Remember!When I refer to person in the Godhead in any blog, I am referring either to singular person (one-of-three) or to the collective person (three-in-one) of the Triune.
Return with me now to the second Journey Flag located on a pleasant plateau in the terrain of God’s Invisible Self. It reads:
The 2nd aspect of the Invisible Self in the Godhead is the Soul and its 5 now familiar main features in addition to consciousness—mind, emotion, will, personality and life.
Let’s consider the listed features of the soul in diagram.
From the diagram, we can see that the leading feature of the soul in the Godhead is the mind.
It is significant to note that by definition the mind is the seat of reflective consciousness! Stated otherwise, the mind is a vehicle for consciousness (once again, independent of brain).
It is important to note that the sublime state of God’s at-rest consciousness, His state of potential-in-check, as we have seen, is a static state—a state of quiet perceiving or awareness independent of mind or brain, a state that I describe as summering (to me, summering is like being on summer vacation with nothing to do but sunbathe and vegge-out—something for which no good airhead debutante ever loses her knack).And summering is such a calm, peaceful, almost somnolent state!
On the other hand, God’s reflective consciousness is a dynamic state, dependent on mind (again, independent of brain).The key word here is dynamic, implying activity— specifically, exercising mental faculties.And mental faculties imply initiative, active processing of information.Mind further implies equipment (mental faculties) and mechanics (operations) to manipulate information (cognitive function). Absolute necessities, don’t you think? What good is information if one cannot sort it all out? I ask you. And the mind is the real can-do place for that!
My search for discovery drifted onward, leaving behind my absorbing encounter with consciousness. Next on my topographical map, I came to the field of soul in the terrain of God’s being and began work there. And so today, fellow tourist (and pilgrim, we are on a pilgrimage aren’t we?) we will begin our tour here in the field of soul. And yes, of course, here I now immediately erect another official journey flag and it reads:
The 2nd aspect of the Invisible Self in the Godhead is the Soul and its 5 now familiar main features in addition to consciousness—mind, emotion, will, personality and life.
Soul, mind, emotion, will, personality and life, these are the words that I gathered from scripture years ago as a result of an aha-moment of understanding that I earlier described to you, astute reader, during one fortuitous read-through (of many) of the Bible. The special verses that caught my eye and proceeded to build my understanding of soul can be exampled by the following several quotes:
Proverbs 10:3a
“The Lord will not allow the righteous soul to famish,”
From our tour thus far we have gathered the understanding that we can continue to broaden our terminology in Modern English if we remember that we are duty-bound to press on in a responsible and accountable manner, always with scripture as the final and authoritative word at any point in our progress.
For example, other features of Elohim’s consciousness whose concepts derived from scripture, now gravitated to the above mentioned understanding concerning consciousness—the understanding that every word in existence has got background! Such features are perception, pure goodness and chaos (all to be lovingly addressed in coming blogs) and features all largely described in Modern English terms.
Once again, I cannot say it often enough, remember that I am using contemporary terms and ideas to describe the Ancient of Days. And just because I do, does not mean that contemporary words are better than classic words and ways. It’s just that I’m stuck with the contemporary because it is the time and thought patterns into which I was born. And I have to deal with it.
But now we can return to those related terms. To understand these features of consciousness— perception, pure goodness and chaos, I had to receive yet another understanding—that is, that the consciousness of God can be seen in its entirety (before committing to the Creation) as a still pool or reservoir of just such features (again, a good dictionary actually will point to this condition in its list of definitions, though philosophy books do tinker with this idea—but I think that they tinker badly, tend to lead one off into a convoluted la-la land.).
And furthermore, I had to embrace that all potential rests here in this reservoir of His being, in the consciousness of this unmoving and unmoved mover (Webster’s)—in the Godhead. And that the process (or lack thereof) involved in this state of consciousness, the state of awareness, is stasis or equilibrium, and it is characterized by inertia and the recently mentioned being, and all is at rest.
Absorbing all of this took quite a bit of contemplation I assure you, gentle reader, and the generous influence of Holy Spirit. Wading through all the subtlety and nuance tied to this pivotal word consciousness was indeed quite a marathon experience.
But slowly I came to see what a saturated and exquisitely primed potential this state of being suggested for what we moderns call the consciousness of God! And God’s being, a brimming and incomparable consciousness, at last became a term to which I could now relate, if not with last-word definitiveness and comprehension, certainly with a whole new level of appreciation.
Remember! When I refer to person in the Godhead in any blog, I am referring either to singular person (one-of-three) or to the collective person (three-in-one) of the Triune.
I’m back! And ready to carry on from where we left off in my marathon-on-consciousness. I hope you are rested and eager to begin again, dear tour participant, for there is more tour to take and here we go.
Newly aware (as you know from last blog) of the influence of Latin on language and understanding, the emergence of Modern English as a working tool of discovery, and relying on the Holy Spirit for interpretation and the scriptures for corroboration; I therefore proceeded to focus on the Latin noun conscius (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness , see Etymology--Ralph Cudworth for modern emergence of consciousness as identity) and discovered that consciousness is defined as “The knowledge of what is happening around one; the state of being conscious, aware. The totality of one’s thoughts, feeling, and impressions; mind (Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary).”
For the sake of brevity, my dear overscheduled tourist, I then selected the term awareness from the definition to serve as my preferred term, thus concluding that consciousness, yes, God’s consciousness can be described as awareness. And, at that time, I also chose to call awareness the main feature of consciousness. An instance of exercising My Choice, concerned reader.
Being fit nicely as the main process of consciousness (to review: as it would, since being is the noun associated with the verb to be which is the root verb of I Am, God’s own name for Himself, Exodus 3:14). Or as used for my writing (again derived from the definition), I chose being as the main state of awareness.
And it was from and because of this foray into word research that now when I speak of consciousness as being the primary aspect of the Invisible Self of God, it is with the reservation that consciousness as a term was not used in original texts. But because of the evolution of words and therefore of translations, moderns may use the word consciousness and/or even find it in various translations. And if using or interpreting the term conscientiously, they then can be said to be using it rightly.
In arriving at the previous deductions, three significant points occurred to me. One was that with or without that specific term consciousness, the concept of consciousness derived from early thought! In other words, it has been with us a very long time!
Two, when we speak of God with English words mutated by thousands of years of worldly experience and therefore with presumably greater understanding, the mutated part is true and needs to be kept in mind, but the greater understanding is and will remain arguable.
Three, it is quite clear to me that in the Bible—in its original languages, God has preserved a precise view of language and words, a benchmark if you will. Further, He has brought that benchmark through time in order to see to it that those who care to may have a potent resource of meaningful words, of spiritual words for spiritual things (Spirit Filled Life Bible), and of words chosen by the ultimate wordsmith—Himself, on which we can rely and by which we can take the measure of any word in any language from any time, whether they be today’s language, words from thousands of years ago or words from thousands of years from now.
I left Blog #22 (the one before The Missing Example) having described how in my venture to begin writing “Sorting It All Out”, 4 years ago now, I was all set to concentrate on Greek and Hebrew word meanings (because of the Hebrew Bible and the Greek Testament) and had negotiated a truce with Modern English. Ah, but here you will now see a perfect example of how plans can change. I was all set, poised to go . . . when Holy Spirit (Holy Spirit is His name so I should use it like that!) joggled my memory again.
Remember how I described in Blog#22 how St. Jerome had done wonders with Latin(http://www.latinvulgate.com/ )! Remember St. Jerome and the Latin Vulgate (http://www.answers.com/topic/st-jerome )?Remember, I even said in Blog #22 that the Latin Vulgate had mega-impact on understanding of the word. Well, Holy Spirit suddenly brought this information from the background back to the foreground of my mind.
He then set me to review my presumptive selection of ancient language concentration even though Hebrew and Greek word study would remain my principle resources. And as a result of that review, I realized that to Hebrew and Greek I must add Aramaic and . . . Latin.Aramaic because it is linked to Hebrew (http://phoenicia.org/aramaicjesus.html ); and Latin, well, Latin because (as Holy Spirit proceeded to illuminate to me—by giving me an “aha” moment) St. Jerome dignified Latin by using it.Latin was a major step toward the modern-day Romance Languages, including English, even though English is called a semi-romance language because of its substantial Germanic origin (http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O29-ROMANCELANGUAGES.html , scroll down to Romance in English). And Jerome’s endorsement of Latin added further justification to my using Modern English in concert with scripture. All this resolved because of St. Jerome and the Latin connection!
Believe me, bemused reader, this was all information I needed to know, being the scrupulous sort, concerned to neither add to nor subtract from scripture.No misleading allowed in this blog! No sloppiness. No sir-ee! And because of this determination of mine NOT to mislead, I must counsel you to anchor everything to scripture, plumb everything I say or anyone says to scripture; and if you have any doubt about the correctness of what is said, always prefer scripture.
Note, dear reader: I like to give you net access to references that are congruent with my original resources since many of my original references are from hardback published books.
Remember! When I refer to person in the Godhead in any blog, I am referring either to singular person (one-of-three) or to the collective person (three-in-one) of the Triune.
I can feel a surge of demand for an example of this contrast between Biblical expression and Modern English expression that I proposed in my last blog.
So, okay.
But I must impress upon you first that, in doing so, I will be discussing the very self of God, so I am extremely respectful when I approach this subject. Here goes with the example:
Scripture quotes God as saying:
“I AM WHO I AM.” (Exodus 3:14 NKJV)
Discussion of God’s self in Modern English outside of scripture employs the pithy term consciousness.
That’s the example.
What? you say.
Yes, I say. Scripture quotes God as saying, “And God said to Moses, ‘I AM WHO I AM.’ And He said, ‘Thus you shall say to the children of Israel, I AM has sent me to you.’ Moreover God said to Moses, ‘Thus you shall say to the children of Israel: The Lord God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you. This is My name forever and this is My memorial to all generations’” (Exodus 3:14-15 NKJV).
And that says volumes!
How? you say.
I say, if you know your verbs, then you know that I am is a form of the verb to be and its correlating noun is being. If you remember how to conjugate to be it is quite varied, to review its variety go to the following link:
God names Himself I am. In fact, He names Himself Who— Being. And in using the name I am, He can connect any number of qualifiers He chooses and concretely identify Himself in that way, such as, “Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me’”(John 14:6 NKJV).
Using Modern English, people use the word consciousness to define God. And the descriptive process stops there. Or it should, attentive reader. Rightly nervous to arbitrarily attach qualifiers or words to actually describe God other than what God calls Himself, most people (I should hope) will tread lightly here. So this nervous modern is sent where? Running back to the scriptures, if she is smart, determined to ever-so-scrupulously quote God rightly on who He says He is. Get my drift here?
It’s kinda like the saying, fight fire with fire. Whether we like it or not, we must describe God in the words He uses to describe Himself. There can be no other respectful way. There is too much possibility for inappropriate deviation otherwise.
So I guess you can see where I am going with that kind of thinking. It means that I can construct an outline of self out of Modern English, but I must also use God’s own word to justify it. And actually, this great exercise, as I call it, is extremely helpful to moderns. I know, because it has helped me. It has made it possible for me to see that there can be a reasonable bridge between the expression of God’s truth in God’s terms and the expression of God’s truth in mine. And thus I as a modern am no longer divided from the truth!
Just as I said I would, I have this informative bit of research about words to share with you (It’s a real eye-opener) and I quote:
“The ME (Middle English) vocabulary differs from that of OE (Old English) by the accretion of a vast number of words borrowed from other languages and by the consequent loss of many OE words. The process had already commenced during the 10th and 11th centuries . . . Much more impressive, however, are the borrowings of words of Romance origin from the Norman conquerors, more especially during the years after about 1240 when the Norman-French were forced by political circumstances to reconcile themselves to their English neighbors. There is no other period of the language that shows the accession of so many alien, and on the whole, useful words as the period 1250-1450 . . . Some are drawn from the special vocabulary of the church, some from the law, some from medicine, some from the home, some mundane in origin . . . Side by side with these French words, many of which were ultimately of Latin origin, occur direct borrowings from Latin itself . . . most of the Latin words were plainly literary and scholarly borrowings.” (Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary, p. X)
No sooner had I digested this information than I learned, from the same source, that interlaced with the expansion of vocabulary came advancements in language expression and adaptations in language terms and usage.
My source went on to relate that in the 4th Century A.D., a Latin (referring to the “language of ancient . . . Rome.” Ibid. p. 1025) translation of the Bible from the Hebrew and Greek had been prepared by St. Jerome to serve as the Authorized Version of the Roman Catholic Church. It was called The Latin Vulgate and from what I read, its very existence had mega-waves of impact on the spread of human understanding (once more one of those where-goes-Rome, so-goes-the-world sort of stories, I supposed).
Further reading about the Latin influence on language finally led me to the first specifics about consciousness that I had encountered and explained that consciousness is a Latin term and that that Latin term, consciousness, may be understood as a concept that derives much of its substance from Greek and Hebraic ancient thought while incorporating complexities arising out of the culture, existence and dominance of the Holy Roman Empire (thus substantiating my above supposition).
My reading concluded, I sat back and considered what I had read, and I clearly concluded that though we may speak today of consciousness, in Adam, Moses and Jesus’ time and language, such an exclusive expression as consciousness was not used, no, not until centuries later. Instead, to speak of consciousness in their times was to speak of the whole as a confluence of parts. To speak of the whole today consists of using one term. Reading scripture one understands consciousness from the multitude of images conveyed. To understand the modern day word consciousness, one must go to a dictionary.
Wow, what a difference a few thousand years makes! Perhaps in our time the emphasis in expression has shifted from a focus on rich expression to a focus on brevity. I cannot think how many times I have used the phrase “use more words!” in conversation. Perhaps in our time we do have many more useful words, but they on their own do not offer a wealth of meaning or understanding only of description. Perhaps that is the beauty of God’s scripture, that there (in the original language of Hebrew and Greek) I can always find both meaning and understanding. My thinking! My choice in thought!
Enough for the day. We will speak of what came next in . . . the next blog (now there’s a word—Blog! Not very elegant, but it serves its purpose.).
The first flag I plant as cartographer and tour guide of the terrain of God’s being, dear fellow tourist, refers to that great feature I presented in my very first and most favorite (if you remember) diagram of God’s consciousness. It was here in the primordial region of experience that I undertook my first sortie into the depths of the knowledge of God, and from here that I developed my first finding. That finding is used to caption Flag#1 and reads as follows:
The primary aspect of invisible-self in the Godhead that makes God God is consciousness.
How did I arrive upon this finding, someone asked? I know you did, astute tourist.
Well, therein resides our story for the day.
Consciousness was such a resonant word for me when I first began my journey of discovery of all things God, way back when! I frequently asked myself, what could I say that I even really knew about this word that I embraced both then (and now) with such energy and verve?
I tell you, I found myself embarrassed back then, embarrassed that as a well-educated English-speaking person interested in words (after all, I had spent several years as an Honors Student in Liberal Arts, majoring in English), I really couldn’t bring much to mind about the background of the word consciousness. And immediately it loomed vital, imperative even, to revisit the origins of Modern English.
Go ahead, patient reader, laugh! But I concluded without a moment’s deliberation that clues to the mystery of the ramifications of consciousness were mandatory and certain to lie there in the past.
Don’t you agree this had to be the Holy Spirit energizing me?
I assure you no airhead debutante goes around spontaneously thinking, why not revisit the origins of Modern English?
Well, answer yes or no as you will but, nonetheless, I did think and do just that. I decided to revisit those origins and see where they led! In the process of my revisitation, I recovered information of which I am sure I must have once been aware but of which I had certainly, at the very least, lost track. And simultaneously, and undoubtedly for the first time, and though a little late not too late (by now a not unfamiliar pattern for me as you must have noted, insightful reader), I began to grasp how important it was to remember that Modern English came from Middle English (ME) and ME from Old English (OE) which came from Germanic origins, and before that, Indo European origins.
There was obviously a great flow of history coursing well-cloaked behind modern-day vocabulary!
Amazing, don’t you think?
And as you can well imagine by now, as a result of rediscovering this cataract of history propelling the emergence of the English language, I then divined the compelling truth that our narrow English base had become infiltrated over time with an overabundance of brand new words. (Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary, p. X)
And suddenly I realized (and thanked God greatly concerning) that if it weren’t for the breathed word of the Bible, the authoritative, Holy, breathed word that has been preserved in its original languages over time and spread without change, remaining with us to steer us through our modern-day profusion of wordiness, we could be lost in a sea of meaningless terms. Because, you see, it is inevitable that we are going to have to discuss God in Modern English terms. We are a Modern English immersed people. And that’s okay. The Holy Spirit will elucidate all our thinking if we just stay in the Word.
Ponder these developments we have just discussed a bit, dear reader—over 2000 years the English language has emerged vastly changed by the influence of ancient peoples of all kinds and we are left to deal with a multiplicity of relevant and irrelevant terms--that is, if it were not for the pure-flowing river of God’s Word that has and is and will be with us until the conclusion of time.
Rejoice in this provision by God! I sure did!
And let’s stop here for today. Tomorrow we will take up right where I now leave off and I will share a fascinating quote I happened upon that will explain a lot about words . . . and eventually about God’s consciousness.
As I said, I know that you probably can’t read the illustration in the last blog all that well, but never fear, attentive reader, that illustration produced a bunch of very readable follow-ups which you will yet see, I promise. For, lo and behold, the rings were suddenly suggestive to me of the fields of a topographical map—a topographical map of the Invisible Self. And so, without further ado, the story goes on.
Being a natural tourist at heart, I then seized upon the idea (those 4 years back now) of creating a tour through what truly is the stunning landscape of being in the Godhead laid out in my drawing. And to fashion that tour, I decided to flag and explain several deductions that I made during my newly purposed journey to fill in the outline made by the rings of my drawing.
And, indeed, after much earnest effort I found myself in possession of one intriguing tour, so that now, today, I can invite you to accompany me and experience for yourself the tour that I designed. And I assure you that, all in all, you should come away from said tour with a greatly expanded sense of the person of God that I encountered. That is my hope! That is certainly my great hope!
So grasping my best, most thoughtful and most respectful attitude and remembering to collect a fistful of flags as we leave, if you’re coming along, let’s be off.
To be continued . . .
P.S. And what better flag to use, I might ask, than this one crowned with a three leaf clover, a historically favorite Christian symbol of the Trinity?
The past few blogs with little drawings were all intended to overview and orient you to what was, for me, a protracted period of deep investigation into the nature and vital interrelationships of the persons of the Godhead--that is, the substance and dynamics of the interaction of each invisible self, one with the other. And from little acorns mighty oaks do grow, goes the old saying; meaning, here, that there's a lot more to reveal than I have displayed so far. Oh, I had to go through all those developmental stages, yes, but over time those little drawings, my little acorns, began to morph into mighty oaks.
How so? you might ask.
The answer is really more of a story than an answer in 25 words or less, a story with its roots back in Blog #15.If you remember, I was exasperated in my effort to craft a drawing of the variously named (by me) vital orb, epicenter of being or Invisible Self. It was the pulsing, orbiting lines of the dynamic that defied my artistry and caused me so much alarm.But later on—a month or so later, I suddenly realized that even if I could not draw the whole vital orb itself, I could draw a part of it.I could draw a static cross section, only slightly modified for my purposes.
And well, yes, as it turned out, I could and did draw just such an illustration. But let me tell you, it took some time developing, though I consider it now as quite a thing of beauty and my spikey handwriting even seems to make the drawing pulse a bit.See what you think when we get there.
Which is now!
And so, my faithful reader, here is my computer & handcrafted representation of the vital orb of person in the Godhead! Don’t worry if it is too hard to read. It is the visual impact of the illustrative effort that is what really matters here.I was, as usual, riveted by the power of the little presentation myself. And our story goes on with ever greater expansion and clarification in next blog, anyway (for example, a ring for Works was not included in this picture but will be added later in the story).
