Mystery, Scripture, and the Need for Creation's Witness

As I walked through the steamy air of a late summer morning, I had John Calvin on my mind.

Lord help me.

It was a lovely morning, but for the burgeoning heat of what was to be an intensely swampy Southern day.  The sky was thick with clouds, the air was damp with the lingering wetness of evening storms.  Here and there, drops fell from the wet leaves above.

And I was thinking about Calvin.  More specifically, the thing that rose unbidden from my memories as I engaged with creation was a reflection on Calvin's Institutes, and one of the justifications for our Reformed focus on the Scriptures.

There were many reasons the Reformers felt that Christians should focus on the Bible.  First and foremost, being engaged with the texts of Scripture yourself meant that you were connected with them.  At that point in history, most Christians were illiterate, and the church made no meaningful effort to teach the meaning of the faith.  Going directly to the texts was a liberation, and a counterbalance on ecclesiastical overreaches.

But there were other reasons.  Among them was the argument from Creation.  The world around us was God's work, Calvin suggested.

"There are innumerable evidences both in heaven and on earth that declare his wonderful wisdom; not only those more recondite matters for the closer observation of which astronomy, medicine, and all natural science are intended, but also those which thrust themselves upon the sight of even the most untutored and ignorant persons, so that they cannot open their eyes without being compelled to witness them..." (Institutes, I.v.1)

But creation is also wildly and deeply inscrutable, a profound mystery that could confuse and distract us in our smallness.

"It is therefore in vain that so many burning lamps shine for us in the workmanship of the universe to show forth the glory of its Author.  Although they bathe us wholly in their radiance, yet they can of themselves in no ways lead us to the right path.  Surely they struck some sparks, but before their fuller light shines forth these are smothered." (Institutes, I.v.14)

Thus, the need for Scripture, because we're just too stubborn, stupid, and self-absorbed to grasp the unmediated self-expression of the Creator.   We need something more, something to help us integrate that awareness into a cohesive purpose.

And there, the teachings of the Tanakh and the Gospels and Epistles come into play.  They become the lens that helps us focus, to see our purpose clearly.

I get that.  I do.  It's helpful to have a framework.

On the other hand, the same thing that structures our thinking can also be spiritually dangerous, for reasons that are implicit in Calvin's own argumentation.  The Creator of the universe speaks directly through existence, all of which articulates the Divine Intent.

And sure, it tends to blow our minds a bit.

But shouldn't it?  I mean, really.  Looking at the scale and wild complexity of our space-time, and the potentially infinite depth of a yawning multiversal cosmos, we are, as Calvin put it, "whirled and twisted about" by our encounter with a power that so vastly exceeds our own that we can feel utterly lost.  (Institutes I.v.11)

That's certainly the reality encountered by modern science, which--after a brief and heady period when it thought it had it all worked out--is beginning to surface complexities so impossible that they seem profoundly beyond our capacity to grasp.

And that, it strikes me, is a necessary part of a robust and authentic faith.  Sure, we need a framework.  But we also need encounters that are unmediated by that framework, encounters that shatter and reform us.  We need something that tears us from our self-absorption, that gives us a sense of scale and mystery and God's transcendent, numinous power.

Contemplating creation, as it so happens, is really good at that.

Total Depwavity

So the question got pitched to me from a brother on FaceBook this week:  what did I think about the concept of total depravity?

For those of you not immersed in the language of 19th century Calvinism, total depravity is the idea that human beings are of themselves utterly irredeemable, so epically craptacular as to be completely incapable of being in right relationship with God and one another.

To repair that breach, there's just not a single thing that human beings can do.  Good works don't matter.  Trying to do right doesn't matter.  We're just out of luck.  In order to make things right, we have to just rely completely on Jesus.  We are depraved on account of we're deprived...of Jesus.  

This concept, derived from Paul and Augustine but mostly from John Calvin, gets quickly taken out to the conclusion that there's just nothing good about people at all.  We're just uniformly nasty, wretched, miserable hell-briquettes.  This truth extends particularly that chatty and affable Muslim guy you laugh with at the office.   Oh, and Gandhi.  Calvinist God hates him some Gandhi.

Here, though, Calvinism once again goes well beyond Calvin himself, and misses two key points of that admittedly challenging doctrine.

So let's play around in Calvin's brain for a while.  In his Institutio Christianae Religionis (XI.II.iii), Calvin does lay out where he stands on the subject.

First, Calvin clearly and repeatedly notes throughout the Institutes that nature, creation, and humanity itself are good things.  Creation is the first book, evidence of the glory and goodness of the Creator.  As part of creation, homo sapiens sapiens was made to be good.  Our reason is a blessing.  (VI. xiv.20)  Our purpose as human beings is not nastiness, and in our created nature, there is strong good.  Calvin hated neither humankind nor creation.  In fact, Calvin also kinda sorta loved the writing and thinking of folks who weren't Jesus folk at all, particularly Plato.   He was perfectly capable of seeing value in the works of reason, and of seeing goodness in the world.  As he puts it:

In every age there have been persons who, guided by nature, have striven towards virtue throughout life.  I have nothing to say against them even if many lapses can be noted in their moral conduct.  For they have by the very zeal of their honesty given proof that there was some purity in their nature...These examples, accordingly, seem to warn us against adjudging man's nature wholly corrupted, because some men have by it's prompting not only excelled in remarkable deeds, but conducted themselves most honorably throughout life.  (XI.II.ii.3)

Second, Calvin did argue that sin was a basic characteristic of humankind, but he wasn't doing this as an abstract theological exercise.  He did so for a particular reason.  According to Calvin, we just can't not sin.  (XI.II.iii.5)   Even the best among us are far from perfect.  That isn't, however, something that we're supposed to lord over other people.  The purpose of teaching depravity is not, not, not to condemn others.  This isn't something you sneer out at someone whose life is in ruins.

It's for those of us who might have allowed ourselves to be convinced that we're somehow better than the rest of the world.  It's a big theological smack in the chops for the pious, the reverent, the upstanding, and the church-going.  Calvin puts this out there for the same reason the Apostle Paul did, as a challenge to pride and self-righteousness among the faithful.

Personally, I still resonate to this for a variety of reasons, making me perhaps one of only two or three progressive Christians who don't just reflexively reject the concept.

I'm deeply aware of how intensely we are, as sentient beings, separate from one another.  The existential boundaries between us are an insurmountable wall, topped with electrified razor wire.  Like you and I, right now.  I can string together these symbols, which you can observe on your screen and understand as shared concepts.  If you're nearby, near enough to be physically present, I can talk to you.  I can see you.  I can hear you.  I can smell you, your stress or your ease.  That last one gets more intense in the summer months.  Hoo boy, does it ever.

But knowing you?  As you know yourself?  I can't do that.

At best, I get an approximation, an image, cast in my mind, knit together from observation and my own intuitive gut-sense.  For this reason, when Paul and Calvin tell us we can't uphold the Law, I don't think of Law as Torah.  I think of law as the Great Commandment.  How can I love you as I love myself?  How can that be, when my knowledge of you is so imperfect and filtered through my own assumptions?

So I fail before the Law, even when law is understood first, foremost, and only as love and grace.

But it goes beyond relationship, and into my own self.  I'm not what I could be.  I am deeply aware of my own limitations as a being, and also of my failings when it comes to living out of the value set that I profess to define my own existence.  Love of God and neighbor does not define my every action and thought.  Particularly thought.  There, deep writ in the neural firings of my cortex and the stirrings of my lizard brain, there are angers and lusts and anxieties that snarl and hoot and cower in most unholy ways.

From that self-awareness, I'm aware that my actuality and my potentiality are very different things.  The self that I could be, were I to be both internally and externally conformed to the radical compassion of Christ, exists only intermittently.  It is the state of being towards which I strive, but when in fleeting moments I do find it, I am deeply aware that finding it is an act of grace, a moment of mystic union, for which I cannot truly claim responsibility.  Those moments are a work of the Spirit.

So.  That's what I think about it.  That help, Kyle?

Songs of Void and Emptiness

As I reflected on the violence of organic life yesterday, and how oddly incompatible it is with the love of God and enemy, I found myself looking upwards into the refracted blue of the sky and thinking about all that which is not life.

Creation itself is mostly nothing. Even I, as I write this, am mostly nothing. Yeah, I'm an organic life form. But if you drill down to the atomic and subatomic level, the physical form that is currently typing this contains far more emptiness than neutrons and electrons. The keyboard onto which this is typed, for all of it's clackity solidity, is also mostly nothing. But we miss this, because our perception is so limited.

As we look out into the immensity of the cosmos, that emptiness finally strikes us. It is at a scale that we cannot grasp, of a vastness of temporal and spatial measure that goes well beyond our ability to conceptualize. We can get a bit of it, through metrics and analogies. But the reality of it is well beyond the capacity of our minds to grasp.

And it isn't just empty of mass. It's empty of measurable feeling. It is, to us, both terrible and beautiful...but is completely oblivious of those categories. Love and hatred and loss and joy are not words that have any relevance to the lives of stars, or in the aeons over which a nebula dissipates. Though the mechanics of physics govern this immensity, and they can be grasped rationally, those natural laws are not themselves "reasoned." They simply are.

The resultant interplay of those forces also cannot be meaningfully described in terms of interpersonal or social morality. When tectonic plates shift, and a city crumbles or vast waves scour the land, and hundreds of thousands die, it is not malicious. Or cruel. Or hateful. It just is. When atmospheric conditions produce intense tornadic activity, and a town is razed, it is not that creation is feeling peevish, or is angry with the town for not being tougher on crime. It simply is what it is.

The vastness of the heavens and the interplay of matter and energy aren't moral or ethical. The music of the spheres is atonal, jarring, and disinterested in the needs of it's audience.

This poses an interesting paradox to the contemplative person of faith. Why?

Because when one spends time emptying self of self, and letting awareness of all things silence the endless internal jabbering of thought for a while, when you return from that peak state you return changed. But you are changed in a way that does not seem to reflect the great cool amorality of physics. Mystics are not hard-nosed pragmatists, or mechanistically utilitarian in their approach to other creatures. It has a rather different effect.

Confronted with creation's vast, near-chaotic dynamism, one becomes calm. Immersed in it's amorality, other beings suddenly matter more. After embracing that which knows no care or love, deep compassion for others is stirred. It is...paradoxical.

St. Augustine once famously called creation the First Book. As he and Calvin both affirmed, it's a nearly impossible book to read and comprehend...thus the need for our sacred texts to guide our understanding.

But perhaps it's not a book the way the Bible is a book, written in symbol. Perhaps it's more like a song, which is best understood not through analysis and deconstruction and debate, but by simply being still and listening.

Predestination

Predestination is a challenging doctrine, made even worse by the fact that most of it's adherents use it as an excuse to become insufferably smug about their own salvation. Then again, holding to that doctrine doesn't inherently make you a Nazi...at least, I hope not.

As a Presbyterian, predestination is part of what I believe--so I'll offer up my overly long two cents on the subject.

First, "predestination" cannot be understood temporally. As mortal beings, part of the ebb and flow of time, we tend to think of it as God's foreknowledge of all of our actions. We've got this image of God planning things out in the back room before pressing that Big Bang Button, carefully charting our lives and deciding whether we gets ta be saved or not. But that's absurd, and antethetical to how God has revealed himself to us. The span and flow of time is meaningless to God. All of temporal existence rests before God as an eternal now. Predestination is a statement of God's limitlessness, of the God who stands above all of the temporal and spatial structures of creation. It is an inescapably necessary correlate of an omniscient, almighty God. If you want to worship a small and clueless godling who is unaware of what you've got planned for next Thursday, go right ahead. I wouldn't quite see the point, but...

Second, an orthodox understanding of this teaching does not allow for any smugness. You can't EVER say with complete certainty, "I am among the elect." You can trust that God loves you. You can trust that God is just, and that Christ is your Savior. You can delight in God, and serve God. But Calvin's clear on this: the number and identity of the elect are known only to God. Election rests in the mystery of God's glory. Those who are chosen are not to be confused with any church organization. Being convinced "in your heart" that you've been saved doesn't cut it. Being a staunch and dogmatic Calvinist doesn't either.

Oddly enough, that uncertainty is the point of predestination.

Predestination, for Calvin, means that you don’t have to fret over every little action, worrying over every little step. Predestination, for Calvin, means that you don’t have to lie awake at night with eyes wide open and mind churning, compulsively recounting every last thing you could have done better that day. God is almighty and graceful, and if God has claimed your life, then it is out of your hands. God is just and loving, and if God has called out your name from across eternity, then it is out of your hands.

And if it's out of your hands, then you don’t have to worry about it. The true end of your life, the true purpose of your life, the true meaning of this brief and fleeting flicker of existence, all rest behind the deep veil of eternity. Trusting God to be true, you can roll up your sleeves and be about God’s business.

Or, at least, that's my take on it...