How can something be hidden and un-hidden at the same time, clear to children and unclear to the better educated? How is it that something which Jesus’ disciples can hear is in a sense completely un-hearable to others at the same time? To some people this may be a contradiction. To others, it’s a paradox that is only explained by an underlying truth.
For instance…
When Jesus says his words are for those who have ears to
hear, he is answering his disciples’ question of why his words go
misunderstood. It’s the sort of enigmatic reply that Jesus is known for. Even
the phrase “for those who have ears to hear” is curious. It’s a humorous word
picture, not a statement of philosophy. Some people who have ears are like
people who don’t have ears, Jesus is saying, and therefore they are like a deaf
person even if they heard every word he said. Confused?
I’m going to talk about the Trinity. Many people would run a
mile at the thought. Discussion of the Trinity has been appropriated by
philosophers for well over a thousand years. In my book on the Trinity, I take
the subject out of the realms of philosophy and into the world of semitic
thought, a world of word-pictures rather than logic statements, where thoughts
are often conveyed in narratives and images without explanatory notes.
It’s not an easy thing for many in the west to get their
heads around this. Western intellectual thinking long long ago had a paradigm
shift that separated it from semitic ways of thinking. Valid in its own way,
western rationalism serves many useful and important purposes. But it can be
tone deaf to the music of the Bible. How do we attune our ears to the world of
semitic thought? It’s not just a different way of seeing, but more like
different eyes to see with. It’s not just different ways of hearing, but in
Jesus’ word-picture, a matter of having ears at all. It’s not irrational, but it is different.
Let me make an analogy that people in the west can understand more readily. Ikea furniture
instructions. The sort of instructions that come with pictures and without
words. Because they are sold in different countries that speak in different
tongues. Ikea know that a picture of a plank and a screw means the same
everywhere, and it is most efficient for them to sell their product with universal
pictures rather than multiple translations. But what happens when you take it
home and try to put it together? One person will be in a state of frustration complaining
to a partner that “the pictures are not very explicit,” only to be told
annoyingly by their partner, “yes, they are.” The partner will, to their irritation, say, “Look the pictures show you that this size screw goes into this size plank
on this side.” And the first person moans again, “That’s not explicit to me,” and the
second person just doesn’t understand why the pictures are not clear and explicit to the first
person. And it's frustrating at times because Ikea have decided that explicit images are more valuable than explicit statements. I'm using the two different meanings of the word explicit: visually clear and not hidden; or verbally explanatory to remove doubt as to meaning.
The first person might have been happier if Ikea furniture
came with well-written verbal instructions alongside the pictures. Because that
is some people’s key idea of explicit. But not everyone's. Ikea believe the diagrams are explicit (tested by people's ability to readily follow and understand them).
Another example. Which is more explicit for a child reading a Janet and John book, the picture of the red ball in the air, or the statement – here in the English language - that “the red ball is in the air”? To the child, of course, the image is clear and explicit and sufficiently so, but the English adult wants the child to learn the explicit statement in the English language. It is possible to be verbally clear and explicit only because it has a clear and explicit image first. But, as we become more educated, we forget that the image is clear and explicit, because verbal reasoning becomes dominant over the visual in Western thought. In fact, part of the problem is that we use the word explicit in the two different senses of the word, and we have a view as to which is more important, a bias for the verbal over the visual.
So much so that if you ask an adult in Britain what it means
to be speak of an explicit image, their brain will reach for a qualifier: e.g. “Do
you mean sexually explicit images?” (Meaning that there are body parts that are
not hidden.) Or we might think of explicit violence in a movie. But change the context, and the language is used casually. The
Ikea image is “not very explicit,” but the television footage of a footballer
committing a foul in the penalty area “is pretty explicit.” We know the
conversation: the foul tackle is pretty
explicit in the TV pictures, but not
from where the referee was standing at the time. Eyes to see, ears to hear. We
still know an explicit picture when we see one. Basically, explicit means that
the object, the ball in the air for instance, is fully in view and not hidden.
This is rather different from what a philosopher defines as “explicit,” which
means that a verbal statement is clearly explained beyond doubt. And the
historic problem with understanding the Trinity is connected to the fact that
discussion of it has been appropriated by the intellectual verbal discipline of
philosophy, and it is hard for Western philosophers to stomach the idea of their
discipline ever being subordinate to the word-pictures and narratives of
Scripture. It's a bit like the dichotomy between a silent movie and a talkie - in the early days, many critics thought silent movies the superior art form, communicating truth through explicit and implicit imagery, whereas most films later came to be dominated by dialogue. (The rise of CGI has shifted the balance back a bit.)
Jesus claims that there are things that are explicitly clear
to children and simultaneously hidden from adults. Contradiction or paradox?
Another way of putting it: there are things that are straightforwardly knowable
but only to those “who have ears to hear.” Contradiction or paradox? It’s
paradox in the sense of an apparent contradiction that leads to underlying
truth. An image is only clear and explicit to your understanding if you can focus your eyes on it. Jesus
is saying that his words are misunderstood only if your ears are not attuned to
them.
There is a terrific youtube channel which analyses Beatles
recordings to observe oddities that listeners have probably never noticed, with the
premise that once you hear this, you can’t unhear it. That’s a great way of
putting it. My book on the Trinity does something similar. As I said, in my
book I take the subject out of the realms of philosophy and into the world of
semitic thought, a world of word-pictures rather than logic statements, where
thoughts are often conveyed in narratives and images without explanatory notes.
I show for example the picture of a triune God in 2 Chronicles 5-7. There we have the word-picture and narrative of God in heaven listening to prayer whilst God's Name resides in his earthly temple and God's Glory fills that temple. I show
it to people and we find that once you see it, you can’t un-see it. Being
Western thinkers, we can be immediately tempted to try to appropriate it hastily back
into the language of philosophy and wrestle with questions such as, where are
statements about “being” and “persons,” but the point of my book is to retrieve it
back to semitic thought until we have grasped it. The force of explicit propositional statements and the force of explicit word-pictures can amount to two different things.
The place to start understanding the Trinity is the
word-pictures and narratives of semitic thought. Borrowing the language of
science for a moment, we make our observations first. We look at the
word-pictures first. We can posit our logic theories afterwards. But we can’t start
with abstract theories and project them back onto the Bible. That is precisely not
the way to read the Bible at all. That is not letting the Bible speak to us. Remember
how the Ikea pictures are clear and explicit in meaning to one pair of eyes and
not to another. Remember how the footballer’s foul tackle is explicit in the TV
pictures but yet was not from where the referee was standing at the time: once you see it, you can't un-see it.
When Jesus spoke in paradoxes, he did so to makes us think,
but not to make us only abstract thinkers. He did so to make us ask, why are
we not hearing what others can hear? Why are we not seeing what others can see and understand clearly and explicitly? The ball is in the air and not at all hidden. We can’t
solve the problem by being Western rationalists. Other worldviews are
available, worldviews communicated in word-pictures and narratives.
Another example. John’s Gospel is a tour de force of paradoxes. John wants to make us think, but not
merely to make us abstract thinkers. That’s why he communicates his paradoxes
in word-pictures and narrative. Here is an example.
This is by way of a meditation on John chapter 20. Here
Jesus says, the Father is “my God, and your God” and later Thomas calls Jesus
“my Lord and my God”.
That’s a thought-provoking contrast, but that’s not all. In
this chapter, Jesus tells Mary not to
touch him and this is when Jesus says to her that the Father is “my God,
and your God”; and a few verses later Jesus tells Thomas to touch him, and this is when Thomas calls Jesus “My Lord and my
God”. It’s a striking juxtaposition. Here are the verses from John 20:
John 20:17, 27-29: ‘Jesus saith
unto her, Touch me not;
for I am not yet ascended to my
Father: but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and
your Father; and to my God, and your God…
Then saith he to Thomas, Reach
hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust
it into my side:
and be not faithless, but
believing. And Thomas answered and said unto him, My Lord and my God.
Jesus saith unto him, Thomas,
because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not
seen, and yet have believed.’ (KJV – out of copyright!)
This is surely a deliberate contrast - what do we learn from
it?:
- Jesus’ first command, not to touch
him,
when Jesus says to Mary that the
Father is
“my God, and your God”;
and then
- Jesus’ second command, to touch him,
when Thomas calls Jesus,
“My Lord and my God.”
The way John relates the resurrection narrative is surely
intended to make us think about these two moments together.
The first excerpt emphasises
Jesus’ humanity in relationship to the Father - before and after the
resurrection the human Jesus has a God, the Father. This is as a Christian
expects, for Jesus “had to be made like his brothers in every way” (Hebrews
2:14, 17). We, who are flesh and bone, have a God to worship and so therefore
must the flesh and bone Jesus.
The second excerpt presents his humanity (ie ‘touch me’) and his divinity {‘my Lord and my God’ says Thomas to him}. Contradiction or paradox?
John’s gospel climaxes
as foreshadowed in the prologue: the divine Word made flesh (John 1:1, 14). In
his humanity Jesus is a flesh and bone man (John 1:14) whose God is the Father
(John 20:17); at the same time, Jesus in his divinity (John 1:1) is ‘my God’
(John 20:28).
John loves paradox. It’s signalled in Jesus’ contradictory instructions
to touch him and not to touch him, and it goes a step deeper with Jesus speaking of “my God”
and being hailed by Thomas as “my God.” It’s not a contradiction, but a deliberate paradox to open our
eyes and ears to underlying truth.
Here’s another way of communicating about these verses about Jesus.
The prologue: John 1:1 presents Jesus as ‘god’ without the
definite article in the Greek, saying “and the word was god” (most translations, which a minority
would translate as “a god”); and the narrative climaxes in John 20:28 when the
Greek unambiguously supplies the definite article, with Thomas calling Jesus
“the god of me” (that is, to translate the Greek literally). This verse is
normally translated in English as “my God”, not as “the God of me”, obscuring
the fact that the definite article (“the”) is unambiguously supplied in the
Greek, declaring Jesus as “the God”.
Here in the climax of the narrative any lingering questions
from John 1:1 about Jesus’ divinity are answered. He is “the God of me”.
Only the incarnate Son could be “my God” to Thomas, and yet at the same
time speak of the Father as “my God.” Therefore to myself writing this post,
both the Father and the Son are “my God.” That’s the message to me of John
chapter 20. Does it resolve all the philosophical questions we might ask about
it? Absolutely not. Is it communicating in semitic thought, in narrative and
word pictures? Yes, absolutely. To begin to understand, then, philosophy had to be
subordinate to the word-pictures and narrative.
I hope
this meditation gives you a chance to think how you might look to Jesus and
call him “the Lord of me and the God of me,” the divine Word made flesh.
What I’ve written here is bound to offend some people. Why?
The answer is in narrative:
And when the chief priests and
scribes saw the wonderful things that he did, and the children crying in the
temple, and saying, Hosanna to the son of David; they were sore displeased,
And said unto him, Hearest thou
what these say? And Jesus saith unto them, Yea; have ye never read, Out of the
mouth of babes and sucklings thou hast perfected praise? (Matthew 21:15-16 KJV)
Sometimes hard to take for those of us with an extensive
Western education, but Paul wrote: “God hath chosen the foolish things of the
world to confound the wise” (1 Cor 1:27). Contradiction or paradox? You decide. John Lennon once, commenting on how musicologists were analysing Beatles' songs, said that intellectuals have proven that you can be a genius and not have a clue what's going on. In my life, I often come back to that.
No comments:
Post a Comment