The Christ Centred Cosmic Civilisation
Rod Dreher wrote “to order the world rightly as Christians requires regarding all things as pointing to Christ”
Christ is the One in Whom in all things consist and humanity is not the measure of all things. If a defining characteristic of the modern world is disorder then the most fundamental act of resistance is to discover and life according to the deep, divine order of the heavens and the earth.
In this series we want to look at the big model of the universe that the Bible and Christian history provides.
It is a mind and heart expanding vision of reality.
It is not confined to the limits of our bodily senses - but tries to embrace levels fo reality that are not normally accessible or tangible to our exiled life on earth.
We live on this side of the cosmic curtain - and therefore the highest and greatest dimensions of reality are hidden to us… yet these dimensions exist and are the most fundamental framework for the whole of the heavens and the earth.
Throughout this series we want to pick away at all the threads of reality to see how they all join together - how they all find common meaning and reason in the great divine logic - the One who is the Logos, the LORD Jesus Christ - the greatest that both heaven and earth has to offer.
Colossians 1:15-23
The Christ Centred Cosmic Civilisation
Episode 56 - The Cosmic Tongue: Logos, Language, and the Divine Link to Reality
Can language shape our understanding of reality? Join us in this enlightening episode of the Christ-Centered Cosmic Civilization podcast as we explore the profound impact of words on our perception of the universe and our relationships. Discover how recognizing Jesus as the archetypal Logos empowers us to use language with creativity and confidence, grounding our descriptions of the world in the perfect expression of truth through the Son. We delve into the integral roles language plays in planning, understanding, sharing experiences, remembering, and thinking, emphasizing its essential function in human existence.
In this episode, we also explore how words transform raw sensory inputs into meaningful concepts, acting as bridges that connect us to the universe. Drawing parallels between language and a priestly function, we highlight how words mediate and unite us with our world by naming and defining it. We reflect on the natural bond between parents and children, discussing the miraculous ease with which infants learn to speak and the deep connections language fosters. Join us on this fascinating journey as we uncover the power of words in shaping our cosmic civilization and deepening our human relationships.
The theme music is "Wager with Angels" by Nathan Moore
Well, welcome to the next episode of the Christ-Centered Cosmic Civilization. And we're continuing to think about language. Um takes this huge burden um away from us in our own use of language and um the knowledge that it's everything has been verbally expressed in language, in, in, in this deep, meaningful way, within the eternal Trinity, means we don't have to achieve that ourselves, but can rather learn how to speak and think and listen and how to express this. Express this one truth uni veritas, you know the universe, one truth, that there is this one truth and he, the Son, expresses this one truth fully, perfectly, exhaustively, and that when we come to him and learn of him, we can have this kind of crazy confidence in being able to describe reality, the heavens and the earth, because it's already been done in him, or he already does this, and he holds all things together through his own words. So as we come and learn of him, um learning how to speak about reality ourselves, the universe, everything, even the God, even the eternal being of God, kind of thing, all of that, it is possible to speak the truth approximately, speak the truth even with our complicatedly messed up, compromised languages and so on. Nevertheless, because there's this archetypal speech, the original, perfect, exhaustive expression of god, the universe and everything, and that is all in jesus. That, as we come to him and learn to speak from him, put our pawn, put his mind like, get that mind, that way of thinking that is in Christ Jesus, we can, with this crazy confidence, speak truth about God, the universe and everything, and also a. It's a way in which we can have this crazy confidence to use language in um amazingly creative, adventurous ways, because, again, we were um, held within this kind of divine language, um and the power language. We can explore that with this confidence that he's got everything, he's holding it all together, and we can speak creatively, adventurously, and so on, because it doesn't actually depend on us Already, this ever new, exhaustive word, that is the divine son. He carries the weight, he holds everything together.
Speaker 1:Anyway, there's a lot to say about that, but what we're going to focus on in this episode is words as mediators, connectors and bridges. So we he is the Logos, we are what we could call Logoi, and that's really rather like I'm not by that wanting to say that the idea that we have, like there have been these log away, these little minds that have always existed, and then he is the divine logos and somehow he gathers around himself. So not, not that kind of thing, that kind of Gnostic idea. That kind of Gnostic idea. When we say that we are Logoi, we're just trying to say something simple that he is the archetypal Logos and we are copied of him and called to learn of him and are created and designed to do that. And so we are like Log um many, lots of examples of him and him speak and learning how to think and speak like him.
Speaker 1:So we are logoy, words or minds derived from and dependent on the great and divine logos. Um, the lord jesus, the eternal lord jesus. Everything holds together in him. He sustains everything by his powerful word and we, um, we are like him and our ability to speak the truth and describe the heavens and the earth is, is outrageous, wonderful, um, divine thing, uh, but it all is is like all part of this idea that he is the logos and we are logoy and this power is given to us be, but because we are made to be like christ, made to be like Christ and because of this, this power of words, it means without words, we have no grasp of ourselves. So it's like, how am I feeling If I don't have a word to express how I'm feeling.
Speaker 1:I don't know how I'm feeling. Actually, I don't know how I'm feeling if there is no word for it, if I cannot articulate it in any way. I mean, I might say I'm finding it hard to express how I'm feeling. I'm kind of feeling anxious, and we might say I'm feeling kind of happy and sad all at the same time, and things like that, and so we're wrestling to try to express it. But if we just have no words at all, then we don't have any grasp at all of ourselves and our experience. We have to have some kind of words for it to even be real, even for that to have any meaning to us at all. So without words we have no grasp of ourselves, our world, our situation, our experiences, our life.
Speaker 1:Right, language is the web that connects our life together. Language enables us to understand, plan, share experience, remember and think. So in one sense, then, language, we might say say stands between us and the world. Let's think of it like that for a moment, so that there's us, and as I'm looking out the window now, I can see a tree, a rooftop, a kind of blue topolin blowing in the wind on some scaffolding, a chimney, pot, skylights, but you see each of the things that I'm seeing.
Speaker 1:You could argue, in one sense, that there's just colour and like colour coming into my eye in different patterns, but what language does is identify. It's like as if there are words. So the colour, all these different colours, in particular patterns, are coming into my eye, but what words do is group them, shape them, define them, so that when I see that particular set pattern of color, what I see is a tree, and it's not that I kind of. My experience is not first of all collecting some color data, then trying to work out what it is and then calling it a tree. It's like that language is so immediate, so immediately part of the seeing, identifying it, that I those, the things that I see, uh, those, um, the things that I see. So the fact like, in a way, the roof I'm looking at you could argue like the chimney, the roof, the skylight, the, even the blue to polar than ever.
Speaker 1:How do I differentiate, though, all those aspects of kind of this one dark collection of colours, greys, browns and things? What language does is it labels different components of those colours, colourful patterns that are coming into my eye to make them distinct, things that have meaning to me. And now it's like part of a story. The world is now identified, it means something. It's like it, it's, it's, it's, um, it's a scene, a stage in which there are things, rather than just an undifferentiated, just massive, random colour and meaningless shapes and things like that.
Speaker 1:So words are kind of like, so part of perception, so that what I see is labelled and named and therefore becomes meaningful and real to me, so that I don't say I'm seeing green stuff, I say I'm seeing a tree, that's what and that is what. I'm seeing a tree, though you could say, well, you're not actually seeing the tree, you're seeing light reflected in particular patterns and all that sort of thing. Yeah, there's that sense of mediating, like light is mediating something to me, reflecting, bridging Light is bridging this gap. But it's not just the light that's bridging the gap. But it's not just the light that's bridging the gap. What makes the real connection is the words, the language that makes the real connection, that turns that light into something meaningful, that is, tree, roof, window, chimney. I hope that makes some sense.
Speaker 1:So language, you could say, stands between us and the world, but I don't like the word between, because that's like the idea that it's getting in the way. But no language has this bridging role not to obscure the world but to enlighten it. Not to obscure the world, but to enlighten it. And we cannot get behind or beyond words to some unarticulated reality. Because even if we said, well, I'm going to try to perceive that green light reflecting off the tree and I'm going to perceive it with some scientific equipment to see it in a different way, yeah, but even then, what I see on a screen or data, on a page or something, I will name it and describe it and it will become meaningful to me through words and language. There is no way of accessing a kind of level of reality. That isn't that without words, no matter how we perceive the world, through whatever tools or whatever sort of, you know, like a blind man may have a stick to kind of prove, push and touch and test the world. Whatever is our stick, whether it's light, sound, whatever, we're always going to be using words to turn for that, to turn for that in order to actually perceive, to have understanding, to be able to perceive.
Speaker 1:So in that way we can think of language almost as like having a priestly role, because the job of a priest is to bring people together, to unite two things or more than two things. But a priest has this intermediary role, mediation Especially, of course. It's really about bringing the living God and humanity together. That's what priest is in the Bible. Priest is in the Bible, and so the priest is like a bridge, a connection person that is able to touch both one thing and the other and to kind of make it possible for the two to connect. And in that way we can think of words as priestly, so that it is the word tree that connects me to that kind of patterns of colour that come to me from across there that I can see the word tree suddenly makes a connection, makes it so that is meaningful, so that I perceive it rather than it being something meaningless or undifferentiated.
Speaker 1:So words are like mediators, not as a third party that's independent of us in the world. So it's not as if words exist independently of us and connect us, for it's rather words are in us, we use words, we invent words to describe things, um, like it's like words themselves become part of the probing of reality and we'll try out a word to see if that will work to describe something, an experience, and after we'll say it's like a tree, we might say and then we'll say no, it's not actually like a tree, it's like this or like that, and then we're trying to find the right word to describe. So words are mediators, but they don't exist independently of us, but they're rather like a web that unites us together. That's why that Hebrews 1.3, when it says Jesus, everything's been created through him, by him, for him, but also that he sustains everything by his powerful word. It's as if the way his words describe and define all reality, he, like, speaks about reality, so it is what it is. And in him naming things and defining them and dividing them and so on, they become real, they become something because he labels them, speaks them, describes them. And we have something of that experience of words as Logoi copied, as these kind of mini copies of him, the original speaker and speech. We feel the power of our words to do this.
Speaker 1:So without words there's just a jumble of disconnected things, but with words, everything is bound together in a universe, a single truth made up of such diverse parts. And furthermore than that, what words do is tell the story of the universe. So the universe isn't just this sort of static collection of things that are labeled, as if it was like a museum exhibit, but the universe is the venue or the theater in which a massive story is happening, so that all the things that are named and described and so on Are done so not statically but as part of a story. Like trees are part of a story that's going on in the universe, as are planets and stars and meteors and angels and earthworms and everything. All of these are like characters in a story that's going on, and the words of Jesus, as he's telling this story, is what holds everything together.
Speaker 1:Words define us and connect us both individually, but also the whole world. We don't know what anything is until we have a word for it. All truth and meaning, even all action and life is given to us only in words. Anything that is quote beyond words is empty and meaningless, and I think that's important for us just to absorb that for a minute because we use that word. I find it funny.
Speaker 1:Quite often a person say I don't have words to describe what I'm feeling right now, and then they pause and go ahead anyway and do use words to give a sense of what they're feeling. Like I don't even have words to say how angry I am. Well, you do have some words. You have at least the word anger, and that sentence in itself is conveying a sense that you are extremely angry and emotional and that you're not able to speak well at this moment, and so on. But people, when they say there's something beyond words, nearly always they do have words to reach towards this thing. Now, it can well be that our language skills and vocabulary are inadequate to articulate something, an experience, an event, whatever. Of course that's true. Or we are too emotional at this time to gather together the right words and string them together in the right way. Yeah, all that's true, and there are genuinely experiences that our current vocabulary and language just cannot adequately express. But that, even then, it doesn't mean there are no words at all that are of any value.
Speaker 1:Appearing to him, encountering Ezekiel, visiting Ezekiel in this wheeled throne, carried by four living creatures, and Ezekiel is perceiving a level of reality that is clearly not. He does not really have the language to adequately do it, and he's kind of indicating that to us, Because we find it hard enough to describe the level, you know, the second heaven level of reality, and we come up with, you know, enormous numbers and sizes and things, and we try analogies and all sorts of things to try to convey the complexity and size and scale of the second heaven. When we get to third heaven levels of reality, it becomes, you know, extremely more difficult, exponentially more difficult, I would suggest. And then, beyond even the third heaven level of reality is the kind of existence that the father, son and holy spirit have always lived, and that's beyond even the highest heaven, as we're told in Scripture. So yeah, like we Ezekiel in Ezekiel 1, or we get it in Daniel, or we get it in Revelation, that when that third heaven level of reality is opened up, language, you know we struggle to find adequate words, comparisons, everything like that, but it doesn't mean there's nothing can be said at all.
Speaker 1:Like Ezekiel does in fact, tell us quite a lot about that encounter he has with the Son of man, and though he's struggling and stumbling and doing his best with similes and metaphors and things like that, we do come away with some kind of an impression of what it what he saw. It's not as if we have no idea in, even in his attempt to speak about what is beyond, um, the you know that he doesn't have words and vocabulary to fully and adequately describe, grasp, comprehend what he's experienced. But his words do do some kind of work, they do provide something and that's really important, because it's about this bridging power of words, that even when our words are not able to make as strong and direct a bridge connection as we would like and we can feel frustrated by that Nevertheless words are so powerful that even a stumbling collection of broken words can create a genuine bridge, genuine understanding, so that someone else can hear what we say and have some sense of what we have seen and grasped. So this need to form a bridge, so that words making these connections with reality and mediating we see that in the very earliest days of a young baby. Well, let me just first of all say we take such great care over words because they are so powerful and words give us life, they give us understanding, and so I'm always amazed at how careful people are with words, even if they don't think they're being careful. Even if they don't think they're being careful Even, you know, people will say a lot of people only have a vocabulary of 400 to 600 words, and so on. Yeah, maybe, but I'm often quite interested in the kinds of words people take the care to use, even in very trivial day-to-day life, because there's a feeling that they want to get the right word as best as they can. And without words we can't really connect with anybody. So this need to form a bridge in the earliest days of a young baby, this need to form a bridge in the earliest days of a young baby Words are the most basic way to connect between a parent and child and right from the very beginning a parent wants to connect with the baby with words.
Speaker 1:Language seems to be wired into our brains at the most basic level. There's a deep instinct within us to find some kind of language, a way to think and understand and communicate. It's almost like a biological craving, searching for words and language. And it seems that humans who are denied any contact with language at all in those early years of brain development, they cannot ever really develop into proper language using mature adults, into proper language using mature adults. If we're denied language in those early months and years it kind of dehumanizes a person, deeply, damages them. It's as if it's so fundamental a need that if we're denied it as we're being formed, it's like a profound disability. It's like having no legs or something. No worse than that. It's much worse than that Studies show. It's much more disabling than that. Disabling than that. Without language, our brains are denied the necessary conditions for development and growth.
Speaker 1:Words connect us together.
Speaker 1:Words connect us to the world around us, and so the most basic interactions between parents and children are around words. We love to talk to babies even before they can speak, even before they're born. Actually, people talk to baby before they're even born, like wanting to give language to them. We always want to know what a baby's first word was, and mums and dads spend hours looking at their baby saying mummy and daddy over and over again. They point at the baby and say their name over and over again and once they've got those first words in place, so much of their early years are about teaching the baby how to say words and then form sentences, and it's an utter miracle how easily and inevitably babies learn how to speak.
Speaker 1:And when we analyze things they do with language little children one, two year old they do things with language that are very sophisticated, and really they do things that they haven't been shown how to do with words and language. That's what makes us realize it's kind of hardwired into us that they learn how to use language so naturally and with such sophistication and power that it is literally an incredible miracle. It is literally an incredible miracle, but they need language and it is frightening. When a little baby is in pain or feverish because they can't tell us what's wrong, it's hard to find out, it is one of the most terrifying things.
Speaker 1:Whereas a little baby who has no words at all is distressed and isn't able to. You can't find out anything about their experience, or very little. It's very hard to. So it's hard to connect and share their life when they don't have the words to tell us what's going on, to tell us what's going on. And as words and language develop, so it's easier and easier to connect with that child. Words provide a bridge to connect us together. They make it possible for us to share life, to share truth, to share ourselves. So we'll leave it there and when we begin next time, let's think a little bit more about Jesus as this word of truth that does this bridging work.