notch in one that the magician conceals with in his hand, and, through clever manipulation, never reveals while giving the illusion that the solid rings are passing through each other. Well, I have had experience with these rings. As an awkward youth, I spent a few years practicing slight of hand, collecting props and tricks, and various paraphernalia of prestidigitation, even performing before sometimes impressed, but mostly patient and forgiving friends and family. I thought those days were behind me, but, once again, I find myself with linking rings in hand. Only this time my rings are already linked, and I’m trying to find that notch to see how they got connected.
Dan Allender has reinforced a concept that I picked up in reading Elizabeth Molttmann-Wendel. Our bodies are intrinsically and inseparably connected to our minds, and souls. In fact, they are part of it. As Moltmann-Wendel has proposed, the state of our body at any given time affects how we not simply perceive ourselves to exist, but, surely, how we actually exist. In grasping this concept I asked myself the question, “why do we so want to separate ourselves from our minds, souls, and the ability to reason. I have said before that the Enlightenment sought to separate the knower from the known, but know I see that it did much more than that. It sought to separate the knower from himself! Rather than linking rings, the “Enlightened” magician is sawing a man in half with no plans to put him back together. What I came away with from Moltmann-Wendel, and what I carried into Allender, was this: that from its very creation, both the soul and mind were never meant to be without the body. God created Adam from the dust of the earth, but he did not get up and live, he was not complete, until God Himself breathed life into him. There is no mention in the scriptures of the soul living before the creation of its physical house. That concept, the one of existing outside our bodies before our birth, has its roots in ancient Greek philosophies. Likewise, as from its creation, the soul is meant to be in the body throughout eternity. The hope of Christianity is the bodily resurrection of Christ. The scriptures refer to the physically risen Christ as the “first fruits” of the resurrection. Is it not obvious that we too, as followers of Christ, will experience the same bodily revivification? And once risen, we will stand in judgment; And once judged those found innocent, only through the blood of Christ, will enter into glory and receive….a new body where mind, body and soul will exist perfectly forever in the presence of its Creator. Mind, body, and soul can not exist independently, nor were they ever meant to.
As this ring glistened in my mind, I could not but continue to contemplate it. As I looked at it more closely, I saw that it began to reveal itself to be linked to another ring. This ring is a little harder for me to explain. (I ran it by my wife -patient woman; God bless her- and she kind of looked at me funny, so I go into this topic knowing that it is not quite all there yet). While being engrossed in such talk of the body, I could not help but consider the bearing of my thoughts on the human condition of being made in the image of God. It seems to me that there may be a connection to God in our very existence that is much deeper than conventional thought. I had always been taught that to be made in the image of God referred to that which separated us from the rest of creation: the ability to reason, the capacity for emotion, the possession of a soul. However, as I began to see that these things are all intrinsically connected to our physical being, I had to extend those concepts beyond what I had previously considered. How come, in considering what the image of God is, I had limited my thinking to only one aspect of the Tri-une God? Could it be that to be made in His image means to reflect Him in not only mind, but also in body and soul as well? Is not Christ, the physical manifestation of God, God’s body? Is not the Holy Spirit, that which extends from God to govern our relationship with Him, His soul? Do we not mirror God in our created ness as mind, body, and soul as He exists as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? The mind: the governing entity over all our functions; the body: that through which we connect to the world we are in, and carries out the bidding of the mind; the soul: that through which we are able to have interactive, not just responsive, relationships and that allows us to see the acting of the body as under the governing of the mind which is, also by the spirit, revealed to be not a separate dictator, but as in a harmonious relationship with the other two, acting and interacting in one accord. Or, at least that is how they should interact, if it were not for our fallen state. The corruption of sin has tainted each aspect of our image. The function of each is the same, but the integrity of their operation is damaged. The sanctification process takes place on all these levels. The mind is renewed, the soul taken over, and our body, I believe, is dying, doing away with what will be replaced by our new bodies. We are the tri-une creation of the Tri-une Creator. (Linked rings, still looking for the notch.)
As I read Allender, I could not help but see this concept elucidated as early as the first chapter. This book is about embracing pain. Not necessarily enjoy it, but seeing it for what it is: a tool used by God to conform us to His image. We experience pain in our body. Even times of mental anguish, as Allender showed us in his friend whose struggle with pornography was discovered by his young son, affect the body. I distinctly remember my mother-in-law spending the nights after the sudden death of her husband huddled on the floor of the bathroom shaking in between fits of vomiting. Allender doesn’t so much say this as he does imply it, but it seems to reinforce Molttmann-Wendel’s proposals. While reading, I could not help but realize that God, too, experienced pain in His “body”. God experienced pain in Christ.
“As men and women after God’s own heart,” Allender wrote, “we are called to walk the path Jesus walked. Jesus, ‘a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering….” (Allender, 15). He quotes Isaiah here to show that the scriptures themselves not only tell of the sufferings of Christ, but characterize Him with pain and suffering. I was shocked and dismayed to pointedly contemplate the modern evangelical propensity to preach a gospel of health and prosperity and to show suffering as something that is our fault or something that is undesirable and to be avoided. Do not the scriptures tell us that we will suffer because Christ suffered? Why are we so eager to eliminate the very thing that identifies us with our Savior on the very level which we image Him? We often hear from “inspirational” preachers that God wants the very best for His children and that HE would never want us to suffer. Where do the scriptures say that? We have forgotten, or maybe even ignored, that God’s best for us is not to keep us safe and wealthy, but that His best for us is what is best for Him. God’s best for us is that He be glorified by, in, and through us. Just as Christ was hung on a tree for the sake of His Father’s kingdom which exists to Glorify God forever, we too may, in fact will, as the scriptures tell us, suffer for the sake of the glory of God. The scriptures also tell us that God was pleased by the crucifixion of His son. Our suffering for the glory of God should be expected, embraced, and borne with the hope that He will indeed be glorified by it, that we will indeed be made more like Christ through it, and that we indeed are experiencing it by the decree of God.
Allender’s book often times made me turn to scripture and just as often offered a new view of it. The context of suffering as supplied by Allender brought to mind three specific instances involving the person of Christ. First, I thought of the story of the death of Lazarus. Christ, being fully God, knew that Lazarus was dead before the report came to Him. In the same way, He knew that He would give the command and that Lazarus would walk out of that tomb. He knew this. And yet, when He arrived at the tomb of His dear friend, He wept. Christ grieved. In the garden on the eve of His death, Christ, knowing that He would rise on the third day, knowing that the whole process was for the glory of His Father and the gathering of His kingdom, knowing all this, He was found in the throws of fear and anguish, in desperate prayer. Christ, again, suffered. Suffering is our responsibility. As Allender said, “Once the inevitable pain comes, it is too late to consider how we will allow ourselves to be shaped by it, “ (p 5). Just as the heat of battle is not the time for a soldier to learn to fight, but a time for him to exercise that which he has learned and demonstrate his faith in his commanding officers, our moments of suffering are proving grounds of who we are, what we believe, the faith that we claim we have. They reveal the strength of God to carry us through it, or they reveal our weakness to us and serve in the capacity of our conforming to the image of Christ for the glory of God. The psalmist does not pray for deliverance from the valley of the shadow of death, but proclaims the hope he has in the rod and staff of the One that lead him there to see him through to the other side. We must suffer. It is, at least in some aspect, how we image God in the person of Christ. The third piece of scripture that came to mind tells not of the life of Christ, but that of His servant Paul. The book of Philippians was written by Paul while he was in prison. His existence at this time was not comfortable, I’m sure. He was in the state of suffering. Yet, while in that state, he wrote these words, “Yes, and I will rejoice, for I know that through your prayers and the help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ this will turn out for my deliverance,” we see his hope, “as it is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now as always,” we see his faith, “Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death,” we see his acceptance and acknowledgement of the purpose of his suffering. Then, he says this, which floored me. “For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” His living, his suffering, he described as Christ. His possible death, the ceasing to be of his corruptible flesh, and, therefore, the receiving of his new glorified body, was gain.
This might not all add up, I know. It may even be hard to follow due to my hurriedness and incomplete thought on the matter, but I hope you can see the rings, see that I have connected Allender and Molttmann-Wendel. I hope to further inspect all the rings, and find that allusive notch that grants them unity.

Shabbat Shalom!

Peaceful and Blessed Sabbath to every one!

So, Ive only got one more response, and then my final paper to post. After reading some blogs of some friends that I have recently come across (the blogs, not the friends), I've become aware that I must start introducing some new topics and some plain ol' casual conversational stuff to keep this thing going. I know that the stuff I've posted so far has been long and required a deliberate read, and I greatly appreciate those that have taken the time to read it. I am humbled that people are actually interested in what I have to say and what I've been thinking. So, thanks to all.

By way of introduction/preparation for my next post, and to spark some new conversation, I would like to bring up the topic of what it means to be made in the image of God, and to bear that image as created man. Up until recently, I had always held the opinion that it was the ability to think and reason and believe. i still think that is part of it, but my thinking on the matter has expanded quite a bit. I am still fleshing things out (pardon the pun), but I think there is something to the idea that we, as man, litteraly mirror the image of God in our created form and function. I don't want to spoil my last response, but let me encourage you to think on the matter. Not just as a prep for my last response, but as a step in your pursuit to know our creator more intimately.

Responses...#5 To Know as We are Known

This reposnse is more of a straight book review than anything else. I almost hesitate to post it as I feel it may not add anything to the conversation. However, it is what I was thinking at the time, and may ellucidate some of what I had already said. It find it really hard to draw stuff out of material that I don't agree with; I tend to overcompensate. I know there's got to be at least some beneficial tid bits in even the worst of material, but I think I may look too hard and maybe malign the original intentions of the author in order to make it look like something I see as OK. When I look back at this response I see a line of thinking that is more clearly stated in some of my other writings, especially my final paper, which I will post eventually. The general Polanyian concepts of not being able to "commit non-commitally", and "a truth named is a truth claimed" is personally very convicting to me. If I say I believe it, then my actions must attend to it, and, conversely, my actions reveal that which I believe. In his book, Parker J. Palmer seems to want to dip his feet on either side as he walks along the fence; He blends world views and religions and even politics and, in the end, doesn't really commit to anything.

There is a particular quote from Palmer that jumped out at me while reading this book. Not because of what it said, but rather what it implied and the shadow that the implication cast over the rest of his words. In explaining why he could not support prayer in public schools Palmer makes the comment, regarding the act of praying publicly simply because it is allowed, “...any prayer that is so vaguely worded that it sounds agreeable to all is, by my limits, no prayer at all,”(Palmer, 10).
As I read this book there were times where I literally exclaimed out loud, much to the surprise of those enjoying the quietness of the library, “JUST SAY IT, MAN!”. I believe that Palmer has taken up an important cause in writing this book, reintroducing spirituality into education, but I found that he falls sadly short of both identifying the problem and offering any kind of effective solution, and in the process of trying to offer both, falls pray to his own condemnation.
So, “Just Say It,”. “Just say what?” you might ask. Well, many things, actually. In his introductory section of the first chapter, Palmer speaks of the problem of how younger generations are being taught in such a way that produces within them a “fantastic ethic,” in which, “the world is an object to be manipulated,….that a small part of it can be organized to suit their personal needs,” (pg 5). The college students he describes as being pessimistic about the future of the whole world yet, at the same time, having the utmost optimism for their own personal futures, I believe, nicely describes the common product of the current education system. In this Palmer identifies the problem: Truth, and the knowledge of it, is not being taught as a unified whole. The wholeness of truth as something to come to know and interact with is something that we have seen in all our readings thus far. He goes on to point out how divided and “sectioned”, if you will, our education system is. We are taught many things in our school, but all in different classrooms, by different teachers, on different days; and rarely do the subjects ever cross over into each other. In response, Palmer demonstrates an understanding of the need for the realization of the reciprocity of knowledge. “We must try to understand more about the knowledge we possess, for that knowledge also possess us,” (pg 6). The things we learn are not ours to take advantage of, but rather enable us while, at the same time, hold us accountable to them. The absence of this realization is what Palmer was lamenting in his illustration of the Trinity scientists.
It is when Palmer goes on to offer a solution that his silence provoked such a reaction in me. He leads up to the solution with great promise, “The question is urgent, and the evidence in response to it is troubling. But the problem will not have been truly engaged until we ask about the origins of our knowledge as well as its ends,” (pg. 6). I was eager to see where he would take us. However, I found that he lead me to frustration and disappointment. This is where I had my first, “JUST SAY IT,” incident. I kept longing to see the words that relayed something to the effect of God having been removed from our education system, but it was never there. Maybe, and that’s a big maybe, it was implied, but if it was, it was hidden in terms like “spirituality”.
As I read on, I saw why Palmer never comes out and says it. And that is because he doesn’t believe it. In entering into his conversation about curiosity and control, Palmer makes the comment that, “knowledge contains its own morality, that it begins not in neutrality but in a place of passion, within the human soul,” (pg 7). Here, Palmer sets himself up for tragic contradiction. He is about to go into a discussion of how we need to transcend through prayer, yet here he in fact turns inward to man himself saying that the morality lies in the knower, not that which is known. That which is known, as we have seen in The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God and On Being Human, points to God. It is His revealing of Himself to man. Right and true knowledge is moral. Man, as God Himself has told us in His holy scriptures, is not. Man is deceitful and desperately wicked. Man’s general sense of right and wrong is, I believe, very spiritual. It has no “scientifically” discernable origin. To me, it is one of the lingering and most powerful reflections of the image of God in His creation. And so, Palmer’s entire foundation is flawed in that it seems he couldn’t make up his mind about where the answer lies, in man or in God, so he has given man the God-like attribute of being able to be right on his own. He shows that he has not strayed far from his Kantian past of man forcing the chaos of reality into his own mold.
I was deeply troubled by Palmer’s use of the word love. “The failure of modern knowledge is not primarily a failure in our ethics, in the application of what we know.” he says, “Rather, it is the failure of our knowing itself to recognize and reach for its deeper source and passion, to allow love to inform the relations that our knowledge creates-with ourselves, with each other, with the whole animate and inanimate world,” (pg 9). What is this love he keeps mentioning? Where does it come from? This, again, sparked me to a “JUST SAY IT!”. I so wanted to substitute the word “love” with God. Man needs to see that God it the source of knowledge and that it is His tool, His way of guiding and directing and motivating. That solution, the solution of looking to God, would work; it would change how we know and what we do with our knowledge. Instead, Palmer offers no solution as he suggests that we simply look deeper into ourselves, to our own passions. That would only get us into a deeper problem! I found that his whole discussion on control and curiosity verse compassion was more directly a discussion of control verses submission. It is the struggle of man to be the possessor and controller of knowledge, the Kantian potter if you will, rather than submit to their own known-ness and the understanding that truth and knowledge belong to God, to whom they are the clay. I would say that Palmer supports that in leading up to the conversation, but then he goes on to say that the clay needs to believe even more that he is the potter in order for us to rightly handle knowing, that love is something that lies deep inside man himself. This concept is carried over in a very dangerous way into his discussion of prayer on the following pages in which he reduces prayer into nothing more than meditative introspection saying that, “In prayer we allow ourselves to be known by love, to receive this freeing and redeeming knowledge of ourselves,” (pg 11). In reality, however, in prayer we come obediently and humbly to our knees before the throne of God, our Creator, who knows us intimately whether we like it or not, and in Him, and only in Him, we see redemption through the knowledge of Him.
I held onto the hope, however, that Palmer would finally define his terms and come out and “just say it” when he began to talk about knowing face to face. Again, however I was disappointed. I saw again why he never says it, and, again, it is because he doesn’t mean it. He speaks of God and love, and even uses Paul’s writings (out of context, I might add) as nothing more than tradition; a model from which to draw on. His terms were vague, because, sadly, I don’t think he quite knows what he believes. He says “love” instead of “God”, “transcendence” instead of “appeal”, “spirituality” instead of “belief”, “tradition” instead of “faith” because he’s not quite convinced himself as to what those things mean. Palmer has seen the problem and does offer some good insights, but he is overall vague and sadly contradictory. It sounds like he is trying to please everyone from Christian to mystic. Sadly, this brings us back to that damning quote I mentioned earlier. “Any prayer that is so vaguely worded that it sounds agreeable to all is, by my limits, no prayer at all.”

4th Response....Enlightenment and Alienation

It was refreshing to read Colin Gunton's book and see him refer to Polanyi in a christian context. To see someone else come at his tacit knowing from an expressly "religious", or better, theological, view very much helped me to see more angles on Polanyi's epistemology.
I also enjoyed Gunton's discussion about the Enlightenment period. I had learned of the Enlightenment in my intro philosophy class in the previous semester, but, as we were trying to cram the ENTIRE history of philosophy into one semester, we only scratched its surface. I learned about who proposed what and how other responded, etc. But looking at it as a whole, as one movement, rather than as a bunch of individual philosophies really solidified in my mind how detrimental it was to our system of thought.
So, here's my response to Colin Gunton's Enlightenment and Alienation:

I find it ironic that the title of “The Enlightenment” was chosen for the period of philosophy to which it is attached. The course of thought from those involved served to so separate man from the world that he is in, that it seems, and admittedly in retrospect, it would more properly carry a title of a more negative connotation. Having gone through a history of philosophy class last semester, I had a general idea of who said what and the basic trends in this time period, but seeing it as Gunton laid it out impressed upon me just how severe and detrimental the separation of reason and perception has been. It so drastically separated the knower, man, form the known, the world in which he is in, including its Creator. In reading the history of the so-called Enlightenment then moving on to the “dissenting voice” of Polanyi, I drew a parallel between Polanyi and Martin Luther. Both offered a view that was directly opposite of the common belief of the time, and both did so in earnest hope for the salvation, of one sort or another, of mankind.
The more I read of the Enlightenment, the more I began to see it for what it really was, what those that propagated it were attempting to do, consciously or not. The main drive of the Enlightenment was to destroy the covenant between God the Creator and man, His creation. This task was attempted through two primary strategies that, though seemingly in opposition to each other, fought toward the same goal. Gunton makes mention of both of these strategies as presented by two of the era’s noted philosophers. “From Hume, on the helplessness of the mind to understand nature by means of concepts not directly derived from sense; and from Kant on the need of the mind to impose upon nature a conceptual pattern and thus compel nature to come to order,” (Gunton, 45). Here we see that Hume has taken to relieving man from his covenantal role on grounds of ignorance. How can man be responsible for and in something that he cannot know, or even be aware of? If we, as man, cannot know then we cannot be a part of a relationship in which we are required to do so. On the other side of the coin we find Kant. He ultimately reaches the same end, although he attacks it from the other flank. When Kant says, as Gunton describes, that man compels nature to come to order, he is ascribing deity to the individual. Each man, in Kantian order, is, in essence, his own God as it is the individual that brings order to the universe. So, we see that Kant supported the same claim as Hume, that man cannot be part of a covenant with a Creator God, howbeit not because of man’s ignorance as Hume surmises, but, oppositely, that man himself is the creator, or at least master of creation. Both men, and those that supported and/or followed their line of reasoning (ironic) have endeavored to reason away their responsibility and accountability to God.
Thankfully, this line of thought, though potent and still lingering in our culture today, did not go unchallenged. The ideas of the Luther-esque figure of Polanyi are described by Gunton in this way: “We stand neither god-like over the material world, as the rationalism of the Enlightenment has encouraged us to think, nor at the mercy of something of something utterly different and incomprehensible, as some forms of existentialist reaction to rationalism may suggest,” (Gunton, 48). It is a direct refutation of the ideas presented and bolstered in the Enlightenment. Polanyi’s idea of tacit knowing directly and fiercely attacks the separation of the knower and the known by saying that, indeed, man is not only able, but is in fact obligated, to contact the world around him and through doing so come to know it. It is obvious how, in contrast to both Hume and Kant, Polanyi not only allows for but supports man’s covenantal relationship with a Creator God. Both Kant’s and Hume’s ideas, and those of others of the same bent, are fundamentally flawed in that they assume that it is man’s responsibility to uncover the world, to determine what the world is. Gunton comments on this in response to a writing of Marjory Grene. “Thus when we are enabled to grasp the order that is in the creation, whether in simple perception or in the higher flights of scientific discovery, it is because something is given to us, not simply because we grasp at it,” (Gunton, 51). The world, and all things that can be known, have been given to us to be discovered, to be known. Again, denying this denies God who has created and given them to us to reveal Himself.
Some of what Gunton says found a warm welcome with thoughts I have had after previous readings. “To put it in theological language,” Gunton says,” we can say that Polanyi’s view reminds us of the eschatological dimension of human knowing; that we live in time, not in eternity when ‘we shall know as we are known’. Those who live in time are those who live under the promise that what they are doing is not pointless or absurd, but will be seen in its full significance only from its end,” (Gunton, 51). Remember my circle? Seeing the end changes the road to it.

On Being Human....Response #3

Have you ever read Calvin Seerveld? It's an experience. He has a very loose, personal way of writing and after delving into Polanyi and Frame, picking up this book was kind of strange. It was hard to get out of a "logical" mind set and get personal again. But I think that was precisely why Dr. Meek placed this book where she did on the list. I had these enormous thoughts of knowing and God, etc., but it was easy to forget that I was the one experiencing the knowing process. Anyways, here's my response to Seerveld's work "On Being Human"....

What does it mean to be human? I was immediately haunted by this question when I heard the struggle behind it expressed by Dr. Meek. It really is one of those questions that, I think, we take for granted that we know the answer to when in fact it is one that we all need to spend more time contemplating. It is almost a paradox in the Polanyian sense: We know more than we can tell, for we are human and therefore must know what it means to be such; yet at the same time, we don’t know as much as our pontifications might suggest. I had thoughts and opinions about the answer to the question right off the bat, but all day after hearing the question, and even now still, I have been laboring to see the pattern behind my thoughts and ideas, to determine if they work together and mesh into a single point.
It seems that we have been engaged in a rather logical study of the abstract in this class. Starting with Longing to Know we were introduced to the model of tacit knowing. Then, to elucidate that pattern we went right to the source by reading Polanyi’s The Tacit Dimension. Armed with coming to know and being known by God, we began to look into the factors, or parties, involved in our knowing. Through Frame we started the study with God. He showed us that God is covenant head of all creation and we cannot know Him without knowing other things (which we all do and, therefore, we all know God), and we cannot rightly know those things without knowing God. Now we look to Seerveld to shed some light on our part in the process, on what it is to be human. We are gathering pieces to the whole, picking up clues to form the pattern in hopes to reach an understanding of our Christian living. OK, maybe it’s not all that abstract, which is what Seerveld was trying to tell us.
As I read the book, I began to notice things that I really didn’t see upon opening the pages for the first time: the Psalms, the art work. I think it was at the point that I read, “But if the scriptures can break through our defences, it can direct us rich young thinkers and shopkeepers, professionals and rulers to let the promise of 2 Corinthians 5 and the open pain of faith expressed in Psalm 39 begin to permeate our professional activity, our business dealings, our teaching and our holding authority over others.,” (Seerveld, 40-41) that I stopped and truly realized that what he is saying is so very practical. It speaks to all of us, thinkers, shopkeepers, professionals. It says that the power of scripture, the glory of God, is intended for humans. At that point the artwork, the sculptures, even the blurbs about the artists and their thoughts behind the pieces, resonated with God. As we have seen in Meek and Polanyi, through Frame, and know in Seerveld, to be human is to be connected to God. The LORD and Creator of all things has chosen to interact with His creation of man in such an intimate way that even those that do not know Him, know of Him and cannot help but glorify Him. Man can know right and wrong. Man can love and hate. Man can make decisions, he can curse, he can pray, he can create life, he can take life away, he can sin, he can repent. Animals, trees, plants, mountains, though all created by God, cannot do any of these. Our connection with God is one so intimate that it allows us to experience Him and participate in His design with Him. In begetting children we participate with Him in his creation. In forgiving our debtors, we participate in His plan of redemption. In burying our loved ones, we feel the sorrow of the fall of Adam, the agony of His forsaking of Christ on the cross. Our humanity is our connection with God.
It was coming to this concept that I saw where my pattern was, how all my thoughts and ideas came to a head. It occurred to me, and actually seemed quite obvious once I realized it, that in order to know what a “human” is, we need to look to an example of humanity. Some one that hungered, thirsted, needed. Some one that loved and scorned, cried and rejoiced. Some one that felt happiness, fear, pride, anger, strength and weakness. Someone that both ministered and was ministered to. This man is found in the scriptures. They show us a figure that was completely human. Yet, at the same time, this man was completely God. In Christ we find both the knower and the known, the clues and the pattern, the parts and the whole. Christ, because completely God, was perfectly completely human. He is the only model, the only authority, as to what is human. The scriptures were opened up to Him, for He was the scriptures, He is the Logos. They permeated every aspect of His life because they were His life. But we are not God in any sense of wholeness, so can we be human in any sense wholeness? But we are human, so where does that leave us? I believe that the characteristic of Christ that spoke most of His perfect humanness is found in scriptures that seem to elude us, make us scratch our heads and struggle with the complexity of the Godhead. While Christ says that He and the Father are one, He also says that He does not know things that the Father knows, and that He can only do His Father’s will. It is this characteristic that makes Christ fully human: His obedience and submission to the Father. Humanity is the most precious thing that we can participate in with God, and can only fully do so through Christ. As I said before, I believe all creation is in obedience to God, but a more intimate relationship, a more whole humanity, is found in doing what only created man can do, and that only through Christ.

Responses...#2 "The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God"

This response is what I wrote after reading a portion (first 100 or so pages) of "The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God" by John Frame. This book served as a major stepping stone in my thought process as it introduced a pivotal concept. Actually, I had the concept already, Frame just put it in words for me. Anyway, here you go....

I have had this circle rolling around in my mind that I have been struggling to verbalize for about six months now. The circle is not an object, but rather a process that started forming as I read Longing to Know. Actually, let me rephrase that. The process had always been there, but my ability to recognize it as something to be able to describe, something to convey, has been becoming more and more developed, and, as a result, the struggle has become active. While reading Longing to Know I began to piece together this process that involved seeing things, everything, as parts of a whole. I saw a natural progression in which these wholes, the patterns, themselves also played the role of parts of a larger whole. This process, if taken at its face value, would seem to go on ad infinitum: you just keep on knowing and knowing as wholes become pieces which are part of whole that are pieces, etc., etc., etc.. However, this would seem to make knowing futile. For if we cannot see an end, or rather a culmination, an ultimate whole, to our knowing, than can it be said that we can truly know anything? Pieces need a whole or they are not truly pieces.
So what is this whole that is the ultimate culmination of our knowledge? In my circle, it is God. God is the whole that all the pieces fit into. As the clues, which come from the universe created by God, form into patterns they reveal God to us in some way; and as those revelations mesh with others, forming a new pattern or whole, they reveal yet something else. That is the upward arc of the circle. Now, describing the downward arc is where I run into trouble. It is one of those classic instances of knowing more than I can tell. It’s not that I’m not sure of how it works; rather I am not able to find the words to put it into a picture.
When I read the introduction to the first chapter of The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God, I nearly cried. Not of sorrow, but of joy, relief, confidence, assurance. I saw my circle, or least a representation of it. “The biblical God is the God of the covenant, the Creator and sustainer of the world, the Redeemer and judge of men. So we cannot know God without knowing other things at the same time,” (Frame, 10). I believe this is pretty much what I have said. Things we come to know reveal God. But he goes on. “And, quite importantly, we cannot know other things rightly without knowing God rightly.” Oh, my! Like Evangelist pointing the way to Pilgrim, this Frame has been where I’m going! The relationship between the things that we know revealing God and God revealing the things that we know, is what I have always been aware of but have been unable to relay. But, in sentences preceding these two, Frame offers what I see to be the missing link between the circle in my head and the circle in my mouth. “The biblical God is the God of the covenant, the Creator and sustainer of the world, the redeemer and judge of men.” The covenantal relationship between God and all creation, a separate covenant from the one between Him and His elect people, defines the operation of not only revealing Himself through the clues, but revealing the clues through Himself. We start off seeing, to use an example from Frame’s book, a rose, and we, believer or unbeliever, say truly that the rose is red. But, if and when we are given the grace to see that the redness of the rose reveals God, we then say, more truly, that God has made the rose red, which illuminates the true being, the true beauty of the rose. God revealed himself to us through the rose, and now, in knowing the culmination of knowledge that the rose attends to, we see the rose differently than we did before. The rose is then revealed to us through God as it fulfills its covenant role. Because all creation, the very cosmos is in covenant with Him, We cannot rightly know God without knowing things, and we cannot rightly know things without knowing God.
This is how I now reconcile Frame’s assertion that unbelievers cannot but know God. The unbelievers, though in rebellion against God, are given their rebellion and mutinous will by God. They can do nothing other than rebel, thus they are in obedience to, or fulfillment of their role in the covenant. This is how they know God, and, unless determined otherwise by God alone in His divine order, they will be clues to, a piece of the whole of, God as they are used to demonstrate God’s justice and wrath. Just as the rebellious generation was doomed to die in the wilderness, unbelievers are on the same journey as believers, and are therefore beneficiaries of the blessings of that journey, but they will not reach the Promised Land. Their unbelief and their condemnation point to God and His various characteristics. Unbelievers cannot but glorify God in their covenantal lot; they know Him through their unalterable obedience and inescapable role in God’s covenant with them of history and purpose, His covenant of how He determined things should be. God is the unavoidable known.
The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God is a natural progression of Longing to Know. Meek’s book declares that we can know God and, as the final chapter states, we are known by God. Frame continues that discussion by saying that not only can we know God, but that, indeed, we can’t not know Him, and by explaining exactly what that requires of, and how it bears on, our tacit knowing.
In journaling while reading Longing to Know for the first time I had said that I felt like a newborn learning to see. Colors became clearer, edges sharper and more defined, and light began to separate from darkness. As I read Frame, I felt like a toddler learning to talk. It seems that I’m starting to grow up.