The Holy Muse
“The Trinity is certainly a mystery, but it only remains a mystery to us because we don’t take the Bible’s detailed architectural descriptions seriously.”
in·ef·fa·ble/inˈefəbəl/
Adjective: Too great or extreme to be expressed or described in words.
We’ve been discussing the “intuition” required to makes sense of the Scriptures. Why is this the case? Are words somehow more than words? How is it that we can make more “sense” of sentences than what they obviously contain to the naked eye?
The idea of “reading between the lines” makes Bible scholars rightly nervous. Coming up with “new stuff” from ancient texts can most certainly be a dangerous pastime. But there are guidelines, and they have to do with relationship.
The Bible is a single work of literary art, and the artist is in charge. When we come up with stuff that is new, it is stuff we’ve seen in the text. Anything novel or “weird” I say comes from a comparison of two or more texts that follow the same structure. For instance, each passage that follows the Bible Matrix will use different symbols at the “Atonement/Sanctions” step. Their position in the text gives us the correspondence. Once that correspondence is made, we can ask “What is the Spirit telling us about Atonement?” That’s why I call it cross-eyed exegesis.
It’s no different than comparing a theme in a symphony from a later reprise and noting both the similarities and differences. What has changed, and why? What is the composer saying to us through the theme initially and then through his modifications later on? My observations might seem bizarre, but it is still the literary composer, the artist, who is in charge. He is totally aware of the possible comparisons because He is the author of the structure which underlies both passages.
So, if we are going somewhere new, it’s because the text is taking us there. The danger is in going somewhere new outside these innate guidelines of the artist.
Now, this appeals to me because I like structure and patterns. But it does take a high level of artistic sense to work out the parallels, and that is hard to quantify. [1] It’s systematic in a symbolic sense, but symbols are not systematic in themselves. The Spirit seems able to use things that have little or no relation in the Created order as symbols to communicate the same thing. For instance, at Maturity we have investiture, wall building, swarms, clouds of incense, brothers, trumpets, silver, and locusts, and more. The relationship of the Father and Son by the Spirit, and their work together in gathering the Bride, is “ineffable.” It is too great to be described in mere words. The glory that is being communicated requires a multi-layered construct of things we do understand. Unfortunately, for many, this methodology goes straight over their heads.
A perfect example would be the tragic amount of jargon and theo-speak that gets thrown around by Bible scholars trying to understand the Trinity. The Trinity is certainly a mystery, but it only remains a mystery to us because we don’t take the Bible’s detailed architectural descriptions seriously.
It takes the entire Created Order to tell the Bridal story, and the Spirit picks up all sorts of loosely related symbolic odds and ends and strings them into recognisable patterns (like DNA) to tell that story. This is the way God communicates the mystery to us. His initial Word is simple, but like any good fractal it takes on a life of its own as it works itself out in history, becoming ever more varied and complex and, well, artistic in its expression. It’s not only serpents and false prophets that are subtle. True prophets are, too. [2] The reason is that symbols are relationships, and relationships show us that the Creation is an expression of the Persons.
Peter Leithart recently commented on some observations by Steve Guthrie, who likens the work of the Spirit to the work of an artist.
In the highly sensible opening chapter to his Creator Spirit: The Holy Spirit and the Art of Becoming Human, Steven Guthrie asks what makes “art” seem “spiritual” to so many people. Many, he notes, find that art is spiritual because both “art” and “spirit” are mysterious, unsayable. He notes that the Spirit in Scripture is mysterious, a boundary-breaker, plan-disrupter, a surprise-bringer. But he also rightly insists that it is simplistic to say that the Spirit is simply “unsayable”.” Citing the many passages of the New Testament that link the Spirit to communication, he concludes that the Spirit is the mysterious wind but also the “breath that carries speech from speaker to listener. . . The ruach not only moves, but carries – gifts, power, words, insight, and so on. It is movement-between.”
He resolves what he calls the “paradox” of the Spirit’s ineffability and communicability, and the parallel “paradox” in art, in several ways. He cites Calvin Seerveld’s observation that art communicates by “allusivity,” its ability to hint at or refer indirectly so as to enable one to participate in the reality hinted at or referred. In this sense, the ineffability of art, and of the Spirit, is the mode of its communication. It’s precisely the allusiveness and elusiveness of art that enables it to communicate in a participatory manner.
Guthrie summaries this way:
“A communicative act that aims at the collaborative activity of mutual love – here we have a much richer, more satisfying way of thinking about artistic ineffability. And it is fair to say that in this richer conception there is indeed a structural similarity between the aesthetic and spiritual experience. In each case the experience (1) communicates and reveals and yet (2) cannot be reduced to words; each (3) originates in love and (4) culminates in participation.”
The mystery of the Spirit, like the mystery of art, is the mystery of personality. Guthrie observes that artists (he is citing interviews by Robert Wuthnow) often speak of the “spirit” that inspires their art as a force, energy, an impersonal Reality. Such a spirit cannot maintain the “paradox” of communication and mystery; an energy might be described in prosaic, mathematical terms; it is reducible to forumlae and definitions. A force cannot communicate with us. But a person both communicates and remains beyond our comprehension: “It is precisely because the Holy Spirit is a person, and not a force, that we cannot box him into doctrinal formulations. It is because he is a person that he is mysterious.” [3]
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[1] I think I’m getting good at this, but I’m hopeless at working out chronology, remembering dates and numbers, and at team sports.
[2] See Mercury Rising.
[3] Peter Leithart, Personal Mystery.
Art: Michael White, Beach www.michaelwhiteart.com
