God Demands Mysticism

Let me bring to your attention the excellent comment posted by Jackabond:

There’s a great deal of scaffolding in the established Church, such as Christology, that has been erected around Christian beliefs that aren’t consistent with a spiritual or mystical reading of Scripture. These are clearly in reaction to various heresies in the early Church that the modern Church still clings to, probably out of fear of those heresies creeping back in. This scaffolding is often just the Hellenistic mind trying to make sense of something that was given in more mystical and symbolic terms. Sadly, the scaffolding has become a rigid structure in the established Church that often stands in the way of spiritual growth.

This is precisely the problem with most historical church doctrine and theology, regardless of the branch or denominational legacy. It was all based on human attempts to nail down something that exceeds human intellect. This in turn is simply the flesh trying to evade capture and the utter necessity of feudal submission to Christ as Lord.

If human reason can capture something in a proposition, then the demands of God can be subjected to fleshly desire. That’s the whole point. It won’t matter if you leave it as a paradox of Christ as both God and man. The obsession with locking in the words and thoughts on a human level denies the power of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit does not operate directly in mind, but in the spirit, which in turn speaks to your heart, not your head. Your brain is not the essence of what makes you “in His image”. It is your spirit, something indefinable in words.

The only valid question here is not what Christ is, but who. There’s no what or why until you have answered who and whom. You can bet the early Apostles did not tolerate such intellectual speculation. Just a quick reading of their comments and letters will make that obvious. Paul railed against semantic wrangling because words cannot capture the essence of God or anything that belongs to the Spirit Realm (AKA the Unseen Realm).

Have you not noticed that the Hebrew language is only nouns and verbs? Abstractions don’t exist in Hebrew. That language developed in a world where the human intellect was understood as limited, so that the only way you could address spiritual matters was to employ symbols and parables (AKA parabolic language). The whole point was to discern what God requires of you in a given context in this world. Across the entire Ancient Near East, it would have been gross arrogance and blasphemy to declare spiritual things in concrete terms. This is the paradox of biblical mysticism: It is intensely practical because it doesn’t dabble in things above human ken.

The Doctrine of the Trinity is Hellenism, a rejection of the Hebrew mystical approach to spiritual matters. Scripture itself avoids any attempt to nail down in words any specifics in how the three labels — Father, Son and Holy Spirit — relate or anything you can state in propositions. It’s all left as a mystery beyond explanation. Your job is not to parse the essence, but to obey Him.

Thus, the Apostles kept heresies at bay by pointing this out. Their reply would have been, “You are asking the wrong question. It’s a question only the flesh wants to know.” And the flesh wants to know so it can evade moral discipline. The only answer you need is to recognize Jesus as your sovereign Lord. Because your heart has the ability, you are obliged to submit and commit to Him, even without Election. That much is built into the nature of how the heart works, and the heart is supposed to lead the head. The brain, along with the rest of the flesh, must be crucified on the Cross and forced to live in submission. It is not pampered and allowed to reign.

Note: One of the greatest heresies of all Church History is the notion that the intellect is not part of the flesh, not fallen, and therefore perfectible.

We don’t need a scaffold. We are not obliged to answer the millions of fleshly concerns, which includes intellectual queries. All you need to understand is your role in Christ’s Kingdom. You need to understand that no matter how brilliant and talented you may be, God does not speak through those fleshly capabilities. He can use them for His glory if they are enslaved to faith, but they must never, ever be allowed to take the lead. The Bible says they are tainted by the fall and fleshly appetites; like fire they must be contained in order to be useful.