1. Intro
Dear Alan, Sorry to take so very long responding. A few pressures got in the way, and I couldn't begin to answer your Calvinism and Zen question anyway without a deal of thought. As I was writing, it occurred to me that I might usefully copy this material (with your indulgence) to a few others who have some interest in these matters (or at least some curiosity - if not alarm - about where I'm coming from). This consideration accounts for the text falling into a less personal register as it goes on. And is also the reason why I at points seem to be explaining Van Til and Dooyeweerd to you, when you are already more conversant with their thought than I am. Apologies for these things.
As always, I am a bit awestruck at your reading programme! I am, of course, very much on board with your impatience of MacDiarmid's, Sorley's, (and much of that Scottish literary generation's) indulgence of Sovietism. I concur also with your "post tenebras lux" approach. I was reading this morning Psalm 139 - "If I say, 'Surely the darkness will overwhelm me
As always, I am a bit awestruck at your reading programme! I am, of course, very much on board with your impatience of MacDiarmid's, Sorley's, (and much of that Scottish literary generation's) indulgence of Sovietism. I concur also with your "post tenebras lux" approach. I was reading this morning Psalm 139 - "If I say, 'Surely the darkness will overwhelm me
And the light around me will be night,'Even the darkness is not dark to You,
And the night is as bright as the day.
Darkness and light are alike to You" (vv11,12)
You mention the verse "He has made everything beautiful in its time". Since like you I view God as absolutely sovereign, I am predisposed to this affirmation. Yet it remains a sword in my heart nonetheless. I have just discovered that the Chinese character for "endure" (忍 rěn) features a knife blade (刃 rèn) over, or in, a heart (心 xīn). To lift a newspaper or glance at a TV bulletin, or visit a children's hospital precludes any simplistic application of these words. If the verse be true at all (as likewise, if God be sovereign at all) it can only be so on a profounder level of apprehension than is the norm. The attempt to endure trauma while professing the sovereignty of God is difficult enough. To call it "beautiful" seems a step too far. As I contemplate the utterly excruciating and hellish horrors so many humans bear and have borne both in peacetime and war I am crushed by the unbearable nightmarish weight of it all. I think the translation of the word must be in question. Or the frame of reference is rarified. Eschatological, perhaps. Something to do with the Cross.
I checked out the original Hebrew for this word "beautiful". It is "yapheh" יפה, which seems to be a standard enough term for "beautiful", but can also shade into "good" and "excellent". Thus the French Louis Segond version has "Il fait toute chose bonne en son temps". Actually, I'm not sure that takes me much further forward. The American Standard Version is a bit easier to get along with. It has "He has made everything appropriate in its time". In the Septuagint, the term used for "beautiful" here is "kalos". This turns out to be the word Christ uses of Himself and of his demise when He says "I am the good (ο καλος) shepherd. The good (ο καλος) shepherd lays down his life for the sheep" (John 10:11).
In Classical Greek "kalos" means "beautiful". Also,"noble","praiseworthy". But most significantly for me, it can also mean"serving a good end or purpose" (Greek-English Lexicon, Liddle, Scott, after Passow).
In Ecclesiastes the Chinese renders the Hebrew "yapheh"with the character for "beautiful" (美 měi) and the character for "good" (好 hǎo) together. In tandem, these characters (美好 měi hǎo) can mean "OK". Maybe that helps just a little bit.n
So where are we? The Greek at least tells us that God has made everything "kalos" in its time, and also that the Shepherd Who is "kalos" lays down His life for the sheep. Thus the death of this Shepherd "serves a good end or purpose". Thus the Cross was supremely yapheh יפה ("beautiful") in its time. And for all time and eternity. Yet who can bear it's horror? Pain is pain.
In Gethsemane ("Oil-Press"), Christ recoiled from the prospect of the pain before Him. Certainly, as I think about it, pain accepted as the careful providence of God ("Thy will be done") can surely be distinguished from the random, blank pain of an atheist universe. The cosmos "groans", being presently subject to "decay/ futility/ meaninglessness" (Rom 8), but the Christian (certainly the Calvinist Christian) affirms in effect that "this (cosmic) sickness is not unto death but to the glory of God, that the Son of God might be glorified by it" (John 11). That is of course a very difficult statement indeed which risks outrage. On the other hand in its impenetrable mystery it rescues from meaninglessness all human misery from the dawn of history to the end of time.
But pain remains pain. Jesus wept sorely at Lazarus' tomb minutes before he commanded Lazarus to walk out of there. The certainty that all was going to be well (or "OK" - 美好 měi hǎo) did not seem to exempt Jesus from the trauma of loss.
So it seems that all these words are being stretched beyond their limits in the attempt to contain a reality which transcends the lexicon (and which I suspect transcends Time itself). Like plastic supermarket bags faced with a snorting Clydesdale horse stood by the checkout counter.
I checked out the original Hebrew for this word "beautiful". It is "yapheh" יפה, which seems to be a standard enough term for "beautiful", but can also shade into "good" and "excellent". Thus the French Louis Segond version has "Il fait toute chose bonne en son temps". Actually, I'm not sure that takes me much further forward. The American Standard Version is a bit easier to get along with. It has "He has made everything appropriate in its time". In the Septuagint, the term used for "beautiful" here is "kalos". This turns out to be the word Christ uses of Himself and of his demise when He says "I am the good (ο καλος) shepherd. The good (ο καλος) shepherd lays down his life for the sheep" (John 10:11).
In Classical Greek "kalos" means "beautiful". Also,"noble","praiseworthy". But most significantly for me, it can also mean"serving a good end or purpose" (Greek-English Lexicon, Liddle, Scott, after Passow).
In Ecclesiastes the Chinese renders the Hebrew "yapheh"with the character for "beautiful" (美 měi) and the character for "good" (好 hǎo) together. In tandem, these characters (美好 měi hǎo) can mean "OK". Maybe that helps just a little bit.n
So where are we? The Greek at least tells us that God has made everything "kalos" in its time, and also that the Shepherd Who is "kalos" lays down His life for the sheep. Thus the death of this Shepherd "serves a good end or purpose". Thus the Cross was supremely yapheh יפה ("beautiful") in its time. And for all time and eternity. Yet who can bear it's horror? Pain is pain.
In Gethsemane ("Oil-Press"), Christ recoiled from the prospect of the pain before Him. Certainly, as I think about it, pain accepted as the careful providence of God ("Thy will be done") can surely be distinguished from the random, blank pain of an atheist universe. The cosmos "groans", being presently subject to "decay/ futility/ meaninglessness" (Rom 8), but the Christian (certainly the Calvinist Christian) affirms in effect that "this (cosmic) sickness is not unto death but to the glory of God, that the Son of God might be glorified by it" (John 11). That is of course a very difficult statement indeed which risks outrage. On the other hand in its impenetrable mystery it rescues from meaninglessness all human misery from the dawn of history to the end of time.
But pain remains pain. Jesus wept sorely at Lazarus' tomb minutes before he commanded Lazarus to walk out of there. The certainty that all was going to be well (or "OK" - 美好 měi hǎo) did not seem to exempt Jesus from the trauma of loss.
So it seems that all these words are being stretched beyond their limits in the attempt to contain a reality which transcends the lexicon (and which I suspect transcends Time itself). Like plastic supermarket bags faced with a snorting Clydesdale horse stood by the checkout counter.
The default outlook of our Western society is secular. The defining context is Godless. The de facto committment is to a neo-Darwinist philosophical materialism. Design is illusion. Life accidental. Death terminal. Purpose strictly DIY. The random Now is all there is. In contrast, the Christian is optimistic about the future, however desolate the present:
"Blessed are those who mourn, For they shall be comforted" (Matthew 5: 4)The Good Shepherd will lead us to a Good Place:
"I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us." (Romans 8:18)
"For the Lamb who is in the midst of the throne will shepherd them and lead them to living fountains of waters. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.” (Rev 7:17)
Context is everything:
"He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also He has put eternity in their hearts..." (Ecclesiastes 3:11)
Having mulled this over quite a bit, I guess I can only finally cope with that word "beautiful" in eschatalogical terms. In other words for me it ultimately can only refer to suffering reality as entered into and rescued by the Christ on the cross. Suffering (忍 rěn) reality will finally, because of the Cross, have the "knife" (刃 rèn) removed from its "heart" (心 xīn), to be replaced with "eternity" (永 yǒng).
Those latter words from Ecclesiastes ("He has put eternity in their hearts") are central to the philosophy of Herman Dooyeweerd, and he beautifully and classically articulates this Biblical context of suffering here:
Those latter words from Ecclesiastes ("He has put eternity in their hearts") are central to the philosophy of Herman Dooyeweerd, and he beautifully and classically articulates this Biblical context of suffering here:
"Nothing in our apostate world can get lost in Christ. There is not any part of space, there is no temporal life, no temporal movement or temporal energy, no temporal power, wisdom, beauty, love, faith or justice, which sinful reality can maintain as a kind of property of its own apart from Christ.[...] It is all due to God's common grace in Christ that there are still means left in the temporal world to resist the destructive force of the elements that have got loose; that there are still means to combat disease, to check psychiatric maladies, to practise logical thinking, to save cultural development from going down into savage barbarism, to develop language, to preserve the possibility of social interaction, to withstand injustice, and so on. All these things are the fruits of Christ's work, even before His appearance on the earth. From the very beginning God has viewed His fallen creation in the light of the Redeemer." (Herman Dooyeweerd, "A New Critique of Theoretical Thought" Vol II, p 34)
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