The Divine Abundance: Part Six

(Continued from Part Five)
So Beauty is real, present, independent, giving, bestowing, playful and creative. It is also diverse, copious, and harmonious. With Allah as God, only red is beautiful. All other colors submit in inadequacy. But with a Triune God ruling the heavens and earth, a rainbow of colors are considered equal in richness and beauty. Red and Blue can stand together and equally declare God’s glory in Beauty. But our God is three separate and distinct units, having no commonality. In like manner Red and Blue do not stand apart like in a debate, vying for the win. They are more like the two lines of music that when played together, harmonize. When something is beautiful, the individual aspects of that beautiful item work together to make it so. Take a beautiful tree. You do not separate the trunk from the branches, or the leaves from the ground its planted in. Every part plays its line in harmony. This is a microcosm of how the world works. There is a multiplicity of colors, textures, tastes, aromas, sights, sounds, that all work together in creation to glorify God. In their right created context, they are beautiful. This stems from the God we worship. Again, you cannot separate the creation from the Creator. A work always reflects its author.

Beauty is real, present, independent, giving, bestowing, playful and creative, diverse and harmonious. Beauty also carries an aspect of distance. Distance does not necessarily mean far away. It simply means space, and spatial relationships. In terms of our God, He is infinitely far, transcendent, and wholly other, and by the same token infinitely near, immediate, and within. Beauty therefore has these attributes as well. A painting perhaps best exemplifies this. To look at a painting one can see and touch the canvas, paint, frame, etc. In that sense it is near, close at hand. But it also has an aspect of distance, in that it takes you somewhere. From a Japanese bridge to a plaza in 18th Century Italy, to ancient Egypt (as with the pyramids). Beauty, in other words, is dimensional. Beauty has both the ability to transcend space and time, but also to locate one in a certain space and time. It not only remains beautiful through different cultures and era’s, but also takes the beholder and locates them in a different context. As I mentioned, this happens most readily with paintings, but architecture can have the same affect, both civic and landscape. Beauty brings the far near, and brings the near far away.

Beauty is real, present, independent, giving, bestowing, playful and creative, diverse, harmonious, and dimensional. Lastly, Beauty has context, and cannot be beautiful, at least in the same way, apart from its surroundings. To relate this directly to our God needs some clarification. God would still be God apart from His people, technically. But He Himself has chosen to irrevocably unite Himself to us, to identify Himself by us. Christ is now forever in human flesh. That cannot and will not be undone. To separate Him from that flesh would in some sense, hypothetically of course, diminish His beauty. In like manner, creation has context. The beauty of the trees in the mountains of eastern California could not be appreciated in the great plains of Nebraska. But in their context, they are some of the most sublime sights one can ever see on this earth. Likewise a Bach Cantata played at a hockey game, just does not fit, nor would the beauty be fully communicated and appreciated. Just because something works here, does not necessitate it working there. This is another way of joining the form/content debate. Form matters. The content is affected by the form. A cheesecake in a springform pan will look and taste different than a cheesecake in a meatloaf pan. The cheesecake needs its own specific context to function as it was meant to. Beauty works the same way. Beauty identifies with something. The point here is that the ‘something’ is important.

From this discussion, we have now a specific set of standards to judge beauty. These are objective standards that do not depend on taste. Beauty is real, present, independent, giving, bestowing, playful and creative, diverse, harmonious, dimensional, and within a specific context. Next time we will look at how if one of these aspects is distorted or maligned, the object no longer is beautiful. But for now, beauty is important, and how we understand it will affect how we live and relate with one another. And it happens whether or not we believe it.

The Divine Abundance: Part Five

We have discussed the nature of the Trinity and its relation to Creation. The question then arises, what has this to do with aesthetics? What has this to do with beauty? The Creator God is Beauty, and there can be nothing more beautiful than God. Ultimate Beauty therefore must have the same attributes as the infinite God. If it did not, God could not be the Ultimate Beauty. In this way, we have an objective standard for Beauty. Beauty is not simply and only ‘taste’. Taste has its place, but it does not govern all areas of Beauty. Therefore, something can be truly, biblically beautiful, say a ripe peach, and not be pleasing to every single person on earth. If that example seems trite, think about it again. Peaches are an act of creation. They are created by God. God cannot make what is outside His nature. Hence, peaches reflect God’s nature, and are in that sense, Beautiful. But John doesn’t like peaches. And God has given him the freedom to not like them. Taste is a subcategory of Beauty, and not the other way around. Our modern/postmodern relativists have elevated taste above all, elevating their own decision-making abilities over and above what God has decreed. In this way they can look down on God and decide that He is not their type, just like John does not like peaches. But taste is not the heading, with beauty as bullet point number three, followed by truth, and flavors of ice cream. We must say that Beauty, who is God Himself, reigns and that all things flow from Him.

So in the past four discussions regarding the Divine Abundance, what framework have we given for our understanding of Beauty? We have looked at these each in their own place:

The ‘superfluousness’ of Creation
The necessary love of the Creator
The Triune nature and fellowship of the Creator
The divine dialogue and difference within the Trinity
The distance and immediacy of this Triune God
The identification of God with His people

What can we understand about Beauty from these things? The first thought to take away is that Beauty is real and present. It is not a figment of imagination, nor is it a created substance that will pass with time. Beauty surrounds us because it is emblazoned in creation. It follows then that Beauty does not need a subject to appreciate it to be beautiful. Creation was Good on Day 5. Creation was beautiful without Man. Now in the Almighty’s divine pleasure, it was not complete without man, but the presence of mankind does not suddenly give Beauty its life. Beauty has its life in that it reflects the nature of the Creator. Beauty is the very reflection. The Triune God was beautiful, was Beauty, from before the foundations of the world.

Beauty is real, and present, and independent from us. Beauty also gives and bestows. As the very reflection of God, it gives glory and bestows majesty on God. Acts of beauty then consist of bestowing on others. This is tempered and defined by the selfless love of the Trinity. The act of giving is an act free from selfish ends and desires. Beauty then is a selfless love, giving of itself for the pure reason of blessing others. This can be seen in music, to take an example from the art world. When various lines complement each other, and do not dominate, but harmonize and flow together, achieving a sound bigger than the individual lines, the overall product is beautiful, because it reflects the nature of Beauty, the nature of God, which involves a love which is directed outward, a selfless giving for the benefit and glorification of the other.

Beauty is real, present, independent, giving and bestowing. Beauty also is playful and creative. To look at the diversity of creation, and to speak of God as anything but playful, humorous, and creative, is to look but without seeing and understanding. Beauty then is rich in diversity (allowing for tastes), humorous, creative, and playful. I say playful in order to bring to mind images of delight and joy. God clearly enjoys His creation. Go to any national or international park, landmark, or reserve. From Yosemite, to the Fjords of Norway, to the (fill in your favorite desktop wallpaper). This again, speaks to the unnecessary nature of creation. God did not need to create 300,000 different types of beetles, but He did, and did so out of His own good pleasure and delight in creation. To watch antelopes and gazelles bounce and prance as they do over fields and hills, is a delight. Simply look at the giraffe for conclusive evidence that God is a comedian and enjoys playing. Beauty is a reflection of that playfulness. To watch the sun melt in a rainbow of colors, dripping down into the raising waves of a moving ocean, while the land and mountains behind you are seduced by the dark of night, is Beauty. It is beautiful because it is an exhibition of nature playing and enjoying the game of creation, the game God has given it to play.
(Part Two forthcoming…)

The Divine Abundance: Part Four

We left off a couple of months ago with the idea of the God of Creation, the God who is infinitely beyond all, stooping into history, and approaching His own. In Christ, the Unapproachable One, becomes approachable, the God of all takes on flesh and tabernacles among us. This brings us to a fourth point in our pursuit of a paradigm for understanding the beautiful and our place in it.

The Lord of all Creation is infinite. This must be so, or else God would have a beginning or an end, and that is nonsensical. There are two sides to this coin. The infinity of God by definition means that God is infinitely above us, beyond us, transcending every thought, concept, imagination, or word we can give. This we know, and have dwelt on already. From this starting point we arrive at our own superfluousness, and the unnecessary nature of Creation.

Infinity also means however, that God is infinitely close to His creation. As far as He is distant, He is also near. In short, He is the distance that separates us. He is the distance that breaks through the Creator/Creature distinction. He is the God who, though being above all, has irrevocably bound Himself to His Creation. He has defined Himself, named Himself, with relation to His people. In Exodus He gives Moses the name by which He will be known, and remembered. “God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’” God also said to Moses, “Say this to the people of Israel, ‘The LORD, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.’ This is my name forever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations,” (Ex. 3:14-15). Even in the very name of God, He involves His purpose, His people. He is to be remembered throughout all generations as the God of a certain, particular people.

This God identifies intimately with His bride. He puts His reputation on the line, if you will. Here we have a clearer idea why the history of God’s people is so important. It is through God’s relation with us that His glory is made known to the nations. Two things we take from this. One, God uses weakness to confound strength. He uses broken clay pots to conquer the iron and steel of His enemies. The second thing we take from this is that God is not using the history of His bride apart from divine foreknowledge. In other words, He is not simply hoping the story of His grace will fall on sympathetic ears. He will be made known to the nations, and He will bring redemption to the world, placing His enemies beneath His feet. This will happen. And in order to accomplish this, He chooses to use us, the fallen and restored Bride.

This however, is more contextual, and tangential to our discussion of aesthetics, though not unimportant. To reorient us, work through this quote from David Bentley Hart’s book, The Beauty of the Infinite:

This is why consideration of the analogy of being concludes this long meditation on Trinitarian doctrine: the Father forever sees and infinitely loves the whole depth of his being in the Son, illumined as responsive love in the fullness of the Spirit, and in the always determinate infinity of His triune being God begets all the riches of being – all that all things might ever be – in the image and light of His essence; and thus God himself is already his own analogy, his own infinite otherness and perfect likeness. All things – all the words of being – speak of God because they shine within his eternal Word. This Trinitarian distance is that “open” in which the tree springs up from the earth, the stars turn in the sky, the sea swells, all living things are born and grow, angels raise their everlasting hymnody; because this is the true interval of difference, every metaphysics that does not grasp the analogy of being is a Tower of Babel, attempting to mount up to the supreme principle rather than dwelling in and giving voice to the prodigality of the gift. (The Beauty of the Infinite, 248)

This is a little thick, so lets work through it. The ‘analogy of being’ refers to the metaphysical concepts of difference and transcendence. Packed in the luggage of those terms are the two sides of the infinite described above. The triune nature of God is in essence, one of love. We have seen how this love overflows in rich abundance into Creation, showing God’s playfulness and intimacy within unnecessary gift. This is seen in “all the riches of being – all that all things might ever be – in the image and light of His essence.” All creation therefore sings in praise of who God is, for He is intimately united, by choice, and not by force, to all creation. “He is before all things, and in Him, all things consist,” (Col 1:17). “For in Him we live and move and have our being,” (Acts 17:28). Because God is infinite, and is the very space that separates us (‘even in the depths of Sheol, You are there…’), He gives life to all things. He is therefore that “open” space in which trees grow and sway in the wind, angels sing their hymns, and the oceans clap their hands in praise. Hence every metaphysic (paradigm, worldview, theology) that does not understand this, is by nature the tower of defiance and rebellion. To not recognize the ruler of heaven and earth, is to declare autonomy, which will necessarily bring confusion and exile. We cannot mount up to God. However, He can stoop down, and has in Christ. This is that gift that we are to dwell in and give voice to. We dwell in God’s bounty whether we like it or not. It is simply the way things are. We can however choose not to give voice to it. Either we refuse and climb Mount Babel, or we accept, and honor God as God, and give Him thanks.

Here is gratitude, the only word on our tongue fit for the Creator God, who is above all, and in all, and through all. Glory and power and dominion are His forever, and ever, world without end. Amen.

The Divine Abundance: Part Three

Following our discussion of Christian Aesthetics, we began with the unnecessary nature of creation. We then talked about the divine fellowship within the unity of the Godhead, and the nature of their love for one another, and what implications that had on our lives. This installment will address the divine difference within the Trinity. Hart continues discussing the Trinity, for it is the foundation of our understanding of all of life, and therefore our appreciation of life: beauty. Lets begin with two quotes.

Theology can speak of being as rhetoric and see in the surface of being a kind of intelligible discourse – not one concerning the scale of bare substances, but a doxological discourse, an open declaration of God’s glory, by which the God who differentiates speaks his beauty in the groundless play of form and action, the free movement of diversity, artistry, and unnecessary grace. The occurrence of difference as difference, as the reverberation of the variation in the very event of difference expresses – not dialectically, but aesthetically – the superabounding joy, delight, regard, and response that is God’s life.

[On our journey called life, we are continually] discovering and entering into greater dimensions of His beauty. This is so because God is always beyond, and still above the beyond, but also because God abides in absolute intimacy with creation as the infinite of surpassing fullness, whose beauty embraces and exceeds all that is.

In that first quote, Hart is basically saying that we can understand God as a form of divine dialogue. In Himself is drama. There is assertion and sacrifice, give and take, love and surrender. This dialogue defines the nature of the Triune relationship (if I may be so bold to say ‘define’). The three persons glorify one another, love one another, and are satisfied completely in one another. Their dialogue comes to us as distinct difference. The Father speaks to us (loves us) differently than the Son speaks to us (loves us). The Spirit relates to us (loves us) differently than the Father and the Son. And yet, in their difference, the mutually indwell one another (perichoresis) and are one. This essential difference that lies at the heart of their unity, gives creation the abundant difference it enjoys. God imparts His attributes to creation. Hence male and female. Hence sun and moon. Hence lions, tigers, and bears.

This difference is the foundation for beauty and our appreciation of that beauty. Beauty comes in the interplay of difference, and again, reflects the interplay of the Godhead. It can either reflect well (say in a Bach Cantata) or not so well (pick a Picasso, any Picasso). There is a reason Picasso’s later works are just plain ugly. He (intentionally) distorts the natural interplay of difference within creation. Take the face. The difference that lies in the human face between the eyes, nose, cheeks, mouth, and so on, gives the face a beauty. Some faces are more beautiful than others, because the interplay of the differences are such that they are more pleasing. This distortion of Picasso’s is a direct attack against the God of creation, and the beauty that He built in. It is interesting to think that the degrees of beauty are also built in. They are not just a result of the fall. For example take a male lion in full maturity. There is a cross-cultural agreement that that image inspires awe, and is, frankly, beautiful. Compare that to a hyena. Just as much God’s creation as the lion. Cries in affirmation of God’s glory just as much, but the difference is very noticeable. This difference is built in to creation, and gives testimony to the ‘groundless play of form and action, the free movement of diversity and artistry’ in which we witness our God bestow on His creatures, an aspect of Himself. This leads to that third clause of the quote, the unnecessary grace. This unnecessary grace is what calls us to a ‘divine playfulness.’ If we were made in the image of God, and are recreated in the image of Christ, and indwelt by the Holy Spirit, made partakers in the very life of the divine, then how can we not join in “the superabounding joy, delight, regard, and response that is God’s life.” This response to God’s life is defined by the love the Father shows the Son shows the Spirit shows the Father and the Son. It is again, the selfless love, a love that is eternally bestowing to another.

Bringing us to the second quote. As our hearts, minds, souls, and bodies are enlightened more and more by the Spirit, we will see clearer and clearer the Divine Abundance that covers everything, enfolds everything, encompasses everything, upholds everything, breathing everything into life. The God of true diversity, a unified diversity, this God who is eternally beyond everything, purposefully stoops into human history. The completely Transcendent One has become flesh and blood in Jesus, thus introducing intimacy with His creation. Through this intimacy with the Holy God of all, we, His beloved, join in His beauty, which pervades all of life.

Makes getting mad at the guy who cut you off on the freeway this morning, look kind of petty.

The Divine Abundance: Part Two

In the next section, Hart discusses the fellowship enjoyed within the Godhead. To say God is love, which we must, we automatically make certain tangential assumptions, which, when flushed out, show that our God is unique in being love. If God is love, and we take our former point that we are unnecessary for God to be who He is, then we are saying that God is love with or without us. Before the creation of time, God was God and He was love. But love, biblically understood, must have an object. It is not just a good feeling. Love must be directed outward. If God is love before the creation of the world, His love must have been directed at Himself. This leads us to the triune nature of our God. This is why no other god can be love. Allah certainly can’t. He is a monopod, and cannot show love before the creation of objects. There is only self-love, which is no real love at all, just another phrase for self-gratification, and self-service.
But our God is Love, true outward love, from before the beginnings of time. This outward love can be understood as selfless love, or rather, a giving love. The Father gives to the Son, and the Son gives to the Father, and Spirit gives to the Father and the Son. They are eternally concerned with the other. This is how it plays out in history. The Father, Son and Spirit together, as the One creating God, made the world. The world falls into sin. The Father gives to the world His Son, conquering. The Son gives to the world His Spirit, enlivening. The Spirit gives back to the Son, the world, transformed. The Son gives back to the Father, the world, robed in righteousness. There is no ‘keeping for self’ in this picture of God’s glorious drama.
Another way of describing this divine fellowship, is to touch on the presence of Speaker and Spoken. We cannot deny the unity of God, “Hear O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is One.” But throughout Scripture God speaks, and at the same time is spoken and spoken to. Take for instance the baptism of Christ in the Jordan. Jesus, the fullness of God, Immanuel, rises from the water, and is blessed by His Father, in a voice from Heaven. This voice is accompanied by a dove, descending. The Father speaks, the Spirit is Spoken, and the Son is Spoken to. This reveals that God does not only give, but also receives. Love must give, but love must also receive, and respond. Jesus immediately goes out into the desert, following this baptism, to complete the initiation of His ministry. He has heard His Father, and knows He must respond. He does not simply accept, but acts. Love is not given to the other for the other to have good feelings, but for the other to be equipped for action. Our love towards others must be so minded. God loved us, not simply to save us from sin, which He did, but to transform us into the image of Christ, which in God’s glory requires our action, or obedience. We do not simply accept salvation, and nothing else. We accept love with the purpose of responding accordingly.
What does this mean for our discussion of the Christian Aesthetic? Let’s first define our premises. Premise number one: God is the ultimate Beauty. If beauty (or anything for that matter) dwelt outside of God, His Godness would be immediately destroyed, and the world would spin helplessly into meaningless oblivion. Premise number two: God’s character and attributes are the standards by which we judge beauty. In other words, we look at the world, and can objectively say that something is or is not beautiful based on how well it reflects God’s nature. Hence we can call sexual fidelity in marriage a good reflection, and rape a bad reflection. Giving a thirsty man a glass of water is beautiful. Charging him for it is ugly.
If these assumptions are true, then beauty must necessarily consist of selfless love. This selfless love also must be given with the purpose of equipping. The result of this love, is a worldview which sees God’s love to us in everything, and leaves us therefore, with no excuse to sit on our duffs and watch it pass by. God’s love necessarily calls us to action. Whether that be translating the Word in Africa, or sipping scotch with a brother on a back porch, love requires action, and direction. In this worldview, life will be lived to the glory of God, and will necessarily be filled with the beauty of His Holiness.
This takes time to understand, let alone bearing fruit in our lives. Not just time either. It takes the Spirit’s gift of transformation. It is this gift by which all is understood, and life is completely and fully enjoyed.

The Divine Abundance: Part One

One of the 7 or 8 books that I am reading right now is The Beauty of the Infinite by David Bentley Hart. It is an excellent book by any standard, though thick at times with a temptation towards headiness. Hart is of Eastern Orthodox persuasion, and has taught at many higher up establishments such as Duke Divinity School, so that may explain some things.

Regardless, it is an excellent book. Its purpose is to present a biblical paradigm by which we Christians may understand beauty. This is a topic which I will frequently be posting on, as it is one that is close to my heart and thoughts. But as I said, I am currently reading it, meaning I have not read it fully yet. I would however, like to comment on sections as they are being read.

The first chapter begins where all things begin: the Triune God. His first subheading is labeled the Divine Apatheia. In essence this section is explaining God’s complete and utter satisfaction in Himself, and need of nothing that is not already contained within the Godhead. This thought has at least two ramifications. The first is that God is complete. He needs no one, is dependant on no one, and finds utter fulfillment in the divine community.

Secondly, and logically following the first point, we His creation, are completely unnecessary to God’s existence. Any ontology other than this necessarily denies God’s omnipotence, and to do that denies the existence of God Himself. If He is not above all, who is, and so on. This statement has many implications, but I want to talk about only one.

If we are completely unnecessary, and if creation is completely, in an ultimate sense, unnecessary, what is the purpose of it all? In a very real sense, creation is superfluous. It is extra, it is divine abundance. What does this say about the Triune God we worship? One thing it definitely does not say is that God is a utilitarian pragmatic. If our God is not, why should we?
If God did not create the world out of some sense of duty, or some world shaped hole in His heart, why did He create it? The only other option is to say that God created out of pleasure, desire, and love. This is consistent with the Creation story, and all of Scripture.

It follows then that all of creation was given in love. All matter, both organic and inorganic, speaks to the love and pleasure of our Father. This is how we must understand creation. Out of any number of possible options, God chose to make the world this way. He could have given us one tree that grew one thing, which contained, nutritionally speaking, everything that was necessary to our survival. But He didn’t. He made apples and oranges. He gave us plethora of edible leaves. We only need one type of lettuce. But He gave us Red leaf, Green leaf, Romaine, Kale, Arugula, Red Kale, and so on. How many different types of fruits, vegetables, meats, grains, etc. are there? And those are just food groups. Look at the rock world, the tree world, the animal kingdom. The superfluousness is staggering. To our modern eyes, it is all simply excess or unneeded waste. But in God’s eyes it is Good.

What does this say about the God we worship? God enjoys difference. He enjoys playfulness. He enjoys interaction and community. Developing our understanding of these characteristics, and the many more that creation presents to us, takes us a step closer to developing a distinctively Christian Aesthetic. With this tool we will be able to have a clear understanding of what beauty is, why it is not completely relative, and how we are called to live and worship in such a way that reflects this beauty to the ugly and disfigured world we live in.

Archetypal Residue

That's the good stuff. Maybe not the best stuff, but really good stuff.

Bowmore, single-malt. From the oldest operating distillery on the island of Islay. The second oldest in all of Scottland.

Aged for 12 uninterrupted years in a single sherry barrel. Slowly, patiently absorbing the warmth of oak and salt air.

Islays are known for their intensely smokey, peaty aromas. This one is not as sharp as some (Laphroaig and Lagavulin reign as most distinctly flavorful). But Bowmore is full of character and flavor, while remaining extremely well balanced and very smooth.

It rolls around on the tongue, dangling a hint of honey behind rich smoke that disolves into flavors of pear and - if you wait for it - dark chocolate. Close your eyes and savor it, and you can smell the Scottish sea-mist wafting over the malting floor.

Bad scotch is like so much "Christian" fiction. Bland, convoluted, uninspired, soul-less. Great scotch drinks like Edwards reads. Resonating echoes of the better country. Steeped in archetypal residue. Passing from lips to tongue, evoking the depth of goodness and beauty that must been seen and tasted, not merely told of. Smoothly but resolutely warming as it goes down, it inspires contemplation of the mysterious currents of Word and Spirit.

The Beauty of the Gospel

Fear not, O ye of faint heart. That title sounds more exhaustive than I mean to be here. I merely wish to bring up another side of this toast and ode to Dispensationalism. In continuing this discussion on premil eschatology (as specifically endorsed by Dispensationalists) I wanted to follow up on the Blind Sage's comments (which were totally sagacious, dude!).

As committed Sola Scripturians, we are to rely on Scripture for interpretation. This means at least one thing, and that is this: reading post-revelatory history into revelation is bad. When the Holy Spirit completed the canon with Revelation, He completed the canon. There was nothing more to say. The entirety of Scripture was complete, sufficient, and thorough. Whether or not Israel has lived as a people group since that time, as apposed to say the Hittites, is irrelevant. That isn't proof of their Scriptural significance. It can be reduced to the old problem of the horse squarely resting behind the cart. The horse is Scripture and our understanding of it. The cart is our method of interpretation. I mean to tread lightly here, for all who seek to interpret Scripture are susceptible to this problem. Nonetheless, we are required to read and understand Scripture, and the Spirit comes along side us and enables our minds and our hearts to soak in its truth. But we must not allow our method of interpretation to be the absolute authority. Obviously we have to start from somewhere, but our methods are the malleable part, not the intention of Scripture.

The Word of God comes to us in different clothes. In Genesis it comes dressed as a tidy, three-piece suit of historical, reliable narrative. The Psalms come to us flowing in gowns of rich imagery, painful emotions, and the raw, unashamed truth of life. The Prophets approach, warily but with perseverance, the essentials barely covered with unadulterated animal skin. We cannot deny the differences between these styles/genres. They are as different as David and John the Baptist.

Here we catch a glimpse at the Triune Beauty. Does God reveal Himself to us employing only one method of revelation? Not at all. We look at the mountains and see His majesty, we enjoy the privileges of marriage, and are witness to the community of love our God shares in Himself. We read the Word of God and the Spirit enlightens our hearts, minds, souls, and bodies. In other words, we do not look at a mountain, or marital bliss, and literally interpret creation with respect to God. We do not look at the ocean and see God face to face. We see Him, but through a deeper beauty. God has revealed Himself to us in all of life, but restrained, and through veils of sign and symbol. That's what language is after all, verbal and written signs, signifying something real, and weighty. Therefore we see God in all of creation, or Natural Revelation, but through metaphor, and not by explicit, undiminished, raw vision. And praise God for His kindness in this. The same is true with Special Revelation. God explains Himself, as far as He does (Deut 29:29), through different forms, enabling us to see different sides of His glory. The mountain does not mean the same thing as marital bliss. Nor do we interpret it in the same way. Thus Ezekiel's vision of God in His glory, reveals a different side of God than Paul's Epistle to Titus, and thus needs to be interpreted differently.

Here we see an aspect of the beauty of the Gospel. God in His wisdom, spoke to us in His Word. But He did not speak to just part of us, the historico-grammatical part up in our left brain. He also spoke to our emotions, our desires, our hopes, our spirits. Every aspect of our whole body is given a mode to understand God in. To limit the interpretation of Scripture to one mode, denies the trinitarian make up of our own body. It places undue emphasis on one way of understanding, leaving the other ways weak and starved. But God did not intend for this to be. His Gospel, which extends from Genesis 1 through to Revelation 22, is full of rich and varied texts, all of them interacting with all of us, heart, soul, mind, and body. Here we find a Triune God not interested in one aspect of His creation, such as their historical sensibilities, but a God who loves all of life, and gave all of life to His creation. Here we find a God who enriches His creatures with not just a rational brain, but with emotion and senses as well. Here we find not a dry and arrid text, full of strict and literal non-sequitors, but the tremendous and humbling complex beauty of the Gospel.