The Christian Future,

that Christ came and will come again,

both announced together beforehand,

as a plan for the fullness of time,

to unite all things in Him,

in heaven and things on earth,

suffice for the coming to power and

the removal from power of antichrist,

as predicted by the Spirit of Christ in the prophets,

who predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories.

Thus confess the saints,

who, by God’s power,

are being guarded through faith to a living hope

through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,

to an inheritance that is

imperishable, undefiled, and unfading,

for a salvation,

ready to be revealed in the last time.

Thus confess the saints,

created in Christ Jesus unto good works,

which God hath before ordained

that we should walk in them.

Thus confess the saints,

who as exiles and sorjourners

have come to the general assembly and

the church of the first-born;

who are called;

the beloved in God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ,

who are registered in heaven.

Do not be deceived,

freedom of will is but labyrinth of descent and futile myth,

but goodwill as freedom to love is  God’s eternal gift.

We cannot change the things over which

we are free to choose how we may ponder them,

things that groan and burn with anger,

yet wait to speak their last speech.

Will I ask with Zacharias, “How shall I know this?”

and become dumb, or

will I ask, “How shall this be?”

and sing with the mother of God,

“My soul doth magnify the Lord,

and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Savior.”

Declare your glories Lord that we may see you!

Indicia in primis ad infinitum.

“Upon this Rock, ‘Es ist vollbracht’!”

these…

errors,

entropic ephemeras,

staircases and mirrors,

labyrinths and layers;

these…

sentries relieved,

messengers sent,

beggars all who run with thieves,

who steal and stall without relent;

these…

words inning, ill-gotten,

God permitting,

laughable, pitiful,

inuring,

doubly cured,

undeterring;

these…

involucel laurels set to fire by hell;

these,

what would be heard said

if want and word spoke cheek by jowl,

uncowled and wild from the dead;

these…

are the prayers .~ offer from a dark place in the morning,

until the dogs and the sorcerers,

the horny crowd and the idolaters,

the liars and the murderers

are cast from me with the Morning Star’s appearing,

for His saints to see as He promised,

without being worthy or having warning.

_____________________________

And through his faith, though he died, Johann Georg Hamann still speaks to me, confessing, ”…as for my prayers, they are not worth anything, but we all have an Advocate who constantly intercedes for us with unceasing sighs.”

To fulfill His desire, to see His glory, to have continually made known to us the name by which we are kept so that the love with which the Father loved the Son may be in us, and the Son in us; for this we listen to His prayer for us.  “Sanctify them in truth, Thy word is truth,” prayed the Son of God made the Son of Man, our High Priest Jesus of Nazareth.  This Anointed One, who remains forever and ever Lord of the Nations and King of the Jews, confessed, “I am the Way and the Truth and the Life.  No one comes to the Father except through Me.”  The Father gave His name to the Son, and the Son manifested His Father’s name to us.  And the Spirit is the one who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth who guides us into all the truth, for He does not speak on His own authority but whatever He hears He speaks, and He declares to us the things that are to come.  This is the testimony of Jesus, the Spirit of prophecy.  We ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons [which means, since in the resurrection we neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven, for we are all one in Christ Jesus], the redemption of our bodies.  For in this hope we were saved.  Now hope that is seen is not hope.  For who hopes for what he sees?  But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. 

Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness.  For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.  And He who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God, and the one who searches mind and heart is able to save to the uttermost — at all times — that is, completely, those who draw near to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them.   What then shall we say to these things?  If God is for us, who is against us?  Who is to condemn?  Christ Jesus is the one who died — more than that, who was raised — who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us.  Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?  Who will ascend into heaven?  (that is, to bring Christ down) or Who will descend into the abyss? (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead).  [No one can conquer Him, nor win for Him the victory in His behalf.]  For neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

The righteousness based on faith says, “The word is near us, in our mouth and in our heart” (that is, the word of faith that the church proclaims); because, if we confess with our mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in our heart that God raised Him from the dead, we will be saved.  For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.  For the Scripture says, “Everyone who believes in Him will not be put to shame.”  For there is no distinction between the Jewish people and the people of the nations; the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing His riches on all who call on Him.  For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”

Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.  Through Him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.  More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces approved character, and approved character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint or put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. 

See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are.  Saints!  Servants!  Beloved!  We are God’s children now!  What we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when He appears we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him as He is.  And everyone who thus hopes in Him purifies himself as He is pure.  Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God.  So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us.  God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.  By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the Day of Judgment, because as He is so also are we in this world.  And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to His purpose.  Though we have not seen Jesus Christ, we love Him.  Though we do not now see Him, we believe in Him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of our faith, the salvation of our souls. 

Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial, for when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love Him.  If any one imagines that he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know.  But if anyone loves God, he is known by God.  There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.  For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.  We love because He first loved us.  If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen?  And this commandment we have from Him: whoever loves God must also love his brother. 

Whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.  May the God of endurance and encouragement grant us to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus, that together we may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.  May the God of hope fill us with all joy and peace in believing so that by the power of the Holy Spirit we may abound in hope.

If .~ fail to see Creation as the Father’s gift of love to the Son;

If .~ fail to see the Son’s love for the Father as His upholding Creation by the word of His power;

If .~ fail to see Creation as the Holy Spirit’s watch and ward, where He listens to the Father unto the consummation of uniting all things in the Son, things in heaven and things on earth, as fixed by the Father’s own authority when all things are subjected to the Son, who then Himself will also be subjected to Him who put all things in subjection under Him, that God may be all in all;

then, 

.~  am not only ignorant about why .~ am now here,

.~ don’t even know now where .~ am!   

If .~ do now know these things,

then,

why do .~ live here now as if .~ am lost?

Sometimes I seem to myself like a man who while at sea unwittingly struck a hidden reef, and who through excruciating effort barely escaped shipwreck to successfully cross over a small bay in the midst of a terrible storm, finally to reach the safety of the shore. This man however no more reaches dry ground than he has the audacity to set his craft back in the water, even though it has been damaged by the storm and has a gaping hole in its hull. So driven is he by his ambition that even under such deplorable conditions of disadvantage he desires nothing less than to undertake a sea cruise around the world! Remembrance of my previous errors and earlier entanglements make me suspicious of my future ones. The unfortunate make-up, the many weaknesses and the overall disordered state of my inner life’s powers, all upon which I must rely to make these observations, only exasperate my worries. The impossibility to improve these abilities nearly brings me to despair, pressing upon me the conclusion that it is better to die on the barren rock on which at present I find myself than to risk being cast out on the vast, open ocean that extends to infinity[1].  This sudden insight into my dangerous plight stirs me to the point of depression, and as much as it is especially typical to lose oneself in this passion, I nonetheless cannot abstain from nourishing my despair with all the striking reflections, which impose themselves on me in such an overwhelming mass by means of the present subject matter.[2]
Initially the state of desolate loneliness in which my worldwide wisdom drew me both shocked me and caused me dismay.  I saw myself as a strange, miscarriage of birth that somehow had escaped slaughter, who, owing to its failure to fit into the normal settings and patterns of social life had been miserably abandoned, banished from all human association. I would so very much like to run back to the great assembled mass of people, to immerse myself in their presence, and be warmed by their company; but I haven’t the heart to join such a hideous and nasty lot. I wave to some, inviting them to at least form with me a special little group. Everyone however keeps a certain distance from me. They fear the storm that always rages around me, attacking me wherever I go. I have made myself the target of hatred among philosophers of metaphysics, teachers of reason, masters of measurement and even doctors of theology. Should the insults and abuses that I must suffer at their hands surprise me? I have disapproved of their doctrinal structures, how can I be disconcerted over the hostility they direct toward my person and me? If I survey myself from without I can expect nothing but conflict, opposition, anger and defamation. If I look within, I find nothing but doubt and uncertainty. The whole world has conspired to set itself against me and to speak out in opposition to me. All the same, my frailty goes so far that I feel all of my opinions wilt and fall away from me unless supported by another’s approval. Every step that I take is unsteady, and by every new consideration, I fear I might commit another error or inconsistency.
Given this is the case, with what confidence dare I risk such undertakings, if apart from the innumerable weaknesses indigenous to myself, I find beyond these so many others which belong to human nature in general? Can I for all this be sure that in reverse of all accepted opinion I will meet the truth, and on what testing stone should I distinguish the truth, assuming that blind luck might put me on truth’s trail? According to the most precise and most carefully reached conclusions, I am unable to claim any basis for my approval and feel nothing in me apart from an active tendency, to vividly look at objects from the point of view in which they appear to me. Experience is a fundamental law that instructs me about the connections of things in view of the past. Habit is another fundamental law, which sets in me the determination to expect the same in regard to the future. Given that the two of these join together to work upon the power of imagination, they provide immediate cause [for accepting] certain clear and strong terms denied others that fail to have such advantages. Without this characteristic of mind by which certain terms are able to be imagined as more vivid than others (regardless of how insignificant and indifferent they may seem to be in appearance ), we would never be up to awarding our approval to a given proof, nor be able to shift our focus away from the few objects which are present to our senses. Indeed, we could not attribute any other suitable presence to these things there before us other than an existence which rests merely upon our senses, and these must be wholly surrounded by and included within the series of feelings, which in turn determine our Self or Person. In this way quite in line with the purpose of this incessant series, with one following after the other, we are simply able to grant such impressions, which are immediately present to our consciousness, without first of all that already once the vivid images could be accepted, which our memory holds up for true imprints of earlier. Therefore, memory, the senses, and reason are all based only upon the power of imagination or on the liveliness of the idea. No wonder then a fundamental law that is so fickle and unreliable leads us in error if blindly followed through all changes, which nonetheless is necessary. Nevertheless both our conclusions about cause and effect and our conviction of the ongoing existence of external objects, which are absent from our senses, are based upon this fundamental law. Irrespective that both of these performances of the human soul are equally natural and unconditionally necessary, still they nonetheless sometimes operate under certain circumstances at odds with one another in such a way that it falls to us as impossible to correctly and regularly think about cause and effect and at the same time to believe in the continuous existence of matter. How might we bring these two fundamental laws in unison? Which of the two should we prefer? In the event we award neither one an advantage, but instead alternately give approval to one or the other (which is typical among philosophers), with what confidence could we take it upon ourselves to assume this proud title, while at the same time scientifically accepting an obvious contradiction?
We might still be more likely to excuse this contradiction if it were somewhat compensated for through a certain degree of thoroughness and placation distributed through the remaining portions of our understanding. The case however is completely the other way around. If we exhaustively look into human reason to the very grounds of its beginning we touch upon feelings, which make ridiculous all of our past hard work and effort, while at the same time appearing to deter us from any further future investigations. The human mind investigates nothing with greater curiosity than the cause of every phenomenon. Without being satisfied with the understanding of immediate causes; we would not easily cease our examination until we have reached its originally final basis. With little pleasure would we want easily to remain still in our study before we had become familiar with the power itself in the cause which produced the effect, as well as with the active quality or capacity whereon really rests the bond between the two. This is the aim of all our studies and deliberations. And herein we find ourselves caught up in a painfully embarrassing situation, when we realize that this link, this bond or this effectiveness lies completely in ourselves and is nothing more than a determining feature of the soul, which we acquire through habit, which arranges the transition from an object to its usual companion, and bridges the impression of one lively idea to another. Such a discovery takes from us not only all hope of ever reaching an achieved sense of satisfaction; it also even does away with our very wish for it. This is so since it is obvious that if we desire to discover the final effecting basis as something that has its seat in the external object itself, then we either contradict ourselves or we speak nonsense.
Admittedly however, we fail to notice this deficiency about our terms in ordinary common life. Imperceptibly we are just as ignorant regarding the form or standing of the final reason of their union, whether regarding the most usual everyday common connections of cause and effect or the most exotic and exceptional. This however stems solely from a deception of the power of imagination, which raises the question, to what extent can we give in to such a trap of trickery? One might solve this difficult problem however one may choose; nonetheless a very dangerous and inevitable dilemma remains. If we give room to every illusion produced by our power of imagination, which typically quite often contradict themselves, then we are led astray into such errors, inconsistencies and depths of darkness that in the end we must even feel ashamed of our own gullibility. Nothing is more dangerous to reason than the excesses of the power of imagination, which have brought about most of the prejudices prevalent among philosophers. People with a vivid imagination might to this end be compared to the angels to whom the Scriptures give wings with which they might cover their eyes.
If on the other hand however we decide to reject all the usual impressions of the power of imagination to follow pure reason, which means, the general and reliable features of the faculty of imagination, then this decision too would be of necessity very dangerous. This would be the case owing to the fact that reason acting alone and according to its most general fundamental law, would guide itself to foundational causes, without the least degree of evidence left remaining in neither philosophy nor in common life. From this total obsession with doubt we are freed merely by means of the peculiar and from the pretense of appearances according to the trifling feature of the imagination, by which we have labored so hard to get ourselves involved in the remote prospects of things and to track them with as much of a vital impression as those that are less problematic and more natural. Should we however formulate it as a ground rule that no refined and synthetic observation should be accepted? If so, that would put an end to all science and philosophy. You presume moreover thereby a single quality of the power of imagination. You must be able to assume the similarity of all causes. Indeed, you contradict yourselves in that this ground rule follows from our preceding consideration, which even one who is not metaphysically astute would be able to deny. To which party should we now grab hold under theses difficult circumstances? If we dismiss all synthetic conclusions, then we fall into the most obvious inconsistency. If we admit them then human reason through this is totally reversed. No other choice remains open to us except between a false reason and no reason whatsoever. I for my part advise myself at least in the present case to offer no help and note here only that according to the customary course of the world seldom if ever has thought of this difficulty been raised, or if allowed to do so it passed from its attention and was quickly forgotten. Very artificial considerations have little or practically no influence on us; nevertheless we are not able to make it a ground rule that they should have absolutely none, since this is an outright contradiction.
What I have said here however, that very refined and metaphysical considerations have little or no influence? I can scarcely break this opinion to myself according to my present sensitivity and experience than to pull back from it and reject it. The strained sight of these multifaceted contradictions and imperfections in human reason have so seized me and overheated my brain that I am prone to give up all beliefs, all proofs and every degree of probability. Where or what am I? From which causes do I conduct my living presence, and to what end goes my future destiny? Whose goodwill should I seek and before whose anger should I fear? What kinds of beings circulate around me? Over which of them do I have any influence and what number of them have influence on me? All of these questions push me into great confusion, and my power of imagination sets me in the pitiful state of being immersed in a fog of the thickest darkness, withdrawing from me the use of all my members and any of my abilities.

____________________________________________________________________

Johann Georg Hamann, “Nachgedanken eines Zweiflers,” in Stefan Majetschak, ed., Vom Magus im Norden und der Verwegenheit des Geistes, Ein Hamann-Brevier (München: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1988), pp. 183-188, originally, Königsbergsche Zeitungen, July 5, 1771.  mike mcduffee liable for the translation.

[1]  t’is better to fear the God i don’t know than to claim knowledge of God without fear?   Conservative adherence to convention rather than taking up the campaign of criticism, open to incessant revision?  A natural death instead of suicide?  .~ don’t know.

Morsels,^[i] Crumbs and Fragments

By Johann Georg Hamann (d. 1788), London, 16 May 1758^[ii]

John 6:12, “Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost.”

                An army of folk was fed until satisfied with excess remaining by five barley loaves of bread.  This small portion served in the wilderness to the crowd was so bountiful that the number of baskets full with leftover bread was far more than what the people first received for their fill.  We see precisely the same miracle of God’s blessing in the vast domain of the arts and sciences.  What an enormous storehouse is required to hold the entire history of scholarship.  And upon what foundation is all this knowledge based?  On the same five barley loaves, the same five senses which we have been given together with irrational animals.  Not only the whole warehouse of reason rests upon this foundation, but also the treasure chamber of faith.  Our reason is like the blind Theban prophet who prophesized based upon the reports of his daughter that she shared with him about the flight of birds.  Faith, the apostle said, comes through hearing, through hearing the word of God (Romans 10:17).  The Lord said, “Go and report to John what you hear and see (Matthew 11:4).”

                Man enjoys infinitely more than he needs and lays to waste infinitely more than he enjoys.^[iii]  What a compulsive squanderer nature must be for the sake of her children.  With such modesty she adjusts the scale and ratio of our number to our needs, and calibrates her resources according to the expenditures needed to meet our hunger and to tolerate the wantonness of our desires.  She must be the daughter of a Father very rich in love who is a generous friend of humanity. 

                Yet how far the sins of man exceed this liberality by way of his complaint over the imprisonment of the body, about the limits within which the senses restrict him, over the less than perfect light — the same light that he simultaneously damns through his insatiable yearning after the lusts of the flesh, through his factional bias for sensuous prejudices and through his pride in the very light that he belittles.  The visible world may in fact seem to be a wasteland in the eyes of a created spirit destined for residence in heaven.  The loaves of bread that our God has put at our disposal might well indeed appear to us unseemly and abysmal.  The fish He has given us might look by our measure to be pathetically small.  Nonetheless they are blessed and we are blessed for having them from the hand of an almighty, amazing and mysterious God, who we Christians call upon as our own because He has revealed Himself with greatest humility and utmost love through these very same unseemly, abysmal, and pathetically small things.

                Does not our own spirit in the depths of its wretchedness betray a confirmation of its transcendent origin by its incessant effort to elevate itself as a creator over the sensuous impressions that invade it?  And as spirit does it not seek to make these same impressions fertile and fruitful by building them into scaffolding suitable for climbing up into the heavens or for the making of idols?  Is not our spirit always busy burning glazed bricks and collecting straw for transforming the meager offerings of the senses into such extensive bodies of wealth that in the face of such grandeur we can only step back to stare at it with utter astonishment?^[iv]  

                Our soul is made guilty however precisely of excess in the nourishment of its powers as she exercises these through the body.  In an addition to the bulk which our necessity of nature specifies to us, we should employ economic attentiveness to collect and not to complain about the crumbs escaping us in the heat of satisfying our appetites, which we fail to consider worth the effort since we always see more to consume in front of us.  In this life we live off of morsels, crumbs and fragments.   All our thoughts are nothing more than leftover fragments.  All our knowledge is but stitched together, incomplete piecework.  With God’s help it is my aim to make of the following pages a woven basket in which I may collect the fruits of my reading and reflections gathered as random and assorted thoughts.

Morsel #1

                With the concept of freedom are we not giving name to sheer manifestations of self-love?  This self-love is the heart of our will, from out of which springs and circulates every tendency and desire, like blood flowing through our veins.  We are unable to think without our being conscious of wanting, without our consciousness to be. 

                The Japanese worshiper sees his idol in as intimate a relationship with his concepts and affections as the Russian does his beard and the Englishman his Magna Charta.  That is why the superstitious, the serf and the republican argue with equal fury and effort for the object of their self-love, based upon a common reason of freedom and zeal for it.  

                Why does commerce increase the love of freedom?  It does so because it increases the property of a people as well as every citizen.  We love what belongs to us as our own.  Freedom therefore here is nothing more than self-interest and an extended branch of self-love for our goods.

                That is why there is so great a similarity between the effects of self-love and freedom.  Yes, the former is the law of the latter, as Young said:

                                                Man love thyself;

                                In this alone free — agents are not free.

Just as our powers of understanding have self-understanding as their object, so too do our tendencies and desires have self-love as theirs.  The first is our wisdom, the last our virtue.  For as long as it remains impossible for man to know himself, he remains unable to love himself.  This is why only the Truth can set us free, this is the lesson^[v] of heavenly wisdom, who accordingly came into the world to teach us self-understanding and self-love. 

                Why is it that man cannot know his own self?  The cause for this must lie simply in the condition of our soul.  Nature, who instructs us about the invisible realm by way of nothing more than riddles and parables, shows us through the many occasions and relations upon which our bodies depend how we may imagine the dependence of our spirit upon others spirits.  Just as the body is subject to the laws of external objects – - air, the earth, the effect of other bodies; in like manner too must we conceive the life of our soul.  The soul is subject to the constant influence of higher spirits, and is bound to the same.  Accordingly, this indisputably makes our own sense of self so doubtful that we remain unable to recognize pr distinguish ourselves or fix for ourselves a decisive category of self. 

                The impossibility to know ourselves can just as well lie in the foundation of our nature as in its particular regulation and states, just as the works of a watch set into motion operate as determined by the design and conditions of its own internal fittings.  If our nature depends upon the will of a great being^[vi] in a specifically precise manner, it is logical to presume that one must consider the concept of this being to assist in explaining our nature and that the greater the light we are given in which to behold this being must of necessity result in our gaining greater clarity of understanding about our own nature. 

                Our life is the first of all our possessions and the source of our happiness.^[vii]   Our examining the constitution of the former gives insight into the characteristics of the latter.  Our sense of happiness, contentment and well-being is a state of such insecure dependence that an infinite number of random circumstances are able to upset us and rob us of it, and we have as much power over these circumstances as any other external thing has a right to boast about having.   The entire horde of hostile causes by which the bond between the soul and the body may be severed however, is subject to the sovereign rule of the one to whom we owe our debt of gratitude for having life as our first of all possessions.  All secondary instruments remain under the control of His ruling hand.  The state of our happiness accordingly must have this same particular basis and explanation. Therein should be noted then how necessary our sense of self is grounded in the same Creator, that we do not have it in our power to acquire self-understanding, that even to begin an attempt at circumscribing the dimensions of the self presses us into the very presence of the divine, who alone is able to determine and fully grasp the whole mystery of our being.^[viii] 

                This first cause of all things, upon whom we so intimately and immediately depend, must be unavoidably relied upon if we want to examine and understand our own self-being, our nature, purpose and limitations.  Besides knowledge of this first cause belongs the additional knowledge of all the other intermediary beings with which we are connected, through whose effect our being is helped produced or by which its state is caused to undergo change.  We could call all of these factors contemplated together the state of human nature in the world.  If I desire to establish the basis for my own self-being, is it enough to simply ask the question, what is man?  Should I not also ask, what is the station of my own self-being?  [O self, o soul] are you free or are you a slave?  [O self, o soul], are you a minor, an orphan, a widow? How do you stand in the eyes of the higher being before whom you lay claim to what manner of reputation?  This higher being who seeks to oppress you, who seeks to cheat you or take advantage of you, and who seeks to win you through your ignorance, uncertainty, weaknesses and foolishness?  

                Herein let it be realized upon how many variables our self-understanding rests, and that this knowledge remains impossible or very inaccessible or deceiving as long as it is not uncovered or has been revealed to us.  We must further realize that reason^[ix] is only able to grasp anything by means of analogy in order to ascertain knowledge, which is held in a very ambiguous light.   Through our observations we may only formulate conjectures about the plan of divine creation and His providential rule, which apply to us in accordance with the specific design of His secret will. 

                Our life consists in an organization of the visible part with a higher being that we are able to infer conclusions about only by means of His effects.  This arranged union is surrendered to a certain extent to our own will — and to an uncertain extent it is also subject to an innumerably large number of other random circumstances.  Both of these factors, my will and the random circumstances, are subject to the sovereignty and providence of this higher being in a way that is hidden from us and impossible for us ever to grasp.  It is this same higher being who has given us life and preserves our life according to His will.  These thoughts and similar notions serve to point us in the proper direction to which we should turn our attention in order to secure good deductions about ourselves. 

                In order to make it easier for us to recognize ourselves, the reflection of each us is made visible in the mirror of our neighbor.  Just as a pool of water casts back an image of my face so is my “Ich”^[x] cast back to me by each person near me.  In order to make as dear to me this “Ich” as my own, providence sought to combine many advantages and conveniences with being in the company of others. 

                God and my neighbor belong therefore to my self-understanding, to my self-love.  What law!  How intoxicatingly delightful is the Lawgiver who commands us to love Him with the entire heart and to lover our neighbor as we love ourselves.  This is the true and only self-love of man.  It is the most noble wisdom of self-understanding known by a Christian, who not only loves God as the highest, most charitable Being who alone is good and perfect but beyond this knows too that this God Himself has become his neighbor and the neighbor of all those around him in the strictest sense^[xi] so that we might have every possible reason to love God and our neighbor. 

                Alone in Christian faith therefore it may be seen that heavenly understanding,^[xii] true happiness and the most sublime freedom of human nature are joined together.  Reason — spirits^[xiii] — morality are the three daughters of the true doctrine of nature, which has no better source than revelation.^[xiv]

Morsel #2

                Should we not be terrified over the lofty standard to which our nature aspires whenever we consider it a law of our will to choose not merely the good but rather the best?  The construction of every edifice is determined by its design.  Is not this call of our will to choose the best itself a prophetic suggestion, indication or anticipation of the greatest happiness to which we aspire? 

Morsel #3

                Roman law prohibited soldiers to purchase land in any territory in which they waged war.^[xv]  Here we see a Roman law the lapsed Christian condemns, who, called to the campaign^[xvi] in this world wants to make of himself a possessor of it.  We find in the histories, laws and customs of all people what might be understood to be a sensum communem of religion [a common sense for religion].  Everything lives and is full of hints about our vocation and about the grace of God.  We have an enormous advantage in learning about these things by examining on a miniature scale the influence and effects of God upon the Jewish people.   In the example of the Jews God desires to explain the mystery, the methods and the laws of His wisdom and His love, to make these things known through the senses that we might transfer the application of them into our own lives, regarding other things, people and events as we observe or experience them in this world.  The apostle says this explicitly to the people of Lystra, that God had given even as a good witness and a testimony of Himself to the pagans; and in what did He do this?  He did good to them — He gave of Himself to them, that they might discern and recognize love and the God of love.^[xvii]   He gave them rain from heaven and fruitful seasons and filled their hearts with food and gladness (Acts 14:17).  We obviously sees here that this rain and these fruitful seasons do not exist alone in the conditions of climate but also suggest the expression of the Spirit that conveys to us good thoughts, impulses and insights and who in such a distinguishing way was ascribed to the Jews that it was said of their women they needed His presence and support to even spin wool for the tabernacle.     

                If the smallest tuft of grass is proof of God’s existence, how could the least of human actions have any less significance?  Have not the Scriptures chosen the most despised people, one of the least of all the peoples of the earth whose actions were most wicked, indeed the most sinful of peoples^[xviii] to couch God’s providence and wisdom therein and to reveal Himself through such degradation^[xix] of images?^[xx]  From this we realize that nature and history are the two great Commentarii — commentaries^[xxi] of God’s word and, on the other hand, God’s word is the only key that opens to us an understanding to both of these commentaries.  What is it those mean to say who distinguish between natural and revealed religion?  If I understand the view correctly, then the difference between the two is no more than the difference between the eye of the beholder who looks at a painting without the least understanding for the medium and the art of drawing or for the story portrayed in contrast to the eye of a painter beholding the same work; or the difference between the natural sense of hearing and the musical ear.  Could not the same be said of Socrates when one speaks in reference to his guardian spirit as that which is written about Peter, “not realizing what he was saying,”^[xxii] or of Caiaphas who prophesied and declared divine truths without either himself or his listeners being the least aware of the fact that the Holy Spirit spoke through him.^[xxiii]  This same phenomenon is presented in the peculiar stories of Saul^[xxiv] and Balaam; that even among idols, indeed in the very instruments of hell the revelation of God is laid before us and that He uses these things, making them like Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, His subordinate and servant.^[xxv]

                An English clergyman has sought primarily in natural history to introduce the anointing of grace.  We lack still a Derham^[xxvi] who lays bare not the God of naked reason, if I might so speak, but rather the God of the sacred writings in the kingdom of nature; who shows us that all of the treasures of nature are no more than an allegory, a mythological painting of heavenly systems — just as all events of world history are shadow images of secret deeds and revealed miracles.  Jeremiah 30:20.^[xxvii]

Morsel #4

                No question has caused more trouble for the worldly wise than the origin of evil, or the allowance of it.  God Himself has said, “I bring about evil“^[xxviii] — If we had a right idea of things or sought to conceive such for our own use, then we should have no cause to be confused or make ourselves offensive through the way we express ourselves.  Good and evil are really universal ideas that do no more than refer to the relation of our self to other things and how these things relate back to us, such that I say, they report to us.  We are in touch therefore with other things, in this nexum — linking of all things — rests not only our true being and real nature but also every change and shading of variation of which we are capable. 

                It is necessary for us to have food that our lives may be personally maintained and replaced within the stream of generations.  Our personal lives and all of humanity depend upon the fruit of the earth, and this to a certain extent according to the functioning of our bodies and the course of nature.  Sloth is then a moral grievance and costliness is a physical one.  We call both of these grievances or evil because through either of them the linkage is destroyed by which our life presence^[xxix] consists and its preservation is permitted to persist. 

                Our health is a good that consists of a harmony of the corporal body in unity with the soul.  Anything capable of ruining this or altering it is called evil.^[xxx]  Contrary to this, anything that can preserve or restore this harmony is called good.  Our health and life can accordingly cease to be a good as soon as both infringe upon a higher order that stands in a closer relation to our spiritual nature. 

                Man is a very distant member in the row of created things extending from the great primordial being through whom all exists and through whose word all is sustained. 

                Imagine a powerful king who sacrificed a favorite of his to the fury of his courtiers that he might avenge himself through this man’s son.^[xxxi]   With the banishment of this child’s father the vengeance and force of his enemies suddenly recedes.  His under aged son however remains in the kingdom and all fury rages around this child to torment the father twofold through wrecking vengeance upon his heir with even greater cruelty.  The king discloses to this child the fate of his father, the malice, the and power and cunning of his enemies, indeed he shares a portion of the secret as to why he cannot openly declare himself for his father or for him.  The king explains why he had to banish his father from the court.  At the same time the king also assures the boy that he should be confident and unconcerned wherever he may wander because the king has appointed to him an unknown friend who watches over all his ways and keeps an eye on all the designs of his enemies.  The king confides to the child that he wishes to affix upon him a sign that all should admire and that none would be able to extinguish, nor could he be robbed of it save by his own hand or his own will or his own disobedience and contempt for the warnings and assistance, which the king has placed at his disposal.  The king tells the boy his expulsion is to be only for a short time.  The king has explained to the child that he intended to have him led to his father’s unknown place of residence.  Finally the king promises that after concluding some important affairs in his behalf they both would be publicly called back to his kingdom to be openly declared as the king’s friends and followers or co-regents while at that same time the king would then have executed the punishment he held in reserve for their enemies.

                Let us follow the child who throughout his days is stalked by his enemies who do all they can by way of caresses and threats to succeed at sometimes making a mockery of the sign upon his forehead, or at other times tricking him into thinking of it as a stain that he should wipe away himself.  At other times they promise him sweet secret delights and golden mountains to tempt him to turn to them, but of course only provided that they were able to reach so far as to make these things for him indecipherable or temporarily invisible.  At all times they incessantly sought to satisfy their hunger for vengeance.  While in the midst of discovering the depth of their depraved cruelty and the gravity of danger in which the child found himself the anonymous friend appears to deliver him from their grasping claws.   As short as the way of exiles is matches the extent it is threatened by inner anxiety, fear and constant attack of his enemies.   In every threatening situation, always at the appropriate moment his previously unknown deliverer appears to intervene preventing his being killed.  Moreover, whenever the boy finds himself in the presence of this protector all images and forms of terror and danger that torment him vanish. 

                In order to emphasize the similarity to our condition described in the imaginary tale let us suppose that this child bears a sign on his forehead without his knowing it, and that no other hand than his own could wipe it away.  It would be bound to him in such a way that he could not touch his forehead nor be swayed to do so by means of any idea without his realizing in the gesture the cause or the presence of this sign and the respect for it which his enemies must have, while too realizing all the consequences of his act should he be disobedient and attempt removing it himself. 

                This child now wanders — in accordance with the royal promises and commands — to the place where he shall find his father — relying upon the protection of the unknown friend he has come to trust, confident that with him he can face down all harmful danger.  Along the way he has become consumed with hope, childlike love and trust, which are his pride, his desire and the earmarks of his strength.

                If we conceive of all humanity and every individual person in a similar situation to that described in the story then we realize that for all of us, our life, our security and sense of certainty, and our eternal happiness all depend upon a single condition which alone is able to overcome all difficulties we encounter in this life.  If we realize that by our violating this one condition we not only forfeit our happiness but also subject ourselves to a state of terrible misery in which we find ourselves suspended in constant fear, anxiety and danger, then we know we are in need of a necessary, instantaneous act of redemption if we are ever to escape being lost forever.  If we saw ourselves actually living in such a predicament then the question about the origin of evil would strike us from a thoroughly unfamiliar point of view.

Morsel #5

                The more I give thought to the idea of freedom, the more it seems to agree with all these same observations.  I will mention two.  We agree that there can be no freedom without the rule of law.^[xxxii]  We declare that to be a free state in which both the subjects and rulers of the realm are required to comply with the law.  The force of law is grounded in the basic drive of self-love made effective by incentives for reward and by consequences of punishment.  Cheap decrees of judgment are the most unsettling and the most offensive.  Good law does not touch upon my own love and applies to my actions alone.  This makes everyone else my equal under the same circumstances in which I find myself.   An arbitrary verdict absent the authority of law imposes upon us an unjust condition of servitude, with is opposed to and resented by our sense of self-love.  Good law always lets me know the consequences of my actions.  That is why no power of imagination through flattery or suspicious leanings can deceive us about the justice of our rulers and judges.  Indeed, the judge in a free republic demonstrates to me through his example that he is as equally subject to what the law commands as the compliance he orders of me.  The judge who decides a verdict against me is subject to the very same law upon which he based his ruling to the exact same extent as I am.  Herein exist all of the advantages of political freedom.  Every person knows the consequences of his or her actions.  No one who violates the law can escape punishment.  This is the case because nothing can limit my actions save the intent of the law, and the intent of the law is as thoroughly well known to me as it is immutable.  Because I understand the intent of the law as it applies to all circumstances, it serves to promote my self-preservation and support my self-love.  Therefore, in our realizing this, we summon ourselves to the law and we revere it.  It can be further added that the laws we issue based upon self-love never strike us as burdensome, and that the greatest privilege of free states is to be self legislative.  Laws then do not limit freedom, rather they provide the wherewithal to discern circumstances and identify the courses of action that should have beneficial or unfavorable consequences for my self-love.  The insight gained from good law, accordingly, influences our inclinations and affections.^[xxxiii] 

                Similarly, on the basis of this explanation the Stoic principle that the virtuous are alone free and every villain is a slave^[xxxiv] is awarded its merit.  Lusts and vice hinder our insight.  False judgments based upon skewed insight confuse our self-love.  We lead ourselves to believe that we act in our own best interest for our good pleasure and in service to our own honor and yet nonetheless choose a means that contradicts all of these end purposes.  Is this self-love?  Whatever is inconsistent with self-love also cannot offer freedom. 

Morsel #6

                If we consider how vulnerable we are to the power and suddenness of the presence of the Spirit, whose strength and speed we can never match, we are seized with the fear that only such an exceptional danger can generate.  Only then are we able to grasp why being a Christian is so vastly superior to living according to the state of being based upon a mere natural sense of self-confidence.  The natural man seeks his emotional, psychological and spiritual welfare^[xxxv] with constant fear and trembling. 

Morsel #7

                Whenever I eat too much I suffer an upset stomach.  Every part of the body has its own feelings that serve as warning signals announcing a condition injurious to it — this is the body’s physical conscience. 

Morsel #8

                From whence comes the outlook in which functions the art of fortune telling that produces a large number of prognostications based upon nothing more than a misunderstanding of our instincts or natural reasoning.  Each of us is capable of being a prophet.  All phenomena^[xxxvi] of nature are dreams, appearances, riddles that have their significance, their secret meaning.  The books of nature and of history are nothing other than ciphers, hidden signs that have need of a decoding key.  The sacred writings lay these things out to explain them, which is the intention of divine inspiration.

Morsel #9

                The body is the clothing of the soul.  The body covers the nakedness and shameful ignominy of the soul.  The soul’s lustful yearnings and ambitions are the blame for the depraved tendencies running through the blood and running up the fevers of her body.  2.  The body serves to maintain our soul in the same way that clothing protects our body against external blasts of wind and other elements.  This necessity of our nature has as its charge to preserve us even while higher and lighter spirits fell without rescue of preservation.^[xxxvii]  The hindrances our clothing imposes upon us, which make us a bit heavier and restrict some of the movement in our members extend not only to the things of the soul’s good repute but also to the bad.  How loathsome might man be if the body did not keep him in check!

Morsel #10

                The general good of a state is supported by the alms of its subjects.  Every fragment of diligence has been blessed of God for the general wealth and the common nourishment of all. 

^[ii] translated by mmcd, with all excesses and errors to be charged to his account.  Beyond points of clarification footnotes include episodes of actuated commentary.

^[iii] I trust the Magus of the North would agree that man too enjoys infinitely more than he can ever fathom.

^[iv] This is so much richer in human insight than Kant’s arid and impotent conception of pure reason.

^[v] Die Lehre.  Pons Wörterbuch für Schule und Studium (Stuttgart, FRG: Ernst Klett Sprachen, 2003).  We engineer a fork in our thinking whenever we design a point of thought from which the idea and inclination we have of truth branches away from our Lord Jesus Christ.  This fork in the road of thought divides the path of orthodoxy from heresy.  What is not of worship received with gratitude and sanctified by means of the word of God and prayer is sin.

^[vi] If I pray to that than which I can conceive nothing greater then I commit idolatry, if I presume it exists; otherwise, I merely perform a menial mental exercise that keeps me from listening to my Lord as He speaks to me from His word and from His world.  The first offering is the sin of falling away, which so easily entangles me, the second is an encumbrance to my running with endurance the race that is set before me.  In either case I turn my eyes away from looking at Jesus, the Author and Finisher of our faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God (Hebrews 12:1-2).  Such idolatrous prayer or vain contemplation keeps me from drawing near with confidence to the throne of grace, that I may receive mercy and may find grace to help others in time of need (Hebrews 4:16).  There is a no more futile or more ugly way to waste time in life than expending effort to establish a covering law warrant for Love’s carefree giving of Self in behalf of another as only He who is love indeed has done in accordance with His self-disclosure to do:  Romans 5:8. 

^[vii] Die Glückseeligkeit – bliss.

^[viii] Thus the ancient adage, “Know Thyself,” is first deceitful, and second impossible.  We are called to know ourselves before the One who knows us.  If anyone supposes that he knows anything, he has not yet known as he ought to know; but if anyone loves God, he is known by Him.  Knowledge without love is hypocrisy and lawlessness, as a genre of communication it is a lie.  Such knowledge makes us arrogant; my trafficking in it or my affection for it demonstrates that my soul is not right within me (Habakkuk 2:4; 1 Corinthians 8:1-3).  

^[ix] Die Vernuft – reason, common sense.

^[x] I resort to Freudian English to convey reference to the one being made in the image of God as male and female, the self or ego we grammatically locate on the social grid of communication as the first personal singular pronoun, “I,” which is the self speaking of his- or her own soul, whom God has given of His  breath of life.  .~ prefer the sign “.~” as a referent of my passing self that is not my own.

^[xi] im strengsten Verstande, i.e., first hand experience of most pungent empathy, strongest solidarity and staunchest commitment of loyalty.

^[xii] die Erkenntnis, insight, philosophical/psychological – understanding.

^[xiii] Geister – could be minds or intellects: the community of human souls made in the image of God for the purpose of fellowship with Him.

^[xiv] Hamann said elsewhere, God’s instruction in our sleep and through our dreams makes us wiser and happier than can the sentry of reason and all our natural abilities and good intentions. 

^[xv] Hamann cites L. 9.II de re militari et L.13.II eodem., about which Seils comments that Hamann was referring to the writing About the Nature of War by Roman Marcus Pocius Cato, see footnote #3, p. 86.

^[xvi] To fight the good fight, for no soldier in active service entangles himself in the affairs of everyday life, so that he may please the one who enlisted him as a soldier (2 Timothy 2:4).

^[xvii] Büchner confessed none have ground to complain against the damages we incur and inflict to life, or over the fact that we have not power to overturn death because none of us have suffered the pain necessary to make us eligible for receiving such an entitlement.  He who has suffered most has the greatest right to complain.  If He who has earned this right yields it, then He establishes a precedence He charges us to follow.  Who dares claim His right, who dares over rule His precedence?   So the law of sin and of death condemns us all, that we may all be set free by the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1-2). 

^[xviii] Most sinful because they had greatest access to the oracles of God.  For who comes to know sin except through the Law (Romans 7:7fl.)?  With telling, well-aimed indictment Hamann wrote elsewhere of the Jews, “In what other land lived such patriots, such passion for the homeland, and where else can boast like the land of Israel of its people harboring such a love for humanity?  How is it possible to look upon the Jews without compassion?  The cruelty waged against this people seems to be an indigenous part of the sins committed by pagans against them.  Have we not become in fact the murderers of these lovers of humanity?  Do not we Christians, who call ourselves Christian after His name, do we not exceed their obstinacy, their ingratitude and their stubbornness?”  From his commentary on the Gospel according to Matthew in Sämaliche Werke, ed. by Nadler, Band I, Tagebuch eines Christen (Wien: Thomas-Morus-Press Im Verlag Herder, 1949), p. 198.  I have translated Menschenfreundes as love of humanity.  It was a special term of the Enlightenment era, held high on the banner of its advocates who believed their agenda promised an improved state of happiness for everyone.  The term includes the notions of philanthropy and hospitality.

^[xix] Die Erniedrigung.  Humiliation, abasement, degradation.

^[xx] Die Bilder.  Images, scenes, metaphors, pictures.

^[xxi] Sources of interpretation or explanation.

^[xxii] Luke 9:33. Hamann’s reflection also embraces Peter’s confession of Jesus as Messiah as given to him by the Father and his expressing Satan’s desire to deceive us into setting our mind on man’s interests an not on God’s (Matthew 16:17, 23).  Peter taught that that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation, for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God (2 Peter 1:20-21).

^[xxiii] John 11:50-53.

^[xxiv] 1 Samuel 10:5-13.

^[xxv] Jeremiah 25:8-9; 27:1-8; 43:8-13.  See too Isaiah 13:1-5 and Isaiah 44:24-28 & 45 fl.  It is shameful that Old Testament scholars stain their holy hands by examining the entrails of pagan for clues about how to correctly handle the Scriptures rather than climb to the heights of revelation to reflect on how best to teach the church about the historiography of God’s sovereignty and providence.  Natural reason can neither climb that high nor breathe at such heights.  Why plaster the church’s confession with their giddy delusions or decadent distortions?  This strategy of research is so bankrupt, it is like burying the Lord’s one talent in the ground for fear of Him, seeing Him from the view of His enemies. 

^[xxvi] William Derham, 1657-1735, published new editions of Ray’s Pysico-Theological Discourses, and The Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of the Creation, both in 1713.  Read from The Galileo Project, http://galileo.rice.edu/Catalog/NewFiles/derham.html.  According to Bookrags.com the English naturalist and theologian was best known for his Physico-Theology (1713), which abounds in arguments from design to God, and Astro-theology (1715), which argues that Newtonian cosmology is ample evidence of God’s existence. Derham also determined the speed of sound by timing the interval between the flash and roar of a cannon fired 12 miles (19.3 km) away (1705). His value of 1142 ft/sec (348.08 m/sec) is in good agreement with the presently accepted value of 1130 ft/sec (344.4 m/sec). Read from http://www.bookrags.com/biography-william-derham-scit-041234/. 

^[xxvii] Hamann refers his readers to the prayer of Jeremiah beginning at verse 17and ends at verse 25, after which the Lord responds to the prophet as recorded in verses 26-44.  He correctly points us to the mystery of historiography rather than the minimalist science of natural philosophy.  God helps us, it is the 21st century and we still suck at the teat of Islam for our milk to nourish our apologetics for strengthening our confession of the existence of God!  Such arguing cannot reach the beauty of the Trinity, nor bear witness to the revealed name of God.  Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God — Jesus the Jew, the Son of God, and the Spirit is the one who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth. 

^[xxviii] Isaiah 45:7; Amos 3:6.  The New Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, revised and expanded, ed. by Jerome H. Smith (Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1992) states, “This Hebrew word is never rendered ‘sin’; it is rendered ‘calamity in Ps 141:5; ‘adversity’ in 1 Sam 10:19; Ps 94:13; Eccl 7:14; ‘grief’ in Neh 2:10; Pro 15:10; Eccl 2:17; Jon 4:6; ‘affliction’ in Num 11:11; ‘misery’ in Eccl 8:6, besides several other renderings elsewhere” (p. 795).  God inflicts calamity upon the wicked, He does not Himself commit moral evil.  God is the author of vengeance to punish wickedness; He is never the author of such wickedness Himself.

^[xxix] das Dasein.

^[xxx] das Übel.  A deplorable state of affairs, a bad thing.

^[xxxi] The power to destroy death, to make death revocable, the power of the resurrection takes the story outside the bounds insisted upon by reason.  Within the scope of reason the king is a cruel and capricious ruler who enjoys sadistic games.  To trespass reason is to enter the arena of terror and wonder, it is to enter the temple of worship. 

^[xxxii] Hamann will teach those students who choose to matriculate in his stream of thought that human grievance is not the source of truth.  Rosenstock-Huessy gives us a beautiful portrait of the complete Victim who alone gives this status the one voice it deserves, for God made man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.  Who more than Jesus the Jew has right to speak in behalf of all humankind?  To whom except him will we listen?  Whoever claims to take his place is the greatest hypocrite of all.  All I can add is to urge my fellow students not to be deceived into confusing lawlessness with chaos.  The mark of increasing lawlessness is the rise of greater hypocrisy.  The greatest hypocrite is the most lawless.  What we imagine as chaos — the time of the wolves — is actually a time during which faith working through love wanes.  The most godless person is the one who appears outwardly as righteous to men, but inwardly is full of hypocrisy and lawlessness (Matthew 23:28).  “And because lawlessness is increased, most people’s love will grow cold (Matthew 24:12).”  We are to do and observe all they tell us but not to do according to their deeds.  They weigh others down with unbearable burdens and relieve none to advance themselves.  They live to be noticed by others.  They love honor and curry favor for garnering respect.  They exalt themselves to shirk humility.  Hypocrites build tombs to inter truth and adorn monuments commemorating righteousness, all the while having earned their appointed portion in the place with hypocrites where there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth (Matthew 24:51).  Jesus brings justice for His elect who cry to Him day and night, He will not delay long over them.  However, when the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the earth (Luke 18:8)?  May it be only because He has removed His own that He does not.

^[xxxiii] Unsere Neigungen.

^[xxxiv] Who other than those who speak arrogant words of vanity, who entice others by fleshly desires, who by appealing to sensuality promise freedom while being enslaved to corruption themselves prove the principle, for by what a man is overcome, by this he is enslaved (2 Peter 2:18-19)?   Free me Lord of all vestiges of hypocrisy, cleanse me of all remaining impurities, rule over me to release me of my lawlessness.  Free me Lord of those things about which I am ashamed.  Everyone who commits sin is the slave to sin (John 8:34).  Thus whenever I present myself to someone as a slave for obedience I am a slave of the one whom I obey, either of sin resulting in death, or obedience resulting in righteousness.  O Lord you alone liberate the sinner from self inflicted slavery.  Thank you Lord for the freedom of obedience from the heart to that form of teaching to which I am now committed.  You have freed me from sin to make me a slave of righteousness.  Lord have mercy upon the weakness of my flesh, I yearn to live my bond service to your holiness.   Who are you Michael, why are you so bold to hold yourself in a bond of love?  The Lord rebuke you Michael, I am one freed from sin in Christ enslaved to God, I am one who derives the benefit He allots to me resulting in sanctification with the inevitable outcome of enjoying His free gift of eternal life.  I am his, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me, and delivered Himself up for me.  May my Lord slay me before I nullify the grace of my God, as if righteousness comes through the law and Christ died for me needlessly. 

^[xxxv] seine Seeligkeit. 

^[xxxvi] Die Erscheinung means both phenomenon and vision.

^[xxxvii] To our shame this actual fact provokes in us neither reflection nor gratitude.  These angels sinned to be cast into hell; God has committed them to pits of darkness, reserved for judgment.  Our refusal to give them thought denies us the power to foster the humility needed to even begin gaining an inkling of the reality in which we live.  Father, at least cause us to pause over the phrase “suffering wrong as the wages of doing wrong” long enough to shudder in wonder if not in godly sorrow with praise and thanksgiving.  Who knows the kindling temperature of the human soul?  Who dares risk the touch of a mighty angel in flaming fire when sent by God to inflict vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the Gospel of our Lord Jesus?  Who among us dares to publicly portray Jesus Christ as crucified knowing they will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, ruin, and loss of their souls’ well-being.  Marred and lost forever and ever, banished from their Shepherd, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His might?  Yes, we endure everything for the sake of the elect, but will we not weep too with great sorrow and unceasing anguish in our hearts for our lost kinsmen according to the flesh?

Prayer, by Johann Georg Hamann^[i]

                 Lord, hear my word, take note of my oration,^[ii] and examine my cries, my King and my God, for I want to pray before You.^[iii]

                May the oration of my mouth and the conversation^[iv] of my heart be well pleasing in Your presence, my Refuge^[v] and my Redeemer,^[vi] Amen!

                 Dear heavenly Father, may You be lauded and praised for all Your mercy and steadfast faithfulness by which You have protected me and kept me this day, this night.  You have allowed me to live once again to wholly and joyfully see even this very present morning.^[vii]   Accept my gratitude from the hands of my High Priest and Intercessor, Jesus Christ.  For His sake too, forgive me of all my sins.  Permit my conscience to be cleansed from the dead works of darkness.^[viii]  I comment my spirit to You, into Your hands.  You have redeemed me Lord, You true and faithful God.  Complete the good works, which You have begun in my soul for the sake of Your name.  Give me Your Holy Spirit, who reigns over me, leads me in a level path,^[ix] guides me into all truth,^[x] and brings these things to my remembrance^[xi] through which You set me free to be holy, pure and fruitful in the good works that are pleasing to You in Your dear Son, Jesus Christ.^[xii]  Look after me that I should not be fond of grieving^[xiii] or angering^[xiv] my Lord, but rather form in me the effects of His grace that I may be made submissive and obedient^[xv] to His alluring voice.^[xvi]   Give too Your holy angels charge over me that they protect me in all my ways and bear me up on their hands that my foot might not stumble over any stone.^[xvii]  (And my family, that they protect me against sin and disgrace, against harm and danger; around us and ours too may the angels this night be a wall of fire, a corral around us and ours.  Should it be Your gracious will, awaken me in the morning at the right time to Your praise and for Your service.)  Prepare and equip me for those things to which You have called me.  The Lord our God is kindly toward us, He strengthens the work of our hands, yes, You desire to strengthen the work of our hand to Your glory and for our salvation.  May all my worries and petitions be entrusted to You to be cast in Your lap. You will make all things well; to this end You will never leave us or fail to meet us.  Amen.

                 Take care too of my father, be gracious with him, and forgive us all of our sins.  Bless him and strengthen him in body and soul.  Permit him so long as it is Your gracious will to live for Your glory and for the blessing of his family.  Complete too the good work that You have begun in his soul.  May Your dear Son Jesus Christ be revealed and elated^[xviii] in his soul.  Draw him with the strands of his love for You, and give him the patience to overcome the sufferings of this age.  Allow him through all the trials which You will yet impose upon him to be prepared for Your appearance.^[xix]  Draw him free from all earthly things and permit his heart and his treasure to be with You in heaven.  Permit him to see and to taste how kind the Lord is and through this may his heart be cleansed and reformed of all anger, hate and the root of bitterness.  Rule too over the heart of any who have anything to do with him; particularly over those who are dependent upon him.  Permit too that my own heart toward him may be full of childlike love, reverence and obedience.  Give me the grace to follow the example of my Savior’s humble subservience.  In view of Him might I be changed in accordance with Your salvation, word and will.  May his rod and staff, which comforts him through the dark valley, lead and guide him in Your wise counsel unto being accepted with final honor.  Permit those whom You have given him be soon united before Your throne in order that they might praise You in all eternity for the riches of patience, longsuffering and mercy with which You kept us here and brought us to You.  Amen.

                 Be merciful too toward my brother.  Be gracious toward him, forgive us all of our sins and keep us from having to bear the guilt, shame and punishment we deserve because of them.  Let us grow in reverence for You.  Allow us to increase in our knowledge of You. Permit Your love and the love of our Savior, our Mediator and Intercessor through Your good Spirit be richly poured out into our hearts.  Let us keep Jesus Christ in memory, the crucified and resurrected, that we rejoice over and take comfort in His ministry of intercession for us at the right of the majesty.  Allow Jesus Christ to be revealed and explained in our souls as our only wisdom, righteousness, salvation and redemption.  Make of us vessels of honor and of mercy.  Keep us from being vessels of wrath and dishonor.  Join our hearts together that we might not become a stone of stumbling in one another’s way.  Encourage in us the desire to follow the shepherd voice of our Savior that we might more and more deny ourselves, take up His cross upon us that we might walk in the footprints which He has marked out with His precious blood.   Amen.

                 Be gracious toward our friends of heart and blood, acquaintances and relatives.  Permit none of them to be lost or go astray.   Bring to mind our corruption and ruin, open our eyes so we might want to see the wonder in Your Law and the source of our salvation which You prepared for us in Jesus Christ our Lord.  Let us draw from out of His fullness of grace upon grace.   Richly repay them the good which they meant toward us; and permit our faith prove itself active and vital toward them through a heartfelt brotherly love.  Permit all their needs of soul and body be entrusted to You.  Reveal Yourself to them as a reconciled God and gracious Father in Jesus Christ.  Make of us all to be members of His body, to be sheep in His meadow, and be branches of Your vine.  Amen.

                 Be gracious to our enemies.  Forgive them.  Allow our heart to be conciliatory toward them in accordance with the love with which You have loved us.  For we were once even more Your entrenched enemies yet You have pity on us or accept us in Your graces.

                 May also all misery and ruin in general be entrusted to You.  Progressively destroy the kingdom of Satan in us and through us.  Allow Your Kingdom and the Kingdom of the beloved Son grow and increase in our hearts.  Assume the public poverty that oppresses so many lands.  Preserve the fertile fields among us.  Bless and protect our land, our city and our home.

                   Make You Yourself our house a house of prayer, keep distant all the instruments of Satan, and bring to naught all of his cunning assaults, reducing them to a murderous pit. 

                 Give too our father and rescuer wisdom, patience and love, to be the head of your house to rule it with godliness.   Deliver to us all an obedient heart and allow Your fear and the love of our Savior to be richly poured out in our hearts.  Permit too Your name to be spread among us like a salve. 

                Permit the glorious light of Your holy Gospel^[xx] to always increasingly more dawn^[xxi] among us and give us the grace that we may bear the fruit of it with patience.  Preserve, increase and protect too Your small assembly^[xxii] among us, and let it soon become an army and a shepherd.^[xxiii]  Prepare us even through honest repentance and through an authentic faith in Jesus Christ, our Savior and Your beloved Son, for the judgments, which our sins have earned.  Punish us not in Your wrath and discipline us not in Your fury. 

                Give us grace that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and dignity under the authority of those whom You have set over us.  Bestow them with a wise heart that they may ruler over and look after Your people. 

               Be gracious to our king.  Let all his actions be devoted to Your glory and to the common good.  Permit Your beloved Son Jesus Christ be elated^[xxiv] in him.  Draw his own soul through the sign and wonder of Your love to You and through his example, may many be awakened to and aroused over^[xxv] the righteousness and confession of the name and teachings of Jesus Christ.  Amen.

                 Be gracious toward all house fathers and house mothers, all teachers and students, all widows and orphans, the sick and dying, toward infants and women with child, with those who travel over land and sea, the tempted,^[xxvi] the abandoned, the imprisoned, the suffering, those in need and the distressed.  Be merciful to them, may Your gracious and holy will be known and praised by all, and be revealed and glorified through all.  Amen.

                Stand in my place for me, my Savior, by Your heavenly Father, give me the Spirit of adoption and of prayer, which cries out in my heart, “Abba!  Dear loving Father.”  Permit the Spirit to come to the aid of my inability and unworthiness with His sighing without words.  Permit me to detest and tear off from myself the filthy rags of my own righteousness.  You, Yourself clothe me with the white robe of Your righteousness and holiness, which You acquired for me at such precious cost.   Let me be accompanied with Your power and strength, let me be upright that I may walk before You and be pure. Give me the shield of faith that I might extinguish with it all the flaming darts.  You, Yourself be my shield and my greater reward.  Stay with us when all around us yearns to become night.  Help us to struggle chivalrously that we may press on through death and ascend onto You.

                   Renew in me the covenant of my baptism.  Give me the grace and the powers of the same that I might live it in a worthy and appropriate manner.  Help me to resist the devil and to renounce him and all his works and all his ways.  Help me to put off the old man together with all his lusts and to put on the new man who is created in the image of God in true righteousness and holiness. 

                 As a redeemed of the Lord let me live for Him and die for Him, and while I yet live let me live only by faith in my Redeemer.  Let me look up upon Jesus, the Beginner and Finisher of my faith, who since He had truly wanted to have friends, endured the cross and did not regard the shame.^[xxvii]  Help me to set aside every sin that clings to me, that holds me back and makes me lethargic for the course ordained for me.  You, Yourself sprinkle my conscience with Your precious blood and give me Your body to eat and Your blood to drink for the forgiveness of my sins, for the strengthening of my faith and for spiritual life in You, for the remembrance of love and for the kindling of a truly fervent heartfelt response of love in kind.  Let me too here in this life taste already the powers of the world to come and allow my walk^[xxviii] to be with You in heaven.  Lead me soon into the Kingdom of Glory, which You have prepared for us from eternity to eternity.  Amen. 

                 Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name.  Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.  Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.   Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.  For Yours is the Kingdom, the power and the glory forever and ever.  Amen.

                   May the Lord bless and protect me, may He cause His face to shine upon me and be gracious toward me; may He lift me to His countenance and give me His peace.  May the peace of God, which is greater than all reason, protect our hearts and senses in Jesus, Amen.  The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God of the Father and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with us all Amen.  Lord Jesus help!  O Lord!  Let all be profitable and transpire well.  Blessed be the One who comes in the name of the Lord.  Amen.  Yes, come Lord Jesus.  Amen.  God be gracious with me a poor sinner.  Amen.

^[i]   Josef Nadler, Johann Georg Hamann, Sämtliche Werke, historisch-kritische Ausgabe, I. Band, IV, (Wien: Thomas-Morus-Presse im Verlag Herder, 1949): 310-314. 

^[ii]   Die Rede, Ansprache – address, speech.

^[iii]   Psalm 5:1-3.

^[iv]   Das Gespräch, die Unterhaltung, talk, conversation; die Diskussion; der Dialog, dialogue.

^[v]   der Hort, der Schatz, der Liebling, darling, sweetheart; dieZuflucht, refuge, shelter.

^[vi]   Der Erlöser, der Befreier, liberator, releaser, deliverer.

^[vii]   Den heutigen Morgen wieder gesund und fröhlich hast erleben lassen.  Sound and healthy; cheerful and merry.

^[viii]   Hebrews 9:14, quickly to mind springs our Lord’s words He spoke to the apostle to the nations, saying, “to open their eyes so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the dominion of Satan to God, in order that they may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who have been sanctified by faith in Me (Acts 26:18).  This is another passage that demonstrates the sufficiency of faith in Christ alone for receiving the forgiveness of sin.

^[ix]   Ps 26:12; Ps 27:11.

^[x]   John 16:13.

^[xi]   John 14:26.

^[xii]   Ephesians 2:10.

^[xiii]  Betrüben, sadden, distress.

^[xiv]   Erzürnen, incense, enrage.

^[xv]   folgsam und gehorsam.

^[xvi]   Die Lockstimme.  Captives all, either we are led astray by the cunning of history or we succumb to the alluring voice of our Lord.  Der Lockruf, the alluring call, the figure of speech that describes the beauty of the Shepherds’s voice (John 10:1-6).  Even should we fall it is always by the lure and enticement of our own desire, by our own voice we conceive sin unto the fulness of death and not by the voice of a stranger.  The saying is trustworthy, for it we are faithless, He remains faithful — for He cannot deny Himself.  Let us not be childish, this is no luetic license, this is no logica gaman, as if we may leap merrily away from our last sin.  Christ is not weak in dealing with us, He is powerful among us.  For He was curcified in weakness, but lives by the power of God.  Let us examine ourselves (how can .~ love whom .~ don’t know, and how can .~ know myself apart from Christ?).   Lord, should .~ subject myself to stand trial before You in accordance with Your word, what do .~ prove or try but Your mercy?  Help the helpless Lord, commute my condemnation for Your mercy, even as completely as You have crucified my flesh with Christ when He was publicly portrayed as crucified (Romans 6:6; Glatians 2:20, 3:1).   Before our own Master we stand nonetheless, we are upheld, for the Lord is able to make us stand.  Are we fascinated with Jesus, is He attractive to us?  If not charmed by Him into becoming His follower, then we stay turned over to the world, tempted by the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes, possessed by pride in possessions, ruled by one cast out, futile vainity, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience.  If we love Him we will keep His commandments.  If we love the world, then we love the things in the world.  If you are being crucified daily between these two loves, then rejoice!  You walk in the same way in which He walked, for because He Himself has suffered when tempted, He is able to help us who are being tempted.  For we do not have a High Priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.  He learned for us obedience through what He suffered.  And being made perfect in the very way we prove ourselves imperfect, He became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey Him.  Rejoice then, not in the ugly fact that you sin (for this which is done breeds gratuitous fear, fear that is unjustified and uncalled for), but in the beautiful fact that if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Do not rejoice in the mundane evil that you commit sin but in the wonderful mystery you do not practice sin!  Our agony bears witness to the truth that the one who practices righteousness is righteous.  If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us, if we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves, and the truth is not in us.  If .~ say, “.~ have come to know Him,” and yet do not keep His commandments, then .~ am a liar, and the truth is not in me.  But if His word abides in me and .~ live to keep His word, then the agony of failing in this and disappointing my Lord confirms .~ am in Him, this very agony encourages, entices, commands, and urges me to walk in the same manner as my Lord walked.   Jesus Christ is in me, unless indeed I fail to meet the test!

^[xvii]  Matthew 4:6; Ps 91:11-12.

^[xviii]  verklärt, heiter – cheerful; also transfigured.

^[xix]  1 John 3:1-3.  Hope fixed on Him purifies us, just as He is pure; otherwise we practice sin; we either hope for His rule, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” or we practice lawlessness.

^[xx] Evangelii.

^[xxi] aufgehen: to become gradually more visible the way a growing plant ascends; to work out, to become realized; to be made clear or apparent; to be demonstrated or proven. 

^[xxii] Häuflein.

^[xxiii] eine Heerde und ein Hirte.

^[xxiv] verklären.

^[xxv] erweckt and gereitzt.

^[xxvi] Angefochtenen.

^[xxvii] achtete der Schande nicht, for “despising the shame” (Heb 12:2), English Standard Version.

^[xxviii] der Wandel, which speaks of walk in the truth, transformation, sanctification; but too, of consummation, glorification, when the race complete, when full we are made fully holy, full of His holiness, to see the Son’s glory without any further internal resistance or external opposition, so the love with which the Father has loved the Son may be in us with the Son in us.

The Chief Question of the Evangelical Catechism^[i]

By Johann Georg Hamann

Matthew 22:42, “What do you think about the Christ?  Whose son is he?”

 What do you think of Christ?

 I.              General Considerations for the Clarification of Doctrine Contained in this Significant Test Question:

                1.                Man is a thinking creature.

                2.                The Fall has killed him, his brain,^[ii] his spiritual brain.

                3.                All thoughts about Christ or of God are hidden from us, (contrary) repugnant to us.

                4.                In order to think correctly about the Christ, a supernatural change of senses,^[iii] as well as blessed illumination is indispensable.                                     

                5.                The thoughts^[iv] of man are under God’s jurisdiction.

                6.                We human beings^[v] must be prepared to be tested ^[vi] by God, and to be examined^[vii] through thoughts, as well as actions  –  principally we must examine^[viii] and check^[ix] our thought about Christ because according to these thoughts God will judge us. 

 II.            The Content of this Question:  What do you think about the Christ?

                 1.                Objective — regarding the topic, Christ.

                                a.                What do you think of His glory? 

                                b.                What do you think of His origins?  Whose Son is He?

                                c.                What do you think of His person?

                                d.                What do you think of His anointing? 

                                                (1)                Of Him who anointed Him, the Father

                                                (2)                Of His office for which He was anointed

                                                (3)                Of the Spirit by which He was anointed

                                                (4)                Of the measure of His anointing

                                                (5)                Of its thickly rich composition^[x] and sweet aroma

                                                (6)                Of the beauty and delightfulness

                                                (7)                Of the worth and exquisiteness

                                                (8)                Of the virtue and the power of your anointed Redeemer to move^[xi] your  heart and heal your wounds^xii]                                 

                2.                Actuality^[xiii]  –  Regarding the act of thinking^[xiv]

                                a.                What do you know

                                b.                What do you believe

                                c.                What do you love

                                d.                What value do you reckon^[xv] the Christ.  What value do you reckon your reason,^[xvi] your will, your inclinations, your memory?^[xvii] 

                 3.                Formality  –  Regarding the state of your thinking.  What?  What do you think of the Christ for a possession, for splendor, for use,^[xviii] for a value or price should you buy or sell Him?^[xix]

                 4.                Subjective  –  –  You  –  Jews  –  Pharisees  –  Sadducees  –  Disciples

 III.           Reasons why this is a chief question and premise of the Evangelical catechism

                 1.                Without just^[xx] thoughts about the Christ it is impossible to really^[xxi] think about God.

                2.                Without just thoughts about the Christ religion^[xxii] cannot take place, consequently no blessedness.

                3.                This question is the guiding principle of self-examination.^xxiii]

                4.                This question comprehends in itself all remaining questions about religion and is the key to unlocking the entire law because Christ is the end of the law.

                5.                This question stops the mouth from speaking all insolence and asking after useless curiosity.

                6.                This question is the standard and banner of all our thoughts. 

                7.                This question casts aside all prejudices and errors, both in considering Jesus Himself and in all other things.

                8.                At the same time, this question explains Christ’s thinking toward us.  How we think about Him, so He thinks about us; and we become to His way of thinking about us because His thoughts are creations, mysteries and wonder working.

                9.                This question is the richest source of thought and all sentiment.^[xxiv]

 IV.                Application

                 1.                For instruction.

                                a.                The sum total of Chapter Eleven.  Insight^[xxv] is the name of Christ. 

                                b.                The best subject matter for contemplation and the best rule for self examination.^[xxvi]

                                c.                Christ is the best judge of the human condition because He alone knows our heart and thoughts and will be the future judge of these things.

                                d.                The end purpose of Evangelical ministry is to teach Christ. 

                2.                For the conviction of all ignorant, erroneous, unpleasant^xxvii] and offensive ideas.  The basis for these ideas is ignorance, disbelief, pride, ^[xxviii] reason of the flesh, disaccord,^[xxix] the external façade of the church and the heart’s interior. 

                3.                For examination and testing. –

                                a.                The state of our ideas.  Right ideas about Christ are effusive,^[xxx] rapturous,^[xxxi] spiritual, practical, genuine,^[xxxii] proliferate, humble without fear, and the sanctified^[xxxiii] and revived^xxxiv] of our whole nature.

                                b.                The object of our ideas, the subject matter of our thoughts.^[xxxv]  The exalted middle class, travels and labors, immeasurable treasures, ideas, words, works, the Gospel and the conditions thereof, service and wage, garb, love and the motive for it.

                4.                For admonition and instruction.^[xxxvi]  Prove, show, put on, display your deep respect and high esteem.^[xxxvii] 

                                a.                through the degrees, levels, ranks or grades^xxxviii] of the same

                                b.                through the effects — desire this deference to accompany all activities, avoiding all rivalry, letting your joy, sadness, and celebration sympathize with recollections of Him.  Seek to propagate your ideas of Christ in others through godly conversations and by means of pious change.  Amen.

^[ii]  das Gehirn.  “Originally, that soft, white substance in the cavity of the skull, which is comprised of two masses, the larger of the two in a strict sense the brain [cerebrum], the smaller referred to as the cerebellum [das Gehirnlein oder Hirnlein]…many hold that the brain is the seat and the center of operation [die Werkstätte] for the soul.  Translation of entry found in Johann Cristoph Adelung, Dietrich Wilhelm Soltau, and Franz Xaver Schönberger, Grammatisch-kritisches Wörterbuch der Hochdeutschen Mundart (Wien: Bauer Verlag, 1811), Digitale Bibliothek, Münchener DigitalisierungsZentrum, Bayerische StaatsBibliothek, read from http://lexika.digitale-sammlungen.de/adelung/lemma/bsb00009132_2_0_862

^[iii]  eine übernatürl. Sinnesänderung:  The senses primarily, but in the wake of their transformation a change of tastes, tendencies and understanding of the meaning of everything.  As Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy will later say in his visionary works, Out of Revolution and Fruit of Lips, a change of style demonstrably proves a change in life, which can end and begin divinely endowed revolutionary change in history.

^[iv]  der Gedanken, the ideas.  Our word idea comes from the Latin tapped into Greek, it means the form or appearance of a thing as opposed to its reality (Latin, videre, to see).  An idea is whatever exists in my universe of conscious reflection upon earlier listening, what I might think, know or imagine as concept, image or notion pieced together or taken apart.

^[v]  Not an abstract classification or species of life, but men, women, children, families and generations living in history.

^[vi]  abfragen.

^[vii]  untersucht zu werden.  Die Untersuchung, examination, inquiry, investigation; exploration; analysis

^[viii]  untersuchen

^[ix]  prüfen, check, verify.

^[x]  der Specerey

^[xi]  erweichen

^[xii]  The pedagogic strategy played out as style, the examining of something unexpectedly essential.  This generates uncertainty and intrigue.  Should I continue to read or not?  Is Hamann mad? Is he putting me on?  Should I dismiss him, or realize with the train of readings he releases he lights the way for me to follow.  He offers me insight over how little I have truly thought about the full wonder of Christ’s glory, this awarded me by showing me how little thought, idea, notion I have ever! given of our Lord’s unction, which though a precious truth in its own right [indeed I suppose that if all was written in detail about the anointing of Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God, to the Office of the Christ that even the world itself would not contain the books which were written], God gives us to help us behold the glory of His Son.  Busted!  Back to II. 1. a. subsumed under I. 6! Yes, yes, quick to concordance, dictionary, encyclopedia, commentary and chain reference; to hermeneutical principles grounded in the organon of grammar; for these tools are good for the understanding.  But understanding is ironic, our increasing in it leads us to judge ourselves as lording over the subject under our examination (now I get it – seize, have and hold it)!  From whence comes wonder, reverence and awe if we remain standing in an imaginary, autonomous self’s antechamber of study with the topic of unction disposed of at our feet?  Our aesthetic awareness serves our understanding by reminding us in a soberly yet refreshingly pleasurable way that our thoughts are subject to divine scrutiny and judgment. 

^[xiii]  Actualiter, die Tatsache, as matter of fact or die Wirklichkeit, as a matter of reality.

^[xiv]  Das Denken, das Überlegen, thinking; die Denkweise, way of thinking, reasoning, thought, the lay of the tracks for our trains of thought; Denkvermögen, understanding.

^[xv]  schätzen, to guess, like at the carnival, when for a dollar you try to guess the weight of a single Mom scantily clad to be undressed a MILF, for money to feed her habit, and maybe her child, if there’s any left over and she remembers.  Guess within the pound and you’ll win a stuffed teddy bear made by slave laborers overseas somewhere putting in twelve-hour days for the hope of getting free, their exploitation rippling out rings of profit ending at the shoreline of your lust, with that kiss you want when you give the little cuddly nothing to your sweetheart.  Come on, take a guess, how high should we hold this in esteem, tell me, just what is the worth of Christ’s glory?  Perhaps the you here is more me than you, for you are ranked among the last ones, the hollow ones or modern-day Cathari.  However believing, now back we go and finish reading II. 2. d. 

^[xvi]  der Verstand, understanding, intelligence, intellect, common sense, mind or wit.  Did you get caught in the trap, did you hear it snap? 

^[xvii]  An unjust scale is an abomination to the Lord, now what do I really esteem higher, the Lord’s glory or my estimation of it?  careful now mcduffee, this process operates under conditions stipulated by I. 6.

^[xviii]  der Gebrauch, longstanding, ongoing use, application, or practice as custom.  Application strikes at the pragmatic obsession choking the life out of North American evangelical homiletics.  Are we really in one another’s company for this kind of conversation about the glory of Christ?  Its application? 

^[xix]  Whether aware of it or not, now I am trapped, shall I barter His glory, put it up for sale, or for auction?  Who will give me the first bid?  No!  Of course not, well will I invest in it, accrue wealth from it or spend it on something worthwhile, worth having, of what worth?  No!, well then will I just keep it to look at, to handle at will or maybe use it to get some work out of it or make sense of it?  I flip and twist but I’m caught; my rodent spine is snapped for my being lured and enticed by my own desire, going after the bait of my own bait that I set for another.  If not deceived, what a fool I am; and if deceived where are my beloved brothers and sisters to slap me sober?

^[xx]  richtig, right, correct, accurate, proper; true; just

^[xxi]  recht, right; real; legitimate; right, correct

^[xxii]  Let us pretend this to be the religion that is pure and undefiled before God.

^[xxiii]  One quadrant of the full circle of speech, together being sound doctrine (1 Timothy 1:10), effective prayer (James 5:16), honest self-examination (2 Corinthians 13:5) and vital speech (Ephesians 5:25).

^[xxiv]  die Empfindungen, perceptions, sentiments, feelings.

^[xxv]  die Erkenntnis, die Einsicht – inspection, understanding; judiciousness, perception; realization; decision, sentence, finding.  The finding of a court, a just decision with a mixing of agnoscere with cognoscere. 

^[xxvi]  die Regel – standard; regulation

^[xxvii]  ärgerl. – ärgerlich, annoying, vexatious

^[xxviii]  dis Stolz – haughtiness

^[xxix]  die Uneinigkeit, refusal to agree or the lack of concord (discord)

^[xxx]  überschwenglich – pouring out or forth, overflowing; expressing excessive emotion in an unrestrained manner, remembering nevertheless, that living the life in Christ is doing the impossible without knowing it except by faith in the power of the Spirit, in accordance with the authority of God’s word; thus in this case remembering, we speak to edify and not to confuse others into thinking we are mad; we speak to convict, to call to account, that others who are without gift or faith may have the secrets of their hearts disclosed, so they might fall on their faces to worship the God they have come to be convinced is in our midst.  Let all things be done for edification.   The spirits of prophets are subject to prophets; for God is not a God confusion, He is not the God of the envying or makers of strife or the evil workers of the agitation and tumult of war.  Therefore by faith we trust our effusive thoughts about Christ shall be contemplated properly and in an orderly manner; as Christ gives the Spirit without measure the Spirit in turn teaches us the mind of Christ so that all the thoughts we receive through the study of God’s word shall be taken captive to the obedience to Christ. 

^[xxxi]  entzückt, delightful, enchanting, but so much more so than Rococo charm.  Each right thought of Christ taken captive by Christ is the equivalent in our soul of the event that is to come when we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with the dead in Christ to gather with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.  These effusive, rapturous thoughts of Christ given full reign over our soul are tempered only by the timing of the Lord while we live lives of self-control born in us as a fruit of the Spirit.

^[xxxii]  earnshaft, serious, grave, sincere, earnest

^[xxxiii]  heilig

^[xxxiv]  erneuren

^[xxxv]  Den Gegenstand uns. Gedanken. 

^[xxxvi]  die Anweisung, assignment, direction.  Not just information for me to follow that I may know how to do something, but a command for me to do something I am ordered to obey as an assignment unto a particular end by way of a specific course of action.  For we are His workmanship in Christ created onto good works that He has preordained that we should walk in the.  God help me, dissipated saint that I am, as a son of Eli I have not received a commandment for years.  I just keep learning the right way about how to do things.

^[xxxvii]  Beweist eure Hochachtung

^[xxxviii]  die Grade.

Every Bible story a prophecy
fulfilled
throughout the centuries
and in every human soul.
To believe in, to feel the
omnipresence of God’s Spirit and His
omniscience, a person need only
open the Bible.
Every story bears the image of Man
[male and female He created them],
a body,
an invalid of little significance
made of earth and ash,
the sensuous letters;
but too, a soul,
the breath of God,
the breath of His lips,
the light and the life
that shines in the darkness,
and cannot be, by the darkness,
understood or grasped.
The Spirit of God reveals Himself in His word,
just as the permanent, self-standing One
– in the form of a Servant –
is flesh and lives among us full of grace and truth.

I.  About the Story of Noah

Our life, our works, and yes, even our bare existence as natural men happen owing to God’s will and omnipotence.  How immense is God’s influence, how faithful God’s union in those who believe — in every preacher of righteousness — who like Noah was kept safe through the Flood of Wrath and saved from its destruction through faith — for the epic event of the Great Flood is nothing more than an emblem, a parable, a shadow through which God had wanted to reveal Himself to Mankind.  Hence, set within the story of Noah are the secrets of the Kingdom of Heaven, as if hidden in a seed of grain.  The secrets of mankind’s family tree divided by gender or by the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent, and finally, the secrets of every human soul, but especially of the miracle of her salvation.

The Patriarch, reclining, drinking, awakening, symbolizes God or a voice of God in the wilderness — his sleep, his intoxication, his tribunal or judgment upon his children is a preacher of righteousness.  John 15: 1.  “I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser.”  Psalm 78:65.  Then the Lord awoke as if from sleep, like a warrior overcome by [but sobered up from] wine.  [see too Psalm 44:23 and 73:20].

Why was Canaan cursed and not the father?  Of the Son of Man was made sin, flesh and the sacrifice for sin on our behalf.  However, through His sacrifice the curse and the punishment for sin fell back upon its originator and this one’s seed.  The blood of the Son of God credits life to those who believe and eternal damnation to unrepentant sinners. 

Praised be the Lord, the God of Shem.  Not Shem’s righteousness, but God’s mercy.  Into these two words is poured the secret of the Incarnation and the secret of faith, through which alone we are made blessed.  Shem is the body of which Christ is the Head.  This union is expressed in several terms, namely the union of believers in Christ, and through His Spirit, their union in God.  John 17:21.  “…that they may all be one; even as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be in Us; that the world may believe that Thou didst send Me.”  The God of Shem as well is revealed in these words, the union of two natures in Christ and in us as long as He will live in this condition of humble abasement.    

Contained in Japheth’s blessing is the indwelling of the Holy Spirit as well as the spread of the church among the heathen.   Japheth as well as God dwells in the tent of Shem.  Both are true:  the words of the Holy Spirit are like the wheels in Ezekiel’s vision, they may go in any direction, yet while doing so they need not turn. 

One compares the curse of Canaan with the raven Noah released and Proverbs 30:17.  The eye that mocks a father, and scorns a mother, the ravens of the valley will pick it out, and the young eagles will eat it.

The ark is an allegory for the Savior.  Ham came out of it unharmed as did Japheth.  Genesis 9:18.  Now the sons of Noah who came out of the ark were Shem and Ham and Japheth; and Ham was the father of Canaan.  Behemoth Job 40:19.  likewise is a creature of the word, through which all things are made.  Compare John 2:19.  Jesus answered and said to them, “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.”

The tongue a fire, its sets ablaze the wheel of nature and lies upon the glowing flames of hell.  James 3:6.  And the tongue is a fire, the very world of iniquity; the tongue is set among our members as that which defiles the entire body, and sets on fire the course of our life [our existence, our origin!], and is set on fire by hell.  The serpent spoke — Cain spoke — Ham told his two brothers outside — all of our thoughts are tongues of lies and tongues of the spirit of murder.  Psalm 73:9.  They have set their mouth against the heavens, they speak in wickedness, and their tongue parades through the earth, from on high they speak of oppression.

Mankind, the Fall of Man, is the nakedness of God and the shame of creation — the drunkenness of Noah also symbolizes mankind, whose natural ruin is expressed through a drunken stupor and through the ensuing unawareness of his own disgrace to which he succumbs as a result of it.  Do we not still mock with Ham our own nature and the nakedness of our ancestors in the barbarians and the savages?  What did the Jews and the wise pagans gain – Shem and Japheth – by their efforts to restore the Fall of Adam?  They forced both the Law and Philosophy to go too far.  Both of them regressed.  Isaiah 44:25[-26].  Causing the omens of boasters to fail, He makes fools out of diviners, causing wise men to draw back, He turns their knowledge into foolishness, [confirming the word of His servant, He performs the purpose of His messengers.]  Neither of them realize the perversion of their nature — they do nothing more than cover it up, like spreading a mantle over it.  Their shoulders are able to bear that much.  Their righteousness, their strength and their wisdom goes no further than that. 

When the conscience in us awakens from its slumber and the deep sleep of sin, does it not like Noah curse man and praise God and bless the God of Shem and bless the victory through Jesus Christ our Lord?

Noah awoke — and knew what his younger son — the animals of the field were created earlier than man, servants simultaneously the same.  Noah knew — the empty word of Hannibal, “agnosco fortunam Carthaginis” was the voice of the spirit who rules in the air, who like Balaam speaks the words that God has set in his mouth.  Satan belongs among the prophets as much as Saul.  He is himself among the children of unbelief a preacher of righteousness.  Like Judas he condemns himself to the fire for his sins.  From the testimony of his own mouth he shall be judged, he shall be brought to ruin by his own lies, he shall be caught in his own intrigues and become his own murderer. 

The nakedness of his father, ridiculed by Ham and for which wine was the blame, was a secret of God, like all sin, because God uses sin as revelation of his wisdom, power and goodness and righteousness.  The spirit of Ham was carried away to mockery the moment he heard the disciples speak in other tongues.    

II. About the Prophecy of Ishmael

It is no less amazing that the spirit of the serpent, the tempter, pursues his role against mankind, and will never cease to speak and work with us; in us and through us as a liar and a murderer than that the spirit and the kingdom of Ishmael should still persist in his children and their descendents.   All of creation is a tree trunk that spreads itself out through innumerable branches.  We must imagine all of mankind taken together in this same way, as too similarly every single nation, and yes, every person a seed of grain in whom lays the entire draft of the whole of creation.

Ishmael was sent of God to Abraham.  God called him to existence as a wild donkey.  God will have Ishmael breathe his last and die and be gathered to his people.    Ishmael is no more than a framework, a shadow, an example, a sign set by God. 

Sarah is dissatisfied with God, whom she blames for her infertility — she wants to build her family through her maid-servant — like Adam, Abraham obeys his wife.  Hagar is lifted up by the kindness of her lady mistress, whom she despised, through the favor of the Lord and that of her new husband – is forced to set out and take flight owing to the cruelty that she had earned to experience.  This harsh treatment of Sarah’s met with Abraham’s desire and approval.

Ishmael the archer Genesis 21:20 was the chief of those who shot at and injured Joseph. Genesis 49:23. Colligated with Isaiah 21:17.  “And the remainder of the number of bowmen, the mighty men of the sons of Kedar, will be few; for the Lord God of Israel has spoken.”

We find Hagar and Ishmael that very same distance from one another Genesis 21:16 as that of our Lord from His disciples in the Garden of Gethsemane Luke 22:41.   And He withdrew from them about a stone’s throw, and He knelt down and began to pray.

The author often repeats himself, remarking that individual persons signify entire tribes and nations.  He remains fixed however only upon the outside shell of the story.  Legions of spirits and their story; the name of God, the will of God and the Kingdom of God portrayed through Leviathan and its Overcomer are in the story of every person reproduced in darkness.  The Holy Spirit is the Storywriter of the Bible — we must see Him hovering over the surface of the water, otherwise we find nothing but waste, emptiness and darkness upon the deep [as if He must depend upon the wet dreams of pagan plagiarizers to tell us His bedtime story]. 

IV. Jacob’s Prophecy

One who is dying is the same as Noah awakening from getting drunk.  The phenomenal, the sensual, the sexual, the perceptible, the growth of our vineyard, bears down heavily upon us, so that we should come to be conscious of ourselves.  Blessed is the one who finds himself wrapped in a covering upon this awakening, which removes from him eternal shame and ruin.  Blessed is the one who realizes just how great his need was for such a covering. 

The author quotes Tagius that a great number of scholars and schoolmasters arose from out of the line of Simeon.  Cannot one so see the Greeks, who of monarchy gave a name to Rome and thereafter suffered altogether the destiny of educated slaves.   Do not the Jews boast until this day of their being witnesses of the unity of God throughout the entire world?

VIII. Prophecy about the Jews

The Jews still remain a mirror in which we see the secret of God’s salvation in humankind as a riddle.  Solomon as always still prays for them 1 Kings 8:50-51.  David as always still lives, who then pleaded for God’s patience in the time of their old age, when their strength would fail them.  Psalm 71:9. 59:11. They were struck down for our sake, so that through their preservation we might be astonished over the treasures of patience and the riches of God’s longsuffering.  Reflection upon this allows for and should lead to our repentance. 

Is it not precisely the lack of faith that rules in us, for which we punish this people that we should learn to fear for ourselves?   Have we not crucified the Son of God just as much as did they?  Do we not build the tombs of the prophets that they have killed? 

As Christians can we read the Book of Obadiah without being horrified?  Does not the same end threaten the heathen, us heathen?   We who have been grafted into the olive tree, whose branches by our own hands have been rejected and cut off from God, are we not threatened with the same end that had threatened the Edomites and which the Romans learned about again?

Has Jesus ceased to be the King of the Jews?  Has the inscription on the cross [THIS IS JESUS THE NAZARENE THE KING OF THE JEWS] been changed?  Do we not then persecute Him in His people?  Is not our Faith as much a table as their Law [Matthew 15:21-28; Mark 7:24-30], which became a snare?  — If the children of Abraham are punished who did not do the works of Abraham — then what kind of judgment awaits us who call God and His only begotten Son, “Our Father,” and yet blaspheme His teaching and His works through our absence of faith and our dogged obstinacy?[1]

note [1].  Sämtliche Werke, historisch-kritische Ausgabe, I. Band, IV, ed. by Josef Nadler (Wien: Thomas-Morus-Presse im Verlag Herder, 1949), pp. 315-319.  a tired but tried translation by a late reader.

A Postscript to the Preceding

A Children’s Story about Everything (in need of illustrations)

by Simul-Justus et Peccator

The exotic absurdities of high-end and low-end physics expose our vanity in seeking to know His creation without Him.  The further from ourselves we peer into the storm clouds, thorns and thistles we call the universe the more ridiculous our stories become, the more Maya begins to makes sense, convincing us, it is better to be nameless than to bear His name.   However, our struggles at rebellion also disclose our magnificent beauty, testifying to our being made in His image.  Once we lived on one language by one lip.   God saw what we started to do with our being one having one language.  He tells us that He saw then that nothing we proposed to do would be withheld from us (thus teaching us that even what we take He gives us).  So He confused our language.  Unable to understand one another forced us to give up on our desire to make a name for ourselves.  No matter what the hunters of men have sought ever since, God means us to be baptized only in the name not of our own making.  God liberated us from the deterministic death camp of our own fatalist design.  He transported us into His top security prison, yet night and day He leaves its front gate swung wide open.  Here we suffer and labor.  He does not permit us to be tempted beyond what we are able.  He always keeps open the way of escape so we may endure what we cannot get around or get away from.  Our watchers in heaven rejoice with Him over every successful prison break, made good by simply walking out.  We are able to do all things except bear ourselves while making ourselves free.  For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.  Lift your eyes now and look from the place where you are, behold the bloodstained doorposts and lintel we must pass under to enter the given light.  Only those waiting for the city which has foundations go that way through many tribulations.  What we will be has not yet been made known.  As it is written, “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love Him” — but God has revealed it to us by His Spirit, who testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.  Fellow ravens, stop digging and building!  We too out here are also sinners.  Listen!  Turn!  See!  Yield all escape routes conceived through art, skill and device of our own design.  The answer to anything to do with the wellbeing of our soul is always more than how we arrange circles and squares!  The Warden offers us all a full pardon.  Whosoever takes — receives – Him He initiates into the life that is transformed without end forever and ever.  Why still seek the understanding that comes to nothing, that applies to things that cannot remain, governed by rulers who shall not stand?  Why dig and build according to plans diagramming the good life analogous to the heavens and earth of this age, which the word of God has kept in store, reserved unto fire against the Day of Judgment and perdition of ungodly men?  Who wants his or her mother or children to die in the flames of a burning prison, tormented day and night forever and ever?

Words

Words reveal

the invisible essence of our soul,

even as creation

is a string of discourse stretching

from one end of heaven to the other. 

Only the Holy Spirit was able 

to tell us about the miracle of the six days

in a way which, while remaining profound

we could grasp nonetheless. 

Between an idea of our soul and

a sound which emanates from our mouth

measures the distance

equal that between spirit and body,

even that between heaven and earth. 

What kind of incomprehensible domain joins

these things so disparate and

so equally distant from one another? 

Are not our thoughts humiliated over

the fact that

they fail to become visible

unless

coarsely fitted out

in the pattern of arbitrary signs? 

Furthermore,

what better proof for divine

omnipotence – and humility –

than that

He desired and thus, brought to pass

having the depths of His mysteries and

the treasures of His wisdom

breathed into the form of a servant of such [running]

gibberish and [stunning] confusion

as one who possesses the tongue of scientific abstraction?[1]

A good storyteller follows the rules of the road: goes with the flow but avoids the potholes.

 “Historical, contingent truths can never be proofs of rational, necessary truths.”^[i]

 Words reveal the invisible essence of our soul, even as creation is a string of discourse stretching from one end of heaven to the other.  Only the Holy Spirit was able  to tell us about the miracle of the six days in a way which, while remaining profound we could grasp nonetheless.  Between an idea of our soul and a sound which emanates from our mouth measures the distance equal that between spirit and body, even that between heaven and earth.  What kind of incomprehensible domain joins these things so disparate and so equally distant from one another?  Are not our thoughts humiliated over the fact that they fail to become visible unless coarsely fitted out in the pattern of arbitrary signs?  Furthermore, what better proof for divine omnipotence – and humility – than that He desired and thus brought to pass having the depths of His mysteries and the treasures of His wisdom breathed into the form of a servant of such gibberish and confusion as one who possesses the tongue of human abstraction?^[ii]

  Alle Wunder der Heilige Schrift geschehen  in unserer Seele (J. G. Hamann)

 That the attainment of truth in human minds should proceed as Aquinas says “through certain doors” is a mystery that is explored, though not wholly explained, by the sacred history presented in Holy Writ.  Odd indeed as it sounds, my conclusion is that those in search of understanding knowledge might consider periodically setting aside epistemological texts and turning to Scripture.^[iii]

            Why odd?  What key unlocks what Oswald Spengler called the “metaphysical structure of historic humanity”?  Like a dead relative whose remains we have boarded up in the room where we found them, the odor of this question does not go away, even if we do not ask it anymore.  We have “simply” stopped noticing the smell, needing no longer to even ask from whence it comes.  Only the occasional guest stranger who enters our home signals to us by initial grimace and strained politeness that something seems to be wrong.  “Scientific history,” one scholar tells us is, “the sort of study that modern historians generally engage in.”^[iv]   This term refers to the service that provides the mundane product the history-making industry grinds out every year through the discipline’s publishing and promoting cartel holding sway over the interlocking organizations and operations of the university system, which controls the production of normative historical knowledge in Europe and North America.  The product of such work, we are correctly told, is the result of “the attempt simply to arrive at an accurate account of past events based upon sufficient evidence, without regard to learning lessons, predicting the future course of events, or grasping the ‘meaning’ of human history as a whole.”^[v]   Being creatures made in the image of God and thus of manifold multiplicity, we do best blindfold with one hand tied behind our back such one fold work.  Therefore we bind ourselves accordingly and gouge out our eye of faith, willing to go to hell so maimed.  We sacrifice all that is living, powerful and noble throughout the generations on a puny altar of “scientific history.”   Well do we modify the dimensions of our petty priestly duties by the disabling and deceptive adverb, “simply.”  We are an adulterous generation, we eat and wipe our mouth, and say, “We have done no wrong.”  But what do we have to do with judging outsiders?  Is it not those inside the church whom we are to judge?  God judges those outside.  Lord, let me be purged of what evil is in me that keeps me from making good evangelical history, or remove me from among those who need no such purging.

            In the first volume of his valuable work Christianity & Western Thought,^[vi] Colin Brown appropriately enough by the standards of civil-religious engineering that direct the designing and constructing of the connections students travel through the curriculum of the modern world of higher education, judged it unnecessary to detour their attention to a Christian campaigner in criticism of Enlightenment criticism called the  “Magus of the North,” Johan Georg Hamann (1730-1788).   It is strange to read from such an excellent scholar “deeply committed to the Christian faith”^[vii] about how important Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) is,^[viii] and yet not hear a single word spoken about his contemporary and acquaintance, Johann Georg Hamann, who also was his profoundest critic.  At least one odd principle of judgment must be in play to compel a Christian teacher to omit such a strong voice of Christian testimony to Biblical truth in the Enlightenment era, and yet nonetheless, adore,^[ix] review, assess and thus contribute to the continued vitality of an apostate of that age who undermined the health of the living church – her most holy faith – and sought to rob her of the wisdom for salvation hers through the sacred writings; who then sought to disrupt prayer in the Holy Spirit and to sever her from the love of God while she waits for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life. 

            It is a binding appeal for accompanied by a belief in the ethereal power of the imagaination –  misused, desperate and sick –  over the character and actions of others that led Colin Brown to censor one voice and engage the other.  As he said in his introduction, “This book is about the changes in preconceptions, world views and paradigms that have affected the ways in which people have thought about religion in general and Christianity in particular in the Western world.”^[x]   We deceive ourselves if we fail to see intrinsic to our awarding acknowledgement to those who “influence” the life of the church is our habit of paying homage to them.  That Brown adores Kant does not mean he worships him in the Biblical sense, but rather that his paying attention to him and ignoring Hamann corresponds more to the pagan practice of worship, which was motivated by either the purpose of gaining favor with or disarming the demands of a bothersome character.  Why bother with what does not bother us?  What is it to us that one cried out, ”For who is this uncircumcised Philistine, that he should defy the armies of the living God”?  Why listen to the stutterer who stammered, “Is there not a cause”?  We acknowledge the “influence” of Kant because we know him like a circus bear.  We know his tricks, we wrestle with him for the show, because it is safe to do so, we inflate his affects because it serves our purposes.  We set him in a pantheonic order of his liking because it pleases us.  We heighten his fame by pointing him out like star gazers, swelling him up to Goliath stature so that we might play the role of David to cut him back down to size.  We focus upon him as if an expert witness, awarding him a stature that he could never earn if we stood him beside his contemporary Hamann, if they were allowed to speak to one another in our textbooks and curricula, if we let our students listen in on both of them.  Why Kant?  Why not Hamann?  What would happen if we forgot Kant, and in place of his absent memory we immersed our mind in the baths of this entkleidende Metacriticus bonae spei?  What if we too dared to strip ourselves of ourselves to put on the new self, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth, walking like living parables, looking like naked pagans in the eyes of the world?  For in the eyes of the globalized moment, this strange ready God has made for us all, He makes everyone born a Dane, a follower of Jesus fulfilling His kindling dream to come by the power of the spirit of the anti-Christ, except for those the Father has given the Son that He may give them eternal life.   We fail to remember how we were beaten or bested into plodding the beaten path we follow, and that by way of the process the Germans call Bildung to which we subject our students.  Do not we best them too, and beat them over the head to make sure they walk it too?  Why do we persist entertaining the same subjects of study in our syllabuses?  Are we not “simply,” uncritically, doing nothing more than putting on display our having mastered the standard set of techniques and scripts authorized professional participation permits, awarded by the prevailing consensus of community membership, which we worked so hard to earn? 

            Why is it that by our efforts at holy laughter we only make fools of ourselves?  Oh for holy confidence, oh for godly courage, for simple faith working through love long enough to just sit down and have a real good laugh.  Constantly gnawing even while yawning with modern nervousness, .~ do not have the time for such a cathartic outburst.  .~ am too busy hiding from one .~ cannot see, not knowing where .~ am, not knowing where .~ am going in this moment when the Lord is bringing to nothing what things that are.  God help me (and He does), .~ don’t know what to hold on to or in what direction to head out.  .~ cry out to you Lord, .~ follow you Lord, but .~ have no sense of connection or direction or consistency in which .~ can rest.  .~ am so often dulled into believing .~ am alone except for awkward lapses as episodes of interruption that relieve me from my sense of lostness adrift in a sea of misunderstanding amidst fragments of debris, bits of stories about guaranteed certainty and absolute integrity tossed to and fro by the waves of cunning carried on tides of craftiness concocted through the hypocrisy of liars devoted to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons.  I hear Woyzeck’s pounding drums beating not beneath me but inside me.  What irony!  Free masons in me adorning the monuments of the righteous though dead, who, through faith still speak to me while .~ stay busy, busy, busy building the tombs of the prophets.  

Do not allow yourself to be deceived, Michael do not deceive yourself. 

We read and thus we write c.s. lewis tells us as if c. p. snow cares to know, we seek, we achieve, “the extension of being,” we want to be another by another to better be ourselves as if brought safely through the water makes us a willing partner whose appeal to God for a good conscience no longer matters, nevertheless, what never happened, happened (1 Peter 3:21-22).  We enter or give entry, we listen or speak, to commit adultry or to keep our bed of marriage with our Lord undefiled.  Let the ear be submissive, chaste and listen with fear with a gentle and quiet spirit, hoping in fear without being frightened by any fear.  Let the tongue live with the listening ear in an understanding way, as with a weaker vessel, grant her honor as a fellow heir of the grace of life, so that the prayers spoken may not be hindered. 

Having the promises beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God, pursuing peace with all men, and the sanctification with honor without which no one will see the Lord.

If you think you are wise in this age,

become a fool that you may become wise. 

Do not be deceived;

God is not mocked,

for whatever you sow Michael, that will you also reap. 

If you think you are religious and do not bridle your tongue, you deceive your heart,

your religion is worthless. 

Normality is nothing more than the prevailing pattern of depravity. 

We live in a world in which depravity remains constant,

yet hypocrisy ever increases as the lie that grows with lawlessness. 

What we confess as providentially conditioned progress governs the prayer,

“Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” 

            These are all drafts dunker, drawings of the load you pull.  Edit them out, set them aside, take up your task as if they neither exist nor have any influence upon the you you are believing.  Gird up your loins, embrace the good confession He made before Pontius Pilate, submit to rightful authority and speak!  We are trapped by our wanting to set ourselves free, not by our wanting to be free as He desires.  We suffer the realization that “it seems that only by learning what [the Scriptures] have to teach can [we] come to read [the Scriptures] aright, but also that only by reading them aright can [we] learn what [the Scriptures} teach.”^[xi]  To drink the tonic God offers to make us wise for salvation by our reading the Bible we must first accept the authority of the Bible, which Kant rejected and Hamann embraced.  Why listen to Kant and censor Hamann?  Why not expand the arc of “the hermeneutic circle” to include reading Johan Georg Hamann?  Why not read Johann Georg Hamann within “the context of [the] tradition of religious and intellectual practices of inquiry”?^[xii]   Why not expand “the authority of the tradition of inquiry and interpretation which [has] grown up around”^[xiii] the sacred writings to include, if Kant, then Hamann in tandem with him?  Is not the latter philosopher enough to qualify an opportunity to address the same things that we allow Kant time to speak to?  Whose rules hold sway over the Christian tradition of inquiry and interpretation that prohibits Hamann having a hearing?  What cause for dismissal?  What cause for embarrassment?  What fear of loss?  What cause for greater reputation?  What lust for gain?  We deceive ourselves if we think of modern philosophy as a way to understand the world rather than as primarily a determining factor of influence upon how we read the Bible. 

            God’s firm foundation stands, bearing this seal, “The Lord knows those who are his,” and “Let everyone who names the name of the Lord depart from iniquity.”  And for whom is the solid food of the Scriptures except for the mature, skilled in the word of righteousness, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil, that is trained by constant rebuke and correction?  Trained by the exact things .~ shirk and shill to shield myself from the shame .~ fear, forgetting love casts out all fear.  It is for discipline that we endure!  Discipline me Lord that .~ may share in your holiness among your saints as you allow.  Lord release me into your loving will, issue your painful discipline that you may yield in my life the peaceful fruit of righteousness.  Lord, .~ yearn to live the good life.  As the Father of spirits .~ confess subjection to you, although ,~ do not know what it means, nor do .~ know how to do this.  .~ perform the trigonometry of truth to locate my position as helpless.   Head out with me from where you are reader, let us trust Him together to get us away from wherever we do not belong.  Let us go out together not knowing where we are going, believing we will live in the land of promise.

            The Scriptures teach us that men make up gods to worship them, and that this is called idolatry.  “Kant’s Copernican revolution in philosophy, with its emphasis on the knowing and willing self as the cognitive and moral center of the universe, created the conceptual space in which the notion of worldview could flourish,” David K. Naugle teaches us in his chronicle of a corollary idol titled, Worldview, The History of a Concept^[xiv]   Failing to see myself in another proves .~ am blind.  Thinking .~ can see everything from my vantage point is vain.  Failing to see myself before God is depraved.   .~ too burn what .~ have cut to stay warm, .~ too make a fire to bake my bread, but why should .~ worship the god another has made?  Why should .~ fall down before this all-seeing eye of self with its worldview to adore it, or fall into the shallow grave its maker dug out with it, or take it up into my prayers for deliverance?  Don’t .~ have enough lust to flee from, don’t .~ make false gods enough to keep myself from?^[xv]  .~ know together we have become worthless,  and that together there is no fear of God before our eyes.  Let us admit together our blindness that He may relieve us of our guilt who said, “For judgment I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind.”  Blind us Father, we wish to see Jesus.

            It is as odd a practice to keep talking about Kant without mentioning Hamann, as it would be to talk of poisonous snakes and not mention the antivenin available to counteract their deadly venom.  Roger E. Olson tells a story about Kant, “the greatest Enlightenment thinker of all,” yet too has banished Hamann, his greatest metacritic to oblivion.  Again, this is strange because Olson’s working principle for selecting, arranging and presenting the content of his book he explains is based on the principle, “People live from the stories that shape their identities.  Those of us who call ourselves Christians are shaped by the Christian story.”^[xvi]   Why inject into the life stream of Christian identity the infectious tale of Kant without including the leukocytic defense of Hamann?  R. C. Sproul teaches who knows how many generations of the church that Immanuel Kant’s thought “represents the watershed of modern philosophy,” and that this philosopher created a “philosophical revolution” perhaps of “greater impact than the Copernican revolution in science” with “more far-reaching consequences than the American Revolution  in politics.”^[xvii]  Yet he fails to mention the work of Johan Georg Hamann who devoted his life to refuting Enlightenment-based prejudices that distorted the integrity of revealed knowledge.  What ruler do we obey that demands we “understand the concepts that shaped our [!] world,”^[xviii] with so much ado about Kant without examining the courageous effort of a contemporary Christian who fought this thinker’s idolatrous onslaught?^[xix]

            The most insidious element in the nature of the choice to do so is that it seems so ordinary.  So natural.  So expected.  God however is extraordinary, supernatural and surprising!  Why not teach the next generation of His people accordingly?  Why should we order our speech to conform to the hierarchy of listeners before whom we speak?  Should we preach rebellion because we speak into the context of disobedience?  This is not a priority of lockstep sequence, but rather one of priority, freely chosen as an exercise in discernment.  Brown, Olson and Sproul’s choice to speak about Kant and ignore Hamann exhibit’s a lack of faith.  I do not mean this in terms of integrity or intensity.  I am not questioning the godliness of these men.  I am however rebuking how they turned their eyes of faith to see what they wanted to talk about, without looking at what they chose not to talk about. Why?  Because they do not know how to control the things they were not taught.  O for the creative break that only fatigue can make.  To rely upon powers of influence and relations of affect, as these organizing concepts are presumed to operate by the established academic method of handling intellectual traffic, restricts our field of vision by which we decide the ways we should live out our life in Christ, as nothing more than wisps of smoke passing through this world as sojourners and exiles.  This is not to say our course of action should be anti-intellectual and reactionary.  Nor should our style be a cautious sheltered one of tactical withdrawal from the marketplace of ideas or the public square.  Instead, wherever we find ourselves, worship and prayer in the Spirit and truth should be our first line of witness followed by confession and service.  There will be differences of conscience over how we should present ourselves as living sacrifices, holy and acceptable to God.  Yet we should all work for the building up of the church until we all attain to the unity of faith and of knowledge of the Son of God.  Therefore our historiography should include space for the social construction of knowledge about the past with a view that our audience ought first always be the living church surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses.  We should always speak to puzzle angels and to manifest God’s manifold wisdom to rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.  We should speak in such a way that matches wise conduct toward outsiders, and that testifies to the best use of time; thus in such a way that anyone without gifts who happens to overhear us may listen in to say, “Amen.”^[xx]  Thus our purpose of communication should first be generational edification, the giving of precious truth to men and women who are yet boys and girls struggling bravely to become men and women who want to be mature and perfect.  Only as an extension of this work do we apologize for Christ and refute the affects of false knowledge that either distorts or denies Him. 

            Furthermore, the recognition that modernity has transformed history into an argument,^[xxi] used to justify contending attitudes toward the past, should be for us as Christians a sobering realization.  What myth do we pretend to be worthy of respect that keeps us from seeing how the discipline of history today is used to advance a myriad of agendas, many of which are adverse to the health of the church?  The past is but one part of the living stream of speech that makes up the arena of divine discourse into which we are born for a time.  In this living stream we receive God’s word from the past rooted in creation and encounter His Spirit sent to us from the consummation secured by the only begotten Son of God made man, who is  Lord and Savior of all,  Jesus Christ.  It is such a past and future together that form the present.  The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy (Revelation 19:10 with Ephesians 1:9-10).  To gain a balanced appraisal of this arena of divine discourse requires us to consider its quadrilateral nature.  All the past is made up of four avenues of life:  historical consciousness, prophecy, fulfillment of prophecy and providential conditioning.  A fair judgment of the past demands a full examination of it.  We deceive ourselves if we think there is any historiography practiced that stands without theological foundation.  The proper use of history requires the abuse of scientific historiography because a full examination of the past is only possible from the vantage point of the consummation.^[xxii]  We have the outline, but see all within its perimeter as in a mirror dimly.  This makes our surveying, navigating and engineering this life a difficult project, leaving much room for error.  Understanding historical reality is cruciform helps us at least to lay out our errors upon a fuller, richer backdrop of the past as it really happened.  If we may say such an approach lacks “objectivity,” or it is prejudicial to a “provincial” way of doing history, then we speak in the imperfect passive voice.   Professionals once wrote scientific history.  Historians were writing in such a style as a past action while alternatives were emerging.  In this present time of transitions we as evangelical Christians should examine our heritage to better understand what style(s) of historiography we should ply.  Sometimes a man must go into his own tent because there is no other means by which to protect his family from the elements of a hostile environment.

            Sound confession requires our convictions and conscience to be grounded together in a good reading of the Scriptures serving the growth and governance of the church.  The breadth of confession does not encompass our deciphering out and making explicit all of God’s actions in history.  His work is unfathomable.  Nor does confession provide us the formula by which we can predict God’s future actions.  Confession of faith offers us opportunity to point out possible connections among human events that transcend the confines of contemporaneous cause and effect.  Making such connections better equips us to create a historical narrative that invites general listening in while edifying the church.  This work is to be done with no less skill, truthfulness and openness than is that insisted upon by profane professionals.   If anything Christians should desire and aspire to even higher standards of scholarly distinction.  I would argue the point in fact that it is primarily our responsibility to protect and to practice these high standards of scholarly distinction.  Because this is the case, we should realize, I believe, that sometimes didactic duties to the church charge us to strike out in an unanticipated and little followed direction instead of sticking to the plan of knowledge prevailing civil-religious surveyors lay out as suitable plot lines and lot boundaries of legitimate and valuable knowledge.  Even should we admit that the value of history is “not to teach lessons but to provide perspective,”^[xxiii] we should at least be willing to ask for the sake of those who come after us, “From what vantage point and to what purpose?”  Of course we teach lessons through the discipline of history!  Of course we teach how to be a professional historian all the while teaching lessons about life in doing so!  And of course we teach history to students to teach them lessons about life from our perspective!  Our false claims to the contrary, no one simply historifies to provide perspective from the “context of no context“^[xxiv] about the past of a world “adjudicated to nobody.”^[xxv]   Evangelical Christian scholars should admit this, and openly announce the intent to write good history from a confessional standpoint to the end of building up the church.  

            In the land of silence man remains inert and incommensurable.  Without speech he is without a standard by which to make judgments.  He who has no name may not speak.  Speech judges us whenever we respond to another’s actions.  Speech judges me when reckoning a memory of what I have done.  I am unintelligible unless I speak.  I can neither be praised nor condemned.  We lust after meaning without words yet we yearn for words to be spoken that award meaning to our lives.  Man without speech then is a conceptual fiction, such a thing as a non-speaking human is not real.  We only make such a thing real by speaking about “it.”  We wonder how human “it” might be by discussing this question together.  The exception proves the norm.  The feral child syndrome in all form of manifestation demands the person be cared for with all the rights to which he or she is entitled owing to being like us, to his or her having been made in the image of God even if totally lacking any capacity to behave accordingly.  We would name such a child.  We would brainstorm over the challenge of learning how to communicate with the child suffering the burden of the speechless state.  By faith in our Creator we trust these fellow members of His offspring will exercise these qualities in the ages to come.  Man is a creature of perpetual speech, in communication with God and with others.  Man hears speech and remembers, he pieces things together of what he remembers in party with others while making new memories with them.  By means of perpetual reminiscence and communication we carry out our names.  We continue on the project of our own personhood.^[xxvi]            

            The essence of receiving life to live in this world is to realize that this world is spoken in God’s language.  God calls into being that which does not exist yet what He desires to exist by the power of His spoken command.  He brings nothing to being by wordless thought, which is another conceptual fiction, as if either God or man could endure living in the medium of thoughtlessness.  We believe in our ignorance (in ourselves), our immanent, telepathic partner in faith, to be the more powerful actor, and thus the governor over our talking to one another.  God however brings the insides of His divine word out into the outside of the not divine by bringing to hearing-faith being that outside outside of the not divine via the bridge of speech.  God’s Word is Pontifex Maximus of creation in which the generations of men and women live. God’s word alone is the only bridge builder to and only pathfinder through His creation and this world of human generations.   “Hamann is one of the first thinkers to be quite clear that thought is the use of symbols, that non-symbolic thought, that is, thought without either symbols or images…is an unintelligible notion.”^[xxvii]  In the beginning was the Word!  Hamann said, “Where there is no word there is no reason — and no world.”  Therefore he concluded, “All idle talk about reason is mere wind; language is its organon^[xxviii] and criterion!”^[xxix]    Hamann rebuked^[xxx] the Enlightenment’s idolatrous concept of reason from his confession of the transactional nature of knowledge through receiving and delivering, through tradition enlivened by faith.  “Hamann attacked the alleged independence of reason from experience and its daily induction.”  Reason is neither pure nor autonomous; we exercise our faculties of reason within a web or relations through which we live by way of words.   As either an intensive or reflexive reference, ‘myself’ is never alone inside or out.  .~ pretend .~ do not exist unless .~ admit .~ live as hearing another speak.  If .~ hear then it is because .~ have learned to speak.  If I think then I speak because someone else spoke to me.  Speech, however, as Hamann contended, “always has and unavoidably always has an empirical side so that all talk of a pure reason would be a contradiction in itself.”  That is, speech is the life lived among the living and the dead.    Nothing on its own is analogous to anything, everything is alive with His word spoken in the way He created, being upheld now with groaning anticipation by the word of His power, kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.   What would we dare handle, taste or touch except that His word tells us everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected, if it is received with gratitude; for it is sanctified by means of the word of God and prayer?  The multiplicities of hearings together make up the reality we read all around us.   We do not seek similarities, we yearn for the one arrangement that produces fullest harmony, that is the reading the church wishes to hear and make known as the manifold wisdom of God to the rulers and the authorities in the heavenly places.   Filled with the Holy Spirit we desire to speak to one another accordingly, in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with our heart to the Lord; always giving thanks for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God, even the Father, subject to one another in the fear of Christ, being strong in the Lord, and in the strength of His might.   Then believing is being known and reading, “the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day,” is not mere rhetoric or only literal, but a living moment of our Living Lord given us to enter, and then?  Let the Lord decide.  

If we listen to Hamann we perhaps hear the father of  “counter-modernity” speaking.^[xxxi]   Or maybe we learn by listening to him that at the same time of modernity’s birth postmodernity was born too, with the same simultaneity with which we now rejoice and weep. Where we think of being, Hamann confesses wording as faith working through love.  Hamann fought to thwart the hope of those champions of the Enlightenment who worked to bring to an end the divine work of prayer.   His metacritique of their claim to base all action upon reason countered that human action was dependent upon divine revelation.  Hamann confessed God’s revelation as the essence of living (historical) human existence.  Human thought is the transitional middle between God speaking to man and man acting upon what he has heard, interpreted, understood, reckoned, and decided.  Accordingly, fedeism is not a subjective state but rather our ontological condition, our state of being, our way of living.   Hamann denied the possibility of Kant’s critique of pure reason based upon his view of language as the human medium for trafficking in the living of things, which God has given us, who not only empowers us to detect or reflect the meaning He has revealed, but also the freedom to create alternate meanings against His will, allowed as He allots.   Because we can “only think in language, then it is simply not possible to investigate our thinking instrument – to say what it can or cannot think in advance of its deployment.”^[xxxii]  Our words give us the confidence to conceive “what ‘things’ and objective realities are.”  Since this is the case, “it is not possible to separate out within language the ‘categories – whether of ‘reason’, the ‘understanding’ or ‘the imagination’ – by which things are thought, from ‘intuitions’ or the empirical contents of thoughts themselves.”^[xxxiii]   Hamann insisted that pure reason conceived could never be pure reason proven without provincial qualifications.  This had to be the case because “all reason begins as a process of interpretation, or ‘divinatory’ understanding of meaning.”^[xxxiv]  Hamann’s metacritique of Kant’s philosophy imposes a more humble limitation upon human reason, subjecting it to conditions of linguistic and historical determinations, reminding us as theologian John Milbank points out, that “local and particular experiences always enter into our general conception of epistemological categories, making them endlessly revisable, and justifiable neither de facto and a posteriori, nor  de jure and a priori, [since] these culturally particular categories can only justify themselves as a kind of ‘conjecture’ about the transcendent, and the relation of this transcendence to finitude.”^[xxxv]

            Hamann was first a Christian, and only as such was he the critic of the modern Enlightenment.  As a philosophical theologian Kant said the chief objects of metaphysics were “God, freedom and immortality.”^[xxxvi]  Kant believed that these metaphysical problems form “the basis for our greatest expectations and for our points of view about the end purposes of life.”  He said, “For this reason it is futile to want to strike an artificial sense of indifference over research [of such things], since human nature cannot be apathetic about these things.”^[xxxvii]  In considering these matters, questions about God took priority because “The Supreme Being” is “a concept which crowns and encloses the entirety of human knowledge.”^[xxxviii]  With this Hamann would agree.  However, he insisted knowledge about God could never be independent of the teachings handed over to us through traditions of their being told and believed.  As the apostle Paul wrote and taught, “Whether then it was I or they, so we preach and so you believed (1 Corinthians 15:11).”

            Hamann believed that creation is marinated in the word of God because “through [His word spoken as language] are all things made.”  The medium of speech in which we form words was not invented by us, it has been given to us by divine initiative in a moment when our capacity to speak was activated by our hearing God speak to us as the “Great all-giver.”^[xxxix]  “And God said to them… (Genesis 1:28).” 

            Hearing the word of God is man’s highest calling.  Responding by being obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching revealed in the sacred writings is our true duty and only source of real joy.   All of reality within and without is our reading material to this one perfect end.  Reality gives counsel, the trees advise, the stones cry out, and the stars stare down at us like enraptured saints, explaining what they know.  All are waiting to be rightly interpreted, intrinsic to their being is the knowledge that they shall be rightly read. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God.  For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.  For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now (Romans 8:19-22).   “O ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky; but can ye not discern the signs of the times (Matthew 16:3)?”  The two should never be siphoned apart as if sending mixed signals.  History, prophecy and its fulfillment as well as providential conditioning work as an orchestra of reality to perform as they have been composed.  What is impossible is for any member of this symphony to strike a miss-played note or take up an unexpected motif.  “I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out (Luke 19:40).”  It is not impossible for stones to cry out.  What is impossible is that there would have been no crowd to greet the Lord as He entered Jerusalem.  What we believe is possible determines the world we talk about, but does not govern the world in which we live.

            The same method and the same source is the only means by which .~ can learn about myself.  This draws me into an even more intimate ring of reading.  .~ discover who .~ am before God only be understanding myself in relation to Him and my neighbor. 

            We can take apart completely to distinguish the pieces of whatever signs we examine, claiming possession of knowledge about the things we handle as wages for our work to our own advantage.  Nevertheless, all things join together to say the same thing but in infinite fittings of rich variety, so that no matter our motive or method to analyze them they obediently arrange themselves to say the one necessary thing — the only thing they know, the only thing they have been given to say.  We are literally called to play our part in the drama God has set out in this world within the reading hall of creation on cue (quando, when & qaualis, in what manner) as He directs the signals for our picking up the story of salvation as we receive it as timed in ordained measure and relation attuned to our unique reckoning at getting the meaning of it.  Each of us is wrapped and saturated in the message because the Speaker is actually not far from any of us, His word is near us, in our mouth and in our heart and the voice of faith has gone out to all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world.^[xl]    The great mystery of man is that although made literate to read reality he cannot understand it.  “How can I, unless someone guides me (Acts 8:31)?^[xli]

            Hamann fought a two-front war against the conflicting claims to all knowledge — of the Church on the right and of science on the left.  He condemned any system, centralization, monism as authoritarian.  When speaking of Descartes’ cogito ergo sum he said, it is all very well about the cogito, but what about the “noble sum?”  Hamann stands at the ramparts to protect the human soul from the siege machines of quantification marshaled by ideals of reason or engineered by dictates of dogma.^[xlii]  He battles in the name of divine quality against the tapes and types of scientific data as the measure of the good, the beautiful and the true.  The society of convenience depends upon tools designed by sins of presumption, he refused to use them.  He fought a battle against applying God’s word to our agenda, to ply God’s word, to bend it or submit it to the work we choose as we wield it as a tool in the line of business we call church life, academic life, political life, socio-economic life or whatever other life subject to the confinements of quantitative generalization.  He rejected imprisoning social and personal life to scientific principles of organization, as if the Enlightenment celebrated calculations of satisfaction between human beings could be reckoned by reducing our lives to a common standard of universal measurement based upon a universal lexicon of concepts, which graph human happiness while factoring out enthusiasm.  He rejected quantification based upon alleged verification of numerical hypotheses and any planning of people’s lives as a result of this boasted expertise, whether for individuals or for groups.  He rejected physics and biology in their youth, he would have hated them in their rebellious adolescence.  He hated the social sciences with their moral categories and economic classes cutting human life up into objects of criticism and control, making being made in the image of God a variable to be modified with programmatic precision.  He was a fool.  He died to the end comforting others, little comforted himself by those who loved him and tried to help him with the terrible burden of protecting life he felt obligated to bear.

^[ii] Johann Georg Hamann, quoted by Sven-Aage Jorgensen in his commentary of Hamann’s Aesthetica in nuce, footnote seventeen in Johann Georg Hamanns Briefwechsel (Stuttgart, FRG: Philip Reclam, 1968, originally 1762), pp. 86, 88 with mike mcduffee liable for the translation.

^[iii] J. Haldane, “Reason, Truth and Sacred History,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, 68 (1994), p. 183.

^[iv]  Gordon Graham, The Shape of the Past (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 2.

^[v] Gordon Graham, The Shape of the Past, p. 2.

^[vi] Colin Brown, Christianity & Western Thought, A History of Philosophers, Ideas & Movements From the Ancient World to the Age of Enlightenment, vol. 1, (Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 1990). 

^[vii] Ibid., p. 10.

^[viii] Ibid., pp. 309-330.

^[ix] ad/to + orare/to speak. 

^[x] Ibid.

^[xi] Undoubtedly an example of a violation of some particular ordinance of the academic code.  Nonetheless, the quote is primarily a statement made by A. MacIntyre from Three Rival Versions of Moral Inquiry (London: Gerald Duckworth, 1990), p. 82 as quoted by Gordon Graham in his The Shape of the Past (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 193 with my own alterations in brackets. 

^[xii] Gordon Graham, The Shape of the Past, p. 194. 

^[xiii] Gordon Graham, The Shape of the Past, p. 195.

^[xiv] (Grand Rapids, Michigan/Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2002), p. 59. 

^[xv] Isaiah 44:14-17; 1 John 5:21.  

^[xvi] The Story of Christian Theology, Twenty Centuries of Tradition & Reform (Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 1999), p. 540 and p. 11 respectively.

^[xvii] R. C. Sproul, The Consequences of Ideas (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway Books, 2000), 117.

^[xviii] The subtitle to Sproul’s book. 

^[xix] I have selected these texts to make visible the problem of prejudicial redaction because we use them as assigned texts for courses taught out of the Theology Department at Moody Bible Institute, Chicago, Illinois.  Alarming to me is that Sproul would have us adore Aristotle in the name of Jesus as proposed by Thomas Aquinas.  According to Sproul we have been waiting for a philosopher-messiah ever since Aquinas has been dethroned.  Praise God the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fall down before the Lamb with the prayers of the saints in their hands and not their treatises on metaphysics. 

^[xx] Beginning always devoid of the Spirit but under His conviction in the subjunctive mood, “Oh, if this could be true, that it would last long enough for me to lean on, how I wish I could be sure.”  The God that is Amen gives to the outsider without gifts the gift of His word to relieve him of his subjunctive sigh and turn it into the imperative of His love. 

^[xxi] Joli Jensen, Redeeming Modernity, Contradictions in Media Criticism, (Newbury Park, London, New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1990), p. 200.

^[xxii] Panneberg has theologically reasoned well through this dimension of historical knowledge.

^[xxiii] Robert Darnton, George Washington’s False Teeth (New York/London: W. W. Norton & Co., 2003), p. xiii.  This is the comment of an excellent historian, one who handles the past with great creativity and sensitivity and is able to tease from it knowledge that others had not imagined as being accessible.  Having said that, his comment strikes me as corresponding to a mentality that might have prevailed among the elite of imperial Rome when fulfilling their civil religious duties, more mere gesture than sincere oblation.  So this is how we become gods?  So this is why we write professional history?   Children of Lot, flee Romathens!

^[xxiv] From the title of a lovely insightful essay on American culture by George W. S. Trow, Within the Context of No Context (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1980).

^[xxv] Part of caption to a map located inside the back cover to Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy’s Out of Revolution, Autobiography of Western Man (Norwich, VT: Argo Books, 1969).

^[xxvi] A cumbersome term we use to avoid using one that once thrilled but now embarrasses us, our soul.

^[xxvii] Isaiah Berlin, The Magus of the North, p. 75.

^[xxviii] A word out of fashion, in the plural either organums or organna, from the Latin organum meaning tool or implement or engine to do work.  An organon is a system of principles for use in acquiring knowledge, usually applied if at all and to our loss, to philosophical or scientific inquiry.  The organonoic way of life is submission, devotion and learning through the disciplines of studying the Scriptures and exercising  prayer before God. 

^[xxix] Hamann quoted by Berlin, The Magus of the North, p. 79. 

^[xxx] Critique of Pure Reason (1781) and Metacritique of the Purity of Reason.

^[xxxi] The phrase is from John Milbank’s work, Theology & Social Theory, Beyond Secular Reason (Oxford UK & Cambridge USA: Blackwell, 1993), p. 4.  This entire paragraph is based upon Milbank’s analysis of Hamann and Herder, pp. 148-153.

^[xxxii] John Milbank, Theology & Social Theory, Beyond Secular Reason, p. 151.

^[xxxiii] John Milbank, Theology & Social Theory, Beyond Secular Reason, p. 151.

^[xxxiv] John Milbank, Theology & Social Theory, Beyond Secular Reason, p. 78.

^[xxxv] John Milbank, Theology & Social Theory, Beyond Secular Reason, pp. 63-64.

^[xxxvi] Immanuel Kant quoted by Wilhelm Weischedel, Der Gott der Philosophen, Band 1, (Nordlingen, Germany: dtv wissenschaft, 1971), p. 193.  Weischedel edited Kant’s work in six volumes (Frankfurt a.M./Darmstadt, 1957).  My translation.

^[xxxvii] Immanuel Kant quoted by Wilhelm Weischedel, Der Gott der Philosophen, p. 192.

^[xxxviii] Immanuel Kant quoted by Wilhelm Weischedel, Der Gott der Philosophen, p. 193.

^[xxxix] Of course we can coin a phrase, and certainly distort a meaning; but only according to its kind.  Biblical “evolution” does not relate only to creatures of air, land and sea after their own kind; the same forces of life are at work in the languages God interjected into history at the Tower of Babel. 

^[xl] Hamann said we are free to take part or resign from it and perish, according to Berlin he rejected determinism as a scientific fiction.  See The Magus of the North, p. 85.  Hamann’s speculation that man began with mere sensations and images to first speak in song and poetry followed by prose makes sense if we remember God first encountered us through the theophanous display He aesthetically judged most appropriate for our being living faith in His presence.  This precedence resonates with His having made us in His image, thus serving God’s pleasure to speak to us (Genesis 1:27-31).  We might give impetus for reflecting further on this encounter as an exercise in edification by asking, “When did we begin drinking water?”  The question draws our exchange back to the second day of creation (Genesis 1:6-8), the only one about which God did not have it written that He saw what He had done was good. 

^[xli] Note the diligence of an honorable man.  The Ethiopian had traveled to Jerusalem to worship.  Returning to Ethiopia he busied himself reading the Scriptures.  He answers honestly the question posed him, “Do you understand what your are reading?”  He invites Philip to come up and sit with him.  He asks Philip a good question which allows the evangelist to work from the text to tell him the good news about Jesus.

^[xlii] I concede I have much more learning to do that I may become more familiar with and understand this flank of his campaign.  What is the serviceable thing to do for a man who confesses a falsehood?  How do I promote the good of eternal life in his life?  Torture?  Fine or Imprisonment?  Censorship?  Of course not!  How asinine such actions strike us now matches just how normative they once were to earlier generations.  Islamist supremacists today work to recidivise this torturous brutality.   We may well have temporarily exchanged less violent evils for these, but the coins in the trade remain convertible.

Time Is Not on My Side (And It’s Not on Your Side Either)

 …He has put eternity into man’s mind, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.  –Ecclesiastes 3:11.

 But it shall be one day which shall be known to the Lord, not day, nor night; but it shall come to pass that, at evening time, it shall be light (Zechariah 14:7)

 As Ananias conceived a lie in his heart for selfish gain, as a body is lay in a tomb, as Jesus set forth by parable the teaching concerning the Kingdom of God; so too did the Father appoint, bow, commit, make, ordain, purpose, put, sink the times and seasons in His own power for His serving His desire (Acts 1:7). 

We learn to tell ourselves by way of a prevailing research tradition[i] between paradigm shifts[ii] that the universe is approximately 20 billion years old.  In service to the function of science there is no harm in saying that.  Science as a kind of work operates by a set of conjectures that although impossible to prove remain profitable for allowing us to do the kind of work we want to do.  This work done furthermore, allows other kinds of work to be done, which we also find worthwhile because it gives us things and tools that we like to own and use.   It is a risky but exciting venture to subject the universe to a stopwatch of our own design.  There is no harm in wanting to measure the passing of cosmic finitude as if marking a single unchanging stream of time passing by our front porch.  But the time recorded should be held as makeshift, announced with an absence of confidence rather than an absence of fear.

The nature of God’s time is tough to grasp.  “Relativistic science has shown that time can no longer be considered a smooth, unchanging stream flowing in one direction.”[iii]  It appears to be well accepted that time changes its timing with speed.  Time slows down as speed increases.   The relativity of time, indeed its possible volatility as we are now learning,[iv] compels caution in stating with certainty the age of the universe, or even over what idea of the universe we imagine while making a problem of its age.  For example, at present astronomers and physicists are grappling with the notion of the “Big Rip,” which “is only one of a constellation of doomsday possibilities resulting from the discovery by two teams of astronomers six years ago that a mysterious force called dark energy seems to be wrenching the universe apart.”  Cosmologists are trying to figure out what accounts for the fact that galaxies “started speeding up about five billion years ago.”  Dark energy when first proposed was discounted as too exotic or simply wrong-headed.  “‘In five years we’ve gone from saying it looks like a mistake to something that everyone is claiming evidence for,’ said Dr. Robert Kirshner of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, who was part of the original discovery.”  Negative pressure, antigravitational force, phantom energy, negative kinetic energy conspire to present a universe that “violates physicists’ intuitions about how the universe should behave.” A “chunk of [phantom energy] could prop open wormholes in space and time—and thus create time machines.”  Wacky things must be taken seriously; our paradox-free comfort zone might well be compromised.  Dr. Kirshner explains, “We’re in trouble; the way out is going to be new imaginative things.  It might be our ideas are not wild enough, they don’t question fundamentals enough.”  As these seismic hunches are worked out on the cosmic level we should remind ourselves that on the subject of home earth age, the present orthodox acceptance of the “twenty-fold extension of our ideas of the length of geological time” only became so “since 1931.”[v]

Given the current state of this work and the way we are taught to talk about it, we should take caution in how we voice our differences as Christians.  The notion that phenomena may appear differently than what we might intuitively expect should not disturb us or prompt us to presume things must be as we insist.  It would be best to stop accusing those of us who think of the age of the earth in terms of millennia rather than millions of years as being out of step with those things that we can take in and come to know as beyond challenge.  We do not make God out to be a trickster or a liar.  God harbors no desire to deceive but wants to show to the heirs of the promise the unchangeableness of His purpose (Hebrews 6:16), and it is impossible for God to lie (Hebrews 6:18).  To lie would mean to declare a state of things relative to time that does not exist.  God declares only what is, no matter how things might look from our present perch.[vi]   On the other hand, if Christians who confess the Scriptures as the authoritative word of God nonetheless conclude that the Ancient of Days made the earth over a period of millions of years rather than during a short near-week burst of creativity, then those of us who cannot in good conscience affirm this should seek to learn how such a view preserves the essentials of the faith before we find fault with it.  We need to learn from them how they read the Scriptures with integrity to reach their conclusions from within an orthodox framework.  Neither camp of commitment on this issue should seek to govern or condemn the other, rather both should rely upon the Lord to build us up and refine us together.

Our idea of time is that it is the created sphere over which God rules.  But we experience nothing like this.  We live in multiple times as much as we are part of multiple other times about which we are unaware.  In all of them He is in our midst as the One who is alone One.  Through this multifaceted divine presence He arranges the redemptive fulfillment He desires to share with others.  The Arranger of these situations is also the Master of timing.  He alone makes sure that the time is fulfilled (Mark 1:15) precisely at the same moment when “the fullness of time” arrives (Galatians 4:4) to give a new time its beginning.   Timing is the power of God, which is manifested throughout moments of human drama by the power of prophecy converging with the power of its fulfillment to create new action toward the consummation of all human life for worlds to come without end.   God determines the times concerning all men that together measure the relation of prophecy to reality, the carrying out of the mystery of God in history until the saints come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.  Our source of knowledge for the Lord’s timing of this growth, which we may call redemptive history, is solely the Scriptures.  Scripture tells the story of the one time we may call, “Salvation is from the Lord.” (Jonah 2:9)

It is a scary and humbling experience to realize that in the world of life the most essential affairs at work within and among us cannot be found to be necessarily true by virtue of the meaning given them by the scientific discourse of the day.   Apart from reliance upon our own testimony to the truth about these things that we give to one another according to the Scriptures, the claims of science remain irrelevant.  In all matters of faith, life, death and truth our testimony can be true only if it bears witness to what God has said.  We confess God as creator of heaven and earth, thus we confess all facts form one coherent holistic reality.   To declare that all factual statements of knowledge recorded in the Scriptures essentially related to salvation cannot be revised should be understood in light of this confession, that creation was subjected to futility and that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God (Romans 8:20-21). 

Scientists are fallible careerists seeking personal achievements by expanding our knowledge about the world and ourselves.  They rely upon the tools of their trade and the prevailing rules of habit followed in their guild.  They are to be commended for the work they do.  Their findings give us a series of moments of temporary clarity as we rush through the blur of life. In doing so they do their part in satisfying desires they, like other entrepreneurs, in part help to create. They are unable to do more than this.  In comparison to the Bible, their goods and services offer us incomplete and unreliable knowledge when we pause to reflect on the purpose of life.   Once the church erred by unequivocally stating, “Now consider whether in all prudence the Church could encourage giving to Scripture a sense contrary to the holy Fathers and all the Latin and Greek commentators.”[vii]  Thankfully, with the results we call the Reformation, reckless Roman Catholic priests and scholars did just that.  We do not want to err in the same way again, but this time embracing instead as our authority a secular set of “commentators” for our sense of Scripture.  What we can say by faith let us say boldly, if we speak otherwise then may we do so tentatively with humility.  Happy is he who does not condemn himself in what he approves.

Evangelical entanglements over the conflict about lengths of time are symptomatic of our continuing obsession with space at the expense of timing.  We attach ourselves to projects in progress that swell or shrink prophetic time.  We contend that the living of Christian conviction can only be done within that single expanse in which we have taken up our position.  We pressure ourselves and are pressured by others who agree with us that we cannot be content with merely holding our position.  Together we generate the compulsion to press everyone else into the same single expanse.  But we have been shown a still more excellent way.  The alternative we choose—old or young—merely determines through whom we fulfill the law of Christ.  Our choice includes the calling of bearing the burden of those who chose the other alternative, not as one enriching our target environment but with special interest, knowing our welcoming one another is the way by which we bear witness to the truth of the Living Word who lives in us and among us.  It is correctly stressed that character is the moral posture by which we carry ourselves when we are alone before the Lord.  I would only add it is also the posture we present before God when we speak about those with whom we disagree in their nonattendance, while in the company of those with whom we are in agreement. 

To conclude, as it is written, if anyone adds to or takes away from the words of prophecy God shall add to him the plagues He promises shall come or take away his part from the tree of life and from the holy city.  Given this is true, it is prudent for me to reflect on how I choose to handle the time He has made to bring these things to pass.  What will He do with me if I announce their arrival before or after the exact moment of their reaching the fullness of time He has stored up for them, according to the testimony of Jesus, which is the Spirit of prophecy preceding at that perfect rate fixed by the Father alone?  No matter how much time we figure God has made, our calculations should never be based upon the casual dismissal or marginalizing of God’s word.  Our God is Lord over the times, which we call time.  His timing determines the times.  We should not go beyond what is written in our deliberating over this wonderful truth.  At issue is not whether we follow in the footsteps of an Irish bishop or a British scientist.  What is at stake is whether or not we do our best to present ourselves to God as those approved, workers who have no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.  Will we agree with one another about when God created the heavens and the earth?  Unlikely.  Who we become in one another’s eyes owing to our differences we discover by working through this difficult subject should be the person we see and love and not the person we see to judge.  It is for this far weightier thing that each of us shall give an account of himself to God.

[ii]Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd ed. (Chicago: The University of Chicago, 1962, 1970). Kuhn tells us that drills and practice have more to do with the advance of science than the discovery of immutable and general covering laws of nature.  “A new theory is always announced together with applications to some concrete range of natural phenomena; without them it would not be even a candidate for acceptance.  After it has been accepted, those same applications or others accompany the theory into the textbooks from which the future practitioner will learn his trade.  They are not there merely as embroidery or even as documentation.  On the contrary, the process of learning a theory depends upon the study of applications, including practice problem-solving both with a pencil and paper and with instruments in the laboratory.” (p. 47).  M. S. Watson, once Jodrell Professor of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy, University College, London gives us an excellent example of what Kuhn is talking about.  Watson tells us, “Paleontological procedure is as follows:  it begins with the collection of the fossils remains…from beds of rock whose relative ages can be established, fundamentally by superposition, but in practice largely (and in the case of rocks in disconnected areas entirely) by the use of ‘characteristic fossils.’”  Now Watson goes on to say that “species have only a limited persistence in time” and that “on this limitation rests the power of recognizing [according to colleagues whom Watson quotes],  ‘strata by the organized fossils which they contain.’”   Watson goes on to say, “Probably the most perfect of such evolutionary series amongst invertebrates is that of Micraster in the English Chalk.”  However true to reality this one series might be Watson nonetheless concedes, “Evolutionary series comparable in their apparent reliability with that of Micraster are exceedingly rare…” Watson admits, “It is therefore exceedingly difficult to discover material which can throw light on the problem of the evolution of species in a convincing manner.  Most of the casual suggestions that B is the descendant of A cannot be established on evidence which is at all adequate.”  Finding “true evolutionary series illustrating the origin of species of mammals,” according to Watson, includes “chief difficulties [which] arise from the rarity of cases in which we have a series of successive forms representing the same ecological niche.”  Experts on evolution learn their trade by studying the classical case of horses.  As Kuhn says this is the drill and the practice by which they learn their theory.  Even with the difficulties of this series Watson still maintains “the fact that the horse series lacks specific detail is associated with a very much greater reliability of the fundamental facts of horse evolution than exists in the case of most series which are supposed to show the origin of one species from another.”  The truthfulness of these findings aside, the procedure by which the knowledge is learned is earmarked more by habit than by discovery.  See “The Evidence Afforded by Fossil Vertebrates on the Nature of Evolution” in Genetics, Paleontology and Evolution, pp. 45-48.

[iii] James Reid, God, the Atom and the Universe (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, Contemporary Evangelical Perspectives, 1968), p. 60.

[iv] See Dennis Overbye, “From Space, a New View of Dooms Day,” The New York Times, February 17, 2004.   Evidently about 70 percent of the universe is made up of dark energy, scheduled to destroy the universe about “30 billion years from now,” according to Hubble researchers.  Scientists have yet to figure out if this energy is unchanging and of a fixed potency (Einstein’s cosmological constant), or if it works in a variable way yet unfathomed.  The Space Telescope Science Institute news release on the matter tells us that beyond these two dominating ways of thinking about this, there are also “many more exotic possibilities.”   It is an odd comfort to be taught the universe is so bizarre and mysterious, but then be told by the same folks it will not come to an end for another 30 billion years.  I have been endeared to people during my few years of life who by all outward appearance were healthy and who nonetheless died suddenly or were killed owing to an unknown pathology or because of a fluke accident.  Are we to be commended for our blind faith manifested by our steady certainty that no such variables work at the cosmic level of life?  The Space Telescope Science Institute story “New Clues About The Nature of Dark Energy…” read from http://www.sciencedaily.com/print.php?url=/releases/2004/02/040223074521.htm.

[v] Adolph Knopf, “Time in Earth History,” in Genetics, Paleontology and Evolution, ed. by Glenn L. Jepsen, George Gaylord Simpson and Ernst Mayr (New York: Atheneum, 1962), p. 1.

[vi] I am greatly indebted to a lovely book titled Rufous Redtail by Helen Garrett (N.Y.: The Viking Press, 1947).  This make-believe story helped me realize how little I ever will know and how much I should prize this realization.   

[vii] “Letter on Galileo’s Theories” by Cardinal Robert Bellarmine  written April 12, 1615, read from Modern History Sourcebook, http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1615bellarmine-letter.html.  Roberto Bellarmino (1542((1542-1621) is regarded as one of the leading defenders of papal authority and Roman Catholic teaching of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.