Are We Looking at Things Backwards?

[makesends]

All through Scripture, I see the huge difference between Man and God, in every way. Even the fact that both exist is different: God exists in and of himself —he is the "what is", base fact, from which all else that exists, descends logically and causally— but man is only, 'creature', no matter to what station or worth God has assigned him. I think probably all the readers here would agree, so far. “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways,” declares the LORD. 9“For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so My ways are higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts.…". (From Isaiah 55)

So, God being infinitely 'above' us brings us to his Transcendence. He is still beyond our understanding, no matter how far we go in understanding him. If what I bring to this discussion has any validity, it is still not the whole matter, but just a way to look at things.

The hermeneutics by which theologians and Bible students within Orthodoxy's bounds usually operate, normally insist on certain common sense rules, among which are the maintaining of structure in reading Scripture's words/phrases; that is, for example, if the language is symbolic, then the symbolic word(s) are only symbolic, not literal. The "arm of the Lord" is not talking about an actual arm. Hyperbolic language is only hyperbolic. If the Gate of the New Jerusalem is said to be a gigantic pearl, it is not referring to what we think of in terms of 'one pearl'. And so on.

Same goes for other things: Poetic language need not be used as Doctrinally descriptive in a literal sense. Analogy is only analogous. When one thing is said to be LIKE something else, it only means that it is like that other thing, and is not actually that other thing. (Strange how loosely we find ourselves, though, following these rules. But I digress.)


So, to The Thesis of this OP:

One thing that God being so far above our understanding has brought me to consider, is that we humans, temporally dependent, can't help but see things the way we do. I don't mean that we can't think abstractly but that we necessarily think our thoughts valid, almost as though WE are the purveyors of reality. Thus I have to back up every time I think I have things figured out, because I have come to realize that we look at things backwards. Only God knows what the solid reality is. We have at best, words, wisdom via experience and relationship with Him, to help us understand it. Is it possible that in looking at things backwards, we call, for example, 'symbolic', what is literal, because we can't handle, can't comprehend, the greater or more solid thing of the two? Or, instead, does God have the only REAL arm, and ours is just a poor imitation, ours of mere created material, and his of his very nature, his very being, he who alone is self-existent? Does ours look sort of like his—his being the real thing—instead of his resembling ours? Need "the mouth of God" (Matthew 4:4) not be THE real mouth, and ours only poor representations to help us consider his? Take, for example, the outlandish concept of the perfect "Bride of Christ", who is "The Body of Christ", "bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh", compared to a feeble bride of this temporal existence, and the notion, "one flesh", that she and her silly husband are.

I'm not saying that all things we take for symbolic, (and such), would, under this supposition, be literal in this way. I'm just saying that this seems to me to be a valid consideration in some passages of Scripture. And I'm certainly not proposing that we discard common sense in reading and understanding Scripture! I'm saying, let's admit not only that we don't know much, but that we might do well to consider that we are looking at things backwards.


With this, come several other thoughts: a) Let's don't get carried away with 'spiritualizing' things, as that is not the purpose of Scripture, (though it seems to be a habit with Clergy and laypeople sometimes), amplified by the notion this thesis presents. Let's eschew pursuing all apparent implications, as though they too are not separated by 2 or 3 or more degrees from what already is not Orthodoxy. b) It may be impractical for many of us to 'go there' with this thought —if it makes no difference to our amazement in considering his majesty, beauty, purity and power, and it makes no difference to our love for each other. c) If there is even a 'little something' to this thought, it is as always beyond us to comprehend to its fullest. We will not know until we see him as he is.

 

[Arial]

One thing that God being so far above our understanding has brought me to consider, is that we humans, temporally dependent, can't help but see things the way we do. I don't mean that we can't think abstractly but that we necessarily think our thoughts valid, almost as though WE are the purveyors of reality. Thus I have to back up every time I think I have things figured out, because I have come to realize that we look at things backwards. Only God knows what the solid reality is. We have at best, words, wisdom via experience and relationship with Him, to help us understand it. Is it possible that in looking at things backwards, we call, for example, 'symbolic', what is literal, because we can't handle, can't comprehend, the greater or more solid thing of the two? Or, instead, does God have the only REAL arm, and ours is just a poor imitation, ours of mere created material, and his of his very nature, his very being, he who alone is self-existent? Does ours look sort of like his—his being the real thing—instead of resembling ours? Need "the mouth of God" (Matthew 4:4) not be THE real mouth, and ours only poor representations to help us consider his? Take, for example, the outlandish concept of the perfect "Bride of Christ", who is "The Body of Christ", "bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh", compared to a feeble bride of this temporal existence, and the notion, "one flesh", that she and her silly husband are.

This reminds me of an episode of Young Sheldon the spin-off of Big Bang Theory. Sheldon as a child was so smart he was allowed to take college courses and took a philosophy class. I don't remember all the details but his professor showed him a picture of a butterfly and ask him what it was and of course he answered, "butterfly". The conversation went something like this.

P: How do you know it is a butterfly?"
S "Because it is a butterfly."
P "But how do you know you are not the butterfly and this is a chicken?"

It went on and on and Sheldon's scientific world was upended. It came down to the professor had him not even knowing if he (Sheldon) existed. He was so confused he got deeply depressed and one morning he couldn't get out of bed to go to class. His mother ask him what was wrong, and he said something on the order of, "I don't know if there is a class and I don't even know if I am a chicken or a butterfly or if I am my own imagination and not real at all."

I realize that didn't contribute anything to the conversation but---am I really having a conversation or am I really just a grain of sand? IOW, good post but I don't know how to engage with it. My thoughts are "maybe but no one knows."

In any case just as God set boundaries for the sea that it could not go beyond, so too are the boundaries he set for the human mind. He tells us what we need to know of him, and he tells us in a way that we can understand (analogies and symbolic language). It was men who penned the inspired word and they only had human comparisons at their disposal. They couldn't go beyond that because that is as far as humans can go. Anything beyond that would be gibberish from our perspective.

 

[makesends]

This reminds me of an episode of Young Sheldon the spin-off of Big Bang Theory. Sheldon as a child was so smart he was allowed to take college courses and took a philosophy class. I don't remember all the details but his professor showed him a picture of a butterfly and ask him what it was and of course he answered, "butterfly". The conversation went something like this.

P: How do you know it is a butterfly?"
S "Because it is a butterfly."
P "But how do you know you are not the butterfly and this is a chicken?"

It went on and on and Sheldon's scientific world was upended. It came down to the professor had him not even knowing if he (Sheldon) existed. He was so confused he got deeply depressed and one morning he couldn't get out of bed to go to class. His mother ask him what was wrong, and he said something on the order of, "I don't know if there is a class and I don't even know if I am a chicken or a butterfly or if I am my own imagination and not real at all."

I realize that didn't contribute anything to the conversation but---am I really having a conversation or am I really just a grain of sand? IOW, good post but I don't know how to engage with it. My thoughts are "maybe but no one knows."

In any case just as God set boundaries for the sea that it could not go beyond, so too are the boundaries he set for the human mind. He tells us what we need to know of him, and he tells us in a way that we can understand (analogies and symbolic language). It was men who penned the inspired word and they only had human comparisons at their disposal. They couldn't go beyond that because that is as far as humans can go. Anything beyond that would be gibberish from our perspective.

But what he will show us when we see him won't be gibberish. We will see what these temporal things represented. I didn't really talk about that, but I can't help but wonder if EVERY detail here represents what we will find [out] there.

 

[Arial]

But what he will show us when we see him won't be gibberish. We will see what these temporal things represented. I didn't really talk about that, but I can't help but wonder if EVERY detail here represents what we will find [out] there.

Yes, then we will know even as we are known. We have to be changed so that we are no longer mortal and no longer corrupted, and then I guess our minds can contain those things that would like cause us to disintegrate, or at the least end up completely insane----mind blown literally---if we were to be shown them in our present condition.

So, here's a question. Does he see us now as we will be or as we are now?

 

[Arial]

@makesends

One anthropomorphism I have trouble pin pointing is when it says God's voice was like thunder. Or he spoke in the thunder.

I never considered it literal, but when I was a new Christian (and one who loves thunderstorms) still when I heard thunder, I connected it to God speaking. In your speculations in the OP, was I possibly closer to the reality--it was him speaking I just couldn't understand what he said---than the words themselves convey and that we consider analogy or symbol?

Quick story. Last summer we had a series of rolling thunderstorms throughout the night, passing right over my house. In one of them there was one of those booms, the kind that the thunder is right on top of the lightening which lit up the whole room. So loud it shook the windows and nearly stopped my breath. This is the thought that went through my head "That was God speaking judgment." I could not shake that feeling until late the next day. It was, to me, that not all thunder is God speaking but that one was. Of course, the idea has faded, but it lasted a long while.

 

[makesends]

Yes, then we will know even as we are known. We have to be changed so that we are no longer mortal and no longer corrupted, and then I guess our minds can contain those things that would like cause us to disintegrate, or at the least end up completely insane----mind blown literally---if we were to be shown them in our present condition.

So, here's a question. Does he see us now as we will be or as we are now?

"Does he see us now as we will be or as we are now?"

NOTE: Mere opinion, here:

Both, I think. But we are now what/who we will be, though we can't see it that way yet. That is to say, this is not a dichotomy. He spoke the finished product into existence, and this temporal is how it is being accomplished.

It does make sense to say that we are not whole persons yet, not complete, until we see him as he is. Yet, the other is true, too, I think. And God's perspective is the only real one, which is not time-dependent, yet even time itself, (or for those who deny that there is such a thing as time, what happens in this frame), depends on him.

This probably will complicate it further, and it is another step past Orthodoxy, but I think it helps explain what I just said: What happens in this frame is real, though a vapor in comparison to the solid spiritual. I think what happens in this frame is part of our makeup when we are there. God is making us.

 

[makesends]

@makesends

One anthropism I have trouble pin pointing is when it says God's voice was like thunder. Or he spoke in the thunder.

I never considered it literal, but when I was a new Christian (and one who loves thunderstorms) still when I heard thunder, I connected it to God speaking. In your speculations in the OP, was I possibly closer to the reality--it was him speaking I just couldn't understand what he said---than the words themselves convey and that we consider analogy or symbol?

Quick story. Last summer we had a series of rolling thunderstorms throughout the night, passing right over my house. In one of them there was one of those booms, the kind that the thunder is right on top of the lightening which lit up the whole room. So loud it shook the windows and nearly stopped my breath. This is the thought that went through my head "That was God speaking judgment." I could not shake that feeling until late the next day. It was, to me, that not all thunder is God speaking but that one was. Of course, the idea has faded, but it lasted a long while.

That well may be right. I don't know. I remember when I was very little, the 7th (of nine kids), probably 4 or 5 years old. I was every day left alone in the house because my parents were teachers at a Bible Institute nearby, and my older brothers and sisters were at school. When I was alone, I was terrified of thunder and lightning. And our house (in the tropics of South America) was not exactly enclosed, and had a tin roof with no ceiling; house on a hill, with tall trees around, so lightning "right there". One day a particularly bad storm, with sheets of rain, (harder than any rain I've seen since, I think, and I've seen some doozies) of itself deafeningly loud on the tin, and bolts of lightning one right after another had me so scared I didn't know how to think. Then it came to me that not only is God stronger than the lightning and can keep me safe, but that God is ENJOYING it! HE is the one DOING it! Ever since then, I have loved thunder storms, and watching lightning storms from a distance where you can see clouds back-lit, looks like Heaven to me.

Now that I think of it in the context of what you said about judgement, I wonder if this doesn't have something to do with why I have no problem with God executing final judgement on his enemies.

 

[QVQ]

The Bible to me is literal. I know there are learned opinions about "poetic language" but those "pearly gates", when my vision failed, I would see distortions, some very sparkling and larger or smaller. Spatial opening would be sometimes solid and shimmering. It was a world of fun house mirrors and in a way, very beautiful. Our vision is very narrow and specially tailored. I wonder that birds see or cats?
Then what does God see, awsome to consider with His "sensory" abilities
And I can agree with @makesends that the "mouth" of God is the actual mouth and ours is the imitation.
The literal bible means that I try to see the world as it is described therein as what it may truly be if I had eyes to see.
Interesting thoughts on this thread