Overview:

Chapter 1 Introduction

Chapter 2 Actions

Chapter 3 Life: 3.1 Order and Disorder, 3.2 Good and Evil, 3.3 Truth, 3.4 Reality, 3.5 Complexity, 3.6 Location, 3.7 Substance, 3.8 Freedom. 

Chapter 4 Love

Chapter 5 Reproduction: 5.1 Leviticus 18:22, 5.2 Wisdom, 5.3 The Book Of Esther, 5.4 Family, 5.5 Marriage, 5.6 Identity and Dignity

CHAPTER 1

Who can hide in the secret places so that I cannot see them? Declares the LORD. (Jeremiah 23:24).

If God can see all things, then what does God see? Our eyes have evolved to detect only a small part of the electromagnetic spectrum we call ‘visible light,’ so that through our sight we can perceive only what the laws of physics permit, the surface of and difference between things. In Jesus, God became man and is able to empathise with this human condition, though He has also somehow eternally existed beyond our physical sense perception, beyond even the limits of our imagination so that we may only rise to the heights of wonder.

I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things? (John 3:12).

Human vision is more than sight, it is an embodied awareness of that which exists beyond our interior self by all the sense processed into a narrative within the mind. Yet, in a world of appearances, image is the king and queen of our eyes. What is visible to the senses guides all our actions in our world of substance, where matter forms lines and shadows, light and darkness. Each face, each eye upon which we gaze is a window into mysterious depths. Each of us like an ocean shut up behind the doors of our skin – the barrier between the inner darkness and the outer reality in the light of the senses.

Our self-consciousness held within us, extended through time within our discrete bodies, separated by our boundedness, is the unchanging rock of our conscious self, that awareness of who we are lived outwardly in a finite world. This awareness is the place in which knowing, memory, and thought exist within the ‘space in which we are’.

We are embodied complex systems that receive more information feedback from our immediate environment than we can process within a moment of conscious awareness, but we then also miss a lot. If we are focused in one direction, we will miss what is going on in another. Attention is like a snapshot of a moment, yet every moment flows one after the other like a river of time – many moments flowing around us like an immersive art installation, with a motion picture being captured in the mind of which we are drawn to focus upon our preferences, desires and hopes.

Yet the now is as a screen presented before our eyes, like the smallest space before us yet in slices that we have evolved to see as a continuous whole extending off into a perception of depth. The screen has on it either system or symbol – each of which represents what is other to and or a whole that requires further exploration.

Our attention is limited in its scope and hampered further by our internal landscape. What we learn is by way of objects, other people, and experiences. Natural creatures existing with us are the object and the cause of human knowledge about them in themselves. Teachers by way of command or reason and first-hand experience of events are objects and causes of human knowledge about say, boundaries or the effect of gravity. The regularity of the seasons, the ordered motion and patterns and stars, the hidden mathematics of the ordinary and extraordinary, rules of engagement, the laws of physics uncovered by the curious, the science of all that is visible suggests a logic and certainty that comforts the human need for psychological safety.

If this world is so governed in a steady trust by a language of order, then perhaps our interior ocean, its winds and waves can be mastered – we can become like captains that take charge of a ship, steering it across the vast expanse of life and time to a safe harbour at journeys end. A self-mastery that governs this fleshy vessel on its course.

Or perhaps, belonging to our nature with its determined bounds, human rules and laws can govern the unruly within rather than leaving the human spirit to move this way or that, in its own way like a ship without an anchor or perhaps like a house built on shifting sands, the changes and chances of life shaping the movement and character of life within and without.

The answer of our being now and our being next into the future, is in the movement or shaping of the environment around us, the peri-personal space is the place of the human spirit in action. St Aquinas said, ‘conscience is a kind of dictate of the reason (for it is an application of knowledge to action as stated ST I:19:13)’. Yet, if we are to live a wholly transformed life the act must begin as a movement of the heart. Two things then are necessary for the determination of what a person ought to do, the first is his being, potential and actual, and the second is in the freedom to act.

The problem that comes with laws and rules, like lines drawn in the sand, is that they fix our gaze on this outward world of what is done in or upon it. Our senses calmed by the material certainties of what is known, we are bound and held fast by this external order and to these patterns. If the body moves, then perhaps the interior is dragged along with it? Is our will truly free or captive to the dust that surrounds it? Is the interior self a prisoner of the flesh carried this way and that? If our eyes are turned away from our hearts, that is we ignore the life within and do not know ourselves as the person we are, then perhaps the answer to these questions is yes.

Our interior vision is an inward knowing from that place we find in stillness. This inner knowing and subsequent self-control is like an inner light that develops the virtues, and if we are not attentive to it, we fall asleep and become prey to noticing only that which we wish to see, like a map we have drawn solely for material gain rather than a true representation of what is. St Paul writes ‘do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.’ (Romans 12:2).

How do we reconcile this hiddenness of our life within, the mind and heart that is able to soar beyond the clouds in imagination, with the life of matter that is pulled to the ground? Are we simply to mimic the rules that govern the stars, or the live out the behaviours written into the language of our DNA? Are we simply imitators of the laws according to nature which direct the behaviour of our unconscious animal neighbours?

To be Holy or set apart from the world is a ‘turning aside to see’ it transforms our sense and interpretation of the real in a whole new way. The human spirit and the Spirit of God are to create within and without a continuous movement, an ebb and flow like a dance as we participate in the life of the kingdom of heaven brought to earth by the first yes of our ancestors and now that of our own.

God breathed into his nostrils and the inanimate dust of the earth became a living being. (Genesis 2:7). It is the spirit that gives life; the flesh is useless. (John 6:63). But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. (Galatians 5:18).

The veil between the two realms removed, the home within us is a new home without a boundary between that which is from above and that from below – existing within and alongside the world, interdependent, yet at the same time set apart to live differently.

We were set free to live with the perfect freedom to choose; between the mere appearance of things or by the continual seeking of truth, for the heart is not transformed by what it must do but by its desire to do (1 Peter 5:2).

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:14). For God so loved the world that He gave us His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life (John 3:16). Jesus entered the world of nature to which we belong, fully God, fully human. If we were in any doubt, that God became man, tells us to be human is to be precious in the eyes of God, before we were born, before we had done anything in the world, He knew us and chose us as His own with a definite purpose (Jeremiah 1:5, 29:11).

Each person, an embodied soul, holds the light of consciousness, precious and rare; like a candle flame that flickers against a vast cosmic universe of dust and stars. When we still ourselves and look up with wonder we realise that in belonging to all above and below, we are both ancient and new. Our bodies contain atoms that were made in exploding stars, and out of this ancient dust we have been arranged into a unique order that is us and for a short while our own. Yet our deepest longing is left for love, to be loved because we exist, because we breathe. Love is not a meritocratic principle, though we do not claim what is not ours, because love is grace – a gift.

We were set apart to participate in that which is greater than all the physical mechanisms of existence, with the freedom to be and to move we can choose the mystery that is to love and be loved.

CHAPTER 2

A person is a journey through time, therefore an action in a moment is not to become a global rating of the whole. This in no way suggests that a consequence for an evil act should not be for example long-term imprisonment, yet even then a person is to be afforded a human dignity whether they have shown repentance or not – how we treat others is not about what is in them, but instead what is coming out of us.

Our experience of time is real to us because change itself is not a simulation, that is to say movement or changes in the world are not an imagination. The physical world of matter marks the times for us – the sun, moon and stars mark the sacred times, the days, and the years. (Genesis 1:14). It is the representation of the real in our minds which becomes a simulation when it no longer reflects that which is true. A making manifest of an imagination or simulation into reality that inflicts harm is evil. We live in a simulation when we allow the imagination of a few dictate the reality of the many. Freedom of thought, speech and democracy are the defence against living in a simulation, as it protects against the concentration of power into one location, protecting against the tyranny of ideologies that do not lead to the preservation of life.

To further the case, we have to discount locating actions and consequences as places upon which to anchor morality as separate entities in themselves. It does not seem reasonable to suggest that the foundation of what is good can be derived from a desirable action alone for which the same action can have different outcomes. For God Himself is good, pure and simple.

God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all (1 John 1:5). God is pure act, Aquinas. 

The fundamental problem with anchoring morality to the appearance of things is that, though desired, an outcome is only probable (or improbable) until it happens, and the same outcome can be reached by multiple causes or modes of action.  

The Lord says to the prophet Samuel “Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” (1 Samuel 16:7).

If we think of an action as the change point between intention and consequence, then time also plays a crucial role in determining the probability of an outcome. The further we are from the action or the point of change, then the lower the probability of a particular outcome. As we get closer in time, we may work towards the higher probable outcome which continues to increase its likelihood or chance of happening. A consequence is always future, only becoming truly certain from the picosecond after the action is in effect.

Action is a mechanism of expression of that which begins inwardly as a concept. Action is a pathway to becoming known, yet this knowing is in itself a relationship of one thing to another. We do not know what we assume to know, for this is mere speculation but we can know that which we have collaboratively ascertained by way of interpersonal relationship, or investigation.

If a rock sits upon a mountain and falls, yet no-one is there, the action is neither good nor bad. The same action happens, yet a person randomly walking alone gets hit by the falling rock, this is unhelpful for the person hit, potentially catastrophic, yet still no morality can be attached to the action. If someone was on the mountain unaware of anyone else around and pushed against the rock, not realising that the rock was unstable and it fell and hit a person below, we still have not arrived at an action that can be considered under a moral rule. If the person pushing to rock knew it was possible someone could be below yet did not realise the rock was loose and did the same action and it hit them, the intention would still not be evil. If the person pushing was negligent in realising there was a possibility of the rock moving and someone being below, then we have thoughtlessness which opens us to responsibility. If the action of pushing the rock harms someone intentionally then we have evil being done. The action of the rock falling is the same in all scenarios, so it cannot be the action of the rock as the thing in itself which effects the pathway to the consequence that locates morality.

St Paul reminds us of this when he writes, ‘for in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails anything, but faith working through love,’ (Galatians 5:6). And in 1 Kings 19:11 the Lord spoke to Elijah on mount Horeb telling him to, “Go out. Stand on the mountain in front of me. I am going to pass by.” Yet, ‘as the Lord approached, a very powerful wind tore the mountains apart. It broke up the rocks. But the Lord wasn’t in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake. But the Lord wasn’t in the earthquake.’

Inanimate objects do not act by their own will and cannot be good or evil in themselves but only through an agent able to choose how to use the object can good or evil be done with it or through it. The intention of a conscious being is the concept formed within the individual, and the concept has an evolution in itself from simple to complex that along with its related action forms a system.

The action becomes an extension of the concept, yet the concept remains concealed by outward appearances. If animal behaviour is a dynamic system formed from the interplay between the language of DNA within and all that is without, this behaviour unless intended by a conscious will also falls outside the bounds of moral responsibility.

Therefore, a moral act is the product of the human will – the extent to which it is freely chosen depends on consciousness, our nature and nurture. If we make acts things in themselves, then they become the objects between us – objects are tools and tools extensions of the will or intent. Therefore, the moral act cannot be separated from the intention, so in order for an act to be ‘right’ it must have a founding principle such as for love or for life. Therefore, choose love, choose life – this is the way.

CHAPTER 3

Animals are striving to fulfil basic physiological needs. If we think of a predator-prey relationship such as a rabbit and a fox, does a rabbit flee a predator as a mechanism to avoid evil? I say we have observed the rabbit running from a creature about to eat it and projected our own feelings about death as evil on this observation. What if the rabbit is not fleeing evil, but chasing life? Is the fox doing evil as it chases the rabbit for food? How is the fox doing evil when it too is chasing life? The death of the rabbit is a good for the fox.

It follows in nature that the weakest are picked off by the predators, supporting the survival of the fittest. This benefits the community overall by the strongest passing on their genes, and the population of rabbits remaining sustainable within their ecosystem. The rabbit and fox population are interdependent, their relationship counterbalances each other with upper and lower limits that support the continued flourishing over time of each.

It seems natural that the end goal of nature as a collective is to survive, but not necessarily for the individual. Collective survival is therefore greater than any one individual. Death by eating is not helpful for the individual that dies, but it is helpful to the organism that ate it. Existence is necessary for this relationship, but so is death and so both are deeply connected.

This is repeated throughout the natural world. There are patterns of nature that exist in and between the diversity of all living beings. Is a mighty oak doing evil when it prevents anything else from growing underneath it? No, it is drawing water to itself, supporting its own survival, which enables it to then become a support to a community of others.

Purpose and meaning are tied into each organism’s interdependence – within a species or population and within the food web of which it is a part. The individuals have purpose, and their value is drawn from the relationship they have to each other. The purpose towards a collective survival of the species and value from being a part of the whole system within which they connect. Because of this an organism has value by its connectedness to its own species and population and the whole system within which it lives.

Life was designed to thrive as a whole, and as a whole we reflect the image of the Trinity, in the relation between God, self and other. God is Himself a community of being. If God is love, then the state of the trinitarian relationship must be a perpetual state of being love. The self-emptying a perpetual movement away from self towards an other, is a permanent state of cooperation, of being with and in the other, each all and nothing together. This relationship derives a definition of love as all things working together for each other. A pattern of being and becoming that exists in all things finite and eternal, animate and inanimate. God and Love are the smallest words with the largest of possible meanings. In love there is only light, for love is the treasure of heaven carried within the soul.

Love is the cooperation of all things. As God created the heavens and the earth, the universe consisting of the inanimate order of all that is seen, revealing that if the universe is ordered as we understand it by the principles governing the laws of physics, then the order in the beginning, the shape and fundamental principles of matter, determined the order of things now.

Now, upon this tiny planet in a vast universe of the visible and invisible, in a universe containing within it the regularity of what we have come to expect alongside the surprises of the extraordinary; the comets, the eclipses, the supernova and so on – how much do we value the life we have on this little planet when all else points to this exceptional, miracle of life in a glorious solitude within this habitable zone of a million circumstances that have come together and given us the stability and conditions ‘just right’ for us to exist as the pinnacle of over 4 billion years of change? How precious is this gift of life that was born out of a cooperation between the dust and the language of love. The order that could not be the result of random chance, like the writing of an intelligible message in the sand of dead matter unable to comprehend itself, becoming life as we know and understand it. ‘The light shone in the darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not.’ (John 1:5).

Life contains within it a fleeting order, broken down into a disorder that naturally recycles the materials within this self-sustaining system. Life with all its checks and balances, is seeking always to maintain an equilibrium position through diversity and interdependence. Life goes to great lengths to allow all that exists in life to thrive, diversifying to the extent that the environment will maintain by adaptation numerous species so that competition is avoided as far as possible.

Disorder in nature is a measure of uncertainty, a state of what is unknown or given our limitations unknowable – gas particles, or grains of sand may collectively produce patterns or an average state of conditions, but at the smallest scale the vast number and quantity of data necessary to know and determine the movement of a thing is beyond our skills of observation and computing power. What has been traditionally taught as disorder under Natural Law such as irrationality or disease, can be explained as an integral part of nature and our limitations – as a way of highlighting the need for action – a way of preventing excess, as well as a breaking out of rigidity and lack of change.

As part of a dynamic system, earth with nature, moves, changes, and evolves over time. This is clear in the inanimate and animate, the earth turns, the dinosaurs are gone and so on. Right order would be static without change. Why do we have change? Because everything in the universe moves. Why do we have movement? Life needs movement, and time. Why do we need time? Time is how change is intelligible to us – time marks changes in the appearance of things, the seasons, the days, the hours. It allows us to imagine what is not or not yet – the marking of time allows us to dwell in safety, to predict what might be based on what is.

What is intelligible to us is rational, yet rational can be true or false as it is dependent upon the position of a thing in space-time. The universe holds the future within consciousness and its freedom to move, otherwise there would be no room for anything new until it emerged into the now. Consciousness is the intrinsic value of every human being, that makes us not objects, but souls.

3.1 Order and Disorder

Disease as an event that is detrimental to an individual and population cannot be assigned moral value in itself. God, the first cause, moved us, gave us this life not so He becomes every cause within our experience for then nothing would be free, freedom itself would be a sham, and without real freedom true love cannot exist.

As disease can be described as disordered because it leads to harm or death whether it be curable or incurable. A disease can be viewed as a disruption to the ecological structure of interdependence. This is to be separated from the beneficial nature of microorganisms that breakdown materials when living things die, an action which brings the ordered structure of an organism back into chaos so nutrient recycling can take place.

A disease can be linked with a direct cause or origin, such as genetic mutation and patterns of inheritance, or exhibit strong correlation with effects of a poor diet, or lack of exercise – it is the knowledge an individual has in respect to the potential outcome of their actions that would lead to accountability – the knowing of ‘if this then that’ beforehand, as well as the negligent action without due care for self or other that is appropriate for age and stage.

Order and disorder can be used by God, they are an inherent part of nature, consider the flies and the bees (Isaiah 7:18), however, the appearance of disorder may still have an underlying mathematical order that is not visible to the senses, a beneficial randomness that increases the chances of survival in a dynamic world, promoting movements complimentary to life and creation.

The action of natural disorder that does not bring good to an individual or population is not acting morally that it has chosen its way, the mechanism of the animate and inanimate nature displays an interdependence that is a collision of a multiplicity of factors that facilitate stability.

Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system, has by its massive gravitational effect prevented the earth being hit by many asteroids thereby promoting the stability necessary for life. The earths hot core and tectonic plates are responsible for earthquakes, a phenomenon which effects destruction, but without a hot molten core, the earth would not have the magnetic field which prevents a hostile solar wind from tearing away the atmosphere that sustains life. God has created a set of circumstances that enable this stability. Everything that happens leads on to facilitate the next. All things are preparation, in a chain of causation – one stage is the necessary step for the next.  

The mechanism of action within nature is innate, written into a biological code. Organisms act instinctively without the ability to reason. Nature itself is therefore neither good nor bad because it has no ability to choose it. Goodness itself is derived from the ability to choose one thing right or good over an evil or wrong.

The cycle of life is such that nothing is wasted and is a part of nature’s self-sufficiency and overall stability. We perceive within nature factors that appear to mind cruel or loving by projecting our experience of our own humanity on to it. Survival of the fittest, adaptations and evolution support an organism’s fitness to survive generation to generation upon a dynamic earth. That the weak are more likely to die by a range of biotic and abiotic factors such as disease, may appear to control population numbers where selection pressures lean towards strength and dominance providing stability over time, or to be eaten is beneficial to the support of complex food webs, for the aim of life is to thrive as a whole by relation. As such these mechanisms can be interpreted as helpful or not helpful to the continued existence of an individual, but helpful within the framework of interdependent species.

It seems natural that the end goal of nature as a collective is to survive, but for an individual it is not because it could be food for another or be one too many to be supported by the ecosystem of which it is a part. Collective survival is therefore greater than any one individual. If every creature survived, the earth self-sustainability would collapse.

Though nature cannot derive its own goodness, we can perceive what is helpful or not, and observe organisms as individuals who instinctively mate, flee or fight according to their biological drives. These behaviours are both of an innate purpose and value to each individual. Purpose and meaning are tied into each organism’s interdependence – within a species or population and within the food web in which it is a part. The individuals have purpose, and their value is drawn from the relationship they have to each other. The purpose towards a collective survival of the species and value from being a part of the whole system within which they connect. Because of this an organism has value by its connectedness to its own species and population and the whole system within which it lives. This nature derives the common good. However, life is so precious and so rare, that every creature that survives is like a jewel sparkling in a sunbeam – something we often forget in the everyday ordinariness of life.

Human purpose and value can be determined in the same way, however there is a crucial difference. Human consciousness enables the mind to reason and therefore make choices about an action. God is also able to choose His actions. It is this ability to choose that gives birth to morality. This ability to choose places us in the position to rise above nature, for nature has no ability to choose its own action, though the young, who do not have fully developed neurocircuitry until on average between the ages of twenty one to twenty four, may be prone to impulsive behaviours and not accountable until fully developed. Nature’s way obeys the language of its programming, for the inanimate by shape and orientation, for the animate by the language of DNA.

3.2 Good and Evil

Every human life has infinite value by existence, in potentiality and actuality, it follows then that this derives a universal equality. In the parable of the lost sheep (Luke 15:3-7), the shepherd leaves the ninety-nine to find the one who is lost, because the one is priceless and therefore the one and the ninety-nine are equal in value.

The human mind can conceive complex ideas of itself and others, human consciousness gives an individual the opportunity to derive meaning from its connectedness to others (including nature). Meaning is constructed by the life we shape through our relatedness.

Kant suggests we act in the world as if we are an end in ourselves, then we work for each other and belong each one to the other, there is then no division between us, we are the self and the other. Jesus said, “I in them and you in me—so that they may be perfectly united. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me”. John 17:23. Therefore, Jesus tells us to ‘turn the other cheek’, to not fight because no good can come from fighting ourselves.

St. Augustine’s writing on the problem of evil is correct, evil is an absence of the good. He says, ‘For evil has no nature; but the loss of the good received in the name of evil.’ As words are signs, evil is a sign of emptiness, evil is an abyss from which there exists no good. Those who delight in evil have a stain on their soul that no water can wash away.

St Augustine says, ‘God can bring good out of evil’, which like saying God can create something from nothing, ‘creatio ex nihilo’, therefore as we are able to turn towards or away from God, to bring our attention into presence or absence of the good, then in repentance we are able to find life in the abundant mercy of God, when there was once none.

When the evil is done to us, it is a taking away, a theft, a loss, a grief. Jesus says, ‘Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.’ (Matthew 5:4). Forgiveness for these acts can never be imposed upon a victim, it is a process, a wrestling with God, self and other. Forgiveness is not about judgement but the peace that dwells within our hearts, the love we are able to recover for ourselves that is taken into all the places in which we are.  

The problem with evil as privation is in the material interpretation of its meaning relating to ideals of completeness, and the implications of such ideals. This is resolved in the discussion of substances and essences, as well as the recognition of the definition for the words, love, good, and perfect being the same. Evil attempts to derive meaning from the material world which is fleeting and temporary.

To be perfect is not to be complete physically, but to be in relationship – all things working together for each other. Therefore, like love, and goodness, perfection works at different orders of magnitude, from the smallest to the largest possible meanings as made manifest in the thoughts, words, and deeds of a person, as well as through the mechanism of nature. Love, goodness and perfection are then the end to which we are directed – love as the foundation leading us into life, truth, and all wisdom.

Be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect, Matthew 5:48, is like saying be whole, be perfect, be one as your heavenly father is one. The wholeness as a presence to another rather than absence.

God says, ‘choose life’, rather than death (Deuteronomy 30:19) and says, ‘there is no fear in love’ (1 John 4:18), therefore the opposites of absence and presence are distinct to mind. Fear is a dark void, and it is fear that is the opposite of love and leads to hate. It is love that embraces our fears, it encircles them until that empty space gets smaller and smaller then eventually disappears.

We may see fear in another and wish to try all we can to take it away – but fear isn’t something we can absorb – it has to be filled. We can paint images of love with our words and presence to fix the mind on an alternative, an image of light rather than darkness. It is no wonder death and darkness live together in the imagination as our eyes close to sleep, all we experience is the dark – and death is the eternal sleep. But death in Christ is a healing and healing is light.

Is death a natural evil the result of our fall in the Garden of Eden? I say not, in that there was always going to be a physical transformation from one life to the next, but not the sadness associated with it because we had the certain knowledge of God. Before the fall heaven and earth met together, God walked with us in the Garden, (Genesis 3:8) after the fall was a veil until the Word rolled back the divide, resolving the transcendence of God and man in the person of Jesus Christ, fully God, fully man whom we now believe in and depend on by faith.

3.3 Truth

What can we learn about truth from the raven paradox? How can we tell the truth of a statement like ‘all ravens are black’? If we make a statement like this, to be true it requires the observation of the words in the context of the real, otherwise it is a simulation – an imagination that remains in the mind. In addition to this by the fossil record, we know that ravens would not have existed from the beginning of time, that the raven would itself have evolved and come into its distinct being at some time in the past – a time we did not see. This means that the statement ‘all ravens are black’ is temporal in nature and is referring to the existence of a thing that human consciousness can bear witness to. The contraposition of this statement is supposed to be logically equivalent, ‘if it is not black then it is not a raven’ yet this example is nonsense. The colour is an accident that could be given to many different substances, and it is a colour that dominates in the genus Corvus to which the raven belongs. A raven is not equivalent to black. Therefore, only a property necessary for the definition of the substance could be used for the contraposition to be logically true – for example one used for classification of the species such as: ‘all elephants have long trunks’, would also be true as ‘if no long trunk, then it is not an elephant’. Therefore, the relations between things are an essential part of determining whether a statement is true. A statement or hypothesis a priori about the world is contingent – it could be another way, that is until a raven is found and observed to be black at which point, with recurring observations of black ravens, we have the increased probability that the accident is necessary. Another way of looking at the terminology is that the colour is essentially a variable so widespread in nature that cannot be uniquely related to the definition of what it means to be a raven.

If we observe a raven see that it is black, and then decide a posteriori that ‘all ravens are black’ we condition the accident as necessary to it, as belonging to it and is inseparable from it. We determine the relations between things when we write an identification key – a series of questions that lead us to tell the difference between things, going from the general term ‘animal’ to the specific ‘raven’.

The probability of the first statement ‘all ravens are black’, as being true is dependent upon the sample size of observations which in turn means the truth is limited by location in space and time. It is not possible for us to be in every place at all times therefore, the first problem with the statement is the ‘all’ as it implies the determination of an absolute knowledge which is not possible for a finite set of observations. If a non-black raven was found, the first enquiry would be, is it actually a raven? Does it breed and produce fertile offspring? If it is determined to have all the other characteristics of being a raven, finding a colour anomaly among black ravens could suggest not that it is not a raven, but that a genetic variation has perhaps occurred as the result of mutation that may or may not lead to an adaptation over time, and a shift in the whole population.

3.4 Reality

Reality is complex, yet through the nature of time and consciousness the languages we speak and the mathematics we write, reality is broken down into a linearity that draws our attention from the universal to the particular. A word or a number is the representation or concealment of a meaning that we have attached to it. For example the word ‘nature’ is equivalent to a ‘hyperobject’ in itself as a small word that embraces a very large meaning, yet the fullness of its definition will be understood conceptually by experience in what is real to us, therefore the conceptual understanding of its meaning will be different to different people – for we do not all occupy the same space in the same time, and different visual images will be attached at different orders of magnitude to the meaning or context of the word. To grasp this more fully, think about how you would explain the word to an alien with no experience of our planet.

Language, like change over time, fragments in order to describe, explain or evaluate. This enables us to make sense of the world around us and communicate with each other in a rational order that we may be understood and known. The fragmentation allows for adaptation, for new connections and relations to be made as things change over time, for understanding to develop in simple and complex ways.

What can the Russell paradox teach us about reality and truth? The answer is that all is one or many ones, and that our brains have interpreted observations in the world as patterns in the mind. Patterns determined by the continuation of, or degree of separation between things. Existence being both continuous and discrete, dependent upon where you are and the perspective it gives. Mathematics is a language developed to describe the patterns of our observations, a collective agreement of a word with what is seen. That any number, such as two or three, are concepts that can be grasped in the mind – the number a symbol of an objective experience – such as a grouping by their proximity in relation to what we agree belongs to the set of all that is two or three – yet though this observation is helpful it is not reality in itself. So, a number is applied to a concept of all that is say the number three, which has a correspondence between the word, concept, and its extension in the world – this is useful until we contemplate the paradox of sets that are or are not members of themselves, however we can here employ the tree shape, a fractal that holds the all and the one together. 

If all is one, or many ones, to say a thing is not the other is to suggest discreteness, difference or individuality and the relation may be correlative or not. To say a thing is not one is to say it is zero. Zero is a distinction between things, the ‘is not’ rather than is.

This linearity, this order produces truths as facts, and equations through reason. If pure reason as logic is the ordering of things – it must be possible to reorder that logic in different ways making logic creative, mathematics is creative and what is possible may or may not actually exist.

However, reality is a complex system, therefore how these truths, facts or equations are put together into wider context, or connected into an intelligible order is dependent upon successful outcomes through experience, investigation, trial and error and in relation to the worldview which is relative to the times. Is it possible for a complex system to be true? Yes, if nature itself is a complex system of interdependent parts working together, then what exists is real, for us in the apprehension of the real in our mind is true by correspondence, not by inference or evaluation.

The first principle that “the same thing cannot be affirmed and denied at the same time” does not consider location – for a finite being can be said to exist in so far as it extends into space – so for example, the cat exists (independent of its state of being alive or dead) inside the box, yet at the same time not outside the box. That a thing exists here but at the same time not there is a matter of position that is either known or unknown.

This would account for differing worldviews, depending on position in relation to where a person lives and who they interact with. As things change the environment around us, whether natural or man-made, people in the same time separated by distance will be witness to different things permanent or impermanent to them. Often, this will call into question the reliability of witness, and our understanding of a thing will change because we are in ourselves complex systems that filter information most often according to biases or preferences developed over the time that we are.

Our underlying schema will act as a representation of the world that exists around us. The map of the world we inhabit externally is drawn within the mind and is the territory or landscape that we inhabit internally that shapes our thoughts, words, and deeds. This representation may be true in that a thing exists by our witness to it and by the position of inanimate objects and the animate in relation to us at that time, yet the inferences and evaluations we make about them may be true or false as all is subject to cognitive distortions of various kinds. The world exists independent of our minds, yet how we relate to it is subject to our embodied relationship with it and how the mind processes this information.

The awareness of ourselves, that is the knowing that ‘we are’ is the thread that runs through the whole of our lives. From our earliest memories to the present now the awareness of being is like a mountain – a rock that persists unmoveable, unshakeable. The movement of life, the events, and feelings that are the changes and chances which we encounter upon this journey are like the weather that makes each day a new beginning. From our mountain we live each day with the possibility of fresh perspectives. This landscape is our home, a house with a door.

As a complex system we can hold together fragments of truth, yet not hold absolute truth by nature of the way knowledge is revealed by our searching through our natural limitations and boundedness. Correlation does not imply causation. Truth of a matter comes not by way of what we think, but by what we have explored in relationship, and even then, we must remain open to error within ourselves, and if we are sure, speak, yet recognise that it is love that works within us and within the other for change.

In stillness it can feel like a moment of forever is now until something moves about us – perhaps a bird perched on a branch flies away and there is movement. The movement of the sun, moon and stars marks the seasons and the times. Time is how change due to motion is intelligible to us, time marks for us the changes in the appearances of things. What is rational is intelligible, and what is intelligible to us depends on the times, therefore rational is relative to experience and this order can change. As generations pass on through the ages, new facts, new equations and discoveries may alter way in which we connect them together and new patterns emerge with new conclusions.

If we consider two people standing on the same shore looking out at a starry sky – both in the same place, both human yet separated by thousands of years. How do they understand what they see?

Would what they see be dependent on their worldview? The facts of their observations the same, yet one closer to us is likely to have more available data to support that view than the other, though this is also dependent on what in their life up to that point they have given their attention to. Someone, even today, could reject what they have been told and rely solely on sense and experience as some do.

Imagine rational like a sentence they construct across the starry sky, the combination of their seeing and available facts ordered into a way that makes sense to them. Both might feel the same but one is likely to believe the earth is the centre of the universe and the other not. But how they then assimilate that knowledge or experience into the reality and meaning of their lives structures their frame of ordering, so it is not the facts in themselves that matter as much as how we link them together into underlying schema. And how we do that changes over the course of time. Language facilitates social bonding by cooperation that develops meaning and purpose between us or a breakdown of order by dissonance and its consequent suffering.

Human knowledge is memory; learning and understanding come by way of our relationship to this. New knowledge shifts perspectives, breaks open new horizons, explores new territories. This is simply a consequence of current generations standing on the shoulders of the past, though rather than like climbing a mountain to the summit, knowledge is more like a flowing river, moving shifting out to the sea, for mountains have summits, and if God is all knowing and infinite, there must also exist an infinite knowledge that extends beyond our seeing and therefore knowledge within our understanding can never be absolute in itself.

Language comes in different linear forms yet has origins in the complexity of experience. It is likely that hunters would have developed different sound and visual cues to coordinate their efforts ranging from imitation, for camouflage, clicks, bodily instructions to direct movement, and rhythm. Cooperation would be established, and meaning developed between individuals and perhaps like any adaptation that brings advantages such as greater success, this is a behaviour adaptation passed on from one generation to the next – each developing on what was and is. Language now has become a collective agreement of grammar rules to which we subscribe, it is a social contract that changes with worldviews over time. Language facilitates social bonding by cooperation that develops meaning and purpose between us or a breakdown of order by dissonance and its consequent suffering.

Ancient humans used their bodies as a reference for measurements, perhaps also rocks, scratches, clicks and so on as a representation by a symbolic imitation of the number of things seen. Before our language was, the objects, groups and patterns they represent were simply things that existed independent of human mind-consciousness. Mathematics was simply one or many ones that we over time have grouped and represented symbolically, creating sets and sequencing them yet the most remarkable thing about this particular language is it just so happens to explain the order in the universe.

As we are looking at an object that exists the overall impression, grasped before language or memory attaches to it, is the presence of it as existing, its shape and movement. The real is apprehended in its actuality, its potentiality comes by way of language or memory that is the result of linear reasoning or complex retrieval of information in the mind.

We can keep a representation of the real in the mind as an imagination or simulation of the real within our consciousness – yet the ability to represent this photographically will vary person to person, though either way it will not be apprehended in the same manner as it is in real-time by direct sense perception.

The problem with potentiality – that which is not visible or is not yet, is that it can become in the mind what ‘ought’ to be which can go beyond available data, an extrapolation of what might be from an incomplete data set, and / or based on inflexible and false beliefs. These errors can fill in the gaps for our neighbour outside of a relationship with them, the assumptions we make and have learned to make through experience, sometimes because they bring a sense comfort in certainty or ego, or through inexperience therefore becoming what we think we know i.e., probable, or potentially true rather than what we actually know is true. This internal dialogue can be constructed as a narrative which separates us from our neighbour. (Leviticus 19:16, Proverbs 16:28).

Our brains are hardwired for ‘safety-seeking’ that is a part of our animal nature, as opposed to seeking human outcomes such as happiness which some say is our telos, or end. Our primal or basic physiological needs are innate, yet what separates us and makes us human comes by way of our social interaction with each other. This is demonstrated by the examples of feral children and the effects of social isolation. 

Yet when we learn to love, that love is able to embrace every moment in every place that we are. For love works in and through all creation saturating all in all which does not impose upon us the particular nature of a thing, but embraces the particular as a participation in the whole. From love, from wholeness comes life and truth, it is the end to which we are directed, in which happiness is a product or fruit, not a cause or end in itself. Consider the paradox of appearances in relation to the trials of life – think of the beatitudes in Saint Matthew’s Gospel and the blessedness of the poor in spirit, those who mourn or are persecuted. The wholeness of our being is to be honest; close to God are those who love justice, are humble, and pure in heart. (Matthew 5:5-8).

3.5 Complexity

The world tells us we live in a ‘post-truth’ age because it has confused the difference between truth and reality – for we all experience reality in a different and personal way as beings occupying a discrete point in space, therefore our language is the collective agreement to which we subscribe that holds our perceived reality together in a cooperative way. Language enables us to be known uniquely yet held together as one. It is impossible to know and understand another’s thinking without communication and that collective agreement of its meaning. For example, we say ‘grass is green’ because this is what we have been taught green and grass look like and so have agreed it cooperatively.

However, what is real to us may or may not be true, because reality is a complex picture that we have built up of our experiences and our relationship to them – like fragments of our awareness in time put together to create a mosaic in our minds. We then hold new events or facts against this internal mosaic, or schema to see if they match up, like a jigsaw puzzle we look to see if they fit our underlying beliefs which will include, among other things, the relationship between our world view and self-concept. It is then the inferences and evaluations we make from these underlying beliefs that cause us to accept or reject these fragments as they are presented to us.

Patterns that imply random correlations in complex biological systems conceal the truth of the complexity of multifactorial causation that will be biotic and abiotic. For example, the complex causation of the limits and variation in the size of progeny will involve context-dependent factors including energy efficiency, population pressures and so on. In human contexts, regression to the mean will involve the psychology of success, desires related to status and belonging, placebo effects and so on.

Errors of intuitive predictions will be influenced by the limited availability of data such as spatiotemporal distributions of individuals, their movement, personal preferences, broad cultural measures of success, and individual experience over time. Being unable to see or experience the thoughts of others, leads us often to use a self-referential model of prediction because it offers a certainty which is a desire for the comfort of an internal equilibrium.  

Our humanity has a need for this security that has led us to be adapted and predisposed to prediction of what comes next in order to establish certainty. Our safety seeking brains like to know what might happen next, familiarity is secure and comfortable. This predictive ability that goes beyond available data benefits us a priori, for example, we may never have been exposed to a knife wielding human shouting and slashing wildly, yet we would instinctively recognise this as a threat to our safety and our brains would elicit the freeze, fight, or flight response.

Going beyond available data has other positives that enable the mind to shift from established schools of thought to discover afresh what might be. The downside of this imagination of what is not, is that it can become entrenched preferences that make us inflexible to what is real and external to us. This can make us selfish in seeking fulfilment of individual preferences that make it hard for others to live up to the ideals we have created.

Relationship, therefore, as an exploration and sharing of imagination with others, is better for achieving meaning and truth for the end of the common goods. Therefore, for complexity in relation to what is true, the end to which truth is directed is grounded in what exists independent of mind, and in the other, which is revealed in and by love, for love works in what is seen and unseen and is the largest possible collection of all that is good.

Someone might say that an individual experiences truth for themselves and might recall an action done to them and the only other witness was the person acting upon them. If the action was evil, justice demands that the truth of the event is known by others – the end for which is always the for purpose of love that is the order of establishing good relationships – fostering healing and love for our neighbours as ourselves, because if we truly love our neighbours, we do not wish anyone to experience evil as we have. Sharing enables a community to establish what is true by making visible what is hidden and act accordingly, not for status or personal gain, but for the end of stability, security, love and belonging. The principle of consequences for actions is a matter of steering – correction or continuation. Though it is not the act itself that matters as much as the heart that is the captain of the life it leads. It is our physical being that for a little while extends into space-time, yet it is what we carry within our hearts that is taken with us into every place that we are and consequently the part of us that must be transformed to be the visible witness to the change we desire for the world around us. This however is not a matter of influence that pushes without understanding of all that is other – it is a dialogue, a movement of love.

The problem of individualistic inferences and evaluations is that we do not exist for ourselves, love and belonging is a human need that is dynamic rather than passive.

The complexity of life can contain within itself linear threads of truth unchanging, yet how they are ordered and how we relate to them depends on where we are and when we are. Fragments of information can be organised in different ways to form different conclusions depending on the internal filtering of the person.

The problem with using language models is that they are social constructions, patterns of order developed for intelligibility, words themselves being a social agreement or contract between us. This is why the meaning of a word can change by usage over time. Creativity produces order not necessarily in accordance with right reason, it may appear rational, which means intelligible to us, because it is relative to the times in which we live and our preferences.

Right reason or order exists independent of mind. The natural order of the universe has existed long before humanity was around to see it. Reasoning by way of the intellect may lead us to knowledge and understanding whereas our preferences developed experientially are beneficial for the purpose of belonging therefore advantageous for developing social bonds, and certainty, the ingredients necessary for flourishing from generation to generation.

Reason and preferences work together when we choose how to respond toward individuals that are other to us, human and unique, for the purpose of mutual flourishing and the common good. Right reason, or order being all things that work together for each other.

Context matters when developing understanding and meaning as does the ability to go beyond the surface of a thing to understand the mechanism that leads to it. If a person comes before us and starts speaking of things we do not know or have not experienced, engagement through a means of dialogue is necessary to tease out understanding. Language likely developed through the need for cooperation to achieve ends such as hunting, coordinating responses to stimuli and socially to connect with those around them. Visual processing through eye contact, would have been triggered by body movements and facial expressions, sounds and clicks that would have become an agreement between individuals. Language as an embodied representation of our lives and our relations to the world around us (animate and inanimate) involving three dimensions of image (as it relates to the senses of the object or subject), symbol (representation of a thing) and meaning (the relations it has to its purpose, or character such as shape).

Our concrete experience can be viewed symbolically in words in logical relations that are direct, that is a correspondence between or mirroring of what is or metaphorical relations that are indirect or correlated. The purpose of cooperation and therefore also of our language is to facilitate movement together.

Consider the possible configurations of a population, as numbers increase so does the potential for different arrangements and distribution of individuals. If we consider the movement of people like dots from afar without any knowledge of their preferences or intentions, it is likely this movement, or reasons for it would make no sense to us. To know what each individual is doing or where they are going is not possible, rather like gas particles moving within a given space.

The regularity of the seasons, the rising of the sun and its setting provide an order of time to which we can organise our lives, and when you add to this laws, roads, paths, jobs, shops, families and cooperative communities, the patterns of movement become increasingly ordered and predictable. This drive towards efficient use of space has the downside of a comparative loss of freedom and independence by entraining. A path is an implicit message to walk this way rather than that; helpful in the mountains if you wish to protect vital species from being trampled on. However, if we all moved in the same way all day every day this would become an unconscious habit rather than a choice, having the effect of making us less able to spot the unpredictable or the new because it is not anticipated or expected.

Diversity, and uncertainty facilitates conscious movement and relationships, and freedom of speech facilitates social mobility. Love is diverse, its ways containing all movement with and for each other in ways that we know and those beyond our seeing until they are revealed.

The social relations we have developed through language itself gives us the freedom to move with, towards or away from each other. Freedom of expression and our ability to express ourselves with the knowledge and use of language is therefore linked to social mobility, and the quality of relationships.

The view from above and the view from below of the same object may indeed have the appearance of a disconnect between each perspective. If someone stood at the base of a tall tree in a rainforest, they might perceive oneness of the whole, whereas someone high in the canopy may observe many disconnected leaves at the termination of individual branches. Both are correct, just different.

Interpreting a sentence and its meaning can also be viewed from different perspectives by position in time and location. Biblical understanding for example requires somewhat of an understanding of how God teaches us involving the full dimensions of our experience using the concreteness of our sense interpretation so as to be intelligible to us and also metaphorically because He exists within and beyond our limits. This requires some research of ancient worldviews and understanding in order that it may be understood, and its essence reframed within a new context. Scripture therefore requires of us to look for its original context and locate the echoes of its meaning that run throughout Gods Word, and in this way, scripture can interpret itself.  

In modern times, as distance increases between what was then and what is now somethings are lost only to be rediscovered as God is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow, what was a moment past remains forever true in His memory if not ours; though the past still has a physical presence not just in the fossils and scars upon the dust and the earth, but in our Churches too.

St Aquinas said, ‘It would be superfluous to receive by faith, things that can be known by natural reason.’ And St Anselm said ‘For I do not seek to understand in order that I may believe, but I believe in order to understand. For this also I believe – that unless I believe I shall not understand.’

This means that the underlying principles of what is by relation true must be continually uncovered as fluctuating between the imperfection of potential being and actual being. This means that relational truth is dynamic and adaptable with changing positions that broaden rather than narrow our views. Truth enables trust, through humility, which permits us to live together in communities of peace and security, all for the end of love and belonging that facilitates this extension of potential being into actual being.

Self-actualisation which is ultimately for others requires a solid base upon which to climb. Disruptions to individuals through violence, famine, and access to other basic needs become the ripples that extend into families, communities and eventually distorts our view of humanity. The fundamental mistrust of others is strongest where familial relations are weakest. However, refocusing our attention to our common humanity that looks not at our differences, which are necessary, but at our shared common needs. Bringing into remembrance that a need within us and the other helps us to connect with compassion whether they be family or stranger.

‘For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’ (Matthew 25:35-36).

As the word love embraces the largest of meanings it also embraces all fragments of subjects and objects working together for each other – that means that it embraces the largest of dimensions of images in relation to all possible actualisations, that is all possible manifestations of what it means to love. Therefore, it resists rigid definition by appearances except by the motion of parts in relation to the other including in thoughts, words and deeds. This further means that relational truth can be unique in character, and difference does not mean that it falls outside of its meaning.

Love embraces all that is good for the purpose of relationship with God, self and other – it is the largest grouping of all things that lead to life. This could be supposed to be like a line of real numbers – each number is not the other, yet they belong to the set of real numbers which if made circular would mean no-one could discern status by positioning themselves in relation to closeness to God – then no-one may boast in their works, but continually walk humbly with God whilst always in a perpetual motion towards self-actualisation. Continuing with the number analogy, imaginary numbers belong to a different set and deviate from the real number line – this would be like what is not good and leads to destruction.

Just as we developed science and technology, so did we also begin to hear the calling of God. It is not mere coincidence that God called Abraham out of an advanced civilisation of that time to follow Him. 

3.6 Location

The linearity of our common remembrance and experience fixes the position of the good in time and space. That means we judge our position relative to all that is other. Linearity opens us up to comparison by the order of the external relative to ourselves.

When we consider the problem of location in a sentence such as ‘Glasgow is west of Edinburgh’. The relation of Glasgow to Edinburgh in this sentence has direction without magnitude. If the meaning of the names are attributed to a location in space-time, then the relation is the line between the two points, when we take ‘west’ to mean exactly west. In science, a line as the relation between two points has been called distance. Temperature is essentially a linear relationship, a line with regular and ordered distances between points that relate to, not just how hot or cold something is, but a number related to water and its states of matter or as in the Kelvin scale, the lowest possible temperature in the universe to the highest.

If the names have no meaning to the hearer, then Glasgow and Edinburgh may as well be nothing more than two points in space-time. West has been given the meaning of a direction, yet if a point is selected to represent Edinburgh, then Glasgow’s position has a range of possible locations everywhere that is west. Yet the point representing Edinburgh could be any location from the east side of the universe to the smallest distance from the end of what could be east of west. Yet in space we do not know what is up or down, west, or east – therefore each point could be begin or end any place, yet as the sentence states ‘is’ we would expect this relation to exist at the same time.

If one point can be located, for example we know what Edinburgh means and where it is on earth, then a line North to south through Edinburgh would determine what is west and not west of this point, though without the magnitude of the distance from Edinburgh to Glasgow, then the area covering the possible locations of Glasgow would be along a line of the smallest possible distance or the largest.

Possible relations between things are correspondence and correlations. Of the correlations there can be supposed to exist four: 1. Events (located in space and time). 2. Operations (mathematics, forces). 3. Agreements (language, symbols). and 4. Systems. These relations would include patterns and variations, be abstract and or concrete.

Correspondence relations are mirroring which involves representations that are reflections, exact copies, equilibrium, and repetitions. This would incorporate both movement and or stillness of objects. Correspondence therefore would establish relation without a necessary relationship for example correspondence could come by proximity of objects without correlation. Correlation establishes relationships, connections or bonds between objects which could be seen as cooperative to a higher degree. Correlation however does not necessarily imply causation. 

Universal knowledge is truth. Absolute knowledge is the principle of all that is or is not true. The first principle that “the same thing cannot be affirmed and denied at the same time” does not however consider location – for a finite being can be said to exist in so far as it extends into space – so for example, the cat exists (independent of its state of being alive or dead) inside the box, yet at the same time not outside the box. That a thing exists here but at the same time not there is a matter of position that is either known or unknown. If a thing exists yet is not observed because of the distant proximity of observer to the thing (subject or object), then any claim to absolute knowledge is false. As only God can be in all places at all times and beyond, means that only He can be Absolute in Himself and all knowing.

3.7 Substance

Substance is not simple or linear, but a complex series of relations. Substance is said to define a ‘thing-in-itself’, but in this very task we encounter many difficulties, such as the nature of language and form, the differences between the individual and the collective, the parts and the whole. When we attempt to describe a whole, language breaks it down into parts. When we describe an individual as a substance, we exclude a vast swathe of the collective – in some sense the individual has to become either the ideal example of the substance in its species or we have to say every individual is its own substance. If we look at what makes the substance unique, in a human, in terms of DNA, we would be highlighting a tiny percentage that makes us distinguishable from other animals and therefore referring for example to aspects of the human brain and its ability to reason. Therefore, if we focus on the smallest detail that makes us unique, we are not really saying much about the whatness or the whole of who we are.

If we attempted to explain our humanity to an alien, we would use words, and images to give a relation from language to meaning. So let us consider shape or a non-specific outline of a thing, for a human being, this would include for example two arms, two legs etc., in which case we have aligned the substance with an ideal, and brought into question the humanity of someone who perhaps was not born with these features yet is still human. Put another way, it is like saying that cookies are characterized by roundness, yet if I take a bite out of the cookie it is no longer round, yet what remains is still a cookie.

If we say the structure of the substance defines its whatness we still encounter problems – carbon being a prime example of a substance that can form many different structures with differing properties, yet it remains carbon in them all. If an element is a substance as it can exist as a thing-in-itself, then we still have to use parts and properties such as quantity as well as the relations between them to describe its unique character.

Symphonies and pizzas are composites, as each part can exist as a thing-in-self, yet it has been constructed from many substances into a new form – even the spaces between notes are not empty of whatness, nor is there one ideal recipe for a pizza base.

Defining a thing-in-itself by physical form, or by material leaves us unable to cover the ‘all’ of a species therefore we must turn to a metaphysical essence, or the essential nature of a thing to tell us what it is and could be. Essence therefore must embrace all potential and all actual being relating to a genus or species. Therefore, all humans have for example the potential to be male or female until conception and potential being becomes actual being. All humans have the potential to be a chef or musician until their actual being makes it so or not. So, the essence of humanity contains all the actual that has been, all that could be and all that will be.

The actual being of the human person is grounded in material substance that has potentiality and actuality over time, from conception to death in the workings and movement of its matter in relation to its created nature (e.g. the genotype), its nurture (biotic and abiotic) and its free will. The human spirit shapes and creates the space and time in which it exists. The objective and subjective nature of the person comes by way of different modes of attention.

Though finite, existing discretely, that is within the limits and bounds of how far a body extends into space, the material substance of all things can be said to have a continuous nature, it is simply the same ingredients organised in different ways, with new relations, in evolution for example, from life comes life. In that life, we share commonalities by relations that are in our material nature, such as in our DNA and our behaviour as social creatures. Some relations are closer than others, the difference being the greatest between the beginning and the end of a line. For example, the relation between hydrogen and helium is closer that the relation between hydrogen and uranium. A human has multiple relations as well as the relation to animals, these include to God, the internal self, to other persons, the environment, biotic and abiotic.

The problem of what a substance is, can be resolved by a word. The whole is held together in the individual by a name. The word is a sign or symbol of the whole being, as the name of the thing-in-itself. A noun holds the essence and the being (in actuality and potentiality, or in reality and imagination) together. The word as a sign or symbol conceals within itself all the possibilities of its whatness, and what we perceive by the manifestation of its essence and being is but a moment or series of moments strung together, yet still only fragments of its whole – the whole being stretched out into time as we live, breathe, and move through space.

The meaning or definition of a word in order that it be understood and communicable must be agreed by two or more people. If you are naming a thing that exists, its definition must correlate or correspond with truth. Truth is how agreement is brought together.

In relation to the essence of the Holy Trinity, all possibilities exist in Him and through the act of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit – therefore all that is, was and will be already exists as an act of God, through God and with God – because He is within and beyond space-time, therefore there is no potential being only as St. Thomas Aquinas says, pure act. Only that which does not participate with God creates an absence to themselves by having no relation except through love as a mechanism which is all things working together in a causal chain, or through interdependence.

3.8 Freedom

If Jesus did not come to abolish the law but fulfil it (Matthew 5:17), then as Aquinas says law is an ordinance of reason, we infer that reason and right order to which it is intelligible comes by way of relations. Before the new covenant was established there was a veil between man and God (2 Corinthians 3:15-6). The law made visible an invisible reality (Romans 2:29, Romans 5:20). Yet I note, the divine command in Genesis 9:6 had boundaries, for God permitted that a man not be punished if 1. his heart loved God above all things or 2. did not intend the act in relation to its consequence (Exodus 21:12, Numbers 25:12). Therefore, though the Law confers power to enable us to act in certain ways, this is not necessarily moral.

We can separate laws that require the habit of obedience and consequence from those that are right in themselves. For example, Mark 2:27, it is not the act in itself, but the principle in relation to the act – to give life (Deuteronomy 30:19). So sovereign authority does not necessarily mean moral authority. God also makes this distinction, that a man in having the power to judge only holds liable for the outward appearance of the act, for man does not see as God sees (Numbers 25:27, John 19:11, 1 Samuel 16:7). Genesis 9 also refers to the food laws, again as an outward sign of an invisible reality – that we are to live as humans ‘set apart’ from the animals. Yet, Jesus is the new Adam, restoring the relation between God and man, taking all sin upon Himself – and fulfilling the prophetic blessing of Jacob to his son. ‘Judah, your brothers will praise you;’ and ‘he will tether his donkey to a vine, his colt to the choicest branch’. (Genesis 49:8,11). A donkey is the only unclean animal of which the firstborn are considered to be holy, therefore to use the donkey for service, God told Moses it must be redeemed with a lamb, Jesus became the lamb of God sacrificing Himself once and for all, and in doing so has become the firstborn of all creation. This matters because it is a sign to show us that God fulfils all His promises including the first covenant with Noah and his descendants, an everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth.’ (Genesis 9:1-17) As also seen by St Peter Acts 10:15. If we now live by the Spirit, we surrender our sovereignty to a heavenly judge (1 Corinthians 15:27), so that in our weakness He is made strong. If we have been freed from the law, we have been freed from the duty of the law, which means God has restored the privilege of life by His grace, therefore we are no longer bound by duty (Hohfeldian analysis), having a perfect liberty of will to choose our boundedness, we choose our actions to give freely without necessity or expectation of return, we choose to act within the bounds of love, knowing this is all visible to our Father in heaven. (Romans 6:18). Was the law alone enough to change the heart of man? If it was, then why do we need Jesus?

It is for freedom that we have been set free. (Galatians 5:1).

Each one of us was born as a necessary being, a thought of God, known before we were born into a world of changes and chances. The blueprint for our being is written at the moment of conception, and from that very moment our journey towards becoming the fullest expression of who we are is a complex interplay of our nature, our nurture, the environment – the circumstances within and beyond our control, and finally our free will. 

The limits of our nature bind us, and experience teaches that though our imagination soars beyond the clouds, elephants do not fly, and objects fall. There are some boundaries that just do not move. And God teaches this limit in the Garden of Eden, He says, everything is yours, you are free to eat from any tree – but one. In the whole world that He has created and laid before the first humans, there is just one tree they cannot have for if they eat of it they will die. 

Without this choice, without this one thing, we have no freedom to turn towards or away from God. If we could have everything, then would right and wrong even exist? All things would be permitted, but not everything necessarily beneficial. Without choice, without a boundary, without limits, in a self-determined morality there would be chaos and anarchy for we, being lower than the angels, being of matter and spirit, we have actual and potential being – the potential concealed within so that we must seek and discover not just others, but also ourselves – yet always both for the good in relationship. 

In simpler terms, our potential being is sustained by the fundamental physical and psychological needs of food, water, shelter, family and so on. Freedom comes in being able to self-direct at will a meeting of these needs. The soul requires our self-actualization which counterintuitively is not for ourselves but directed toward others. The spirit is our breath which comes out from the heart, a breathing out of our actual being that speaks, acts, shapes, works with and in the world around us. 

Hearts of flesh are tender, open-minded, flexible, and humble. Sensitive, yet like a house built on a rock, they are secure in the knowledge of Christ. They are the place where we find the gentle whisper of the Holy Spirit, the sound of silence that echoes within. The little voice that speaks for us to hear if we are willing. 

Nature so often draws us to inhabit the stillness within when we turn our attention to the work of God’s hands, for its beauty, the patterns the rhythms which flow outside us are also within. The sense of beauty is the unconscious recognition of the continuity of all things, the belonging to the language of love in spirals, fractals, movement, and change – to our experience of time in the seasons within every beat of our hearts. The rules of nature that make the flowers bloom and the trees grow tall, built our bodies too. That beauty is not derived from things and given to us, but by our participation with them. God created all things to be beautiful and we were never meant to think we could measure it. 

‘Our life and our death is with our neighbour. If we win our brother, we win God. If we cause our brother to stumble, we have sinned against Christ’. Saint Anthony the Great.

Saint Aquinas looked for what made us one with the animals and plants – yet it is what we choose to see in the world that enables us to participate with God. To be Holy or set apart from the world is a ‘turning aside to see’ it transforms our sense and interpretation of the real in a whole new way – for God sees not as man sees – God sees the heart. ‘Be transformed by the renewing of your minds.’ (Romans 12:2). It is love that infuses the ordinary, the day to day, with great beauty.

If we are at rest in the doldrums, or lost at sea – are we free? If we happen across a breeze and it moves us without asking – are we free? If we pick up a paddle and work toward the shore, have we become masters of the waves? Can two move together unless it has been agreed? (Amos 3:3). Perhaps freedom, comes when we speak to the wind and the waves and they move with us, all things working together by participation with and for each other.

This is the essence of love and the heart of the natural law. We can extend this definition of love to the biblical sense of what is good and perfect. God is pure and simple, God is Love (1 John 4:16), God is perfect – Jesus says, ‘be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly father is perfect’ (Matthew 5:48) – ‘Praise the Lord, for the Lord is good’ (Psalm 135:3).

If you substitute these words for each other and then consider the circumstances and intention of the teaching, you see that this definition is compatible, not simply as altruism but within relationship through a dynamic cooperation. ‘And let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be perfect and complete. (James 1:40. ‘Let those of us then who are perfect be of the same mind. (Philippians 3:15). This is a mirroring of the Trinitarian relationship, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, as He is, so we are meant also to be – a perfect community of being together. ‘The Lord’s works are perfect.’ (Deuteronomy 32:4).

Yet laws or rules, the lines drawn in the sand fix our senses on this outward world of what is done in or upon it. What sets us apart from the animals is our consciousness, and with it a freedom to choose our way, a way that fixes our attention toward or away from what is God and of God. It is what we choose to have in our hearts that aligns us with and for God, self and other. To see others through the pureness of God’s heart so we do not let categories and stereotypes keep us from being open to the newness of another day. Love and life go to great lengths in order that all may survive. Jesus came to bring us life and have this life to the full. Jesus set us free so that we may have the perfect freedom to choose, for the heart is not changed by what it ‘has’ to do but by its desire to do. 

In choosing to love we choose our boundedness to each other for love establishes relationship and cooperation and as Saint Peter writes, ‘love covers over a multitude of sins,’ (1 Peter 4:8). Life was designed to thrive as a whole, and as that whole we reflect the image of the Trinity in the relation between God, self and other.

In these days of strife and war our greatest need is for humans to love humanity. Democracy is the heart of our collective body as nations, that allows a sharing of power through means such as freedom of speech, and ideas that inspire us to dream of futures yet unknown. 

As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another (Proverbs 27:17). Dialogue is a necessary part of any relationship, and what is left in the shadows can undermine our shared futures for you can do nothing about what you do not see or know. Yet, truth set solely as an expression of passing things, is like taking a moment of seeing and making it into all possible moments of being. It is rigid and inflexible. It removes the unique complexity of personhood, the richness of diversity and the possibility for change. Words are powerful, yet they are like snapshots which we make into a movie over the course of time. The gaps in our knowing made into the assumptions that fit and judge. 

The darkness in the world challenges us to find the light beyond the visibility of what is already known. God tells us to look always for the new, if we hear His voice in the Word, and recognise Him at the altar – let us not leave Him there in the one place of our experience, for His voice, His imprint is everywhere in all places, we need to seek it and listen to it. Our freedom is not in our location or position but in our ability to move whilst retaining the core values of love and life. 

Honesty, and integrity these are a source of life in our souls. Saint Stephen holding fast to the truth opened heaven. Therefore, let us remember now his witness in the face of adversity and use it to give us hope in these modern times. The issue with freedom is the clash between the freedom of the individual and that of the collective and other – between individualism and the common good. A system that has a high disorder would also have a high degree of uncertainty for the individuals living within it. Yet, on the other-hand as a species we also have common needs and desires, this means that as a collective, analysis would reveal that even this apparent disorder would have patterns and overarching structure not obvious to the limitations of individual sensitivity. Rules therefore remove the fears that ask ‘what might happen next?’ Rules that govern our safety, and security enabling our freedom to choose where and what we might do next. Our brains are hardwired to predicting the future, this is indeed part of safety seeking.

To live in an ordered society rules are necessary, it would then make sense that order is the end to which law is directed – order that enables the flourishing of the maximum number of people. Grammar rules for example make language and the world intelligible to us, therefore, to say a thing that is singular is plural is irrational and does not correspond to the relation upon which the definition of the object was agreed. A breakdown of order that removes the definition of a thing from its reality, is the same as nullifying the rule, which is a kind of lawlessness by which people judge by their own eyes forgoing a common good.

A duty therefore in itself is an object extrinsic to persons, a point of captivity whereby our freedom to choose is removed yet it affords us protections or rights, therefore rules are a about relations, agreements by which we attain an order of cooperation.

St Hesychios the Priest said, ‘Wishing to show that to fulfil every commandment is a duty, whereas sonship is a gift given to men through His own blood, the LORD said, ‘When you have done all that is commanded you say: “We are useless servants: we have only done what was out duty” (Luke 17:10). Thus the kingdom of heaven is not a reward for works, but a gift of grace prepared by the Master for His faithful servants. A slave does not demand his freedom as a reward: but he gives thanks as one who is in debt, and receives freedom as a gift.’

Putting ourselves ‘under the word of God’ is an alignment of ourselves with His word, a harmonising of the ‘two wills’ so that we walk or move together as friends. The fracturing of our relationship with each other in our shared humanity, particularly when one places a value judgement on the other, is not then agreed.

Yet Jesus says “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. Luke 6:32. This can only be achieved in humility not in self-righteousness. We are stewards of the Spirit given to us, stewards of our attention, of our love, our interior thoughts, and desires. God sees them all, God sees the heart and is the only righteous judge.

Chapter 4

Guard your hearts for all that you do flows from it. (Proverbs 4:23). God cares about the condition of our hearts, the centre of our being from which our wholeness, and integrity and actions follow. As love is the perfection of all things working together for each other, it is also the source from which wisdom and right reason flow (John 7:38). To love is the greatest commandment and therefore the most important demonstration of witness to the kingdom of heaven come to earth, whether this be held within close relationships or in the hospitality given to strangers (Hebrews 13:2).

Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends (John 15:13). Friendship participates in the greatest act of love given to us in the sacrifice of Jesus upon the cross. It is friendship we seek with the Lord, and so too is friendship the greatest outcome between peoples. ‘Two are better than one… A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.’ (Ecclesiastes 4:9-12).

Sex is not love, sexual drive is for procreation, relationships that seek to satisfy sexual drive are not directed to the greatest part of love which is friendship. Therefore, friendship with a spouse, partner or other is the highest goal – as friendship is the place where our needs for love and belonging are met. Yet people are not objects, therefore friendship is an invitation between two, an agreement (Amos 3:3) – all relationships are invitations to participate with each other, not in submission to a perceived inequality of value, but a submission of the ego and need for power, therefore even in marriage there needs to be relationship worked out with and for each other rather than expectations that desires and lusts a man or woman might wish to have fulfilled upon impulse, which would be to ‘crave’ the other as a body rather than a soul. Friendship as the goal of love, with souls tied together (נִקְשְׁרָ֖ה) – which is different from being the unity or continuous substance of male and female in marriage – is demonstrated in the relationship between Jesus and John, ‘one of his disciples, whom Jesus loved,’ (John 13:23), to whom Jesus entrusts to be His mother’s son or legal guardian (Philippians 4:19) as He is dying on the cross. (John 19:26).

Lust is the sin, yet sexual desire is necessary as part of our design in order to reproduce – otherwise we would be like pandas and on the brink of extinction, and it is a drive common to all (regardless of sexuality or gender) therefore relationship provides the place for these human desires to be worked out which is not something we are meant to do alone. St Paul writes, ‘But if they cannot control themselves, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion.’ (1 Corinthians 7:9).

Sex is a passion for procreation, yet is often its misused for power, lust, and greed (Genesis 3:6), again this is independent of sexuality or gender, therefore it is required to be held in the context of relationship, which in marriage is for the good of children (Aquinas). St Paul says all things are lawful yet not necessarily beneficial (1 Corinthians 6:12) so the ‘place’ or context in which an act proceeds matters – if all acts proceed from the heart as proceeding from love – then who but the Lord could judge such a thing?

Yet love requires that we do acts not for ourselves to live solely in pleasurable circumstances. Whatever we do repeatedly in thought becomes a habit that we are more likely to act upon as the more ordinary it appears to mind and will become something that is a part of a mindset rigidly directed toward its own pleasure unless we embrace the adventure of life in relationship with others.

For anyone to deny someone the right to relationship in which a person experiences love, and belonging is to deny their very humanity as this is common to humankind – therefore it is most important not to be gate keepers of who can and cannot be in relationship with each other, or with God – but to teach and be good witnesses of what it means to love. ‘Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms.’ (1 Peter 4:10) St Peter reminds us that we each have different graces given to us for different ministries during our time on earth for the kingdom of God. Therefore, though equal in our humanity, equal in our common needs, and equal in our value, we are not all called to the same purpose by appearances though it be love that works within and through them all.

Love is the foundation of all being, and the guiding principle of all in all. 1 John 4:16 says, ‘God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.’ Through our eyes God is Himself a unity in diversity, just as our difference comes together in our shared humanity. In choosing to abide in love, we choose our boundedness to each other for love establishes relationship and cooperation and it is from this love that the waters of life spring. ‘Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins’, 1 Peter 4:8.

Love is a repeating pattern of relationships between us, between all created things. The echoes of love repeat throughout the universe, in all things at different scales, in different ways and at different times. What we regard as love beyond our being at any one time is relative to our experience and that which is revealed to us as product of our observation and relationship to them. ‘For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and divine nature so that they are without excuse’, Romans 1:20.

How do we live the life of love as humans made in the image of God? Participation in the space between us becomes the place of opening the mysterious depths of our being, the revealing of ourselves through our movement, and speaking, across a bridge, that place of discovering who we are in relation to the other. By permitting another’s gaze to penetrate the depths of our soul, we allow for the possibility of a spark to ignite a flame in their eyes. To be loved and known through them as they are known and loved through us.

How can there be this opening without surrender, intimacy must be vulnerable, an unknowing of what might be, the submission to the mystery concealed within the other, learning to dance and co-create within a new space. An unframing of all that was to rest in an unfolding. So, rest is in our creativity and the rhythms we create between us and all that is other.

In bringing forth creativity from us to the world we, in essence, become a work of art, a movement of being and becoming, a mirror of creation itself. We as the Creator’s art become creators ourselves through that interplay of opening and revealing and returning to the potential within. Being seen by another as both our actuality and potentiality is what it means to be known and loved; to be held within another’s mind and heart as whole and particular.  

Perhaps this is why music resonates in our souls, so that we can tell the difference between Being as love and a dancing with desire, the latter needing satisfaction yet love pausing because love seeks to know the other not for the end of pleasure in-itself. People are not objects, yet love, gentle and patient, is like an open house, where we are safe to be or become who we are. So, when Rainer Maria Rilke, in his Letters to a Young Poet said ‘each protects the solitude of the other’ did not mean the keeping of distance or separation, but that place of safety to be whoever we are.

There is a solitude in holiness, as to be holy is to be set apart, every individual in their diversity has a holiness linked to the solitude of their own being, therefore also do minority groups in having a set-apart-ness from the majority that gives them a mission of holiness that is different from the rest. Within every person’s solitude is a unique purpose, one given to them – the mission of love according to the nature of their circumstance and community.

With the principle that we love not for what we ever hope the other to be in relation to ourselves, the essence of enframing, but love because of the unconcealment of their own particularity. A revelation of love in their freedom. So ‘being’ as love, is an image of the Creator Himself, something beyond our grasp like death and time.

Love therefore never possesses, for we can take nothing with us, so the freedom to be and move within the other is a coming of heaven to earth, a gathering through two lines of transcendence. Earth to sky, and in Jesus fully mortal fully Divine we move towards His image in the other. The cross also that meeting point of Love and death held together, the beginning and the end brought to the now. ‘And you show that you are a letter of Christ, prepared by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets that are human hearts’, 2 Corinthians 3:3.

Yet, the bleakness of death is what makes it so hard to truly love, because intuitively we seek comfort and desire to avoid pain. But fear itself is an emptiness, not something we can take away, but has to be filled.

Love is the root from which life springs, the intention from which the water of life flows. In Luke 6:43-45 Jesus tells us ‘“For a good tree does not bear bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit. For every tree is known by its own fruit. For men do not gather figs from thorns, nor do they gather grapes from a bramble bush. A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart brings forth evil. For out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.”’ Jesus presents a visual image that triggers our understanding yet not automatically our application of this understanding– for we transfer visual models to a visual understanding in the ‘real world scenario’ of our own experience. This tempts us to judgement of outward appearances of things beyond our knowing.

When Jesus tells the Pharisees and the experts in the Law that they should have practiced justice and love of God without leaving their actions undone (Luke 11:37-54), He was echoing the cry of the prophet Isaiah ‘This people honour me with their lips, but their heart is far from me’ (Isaiah 29:13, Matthew 15:18). The system to which the action is the extension of a concept is to be pure.

St Paul tells us in his discourse on love in 1 Corinthians 13 that without love we are nothing, that ‘love is patient, kind, is not easily angered, nor does it keep a record of wrongs. That love rejoices in truth, always protects, always trusts and perseveres’. Love is the beginning and the end to which we are directed. The fruits of the Spirit spring forth from love, therefore we are not seeking pleasure or happiness in themselves, as again each can result in a double effect from self-seeking that may lead to the harm of self or other. Harm is not only that which results in the loss of a person or persons but a reduction in their wholeness in order to live the life that they have. Happiness and pleasure are also of a time, consequences experienced moment to moment, this does not mean they are wrong, but offer only a fragmented view, where love steps in with a holistic view.

Ultimately love embraces all including that which outwardly appears as loss and sacrifice for and of an individual. Love is a universal principle for the reason that it does not act apart from relationship with all of creation to which we belong. Love is relational, physically, and spiritually. ‘I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh’. (Ezekiel 36:26).

The greatest commandment of Jesus to love God, and others as yourself, is a trinitarian model of relationship along the two lines of transcendence where self can also collectively mean humanity and the other belonging to all that is the natural world outside of us.

Feelings alert our attention toward action, they are real embodied experiences yet not necessarily always true. Feelings can be triggered by thoughts, events, and sensations but also in reverse, so that thoughts, events and sensations trigger the feelings. This enables the brain to work faster, yet also to make mistakes about the inferences and evaluations attached to the feelings in themselves which may be conscious or subconscious.

Love extends beyond feeling, it permeates the universal within and beyond our seeing. Yet true Love, that is God becoming small to enter into our concrete knowing – by first unknowing Himself within the tiny infant to be beheld by our eyes and our understanding. To come close, God clothed Himself in our humanity, to learn and grow as we do. Saint Paul writes in Colossians 1:15 that ‘Jesus is the image of the invisible God’, and Jesus tells us to ‘be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect,’ Matthew 5:48. We now have a particular to which we can direct our attention and being, Jesus. Jesus is teaching us by example to ‘be’ perfect is to act from being wholly present – just as love is all things working together for each other – simple, uncomplicated, like children – so does the what is good and the what is perfect mean the same.

No-one is perfect, no-one is good, but let us strive to become good and perfect with and for each other, that is to ‘act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with our God’, (Micah 6:8). Walking with God cannot be separated from walking with our neighbour, for in Jesus fully God and fully man, the lines of transcendence are resolved – we walk as the reflection of the trinity in the world as the unity of God, self, and other.

Death is too long a time to wait for humans to realise that alone a person is lost on an island of solitude – that only in relationship is the surrounding ocean dried up and we are found. To love, we must turn our attention to the universal truths, to recognise the common value with the other, and their needs as our needs, to see their soul. From this sameness we move towards the acceptance of difference. If we attempt to make the particular of a finite person the ideal working toward the universal, this homogenises our humanity and removes an individual’s freedom to choose their way as unique and other than.

Love is infinite and all things therefore residing within simplicity and complexity. To fix our gaze externally and universalise the particular is to reject diversity, to desire our own preferences for change in the other that imposes should(s) and ought(s) on what is, rather than embracing what is and accepting difference. This requires an embracing of uncertainty, and tolerance for our own discomfort in any mismatch between our self and another.

C.S. Lewis once wrote ‘it is only when a man tries to be really good that he knows how bad he truly is.’ Humility is therefore a work of knowing oneself truly and recognising the humanity in the soul of every person other to us.

Every individual regardless of their nature or nurture has this purpose, or mission of love to discern in the what to do now, worked out in the place, and in the community in which we are. Holiness through loving our neighbour as ourselves is a beautiful thing, in the darkness of the world it is a light that truly sets us apart.

Chapter 5

Our shared humanity meets at the point of our need, our basic physiological needs also shared with the animals. Taking from Maslow’s hierarchy of needs our shared physiological needs are; nutrition, growth, reproduction, movement, respiration (air), safety, shelter, excretion (sanitation), senses and health. Meeting these needs leads to the preservation of life, and the opportunity to flourish from generation to generation.

There is an age and stage aspect to meeting these needs in children, the sick, the poor, those with disabilities and the elderly. Sometimes, politics and war prevent people from having the resources necessary to flourish from the fulfilment of these basic necessities. The ideal is for adults to have an autonomy in meeting their own physiological needs, yet when this is not possible for whatever reason, it is an opportunity to love – for those who can, to support those who cannot; for example, in parenting the young, or providing infrastructure for sanitation and healthcare by a governing body.

Reproduction is pivotal for the continuation of a species from generation to generation and hence a necessity for life. The mystery of how replication developed may never be something we resolve with any certainty, yet asexual reproduction was not able to produce offspring that could adapt to the changes and chances of life on a dynamic earth. The emergence of sexual reproduction resolved the survival of species to these challenges facilitating relatively rapid adaptation of organisms enabling them to flourish across a wider range of biomes. God gave us sexual reproduction in order that life would thrive and survive. How organisms build their lives around the need for reproduction is in nature centred on outcomes relating to the survival and flourishing of offspring alongside behavioural and physical adaptations to manage populations.

If interdependence and relationship give overall purpose, then actions must be for this good. As in nature, collective survival from generation to generation is then the overarching aim, we survive for each other. The collective is then greater than any individuals right to participate in that by any means including that of procreation.

Not all humans are able to procreate for a variety of reasons that are not always of their choosing, disability being one example of that. Does an organism’s inability to procreate mean that it cannot participate within the divine purpose of relationship? Of course not. Can a human unable to procreate still experience the fullness of relationship? Yes, without doubt.

What Thomas Aquinas meant by good was ‘whatever man naturally seeks as a goal’ – whatever is in accordance with our natural ends or purposes. This includes as one of his primary precepts a natural tendency to mate and bring up their young. Within nature this is true, however the common tendency is for males to mate with as many females as possible in order that his genes survive within a species. You could argue that our promiscuity, to have sex outside of marriage and commit adultery within it is fulfilling that tendency. But is that good? It damages relationships with self and others to be driven by this natural desire and the unnatural objectification of another for the purpose of pleasure.

What good is done by the act of mating in itself? Sexual expression within a committed relationship does not always lead to progeny. Does experiencing pleasure count as an act of good done during mating? Or is it the action of the effect in which good is done? Does a woman then have cause to boast when she has given birth? Does that good act mean that a woman who has not given birth has no divine purpose or value? Does the offspring become an object of goodness just by its existence? A mother or father who sees a child as an object of possession is erring towards sin and more likely to inflict emotional suffering as a result. Comparison between human beings in this way devalues each other’s experience. The birth of a child should be a reason for personal joy. But things such as joy and happiness are relative to an individual’s experience and therefore not a universal measure of goodness. 

Therefore, procreation as a primary precept for good is by reason absurd. What this has led to is a culture of belief that it is a woman’s biological right to have a child. This has resulted in the belief that it is correct for a woman to obtain this desire by any means, and the ethical problems we now face relating to fertility treatment, and sperm banks. If intervention leads to the bringing up of a child within its own biological family this is helpful to the psychological needs of the offspring. Nurture within a family unit is an immensely vital part of developing the wellbeing of young people before they themselves become adult.

The intention must be for a child to be nurtured by both biological parents unless because of abuse or neglect the biological parents have not been deemed fit to do so. It is a natural tendency to wish to propagate one’s own genes into future generations, but when unable to do this, we must surely look to the children that already exist and focus our maternal and paternal instincts to caring for those often forgotten and in desperate need. This investment in offspring who require fostering or adoption is of great advantage to society. It is well documented that parenting remains the single most important factor to the determination of any child’s future outcomes.

Statistical analysis of biological variation and patterns of inheritance show what is called a normal probability distribution. Within this distribution exist majority and minority groups the existence of which it would be wrong to assign moral value. ‘For God saw all that He had made and called it very good.’ (Genesis 1:31).

What is born exists, therefore morality cannot be applied to what is, and what ought to be is relative to our worldview therefore a product of our position in space-time, relative that is to the social context, traditions, knowledge and understanding of the day. However, it would make no sense to make the minority the majority, unless a shift in circumstances necessitated a change that benefited the continuation of a particular trait to the next generation for otherwise a population would face extinction pressures.

The nature of sexual reproduction tells us that both male and female of the species are required for procreation, neither humans nor mammals reproduce by cloning (asexual reproduction), therefore sexual reproduction remains the privilege of male and female together.

The bodies of males and females are designed for procreation and sexual relations in a way that persons in same-sex relationships are not. However, heterosexual sin is undoubtedly more widespread, and the shift in focus from the sin of lust between a man and a woman, to be projected in national debate onto to those in a homosexual relationship, is a convenient distraction that almost permits the continuation of this selfishness, lack of meaning and unfulfilling relationships because people believe the modern lie of living and realising individual goals rather than collective ones.

Individualism with hedonistic tendencies results in a meaningless life, a collection of experiences without strong relations.  True intimacy in relationship is separate from the passion of lust (1 Thessalonians 4:8), intimacy comes not in our physical nakedness, but in the metaphysical, in our ability to be vulnerable, honest and open with an other. So often, when we talk about persons ‘falling in love’ we are swept up in the imagining of an idealistic, perhaps wholly romantic expectation of love. We have evolved this sort of response through a complex interplay of chemicals inside our bodies that instigate sexual attraction, arousal and bonding to facilitate the continuation of the species. It serves first to ensure that offspring are produced and second that the bonding enables nurture in an environment that will be of benefit to the offspring. So, when we experience that kind of powerful emotion at the start of relationships, we are essentially feeling a chemical designed for a selfish (genetic) purpose.

When the chemicals wear off, love becomes a choice we make and not necessarily a feeling we feel. ‘But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law’, Galatians 5:22-23. Modern culture has led to high divorce rates impacting on the lives of children who suffer their own consequences of marital breakdowns. The changing landscape of families will relate to shifts in social, and personal expectations, views on the meaning of life, lack of resilience in times of difficulty and the greater desire for an immediate sense of gratification, as well as having the increased opportunities to meet them.

In nature, it is normal for a range of organisms with different reproductive outcomes, that is, not every individual in a population participates in producing progeny, though community cohesion and care for offspring are enhanced with kinship care and sexual simulation between same sex individuals. Nature is a complex adaptive system that functions as a whole of many parts working together for each other. Nature is an example of the fingerprint of God’s love on the world (Romans 1:20).

Proverbs 19:2 tells us “Desire without knowledge is not good, and whoever makes haste with his feet misses his way”. Wisdom reminds us that valuing the essence of the other is found in thoughtfulness rather than behaviour blinded by our desire for them. Love is not the same as desire. Sex fulfils desire, but sex in itself is not love, but an action subject to double effect.

When humanity wants superiority or control over things, he stops imitating and finds new ways to be over and above all that is other. It strikes me that sexual immorality relates to excesses and imbalances of power – particularly a ‘subject-object’ dynamic. In the days of St Paul, in Roman society, the act of penetration was often about status without regard for gender or love, people were objects merely to demonstrate wealth and power. We see this explicitly in the biblical story of Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 19), which also has nothing to do with gender or love but the desire for power and status bringing evil and suffering.

God in turning Lot’s wife to salt shows us that He, our Creator, has ultimate authority over earthly treasures and positions. For salt was considered a treasure of great economic value, towns and cities grew from where it was found. ‘Don’t look back’ she was warned, ‘for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also’ (Matthew 6:21). The roots of evil are pulled up and burned in the fire.

Intimacy in relationship is separate from the passion of lust, or desire for power and control (1 Thessalonians 4:3-8). If our desire is greater than our being, then we miss the extraordinary beauty of that which we are. Life is fragile like lace, delicate, intricate, threads intertwined and related. Repair requires diligence, patience, attention and persistence. Life is so highly specific and improbable that the collision of all factors working together, animate and inanimate, with and for each other demonstrate that life requires love at every point; in every frame and from every perspective.

So how do we respond to desire? Love is a pause, a holding back, a self-restraint, whereas desire consumes. Following desire is like becoming a boulder rolling down a mountain – it does not consider, it does not know, it only acts without thinking, without love.

As love embraces all, our human need belongs beyond the categories and judgements of our seeing, to all people from the one to the many. Therefore, we must love the other more than simply having the courage to face our ultimate destiny alone. The tipping point then is the finding of that other, the pearl of great price that we would endure the pain of death with and for. For love is as strong as death, and worth more than all possible futures alone.

5.1 Leviticus 18:22

‘You shall not lie with a man as with a woman, it is an abomination.’ Leviticus 18:22, 20:13.

The Hebrew scriptures pull no punches when it comes to the stark reality of sexual relations. Ask children which of the ten commandments are in UK law and they will pick do not murder, do not steal, and do not commit adultery. In an age of increasing family breakdown and the introduction of civil partnerships, people are looking afresh at biblical scriptures and wondering if the idea of diverging from heteronormativity can be justified by a new perspective on well-known stories and verse. However, though the biblical narrative on family is broad, the definition of marriage is clearly stated by Jesus as being between and male and female. So, what can the bible teach us about the way forward in these modern times? The only love between two people of the same sex is seen in the story of David and Jonathan from the book of 1 Samuel 18 to book 2 Samuel 1. The bible in the context of this story laid against the verse from Leviticus clearly distinguishes between love and sex, the relationship between David and Jonathan was a covenant of choice between themselves, without evidence that this was shared or celebrated with others. Verse 1 Samuel 18:1 tells us the ‘soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David’ clearly indicating a love beyond the bounds of our natural senses, a love that is separated from the need for reproduction. Verses from the non-canonical text from the Gospel of Thomas can help understanding the knitting together of souls, saying 22 paraphrased ‘when you make the soul and body one – when you see a soul and have a heart of flesh, when you realise your deeds to the other are done to yourself, that his hand is your hand, his eye is your eye, his foot your own – then you shall enter the kingdom’. To be one soul and one flesh is to see the humanity in us as in another. Jesus said, “Love your friends like your own soul, protect them like the pupil of your eye.”

Frequently in the patriarchal society women are valued less that men, and Davids affirms this culture when he says of Jonathan in 2 Samuel 1:26 that his love as a brother ‘surpassed that of women´. The two men touch, embrace and kiss each other, yet there is nothing necessarily sexual about this and need not be viewed as such. There is nothing to suggest they broke Levitical law by having sexual relations. Some discussion on the Levitical law has suggested the verse may have been to deter neighbours in a patriarchal society from becoming embroiled in sexual relations, yet if marriage or sexual relationships were permitted between same sex couples it would be covered by the forbidding of adultery. So why would sexual relations between two men be an abomination? Proverbs 6:16-19 tells us ‘There are six things the Lord hates, seven that are detestable to him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked schemes, feet that are quick to rush into evil, a false witness who pours out lies and a person who stirs up conflict in the community.’

If you search through the references to the same Hebrew word interpreted in these Levitical verses as abomination, loathsome or detestable, the others refer to the subjects including, food laws, sexual immorality, idolatry, wicked schemes, and false witnesses. (Genesis 43:32, Deuteronomy 7:26, 14:3, 24:4, Proverbs 21:27, 28:9, Isaiah 1:13, 41:24, Jeremiah 6:15, 8:12, Ezekiel 16:50, 18:12, 22:11, 33:26).

Throughout the Hebrew scriptures the language is gendered which gives us insist into the nature of each aspect of the word. For example we see that although the earth is feminine, the dust that forms the flesh of man is masculine in Genesis 2:7, 17:23 yet the bone that came out of man and formed the woman, feminine, like the breath that came out of God to give life to man, the pure spiritual milk (1 Peter 2:2), or the divine feminine Wisdom which the apocryphal text reveals came out of God like Eve came out of Adam.

The richness of this meaning and the character and warmth it gives the text is lost in translation, when pronouns become ‘it’, the richness of the scriptural meaning is lost. It is useful to note that the masculine in the patriarchal society was the head of the household, so the masculine flesh is to ‘rule’ over the earth – to exercise self-control (Galatians 5:23). This is born out in another saying of Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas, ‘Jesus said, ‘Look, I will guide her to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every female who makes herself male will enter the kingdom of Heaven.’ This is about cutting the lines of blame; it is about taking responsibility which would have been subject to the head of the household – Jesus is establishing equality of responsibility between male and female for their own hearts and their own choices – a direct reference Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3:12-13).

None of this was not lost on medieval writers who attributed the Divine feminine characteristics to the apostles without any suggestion of this erasing their actual sex. Jesus, and God both male yet also the scripture says a mother and father to us.

The gender roles are also present in the divine command to honour both our mothers and fathers. Male and female join together to be one flesh as heaven and earth are joined together as bride and groom. This reality and symbolism of male and female relations permits the flourishing of humanity, and indeed other life through sexual reproduction, therefore interpreting the Levitical law as seeking to maintain heteronormativity is easily justified. Male and female were designed for the procreative act in a way that same sex couples are not.

And if we look at the development of human relationships with each other and God, we also see the importance of the face. The face is designed for intimate connection, the eyes hold within them whatever they see. We can then reconcile the relationship between God and Moses in Exodus 33 where verse 11 appears to contradict verse 20. Exodus 33:10 ‘The Lord would speak to Moses face to face, as one speaks to a friend.’ Exodus 33:20 God says to Moses ‘But,” he said, “you cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live.”’ The face has different parts with different meanings, Moses would have spoken directly ‘breath to breath’ rather than ‘eye to eye’ for God is Spirit, with a purifying fire burning in His eyes, and this fire would have a mirror image held within Moses eyes and therefore taken into himself as a pathway into his heart and soul the fulness, name and definition of God, which surpasses all understanding and nobody knows (Revelation 19:12) – the image of God in man was corrupted by Adam in the fall, so the time was not yet ready for this to be.

For God to dwell among us, He had to be made a little lower than the angels for a short while for us to behold His face and live. By adoption into the family of Christ who as part of the Trinity is all in all, we are to become a reflection within our soul, a mirror of Christ that is His goodness in the world – as was custom in Hebrew for the son’s name to be a reflection of the father’s soul and a daughter to be a reflection of her mother’s, a fact seen when comparing the life and etymology of the parent’s name with that of the meaning of a child’s names.

Ephesians 3:14-15, ‘For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name.’

The word ‘orgasm’ means imprinting, and the eyes imprint, or take in, an indelible mark upon the soul of the other – it is a part of the intimacy of sexual relations that are designed for bonding. Love imprints and is woven into our souls. Moses permitted a man to have a certificate of divorce if he was not satisfied with his wife, and Jesus relates this as because men’s hearts were hard.

Men’s bodies were not designed to penetrate each other, nor does it permit imprinting of subject rather imprinting object as eyes would not connect. Subject is formed in beholding the face and connecting of eyes to another. The intimacy and belonging to salvation of the eyes is seen in the story of the bronze snake (Numbers 21:9) and echoed in the moment declared by Jesus that the scriptures were fulfilled in their hearing, Luke 4:20-22 its says ‘all of the eyes were focused on Him’. Turning our face to God is giving Him our eyes, that is giving Him our attention and with them we have given our minds and our hearts. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them (1 John 4:16).

Yet it should be noted that in respect of imprinting object rather than subject, is in terms of heterosexual sin, is just as likely and probably more widespread, therefore by the desire of the flesh this would be common to humankind. Love however is not lust, love covers a multitude of sins, and those who live by the Spirit are not under the law. It would therefore be interpreted that despite the law being true in respect of what is the majority case and necessary for the flourishing of humanity from generation to generation, minorities that are produced by nature or nurture cannot be subject to the law of sin and death – for it is not something chosen. Who can judge the heart of man that he might declare he knows the judgement of God upon another? No, we must never judge each other outwardly, yet guide always people into truth so as to make informed choices where this is possible, but it is the free choice of humans to live as they choose, are born or made. The correct teaching is for the matter of the conscience, the conscience that each of us have and being taught what it means to love is the greatest gift of freedom we can offer each other. This means people are not to stir up trouble with those who wish to live peaceably; gossip divides, false witness divides, the proud divide – call out these things, let us not cast out anyone who comes before the Lord in quietness to give thanks, worship and pray. (Ephesians 4:29, Titus 3:10-11, 1 Peter 2:1).

Presuppositions based on the sexual preferences of individuals that categorises the other according to stereotypes is a form of discrimination that must be put an end to. People can advise, yet as long as the equality of our humanity is in our needs, our common needs make us equal not normal. If we judge our brothers or sisters, we in essence are fulfilling the scripture when Jesus says ‘why do you notice the splinter in the others eye, but miss the log in our own?’ (Luke 6:41).

Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it, Proverbs 4:23. Equal in our humanity, equal in our needs, it is a necessary part of being human that we form relationships, to fulfil our need for love and belonging, without which we do not flourish – and it is God’s desire for us to belong to each other as we belong also to Him. If we deny the humanity of another in their basic needs which we all share then we have not loved our neighbour as ourselves. How the needs are fulfilled, that is the mode of action to achieve each need as a goal will not necessarily be equal that is in the same way. Each culture will have its own traditions and cultural ways to meeting needs – for food this will involve what is local, for reproduction same sex couples cannot be biological parents unless through individual journey’s they have conceived naturally at some point. So equality of need does not equate to equality or sameness in how the needs are met.

God set humans apart from the animals, which again, Levitical law reinforces by saying sexual relations by men with animals cause defilement and if a woman approaches as animal in such a manner, this is perverted – it is unnatural (Leviticus 20:15-16). To be Holy or set apart for God is to permit the coming close of the kingdom of heaven, and as such humans are intended to live differently which is what it means to be set apart – to live according to the unique gifts given to us as humans, our conscious awareness is precious and gives us talents to be used, not to be held in the chains of thoughtlessness, but to become stewards of our bodies, and the earth upon which we live. Some visions or poetic use of animals in Hebrew scripture relates not to the things in themselves but their characteristics and our mimicry of them, for example the gnashing of teeth is distinctly animal like, and the Psalmist asks God to ‘break the teeth’ (Psalm 3:7, 58:6) symbolic of ruling over and defeating a wicked animal like behaviour from those given the power to choose God and His goodness.

The ritual purity laws given in Leviticus are for what is temporary and changing within our experience, the external shifts and chances that are marked by the times, seasons and hours of our days. The food laws would be an example, in Acts 10:15, Peter is told all foods are permitted, as by the redemption of all flesh by Jesus Christ on the cross. The Levitical laws relating to moral purity are the order of our internal landscape, they deal with the vices and virtues of the heart – that centre of our being where our wholeness of body, soul, mind and spirit rests within the founding principles of being life, love, wisdom and truth. God desires what we do to be a reflection of who we are – not by status, but the purity (which is itself wisdom) and harmony of our own centres working together in a flow. It is our internal landscape that it carried at all times and taken with us wherever we are. God cares less about the outward sign of an act, than He does about what lies beneath in the motives of the heart that works in them and through them. This is seen in the scriptures relating to Phinehas (Numbers: 25:7-13), the cities of refuge (Exodus 21:12–14; Numbers 35:9–34; Deuteronomy 4:41–43, 19:1–13; Joshua 20; 1 Chronicles 6), the mercy of God given to Rahab (Joshua 6:25) and so on.

 

2 Samuel 13:1-21 tells us the story of Amnon and Tamar. Amnon, so of David thought his sister Tamar was beautiful ‘and he loved her’ the Hebrew word for this is found on a second occasion Genesis 24:67 used in the context that Isaac had sexual intercourse with Rebekah, and she became his wife and was comforted – suggesting the word ‘loved’ refers to an appetite to be satisfied, which as the story of Amnon and Tamar unfolds, we realise is the case. Amnon in fulfilling his sexual desire breaks the law given to Moses, see Leviticus 20:19, the consequence given as dishonour to a close relative, and both being held responsible. In this case, as Amnon raped his sister, she was not responsible, yet the outcome was an abomination of desolation. We derive this from another Hebrew word used in a similar context as the one given in Leviticus 18:22. Deuteronomy 20:18, Ezekiel 7:20, Ezekiel 33:29 all use תּוֹעֲבֹתָ֖ם translated as abominations, detestable things, similar to תּוֹעֵבָ֖ה in Leviticus 18:22 and 15 other occurrences (see Genesis 43:32, Leviticus 20:13, Deuteronomy 7:26, 14:3, 24:4, Proverbs 21:27, 28:9, Isaiah 1:13, 41:24, Jeremiah 6:15, 8:12, Ezekiel 16:50, 18:12, 22:11, and 33:26). Yet, Ezekiel 33:29 is the key that ties the story and the consequences ‘Then they will know that I am the Lord, when I have made the land a desolate waste because of all the detestable things they have done’. The land is feminine, the desolation leaves a barren waste, a desert so that the land is no longer fruitful, or fertile – a quality of women, that humanity has recognised since we have been able to conceive of ourselves as demonstrated for example in some of the earliest human artefacts like the ‘venus’ figurines made thousands of years before humans even began farming. The sexual violence committed against Tamar was an abominable act that was a wicked scheme of the heart against the sacredness of the woman, where the fruitfulness of life springs from her womb – again Leviticus 20:18 suggests this sacredness in the rule for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman during her period, because ‘he has exposed the source of her flow’ – remembering that the people were not allowed to consume the lifeblood of an animal, how much more sacred is the lifeblood of the woman? And if the woman has revealed the source to him, they are to be cast out as representative of loss of life eternal in heaven through no longer belonging to the holiness of God’s chosen people through defilement and disobedience. Again, we have co-responsibility of act despite the patriarchal system of government and family. Let us remember that for the womb of our Lady, Mother of God – heaven and earth were knit together in her womb, the passage from one dimension to another – the womb is a sacred space.

Leone, M. On Muzzles and Faces: The Semiotic Limits of Visage and Personhood. Int J Semiot Law 35, 1275–1298 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11196-020-09812-8 presents the possibility that the ‘breath of God’ through the nose of Adam to make him a living being (Genesis 2:7) could represent the coming to know oneself, as opposed to the eyes being the getting to know the other, therefore symbolic in the ancient world of the dawn of consciousness.

Judges 19:15-30 tells us the story of ‘A Levite and His Concubine.’ This has echoes of Sodom and Gomorrah, and like the story in Genesis this one also has nothing to do with homosexuality as we understand it, though the consequences and outcomes are different. The concubine has a definite institution that legally is less than that of a wife, yet her legal status is not the issue, clearly her value is considered less than the male, which again is in the Levitical law, a person dedicated to the Lord has value in silver, men are 50 shekels or pieces of silver and women 30. The concubine was gang raped and abused all night, she was released at dawn and returned to the house of the old man from the hill country of Ephraim. We do not know the specific time of her death, as she fell at the door and lay there unmoved until daylight but importantly her hands were on the threshold. Here, again we have the abomination of desolation, this time upon the threshold of the door of the house of Ephraim, and to make matters worse, the Levite cuts her up and posts her dead flesh to all the land of Israel which is a clear violation of the law – defiling every place in which she was received. To further the point the prophet Haggai 2:10-19 tells us about the ‘Blessings for a Defiled People’: ‘Then Haggai said, “If a person defiled by contact with a dead body touches one of these things, does it become defiled?”’ “Yes,” the priests replied, “it becomes defiled.” Then Haggai said, “‘So it is with this people and this nation in my sight,’ declares the Lord. ‘Whatever they do and whatever they offer there is defiled. Yet God restores their land, where ‘until now, the vine and the fig-tree, the pomegranate and the olive tree have not borne fruit’. ‘”From this day on I will bless you.”’ (Haggai 2:18-19). Clearly demonstrating the wideness of the mercy of God, a type pointing forward to the coming harvest which for Christians sends us to the open arms of Christ on the cross – and the sacrament of the Eucharist – the Holy meat by which we too are made Holy, hence the significance of the healing of the woman with the issue of blood who touched the hem of His garment. Amen.

5.2 Wisdom

Wisdom is radiant and unfading, more mobile than any motion, she is a breath of the power of God, and a pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty. (Wisdom of Solomon 6:12, 7:24-25). As Eve came out of Adam, Wisdom comes out of God. Divine Wisdom is repeatedly represented throughout scripture as a woman, a divine feminine in the canonical and Apocryphal works. She is represented metaphorically and personified in various texts, ‘there is a river that makes glad the city of God’ (Psalm 46:4), a river of light (Additions to Esther 10:6) that gives water to the trees so they may have life and give that life to others, for a woman is fertile giving birth and raising her young on milk.

‘This bone from my bones and flesh from my flesh shall be called ‘Woman’’ (Genesis 2:23). The Hebrew word אִשָּׁ֔ה (woman) is not fully recognised as meaning as ‘the same or continuous substance’ which is a way of seeing yourself, representative of two beings known through the other as one. This adds to the intimacy of seeing and being known through the human face as being defined by connection between the eyes of the other, an intersubjective gaze. There is a case too for developing this definition to include the soul of man, particularly as the soul and body are considered inseparable, what is done to the body is marked upon the soul.

This perspective sheds light upon some anomalous uses of the Hebrew word for woman in the following verses: Zechariah 5:7, 11:9, Ezekiel 1:9, 1:23, 3:13, and Ruth 1:8-9. In the vision of Ezekiel Chapter 1, the word ‘woman’ is changed to ‘one’ suggesting that the wings of the angels ‘touched one another’, which on the surface has the appearance of sense, yet more deeply is likely to mean their wings were of the same and continuous substance having a kind of unity, a belonging of one to the other which is seen clearly in their motion, and indeed fits with the three men (or angels) that appeared to Abraham under the tree, they spoke together as one, in unison or just as one, (Genesis 18:9-10).

Eve, as she came out of Adam while he was asleep, she is like his consciousness, from where we know not it comes, yet as a visible manifestation or personification of this and as she listens to the snake, she ‘reasons in error’, something that is not specifically female in itself. Whereas she would otherwise have been an image of divine wisdom, as man is the image of God, together homoousias yet Eve visible and wisdom hidden beneath the surface of things and must be searched for.

The Song of Songs represents this manifestation of the female as Wisdom in a binding and flowing movement between her and her prince being like the son. ‘Do not stare at me because I am dark, because I am darkened by the sun.’ From Song of Songs 1:6, which represents the hiddenness of light in light, concealed as one continuous substance. Where she speaks to the daughters of Jerusalem, she is speaking to the daughters of Eve, as instructing them by reason that is ‘intelligent, pure and subtle’ (Wisdom of Solomon 7:23). Where wisdom finds the one her ‘heart loves’, she takes him to her mother’s house – God the Father is also a Mother, Wisdom as ‘a breath of the power of God’ (Wisdom of Solomon 7:25) came out of God, as a child comes out of their mother’s womb.

Christ as the new Adam, is also a mother as he was, and we are adopted as children united in His humanity as we are with each other’s.

Russian theology, known as “Sophianism”, has presented Divine Wisdom as co-existent with the Trinity, or as indistinguishable from Theotokos (Mother of God, God-bearer). I reject the idea of a fourth person of the Trinity, as time fragments our experience of the oneness of God into Father, Son and Holy Spirit, which to us though having the appearance of distinction are one and the same substance. I would argue instead that divine Wisdom is a representation of that same, continuous substance of God, therefore in God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, as they are light, she is light, as a divine bride a mirror of the one substance, as were Adam and Eve. This then reveals that Mary is the image of divine wisdom, the new Eve, like a ‘woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head’ (Revelation 12:1).

Proverbs 3:19-20 ‘By wisdom the Lord laid the earth’s foundations, by understanding he set the heavens in place; by his knowledge the watery depths were divided, and the clouds let drop the dew.’ This clearly places wisdom in the beginning as the Word was also in the beginning, and in the book of the Wisdom of Solomon we clearly see the blurred lines between God and wisdom ‘I called on God and the spirit of wisdom came to me.’ ‘Because of her pureness she pervades and penetrates all things.’ ‘Although she is but one, she can do all things, and while remaining in herself, she renews all things; in every generation she passes into holy souls and makes them friends of God and prophets.’ (Wisdom of Solomon 7:7, 24, 27).

Proverbs 9:10 The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding. As wisdom is female, this gives a passive quality to divine fear, for fear is absence, therefore, to be empty of our own words is to listen to God, to receive from Him by turning towards and listening without words – in silence, in wordless awe and wonder. St Gregory the Great said, ‘we make idols of our concepts, but wisdom is born of wonder.’

Ecclesiasticus 4:23-24 Do not refrain from speaking at the proper moment, and do not hide your wisdom. For wisdom becomes known through speech, and education through the words of the tongue. In the world we are known and visible to others, yet we make wisdom visible only through our movement; breath (speech) or spirit (act) that manifests actual being as opposed to our potential being. We make manifest the internal movement of thought and emotion therefore as Aquinas says, practical reason is directed to action.

It is through our baptism that we are made clean, through our baptism that the stain of sin is removed from our souls so that we may become temples of the Holy Spirit, a home for love to dwell.

Proverbs 18:4 ‘The words of the mouth are deep waters, but the fountain of wisdom is a rushing stream.’ The mouth holds words hidden mysteriously within until they are spoken and revealed. Knowledge has its source in the depths within, St Aquinas wrote in a prayer for study asking God to ‘graciously let a ray of Your brilliance penetrate into the darkness of my understanding’. Our consciousness and ability to reason are qualities of being human able to shape us and those around us, as well as our way of or mode of being. This is true also of the Spirit of God from where we know not where He comes or goes, like the wind, or like the water of life that comes from the heights of the mountains into the rivers and the deeps. Transcendental knowledge, creativity, and wisdom from above like the rain that waters the earth, brings life, and sows seeds in the flesh like the dust of the earth that springs forth a life that blooms. Words that rush from the mouth, are like arrows of time flowing one way, a sound travelling from a source – out of a mysterious spring they are birthed, producing either life or death until our times end, and we are hidden again but in a sea. The source from the beginning we cannot fathom and to the end once again we are taken out of sight. What sets our Father in heaven apart from the worship of pagans is invitation – for the power of the air does not ask, nor does it seek participation in a relationship but always seeking its own end. Yet, God, our Father invites us to pray, to speak face to face, breath to breath, extending His hand, and inviting us always into relationship.

Ephesians 3:10-11, His intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms, according to his eternal purpose that he accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord. As wisdom flows out of God, it flows now out of the church as does love from the heart of a mother.

5.3 The Book Of Esther

Esther is the personification of Wisdom, Additions to Esther 10:6 “A little fountain became a river, and there was light, and the sun, and much water: this river is Esther, whom the king married, and made queen:” This links Esther to the imagery in Revelation 12:1, and as a new edict is written through her, so she is also pointing forward to Mother Mary.

Queen Vashti is the personification of disobedience, or Eve, and is banished from God’s Kingdom (Genesis 3:23). King Xerxes asks us the question; if this is an earthly King, how much greater is God? King Xerxes and Queen Esther are types like the woman and prince in the Song of Songs symbolic of wisdom as a bride of the King of heaven.

Haman is the personification of evil, like Satan. Mordecai’s life in chapter 3:1-6 very much echoes the interactions between Jesus and the Pharisees; therefore, he is a type representing Jesus. Mordecai is outside the city walls that represent God’s heavenly kingdom until he is raised up. We see overall that those who were first in the kingdom become the last and the last become the first.

In the twelfth year of King Xerxes, in the first month, the month of Nisan, the pur (that is, the lot) was cast in the presence of Haman to select a day and month. This is why Jesus says, ‘you do not know the hour or the day’ (Matthew 25:13). And this is why uncertainty is built into our existence as a tool of our freedom, but also why moral judgement does not hinge on the outcome of an action, but what is within our hearts – for we do not know, and must trust in the goodness of God, which only comes when we trust as one – that is God, self and other.

Mordecai wrote in the name of King Xerxes, sealed the dispatches with the king’s signet ring, and sent them by mounted couriers, who rode fast horses especially bred for the king. This represents Jesus as the author of the new covenant under God’s authority.

No document written in the king’s name and sealed with his ring can be revoked. This is a theological point relating to the reason for a new covenant. If God’s word is absolute truth, then it is always true – which means He cannot ever go back on His word for example, ‘but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.’ (Genesis 2:17).

The king’s edict granted the Jewish people in every city the right to assemble and protect themselves. This is key – it is not literal; it does not mean eye for an eye, which philosophically is a representation of Kant’s categorical imperative – people were and are meant to act rationally and value their eyes enough that they and we would not tear out one another’s – something like mutually assured destruction rather than a right to wage war at any perception of injustice.

The battle we wage comes from within us, Salvador Dali represented fear in some of his paintings as images in the mind, sometimes like the plagues of our dreams though represented in a variety of ways – be that in fight or flight. Carl Jung also thought man is the enemy of himself, that we are fighting ourselves!

But the right to assemble is symbolic of the unity in the body of Christ, and to ‘protect themselves’ is a taking on of personal responsibility – of alertness of mind, conscious action, of stillness – these are all ways we are thoughtful and become masters of our own fate – through the inward choice of our whole being, which directs our outward actions.

5.4 Family

In walking the life path together, the attention of each is on the other, therefore the self is lost somewhere between. The ‘I’ belongs in the mind and heart of the thou – concealed within the other, a place of refuge and openness. We ‘like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house’ (1 Peter 2:5) to become the love of Christ in the world. Our shared humanity meeting again at our basic psychological needs, which using Maslow’s hierarchy, includes family, friendship, intimacy, and a sense of connection.

If we realise that everything we do is visible to God as it is not fully visible to ourselves or each other (1 Samuel 16:7), and that everything about us and who we become, our nature, nurture, and choices are written upon our soul – that life is a process of ‘soul formation’ so that arriving at the gate of heaven all is clearly seen and known. This means that all our thoughts, speaking and other bodily actions we perceive as done to others are actually done to ourselves, (James 3:5).

‘When we make the soul and body one, when we see a soul and have a heart of flesh, when we realise our deeds to the other are done to ourselves, that their hand is our hand, their eye is our eye, their foot our own – then we shall enter the kingdom.’ (Gospel of Thomas 22 paraphrased).

Family is at the heart of soul formation. A place where in safety, we uncover the roots of our nature, and experience nurture alongside the developing sense of personhood with a free will. Our freedom, by reason, steers the direction of our personhood through life, which is the journey of our soul until death. The body therefore is a sacred space, the family a sacred space – the community a collection of souls on their journey home – each an integral part of nature – with a body rooted in the dust of the earth, but an immortal soul that at its end soars like an eagle beyond its former bounds.

If soul formation is life’s journey, then what about the modern ethics of procreation? As Divine Command tells us to ‘honour your father and your mother’, (Exodus 20:12) therefore any deliberate choice to create a life that will have no or very little knowledge of their biological relations or heritage, resulting in a high probability that the child will struggle with identity formation and sense of self – is not of God. This is of a deliberate choosing, which is to be separated from the changes and chances of life that go beyond our control; the circumstances that we could not foresee.

The biblical definition of family is broad, and on the cross Jesus consecrates adoption. We ourselves are adopted into a new family by faith and belong by obedience to the will of God. Adoptees taken into care because of family trauma, make when they’re old enough their own decisions – knowing that adults removed them from an environment that wasn’t safe, some resolve to discover more about that birth family and others not. Lastly, let us be clear surrogacy is not a gift of God, for two reasons. First, surrogacy is like theft, a taking of what was not given to individuals by the natural order – and the Lord said, ‘thou shall not steal’ Exodus 20:15. This is not done for the child’s benefit, but for the adults who decide to procure a child to satisfy their own desires. The second, women and children are turned into commodities – objects to be traded and used – therefore it is akin to prostitution.  

Women have the potential and the actual ability to give birth to new life. A woman who takes medicine to be more masculine has to stop taking that medication in the hope that the female mechanism begins to work again in order to be pregnant and give birth. Men do not give birth.

Matrimony leads to an inheritance embodied through a woman which results in life proceeding from life, and from generation to generation. The fruit of the womb becomes a sacrifice of the flesh, of the woman’s body and soul.

So much of the narrative around women today chops them up into little pieces, yet neither men nor women are fragments stuck together with glue. If language can reduce our bodies to atoms, does that mean we can identify ourselves to be as the stars? Clearly language enables us to express what a thing is so that we can relate to it and to each other.

What is real is a representation of what is. What is true is a representation of what is or is not. What exists has presence and form, independent of mind, yet is apprehended by conscious awareness as the sum of the whole that is visible to us and grasped in its particular nature by the attention given to it by the intellect. Yet reality is a complex system of many parts, inanimate and animate existing and working together. Systems existing at different scales from the macroscopic to the microscopic, from the entire universe down to an individual organism, a repeating unity or cooperation at different scales.

Human beings are not clownfish, neither can they be reduced to existing as a ‘brain in a vat’. Saint Paul writes ‘not all flesh is the same: People have one kind of flesh, animals have another, birds another and fish another’ (1 Corinthians 15:39). A person is sacred, a person is a soul. If we hold concepts or feelings in the mind apart from our physical nature solely as the total of our reality, then imagination has become our ruler and our hearts have become like stones.

When concepts or feelings actively reduce the physiological capability of individuals to meet their basic needs, needs that humans share with animals, such as the need to move, grow, reproduce, then the ideology is serving evil as it chooses a reduction in the wholeness of being, a loss of life. When concepts or feelings become our identity the ‘I’ then fights because the threat response to the question of ‘who am I in relation to you’ has been separated from our humanity, from the wholeness of being – our existence as embodied souls. Truth solely as an expression of things, is like taking a moment of seeing and making it into all possible moments of being.

Individuals born with a disability that reduces the autonomy of meeting their own physiological needs have no impediment to their intrinsic value as a human being, nor can any moral judgement be attributed to their physical status over which they had no choice. A person is greater than the sum of their parts – if they are not then someone missing a body part is not a whole person, they are deficient in personhood which is nonsense.

Nature as a complex adaptive system that is a mirror of love for the end of love and the good of life exists for the common good, which does not mean natural processes that produce infertile offspring are subject to judgement. The words of Jesus in Matthew 19:12 teach us that there are three influences on human development; nature, nurture, and free will, He says “For there are eunuchs who were born that way, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others—and there are those who choose to live like eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. The one who can accept this should accept it.”

Individuals that choose chastity and those in same-sex relationships form part of the social structure of a population unable naturally or by choice to procreate, which Aquinas regarded as a foundation of good from generation to generation. Yet so do men and women who through no fault of their own have difficulty conceiving children, and this includes a multitude of reasons. Those with an absence of control over the actualisation of their full potential, cannot be said to be excluded from a primary good by circumstances beyond their control, the bible reminding us in the case of the man born blind that his condition was not a result of sin. Evil is a privation of the good when it comes to what we are able to choose because morality comes by our freedom to turn, that is to choose right from wrong, yet this is often subject to misinterpretation by individuals with regards to accountability, we see this in the Garden of Eden when Adam blames Eve and Eve blames the serpent. Jesus reminds us that we too often see the speck in our brother’s eye yet miss the beam in our own! (Matthew 7:3).

The ideal of that which is or is not, is known by God as the fullest expression of His will within us, that is our fullest possible actualisation or expression of our potential being that leads to the greatest natural good of that which we are. ‘The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.’ (John 1:14). ‘All things working together for good.’ (Romans 8:28).

The story of Lot and his daughters, Genesis 19:30-38 is a sign of their disobedience, going against God’s will and committing sin for their own gain. [This is backed up by the burial of Moses in the valley of Moab after his disobedience displeased the Lord]. The Moabites in their biblical story, is a family line that ends, for God shows us that disobedience has a consequence, a family line that became enemies of the chosen people of God, and the fruit of disobedience that disappears, separated from the eternal end to which we strive.

Each of us has a distinct path to our self-actualisation in the spirit.

Saint Paul writes that a woman will be saved by her childbearing, so is this excluding salvation for the barren? I say not, for Saint Paul writes (Romans 3:31) ‘do we nullify the law by faith? No, rather we uphold it’. For the law was created to make visible what was invisible, and the purpose of that law was the love of God for humanity and for humanity to choose that love by faith. Therefore, love is the overarching principle of all things visible and invisible, and relationship is that place of love.

But the principle of difference does not uphold the reasoning that says, if this is your nature and you are this ‘kind’ of person, then you should desire or want this or that. This is stereotyping. It imposes a rigid schema upon another. It can be said that certain traits lead to certain characteristics, but what is, what exists, is not the same as filling in the gaps from our own ideas and experiences about what a, or any person desires.

If we are baptised then we are born again in the Spirit, to live by the Spirit that is a movement from within into the world outside. The law binds us outwardly to what is visible in the flesh, yet to live according to the Spirit is no longer to live in judgement of what is seen, but to live understanding that it is the invisible, the imperishable Spirit who guides our actions so that we no longer judge by what is seen.

Whoever judges their fellow believer according to the flesh, according to their own observations outside of relationship, is themselves living according to the flesh and not the Spirit dwelling in the heart. Jesus taught that ‘many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ Matthew 7:22. Then Jesus ‘will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’’ Matthew 7:23.

If reproduction which is bound by the flesh was a foundation of good, then neither the barren through no fault of their own, nor the saints who choose chastity have participated in that goodness. If you imagine natural reproductive success as a bell curve distribution it would be wrong to assign moral value to the ‘normal’ yet also absurd for nature to select for the minority to become a majority, for then it would face extinction pressures. Continuation of a species is ‘life’ in that it continues to exist from generation to generation, therefore ‘self-preservation’ as an act would not go against a law of nature. Reproduction therefore is a natural good and a necessity.

5.5 Marriage

Marriage remains for the good of children and is the place of meeting the divine command of honouring your mother and your father (Exodus 20:12). Jesus was very clear in scripture on marriage. Marriage is a covenant agreement written in natural law which is a participation in the eternal law. This is why divorce is not permitted except for immorality, for otherwise it would merely participate in human law as a social contract between people outside of a covenant relationship with God. As the natural law participates with the eternal law, marriage participates with the divine command to be ‘fruitful and increase in number,’ (Genesis 1:28) which is to have an inheritance in familial bonds spreading out from generation to generation.

Therefore, as only male and female can produce offspring, it forms part of Natural Law and the Eternal law as male and female throughout scripture are consistently related with a natural interdependence. Specifically, matrimony by definition, (and literally true) leads to an embodied inheritance through a woman, the fruit of the womb being of great labour and a sacrifice of the flesh. Women put on the flesh, or matter, to the child in the womb, bringing them into existence through the love of her own body and soul as well as that of the child. A woman therefore through childbearing is able to fulfil the greatest commandment to love thy neighbour as thyself.

The language of humans is symbolic of truth, a word represents an agreement between people and a relation between the word, its sound and the object or subject of it. Whereas the Word of God cannot be separated from Him, the Word of God is truth itself, not merely a representation or symbol of Him. God is pure and simple. There is no claim to equal rights to marriage therefore if it is not between a male and female. This does not break a human right to relationship, as a non-procreative relationship can exist legally in terms of passing on wealth by inheritance that are the fruits of the earth – material – and of the Spirit by relations.

Same-sex relationships though not procreative are able to provide loving families in a variety of circumstances in relation to kinship care and adoptees, where birth parent relationships have broken down, require support or children have been removed from birth family care.

Social bonding between individuals of the same-sex and sexual play involving intercourse has precedent in nature, it is beneficial in extending the repertoire of an organism’s behavioural responses to changing circumstances. The adaptive nature of species through a variety of stimuli and behaviour responses tends towards survival of the species, not because individuals love each other.

Social play is pleasurable and rewarding, it also improves the cognitive function of individuals which has adaptive benefits to the changes and chances of life. It has been observed in birds, that males whether as individuals or as pairs taking over the care and protection of the young set the female of the species free to focus all resources [energy allocation] to the development of eggs and therefore producing more and higher quality progeny.

However, sexual reproduction is not a social construction; this is a fundamental principle which recognises the necessity of living with and belonging to nature, that we too are living biological organisms interdependent with and pivotal to maintaining the fragility of earth’s biodiverse systems. Therefore, it goes against reason and natural law to make a non-reproducing human minority the majority. Survival of life from one generation to next therefore requires that heteronormativity remains an essential element of a thriving population.

When the idea of substance was first put forward, they had no idea about change over time, except that out of one came another like that of a child emerging from a mother. But to understand our relatedness to all life could be determined by genetic material, that out of the animal came mammal and out of mammal came human. Each new substance emerged from a common ancestor. And that though the human may be individual occupying his own particular space and time, he or she cannot sustain the future of a humanity alone. God said, ‘it is not good for man to be alone’. (Genesis 2:18). A female is a necessary, not contingent, being in order that man and woman become ‘one flesh’ (Mark 10:8) so that human destiny is maintained beyond the present life span. Men and women are the result of four billion years of change, designed for procreation, for the creation of families in which children become the future we are.

Yet in the current times of a society living with discord and the breaking down of family, it is necessary to recognise that men and women are equally involved in the process of soul formation. In times gone by, gender archetypes were recognised, though nurture was not bound to the natural constraints of biology, Saint Anselm for one, recognised that Jesus and the apostles were both mothers and fathers to us.

 

In St. Anselm’s Prayer to St. Paul, he writes:

O St Paul, where is he that was called

The nurse of the faithful, caressing his sons?

Who is that affectionate mother who declares everywhere

That she is in labour for her sons?

Sweet nurse, sweet mother,

Who are the sons you are in labour with, and nurse,

But those whom by teaching the faith of Christ you bear and instruct?

 

Difference was created; birds in the air, fish in the sea, and God saw difference or discontinuity of species and called it good. Unity and diversity are not mutually exclusive, looking at nature; can the tree keep growing each year without the fungus? Unity works through diversity. Asexual reproduction which produces natural clones leaves life vulnerable to the changes and chances of life that was resolved through the evolution of sexual reproduction. Individuals therefore belong not to themselves but to another.

The journey of the person begins at the fusion of male and female gametes because the unique DNA fingerprint, which is the nature of a person, is determined at the moment of fertilisation. The development of the person, the nurture, is subject to factors within and outside of our control. Nurture is the process of becoming the fullest expression of the individual and it begins in the womb. Nurture is physical and psychological, biotic and abiotic, and at its most basic level is identified with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

5.6 Identity and Dignity

We cannot say that we are embodied spiritual beings served by our instincts. If instincts for basic needs are of the body, then this idea supports a dualism – that is a spiritual being imprisoned within a body, which is false. The soul, as Aristotle suggests ‘the animating principle of the body’, is the life that grows with it from a ‘seed’ that records our nature, our nurture, and our choices. The human spirit then is our breath, the breath or movement of our being that carries our words which shape the world around us, it is the ‘wind’ of our movement, a movement that is our ‘act’. Therefore body, soul and spirit cannot be divided except by God who judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.

We must ask ourselves that when the genotype and phenotype of progeny match, yet through some impairment in a person’s body structure that is an abnormality in development which affects an individual’s flourishing including their ability to autonomously fulfil the seven life processes, or affects their mental health and social relationships, whether this is always categorised as a disability.

Disability shape’s a person’s identity for the reason that it impedes the movement of the human spirit in a way that differentiates majority and minority experiences. Yet differences in experience in no way reduce or change our value, though they may distort the perception of our value precisely because we are social creatures that often default to using imitation and experience to measure our status in relation to others. Love and belonging is a fundamental human need, and status in relation to our perception of self, or self-concept, is an instinct that is seeking safety, requiring a comparison between self and other to determine the individuals position in the groups to which they belong.

Jesus in the sermon on the mount begins by saying, ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.’ Matthew 5:3, revealing to us, that the lame, the blind, the poor, and the oppressed are close to the heart of God – and will be set free from limitations and social isolation by Jesus, as foretold by the prophet Isaiah, (Luke 4:17-21). Jesus declared, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” Matthew 4:17. The miracles of Jesus are the foretaste of heaven, and each one of us now as temples of the Holy Spirit carries that heaven within the heart – bringing our gifts to the world.

Society however still attributes an unconscious hierarchy to individuals through status. High status women for example in today’s society would have a high degree of fitness, be young-looking, slim, smooth skinned, and extrovert. This evaluation echoes from the celebrity all the way down to our peers who closely match this perceived level of status of attractiveness and social acceptance.

High status confers high value and feelings of self-worth. Internalised negativity towards a self-concept that rates itself low status would manifest potentially as hypervigilance and increased probability bias towards rejecting what is because of what ought to be, fostering the idea that needs would be unmet as they are. Thus, for women who do not recognise themselves as belonging to this high-status group and believe themselves likely to fail, adopting a different identity would differentiate them, potentially attracting a greater status that is more in keeping with perceived value. This would be observable not just in societal norms but also between siblings that are close in age or identical.

What may develop during individuation and the process of the developing self-identity is prejudicial attitudes towards the ingroup characteristics that are perceived as too narrow to embrace them, therefore a widening of acceptable characteristics of the female group to include, for example, socially acceptable hairiness so as not to devalue this in relation to the identity of being a woman would support wellbeing.

Female preferences for expression of identity do not change the group to which they belong, it is therefore important that a woman can have the opposite of high-status characteristics yet remain of high value. This requires a shift in collective consciousness and its archetypes.

Self-value is determined by the meaning derived from the quality of attachments to peers and romantic partners. So though medical intervention reduces reproductive ability, this counterintuitively is a mechanism for improved sense of belonging and self-esteem in relation to maladaptive beliefs. It could be seen as a way to increase the selection pool of potential mates, which despite the method being irrational is in itself is a survival instinct.

A society that is able to remove a value hierarchy between masculine females and feminine females, and feminine males and masculine males would contribute to reducing the effect of collective archetypes and / or stereotypes.

If objective beauty is found in our unconscious recognition of the continuity of all things, the belonging to the universal language of love in spirals, fractals, movement and change – to our experience of time in the seasons within every beat of our hearts. Subjective beauty is then the unconscious recognition of the familiar developed [from birth] within us – the preferences drawn from the uniqueness of our individual nature and experiences.

The current social construct of holding gender identity above sex has inverted the process of individuation, in fact it is erasing sex and a part of the sacredness of the human person. Does male imply female? No, male is not female, and this is not interchangeable. To suggest that the removal of body parts changes what a person is, is treating the human as if they were machines, robots that can be adapted to suit the whims of a brain in a vat. It is a dissociation of humanity from a nature that took billions of years to arrive at the moment we are now – it is a separation from God to say I am that which I am not (Exodus 20:16), it is a rejection of nature, going against natural law and is a reduction in the wholeness of being when a person removes functioning reproductive organs in order that they might wear a dress or have socially acceptable hairy legs.

Let society accept a person as the expression of who they are without categorisation being specifically attributed to sex so reproductive futures are saved. Of paramount importance is the establishment of safe spaces for women and children. A society built to protect the vulnerable secures their future – children are literally the future we hold in our hearts.

“But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,” Matthew 5:44. Prayer in itself is a turning of our attention to God and the other, therefore an act of love in its simplest form. The mercy of God is wide, and ‘all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,’ (Romans 3:23). May we love the person beneath the surface of appearances, love their soul and perhaps miracles do happen – even if this takes a very long time, love is always the answer.

The life of the soul transcends the limits of the body, its light carried outwards and across to meet the other in the space between, like the formation of a bridge, a connection that crosses the gap between us making love its meaning. It is in love that we belong, held fast in a harmonious movement, the beauty of love is a recognition of truth in the imprint of the universe carried within the being that we are. Love speaks gently, like a whisper across an eternal stillness, its softness an expression of our deepest being like an embodied touch of rising joy.

Love is the voice that speaks of beauty, it wants us to see who we are, sacred and precious – as precious as the gift of the moments we surrender ourselves to. For beauty is truth and the language of love, an echo, an imprint of all creation that resounds within us, a memory of all that was rekindled when a sunbeam reaches us from dawn’s first light, and all that is in the recognition of the patterns before our eyes; in nature, the stars, the trees, the riverbeds, the flowers – all complexity and simplicity, the correspondence to and mirroring of our belonging to that nature held in our knowing and unknowing. All things were created to be beautiful, and we were never meant to think we could judge it.

A person can also be individual belonging to the species Homo Sapiens having their own unique character by genetic recombination and occupying a single point in space and time to have their own circumstance. Therefore, dignity as afforded by the judgement of each other is unreliable as a person presents themselves in a moment – no one can say that a ‘moment of seeing’ is justified as the totality of their being existing across a lifetime, because where in that is the space for reconciliation or restorative justice? The problem with assigning a measure of dignity according to the measure of reason then supposes that a person with disability means less dignity – Jesus said, ‘if you do for the least, you do for me,’ Matthew 25:40, therefore the dignity of Christ is in persons not related to their circumstance. No one can deny the value of consciousness, so the issue is of resolving the one and the many, the collective and the individual is resolved in Jesus Christ, fully God, fully man – two lines of transcendence are resolved into one ‘in Him’ by His Name, the Word made flesh.

The infinite can be resolved according to perspective – that as a man cannot see the end of another man, he cannot judge the limits to the dignity of the person, therefore this judgment lay solely to God, therefore it is helpful for a person to recognise the other as a soul, rather than as an object.

Amen.