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| Jacob's Ladder by William Blake |
Reading the Bible is Hard.
Reading the Bible is hard. It's difficult to wrap your mind around a book (a library, really) written over the span of a few thousand years. It's hard to understand that even though our reality is the same as it's always been, our view of it has shifted (especially since Descartes). It's also a mind-boggling long book with boring sections that people often skip because there's no surface action (cough genealogies cough). What I plan to do here is provide a different approach to reading the scriptures than what you may be used to - whether you're used to the academic rigor of the historical-literal and theological narrative readings or the popular proof-texting and individualized ego-centric readings. It's not necessarily easier, rather different. It's an approach that's highly intuitive. However, you need a trained intuition. This intuitive approach is what is called an "anagogical" reading.
Though the word anagogy may look and sound similar to the word analogy, they're quite different. Analogy is a tool used in writing to reason (make sense of) a complicated idea or image. For an example, using a spiderweb to describe the Internet. As a spider uses threads to connect a web, so people use links to connect different sites together forming the Internet. Hence the Internet described as "The Web".
Anagogy, on the other hand, is a discipline of writing and reading that practices ascent. What this means is that a communion of the writer/reader with God is achieved. In other words, as the writer writes and the reader reads, they share in "the mind of Christ" (1 Corinthians 2:16). Or, to use an Old Testament analogy, we climb the ladder bridging heaven and earth in Jacob's vision (Genesis 28:12). In stronger words from Peter, it's a means of realizing the promises of God as "partakers of the Divine Nature" (2 Peter 1:4).
To caution, it's a dangerous discipline which can lead people astray if they aren't careful or trained properly. To give a couple examples: Spiritually, if one isn't intimate with the scriptures and tradition, it can lead to heresies and a denial of the Incarnated Christ. Mentally, it can trigger an unholy "madness" leading to paths of conspiratorial thinking. This is why I think it's a part of the wisdom Paul mentions as being discussed only amongst the mature (1 Corinthians 2:6). However, if our experiences and thoughts are tested (1 John 4:1) and they bear fruits (Galatians 5:22) then I think we can be assured that we are safe-guarded by the Holy Spirit (2 Timothy 1:14). [Quickly, to train one's intuition, one must pray unceasingly (1 Thessalonians 5:17), practice fasting (Mark 9:29; Matthew 17:21), always set one's mind on heavenly things (Colossians 3:2), and participate in a congregation (Hebrews 10:25) amongst numerous other things. It's a never-ending training and growing. So, live your faith out. Practice spiritual disciplines and above all else, love. Love even those you despise.] So, let those with ears, hear and those with eyes, see!
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| Adam Van Noort |
An Anagogical Reading of Exodus 24.
V. 1-2
Everyone, please open up your Bible to Exodus 24, read it slowly, and take note of what you just did. You picked up a bounded book or googled a chapter with a fixed amount of verses. What is in front of you is a completed story. Whether you start in Genesis and end in Revelation or start in Exodus 1 and end in Exodus 40, or as we're doing today, only read Exodus 24, realize that the writing took place after the events took place. This is important because in verse 1 of the chapter, the people are divided into groups: 1) the people, 2) the seventy elders, Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and 3) Moses (plus Joshua in V 13). As verse 2 says, only Moses shall come near God. The others are supposed to stop at different places upon the mountain ascent. This division of experience calls to mind the previously mentioned wisdom of Paul's mature companions (1 Corinthians 2:6). Yet, as readers, we know what happens to all groups and are given a special privilege of witnessing Moses's experience. By reading the story, as when the writer wrote, we climb the mountain with Moses in our imagination, our mind.
V. 3-8
We who are inscribed as the image of God (Genesis 1:26-27) and built as the temple of God (1 Corinthians 6:19-20), are the altar at the foot of the mountain created by God in the early morning (in other the words, "in the beginning"). As Moses participates by building the altar, as the writer does with his sacred writing, so must we live life as the ambassadors of God - the Psalmist and Jesus say as "gods" (Psalm 82:6; John 10:34). We, with the people, must assent to following God's words. We must live in a blood-soaked covenant with God. Christ, being the lamb slain from the foundations of the world (1 Peter 1:20 & Revelation 13:8), has made this possible for all of humanity. And as the world was created through Christ (Colossians 1, cf John 1) and all is in God (Ephesians 4:6), so too is creation's covenant sealed from the very beginning. The twelve stones around the altar are the twelve tribes and the twelve tribes are Israel. And as they are symbols of another so the 144,000 of revelation is the symbol of the multitude at the throne of God, at the foot of altar of the lamb. As the twelve tribes are the whole of Israel, so the 144,000 is the whole of humanity. For in Christ the "gap" between Israel and the Gentiles is made null. "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to promise." (Galatians 3:28-29). And remember, In the beginning was the Logos and the Logos was with God and the Logos was God (John 1:1). And Christ has been, is, and always will be the Logos (John 1:14; cf. Revelation 22:13).
V. 9 - 11
Moses, along with Aaron, Nadab, Abihu, and the seventy elders moved up the mountain leaving behind the people. As the people were drinking their milk, learning the ways of the book of the covenant, the chosen ones witnessed God standing upon his purity revealed as crystalline stone. These chosen people got a glimpse of God's essence seeping through the border of heaven and earth. Unlike the people below, these chosen ones saw God incarnated - his feet, being his presence, walking upon the firmament on the edge of creation. This is why we can say it's like a wedding kiss (Song of Songs 1:1-2): It's a meeting of two people (God and the chosen) foretasting their soon-to-be union of one flesh. This is why they ate and drank. They met God and found hope and faith in the future union to come!
V. 12 - 18
After the chosen people had a feast, God told Moses to continue climbing to the peak of the mountain. At the summit, God will give him laws and commandments written on stone - those being the physical manifestation of the covenant written upon our hearts (2 Corinthians 3:3). With Joshua, Moses climbed to the top of the mountain of God. Here's something to notice: we have climbed this far with the help of the author. This author will continue with us to the top. This author is our Joshua. As we read his words, let us dwell in the cloud-covered mountain. As previously in Exodus and in future stories (cf. 1 Chronicles 13:5) clouds and fire are theophanies (God-visions). As we climbed with the author, we have been led inward toward the treasure that is God dwelling in us (2 Timothy 1:14). We started out reading the text, getting the story as the people of Israel received the Book of the Covenant. As we continued to read the story, we saw what could be our future: a union with God. And here is the final revelation of the text: Moses enters into the presence of God and stays there for forty days and forty nights. Forty days and forty nights are reminiscent of the flood (Genesis 7:4), the future forty years in the desert (Numbers 14:34) and Jesus going out into the desert (Luke 4:1-11; Matthew 4:1-11) amongst numerous other events. This number is a divine number. What is meant is that God makes himself known in every instance where the number 40 is found. It's not the only number or signifier of God. But, brought together with the cloud-covered mountain, we can be certain that God is here. That God, as dwelling in Moses and Moses dwelling in God, is really present, really here. That we are partakers of the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4). That we are truly and always "gods" (Psalm 82:6). We are divine and holy. We're not this way because of any material reality, but because of God, the Ultimate Reality surrounding us and living in us. By His Grace and Glory. The author has revealed this and we have experienced it through our reading.
The Book of the Covenant, the hope of the chosen people, and the mutual dwelling of God and Moses are all the same. The fulness of God, ever overflowing, is here and now. The wedding kiss, being the symbolic union of man and woman, is the union of intercourse, which is a symbol, a manifestation, of the heavenly wedding and banquet. You can't eat a wedding cake without a wedding cake. And as God is one (Deuteronomy 6:4; cf Matthew 22:37) he can't be present partially without being present fully. He is who we are (cf Jeremiah 23:24). He is the very love of our love (1 John 4:8). There is none beside him (Isaiah 45:5).
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| Design based off the Lindisfarne Gospels |
The Finale.
An anagogical reading of Exodus 24 takes us on a spiritual ascent up the mountain of God. It takes us inward as that's were the presence of God is most manifest because we are the images of God on this earth. The more one reads and meditates on this chapter, the more one comes to this realization. And if we ask for this wisdom, God will grant it to us (James 1:5). It's a knowledge of reality, of who we are, and how the world operates - the wisdom before God created (Proverbs 8:22). It's a knowledge of the Love (which coincide with knowledge itself as one in God) which nothing is greater: the sacrifice of God for his Creation. His Word is the beginning of Creation (Genesis 1), the sanctifier of Creation (John 1) and the Final Revelation of Creation (Revelation 1). He is who we are born into (1 Peter 1:3), live in (Philippians 1:21), and who we have union with (Revelation 19:7). The author, as Moses, sits in this truth - the Truth that the "mind of Christ" has been present in ours all along.
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