As you recall, I (yes, I, the airhead debutante—but a learned deb, after all, and one embarked upon a spiritual odyssey, if you please) compiled an outline of the invisible self of God from multiple readings of the Bible, and under the influence of Holy Spirit, humbly proposed this self as a vital orb of being. And then, even more amazing (at least to me), I assembled a guided tour (where I am your guide) and on this present tour of the terrain of invisible self, we are proceeding ring by ring through my select number of marvelous aspects of the Godhead taken from scripture and composing the vital orb.
So, sturdy readers, since you are here, if you are ready, let us now gather our things and proceed with rightful awe on our journey of discovery.
Today we begin a multi-day excursion, a browsing of specifics about how mind in the person of the Godhead works (yes, kind of like a shopper browsing and taking it all in).
To bring you up to date on where we are (if you are not), based on the composition of my proposed vital orb: the principle faculties, operations and products of God’s mind involve a collective of high-order components including many associated faculties from other soul features such as emotion, will, personality and life. Further, I have already pointed to how consciousness in the Godhead can manifest in static, at-rest (apart from mind) consciousness and/or in dynamic, reflective consciousness (when seated in the mind as a control/operations center). Moving on:
The principle intrinsic faculties of the mind in the Godhead involve thought, reason, memory, intellect and choice.
The principle intrinsic operations of the mind in the Godhead involve thinking, reasoning, remembering, evaluating, and choosing.
Let’s address the faculties and operations one at a time, discussing some possible products as we go. And I’m going to start with thought.
Faculty: Thought
Definition: N., the result of thinking. (Webster’s).
N., the activity or process of thinking; reasoning power, the ability to think and reason. (Encarta Dictionary)
Hebrew, V. châshab (Strong’s #2803). “( . . . from the mental effort) to think, regard, value, compute; make account of, conceive, consider, count . . . devise, esteem, , find out, forecast, hold, imagine, impute, invent, be like, mean, purpose, reckon . . . regard, think.”
Operation: To think. V., to form thoughts, transitive verb to use the mind to consider ideas and make judgments; transitive verb to believe something, or have something as an opinion; to imagine or understand something or the possibility of something; to bring something to mind; transitive verb to focus the attention on something; transitive verb to regard somebody with care or concern. (Encarta Dictionary)
The ability to review information, including but not limited to the ability to assess, formulate, propose, test, determine and refine raw data through the mental faculty of thought, involving thinking or a regular train of ideas.
For example: Jeremiah 18:5, 8
“Then the word of the Lord came to me saying . . . if that nation against whom I have spoken turns from its evil, I will relent of the disaster that I thought (châshab) to bring upon it.” (NKJV)
In this next verse (which is a repetition of the one above) I have replaced “thought” with an alternate word from the definition of châshab to get an in-other-words experience of the verse and the chosen word:
“Then the word of the Lord came to me saying . . . if that nation against whom I have spoken turns from its evil, I will relent of the disaster that I meant (had every intention of bringing—my words) (châshab) to bring upon it.”
Note: For me, it is so important to sample replacing the original word with one or more of the other words in the definition (and in Bible Study we are encouraged to do so) and then to read the sentence again out loud, listening for the expanded connotation of the word derived by so doing. Such doing, overtime, has built in me a greater understanding of each— the word and the verse of scripture. Sort of a learn-by-doing process. . .
Product: Idea, concept, plan, option, opinion, etc.
Enjoy these ideas about thought a bit on your own.
To be continued . . .
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