Tuesday 20 April 2010

Nature of reality

A post on Jesus Creed seems to me to ask a good question. I found it impossible to get the secret words right for a comment so I took it as a sign to post here - especially since it lost my comment every time I erred against the guardian of spam.

The question is somewhat rambling [certainly no worse than this rambling answer] but it is trying to deal with the way we read and teach scripture and about the nature of the reality we find ourselves in. His final question is really short: "What do you think?" Here's my answer.

We can through the Incarnation make a place for the one who made us.

What do I think? I think in metaphor. Let's take creation and redemption. It is one day of 24 hours. That's why Genesis 2:4 speaks of the day in which Hashem Elohim created the heavens and the earth. And that's why the Son is noted as 'still working on the Sabbath' (John 5:17) - in which gospel there are exactly 24 uses of the word hour.That's why there remains a rest for the people of God (Hebrews 4:9 quoting the timely Torah of Psalm 95).

This hour "in the fullness of time" is the day of creation and redemption and it takes place through the act of death of our 'bridegroom of blood' (Exodus 5:24). His death is the anti-type of circumcision (Colossians 2:11).

Evolution is a good human and non-metaphoric explanation of what we see. (So is Ecclesiastes.) There is no fall and no prelapsarian state. Such a linear view of time and causation is inadequate to the facts of grace. So the giver of the law (Moses) is the subject of the wrath of Hashem until he is brought into the new covenant by the circumcision of his children through the obedience of his wife Zippora. So it is that the law brings wrath till the church in obedience brings all its children to grace by the circumcision of death in Christ Jesus.

So it is that the law is established by faith (Romans 3:31). The corollary is that whatever is not of faith is sin (Romans 14:23). That makes Romans a wrap on this subject as many have perceived.

A linear view of time is also inadequate to our science of explanation and our questioning of our axioms. But even a quantum explanation of gravity and consciousness will not resolve this Escher-like problem of the inside explaining the outside.

The question is whether we can respond given our inside state and the metaphoric and poetic nature of reality. Yes - if God incarnates metaphor - even ours.

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