Good Friday?
Dennis D. Frey, Th.D.

The day of Jesus crucifixion, is known to the world as “Good Friday.”  As a boy, I misunderstood Good Friday thinking that it referred to the Last Supper.  I suppose this was because in my child's mind there could be nothing “good” about the day they killed Jesus.

Of course, I could not fully understand the great goodness of that day or the fact that no one had actually “killed” Jesus in the normal sense of that word.  Today, I appreciate the wonder of Jesus having willingly laid down His life as opposed to it having been “taken” from Him (John 10:18).  It was this willingness to give Himself that makes the day of His crucifixion “Good” Friday.

Nevertheless, I cannot to this day think too deeply about Calvary without being overtaken with a profound sense of sorrow.  I have visited the church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem which is supposed to cover both the place of His crucifixion and burial, and even with hundreds in attendance at any time, there is a hushed and reverent tone.  The nearly 2,000 years since that event have only served to deepen such reverence.

Something good happened at Golgotha that day, and I do not pretend to fully understand even the smallest facet of it.  Nevertheless, I wholly accept the “fact” of it, and unreservedly embrace it within the depth of my being.  In the light of the Cross, I can do no other thing!  "Here, Lord I give myself away, tis all that I can do."

Dr. Dennis D. Frey is President of MISD

Exegesis of Philippians 1:21-24
Roderick Logan, M.A.C.S.

The Philippian letter was written by the Apostle Paul probably between 55-61 AD while in prison. Brevard Childs adds it was “originally separate literary entities combined into a single composition”. Some find it troubling when they discover this book and others in the canon have undergone such a redaction over the centuries. However, there is much to remain confident about and be resolved in regards to the integrity of Holy Scripture.

Timothy is included in the salutation as one of Yeshua’s volunteer slaves. A noteworthy play on words since Paul is currently a prisoner in Rome; chained to a guard. He recounts his prayers for the people in Philippi and their faithful endurance; making mention of their love and righteous fruit. Those trusting in Yeshua have found the courage to speak his Word, and Paul is encouraged. He touches on the mix breed of preachers advancing their cause outside having both honest and dishonest intentions. Paul comments, whatever their motivations Yeshua’s message is still being preached.

Philippi historically was a small, but prominent city both during the Greek and Roman periods. It was known for it’s gold mines. Geographically it is situated on Greece’s north eastern coastline on the Aegean Sea at the foot of Mt. Orbelos. The city is named after it’s founder Philip II (356BC) with a population believed to be around 2000. While it was more prominent during the time of Alexander’s conquests, it remained a wealthy center of commerce throughout most of the Roman empire.

Paul’s letter to the Philippians is a descriptive prose about himself, his imprisonment, his struggle with his lot in life, and how he eventually comes to terms with Yeshua’s call. This theme is summarized in the second chapter. It is about faithfully answering the call of Yeshua to serve others sacrificially. The letter commends the Philippians for doing just that, and Paul’s life serves as an illustration of such a journey. It is against this backdrop that Paul’s initial statement is examined.

“For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me. Yet which I shall choose I cannot tell. I am hard pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better. But to remain in the flesh is more necessary on your account” (Philippians 1:21-24 ESV).

Leonard Nimoy, playing Mr. Spock, in the famed television series Star Trek was well known for his mantra, “live long and prosper”. This and his accompanying hand gesture was a reflection of Nimoy’s Jewish heritage. In fact, it summarizes the Hebraic viewpoint of life into two major points. (1) YHWH is the source of all life; the authority over life and death. (2) Prosperity is not measured in material gain, but in the sustaining of life (Deuteronomy 5:16, 33; 6:3, 18; Ephesians 6:3).

Paul, no doubt, recalled Solomon’s words, “But he who is joined with all the living has hope, for a living dog is better than a dead lion” (Ecclesiastes 9:4 ESV); as well as, “long life is in her (wisdom) right hand...” (Proverbs 3:16 ESV). The law and the prophets speak of life as being innately good (Job 2:4). Life is like a journey and it is the experience of the journey that validates life. It is so much more than the mere animation of the physical body or the vitality of it’s cognitive processes.

Paul, unlike the Greek culture which surrounded him, viewed life holistically. He does not speak of the tripartite man as having a body, mind, and soul; existing as three distinctives. While he uses the zoe (Greek; denoting the physical vitality of organic beings), he does so from a Hebraic worldview. Other Greek words like bios, psyche, and pnuema serve to illustrate how Hellenism classified the living; each segment has its own little box in which it is labeled and contained. Not so with Paul. He understands life to be the nephesh haya (Genesis 2:7); the unified whole living being which has an internal and external expression. There is a body (external expression) and there is a heart (internal expression); but one cannot be examined or understood apart from the other. The quality of life is determined by the unity - oneness - of the two (body and heart) functioning as one. Just as the giver of life is One (Deuteronomy 6:4-7); so Paul, as YHWH’s regent, is seeking to be one. He treasures this concept of life and he values his own personal life. As well, he is defined by his effort to impart life to others (Proverbs 18:21). Critical to understanding Paul is the value he puts on life.

As one of the authors of the Messianic writings, Paul clarifies his relationship to YHWH by asserting Yeshua HaMashiac and the concept of life are synonymous. The redactory work of the King James (KJV) translators in Philippians 1:21 includes the insertion of two verbs and they are shown as italicized in most printings. Neither are found in the original manuscript. As well, the Interlinear Bible transposes the nouns “life” and “death” into prepositional phrases by replacing the definite article with the preposition “to”. The text more correctly reads: “For me the life Messiah, and the death gain” (Interlinear, Philippians 1:21). The translator’s editing is dramatic. The English version is a softening of the text; not so much of what Paul said, but how he said it. In reality Paul is verbally showing the correspondence between life and Messiah, and between death and winning. He is expressing himself with vigor and emotion. This is what verbal “shock and awe” looks like when asterisks, capitalization, bold text, underlines, and red text are not available. Imagine Paul slamming his chained fist rhythmically on the table as he is speaking: FOR ME (bam) LIFE YESHUA (bam) AND (bam) DEATH GAIN (bam).

Th’anatos is the Greek word Paul uses for “death”. It’s Hebrew counterpart in the Septuagint (LXX) is mut (pronounced muth); “a universally used Semitic root for dying and death”, and the Canaanite god of death and the underworld. Paul sees death as the ultimate separation from YHWH and it is due to the sin in the Garden. Death is the subsequent inescapable consequence of rebelling against YHWH’s commandments. It is the destruction of the Creator’s work, especially humanity who was created in his image. The idea “it’s a good day to die” or “he died a good death” is based on Grecian Stoic and Neo-Platonic ideologies. Rabbinic sages would argue life is not elevated to a higher level by one’s attempt to rise above the mortal body

. Not carefully considering Paul’s worldview might lead to misunderstanding his point about death being gain. Remember, Paul is a lover of life because he is a lover of Yeshua. Life is elevated, not by dying and going to some better place, but by obeying YHWH’s instructions and fulfilling his intentions. The “pie in the sky, in the sweet bye and bye” mentality distracts from living life as a fully transformed human being; from functioning as YHWH purposed from the beginning. “In him was life, and the life was the light of men (John 1:4, ESV).”

Paul is not distracted; but he is not ignoring his mortality either. He is a mere man like other men and he is destined to die. In fact, he is under the threat of death at the time he writes this letter from a Roman prison. For Paul there are no heroics in death, not even in self-sacrificial death or martyrdom. Around this time he writes to Timothy and instructs him that it is Yeshua “who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light...” (2 Timothy 1:10 ESV). So how is Paul reckoning his mortality with his high value on life? “The ineluctability of sin and death serves merely to bring out the fact that there is redemption only in Christ”. Paul reckons himself already dead. He is dead - dead to sin - and is only alive because of Yeshua. He has given up living for himself; knowing self-determination leads to self-defeat. He says, “For none of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's. For to this end Christ died and lived again, that he might be Lord both of the dead and of the living” (Romans 14:7-9 ESV). Paul chose to die in Yeshua so he could be resurrected in Yeshua. Once dead he can no longer be threatened with death; life here or life somewhere else, it does not matter. Present or absent from his body, either way he lives and life equals Yeshua.

This Apostle is not struggling with the worries of living or dying. He has come to terms with this issue once and for all. He is focused on his journey and he is engaged. He is experiencing kerdos (gain); he has the “advantage” and he “wins”. Instead of being preoccupied with whether he will live or die, Paul compares his former way to the dawn of his renewed life in Messiah. In chapter three he will later write, “whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ” (Philippians 3:7 ESV). Winning is losing what others deem to be gain. Paul has vicariously placed his life onto Yeshua; he is a volunteer slave without life, rights, or the guilt of sin. In turn, he now lives through the life of Yeshua with all its benefits.

The Hebrew word for flesh, basar, has a homophone which is the word for “publish, preach, or to bring news”. The Creator designed the human flesh - the actual muscular structure - for the purposes of publishing, preaching, and physically bringing his message to others. Paul believes if he remains in his flesh it would be karpos; it would be fruitful. Karpos in the LXX is para. It means “bear fruit, be fruitful, or branch off”. It is the root of the name given by Joseph to his second son, Ephraim; YHWH has made me fruitful in the country of my affliction (Genesis 41:52). Previously it was YHWH who said to Abraham, “I will make you exceedingly fruitful, and I will make you into nations, and kings shall come from you” (Genesis 17:6 ESV). In this context the idea of para is that Yeshua is the one who causes Paul to be fruitful. It is not enough that his created body is so designed to benefit and nourish others, but he must look to and depend on Yeshua to bring it about. A fruit-filled life does not happen by osmosis or sheer presence. Productivity is the consequence resulting from action taken. The ability of the tree to produce a flavorful and nutritious harvest is because YHWH provides the sun, the rain, the wind, and the soil. The tree, although designed to be fruitful, is incapable of bearing apart from the God superintended elements. Likewise, Paul understands his hardwiring and how he has been designed, yet that design must be managed within the context of Yeshua’s purpose and direction.

What is the action which precedes a fruitful season? It is work. Paul uses ergon to describe his labor. The LXX uses ergon for the word melaka (mlak). The Hebrew word for king is malak (mlk) and by adding an alef between the lamed and the kaf the word becomes “messenger”. When a hey is added at the end (mlakh) it becomes the word for work or business. The Hebrew word picture of mlakh is “what comes from the messenger”. The broad view shows this messenger has been dispatched from the king’s royal court. Rabbi Paul is doing exactly what Rabbi Yeshua did: “I have given them the words that you gave me” (John 17:8 ESV). Paul, as the King’s regent, is the designated preacher and now publisher of YHWH’s Word.

Paul is in a quandary and the English text does not quite convey it. It reads, “I am hard pressed...” (Philippians 1:23 ESV). What is the problem? The key word that sets the stage is found at the end of the previous verse, the word “tell”. It is yada in Hebrew. In this particular context it simply means “knowledge” or the ability “to distinguish”.

 Paul’s tension is the fact he is not “in the know”. He is in prison, shackled to a guard, and not able to travel at will. Is he going to die or is he going to live? If he lives, will it be in prison or will he be set free? He does not know. Paul has accepted the idea he might die at the hands of Caesar. In that case, Yeshua will complete all he has entrusted to him (2 Timothy 1:12). Paul is not wrestling with death, but with living; or the state in which he will live. Will he live in prison confined and restricted, or will he be permitted once again to travel and disciple? Will he teach once again in a local synagogue or is he relegated to writing letters in a prison? Remember what Yeshua said: “...Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 19:14 ESV). Children are usually not in the know yet they trust their guardians. Paul is feeling vulnerable just like a child. What will he do?

“I am hard pressed” is synechomai and the LXX uses it for ‘asar. The Hebrew word picture is of a man who has been hooked. It conveys the idea of being held back or restrained. Paul feels he is on the hook. He is discontented with being restrained. He must reconcile his discontentment with the fact Yeshua has allowed his circumstance. If it were up to him he would either be free to travel and preach, or die and be with Yeshua. This constrained lock up is not what he had in mind. Cognitively he knows full well his imprisonment is serving the cause of the kingdom, but emotionally this is a real battle for Paul. There is no denying it, the chains may be Roman, but the continued lock up is YHWH’s doing. Paul’s paradox: he was designed and talented (by God) for more than this, but his situation is marginalizing his expression of that design and talent (also by God). He feels squelched, but he is powerless to change the situation. His desire - epithymia - is a strong emotional plea to depart; to analyo. Paul is “pale with a yearning” to be “loosed”. Analyo is a euphemism for “to die”, and it’s root, lyo, is used to show a “release from prison”.

 Paul wants out. He wants out of prison, out of the shackles, and out from under this restraint. What Paul really wants is to be out from the of limbo.

It is not the uncertainty that is eating at Paul, it is not being able to function at what he believes to be his optimum level. He is not performance based, but he is hard wired for action. He is a prophet in the sense of searching out what is latent, hidden, and obscured by a history of disobedience to YHWH’s commandments. He is hard wired to proclaim, publish, and preach the message entrusted to all nations. This is his life; this is what living is all about. Confined in prison is not what he imagined, but it is the reality of what Yeshua has brought to him. Can he be content? Will he continue to trust in the One who is now restraining him?

Paul’s resolve does come. It does not come easy, but it does come in verse 24; “But to remain in the flesh is more necessary on your account”. Despite his psychological turmoil, he is others focused. The key word is “necessary”. The Greek is anankaios and it means “compelling”. In Hebrew it is used for the word “constraint”; not in the sense of a natural condition, but of divinely imposed affliction.

 Paul responds affirmatively to the call of Yeshua and in turn has restrictions imposed upon him, and it is those restrictions which serve as the framework of that calling.

Here is YHWH’s definition of leadership: optimum functionality while under divine constraint. It is just not about responding to the call and accessing the provided resources, but it is continually seeking Yeshua’s assessment and trusting him to bring about the intended results. Consider these persons and their imposed constraints: Joseph living as a slave in a foreign land; Moses arguing at the burning bush over his inabilities; Esther finding courage under the threat of death; and Nehemiah fighting enemies with one hand and building walls with the other. Much different from the leadership models of the modern church where so many aspire to be up front. Stage performers who seek to be seen, rather than to voluntarily serve others. What kind of person does it take to be a leader in Yeshua’s kingdom? Is there a need for such a leader today or have we learned how to manage getting off the hooks? How do surveys, market shares, demographic profiles, and capital campaigns encourage men and women to be content with what they have been granted, and willing to sacrifice whatever the situation?

Mr. Logan is a minister and graduate of MISD

Sarah – A Life of Discontent
Arthur "Skip" Moen, Ph.D.

“God has made a joke of me”  (Genesis 21:6).

I don’t think we know the people of the Bible very well.  We are the victims of years of watered-down teaching.  The stories of the lives of our spiritual ancestors have been “sanctified”.  We know the triumphs of their faith, but we have little appreciation for the times of humility, disobedience and failure.  Of course, there are notable exceptions.  We have heard of David’s adultery and Samson’s seduction.  But most of the time, our attention is focused on the heroic acts, even if they come about as a result of sin.

This myopia damages our identification with these people.  We see them as something special, living beyond our meager spiritual capabilities.  But if we really look at the stories of their lives, we will discover something amazing.  The Bible never glosses over the failures of people.  It never avoids describing their disobedience.  It never paints them as anything but completely human.  There is a good reason for this.  The Bible is not a book about past spiritual heroes.  It is a book about God’s faithfulness to His promises in spite of the human beings whom He chose as the messengers of His grace.  The Bible is God’s story, not ours.  So, there is very little room for hero worship, saints on pedestals or spiritual supermen.  The story of Sarah is a perfect example.

We know very little about Sarai, the wife of Abram.  When the story opens, we are only told that she was married to Abram and accompanied him when he left home to follow God’s call.  As the story unfolds, we discover that she is the half sister of Abram, but other than that, we know nothing of her lineage.  However, we soon find out quite a bit about her temperament.

Marriage to Abram was not exactly the epitome of bliss.  Sarai dutifully obeys Abram as he determines to leave behind family and possessions, but she soon discovers that Abram is not quite as protective of her position as most wives would like.  After a journey from Haran to Negeb, they settle into a life of nomadic existence.  Since Abram travels with his nephew and all their possessions, we can be fairly certain that life for Sarai was probably a routine Bedouin existence.  The first sign of marital discontent comes after Abram decides to do the commonsense thing in the face of a famine.  We find the story in Genesis 12:10-20. 

Abram is called by Yahweh to go to a place Yahweh will show him.  Yahweh promises that He will make Abram a great nation, that Abram will be famous and that anyone abusing Abram will fall under Yahweh’s curse (Genesis 12:1-3).  This promise is not conditional.  It is comprehensive in its scope.  It does not depend on Abram’s circumstances or obedience.  It is God’s doing.  But soon after Abram responds to this call and accepts the promise, he runs into a challenging situation.  The land is not able to provide food for his group.  So, he determines to take matters into his own hands and do the commonsense thing – go to Egypt. After all, what good is a promise from God if Abram dies from starvation.  Apparently, Abram did not consider the fact that Yahweh’s promise implied provision of life in spite of circumstances.  Abram does the commonsense thing.  What we discover is that usually the commonsense thing leads us into problems.  Abram’s story is no different.

As Abram approaches Egypt, he fears a potential threat.  His wife is beautiful and alluring.  He reasons that if Pharaoh should decide that such a woman is worth having in the harem, Pharaoh may conclude that the only way to have Sarai is to dispose of Abram.  So, Abram propagates a lie – Sarai is not his wife but his sister.  This lie enables Pharaoh to enjoy sexual intimacy with Sarai without any risk to Abram.  In fact, Abram is rewarded for arranging Sarai availability.  Everyone benefits – except Sarai.  Pharaoh gets what he wants – a new woman in bed.  Abram gets what he wants – protection and financial gain.  But all of this is at the expense of Sarai who is asked to provide sexual intimacy to Pharaoh under the guise that she is a free woman.

It is important to note that this deception not only abuses Sarai but also abuses God.  While the commandant “Thou shall not commit adultery” has not been given, Abram had every reason to believe that God’s protection certainly extended to his temporary domicile in Egypt.  In fact, Abram summarily ignored God’s direct promise when he decided to take the journey to Egypt.  He overturned God’s direction – “to a land that I will show you”, in favor of his own choice based on his reasonable assessment of the situation.  As it turned out, it was the beginning of a long and difficult marital disaster.

This was a disaster of Abram’s making.  Abram put an impossible moral dilemma on Sarai’s shoulders: lie for me or I might be killed – sleep with Pharaoh and pretend that you are my sister or you might lose your husband and become Pharaoh’s property anyway.  So, Sarai went along with the deception.  Both men seemed content with the arrangement.  But God was not so pleased.  The entire episode results in plagues and distress for Pharaoh.  Once Pharaoh perceives that God is inflicting punishment on him, he takes steps to expose the lie and then to expel Abram and his entire following.  Nothing is mentioned about Sarai’s feelings regarding this event, but it takes little imagination to see that the bond between husband and wife was traumatically damaged.  Sarai could no longer trust Abram as her protector.  Her life of discontent began with her husband’s disobedience. 

Two intervening stories occur before we return to the saga of Sarai.  In the first interlude, Abram takes a very different posture with his nephew Lot.  He permits Lot’s choice over a dispute about grazing rights, in spite of the fact that custom favored Abram’s priority rights.  Lot heads in the direction of Sodom, a choice that eventually leads him to destruction and humiliation.  In the second interlude, Abram rescues Lot from captivity and returns a hero, only to acknowledge God’s sovereignty in an encounter with Melchidezek.  It appears that Abram has had a change of heart.  Immediately following these two events, God visits Abram and establishes the covenant with Abram, a covenant that becomes the foundation of God’s interaction with His elect race (Genesis 15).  Abram’s destiny is guaranteed by direct divine proclamation.

But Abram’s turmoil is not finished.  Sarai returns to the storyline.  And now we see a different kind of woman.  Sarai is no longer in the background, dutifully fulfilling the requests of her husband, even if those requests put her in the bed of another man.  This time Sarai makes her will very clear.  Having lost faith in Abram’s commitment to her, she feels no constraint in front of him.  She decides that if life is going to give her what she wants, she must take charge.  Sarai knows that God has promised a long line of descendents who will be powerful, influential and very important.  She is more than anxious to see this promised fulfilled.  But she has no children.  One day she conceives a plan to produce the required offspring even if it means using another woman.

Sarai says to Abram, “Look, Yahweh has restrained me from bearing children”.  Sarai’s discontent is laid at the feet of God.  She considers it God’s fault that she is unhappy with this unfruitful marriage.  He has prevented her from conceiving, so she plans another conception to circumvent this problem.  Sarai is following the footsteps of her husband.  He protected his self-interest by offering her as sexual exchange to Pharaoh.  Now she will achieve her self-interest by offering her maidservant as sexual barter for children.  She instructs Abram to have intercourse with Hagar.  The text says that Abram “listened to the voice of Sarai”.  This phrase is reminiscent of the same wording in the Garden when Eve listened to the voice of the serpent.  It is pure unadulterated temptation, coming from the mouth of one who was forced to commit adultery.  Perhaps Sarai reasoned that if her husband willingly sent her into sexual union with another man, he was not the sort of man who would stand up for fidelity when she pushed him into the bed of another woman.  No matter what the psychological reasoning, Abram follows in the footsteps of Adam.  He concurs that this fruit (Hagar) is pleasing to the eye and good for consumption.  He willingly impregnates Hagar.  The woman who was abused now becomes the abuser.  The man who perpetrated the abuse is now used to foster another abuse.  A family pattern emerges.  Sex is used to accomplish selfish ends.

We must notice that in spite of God’s sacred covenant with Abram, a covenant that Sarai surely knew, Abram does not protest this arrangement.  He does not insist that obedience outweighs desire and practical commonsense.  Sarai wants a child.  Abram wants a child.  The arrangement seems logical – and desirable.  The text indicates Abram did more than ploddingly acquiesce.  He engages himself (literally and figuratively) in this plan.  Once again, human beings reason that sex will solve their problems.  But it never does.

Unfortunately, Sarai’s attempt to usurp God’s plan has the same consequences as Eve’s enticement.  Her life becomes much worse.  Instead of fulfilling her desires for happiness, Hagar’s pregnancy brings humiliation, envy and anger.  Now she must live with a servant whose body shows everyone her husband’s lack of moral integrity.  We see her anger in her confrontation with Abram – “Look at the violence you have done to me!  It’s your fault”.  Sarai tells Abram that she has lost face in this arrangement.  Hagar now thinks herself better than Sarai because she carried Abram’s child.  Her plan has backfired.  Instead of a life of fulfilled promise, she has inherited as life of shame.  No one can doubt Abram’s potency.  And now it is public knowledge that Sarai is infertile, a devastating position for a woman who is to be the mother of a great nation.  The secret is out.  Public and private humiliation follows. 

We need to pay close attention to the text here.  Notice that Sarai acknowledges that it was her plan to provide Hagar as a surrogate mother (“I myself gave my maidservant to you”) but that does not relieve her discontent.  Hagar’s pregnancy conceived Sarai’s shame.  Sarai makes it very clear that the situation and its consequences are quite serious.  She says to Abram, “May Yahweh decide between you and me!” 

It’s not obvious what this means.  Peterson translates it “May God decide which of us is right”, but that doesn’t help much.  Right about what?  The context of Sarai’s statement is her complaint about humiliation.  She is angry with Abram.  In her opinion, he has not safeguarded her status.  Abram has let Hagar’s pregnancy affect his emotional attachment.  Sarai sees that Abram is pleased that a child will be born to him even though it is not Sarai’s child.  This is humiliation beyond enduring.  So, she says to her husband, “God will decide if I am right (that I should have been cared for) or if you are right (that you showed favor toward Hagar)”.  Sarai’s obvious implication is that there is no question who should come first – she should – and God will judge Abram for his misplaced devotion.

Once more sexual involvement backfires on the family of Abram.  Abram’s pattern, repeated by Sarai, is now the source of severe stress and deep emotional conflict.  Sarai fares no better as perpetrator of the plan.  She still ends up the victim.  We must notice that the drama that started out about a child has suddenly turned into a soap opera about the misguided plans of the woman.  The child fades completely from the scene.  The real story is about Sarai’s self-identity.  In her mind, even though she got what she wanted, she lost what was important.[1]  She has been disgraced.  The Hebrew word she uses to describe the “violence” done to her is hamas.  This is the only time in the Old Testament that this word describes an action done by a woman.  Sarai has been humiliated by her own gender, and worse, by her own slave.  The humiliation is not about the child; it is about the change in two relationships.  First, her husband is no longer hers alone. And secondly, her status as the mother of the promised progeny is in doubt.  She loses her present and her future.

Sarai appeals to justice.  Actually, she wants revenge.  But Abram refuses it.  After all, it was her plan and it is now his child.  Feeling even more slighted, she says that God will decide, throwing the judgment of Yahweh on Abram’s refusal to act on her wishes.  When Sarai offered Abram sex with Hagar, he was only too happy to comply.  Now that the circumstances have turned against her, Sarai finds that Abram is not so compliant.   Nothing seems to be going her way.

Abram is a man caught in the middle.  Not standing up for God’s promise in the first place has now landed him on ground filled with rage on one side and affiliation on the other.  But Abram knows the power of a woman’s wrath.  So, he takes the easy way out.  “Do what you want with her”, he tells Sarai.  In essence, Abram concedes to another demand from his wife.  If it didn’t turn out right the first time, there is no sense trying to make it right now.  Just let the chips fall where they may.  Sarai can abuse Hagar with his blessing. 

Imagine any contemporary history that wished to portray the lives of the founding family of one of the world’s greatest movements.  Do you suppose that the lack of moral character, the indiscretions, the sexual barter and abuse of others would be included?  Do you think such actions would be the highlights of the story?  Yet, here it is.  The Bible glosses over nothing.  Abram shows the weakest moral fiber, swayed by the ranting of an angry wife.  Sarai displays a woman of fluctuating emotions, a pendulum swinging between manipulation and revenge.  Sarai’s abuse at the hands of her passive husband is now turned toward vengeance.  She knows that the passive Abram will not resist her demands.  

So Sarai inflicts her anger on Hagar.  Hagar flees, determined to run as far as possible from a mistress who is as unpredictable as an evil wind.  But God intervenes, sending Hagar back into the storm.  In fact, Hagar is the only person who shows obedience to God in this entire debacle.  The Angel of the Lord says to Hagar, “Return to your mistress and accept ill treatment from her hand”.  And Hagar complies.  What a testimony to obedience she is.  Unlike the mother and father of the faith, Hagar shows what undeserved suffering at the command of the Lord really means. 

Ishmael is born.  And for thirteen years, God does not visit Abram.  There is a lot said in this silence.  For thirteen years Abram and Sarai must face the consequences of their lack of trust in the promise of God.  For thirteen years they watch a child grow who is a constant reminder of their failure.  And for thirteen years, Hagar serves God by committing herself to submission under a hateful mistress.

Sarai’s next encounter with God reveals another fatal flaw.  God visits Abram and renews His covenant promise.  To mark the occasion, God changes the names of both Abram and Sarai.  Abraham and Sarah now carry God’s name in their new names.  They are known by a new identity – an identity that comes directly from God Himself.  God leaves another permanent mark of His covenant – circumcision.  This mark is private and intimate.  It consecrates the male of the tribe into God’s promise.  It cannot be mistaken or reversed.  Abraham obediently follows God’s command.

Sarah re-enters the story during God’s next encounter with Abraham.   Accompanied by two angels who will soon rescue Lot from the destruction of Sodom, God accepts the hospitality of Abraham and eats a meal near Abraham’s tent.  God tell Abraham that he will return in one year and at that time Sarah will have already had a son.  Sarah has been listening to the conversation, hidden within the tent.  The account (Genesis 18) tells us that when Sarah heard this, she said silently to herself, “Now that I am worn out, shall I experience pleasure even though my husband is old”.[2]  The sense of this statement revolves around sexual pleasure.  It is not only that her disbelief that she will have a child.  This disbelief is contained in the word bala (“worn out”) – a reference to her inability to conceive due to age.  Sarah also says that she doubts she will experience “pleasure”.  Here the word is edna.  This word is directly linked to Eden, the garden of delight, and has strong overtones of sexual pleasure.  Sarah reasons that she is too old to conceive and no longer able to have sexual enjoyment with Abraham.  Interestingly, she associates the word edna with the fact that Abraham is old.  Perhaps Abraham is not so virile either.  Her life has once more failed her.  She sees nothing wonderful in her future.

As Sarah contemplates this in her mind, she laughs about her impossible situation.  God (for who else can hear someone laugh silently) questions her on this disbelief.  Sarah responds with a lie, “I did not laugh”.  Consider how ludicrous her attempt to cover her disbelief really is.  If this stranger can actually hear her thoughts, then it is fairly obvious that he will know when she is not telling the truth.  The lie that she utters is not only disobedient, it is impossibly disrespectful.  In this middle of this dialogue is one of the most powerful verses in Scripture, uttered as a direct result of Sarah’s disbelief.  The visitor says, “Is anything too difficult for Yahweh?”  Given the circumstances surrounding this rhetorical question, we could conclude that a change in perspective about life might be evident in both Abraham and Sarah.  But old patterns die hard.[3]

Abraham’s household journeys to Gerar.  Once again he faces a king who might consider Sarah a prize.  Abraham does not wait to measure the morality of the king.  He retreats to a strategy that worked in the past.  He pawns Sarah off as his sister.  This time God intervenes before there is a sexual liaison. God gets the king’s full attention by announcing in a dream that Sarah is the wife of another man and sleeping with her brings the death sentence on the king.  In this encounter, the king is the only one who appears to have any moral integrity.  He immediately takes action, demanding the truth from Abraham (which he never gets), vindicating Sarah and establishing a weary peace with this foreigner.  While the story focuses on the king and Abraham, we should notice that in this case Sarah is also implicated in the lie.  The king says to God, “Didn’t she herself say ‘He is my brother’”?  Sarah has learned that lying about sexual bonds is an acceptable practice in the household of Abraham.  God’s intervention and the king’s reaction overturn the threat and the deception.  But at a cost.  Both Sarah and Abraham are not to be trusted.

Since Sarah has just received a promise that she will have a son, perhaps she thinks that if she and Abraham cannot produce this child, maybe she and the king can.  There may be more to her comment that she expects no pleasure from old Abraham.  She has given no credence to God’s ability to do whatever He wishes.  God’s intervention prior to sexual union makes it clear that Sarah is to have a child only by Abraham and that the sexual condition of both of these parents has no bearing on the outcome.  [If we jump ahead through the centuries, we will find that sometime during this period Sarah actually comes to the point of believing God’s promise, but this fact is not revealed in the story thus far.]

Our last view of Sarah occurs after the birth of Isaac.  It is notable that the long awaited birth of the heir of the promise occupies only two short verses, barely mentioning Sarah.

But after the circumcision, when the covenant promise to Isaac is complete, Sarah has this to say:

“God has made a joke of me; whoever hears will laugh at me”.

This is not the usual translation.[4]  Most renderings of this verse suggest that Sarah is rejoicing in the birth of Isaac.  But this Hebrew word, sahaq, is used in 17:17 and 18:12-15 in the sense of sarcasm (Abraham in 17 and Sarah in 18 both “laugh” at God’s claim that they will have a child).  Furthermore, the same root word is used in the final story of Sarah when she observes Ishmael “playing” [“mocking”?] Isaac.  Since Sarah’s reaction to Ishmael’s action is anything but joyful, the sense of this word can hardly be one of pleasure. 

There is also a pun here in Hebrew.  The name Isaac comes from the same root word.  So in one sense Sarah is saying that everyone who hears about this incredible tale will “Isaac” at her – will mock the claim that Isaac came from her.

Aside from the etymological data, there is another reason to believe that this word does not express happiness for Sarah.  The reason is found in Sarah’s long history of discontent.  One of the surprising results of discontent is that an attitude of discontent infects life even when life appears to finally give reason for contentment.  Sarah has waited all of her life for this event.  And all of her life she has been abused, victimized and humiliated in her relationship with the man attached to her and to the promise.  She has been unhappy for a very long time, so unhappy that even when God Himself tells her that the life-long desire for a child will come to pass, her inner personality rejects God’s truth.  After all these years of discontent, what could possibly make her believe that her life would be fulfilled?  She rejects the thought that she will once again enjoy sex with the hope of conception.  She sees herself as a worn out set of clothes 

Then the event arrives.  Isaac is born.  But instead of praise for the faithfulness of God, Sarah turns toward her humiliation.  She complains that even in the fulfillment of the promise, her life has not improved.  No one outside the camp is going to believe that this is her son.  She will look like a dotting grandmother, not a proud parent.  People will see the worn out set of clothes she wears as her body and mock her claims to have borne this baby.  Discontentment robs Sarah of joy in God’s triumph.  Her victory is still a defeat.  She is focused on her identity issues rather than God’s comic purposes.[5]

All of this discontentment waits for the right opportunity to show itself.  That moment arrives a few years later.  The final extended story regarding Sarah is the account of the culmination of her long hatred for Hagar.  It comes in Genesis 21.

Sarah observes Ishmael “playing” with Isaac.  The exact sense of this word is difficult to determine.  There is some reason to believe that the word connotes sexual abuse[6] but it could mean something as innocent as showing off or mocking.  Since Sarah is in no mood (for many years) to have her son become the object of any ridicule by the son of a slave, even if it is only the showing off behavior of a teenager, she explodes with wrath.  Notice the carefully chosen language Sarah employs 

“Drive out that slave woman with her son!  No son of this slave woman is going to share the inheritance with my son, with Isaac! 

Observe that Sarah will not refer to either Hagar or Ishmael by name.  She uses nothing but derogatory titles to describe these two human beings.  Put yourself in the camp of Abraham when this occurs.  Sarah storms into the presence of her husband.  Her eyes are wide and fiery.  Her hands are clenched.  Anger seethes from her.

“You!” She points an accusing finger at Abraham.  “Get rid to that slave woman and her son right now.  I won’t tolerate a single minute longer with her in my house.  I can’t stand the sight of her or her wretched offspring.  I’ve made up my mind.  She has to go.  I’m not going to risk any issues about inheritance with Isaac.  Get her out of here!”

The text reveals a hidden motive.  Sarah uses the excuse of the “playing” to press a matter that has been on her mind ever since the birth of Isaac.  It is the issue of inheritance.  No matter what the promise of God, Ishmael is still the first-born son of Abraham.  There is a legal problem.  We can see her consternation over the inheritance issue by noticing a shift in the word used to describe the status of Hagar.  In chapter 16, Hagar is referred to as a “maid” (sipha), but here Sarah uses the term ama.  Hagar’s status has progressed from slave-girl to second wife, even if she is still Sarah’s slave.  This change in status represents a real threat to Sarah because it calls into question the right of inheritance.  Ancient legal codes confirm that the sons of slave women had legal status in the matter of inheritance.  Sarah wants nothing to interfere with the inheritance of Isaac (and consequently, with her own status).  So, she uses this opportunity to rid herself of the problem.

The word she uses for “drive out” is the same word that is used to describe the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden.  This is not a passive or friendly dismissal.  It is a permanent and forceful ejection.  In the environment where Sarah lives, it is as good as a death penalty.  That, of course, is exactly what she has in mind.  Sarah is protecting her son’s interest by insisting that the potential threat be eliminated.

But Abraham is not nearly as compliant this time.  Ishmael is still his son.  Abraham has had at least fourteen years of enjoyment with Ishmael.  The bond is not easily broken.  Abraham resists.  He has been in this situation before.  The last time he gave passive approval of the abuse of Hagar.  But God intervened and Hagar returned from her flight to accept Sarah’s wrath.  Now Sarah will not be appeased.  Abraham knows he will lose Ishmael.  The text tells us that God told Abraham to accept this situation and follow Sarah’s wishes.  With heavy heart, Abraham sends Hagar and Ishmael into the desert.  In it interesting to notice that Hagar does not know that God has promised protection and prosperity to her and to Ishmael.  Apparently, Abraham did not tell her that God would be with her.  She believes quite legitimately that she and her son will die.  Even in his compassion, Abraham omits a significant piece of information that would have offered Hagar hope.

We have reached the end of our stories about Sarah.  The only remaining mention of her is a short account of her death (she is the only woman in the Bible whose age at death is mentioned, a practice that is otherwise exclusively patriarchal).  However, there are two New Testament references that shed light on this woman.  The first is 1 Peter 3:6, a verse that proclaims Sarah an example of submission to a husband.  Peter calls such women “holy women of former ages who hoped in God”.  Here is an insight that is not obvious in the Genesis accounts.  We do not see Sarah portrayed as holy and a woman of hope, but Peter certainly considers her to be both.  This theme is repeated in Hebrews 11:11 – “By faith even Sarah herself received ability to conceive, even beyond the proper time of life, since she considered Him faithful who had promised”.  Here is a different Sarah, a woman who trusted in God’s promise.  Three characteristics emerge about Sarah.  First, she is obedient.  Secondly, she is holy.  And thirdly, she trusts God’ promise. 

We can certainly find the first of these attributes in her relationship to Abraham.  She follows him obediently into the desert to a land God will show them.  She obeys Abraham even when it requires her to submit her body to another man (twice).  In fact, we see a lifetime of obedience punctuated with moment of independent action and demands. 

“Holy” is a bit more difficult.  Peter uses the word hagios, a word that derives its meaning from the context of ritual purity and ceremonial observance.   In Peter’s context, it means “morally upright” or “consecrated”.  The problem is that the stories surrounding Sarah do not seem to fit this condition.  Peter amplifies his description of “holy women” by adding “who hoped in God”.  Here is the connection to Sarah.  Obedience and hope.  Peter is arguing that a wife with a disobedient husband must take a new approach to revealing God’s truth.  She must submit to her husband in a spirit of holiness and hope in God.  In this way, the witness of her character will bring the truth of God’s redemption to bear on her husband.  Peter uses Sarah as his example because she did submit to unjustified suffering at the hand of her husband during a time when he was being disobedient.  On both occasions when Abraham told her to offer sexual relationship with a potential threat, she did so.  The results were disastrous, but that does not discredit the obedience.  In fact, the only way that Pharaoh knew his action was displeasing to God must have come from the mouth of Sarah.  She did not trust her husband’s protection, but she did not stop trusting God’s.  In the midst of a very difficult situation, she still proclaimed the authority of Yahweh (even over Pharaoh).  Perhaps obedience and hope were not so far from her character after all.

Finally, Hebrews tells us that Sarah demonstrated “faith” since she considered God faithful to the promise.  Given our story about her laughter, this may seem hard to reconcile.  The Greek word “faith” in this verse is pistei, a derivative of pistis.  It means, “a firm conviction or belief in the truth”.  In order to understand the example of Sarah, we must see that Hebrews 11:1 focuses our attention on the idea that faith is firm hope in the reality of things not present in observable evidence.  The definite article is absent before the word pistis, indicating that this is the general idea of faith, not necessarily the New Testament particular concept of faith.  So, the author of Hebrews is telling us what characteristics accompany the broadest definition of faith and those are simply, hope in unseen realities. 

In this regard, the author gives Sarah as an example.  First, he makes it clear that Sarah herself exemplified hope in unseen reality.  The inclusion of the pronoun (herself) emphasizes that this woman who previously did not exemplify faith (the story of her laughter) nevertheless came to the place of putting trust in God.  The exact verb is hegeomai, a word that means “to regard, to esteem or to count as”.  She put trust in God in that she regarded God’s promise as truth even when the observable evidence seemed contrary.  In fact, this must have been the case.  Sarah became pregnant.  She must have committed herself to the actions required to achieve pregnancy even though she formally said that she was worn out and that her husband was too old.  She obeyed the implications of her commitment to hope in God’s promise. 

These two New Testament references to Sarah help us see the full picture of this woman.  Sarah was a woman of trials.  She lived with a man who disappointed her trust in serious breeches of fidelity.  She learned to adapt but that adaptation confirmed her to the pattern of abuse rather than release.  Her bitterness brought revenge rather than repentance.  Sarah’s life displayed the results of discontentment.  Even her victorious moment gave her pause for humiliation.  If Sarah shows us anything, she shows us how destructive the disobedience of one spouse can be to the other. 

But this is not the end of Sarah’s story because the story is Sarah is not really about Sarah at all.  It is about God.  Sarah is the instrument of God.  She is the vehicle through whom God fulfills His covenant plans.  If this were not clear enough from the stories, the author of Hebrews presses us to this conclusion when he says, “By faith even Sarah herself received ability to conceive”.  The Greek can be read in the sense that her body divinely received the needed ability to accept the deposited sperm – literally “into the throwing down of sperm”.   This is the Old Testament story of Mary.  A woman who cannot conceive because it is physically impossible for her to become pregnant is empowered by God so that her body becomes fertile.  It is God’s work through her.  In fact, God deliberately waits so that there is no human claim possible.  Sarah’s discontent is directly connected to God’s deliberate intention.  This is the reason that the author of Hebrews makes it clear that “even Sarah herself” finally sees God’s prior restraint is divine deliberation. 

Sarah is vindicated.  But not in the way she hoped.  Her life has shaped her into a woman who cannot see the impossible glory of God’s unexpected surprises.  The story of Sarah is the story of God working in spite of us.  In the end, Sarah can only acknowledge the truth sarcastically, “God has made a joke of me”.  God’s joke is the triumph of His faithfulness regardless of human complaint.  God’s joke is the announcement of El Shaddai – is anything too difficult for me.  God’s joke is verdict that God’s wisdom seems foolishness to us. 

Sarah is the foil of God.[7]  It is Sarah’s life that shows God’s triumph, not Abraham’s.  Abraham is a man on the journey to obedience, a man who must eventually sacrifice his own hopes and dreams for those of His Lord, a man who realizes that there is only one life-giver, El Shaddai.  Abraham is the recipient of life’s object lessons, played out in vivid detail in the lives of his wives and his son.  Abraham is the beneficiary of Sarah’s sacrifice for it is Sarah who throws her life up against the wages of discontent and despair in order that God may show Abraham that life comes from what cannot be done.

In the end, perhaps it is Sarah who truly fulfills the meaning of “wife” from the Hebrew word ezer (Genesis 2:18).  This is a masculine word used to describe a female who is equal (alongside) the male.  Moreover, it is the word used to describe Yahweh’s relationship to His chose people, a word of considerable status.  The meaning behind this word is “to save from danger” and “to deliver from death”.  This is the Sarah we know.  Her obedience, even in infidelity, is a saving sacrifice for Abraham and her acceptance of God’s empowered fertility is a deliverance from the death of Abraham’s line.  Sarah may have been unaware that her life of discontent became the very ground God used to plant a tree of deliverance.

The end of Sarah’s life is almost unnoticed in the text.  But there is one phrase that we should not overlook.  Genesis 23:2 tells us something about Sarah that completes the picture.  “Abraham went in to mourn for Sarah and to weep for her”.  The word for “mourn” is misped.  It is the customary grief shown for the dead and we would expect it here.  But the text adds, “and to weep for her”.  Here is the word baka, a word that shows particularly strong emotions.  Most interestingly, this word has five different senses in the Old Testament from weeping for joy to weeping over distress and sorrow.  But one sense is unique only to the Old Testament.  It is the weeping of repentance.  Are we allowed in these circumstances to suggest such a meaning?  Abraham has spent his entire life with this woman.  She has seen him through struggle and triumph, through disobedience and submission, through loss and gain.  She has endured his duplicity and his passivity.  She has protected his legacy and provided his heir.  And in the end, Abraham may have seen his tragic denial of a woman whose discontent came from his own disobedience to his God.

Sarah lived 127 years on this earth, the mother of children of obedience.  When I finally meet her in His kingdom, I will humbly present myself before her and ask her to tell me the secrets she learned at God’s hand so that we can both laugh.  God made a joke of me so that His purposes would prevail.  That is my life too.  I serve a God who turns my expectations into jokes of independence in order that I might become a person of faith.

Dr. Moen is Academic Dean at MISD.

BROTHER BARISTA?

A barista (from the Italian for "bartender") is a person, usually a coffee-house employee, who prepares and serves espresso-based coffee drinks (www.m-w.com).

Years and years ago, ministers were usually referred to as Brother so-and-so.  A pastor by the last name of Wilson, for example, would amongst church folk be addressed as “Brother Wilson.”  Today, that kind of lingo is pretty much nursing home speak, if you know what I mean (and no disrespect intended).

Today, ministers are more often referred to by their first name, and only on church web sites are they identified according to their function.  You know what I mean, titles such as preaching minister, teaching minister, small group minister, executive minister, children’s minister, junior high minister, women’s minister, young adult minister, counseling minister, and small groups minister.

More recently we have added a whole new string of ministers such as sports minister, health issues minister, special events minister, and financial assets minister.  These are all good and even essential ministries who can but doubt.  To this good list I may be able to suggest a new ministerial title: how about “Brother Barista” or even better, “Barista Minister” so as to be modern and gender inclusive.

“Where in heaven’s name will they perform their ministry?” some uninformed boob may ask?  Why in the church’s coffee café.  Where else?  I am hoping that some really innovative Christian attorney will apply to trademark a Christianized version of the church’s brew, say, “Joyful Java,” and for a side item, “Blessed Biscotti’s.”  All God’s chillens gotta eat somewhere you know!

The only folk who might object would be those out-of-touch nursing home types, and ultra conservatives like that guy in the Bible named Paul.  He’d be a kill joy for sure.  He is already on record as having said, “What? Have ye not houses to eat and to drink in? Or despise ye the church of God, and shame them that have not? What shall I say to you? Shall I praise you in this? I praise you not” (I Corinthians 11:22 KJV, of course).

Views expressed in the Ark Rocker are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the position of Master's Journey or the Divinity School.  MJ

Hermen Who?  What Biblical Interpretation?
Cheryl A. Durham, D.B.S.

 Recently, I read a blog post that disturbed me. This is what it said:

"Determining the method of Hermeneutics or method of interpretation is fundamental in the study of the Bible and Theology. Since the Bible is subject to literal and metaphorical interpretation, we are given two options either to be literal or metaphorical. There is no middle ground to determine what is right and wrong. One who studies theology should have his ground to stand on and must be ready to give an answer when in question."

This post disturbed me because it makes big assumptions about what is fundamental and what choices we have as to how to interpret Scripture. However, it’s interesting that the author assumes only one. The author is coming from a Greek orientation (epistemology) and worldview that claims the answer to the problem must be this or that.

This approach is problematic because the Bible was not written from a Greek or Western worldview, but from a Hebrew one. In the Hebrew worldview, the answer does not have to be this or that. It’s startling that the author to this post doesn’t recognize that his perspective is influenced by his Greek orientation. He doesn’t allow for anything but his own view. He is obviously unaware of the Hebrew worldview that could allow both literal and metaphorical interpretation of the text at the same time.

The author grounds his opinion in the last two sentences above. “There is 'NO' (emphasis mine) middle ground to determine what is right and what is wrong.” “One who studies theology should have his ground to stand on and must be ready to give an answer when in question.”

I believe that the author is projecting his own Greek worldview need onto a Hebrew worldview that does not see things the way he does. So why should we look at the Hebrew worldview? Well, for one thing we worship Jesus (not His real name) who was a Jew, raised in Jewish tradition, who ascribed to the Hebrew worldview and not the Greek one.

It was Yeshua who used both literal and metaphorical ideas in His statements and parables. He used the methods of the Second Temple Period Rabbis. Yeshua turned many phrases that used both Greek and Hebrew idioms, and if taken literally (like raining cats and dogs) could change the meaning of the text significantly.

Additionally, Paul (or Sha’ul), a rabbi who studied under Gamaliel, was not a Greek at heart; he was a Jew. While he had an excellent understanding of the Greek language and both the Greek and Roman civilizations, to be a Jew is not just a nationality; it is a life. This is evident in the idioms, practices, and categories that Paul uses to describe his theology. He is far from just literal. In fact, Paul would not use a Greek understanding of rightly dividing the word of truth as is mentioned in the blog post (2Tim 2:15). He would use Hillel’s Seven Principles of Biblical Interpretation which are far from the blog author’s view of Hermeneutics or Biblical Interpretation.

I am not saying this author knows nothing, and I certainly don’t know a whole lot. However, what I do know is that we cannot just take the Greek or Western way of understanding reality and superimpose it on a people and a God who did not endorse our western worldview. That is an anachronistic error.

The Jews are God’s people; we are grafted into them; they are not grafted into us. I am learning, however slowly, that we have done much damage to the Word of God by not understanding its roots. In our imperialism, we have ripped the New Testament from its Old Testament foundation, and by doing that, we have rendered it rootless. Something uprooted, and not connected to its life-giving source is useless. So what do we do now?

I would suggest to the author that he begin to look at the Hebrew foundations for the Bible. Jesus quoted the Old Testament saying that not a jot or a tittle will pass away until all is fulfilled. What does that mean? What kind of idioms are in that statement? Do the idioms mean something different in Hebrew than they do in English? You bet they do?

How do Jesus and Paul’s Jewish origins affect what they say? How can we know what He really means?  I have a few resources for you….

http://www.hebrew4christians.com/index.html  Hebrew for Christians 

www.eshavbooks.com A Series called “The Essentials”

www.skipmoen.com     Sign up for the free Newsletter on 30 Days to a Hebrew Worldview!

http://skipmoen.com/2009/09/06/as-greek-as-it-gets/

These resources will open your mind on the Bible and how God is speaking to you!

Dr. Durham is a Senior Admissions Counselor at MISD

Rainbows, Mirages and Geometries:
Allusions to a Realm ‘Beyond’?
John A. Adam, Ph.D.

 “Great are the works of the Lord; they are pondered by all who delight in them.”

                                                                          --- Psalm 111 v.2   (NIV)

 I.                     Patterns in Nature: the Handiwork of God.

The question above is a small part of the larger, age-old one: what does the created order tell us, if anything, about the Creator and the spiritual realm. Familiar passages such as Psalm 19 (verse one in particular) and Romans 1:19-20 provide partial insights to the former, to be sure. Certainly, in the light of other key passages such as Psalm 8, Job 36:22 - 41:34, Romans 10, and many other scriptures, it is clear that, while the ultimate representation of God is Jesus himself (the Logos), God has not only given us a revelation of who He is in Scripture, but also in His creation. Indeed, they are all intimately connected (see Colossians 1:15-20). Through His Holy Spirit God caused His Word to be revealed, and through the same Holy Spirit He speaks to us today. Just as His Word will not return to Him empty or void (Isaiah 55:10,11), so, I believe, the Holy Spirit can and does use God’s created order to speak to us. Unfortunately, for many of us living in a largely urban environment, given the pace of modern life, we are not always aware of this. A desire of mine has long been to reawaken (or awaken) in myself and other people a greater appreciation for the sheer beauty and majesty of the Lord as revealed to us in His creation. God is the Author of revelation both in nature and scripture, and while they may address at times different aspects of truth, they must be intimately related (and Psalm 19 demonstrates this clearly). Indeed, it has been said “nature is but the expression of eternal thought in time”.

It may be that we can learn much about principles in the spiritual realm (consistent with scripture) by studying and contemplating the rich variety of patterns and relationships in the created order around us. If we can see there evidence of God’s “fingerprints” we should not be surprised to find that His Spirit can use them to reveal more about the ways God moves in our lives. But we need to train our eyes and minds and spirits to “see” this in the way that we are encouraged to do in both New and Old Testaments: “Consider how the lilies grow...” (Luke 12:27); “Go to the ant, you sluggard; consider its ways and be wise!” (Proverbs 6:6); “Do you know how the clouds hang poised...?” (Job 37:16); “Can you bind the beautiful Pleiades? Can you loose the cords of Orion?” (Job 38:31-32); “Does the eagle soar at your command...?” (Job 39:27); “...whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable - if anything is excellent or praiseworthy - think about such things.” (Philippians 4:8). With such passages in mind I will nevertheless concentrate on only a few of the phenomena perceptible to the naked eye alone (or perhaps with spectacles!): obviously, given the possibility of noticing rainbows, ice-crystal halos, glories¹, sunsets, cloud structures, waves on puddles, lakes and oceans, patterns in leaves, trees, animal patterns and butterfly wings, the flight patterns of Canada geese, etc., there is almost an infinite variety of topics to choose from! I will also, however, briefly address some rather surprising (to me at least) features arising in the realm of “applied mathematics” (section III).

The created realm in which we live is, in part, a model or pattern for the spiritual realm. Hebrews 10:1 says that the law is only a shadow of the good things to come, not the realities themselves, and broadening this theme, 2 Corinthians 4:18 reminds us that what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. The Lord uses such things as light, trees, rocks, water, wind and storms, all mentioned many times in Scripture, to help us see spiritual realities, and recognize spiritual truth. Indeed, these examples and others are dual majestic themes in Scripture and nature. As part of creation, they reveal God’s glory to those with eyes to see it.

The fundamental principle I am espousing here, namely the efficacy of creation as testimony to its Creator, is of course not new; from the earliest recorded Scriptures to the present time there have been many references to it. Having cited Biblical passages above, let us now see what some writers and poets (some secular) have said about this theme.

The following lines are from a hymn written by Horatius Bonar: “Ocean and mountain, stream, forest and flower, echo His praises and tell of his power.”  In her long poem Aurora Leigh, Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote: Earth’s crammed with heaven,

And every common bush afire with God: But only he who sees, takes off his shoes,

The rest sit round it, and pluck blackberries, And daub their natural faces unaware…

Art’s the witness of what Is / Behind this show. If this world’s show were all,

Then imitation would be all in Art;…/ If genuine artists, witnessing for God’s

Complete, consummate, undivided work: -That not a natural flower can grow on earth,

Without a flower upon the spiritual side,…

John Ruskin wrote: It is written on the arched sky; It looks out from every star;

Where the shrubless mountain-top pierces the thin atmosphere of eternal winter,

Or where the mighty forest fluctuates before the strong wind; With its dark waves of green foliage; It is spread out like a legible language upon the broad face of an unsleeping ocean; It is the poetry of Nature; It is that which uplifts the spirit within us...

One of my favorite poets is Gerard Manley Hopkins, a Jesuit priest and scholar. In God’s Grandeur he wrote: The world is charged with the grandeur of God. / It will flame out, like shining shook from foil…It is interesting, and pertinent here, I think, to read what some commentators have written about this devout Victorian poet and observer of nature. In Donald McChesney’s  A Hopkins Commentary [1] the author notes “By contemplation of simple objects - flowers, trees, streams and simple landscapes - Hopkins was at times raised to ecstasy, because he realised that the hidden energy (instress) moulding things into shapes, patterns and colours (inscapes) was the very energy of God himself. This outward and visible beauty was to him the reflection of the energy and invisible beauty of God. So in this sense all nature was sacramental to him - the visible sign of an invisible, intelligent and creative energy.” Furthermore, Margaret Ellsberg, in her book Created To Praise [2], and quoting from Hopkin’s Pied Beauty, wrote concerning the poet  “If he looked very hard not at himself but at things, they would reveal to him something about their source and creator and would become in fact a means of prayer and praise: Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?) / With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim; / He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change: Praise him. What was absolutely novel in Hopkins’ writing was this startling, sustained double vision: he saw God in particulars, particulars in God.”

         
Nearer our present era, Erich Sauer, author of The King of the Earth [3] wrote “Once the universe had been created by God it had to be, since it was His work, in harmony with His nature. The existence of a universe developing in space and time is, so far as its origin and meaning are concerned, a revelation of the innermost nature of God, with its holiness and love.…The world then, being an effluence of the Divine will, must be a concrete expression of the thoughts of the Creator. The spiritual laws of Eternal being must be reflected in the natural world. Between the infinite and the finite, the ideal and the real, there must exist such a basic parallelism that the visible becomes the clothing of the invisible, a symbolizing, graspable by the senses, of the transcendental…That is “natural revelation” in its widest sense. By virtue of it, all created forms of life become concrete expressions of definite thoughts of God, and the universe becomes a universal “reflection of the majesty of the Eternal in earthly matter” (cf. Rom. 1:19,20)…To experience God Himself in holiness and love and to radiate His power and majesty is therefore the content of our human vocation…”

Ric Ergenbright has said as much (but in fewer words!) in his book The Art of God: The Heavens & The Earth [4]: “…by using the visible and temporal things of the earth to describe the invisible and eternal truths of His Kingdom, God has graciously enabled us to know Him better, and to see and understand our world and ourselves through new eyes…To see and experience the beauty of nature is a wonderful thing. But to see and experience the beauty of God through nature is infinitely more wonderful. The former is His good and gracious gift to all people, but the latter is reserved for those who seek Him and faithfully study His Word.”

In his book Rumors of Another World [5], Philip Yancey writes “The ordinary, natural world contains the supernatural, a necessary step since we do not have the capacity to apprehend God directly. We see God best in the same way we see a solar eclipse: not by staring at the sun, which would cause blindness, but through something on which the sun is projected.” (Emphasis mine; see section IV.) Also, “Because rumors of another world are just that, rumors and not proofs, a thin membrane of belief separates the natural from the supernatural.” He quotes Blaise Pascal, who saw the natural world as a foreshadowing of the supernatural: “He has done in the bounties of nature what He could do in those of grace, in order that we might judge that He could make the invisible, since He has made the visible excellently. 

I have a book of about ninety “3-D” pictures, wherein one is advised to stare at a fuzzy picture of nothing in particular, an abstract pattern in most instances, and to let one’s eyes defocus. After a while, an image, apparently three-dimensional, appears, a result of stereoscopic vision. It is really quite remarkable, and with practice I have been able to “see” the “reality” behind the pattern after just a few seconds. This is, to me at least, a powerful metaphor for the scripture truths expressed above (and of course for hints about the spiritual realm given in Ephesians 6 and related scriptures). Another such metaphor is provided by the first movie in the “Matrix” trilogy, remarked on by John Eldredge in his book Waking the Dead [6]. All is not what it seems.

And so with all this in mind we turn to consideration of (i) some specific optical patterns in the atmosphere, and (ii) some geometries with particular features that are relevant to this article. I wish to concentrate on things I have encountered in my professional life that have caused me to pause and wonder; things I have misperceived, taken for granted (unjustifiably) or plain misunderstood; things that forced me to admit that my worldview was too limited, that all was not as it appeared to be…things that caused a paradigm shift, however slight, in thinking about the world around me.

Although not all shadows are in the category of atmospheric optical patterns (the earth’s shadow extends far beyond what we might consider the atmosphere), I include shadows in this group for simplicity. The “rays” often seen, particularly at sunset, certainly fall into this category. They are crepuscular rays: shadows formed by clouds partially obscuring sunlight, and when the sun is above the horizon this effect is sometimes referred to as “the sun drawing water”. The section following that addresses some surprising features of mathematical constructs. The point to remember in this and subsequent sections is that even in the physical and mathematical realms all is not what it seems to the casual (or untrained) observer.

II.  Atmospheric Optical Patterns

(a) Shadows.

On the face of it, a shadow is a mysterious thing, though frequently taken for granted. It is an absence of light (usually only partial) in a region of space. It is in this world, and yet not of it; it is intangible yet so common that we rarely think about it. Without shadows, much of what we see around us would be “flat”; I remember the thrill I had when I first viewed the Leibnitz mountain range and several large craters on the terminator of a half-moon through my small refracting telescope. The long shadows cast by the mountains and craters brought out the fully three-dimensional nature of the surface very clearly.

As children, we may have tried to cover shadows by placing something over them, all to no avail. We also tend to think of them as merely two-dimensional shapes on the ground or wall, but in fact they are volumes of space out of which some light has been scattered. They may be colored, as is often seen to be the case when they fall on snow, and they may be very long – the umbral shadow of the earth is about a million miles long. It is, in fact,  visible on clear evenings as a dark band in the east, rising as the sun sets in the west.

(b) Rainbows.

The rainbow is at one and the same time one of the most beautiful visual displays in nature, and yet, like a shadow, an intangible phenomenon. It is illusory in that it is not of course a solid arch, but like mirages, it is nonetheless real. It can be seen and photographed, and described in mathematical terms, but it cannot be located at a specific place (unlike the raindrops causing it), only in a particular direction. It is an image located at infinity, for no matter how near or far away you are from the drops producing it, the angular size remains the same: you cannot “back up” to get more of the rainbow in your camera viewfinder! (You can of course use a wide-angle lens.)

What then is a rainbow? It is sunlight, displaced by reflection and dispersed by refraction in raindrops, an image of the sun that has been displaced in direction and in which the colors have been prismatically “unfolded” into part of a circular mosaic. It is seen by an observer with his or her back to the sun (provided the sun is low enough). The primary rainbow, which is the lowest and brightest of two that may be seen, is formed from two refractions and one reflection in myriads of raindrops. The secondary bow, frequently visible, is larger and fainter, and is produced by an additional reflection within the droplets producing it. Interestingly, each observer sees his or her ‘unique’ rainbow, because a different set of raindrops refracts and reflects the light into the eyes of every person looking at the colored bow in the sky. There are many fascinating features of rainbows to be found in the literature² (see [7] – [9] for further references.)

(c) Ice Crystal Halos.

What are halos and what produces them? The most common are circular arcs around the sun, formed when sunlight is refracted, reflected or both from ice crystals in the upper atmosphere and enters the eye of a careful observer: careful, because even the common types are easily missed. They are usually produced when a thin uniform layer of cirrus or cirrostratus cloud (occurring at high altitudes) covers large portions of the sky, especially in the vicinity of the sun. Surprisingly, perhaps, they may occur at any time of the year, even during high summer, because above an altitude of about 10 km it is always cold enough for ice crystals to form. In particularly cold climes, of course, such crystals can form at ground level (though we are not thinking here of snow crystals). Very many of these crystals are hexagonal prisms; some are thin flat plates while others are long columns, and sometimes the latter have bullet-like or pencil-like ends. A significant feature of all these crystals is that while any given type may have a range of sizes, the angles between the faces are the same. Although they do not possess perfect hexagonal symmetry, of course, they are sufficiently close to this that simple geometry based on such idealized forms suffices to describe the many different arcs and halos that are associated with them.

(d) Glories.

Early one morning in 1735, a small group of people was gathered on top of a mountain in the Peruvian Andes. They were members of a French scientific expedition, sent out to measure a degree of longitude. They saw an amazing sight that morning. According to one, this was “a phenomenon which must be as old as the world, but which no one seems to have observed so far...A cloud that covered us dissolved itself and let through the rays of the rising sun...Then each of us saw his shadow projected upon the cloud...The closeness of the shadow allowed all its parts to be distinguished: arms, legs, the head. What seemed most remarkable to us was the appearance of a halo or glory around the head, consisting of three or four small concentric circles, very brightly colored, each of them with the same colors as the primary rainbow, with red outermost...”. A Spanish captain named Antonio de Ulloa gave a similar description and also drew a picture of it. In his account he wrote “The most surprising thing was that, of the six or seven people that were present, each one saw the phenomenon only around the shadow of his own head, and saw nothing around other people's heads...”

During the 19th century, many such observations of the “glory” were made from the top of the Brocken mountain in central Germany, and it became known as the “Specter of the Brocken”. It also became a favorite image among the Romantic writers; it was celebrated by Coleridge in his “Constancy to an Ideal Object”. Other sightings were made from balloons, the glory appearing around the balloons' shadows on the clouds. Nowadays, while not noted as frequently as the rainbow, it may be seen most commonly from the air³, with the glory surrounding the shadow of the airplane. Some beautiful color photographs have appeared in the scientific literature (see [7] for further details.)

(e) Mirages.

Mirages are fascinating and, almost by definition, are deceptive to the casual observer, though despite some dictionary definitions, they are not optical illusions (unlike the famous moon illusion, in which a full moon appears to be much larger on the horizon than when it is high in the sky). (For a qualitative description of the relevant physics and historical details on which this introduction is based, see the valuable article by Fraser and Mach [10]). Perhaps no better example of a mirage is afforded by the writings of Robert E. Peary, who in 1906 (en route, as he hoped, to the North Pole), stood on a summit and saw to the northwest at a distance of about 120 miles (as he believed) “snow-clad summits above the ice horizon.” This mysterious yet inviting ‘land’ was eventually named “Crocker Land”, and in 1913 an expedition, led by Donald B. MacMillan, set out to find and explore it. As they approached its apparent location, he wrote “There could be no doubt about it. Great heavens, what a land! Hills, valleys, snow-capped peaks extending through at least 120 degrees of the horizon.” After moving some 30 miles toward this fantastic land, they found nothing. Some might call this a cruel hoax played on them by the ‘laws’ of optics; but it was not an optical illusion, for the image was real enough – it just did not coincide with an object. It was a mirage, and that is one convenient way of defining the phenomenon.^4a

Why are there mirages at all and how are they created? The basic answer to each involves recognition of the fact that, to use Paul’s words in Acts 17:28 in another context, we “live and move and have our being” inside a huge, locally shapeless lens – the atmosphere

itself ^4b. Mirages are produced, not by reflection, but by refraction, and the index of refraction varies in time and space, depending on local climatic and environmental conditions. It is the variations in the refractive index that cause refraction, and these variations are induced by corresponding changes in the density of the air, and to a much smaller extent, its moisture content.

To some extent, a mirage is a problem of perception also, and to that extent they have a loose connection to optical illusions: the mind “assumes” that the light received from an object has proceeded from it in a straight line, i.e. the object and its image are in a sense synonymous. But the slightest deviation from a straight line path over a distance of a mile, or even hundreds of feet, can displace the image significantly. Interestingly, we are more used to “displacement” in time rather than space. Spoiled as we are by the magnificent pictures from deep space that are produced by the Hubble telescope, we realize that the light we see from these objects left them thousands, millions or even billions of years ago. Even our own star, the sun, is over eight light-minutes away, but it is less well known that when the lower limb of the sun is on the horizon, it has actually just set (or, in the morning, is just about to rise). Refraction displaces the sun’s image slightly above the horizon; this effect is most pronounced near the horizon because of the increased thickness of atmosphere through which the light has to travel. This and the concomitant “flattening” of the sun on the horizon are yet more examples of a mirage: again, all is not as it appears to be.      

III.  Some Geometrical Ideas: Maps, Hypercubes and Taxicabs.

In this section I consider some other contexts in which I have found it necessary to examine some of my hitherto unchallenged assumptions about the world around me. In a broad sense, they come under the category of “applied mathematics”, since they involve mathematical (and in particular geometric) concepts that are used in many different subject areas (too many, alas, to discuss here). One surprising such application of mathematics is to be found in cartography, the study and production of maps.

(a) A map, whatever the scale, should accurately represent in two dimensions, directions, distances (and by implication, areas) between points of reference or interest. Armed with information about the scale of the map (and contours, if indicated), we should be able to infer some things about the fully three-dimensional region that the map represents. This applies of course, to the plans and elevations of houses and other buildings. In the medical field, CAT and MRI scans provide two-dimensional slices of three-dimensional parts of the human body. Details of the latter region, whatever it is, may be reconstructed from a successive sequence of the former images. What is being attempted – usually with great success in medicine – is to identify the “reality” from the accumulation of two-dimensional slices⁵. How much richer is the structure of the reality from its lower-dimensional counterparts. While the latter is “true truth” (to quote the late Francis Schaeffer) about the former, it is not exhaustive truth.

Every map distorts the truth to one degree or another [11], because no flat surface can be equivalent in every respect to a spherical surface. We are all familiar with the distortion of high latitude land masses in the standard Mercator projection; Greenland and North America appear to have comparable areas, when in fact the former is less than ten percent of the land area of the latter. I vividly recall the shock I felt when I first encountered the controversial Gall-Peters projection. Was the world not really the way I had assumed it to be? This map represents equal land areas on our planet as equal in area, as opposed to the areal distortion inherent in the Mercator projection, but it does tend to distort shapes. It certainly looks very strange to one who has grown up with the Mercator projection. These problems, together with political ones associated with these and some other map projections, prompted several North American geographic organizations to adopt in 1989 a resolution rejecting all rectangular world maps, stating in particular that: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gall-Peters_projection]

“… we strongly urge book and map publishers, the media and government agencies to cease using rectangular world maps for general purposes or artistic displays. Such maps promote serious, erroneous conceptions by severely distorting large sections of the world, by showing the round Earth as having straight edges and sharp corners, by representing most distances and direct routes incorrectly, and by portraying the circular coordinate system as a squared grid. The most widely displayed rectangular world map is the Mercator (in fact a navigational diagram devised for nautical charts), but other rectangular world maps proposed as replacements for the Mercator also display a greatly distorted image of the spherical Earth.”

(b) Despite our inability to visualize it, the geometric properties of a four-dimensional cube (also called a hypercube or tesseract) can be readily established by analogy (see the appendix); just as a cube in three dimensions has six square faces, twelve edges and eight corners, so a hypercube has eight three-dimensional cubes, 24 square faces, 32 edges and 16 corners⁶. One “projection” of such a cube in three dimensions is essentially a smaller cube within a larger one, the respective corners being joined by edges. This type of classification can also be accomplished for a “cube” in n spatial dimensions. Of what interest is this to anyone but mathematicians? It transpires that this is directly related to the number of different yes/no voting combinations and the resulting number of possible outcomes for n voters when abstentions are not allowed. There are connections also with weighted voting systems. The point is that one can use any one of these systems to represent the other, and a detailed study of any one of them provides information about all. This is an example of the claim that movement to a higher level of mental abstraction is the essence of both pure and applied mathematics.

(c) For a fascinating tale of what might be termed “inter-dimensional phenomena” one can do no better than the little monograph by Edwin Abbott, entitled Flatland – A Romance of Many Dimensions [12]. It makes, amongst other things, an interesting case for our perceptions of how higher-dimensional entities might interact with our 3-space + time dimension. (This little book had a profound influence on my thinking about the intersection of the natural and spiritual realms in general, and about spiritual warfare in particular.)

(d) A very interesting type of geometry that does not “obey” the standard “rules” of Euclidean geometry taught at middle- or high-school, is known affectionately as taxicab geometry. [13]. The reason for this is best appreciated by visualizing rectangular city blocks, joined by streets aligned in the N-S and E-W directions, say. Anyone traveling from the proverbial “A” to “B” can do so only by a sequence of N-S and E-W (or left-right and up-down) maneuvers (unless A and B lie on a line due N-S or E-W.) In this geometric system, the shortest distance between two points is not in general a straight line (except in the special cases noted above), but is composed of a sequence of left-right and up-down line segments.

One consequence of this type of geometry is that a circle, defined as the set of points which are a constant distance from the center, is a square (in fact diamond-shaped, with corners located on the N-S and E-W lines)! Furthermore, the ratio of the circumference of such a circle to its diameter (the number π in Euclidean geometry, where π = 3.1415926…) in taxicab geometry is equal to four! In fact this is but one of many other geometries that can provide us with seemingly weird concepts that challenge our thinking. All is not what it seems even in other “flat” two-dimensional geometries…

And your point is…?

Since I am being constantly reminded that all is not what it seems, what further conclusions can I draw? Perhaps that the whole earth is full of God’s glory (Isaiah 6:3), but in a lower-dimensional form, a shadow, a projection or displacement of His fully-orbed glory – the weight of glory – to be revealed when I no longer “see through a glass darkly” (I Corinthians 13:12). Thus it is akin to rainbows, halos and glories being displaced and extended images of the sun produced by myriads of raindrops, ice crystals and cloud droplets, respectively. At times, as well as being displaced, the image I have of Him is somewhat distorted, like mirages may be, but that is because I am not seeing a true projection of His nature. My own tendency to revert to the “old man” – namely the intervening atmosphere of my “flesh” – distorts the image of the reality. His thoughts and ways (Isaiah 55:8,9) are “higher” than mine, (perhaps implying something about relative dimensionality). We are urged by Paul (Ephesians 1:3; 2:6) to walk in the Spirit in heavenly realms while our minds and bodies occupy this one.

So much, then, for the “kingdom of light”. If the relationship between the source of light – the sun – and displaced images of it in the form of rainbows, halos and glories is a synonym for the finite but regenerate spirit encountering the infinite but personal Creator, then the corresponding synonym for the “kingdom of darkness” is surely an optical illusion. Ephesians 6:10-18 and James 1:15 remind us that ultimately spiritual warfare is a battle fought, first and foremost in the mind. Optical illusions are false mental promises – all is really not what it promises to be. It might be argued, with some validity, that mirages fall into this category: picture the proverbial desert scene in which a severely dehydrated traveler struggles to reach an oasis or lake that is in fact only a displaced image of a portion of sky. Is this not an illusion, and a cruel one at that? Yes and no! On the face of things, the mirage is a false promise; however it is in fact a promise of something real, but not that which the traveler so desperately seeks. It is not the muddy water found in broken cisterns, much less the water of life (Jeremiah 2:13; John 4:10, 13-14). But desperation trumps discernment in this metaphor, and the distorted and displaced image of the sky is not recognized for what it really is. In this sense, then, mirages lie between the realm of rainbows, halos and glories and the realm of illusions, in a continuum spanning the real-but-in-this-world-displaced reality and the patently false but tantalizing images of deception.

       
IV.  Coming full circle: back to the Bible.

In the book of Exodus, chapter 26, detailed instructions are provided by God for the construction of the Tabernacle, to meet the needs of the nation of Israel for sacrifice and worship. In chapters 25 and 27-30 further instructions are issued for building the ark, lampstand, courtyard, priestly garments, preparation of incense and consecration of the priests. Specifically, Moses is to fashion all these things exactly like the pattern he was shown (Ex. 25:9). The New Testament (particularly the book of Hebrews) sheds more light on this interesting concept. In Heb. 8:5 the letter reminds us that the priests “serve at a sanctuary that is a copy and a shadow of what is in heaven”, and that same verse reiterates the command to Moses that he should “make everything according to the pattern shown you on the mountain.” The same idea is also expressed, referring to the priesthood and once-for-all sacrifice of Christ, in chapters 9 (verses 11, 23-24) and 10 (verse 1). In this latter verse, the law is described as being “only a shadow of the good things that are coming – not the realities themselves.” A similar thought, though in a different context, is expressed in Col. 2:17, wherein that reality “is found in Christ.”

We are no doubt very familiar with the figurative use of the words light, darkness and shadow throughout scripture. And let us not forget the vast array of passages relating to the two kingdoms; the Kingdom of light and the kingdom of darkness. However, it is also interesting in this context that Paul refers to the minds of unbelievers being blinded by Satan, and elsewhere that a veil covers their eyes, which is removed when that person turns to Christ. (2 Corinthians 4:4; 3:14.) Do these passages refer to spiritual counterparts of mirages or optical illusions? (The two are not synonymous, as noted above, by the way.) Mirages, and the other optical phenomena we have discussed above, are images displaced from the object producing them. They are real and external; they are formed from real rays of light proceeding from a real object (albeit not in a straight-line path). Optical illusions on the other hand are products of the mind, a problem of perception. We know that Satan can transform himself into an angel of light (2 Corinthians 11:14), and also that he is “the prince of the power of the air” (Ephesians 2:2). Such properties are more akin to optical illusions rather than mirages. On the other hand, the meteorological phenomena discussed above serve to remind me that God is able to do immeasurably more than I can imagine (Ephesians 3:20) and that He can break into my world in unexpected ways. Images of Him are everywhere, in nature in particular, displaced as it were from the heavenly throne, and only shadows of it, but nonetheless real for all that. (It is interesting to note that of the four mentions of a rainbow in the Bible – Genesis 9:13-16; Ezekiel 1:28; Revelation 4:3 and Revelation 10:1, the last three are associated with heavenly visions.) The mathematics and physics of both meteorological and other-dimensional phenomena testify to this in great power and beauty, all these phenomena being somewhat “other-worldly” in the sense I have described. I believe that the answer to the question “Is nature telling us something?” is a resounding Yes, because such phenomena in nature (and in mathematics), for me at least, are valuable metaphors for the unseen reality implied throughout scripture.

Notes

1. A superb website, run by Dr. Les Cowley, contains many beautiful images of rainbows, halos, glories, shadows, and other meteorological phenomena, including sundogs (also known as mock suns or parhelia). These are colored splotches often seen on either or both sides of the sun, and at the same altitude. They are formed by light being refracted through billions of hexagonal ice crystals in high altitude cirrus clouds. The site can be found at: http://www.sundog.clara.co.uk/atoptics/phenom.htm

The Earth Science Picture of the Day also has an extensive archive of such phenomena; go to: http://epod.usra.edu/index.php3

A wonderful book by Robert Greenler is entitled Rainbows, Halos and Glories contains much qualitative information about such phenomena, and some excellent photographs. It is listed in the bibliography [7].

2. Rainbows contain light that is highly polarized. Although it is not widely realized, the human eye is slightly sensitive to polarized light produced by reflection from water or glass, or by scattering by molecules in the air, producing the blue sky, though it is necessary to train oneself to recognize and use this facility. Many insects, including bees, have this facility and so do many animals, all to a much greater degree than humans. However, in humans the ability to distinguish between light of different polarizations has been referred to as almost a sixth sense. Without going into the details of what exactly polarization is, suffice to note that we all know Polaroid sunglasses reduce glare of light reflected from the surface of water, glass or shiny metallic surfaces. They do this by partially suppressing (or eliminating) one type of light “vibration” entering the eye; light from the sun or incandescent lights is generally composed of randomly “mixed” vibrations, but can be partially polarized by reflection (in particular). In the case of reflection from water, Polaroid sunglasses enable the observer to see below the surface to some extent, and are therefore valuable for fishermen!

3. It may be surprising to learn that the theory behind the formation of a glory (like that of a rainbow, but more complicated) is very mathematical in character. In the process of writing a journal article about these two phenomena [14], I read several hundred articles about them in scientific journals. As a result, I had acquired a fairly detailed (but by no means complete) understanding of these beautiful occurrences. But until August 1999 I had never seen a glory! I asked the Lord to show me one about a year previously, and had almost forgotten my request. Imagine my excitement when on my return from a trip to Nova Scotia I glanced out of the airplane window and saw one! It was far more beautiful than I had ever imagined (“Now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to His power that is at work within us, to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.” ----Ephesians 3:20-21 (R.S.V.))

Later I realized that this is a rather lovely metaphor for faith and sight – “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see” (Heb. 11:1). I had never seen a glory prior to that point, but I believed in it with my mind (the theory) and my heart (the testimony of others as to its existence and beauty). I had “faith”, and in due course I saw the outcome of my faith, and it was awesome (in the classical meaning attributed to that word!). Now that while I had “faith” in the articles I had read, my faith is really based on the faithfulness of God who created the glory. So it is that the following verse has become very dear to me:

“Like the appearance of a rainbow in the clouds on a rainy day, so was the radiance around him. This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord....”  

Ezekiel 1:18.

4a. The mirage of Crocker Land witnessed by Peary and MacMillan was probably an example of what has come to be called the Fata Morgana – possibly the most spectacular member of the entire class of mirages. It is the Italian name for the Fairy Morgan, who, as legend has it, was King Arthur's sister, and she possessed, it seems, the ability to create castles in the air. The Italian connection comes from a description of such ‘castles’ written by a priest, Father Angelucci, in a letter to a colleague concerning his observations on the morning of August 14th, 1643, while looking across the Strait of Messina towards the island of Sicily. He saw what appeared to be a dark mountain range in front of which appeared a variety of different images, including columns, arches, towers and windows.

4b.  A rather subtle but very interesting point can be made concerning the relationship between what Fraser and Mach call the “object space” and the “image space”. The former is the actual physical space in which the object, observer and light rays from the object exist. The latter is a deformation of the object space, perceived as such because in general rays are perceived to have traveled in a straight line, so the image is a ‘back projection’ of the rays in the direction from which they enter the observer's eye. This means that the previously flat surfaces of the earth and its atmospheric layers, under this projection or “mapping” become distorted into curved surfaces, some of which may become quite tortuous (depending on the temperature–height profile of the atmosphere – see the above article for further details). This mapping will usually involve only the bottom few meters of the atmosphere in practice. Images may also be magnified or reduced in size if the temperature gradient is variable (if it is constant, there is no magnification).

5. It is important to point out the difference between lower-dimensional “slices” of an object and the projection (or “shadow”) of that object. Consider an antique upright dining room chair, for example. Imagine we keep a record of the shapes the chair produces on the surface of water as we slowly lower the chair vertically down through the water. At first, four small circles (or squares, if the legs have square cross-sections) appear as if at the corners of a larger (unseen) square, and these remain unchanged until the chair seat reaches the surface of the water. Now a large square appears, and the four little circles have disappeared. Then the square seat disappears also, leaving only a thin rectangular region corresponding to the upright back of the chair, which itself eventually disappears once the chair is totally under water.

If the chair were to be lowered obliquely instead of in an upright sense, the resulting sequence of “intersections” would be different. In each case, the accumulation of such “slices” can, like a CAT scan, be used to reconstruct the fully three-dimensional structure of the chair, but this is a relatively easy task, because we inhabit the same type of “space” (i.e. three-dimensional) as the chair! Inhabitants of “Flatland” – a flat, two-dimensional space – would certainly find it much more difficult (though perhaps impossible) to reconstruct the higher-dimensional chair.

There is another way to consider these ideas. The shadow of the chair cast on a wall by a flashlight is a two-dimensional projection of the three-dimensional chair. In many instances, the chair is immediately recognizable for what it is from its shadow. The projected image is generally distorted, of course, because it contains, in compressed form, much of the information defining the properties of the chair.

6. How to calculate some of the elementary properties of a hypercube: an abstract recipe!

“Take” a mathematical point (which is zero-dimensional; a “0-cube”) and mentally move it a unit distance in any direction. Now you have traced out a line segment (one-dimensional; a “1-cube”) that has two endpoints. Take this line segment and move it a unit distance perpendicular to itself: this traces out a unit square (two-dimensional; a “2-cube”), and in the process yields four corner points plus two new edges, which together with the initial and final positions of the line segment, make a total of four edges. Now take this square and move it a unit distance perpendicular to itself to generate a unit three-dimensional cube (a “3-cube”), which has eight corner points (by virtue of the initial and final positions of the square) and twelve edges (four for each of the initial and final squares, plus one generated by each of the corner points as it moves from start to finish). Now take the unit cube and move it a unit distance perpendicular to itself…

Obviously there is now a problem, conceptually at least. In all the prior procedures, there was an obvious direction in which to move, namely into the next higher dimension. Where, then, is the fourth spatial dimension through which we may move the 3-cube to produce a hypercube (or “4-cube”)? Despite our inability to conceive of such a dimension (as the inhabitants of Flatland discovered when trying to comprehend the third dimension), it is nevertheless true that we can calculate properties of the resulting four-dimensional cube by arguing in an analogous way to our earlier methods. Thus each of the eight corners of our 3-cube, having initial and final positions, generate 16 corners in the 3-cube; also each corner as it moves generates an edge, which together with the initial and final positions of the 3-cube’s 12 edges, yields 8 + 12 + 12 = 32 unit edges on the resulting 4-cube. Each of the 12 edges of the 3-cube also generates a square face, which together with the six initial and final faces of the 3-cube gives a total of 12 + 6 + 6 = 24 unit square faces on the 4-cube. Finally, since each of the square faces of the original 3-cube generates a 3-cube as they move through the fourth dimension, this together with the initial and final positions of the 3-cube yield a total of eight unit 3-cubes.

In summary, a unit 4-cube or hypercube possesses the following set of lower-dimensional objects: 16 corners, 32 edges, 24 square faces and eight 3-cubes! Such calculations can be carried out, in principle, to any number of dimensions (for an “n-cube”), but in the interests of preserving the reader’s sanity, this will not be done here, though I will point out that the number of lower-dimensional objects present in an n-dimensional hypercube can be found from the coefficients in the binomial expansion of (2 x + 1)ⁿ .

Dr. John Adam is professor of mathematics at Old Dominion University. He is author of several books.

Bibliography

[1] Donald  McChesney, A Hopkins commentary: an explanatory commentary on the main poems, 1876-89,  New York, New York University Press, 1968.

[2] Margaret R. Ellsberg, Created to praise: the language of Gerard Manley Hopkins. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.

[3] Erich Sauer, The King of the Earth, The Paternoster Press, Devon, England, 1967.

[4] Ric Ergenbright, The Art of God: The Heavens & The Earth, Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois, 1999.

[5] Philip Yancey, Rumors of Another World. Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 2003.

[6] John Eldredge, Waking the Dead, Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville, Tennessee, 2003.

[7] Robert G. Greenler, Rainbows, Halos and Glories, Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1980. (Now available through www.blueskyassociates.com).

[8] John A. Adam, Like a bridge over colored water: a mathematical review of The Rainbow Bridge: Rainbows in Art, Myth and Science by R. Lee and A. Fraser, Notices of the American Mathematical Society, Dec. 2002, 49 (No. 11), 1360-1371. 

[9] John A. Adam, Mathematics in Nature: Modeling Patterns in the Natural World. (Published by Princeton University Press in November 2003).

[10] Alistair B. Fraser and William H. Mach, Mirages, Scientific American, 234, 102-111, 1976.

[11] Timothy G. Feeman, Portraits of the Earth: A Mathematician looks at Maps, American Mathematical Society, 2002.

[12] Edwin A. Abbott, Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, Dover Publications, Inc., New York, 1992.

[13] Eugene F. Krause, Taxicab Geometry: An Adventure in Non-Euclidean Geometry, Dover Publications, Inc., New York, 1986.

[14] John A. Adam, The Mathematical Physics of Rainbows and Glories, Physics     Reports 356: 229-365, (2002).

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GRADUATE WRITES DEFINITIVE BIOGRAPHY OF GEORGE WHITEFIELD

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