Genius in the Church

A Reflection on Psalm 85

Philosopher Immanuel Kant taught us about free formations in nature, such as snowflakes, but told us they were not works of genius (unique creations) because genius is a possibility that can only emerge out of humankind. Genius is possible for humans because we are born of Christ, incarnate God, who is always and already present, who has ended sin in all eternity, while we are still living out the impact of the choices of Adam and Eve in the finite, temporal realm. We, on Earth, may only catch glimpses of the greater truth, but “God has left nothing outside the control of his Son, even if presently we have yet to see this accomplished” (Hebrews 2:8). And his Son did all this for us; he was born, lived, and died for us, to set us free (in all of Eternity) and to set us on the path to spiritual freedom (on Earth, now).

“If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed” (John 8:36).

This means we are rich in creative power, at least in potential; we can open our mouths and speak what is completely new and it won’t be a re-hash of anything previous, it won’t be simply a new combination of patterns and shapes like a snowflake: it will be new in its entire meaning, closer to, or closing in on, the Truth — the Truth which is of infinite variety and magnificence — and this is the definition of freedom. Genius taps into this freedom, it rides on freedom, it knows no bounds because God is its only boundary. God binds us in a beautiful dance, an unrestricted, flowing ensemble, an act of togetherness that is held in His hands.

Human genius is a dance which comes from the pure intellect, inspired by God. If nature brings beauty, humanity brings the sublime.

The story of our lives, in terms of the intellect, is “the Lord raining down blessing after blessing, with prosperity which will drench the land with a bountiful harvest” (Ps 85:12) and we receive, intellects blooming. In each life, we take steps to be closer to our authentic nature, together, breaking through layer upon layer of obfuscation of the pure intelligence of the jewel of God’s love for us, stage by stage, as we, collectively, grow in faith, “restoring Jacob’s destiny from captivity” (Ps 85:1). “Don’t let us in our ignorance turn back from following you” (Ps 85:8), because, if we continue, we will not fail, God promises us, “righteousness goes before us, preparing a path for our steps” (Ps 85:13).

It takes work, and we see the successes of this work where we see the sublime: in music, in art, in literature, in spirit, in love of neighbour, in friendship. The sublime product of the work itself takes work to comprehend and may even be rejected by most, because it cuts a line into the future, to a time when everything is past, cutting a line into the eternal, into a place we may (naturally) feel uncomfortable, unqualified or unable to follow. It’s possible for much of the sublime to never even be seen — even in Jesus Himself. Jesus knows this, and tells us this, and tells us not to lose heart.

John Piper calls the barrier to the intellect the “stumbling block of truth” which, if it is a stumbling block, cannot be overcome by reason or demonstration (Seeing Beauty and Saying it Beautifully, p28). It can only be overcome in love, with the open heart:

“Jesus answered them, ‘I have told you the truth already and you did not believe me. The proof of who I am is revealed by all the miracles that I do in the name of my Father. Yet, you stubbornly refuse to follow me, because you are not my sheep. As I’ve told you before: My own sheep will hear my voice and I know each one, and they will follow me. I give them the power of eternal life and they will never be lost and no-one has the power to snatch them out of my hands.” (John 10:25-28)

We can think of the open heart of the intellect, the freedom and courage of heart, in faith, that allows us to travel to frightening places and know that we are safe there in God’s love.

As much as we have to open our hearts to follow Christ, we have to open our hearts to follow each other. Christ gives us our brothers and sisters in the faith for us to journey together, “Holy Father, each one that you have given me, keep them in your name, that they may be united as one just as we are” (John 17:11). We may say that this togetherness, in the open heart of intellect, is where we find church.

How do we travel together? What does Church look like? We can look at history.

The Apostle Paul, Church Visionary, by his faith, was creative in his intelligence. He extrapolated the implications of what he knew from Jesus, and persisted, digging-in to what his intellect found there, in and through the light of his religious experience, nourished by the blessing raining down on him (us) from Heaven. Paul was living his faith, being fully himself, becoming fully fulfilled in his faith, living out the understanding of his faith in all his expression, in words and deeds, and doing it in communion with his brothers and sisters of faith. What we can see is Paul, thereby, living a life where he is fully alive, as radically alive as Jesus, as radically in communion as Jesus. Can we see this, or do we pull in the reins and limit our receptivity? If we do so, we may find we pull out of Paul only dogmatism or polarisation, or even nonsense. When we attempt to take from something infinite, some semblance of understanding, and put it into the finite, we have to be careful with our approach, and about what we are left holding when we leave. This is why the words of Jesus are like dynamite. Jesus incarnate treads a line of perfect divinity through his every finite moment on earth. No word of Jesus can be misunderstood or misinterpreted. We can misunderstand or misinterpret in ourselves, but we can always return to His words, radiant and alive, and re-assess the meaning we find there. This is the truth when it is spoken “infallibly”. The truth is a part of Heaven, a doorway to Heaven, or a glimpse of Heaven, that exists beyond the interpretations of the time. We follow Jesus, but do so imperfectly. Discernment is a lifetime’s journey for humanity.

Thus, we have to be more careful when we follow the words of human followers of Jesus, whose visions, like ours, may or may not be perfect. And our discernment may or may not be perfect. There is room for error on both sides. Even so, we can approach our fellows with a similar attitude of reverence to our approach to Christ because we all speak from the same place, even if we do so imperfectly, when we follow Jesus — when we actually follow, when we do our best to follow, with hearts fully open to the Holy Spirit. Jesus taught us that we can still listen to the jewels of the infinite in each other, even in the obscurity of our earthly imperfection.

The other thing to be careful of is seeing obscurity where there is none, and thereby miss the treasure. We pan for gold and clear out a lot of dross for each speck of gold. We don’t want to miss the gold, when we find it. The sequence of Paul’s thought can seem obscure to us, because it is complicated thought, and new. Our job is to be fully present, and go where we, inspired by God, are to go with Paul, and our other brothers and sisters in faith. Remembering righteousness goes before us, we know we cannot fail if we continue to follow; in fact, we can progress to places we would not otherwise have gone to, and break through our limits, closing the gap that is between us and Union with God.

We see in Paul that the intellect takes us to some shocking places, where “common sense” might not take us. Common sense digs in its heels and says “no further!” because it doesn’t know what is on the other side: it is pragmatic, perhaps, but it is afraid. If we don’t go to the unknown, we will never progress. Paul, drawing out the consequences of his faith in Christ, takes himself and us to places that might be unthinkable except when we realise that we are taken there by the premises which, as baptised Christians, we already agree with: the places we go to through Paul are founded on Jesus the rock, the cornerstone of our humanity’s breakthrough to Union, as, on the Cross, Jesus explodes us into the infinite unfathomable realm of our Father in Heaven.

• “It was for freedom that we were set free” (Galatians 5:1)
• “We no longer see each other in our former state: there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free person, male or female; for we are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28)
• “God chose those whom the world considers foolish to shame those who think they are wise, and God chose the weak and powerless to shame the high and mighty, he chose the lowly and laughable in the world’s eyes — nobodies — to reduce to nothing those who are something” (1 Corinthians 1:27-28)
• “I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and constraints, for the sake of Christ; for when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Corinthians 1:12-10)

Where do these sayings take us, if we truly follow?

Remembering Jesus, “He turned and said to Peter, ‘Get behind me, Satan! You are an obstacle to me. You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.’ ” (Matthew 16:23, Mark 8:33). Paul takes us there, to this unthinkable place, and he demands, if we are to be there, we must stay and truly dwell in the Truth, absorbing its rays. Paul demands that we think with our intellects and not with our common sense or pragmatism, because our common sense and pragmatism hold us back from the Divine. We must meet what Jesus brings us to, with our intellect, in a knowing which is deeper than anything we have learned or been taught.

“Indeed, it’s legitimate to call Paul a ‘radical thinker’, one of the most radical thinkers in the history of the West. By this I mean that Paul cut to the heart of things, Paul’s thought always dealt with fundamental issues. At one level, Paul demands a radical choice between polar opposites; there is a kind of a dualism in Paul, and so he is radical in that sense. There is death or life; there is slavery or freedom; there is the law or grace; there is light or darkness. And one can line up those polar opposites in columns, so on one side is light, and life, and spirit, and freedom, and grace, and faith; and on the other side is slavery, and death, and darkness, and the law, and disobedience. That’s fundamental enough. Basic choices, you have to be on one page or the other; and this is the part of Paul’s radical-ity that is most often recognised and appreciated. But there is another way in which Paul is radical, and that is he is also radical as a social thinker. Paul takes the major status markers of every culture, ethnicity, gender, and social station — male or female, Jew or Greek, slave or free — and he says that within the Christian community, these are relativised. So he not only divides, he also unites, and the ways in which he does this are complex and difficult to grasp. Paul then stands within a tradition, but he is a creative thinker within that tradition. He doesn’t simply transmit the tradition, he actively takes it up, and works it into deeper thought, seeking out its implications” (Luke Timothy Johnson, in The Great Courses, The Apostle Paul).

To the extremes that we follow Jesus, we must follow Paul, and each other, if we are to progress. We must sit with each other, in contemplation, allowing the Truth to unfold before us. As we grow in trust and love, we grow in closeness to God. The relationship is always reciprocal, we give and receive in equal measure, as equals, because we are all one in Christ Jesus.

Carmelite Saint John of the Cross, in his clarity of logic, is another helpful person to look to, to help us understand the intellect. He follows the Apostle Paul in his way, delving into the bible, reading it in the light of Christ, listening to the church, following the path of righteousness laid out before us, using the light that shines into his own interpretations to share his enlightened thought with us for the furtherance of knowledge. He does what we all must: progressing, extrapolating, extrapolating some more… drawing out to the full extent where our logic takes us, learning what the truth is, dwelling there, following the Lord as he breaks open the way before us, with righteousness. Like reading the Apostle Paul, we read John of the Cross with horror in places, and will pick and choose meaning from him if we are not willing to stay on the path his logic takes us to… “can he really mean this?” We recoil and back away, tempted by thoughts we feel we know better, thoughts with a more satisfactory appearance. “Who is this who darkens counsel with words of ignorance?” (Job 38:2). Who is it in us that lets ignorance reign, over Truth and good counsel? This is how we react to the unknown and to difference: it is ugly to us, if we look carelessly and without reverence. We do so at our peril. “No form, figure, image, or idea (whether heavenly or earthly, natural or supernatural) that can be grasped by the memory is God or like to him” (John of the Cross, The Ascent of Mount Carmel, 3.11.1) so when we see what was inconceivable to us a moment before, we must be careful when we look, so that we don’t exclude the things we do not know, and thereby exclude God (in others and in ourselves).

We walk together. What Paul sees in his faith, we can see, and then add to. Truth deepens and widens the more we look and listen. We proceed in relationship, by sharing, in the light of the blessings that rain down on us from Heaven, now, in this moment in our lives. Right here, we are already in eternity. Exploring, questioning, re-evaluating, finding meaning from the faith in our own terms, in our own lives. As we tune in and think, we draw in the past, think into the future, with what we know now. This is how we build community; this is how we build Church.

Written by: Ruthie Baigent 09 Feb 2023