As I wrote in the last post but one:
"Adam is, in the crucial sense of a moral scenario, hoisted into a suspension between Heaven and Earth. He is not one with the rest of Creation, and he is not one with God."
As I wrote in the last post:
"Perhaps the best way to understand our proper orientation to light--to good--is derived from the metaphor's mundane derivation. What we understand of 'the world' (or more inclusively, 'the universe') is--if taken as a binary, light-versus-dark metaphor--a question of how much of the surfaces of irregular objects is exposed to light."
The greatest marvel of we who consider ourselves thinking beings is the way that we can conceptualize that which does not exist, or that which exists only in potentiality. Indeed, that is what it is to "think," if we are to address ourselves to the question of what we must do in our lives. It would be foolish, of course, for us to imagine that our abilities to conceptualize were independent of our concrete experiences (that is, that we are other than in a suspension between Heaven and Earth), but it would be equally foolish for us to imagine that our relationships to the infinite were pursued properly by our imputing infinite qualities to a divine that we view as embodying every good quality we can imagine.
As I wrote in the last post but one:
"We want to think of God as a constellation of ineffable qualities--but that is really no different than thinking of God as a creature, insofar as all of our thoughts will ultimately assign words like 'ineffable' to the edges of our understanding."
We do not worship God when we call him the epitome of every good concept we can name. We worship thereby an amalgamation of our imaginations. Instead, we must recognize that God must be approached not as an "other" (really a creature) of inestimable named qualities, but rather as the great worthy "Other" about whom the concept of qualities must be subsumed into a greater, undefinable meta-quality. In Jesus' parlance, this is the "light" that we approach when we should, and avoid when we should not.
This is where the "light" metaphor of the Gospels really comes in. We are creatures capable of conceptualization, and therefore we are creatures capable of assuming orientations toward all we can conceive around us. If assuming orientations in our thought-schemes is to be called "work" (and therefore shackled to some idea of moral achievement), it must be admitted that this "work" is potentially as undemanding as the "work" (which I will leave to strict Calvinists to sort out) of obtaining salvation through "faith" rather than "works." Moreover, when Jesus tells us to become like the little children, we are presented with a similar open question of whether this is a "work," or rather a ceasing from the unwholesome "works" that might be thought to characterize what we call "adulthood." And then there is the question of whether it is a "work" to--in accordance with John 3--yield to Jesus' contention that we know not, in any abiding sense, where we come from--and must surrender accordingly our attachments to our earthly concept-schemes.
But if we can choose our orientations as we are suspended--Adam-like--in a conceptual tension between Heaven and Earth, and if we can choose our orientations in a thought-existence independent of time and space, what then but real evil would prevent us from turning more and more facets of ourselves to light--to good? This is the question of the Gospels, not the question of whether we can be good enough, or do good enough, or create enough good.
Metaphors will, of course, fail in the end. My conceptualization of the present matter is that of us being required to present all we can of ourselves and our lives (really the same thing) as a collection of anvils against which we invite the hammers of the light. This metaphor is as weak as my understanding, but then the paucity of my understanding was never in doubt. One might wonder just what might be collected upon the surface of such "anvils," awaiting moment-by-moment the blinding hammer of God--but then we might as well wonder whether we can ever hope to understand just what it is that make us "us."
Elsewhere in the Gospels Jesus speaks of the wisdom of embracing the beneficial experience-type of being broken on the "stone," rather than trying to escape and risking being ground to powder under it. Would that be any different than the notion of seeking to be pounded by the light from above, rather than being found out by that light in the end?
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