Transcendence – the Movie and the Reality

            The 2014 movie Transcendence was a huge disappointment at the box office, criticized mainly for its plot, characters, and dialogue (three rather important elements in most any story). The main character, Will, is transcendent; that is, he has abilities beyond the normal limits of human beings. It is pure fiction – pure, mediocre fiction. Too bad. Transcendence, by its very nature, is not the kind of thing to be portrayed in middle-of-the-road fashion.

            Moving beyond fiction and into reality, Moses (under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit) addresses and challenges one of the most basic worldview assumptions of reality held by the prominent civilizations in ancient Mesopotamia. And he does so with the very first sentence of written revelation. The God Moses introduces is completely separate from and supreme over all creation. This is in stark contrast to the stories (and their accompanying assumptions) common in the Mesopotamian world. For instance,

When Tiamat sees Marduk ride into battle against her, she goes wild, taking leave of her senses and shaking to her lowest parts – an image not only of a stormy sea, but of chaos itself. Slaying her, Marduk splits her in two like a shellfish and thrusts one half upward to make the sky and the other downward to make the sea, setting guards to ensure that her waters will not escape and threaten the world again. The dome of heaven he makes to correspond to earth as its heavenly counterpart. Then he executes Kingu and creates man from his blood so that the gods will have a servant to maintain the earth when they have withdrawn to the heavens. As their final work of creation the gods build Babylon and at its center as a temple to Marduk the great ziggurat, described as reaching as high as Apsu, as high, that is, as the primordial waters were deep. One thing to notice in this myth is the fact that the gods need mankind in order that they may rest from labor. They are not unlimited in power or radically transcendent, but constitute only a part of the larger system of things that is the cosmos as a whole (Eugene Webb, Mesopotamian Religion, n.d.).

            Ralph Smith (2004) makes explicit what is implicit: “In distinction from all the stories of the ancient world around Israel, in the Bible, God and the creation are never mixed. His transcendence and the dependence of all things upon Him is part of what the Bible means when it speaks of Him as creator.” (Trinity & Reality, p. 54). God is supremely transcendent. He is separate from all Other. He is beyond his creation. Transcendence is the idea of being beyond comprehension, beyond the limits of human experience and knowledge. Apart from his choosing to reveal himself (let alone actually coming to live among us), God is beyond his creation and beyond our human experience and comprehension within that creation. 

A Proposition Regarding Propositions

            One could possibly be inclined to think of reality and truth as primarily propositional (please note especially the word primarily). Would this not be the position of theologians who believe propositional truth is the highest form of truth and that the Bible presents truth primarily as proposition? How does this position square with God as ultimate reality and ultimate truth? How does one protect the personhood of God from disappearing? Is God a mere proposition? God is the “I am.” That is a proposition – a proposition, however, nestled in the midst of a story! As proposition, the statement told Moses (and company) something regarding the reality of the person of God. The thought that God is (only, or primarily, or even slightly) a proposition is obviously preposterous. And if (or rather, since) reality is ultimately and foundationally God himself, then neither is reality a mere proposition. The same applies for truth; truth is not essentially, predominantly or exclusively propositional. Note that I am not saying reality and truth do not have a propositional element; of course they do. I am, however, arguing that truth (as well as reality and God) is not fundamentally or only propositional. When Jesus declares, “I am the way, the truth, and the life...” he is not claiming to be a mere conveyor of propositional truth claims; rather he is saying as R. Bultmann (1985) tells us, “So truth…is God’s very reality revealing itself – occurring! – in Jesus.” (p. 2,19). The difference is no small detail. And no small part of the story.

GRANDMA’S GHOSTS, GOBLINS, AND GOD

            On special occasions, when we were quite young, my two brothers and I would stay at Grandpa and Grandma’s house. They lived on a farm fifteen miles from our cattle ranch in Montana. We liked staying over night there. First of all, Grandma would generally spoil us with some of her homemade cinnamon rolls. Hers made the modern Cinnabon roll (that you find in many American airports and malls) look and taste like two-day-old dry toast. The syrupy brown sugar, cinnamon, and butter mixture made the rolls almost drinkable. But even outweighing the sugar high, our favorite occasion at Grandma’s house was bedtime, which always dumbfounded our parents. That’s when Grandma would tell us stories. She was a storyteller with few equals. She held us spellbound as she made up her fascinating tales. Plus, she routinely scared us out of our wits. Part of the intrigue was the very fact that we knew it was coming. My brothers and I would all be tucked in one big bed with a heavy, homemade, hand-sewn blanket over us. We would be peering out at Grandma, sitting in her rocking chair beside the bed. A winter storm would be blowing outside. The windows would be slightly rattling. Inside a dim light was on. And Grandma would tell one of her ghost stories to three heads peering out of the top of the quilt. Three pairs of hands were holding the blanket up to cover our three defenseless necks, as if the quilt was some sort of magic protection of the vulnerable parts against the ghosts that were soon to jump right out of Grandma’s story and into the bed. Which they always did.

            After the climatic conclusion of each of Grandma’s stories, she would get up from her squeaky rocking chair and lead us in the prayer, “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep.” Never was a child’s prayer so sincere. Grandma would then kiss us good night, turn out the dim light, and say, “Sweet dreams. Have a nice sleep.” Sweet dreams? Nice sleep? Are you kidding me? We were terrified. To Grandma the stories were pure fiction, not real at all, merely entertainment for three dear grandchildren whom she loved very much. To the three darling grandchildren the stories were real, the characters were real, the settings were real, and the plots were real. For us, Grandma’s ghosts were just as real as Grandma’s God. And her cinnamon rolls. To this day I sometimes find myself tacitly vacillating between the reality of those three wide-eyed boys and God’s.  

In Search of the Supreme Archetype

Merriam-Webster defines archetype as “the original pattern or model of which all things of the same type are representations or copies; a perfect example.” Halverson tells us that, “Archetypes are standard characters that one might expect to find in a story. They unlock motives and operate as ‘shorthand for situations’ in which characters might find themselves. All archetypes are tied to story forms, but not all characters in stories are necessarily archetypes” (Halverson, 21). Carl Jung borrowed from Kant’s “forms,” Plato’s “ideas,” and Schopenhaur’s “prototypes” to further develop the concept of archetypes (Samuels, 1986). For Jung, archetypes were highly established components of a community’s or a culture’s collective unconscious. As such they were to be discovered by investigating outward behavior, symbols, stories, and religious beliefs. Archetypes play a key role in how humans think, relate, and understand their perceived reality.

The God of the Scriptures is presented to humankind with a kaleidoscope of archetypes – supreme archetypes. A prime example comes right out of the starting block: God is introduced in Genesis chapter one as the powerful, almighty Creator. By the sheer power of merely speaking words, the cosmos was brought into existence. Just saying “light” brought light into existence. Just saying “sun, moon, stars” brought the entirety of those vast and immense celestial bodies into existence. Imagine, just saying, “Lamborghini,” and wah-lah – she’s in the driveway. The genesis of written revelation begins with this grand Creator image/archetype of God in order to dispel the various major rival cosmologies familiar to the Israelites wandering in the desert wilderness. Those rival stories were well known to the tribes of Israel – this newly penned story by a first-time national author (Moses) hit the stands to dispel those stories and construct another – one that is real.

Following fast upon the Creator archetype comes one generally seen in more somber garb: here comes the judge – the Supreme Judge. One can follow this judge motif (and archetypical characteristic) of God all the way through the biblical story. See it burst on the scene in Genesis three when Adam and Eve choose to listen to and obey a rival voice. From then on in the story it scarcely stops. See the Judge with Cain. With the generation of Noah. With Sodom and Gomorrah. With Samson. With Saul. With David. With Solomon. With Israel. With Jesus (vicariously). Ah, and then there is the book of Revelation. No doubt about it – God is the archetypical righteous Judge.

Then, of course, there is God the Savior. This trail through Scripture follows much the same terrain as that of Judge. He is judging. But he is also saving. He does not leave all mankind in that sunken fallen state. No, he saves some. He comes up with a most staggering plan to righteously save unrighteous man. The Bible is a story of God as Savior. Right to the end.

Creator, Judge, and Savior – three obvious God archetypes. There are others, many others. But what we really want to see here is that as incredibly important as these aspects of God are, God was something (in logical sequence) before he was Creator. God was something (in logical sequence) before he was Judge. And God was something (in logical sequence) before he was Savior. Before he created, judged, and saved the world, he was somebody doing something.

In order to understand this created world now, we need to understand something of God’s uncreated world then. Who was he (first, in logical sequence) and what was he doing (first, in logical sequence)? He was not creating, judging, and saving – not yet. Not before creation. Who was he? Answer: He was Trinity. Now granted, “the doctrine of the Trinity is one of those Christian beliefs that we all affirm but which, in our more honest moments, we often think is rather perplexing and somewhat remote from ordinary life" (Parry, 3). We will find, however, that the Trinity is far from “remote from ordinary life.” So, other than being Trinity, what was God doing? Answer: He was relating within the community of the Trinity. “Before he ever ruled the world, before anything else, this God was a Father loving his son” (Reeves, 21). The God of the Scriptures is triune. This makes Him distinct. And it makes Him (by nature) One who relates, loves, and is in a perpetual state of "reaching out." God is (first and foremost) the One who relates, loves, and reaches out. He is the loving Relator. 

Ordo Interpretatio

The notable (big gun) harbingers of general hermeneutics[1] such as Wilhelm Dilthey, Martin Heidegger, Hans-Georg Gadamer, and Friedrich Schleiermacher (all of whom, incidentally, have been labeled at one time or another “the father of hermeneutics”) all subscribe to a certain “order” of interpretation. These men, in contradiction with the likes of Rene Decartes who summarily indicate reality is fundamentally in the mind, held that reality was indeed “out there” to be discovered. Dilthey, as an exemplar of these hermeneutic harbingers, proposed that reality is discoverable through “reflective awareness” and that this process occurs in “lived in experience,” (Dilthey, 1954). Note carefully the perceptive order: a) reality is “out there;” b) to be interpreted via “reflective awareness;” c) which finds its basis in story (“lived in experience).”

---

[1] General hermeneutics (also referred to as ontological, philosophical, or universal hermeneutics) refers to the interpretation of all life experiences, not merely the interpretation of texts. For an understanding of this concept and its historical roots, see Jean Grondin, Introduction to Philosophical Hermeneutics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994) and Michael N. Forster’s (University of Chicago) article on hermeneutics: http://philosophy.uchicago.edu/faculty/files/forster/HERM.pdf