Monthly Archives: October 2023

Gospel, Middle Earth, and Science

23 Monday Oct 2023

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I’ve been a J. R. R. Tolkien fan for some time, even took a great course on the theology of Tolkien. He built an entire mythology of which Middle Earth was but a part. Tolkien’s ability to construct a whole mythos was incredible, but his thoughts on the nature of myths were even more earth shattering. Tolkien opined that he thought the “Christian myth” or the “Gospel myth” was the most beautiful and compelling out of all the alternative myths, religions, and worldviews. To his mind, the “Gospel myth” was far more persuasive than alternatives because of how it spoke to the human situation and narrated a deeply moving drama that really understood the human’s physical and psychological composition. We should not miss the point that Tolkien’s appreciation for the Gospel was also heavily linked to it being convey as a story or drama rather than in prose or didactic form. It might not be overstatement to say that how something is done is just as important as what is done.

Prior to my study of Tolkien, I had never heard anyone use the phrase “Gospel myth” or “Christian myth.” It was unsettling because I thought it implied “fiction” or “untrue.” If I am honest, I’d admit that Tolkien’s use of this phrase is still a bit elusive to me, but I think I understand a bit better why he used such a complex and potentially confusing phrase. Strangely, this understanding has developed through my ongoing study of science and the troubling conflict it has often had with religion. The Church was against a man of science, Galileo, for printing a book on heliocentrism, that the sun was at the center of the known cosmos, even imprisoning him for it. What is vexing in this conflict was the primacy of viewing it through a spatial lens. Why, exactly, were the spatial movements of planets so central when asking if the earth was the center of the cosmos? To me, the rarity of life should be the lens. The Bible is fixated on life, dominating the early pages of Genesis. If we judge what is the center of the cosmos based on bio-centrality (life-centric) the earth is the obvious winner, and we stay true to the focus of Scripture (on life, not the movement of planets).

My point in all this is precisely that science framed the question, and the Church combated it as it was framed rather than reframing the question. Tolkien, I believe, was reframing the use of the word “myth” rather than leaving it in the dull hands of an increasingly oriented scientific world. Tolkien may have very well thought that stories which explain our human experience are more true and more helpful than setting a rocket on the moon. My vehicle takes me places, but stories about the human struggle, the battle between good and evil, the path to victory, all these inspire me, change me, grow me. My vehicle is science; the stories are myth. I believe Tolkien was challenging us to think more broadly about the definition of myth and about how we judge something to be true.

Tolkien’s challenge has resulted in my reevaluation of whether or not any worldview can escape using myth. Even an agnostic is indebted to a misty view, invoking easily a mythological picture of obscurity. Those involved in heavy science are likewise left with mythology too; they cannot escape it. Darwinism, for our evolutionists out there, aims to explain the changing of life; it does not provide any explanation of the origin of life. Even more, there are 500 prerequisites for the possibility of life before we even begin to ask the question, “Is this where/when/how life originated?”

Take the 2020 Nobel Prize winner, the Oxford physicist Roger Penrose, whose work breaks with current scientific consensus. Penrose theorizes that the universe is an expanding and collapsing mass — all this centers around the behavior of electrons, atoms, etc., well beyond my ability to unpack — and postulates that this expanding/collapsing repeats so that there is a line and succession of universes. This leads to one of two consequences: either (1) existence is eternal or (2) the first ‘universe’ did indeed start at some point. I believe Penrose is ambivalent on this. What is current scientific consensus? That this universe had a definitive starting point (big bang).

Why do I think all these scientific views still indebts anyone holding them to mythology? If the universe is eternal, we are in the realm of myth.  This is because, as Penrose acknowledges, at the time of collapse and then a new expansion — running with Penrose’s theory — the scientific laws do not govern and are irrelevant. Those who hold big bang theory similarly say that it is a time/place “where all scientific laws break down.” Either way, we invoke mythology since scientific laws are not the controlling feature, leaving us only with mythological musing to explain or talk about these things. A traditional attribute of God is ‘eternality’. Technically, eternality or infinity is a negative attribute: i.e., it is the conceptualizing of existence without time limitation — I do not believe anyone since the curse has experienced existence in this way. Therefore, assigning ‘eternality’ to the universe is a mythological borrowing of a divine attribute from God.

In sum, there is no respectable, “non-mythology” position to hold. Even the agnostic shrugs their shoulders and appeals to the fog. In many respects, the agnostic is nearly a myth-advocate par excellent. If we think the universe is eternal, we appeal to myth. If we think it began (big bang), we appeal to myth. If we hold a Christian view, we name this myth “creation ex-nihilo.” Again, the drive for a respectable and modern position that does not need to appeal to myth is unavailable. We should then ask if trying to find such a respectable position is itself fiction. Mythology enables us to explain much, and it frees us to think with fluidity free from the constrains of science: after all, when the scientist who holds that the universe had a starting point states, “It is a time/place where all scientific laws breakdown,” this scientist is thinking freely and outside the confines of the science he so dearly holds. Mythology does not mean “untrue” or “fiction”; it means beyond the confines of mere rational composure. It opens us up to think outside the restrictions of a closed universe. The prevailing question of how existence “is” at all demands this step “beyond.” How literal is the Adam & Eve narrative? Should religiously minded people be embarrassed by stories that sound like myth? My firm answer to this is no. If I’ve argued accurately, no one can escape using myth in their worldview, which means either everyone is embarrassed, or no one should be.

Dr. Scalise

Acting in Divine Categories Rather than mere Human ones (2023 Sabbatical, day 2)

18 Wednesday Oct 2023

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When I was in seminary, I would scratch my head whenever I stumbled across biblical texts in the New Testament that used the word “power” in a manner that had very little to do with coercion and domination. I finally turned the corner after studying Greek for quite a while; the underlying verbal form of the word that means power indicates or denotes raw ‘capacity’ or ‘ability’. In does not indicate what said ability does or is used for. Likely because of power-hungry persons who control big media, we have been taught to assume that the word/concept ‘power’ means something like: “capacity to do what you want, or capacity or impose your will, or capacity to have things your way.” ‘Power’ or ‘capacity’ need not serve these ends. This is what Philippians 3 taught me:

“I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and sharing in His sufferings by becoming like Him in His death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead” (Phil 3:10).

This is not a one off either: Scripture uses the word ‘power’ in very alien ways. What precisely is the power associated with resurrection, that power which is proper to it? It is the capacity for life in a rules-based future eternity, sharing in the very life-force of an all loving God. What is this capacity’s purpose? The resurrection of Jesus was both an invitation and the enabling event(s) to have continued life with God, forever. Our definitions of power, or the world’s definitions, almost always implies or outright presupposes ‘coercion’. The power of the resurrection, though, is about invitation, renewed life, opportunity, and jettisoning of death/sin. This is a capacity that is not centered on “taking” or “plundering.” Instead, this power is given, it is offered. ‘Power’ need not be defined as an imposition or a forceful effort to get our way. This is the fallen world’s understanding: it is not surprising — the world has no narrative like the Gospel to craft the world differently. The world only sees everything as a kind of currency based on the notion of scarcity; those with renewed eyes know that we should reinterpret this world in terms of abundance because this is the cosmos’ ultimate destiny.

The quest for us, therefore, is to use power in this divine manner rather than a merely human/worldly way. The simplest way to differentiate these two types of power are thus:

  • Godly: power for/with love
  • Worldly: coercive power

What is striking is that we likely just assume (2) most of the time. (2) robs ‘power’ of its proper dignity. We are servants of the Gospel: the power or capacity we supply is one that frees those we influence from the dominion of evil, sin, and darkness. Godly power is about enabling new capacities in others to walk a divine road of morality, rightness, and love. We must be careful to offer one caveat: Godly power, ever set on setting things towards righteousness, can become overpowering coercion when faced with immovable evil (or otherwise, we don’t need much of the Book of Revelation, do we?). With that said, our capacities we use should be to grow or to point to wonderful capacities to those in our realm of influence. This is power that is on the creative side of things, not coercive. I want to operate in this divine definition of ‘power’, how about you?

Dr. Scalise

“The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak”: imagination and self-actualization (Sabbatical 2023 day 1)

17 Tuesday Oct 2023

Posted by in Biblical Application, Biblical Interpretation, Difficult Texts, Exegesis and Interpretation, human error, imagination, limitations, Spiritual Formation

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The aspect or feature of humanity that allows us to imagine and craft a different future is ‘spirit’. For the moment, so as to eliminate confusion, let’s only speak of little ‘s’ spirit and leave capital ‘S’ Spirit out of this discussion. There have been long discussions down through the ages about what makes humanity unique, and trying to determine what differentiates humans from all other life, owing to the activity of God creating humanity in His image (Imago Dei). Some have thought it ration, others wisdom, and still others claim that a human having a soul is what it is. I could spend pages outlaying a biblical anthropology (the makeup of humanity according to the Bible), but this would be a major digression. Instead, I will assume that it is humanity’s possession of ‘s’ spirit that makes us unique.

What then is little ‘s’ spirit? It is humanity’s ability to transcend the confines of this world. This encapsulates imagination, asbstractization, inventing, and eagerness to explore/discover. There is likely more that goes into it, but this suffices for now. When Jesus says to me, “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak,” what does this tell me? Due diligence demands we lay out the whole verse: “Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Matt. 26:41). The broader context tells us that the disciples fell asleep. To say it differently, the disciples succumbed to their creaturely limitations. Who doesn’t need sleep, after all? Jesus’ instruction is to go beyond this limitation to transcend their situation: “Watch and pray . . . .” There are few words that can better demonstrate both the human’s need and ability to transcend her context than “pray.” To pray is to simultaneous admit your limitations while transcending them through communion.

Humans are unique in this ability, this transcendent impulse, and it leads to imagination, story-telling, and cinematography. It leads moreover to inventions, cultivation of curiosity, and ever growing innovation: in a word, “creativity.” Our little ‘s’ spirit is on a quest of creativity, but its freedom from futility in all its endeavors happens when it reunites with the Spirit of God. I have so much to say about this, but it will have to wait, or I will get off point.

Our ‘s’ spirits serve us by letting us have and use our imaginations; likewise, our spirit serves us by driving us beyond our current situation, transcending our limitations. How this applies to sin in our lives is quite striking. Sin is a fundamental degradation or devolution of what humanity is designed to be. In Hebrew, it literally means “to miss the mark (חָטָא).” To imagine ourselves without a particular sin that holds us back owes to us having spirits. To break through that limitation, we envision us without the limiting sin. This is us transcending our current state. We then move to self-actualize this imagined new self. When I use the phrase “self-actualization” here, I strongly want it tied to “watch and pray.” The secret of humanity is that our strength and very composition is multi-personal, like the Trinity. To self-actualize can only be robust when tied to a communal activity like prayer, praise, and devotion. I could say so much more here too, but I need to bring this to a close; perhaps, I will break out some of these points for future discussion.

In sum, what we imagine we can be (“the spirit is willing”) comes from our unique spirit that God imbued us with. That our flesh is weak points to humanity’s essential lack of self-sufficiency. To overcome this weakness of flesh, we must transcend our current situation and look beyond to God: “watch and pray.” To utilize this “transcending ability” fully, it must be used to commune with the Divine. Humanity uses this unique ability all the time: movies, books, stories, myths, etc. We must not stop there, good as creating all these things are. We ought be ever industrious, creative, and curious, but we must unite this transcending ability to the Transcendent One, bringing home this ability to relish Him whose mystery can never be exhausted.

Dr. Scalise

Reflections on Is Time the Curse (Part 1)

16 Monday Oct 2023

Posted by in Adam and Eve, cosmic origins, Difficult Questions, Difficult Texts, Dimensions, entropy, futility, law of thermodynamics

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After writing part 1, while meditating on those matters, it dawned on me that I should address that question of what time is. Needless to say, I most certainly will not solve the question of what time is. My admitting this though draws out a central point, one which I want to underscore. I hinted at this in part 1: before the fall and curse, time was perhaps nothing more than “difference” or the “experience of difference.” To be clear, no one knows precisely what time is. Time is sequence, simply put, and sequence implies difference. In the number list, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and so forth, we spatially observe sequence, and we know that 1 is not 2, and 2 is not 3: they are different, hence sequence implies difference. I am going to venture a risky claim: I believe that all our understanding of time is nothing more than using our understanding of “spatial movement” as an analogy. This analogy of how objects move across a space is what we have direct knowledge of (non-analogous or univocal); we take that and make it abstract, taking it as an analogy to help us understand the passage of time.

A brief review of what an analogy is will help: an analogy is an idea, image, or reference that we apply to something it does not directly refer to. There has to be a certain “sameness” for the analogy to work, but there are ways that the analogy does not apply, what we call the disparate aspects of the analogy. The saying for someone having a tough day after dropping off crying kids and going to work only to be scolded by their boss, “Today’s a bear,” is an example analogy. “Today” is creating pain in this person in the same way a bear would create pain. The disparate aspect is that the bear would cause physical pain while “today” is causing psychological and emotional pain.

Thus, it is not that we know nothing about what time is; it is that our knowledge of time is analogous and therefore admittedly partial. My question, “Is time the curse?” is not particularly outrageous against this backdrop. If we knew what time was, saying that ‘this is that,’ that time is curse, would be more difficult. The only immediate experience of time that anyone has is the current experience of change, or the current experience of difference. To talk about “timelines” and imagining going into the past or future is all imagination. No one has experienced this. The Bible does focus on the curse and the results of the curse: more often than not it is called “futility, vanity, or corruption.” The Bible implies or directly speaks to limitation of time on human life, like in the curse narrative (Gen. 3:16 – 18), but the focus on various biblical texts are ideas like “futility, curse, vanity, or corruption,” not time. If I am accurate in what I am saying, asking “Is time the curse” moves the conversation away from centering on time and more onto central matters the Bible concerns Itself with. If time is little more than experiencing the present passage of change/difference, then the curse just put a limit on how much a person gets to experience this change or difference.

Is talk of “time” — or the scientific discourse we put around the utilization of time — a deceptive sleight of hand? Demonstrable is the pragmatic value of using time for industry and technological innovation. We cannot argue against that. The advancement of technology, however, fails the ultimate test of pragmatism if it cannot overcome entropy, death, corruption. My point is this: if we zoom out enough, and have a broad enough view, we will see that the final outcome of technological advancement is death, entropy, and corruption. Will the entropic heat deprivation of the universe (see 2nd law of thermodynamics) take 10 billion years or only 8 billion? What’s more, does it matter if it takes more or less time if the ultimate conclusion — after all epilogues have been written — is an energy depleted void? From this perspective, technological advancement will be estimated to be nothing more than enhancing human comfort and passing the time with mere toddler bobbles and trinkets.

If I am right, trying to solve this “time problem” is really trying to solve or remove God’s curse. Humans have a delimited window of existence: delimited from the original intent of God to have humans live in a context of ongoing, endless life. This changed after Adam and Eve disobeyed and God cursed humanity. To remove entropy, death, and corruption, is really to overcome God’s curse, not time. Of course, trying to find one’s way into God embrace with our own devices is not new: I would argue that it is a mark of “human-devised-religion.” God closed the door that gave humanity access to an endless infinite future; it reasons that only an Infinite Being (God) would be able to resupply access to this infinite future. The Gospel inverts how this problem gets solved: instead of using the devices of cursed, non-infinite humans to try to gain infinity, the Gospel’s solution is that the Infinite One enters this cursed world, not to defeat time, but to defeat death, entropy, and corruption. The Infinite One solves the curse imposed by the Infinite One. In other words, God decided He was not satisfied with how the human story unfolded and could have ended, and so He wrote another chapter, with a “happily ever after” segueing humanity to this open future infinite.

Dr. Scalise

Is Time the Curse (Part 1)

08 Sunday Oct 2023

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Is Time the Curse? (Part 1)

I imagine that if I do not qualify the above question, the accusation will rise that I confuse ‘time’ with ‘our experience of time.’ To preempt this complaint, there is no place where a person can observe time without experiencing time. This is not to say we cannot imagine what ‘time’ might be like apart from our experiencing of it. We can, but this imagination of time will not be something another person will be able to experience. What time is as we experience it will be others’ experiences of time too. I might add that there is a ‘principle of analogy’ where we assume that my experience of time is certainly what others also experience. This assumption should be checked by the relativity of time, but let’s leave that alone for now.

Likely the most salient observation about the biblical curse of Adam (Gen 3:17ff) is that God does not curse humanity directly—like God does of the Serpent. God instead curses Adam’s environment: agricultural behavior, human kinesiology, scarcity of resources, and, yes, delimitation. Am I really mining all this from Genesis 3:17 – 19? I believe, yes, but the influence of my education for sure provides additional context, so let’s put the text in explicitly and roll through it.

Delimitation

Genesis 3:17 – 19

Then to Adam He said, “Because you have heeded the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree of which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat of it’: “Cursed is the ground for your sake; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, and you shall eat the herb of the field. In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for dust you are, and to dust you shall return.”

I want to start with my category of ‘delimitation’, which effectively means to limit something into a smaller state than its former state. The word “all” in the aforementioned text is a word for speaking about a totality. We know from Gen. 3:23 that God provided an environment of eternal life in the Garden of Eden; I do not want to digress into the mechanics of how that worked. The take-away is that God’s initial intent for humanity was for them to have ongoing life. There was no book end, just an endless openness of possibility. Those who perpetually exist cannot have this phrase assigned to them: “all the days of your life.” There is no way to talk about “all” when the line of life forward is unbroken and continuous. There is no “all” when the future is endless.

We should add to these points two more: (1) the beginning and end is clearly conveyed in the phrase, “for dust you are, and to dust you shall return”; (2) it is not unimportant that the sun/moon mechanic that gets used (by humans) to demarcate the passing of time during the period of the curse is disregarded or dismantled in the Book of Revelation when God restores redeemed-humanity to endless eternal life. “And there will be no more night; they need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever” (Revelation 22:5). We must carefully distinguish the cosmological behavior of the sun/moon/stars from their usage as a way to demarcate the passage of time. We should be even more cautious not to limit our imagination about the role of the sun/moon/stars after God sets things right (Rev. 22:5). Romans 1:20 points out the fact that knowing God happens through the created order, even to the point that God will judge persons because of their access to knowing God in this way:

For what can be known about God is evident to them, because God showed it to them. For God’s invisible properties are observed since the creation of the cosmos, being understood by the things God created, both his eternal power and divinity so that they are inexcusable (Romans 1:19 – 20, translation mine).

My point is that the cosmological order’s function may no longer be used to demarcate time or usher night day after day, but this does not mean that the created cosmos, which God called “very good,” did not serve to communicate God. Hans Ur von Balthasar, a famous aesthetics theologian, once said that the universe is a body of expression for God. Therefore, in the new heaven and the new earth, the cosmological order may remain with different functions, but still fulfilling its good mandate to communicate God.

Now that we have cleared the field, is time the curse? When we think about time, I believe the first associated idea that should come to mind is ‘limitation’ or ‘delimitation’. The experience of time for humanity is one of beginning and end, of a relentless march of days counting down to death. Whatever ‘time’ was or experienced by humanity before the curse is irrelevant because there is no access to such experience at any time in any place to inform the question, “What was time like before the curse?” Such a question is a pointless quest. This sets up the question, “Is time the curse?” in its correct situation, in the situation of how humans have experienced time now and for almost all of human history. Time—prior to its acting as a kind of ticking time bomb (after the curse)—might be better described as ‘difference’. I will not go deep here, but ‘difference’ is one of the innate properties of the immanent Trinity (my dissertation explains this well, here is a link to it https://www.amazon.sg/Tawidic-Allah-Trinity-Inherent-Relationality/dp/3330002514).

We can put forward a few takeaways from this question about whether time is the curse. Noteworthy indeed is that small children have no concept of time. Even my five-year-old still has trouble understanding it, and it seems altogether unimportant to her. C.S. Lewis once opined that people’s “aha moments” they feel when they are shocked that so much time has passed indicates that humanity was designed to be in a context of eternality, not time-limitedness. Why is it after all that we feel shocked when feeling like time moved too quick? If we were designed to be limited by time, as a countdown clock on our lives, shouldn’t it feel entirely natural that time works the way it does? Time or our experience of time as limiting us, as hunting us, is perhaps the surest evidence that God submitted the entire creature to futility: “For the creation was subjugated to futility, not willingly but because of Him who subjugated it, upon hope, because the creation itself will be freed from its servitude to decay unto the freedom of the glory of the children of God. (Romans 8:20 – 21, trans. mine)” Time is a feature of creation, obviously. Time, however, encapsulates the curse as a kind of Grim Reaper eerily stalking us.  Time as a delimitation of our lives is most certainly a substantive part of the curse, if not its most dominant aspect.

Dr. Scalise