The Beginning Things

Clearing up some Confusion

A few months ago, I said this in a post:

I think most people today are wrong to think of rocks and clouds and streams and the rest as merely inanimate objects, chunks of matter lying around. They are part of the symphony; they have their place in its melody and its dance, and they have taken its life and personality into themselves, so that they become more than objects; they are participants in a song so full of life that it almost brings them to life.

A few conversations I’ve had made me realize I haven’t been very clear on this and need to give a more explicit explanation. So here it goes: my never-before-heard synthesis of all the philosophy I’ve studied over about the past decade.

I frequently mention the mental and spiritual properties of things, and it may sound like I am speaking in metaphors or analogy or some type of symbolism. For instance, I said that the Divine Proportion was reminiscent of the Trinity, and that the relationship between the sun and the moon mirrored that of God and man. But I did not mean to imply that the physical things were deliberately set up by God as symbols or analogies of the spiritual things. I think, rather, that the physical patterns and the spiritual patterns share a common source, and they bear His imprint.

Metaphor and Mysticism

Take some of the things I said about the sun and moon in my last post: “Every morning and evening like a pageant… the moon takes her place and gracefully yields it back to her Master, only for him to give it her again… The solar eclipse is not about the moon blocking the sun; it is about their particular conjunction allowing us to see both in a new way – and the glory of both is increased.”

I noted that this could describe the relationship between God and man. It could also describe the relationship between God the Father and God the Son – or between Christ and the church – or between husband and wife – or between the line segments of the Divine Proportion – or between the ocean and the clouds in the water cycle. It is a relationship of constant yielding and constant returning that lifts both sides up in glory.

The relationship between the sun and the moon represents none of these things and all of them. It is a metaphor in the sense that it recognized a commonality and can be used in poetry or literature to present a physical picture of a non-physical concept. It is not a metaphor in three ways:

• It is not artificial. These shared spiritual qualities are not something subjective; as I’ve said before, imagined order is not the same as intended order. They are instead innate properties of the world – in this case, of astronomy.
• It is not arbitrary. These associations are not something you can choose on a whim; you can be right or wrong about them. You may recognize the association; you do not invent it. Either the commonality exists, or it does not.
• It is not after-the-fact. This is not an ad hoc connection that exists only in your head. It is a pattern woven into the universe. The particular relationship I have just described exists in the nature of love and of the Trinity, and that means it exists outside of time.

In short, when it comes to spiritual truths, I don’t believe in metaphors. I believe in patterns that span the physical, mental, and spiritual realms, the threads that hold together the fabric of the universe and lead us back to its weaver.

The Archai

The pre-Socratic philosophers believed that fundamental principles like water or fire underlay reality. They called these principles the Archai – “the beginning things” in Greek. Plato took it a step further; he thought that mathematical patterns or ideals and ultimately, the Good, underlay reality. The Greeks were right to look for these fundamental principles; there is, as we might say, a baseline of the universe, bearing the mark of its designer. But the fundamental principles of the world aren’t physical or even mental principles. They are principles of person – of a very specific person.

Of course, the person of whom we are speaking is eternal, while we exist in space and time. So these patterns come to us embedded in space and time, in the cosmos and in history. “For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made.”

I don’t think Paul is talking here merely about “thunderstorms are powerful, so God must be powerful” levels of complexity. Remember, this quote is from a letter to Rome, and Plato had already lived and died and left his legacy by AD 56. People had heard of these underlying principles. Paul was telling them that these principles were really a person, one with authority over their lives – one who had come down and become a part of history.

We all recognize these patterns and use them. When you say that you “have a storm raging inside you” we know what you mean, and you don’t mean anything to do with rain or mirroring any of its physical properties. It’s not a metaphor; it’s a pattern. Nietzsche taught us that if there is no underlying order binding the universe, metaphors aren’t metaphors, but lies. He’s right. But if there is an order, metaphors still aren’t metaphors. They’re truths.

“flame” by liz west is licensed under CC BY 2.0