I once preached a sermon when I held up a guitar, said "guitar," and had the word guitar up on the screen next to me. Many in the congregation believed that all three were guitars. While there is some level of truth in their belief - at least in each example building our understanding of the overall concept - the heart of guitars is the object, but only in a state where music proceeds from the instrument. Without the guitarist, the object lacks its full meaning, but only the actual object can interact in that way. I think all of it leads us to a deepening of our understanding of Christ as Logos, not just the Word, but the meaning of all words, all meaning, united in fullness, creator and creation in a relationship that gives definition, understanding, and action together.
Yes! A guitar is a guitar because of what it does, can do… it’s “use” in the world. Any child, anyone, recognizes a chair and names it because of what it does, what it’s “use” is. If something looks like a chair, but has some other use, then it’s not a chair. No?
It's something like that. I think there is an essence or -ness of things that makes them what they are, but without the relationship that essence is lacking.
The photo or the word still holds some of that essence, but without the object in relationship, the photo and the word would lack any meaning. I think.
I love this post so much, Spencer. Thank you. It reminds me of a recent observation by Michael Sacasas: “Science/Religion debates yielded the ill-conceived “god of the gaps” concept, relegating G/god to a filler in then-current gaps in human knowledge. AI discourse offers a similarly misguided “human of the gaps” approach, relegating the human to gaps in AI capabilities.” The modernist heresy has to repent of its atheistic pretensions in order to receive the world, which was created by the Word. May it be so! Your book, Spencer is pointing us in that direction. I pray that many will read it!!
All idols and all counterfeits bind us in time. Our best and only defensive weapon for discernment seems to me to be the double edged sword of truth. On one side , the symbolic manifestation of christ in the world , the word or the logos ( the rod) But it must be coupled with the other side, the spiritual manifestation of christ in the world which resides in each of our hearts the spirit or telos. As counterfeits get more subtle and plausible, so will God manifest himself in the hearts of the children of men. Time is a gift
to help us make sense of what we're doing here, but when you turn your heart and purpose to the telos as was
Explained beautifully in The Great Good Thing, you start to see the course of the lord is " one eternal round." For me satan counterfeits this in every way possible. Be wary of anything that binds us in the here and now. The Babylonian clock that we follow after all is based on a series of six sets of six sixes.
My students and even their children "got" it. Once when a six-year-old daughter of a student was in a Sunday School class and the teacher held up a picture of Noah and pointed to one part of it and asked, "What is this?" the children all chimed in "A Rainbow." My student's daughter was indignant. "That's a represenTAtion of a rainbow!" (*small spitting lisping voice of a child)
I’ve reimagined his painting and captioned it appropriately below , what do you think? or was thinking itself supposed to be left out in the original piece, so one isn’t supposed to imagine? Which ironically for this guy would leave the whole enterprise of the history in human art redundant. And on the realisation of that truth , like Homer Simpson would go “doh” & seek a new means to make a living !
This is not a reply👇 to the article above
(Oh yes it is , oh no it isn’t)
Just a small glaring mistake. Why did he say “pipe” if it wasn’t one? He would have to know what it was to then say what it wasn’t, and therefore knew what it was. And on everyone seeing it would see it what it was too. Then rightly think “hey that dude’s painted a pipe”. Instead of saying “hey that’s dude had painted a bowl of petunias”.
At which point he would rush in and go “oh no it isn’t” then those who paid a lot of money to come in the gallery would say “oh yes it is” ……………… to infinity & beyond . Now that’s art !
Umberto Eco wrote that at least four persons are involved in story telling. The actual physical human being that is the author. The voice the author assumes when he puts pen to paper. The idealized reader he is writing for. And last, the actual human being who is reading or hearing or watching the story as it is told.
Think of all that is involved in simply watching a film, any film, even the most boring hackneyed melodrama ever to appear on screen.
We accept somehow that we are seeing things with a single eye unattached to a human being that jumps instantaneously from place to place and is not representative of human vision (your eye's perception is not flat, bounded by straight lines, etc.) We also inhabit the mind, not of the actor playing the role, but of the character he or she is playing. We see what they see, know what they know, which is nothing like what the camera is showing us. We are also aware that the character is an actor playing the character, even if that actor is long dead (Look! it's Jimmy Stewart!).
And yet we also inhabit the body of a physical person sitting on a physical sofa staring at a two dimensional screen which flashes little dots of light and vibrates a membrane to make acoustical vibrations in the air.
We can't even say that these personas are distinct. Imagine you are watching a film where a psycho killer announces his presence by knocking loudly on the door of his victim's room three times. As you watch the film someone knocks loudly three times on your own door.
The reason that people are so open to attacks by demons (literal or figurative, it makes no difference, really) is because they are like us or perhaps because we are like them.
I once preached a sermon when I held up a guitar, said "guitar," and had the word guitar up on the screen next to me. Many in the congregation believed that all three were guitars. While there is some level of truth in their belief - at least in each example building our understanding of the overall concept - the heart of guitars is the object, but only in a state where music proceeds from the instrument. Without the guitarist, the object lacks its full meaning, but only the actual object can interact in that way. I think all of it leads us to a deepening of our understanding of Christ as Logos, not just the Word, but the meaning of all words, all meaning, united in fullness, creator and creation in a relationship that gives definition, understanding, and action together.
Yes! A guitar is a guitar because of what it does, can do… it’s “use” in the world. Any child, anyone, recognizes a chair and names it because of what it does, what it’s “use” is. If something looks like a chair, but has some other use, then it’s not a chair. No?
It's something like that. I think there is an essence or -ness of things that makes them what they are, but without the relationship that essence is lacking.
The photo or the word still holds some of that essence, but without the object in relationship, the photo and the word would lack any meaning. I think.
I love this post so much, Spencer. Thank you. It reminds me of a recent observation by Michael Sacasas: “Science/Religion debates yielded the ill-conceived “god of the gaps” concept, relegating G/god to a filler in then-current gaps in human knowledge. AI discourse offers a similarly misguided “human of the gaps” approach, relegating the human to gaps in AI capabilities.” The modernist heresy has to repent of its atheistic pretensions in order to receive the world, which was created by the Word. May it be so! Your book, Spencer is pointing us in that direction. I pray that many will read it!!
All idols and all counterfeits bind us in time. Our best and only defensive weapon for discernment seems to me to be the double edged sword of truth. On one side , the symbolic manifestation of christ in the world , the word or the logos ( the rod) But it must be coupled with the other side, the spiritual manifestation of christ in the world which resides in each of our hearts the spirit or telos. As counterfeits get more subtle and plausible, so will God manifest himself in the hearts of the children of men. Time is a gift
to help us make sense of what we're doing here, but when you turn your heart and purpose to the telos as was
Explained beautifully in The Great Good Thing, you start to see the course of the lord is " one eternal round." For me satan counterfeits this in every way possible. Be wary of anything that binds us in the here and now. The Babylonian clock that we follow after all is based on a series of six sets of six sixes.
I wrote my dissertation on "Representational Theology." It applies the principles you are talking about -- and wrote a layman-friendly version of it too. https://www.representationalresearch.com/pdfs/BasicsfromDissertation.pdf
My students and even their children "got" it. Once when a six-year-old daughter of a student was in a Sunday School class and the teacher held up a picture of Noah and pointed to one part of it and asked, "What is this?" the children all chimed in "A Rainbow." My student's daughter was indignant. "That's a represenTAtion of a rainbow!" (*small spitting lisping voice of a child)
Beautiful. Everything is a window; only the soul sneaks through.
I’ve reimagined his painting and captioned it appropriately below , what do you think? or was thinking itself supposed to be left out in the original piece, so one isn’t supposed to imagine? Which ironically for this guy would leave the whole enterprise of the history in human art redundant. And on the realisation of that truth , like Homer Simpson would go “doh” & seek a new means to make a living !
This is not a reply👇 to the article above
(Oh yes it is , oh no it isn’t)
Just a small glaring mistake. Why did he say “pipe” if it wasn’t one? He would have to know what it was to then say what it wasn’t, and therefore knew what it was. And on everyone seeing it would see it what it was too. Then rightly think “hey that dude’s painted a pipe”. Instead of saying “hey that’s dude had painted a bowl of petunias”.
At which point he would rush in and go “oh no it isn’t” then those who paid a lot of money to come in the gallery would say “oh yes it is” ……………… to infinity & beyond . Now that’s art !
Umberto Eco wrote that at least four persons are involved in story telling. The actual physical human being that is the author. The voice the author assumes when he puts pen to paper. The idealized reader he is writing for. And last, the actual human being who is reading or hearing or watching the story as it is told.
Think of all that is involved in simply watching a film, any film, even the most boring hackneyed melodrama ever to appear on screen.
We accept somehow that we are seeing things with a single eye unattached to a human being that jumps instantaneously from place to place and is not representative of human vision (your eye's perception is not flat, bounded by straight lines, etc.) We also inhabit the mind, not of the actor playing the role, but of the character he or she is playing. We see what they see, know what they know, which is nothing like what the camera is showing us. We are also aware that the character is an actor playing the character, even if that actor is long dead (Look! it's Jimmy Stewart!).
And yet we also inhabit the body of a physical person sitting on a physical sofa staring at a two dimensional screen which flashes little dots of light and vibrates a membrane to make acoustical vibrations in the air.
We can't even say that these personas are distinct. Imagine you are watching a film where a psycho killer announces his presence by knocking loudly on the door of his victim's room three times. As you watch the film someone knocks loudly three times on your own door.
The reason that people are so open to attacks by demons (literal or figurative, it makes no difference, really) is because they are like us or perhaps because we are like them.
https://sothebys-md.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/9156d70/2147483647/strip/true/crop/2000x2000+0+0/resize/385x385!/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fsothebys-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fmedia-desk%2F14%2F11%2Fb1ded9a748e4bbd23581ba24584d%2Fn10044-129-web.jpg
A Fake Image.