A STUDY OF FIRST PETER: THE RHETORICAL UNIVERSE BY J. MICHAEL STRAWN SECOND THEMATIC: ANALOG INTELLIGENCE OVERRIDES HUMAN LOCAL CONTEXT INTRODUCTION AND TERMINOLOGY: Triadic structure, most obvious in the composition of the Godhead itself, is replicated in such things as the structure of the Resurrection (as we shall see) and in human language as the manipulation of symbols (facts and representations linked by a formal correspondence.)
Specifically in the Resurrection of Jesus, as the verse of 1 Peter shows, we can see this structure in the power that was the linkage (index) between God and the physical body of Jesus is also mirrored in the new birth: a linkage of God's power in our lives as well. All of these things reinforce the Bible's teachings that we live in a "top-down" universe of noncommutative, unidirectional power that is initiated and sustained by God and of which we are the recipients by "great mercy." Also under consideration is the issue of ontology: the action of giving something the status of being "real." For a Christian, this involves an act of the will in deciding that the invisible things of God must be given ontological status, especially when contrasted with those seen things which confront a Christian daily. Such seen things as good deeds, ethical behavior, etc. are certainly desirable; but when seen as "proof" of faith when only viewed from within a context, are often misleading. The deception of seeing such qualities only from within contextualized intelligence is that the observer will not know he is being deceived. Moving beyond self-reference and contextualized intelligence produces accuracy and clarity of evaluation. ELEMENTS OF THE THEMATIC: The smaller square shows a Christian who lives on earth within a temporal context of his physical circumstances. However, that context is intersected by and connected to the eternal/invisible, the realm where the "God and Father" lives and operates. By His direct action, or linkage (shown by the action-laden verb "given" in the text), He provides the mechanism of "the new birth" which draws the Christian out of his own context into a new condition or status of "living hope." All of this is possible and prefigured by the historical fact of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead by the same power that can transform us. Something old is put to death, something new is created, a new status is formed. By the crossing of the boundary from death to life, new hope springs into being. BIBLICAL TEXT: "Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead..."
1 Peter 1:3 GENERALIZATIONS DERIVED FROM THE THEMATIC: 1) Because of its inherent limitations, contextual intelligence must by necessity look upon the invisible and its interaction with the visible as speculative. By an act of the will, Christians make the decision to give the invisible realities of God a status of absolute ontology over the seen. What unbelievers would call "the real world" must for Christians be seen through the eyes of analog, not contextual, intelligence. One error of thinking which contextual intelligence will cause to arise is even in the practice of Christianity, outward practices and appearances are given the status of manifestations of faith when they may not actually be. The arc of confidence of the contextual thinker is connected uniquely to the visible, the contextual: thus, doctrinality,tradition, and morality are confused for faith when they may not be linked to the invisible at all. For the Christians to whom Peter wrote, they had to make a decision to give ontology to the reality of God and His power, over the persecution which they were facing. For us, persecution may not be in the context; nevertheless, any contextual conditions must by an act of the will be given a lesser status than the reality of God. But for them and for us, the result of resurrection--living hope--gives us a different way of looking at reality. In 1 Peter 1:3, Peter shows believers that the ontological status of the resurrection of Jesus means that their own status before Him is also more real than circumstances that might threaten them. Other scriptural examples of how operating only on contextual intelligence and its conclusions about faithfulness as exemplified by outward acts: Jesus' condemnation of the scribes and Pharisees who derived their overweening pride from their keeping of the law without acknowledging the ontological status of God and His view of their condition. 2) An analog intelligence would perceive a plenary, or fuller reality that would demonstrate its completeness by triadic structure. This process includes (as does all triads) 3 elements. Here, they are the eternal aspect, the temporal context; and the linking of the two.
That linking, like all indexes, is an action. (All actions are by nature indexes, all indexes are actions.) In this case, the eternal and the temporal are marked by the exertion of God's power in linking the two. Human analog intelligence would necessarily look for the exertion of God's power in all circumstances: in history, in physicality, in sociology. A secular or contextual view of these subjects would exclude or ignore the action of the invisible power of God. Thus, there would be no recognition of His involvement in human affairs, and contextual minds will look only for contextual cause-effect action to explain an event in history, an illness, or the actions of human beings in situations. Those who understand plenary reality--this three-featured, full understanding--would ourselves become links, between the visible and the invisible worlds by our actions and our teachings. We can actually replicate the ontological view of plenary reality in our lives. In 1 Peter 1:3, God demonstrates plenary reality with HIs own actions linking the two aspects of reality. The exertion of His power in resurrecting His Son shows how He completed our understanding of reality. Elsewhere in Scripture: All Scriptural examples of people who failed in faith are examples of people who decided not to operate on a plenary view of reality but instead collapsed into a fragrmented reality, based only on what they could see, ignoring the ontology of the invisible power of God. 3). Contextual intelligence carries distinct identifying marks, among which is the insistence on couching all discourse in contextualized language. A contextual intelligence, ignoring the invisible, will want everything talked about in its own terms- -words whose meaning is determined by contextual experience alone. A contextualized intelligence will vigorously resist any language that doesn't fit in a socialized format. An analog intelligence, on the other hand, will demonstrate its linkage to the ontological reality of God with different language that does not carry with it the baggage of muddy socialized meanings. In 1 Peter 1:3, much of the terminology that is used about a believer's status would be meaningless to the contextual mind: "new birth," "living hope" etc. Only when these words are used as "analog language" which is linked to the meanings determined by God are they truly accessible.
Elsewhere in Scripture: 1 Corinthians 2:13 strongly advocates the use of analog language, "not in words taught to us by human wisdom, but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words." This passage also emphasizes that people without the Spirit--contextual thinkers--will not accept analog language or its Source. 4) Analog intelligence when contrasted with contextual intelligence forces a judgement of contextual intelligence. Contextual intelligence is not seen to be merely incomplete, but actually degenerate. This degeneracy is not moral in nature, but rather functional. Simply stated, contextual intelligence does not tell us what we need to know. It is not just that it does not tell us enough, (though that's true)--it cannot tell us enough. In 1 Peter 1:3, Peter acknowledges that we could not possibly know just from our context that we are the recipients of salvation and mercy and new birth and living hope. We must have information from the Agent who brought this all about in the first place. Elsewhere in Scripture: Romans 1 shows that our context can truthfully tell us some things about the nature of reality (there is a God, He is powerful); but even this contextual knowledge is both incomplete and functionally degenerate in that it cannot save us. The exertion of God's power--his intrusion into the physical world as exemplified by the sending and raising from the dead of His Son--are essential. And without His divine proactive agency through the process of revelation, we would not even know of these marvelous things. 5). Contextual intelligence--human intelligence-- by its very nature, fragments reality. What the world calls "rationality" is a process that fragments true, plenary reality, by only giving ontological status to what is seen in the contextual view of reality. Granting ontology--or "real" status--to something that is invisible is an act of the will. But it is far more than just a decision that something unseen is real--all the deciding that imaginary friends are real won't make them so, for instance. Ontology of the invisible power and realm of God is a) not inherited, b) must be taught, and c) should furthermore be an essential element of all instructions to people who seek baptism. We can recognize attitudes that exclude plenary reality by the language used: people say "Well, God can do X, Y, and Z, but probably won't." This speculative language shows that His promises haven't achieved ontological status in the mind of the speaker.
All Biblical examples of faith had to combat this fragmentation of plenary reality when they had to stand up against "common sense" which is derived just from contextual understanding. The action of faith in these Biblical heroes was a demonstration of personal exertion of analog intelligence in the face of opposition caused by contextual intelligence. For us, operating on the rules of plenary reality would change our strategies for survival. We would see our trials quite differently just as Peter called on the believers of his day to see persecution from the point of view of plenary reality. Power emanates from the invisible, not from the visible context. Knowing this produces encouragement for believers as they are reminded of great, eternal purposes that subsume their circumstances. The goal of each Christian, thus, would be to learn to overrule human, local context as a factor in his or her faith. Such an understanding would also cause us to look at Scripture differently. We would read the story of the rich fool in Luke, for instance, and be quite afraid instead of operating on a fragmented, contextual belief that we are quite different from that man and thus not in any danger. The smaller thematic demonstrates how God from the eternal/invisible realm exerted power through resurrecting His Son from His temporal context: deadness. Through this, He manifested the presence of eternal, spiritual reality: the contours of plenary reality. An example of this is the way that Peter will later talk about baptism--something that "saves us." This is a statement of commitment to plenary reality. In 1 Peter 1:3, Peter refuses to let believers think that their temporal experiences are disconnected from the power of God. Just as He resurrected Jesus, just as He gave believers new birth and living hope, He will in the same way exert power over their local context each day. Elsewhere in Scripture: 1 Corinthians 1:18 shows that a fragmented view of reality that discounts the eternal/invisible would have a definite profile in the life of someone with this fragmented view. What a believer would see as the exertion of the power of God would be seen as simple foolishness by the fragmented thinker. 6. While giving ontological status to the invisible/eternal would seem to the ignorant to be an expansion of human intelligence, what is called for is rather a transformation of human intelligence.
Humans have believed that human intelligence can be expanded through education, just as bread dough will expand in one's hands when yeast is added. However, the idea that one can just add the yeast of more information to the dough of context is flawed. The idea of the new birth demands not just an expansion but a true transformation from one status into another, from death to a new, different life. This is mirrored in the death-to-life picture of baptism. Transformation demands more than just a transferring from one set of ethics to another one, no matter how elevated that ethic. When transformation is exchanged for ethics, it results in an underdimensioned gospel, with resultant underdimensioned faith. Peter will show in chapter two that the idea of a transformed people is an essential building block of the kingdom, because that kingdom will not be made up of expanded contextual thinkers, but of a new race of analog intelligence. In 1 Peter 1:3, Peter uses the imagery of a new birth to show that intelligence like all other aspects of life must undergo a radical change, not just an expansion. It is a matter more of change of quality, not change of quantity. Elsewhere in Scripture: Jesus taught clearly that His gospel would not "fit" into old molds of thinking. He used the imagery of new wine in old bottles to show that this new intelligence couldn't be confined by the old molds, and the imagery of the patch on old cloth to show that the Gospel would actually by its strength destroy the old ways of thinking. 7. With the recognition that we live in a "top-down" universe where greatest ontology is accorded the invisible, this imposes a hierarchalization to not only the universe, but upon human intelligence as well. When we speak of a top-down universe, it is an acknowledgement that God "calls the shots" and everything in the universe is obligated to conform (with the possible exception of the violation of human will and choice.) Suffering, therefore, is correctly seen from this hierarchal arrangement of priorities. Fragmented, contextual understanding is powerless to explain (or offer comfort in) suffering since contextual understanding is on the "lower rungs" of the hierarchy of intelligence. The axis of movement when one shifts from the eternal to the temporal fragments understanding. Such fragmentation is reflected in human language: how one speaks
about a situation. Depending on one's starting point, a situation can either be seen as involving the essentials of life, or merely events or accidents. Where one starts in thinking will result in seeing an accident, for instance, as an agent (active force) in one's life rather than a patient (recipient of action.) In 1 Peter 1:3, God's initiative action in dealing with the human race shows us Him to be the source not only of salvation, but of all understanding of salvation and indeed of our lives. He would consequently require of us that we adopt not only His understanding but even His way of speaking of circumstances according to this "top level" of analog intelligence. Elsewhere in Scripture: Paul understood how important it was to view his life and circumstances not just contextually but from God's perspective. Two good examples of this are in 1 Timothy 1:12-17 and Philippians 3:4-16. 8. Contextual intelligence derived from human observation and experience is used as a "baseline" of irrefutability by the world and a foundation upon which all further investigation and supposition is based. However, far from being "ground zero," it is actually very unreliable, since it is an incomplete and fragmented view of what is truly, ontologically real. On the other hand, all true knowing--analog intelligence--is inherently and intrinsically extra-dimensional; that is, from beyond the human context. This conclusion can help us to understand what is truly worth knowing. If the invisible is more "real" to a believer than the circumstances of his or her context, that believer will act and speak differently from others in the world. However, we have seen over and over that children who have attended church all their lives abandon their beliefs because they have concluded that what is really "worth knowing" comes from worldly wisdom, not from outside of our human dimension. In 1 Peter 1:3, God shows that true faith is faith in the supernatural. Things like dead bodies that return to life and new birth are inherently extra-dimensional in their causation and implications. Therefore an accurate understanding of life must be from this extra-dimensional source. Elsewhere in Scripture: God uses the idea of carnality or flesh or sinful nature to illustrate contextual intelligence. In Romans chapter 8, the Holy Spirit shows repeatedly the extra-dimensional source of information God provides, and links it as does Peter to the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
9) Contextual intelligence cannot peacefully co-exist in the mind of a believer along with analog intelligence. One will necessarily overpower the other. The contextual mind refuses to give the invisible its proper ontological status. In 1 Peter 1:3, God shows that the source of information and strength is in understanding derived from analog intelligence, which cannot be "explained" or augmented by contextual intelligence. Elsewhere in Scripture: In Jesus' day the Pharisees refused to give His miracles ontological status and origin but chose instead to attribute them to Beelzebub (Matthew 12.) James 1:1-8 demonstrates clearly that God is the source of wisdom and that contextualization leads to doubt which makes man doubleminded and ineligible for the blessings of God. QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION: 1. Discuss the connection between non-commutation and the idea of a "top-down" universe. 2. Give several Scriptural examples that show that worldly thinking and analog intelligence cannot peacefully co-exist in the mind of a believer. 3. How does contextualized intelligence fragment true reality? (What is true reality?) 4. Why do contextualized thinkers resist new terminology in describing spiritual matters? 5. Why do we say that all true knowing must be extra-dimensional? 6. What does 1 Peter 1:3 say is the cause for our living hope? What was the mechanism by which we received it?