Letter #26: Going Through the Glass Darkly
Getting Face Time with Eternity
Spencer!
Pseudo or not, Dionysius the Areopagite has given me an idea.
Since this month’s opening essay, our exchanges have been traveling on two tracks. On one track, we’ve been talking about the yearning to know God’s truth, not through a glass darkly, but face to face.
“We do not want merely to see beauty,” as C. S. Lewis writes. “We want… to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it.”
On the second track, we’ve been discussing the nature of that sort of knowledge. “Maybe knowledge of the heart,” you wrote on Monday. “Personal knowledge, the kind of knowledge we have of each other, and of a God who comes to us with a human face.” I replied on Tuesday: “You’re talking about making the connection between spirit and spirit. Which is the definition of love.” And on Wednesday you wrote: “That means putting the inside first, rather than the outside. It means judging our outward engagement with matter by our inward knowledge of the soul.”
Now, some weeks ago, I was sitting in church, and the Epistle reading was the famous passage on love from 1 Corinthians, the one we keep referring to. We’ve all heard it a million times because they read it at weddings. Which is dopey, I think, because it’s not about erotic love but agape love, the kind of love Jesus talks about when he tells us to love God and our neighbor.
As I sat listening to the passage, I was struck with its ferocity. “If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.” Nothing. With all that. That’s strong stuff.
As the reading went on, it occurred to me to wonder, really for the first time, what is the connection between that thought and the passage that follows: “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.”
Then, as I was reading your letter about old Pseud, the answer came to me. Because agape love is a connection between spirit and spirit, it “never fails.” Everything else lives in time and dies. Agape love touches the eternal.
Agape love is the bridge between our kingdom of time and death, and the kingdom of heaven and eternal life. Agape love is, in effect, not so much a feeling as a way of seeing across that bridge, of knowing what we can’t know by entering the beauty of God and one another.
Maybe if we thought about what that looks like in real life, we would begin to find that part of our humanity that can’t be downloaded but only lived.
Until next week. Dad
I'm 65. I've spent a lot of my life getting degrees, studying, trying to understand, then teaching, working, doing, gaining experience (personal knowledge of a relational and practical nature).
In a few years, it will all be gone, worm-eaten or worse (embalmed). Hard-earned, invaluable lessons, gone. Yes, I write, and teach, and something of that is passed on. But not that much, and especially after a few MORE years.
I believe in the resurrection of the body, and declare it every week, with the other faithful. What will that mean, for this knowledge?
St. Paul says ALL my knowledge, all OUR knowledge is "in part," at best. In the New Jerusalem, I would imagine, it will be like a pocket calculator on my desk, next to this terminal on which I write, tapped into the internet.
But acts of love ,for my Redeemer, and for others, for the sake of my Redeemer—these are eternal gestures. They cannot be repeated, nor deleted. They live in eternity.
I think you just kinda sorta said what many of my most recent posts have been trying to say. I have always loved those verses in 1 Corinthians 13 because, as you said, it's not about the love of a man for a woman and vice-versa. It's all about not being able in the flesh to understand the magnificent, unexplainable, unbounded, all-encompassing love of God for His creation, man. Of course, that is why the next verse deals with childish ways and seeing through a glass darkly, knowing only in part until we are reunited and in the state of being as our Creator always planned for us.
I think it is important to recall the end of the revelation:
“Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known…”
Prophesies pass, ramblings cease, knowledge passes, the partial passes, childish ways end…
Thank God for this post. I have to share that I was beginning to wonder if I was in the right place with all this striving to know. I understand the desire because I was once on that journey but I now know that all that striving doesn't move the needle one notch in our desired direction. All it leaves us with is guesses, theories, hypotheses and more yearning. I meant what I said, that I am contented to leave the gaps in my knowledge on the subject of understanding God's love for me to what it now is and trust that when I meet Him face-to-face, that on that glorious, unimaginable day I will know Him and His love in full. I rejoice because He does love me.