“I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.” C.S. Lewis
Prisms reveal a rainbow of coloured light when placed in the path of white light. The prism lens shows us the multi-coloured light that was there all along. Looking at the bands of colours can tell us something about the original light and tracing the colours back through the prism can tell us something about the source. Prisms, then, can be seen as a lens for interpreting light and source.
As with the prism light, we can study the things in our world across many bands of colour, many areas of study, and they each contribute some understanding to the whole understanding. And, as with focusing only on one band of colour to the exclusion of others, we make the same mistake when we try to build the whole understanding from only some understanding.
When I look at any given collection of what seem to be related things, my intuition is always asking, “How do these all fit together?” Many things don’t need to fit together, of course, but then there are some that demand out of their very being that they must fit together. Sometimes it matters little if you can fit everything together while sometimes it means the world. One of these times arises in trying to understand the sum of the writings, claims, and ramifications that is the Holy Bible.
Astronomy and Approach
Astronomers have long studied the stars using light from which they can deduce many things about the stars, themselves, such as chemical composition, temperature, density, mass, distance, and luminosity. Astronomers can use even non-visible light, such as ultraviolet, x-ray, infrared, and radio frequencies to discover even more.
Each band of colour is an area of study with specific analysis and results, work and rewards. Visible light analysis can reveal types of matter such as solids and gasses, and hotter and cooler temperatures. X-rays are used to reveal comets via solar winds. Radio and infrared can help reveal complex molecules in space.
The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge.
They have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them.
Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.
Psalms 19:1-4
The stars have no speech yet they have voice, use no words yet words go out, no sound is heard yet day after day they pour forth speech.
Selah.
Tack and Tangent
Jesus gave us simple truths and commands and by the combination explosion of mere men attempting to comprehend them we have come through many roads of knowledge.
Love God and Neighbour
Preach the Gospel and Make Disciples
Mercy Triumphs over Judgment
Matthew 22:37-40, Matthew 28:18-20, James 2:12-13
We have come through Greek exceptionalism, Roman pragmatism, Medieval Scholasticism, Enlightenment Rationalism, Modernist Empiricism, Postmodern Deconstruction, and, our present mood, a sort of unholy nihilist-spiritual hybrid.
Each period gave its input on how to understand what we see around us and each new period sometimes took the gold and left the dross and sometimes forgot to know what was gold and what was dross.
From the many great minds of every time we have expanded and expounded the techniques with which the angles of a phenomena can be approached. We now look at any given body of knowledge and look at it from many different sides and cross-sections. From surface-level to symbolic, psychological to sociological, grammar to presentation, speaker to audience, intent to reception, prose to poetry, history to apocalypse.
Every angle of approach is an area of study with specific analysis and results, work and rewards. The surface can reveal immediate takeaways. The psychological can reveal inner, personal truths. The sociological can reveal outer, communal behaviours. Grammar can reveal literary goals and presentation invites innate response. Speaker and audience can reveal personal and group position and communication dynamics. Intent and reception can reveal how communication is crafted to deliver meaning. Prose and poetry can reveal complexity of thought and emotion. And history and apocalypse can reveal the past, how the past was understood, and how the future is foreseen.
One or more, or all, of these levels can exist and be true at the same time. But how do they relate to each other when they co-exist? Must they agree or can they contradict each other? And how can we even know they are actually present?
Relations and Rapports
The way back from postmodernism is to realize we can trace back the deconstruction to the construction as we can trace back prism light from dissociation to association.
What is the true understanding of a thing if more than one understanding can apply? The Prism Principle applies. Experience and investigation teaches us that multiple levels of meaning, angles of approach, do not and can not exist independent of each other. They must all come back to their source.
Astronomy vividly teaches us that there are many dimensions to a star’s light and each dimension teaches us something unique. Visible light can tell the speed of spinning object and infrared can tell us about complex molecules in its space or in the atmosphere of planets the light travels through.
But if your visible light is telling you a planet is spinning faster than the ability for complex molecules to stay in its atmosphere, without being ripped away, then you must question whether you understand the meaning of each band of colour: You will try to resolve and harmonize your findings within the bounds of reason and reality.
You might even question how you know the differing aspects of analysis are there to begin with. In astronomical spectroscopy you would ensure you have identified the tell-tale signs of each area. That is, you would ensure the light spectrum is or is not present, its intensity, and many other properties.
So, too, with any area of interest, including a text like the Bible.
Take, for instance, the type of text, whether prose, poetry, wisdom, history, or apocalypse. Prose may begin by narration and exhibit plot or character arcs. Poetry often includes repetition of words, structures, or ideas, rhythm, rhyme, and visual elements when written. Wisdom may include abstract and intangible behoovements and axioms of oughts and ought nots and bewares. History will include dates, times, durations, periods, people, places, and events. And apocalypse text will look to a future time, often using coded language and symbols, and often with a message of hope or warning or both.
The text will tell you what it is intended to represent, whether one thing or many, just like light will tell you what it represents by its amplitude, period, phase shift, and frequency.
Light and Luminescence
God…who alone is immortal and who lives in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see. 1 Timothy 6:15b-16a
Let’s take, God, for example, who, convenient to our prism example, is described as living in inapproachable light, whom no one has seen and yet is given any number of characteristics and descriptions.
God is described as and revealed in act to be infinite, self-existing, and without origin; immutable, never-changing; self-sufficient and needing nothing; omnipotent, all-powerful; omniscient, all-knowing; omnipresent, always everywhere; perfectly wise; faithful and unchanging; good and kind; just, right, and righteous; merciful and compassionate; gracious; loving; Holy, separate, and perfect; beautiful, great, and glorious.
We can now understand how it is that one who lives in inapproachable light can be revealed to be a kaleidoscope of characteristics: God’s being emanates like light through the prism of Creation which exhibits his attributes like shifted bands of colour through the elements of the material and immaterial world.
And every band of God’s being is an area of study with specific analysis and results, work and rewards.
Study the stars and glimpse of God’s order and majesty. Study God’s creatures and see a hint of His creativity and caring. Study His earth, sky, and plants, and perceive part of God’s intelligence and glory.
Now follow those banded colours of God’s being, step back and follow those colours as they converge and become unified, and see how they speak to and lead you to something greater, yet simpler.
You are looking back through the prism of Creation to the Source who lives in inapproachable light.
Hues and Horizons
For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. Colossians 1:16
Sometimes it matters little if you can fit everything together while sometimes it means the world.
Let us study, then, all of the world, God’s Written Word, and God, Himself, through all the areas that can be studied, all those bands of colour: The surface-level, the symbolic, the psychological, the sociological, the grammar, the presentation, the speaker, the audience, the intent, the reception, the prose, the poetry, the history, the revelation.
Follow those bands of colour and be lead to where they coalesce, overlap, combine, and become one.
Look to the prism of Creation and see the colours converge, the many become one, impure become pure, and diversity become unity.
We will then find a more complete picture, a fuller understanding, and something greater, yet simpler.
“I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.” C.S. Lewis
Selah.
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. John 3:16
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