This is a discussion of another of the standard non-situational responses to situations—the response of "personal righteousness." This is based in Daniel 6:21-22. In this context, Darius, the king, has issued an edict to the effect that no one can pray to a God or to a man for thirty days unless it is to Darius. Of course, this is the result of a collusion between Daniel’s rivals, those who have feared his ascension to a position of power over them and the subsequent effect that that could have on what they had apparently been doing which was stealing from the king and trying to cover their tracks. We have here a man who is honest and impeccable in his responsibilities and cannot be corrupted. The installation of that kind of a personality over these corrupted types would have been very much a disaster for them politically and economically. So a collusion was devised in order to try to destroy this good man.

Of course, Daniel’s response is recorded in Chapter 6:10-12, indicating that he simply ignored the edict in the sense of it having any authority over him. No doubt he was aware of the significance of it and the meaning that it had for him in his own personal life and the potential danger. But he acted as if it were certainly something subsequent. He is placed into the lions’ den in spite of the fact that Darius the king had struggled greatly according to the text trying to extricate his friend from this situation to no avail. Because the law of the Medes and the Persians indicated that once something had been written and published that it was irrevocable even by the king. Another great example of idolatry where human beings create symbols and then they themselves being the creators of these things bow down to them which is exactly what was happening in this instance in Daniel Chapter 6.

So he is placed into the lions’ den. Darius goes back to the palace, spends a very sleepless night and very early in the morning he does a curious thing. He runs to the lions’ den, which would certainly be hard to understand given the fact that everyone else most likely whom had been thrown into it had stayed there after being killed by the lions. He also asks something very curious. He asks the question from the lip of the lions’ den, "Daniel, servant of the living god has your God, whom you serve continually, been able to rescue you from the lions?" Then come two verses that are the focus of this discussion. "Daniel answered, ‘O king, live forever! My God sent his angel, and he shut the mouths of the lions. They have not hurt me because I was found innocent in his sight. Nor have I ever done any wrong before you, O king.’"

We’ll do a little bit of geometry in this discussion to try to lay out all the features of this response to try to get a better handle on what is taking place in this particular instance. Let’s draw a circle about the size of two silver dollars together on the left-hand side of the page. We will label this circle "the non-situational intelligence" or we can label it "the eternal" because they are one and the same. On the right-hand side of the page, let’s draw another circle of the same size and inside this circle we will write "world situation" and also the word "temporal." Let’s draw an axis that would connect the two circles together. Then we have a graphic depiction of some of the principal elements involved in Chapter 6:21-22. The axis that connects the two circles together creating a union between the non-situational intelligence and the world situation in which human beings find themselves is the "axis of personal righteousness." It is one of a class of actions that would be calculated to connect the two worlds together. So when we look at the aspects of personal righteousness of Daniel here, we grasp that there are many other kinds of actions very much associated with this class of actions that we would call connectors or things that are able to draw a firm relationship between the non-situational intelligence of God and the world situation in which we live.

In this particular case, the action indicated here is that of personal righteousness. We know that because of the statements made in vs. 22. Daniel in his response to Darius says that the angel of the Lord had shut the mouths of the lions and the reason was given because "I was found innocent in his sight." We would inscribe the words "innocent in his sight" under the left-hand circle, under the non-situational intelligence because that tells us that Daniel in his relationship to God, in his relationship to the unseen, in his relationship to the non-situational intelligence, was found innocent. In other words, his relationship was one of personal righteousness. He was committed to guarding a relationship of personal righteousness between himself and the Lord.

The text continues to state at the end of the verse, "nor have I done any wrong before you O king." This also shows us Daniel’s relationship to the world situation. The material content of Daniel’s situation would include Darius, the edict, the lions and their ferocity, the purpose for which the lions’ den had been constructed, the bureaucracy, and all the material aspects of his situation would be found in the circle marked "world situation." Daniel related to these things also based on personal righteousness. Although he had violated the edict of the king, from Daniel’s point of view he had responded in righteousness always toward the king and toward the empire and toward all world situations. He was not the cause of the problem. But rather he was innocent in this regard. So we would put the phraseology "nor have I done any wrong before you O king" under the right-hand circle.

This is an interesting arrangement for a lot of different reasons because it exposes to us a conception that is very important in our understanding of the middle role that we occupy. Man is always in the middle of the axis trying to relate to the non-situational intelligence, which is unseen but which is made known to us through revelation, and to relate to the world situation or to the temporal set of circumstances. Now we notice something here that is of extreme interest. Notice that Daniel relates to the world situation specifically because of his previous relationship that has been established with the non-situational intelligence. In other words, when he says, "nor have I done any wrong before you," it is because of his previous commitment to God. He was innocent in the sight of God and that therefore established the way in which he was going to relate to the world situation and he guarded that relationship—that way of connecting to the world situation always in his behavior.

This brings up the concept of the "analog." This is a demonstration of "analogizing" or we could also use the word "generalizing." We will use two other circles to try to describe this concept of analog and exactly what this means. On the left-hand side of the page we will draw a circle and label it the "biblical past." We could also put the word "then" in this circle. It is the "then"—things that occurred before the circumstance had developed. To the right-hand side of the page, we will draw another circle and label it "the present" or "now." It is to be noted that the non-situational and situational circles that we have previously discussed are not the same as the biblical past or the present. However, the relationship that connects the two together is exactly of the same order. What is the "present" of these men? In chapter 6, the "present" is the lions’ den, the edict, the sentence of death, the physics and physiology involved when Daniel’s body came into the proximity of these lions, the bureaucracy, Daniel’s emotional state whatever that was, anything and everything that was part of his situation. Everyone has a "present" whatever that may be.

In Daniel chapter 3, the "present" that faced Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah would have been the fiery furnace which involved the intense heat radiation and its effect upon living tissue, the fact of a death threat, the fact that they would have to make a decision as to whether to bow to the king’s image or in effect to defy the king’s demand, the bureaucratic concerns, and the emotional concerns, etc. All these things would have been wrapped up in their present or in the "now" through which they were living.

What about the biblical past? The biblical past is the very thing upon which they structured or orchestrated their relationship to the present. In other words, we know that in both instances in Daniel Chapter 3 and in Daniel Chapter 6, these four men would have known something about the ten commandments as they had been written in Exodus Chapter 20. They would have known that these were written from outside of their own experience, outside of their own lifetime, that they had been handed down throughout the generations, and that this covenant had been reissued to every generation of Jews that came along. They all came under the canopy of the covenant and were expected to be guided by it. Such statements indicating this are made in the book of Deuteronomy and the book of Leviticus. They were told that this was their life.

There are other such elements of the biblical past that could have informed the way in which they related to the present. They knew about Pharaoh’s resistance to the command of God to let the people go. They knew what happened subsequently in Egypt when the Lord poured out the ten plagues and great destruction was visited upon the Egyptian empire. They knew what happened when Israel came to the brink of the Red Sea when the enemies of God and the people of God were held at bay by the column of fire by night followed by the exodus across the Red Sea into freedom and the destruction of the Egyptian soldiers that pursued them. These things were all part of the biblical past. However, because they related directly to the biblical past that then was rolled over into an "analog" which really describes a similarity, a similitude, something that has a likeness to something else. That is exactly what their relationship to the present became. Their relationship to the present became an analog, or a copy, or a similarity or likeness to their previous relationship to the biblical past. That is why they did not bow down to the edict or why they did not bow down to the golden image that was set up by King Nebuchadnezzar.

There is an axis of personal righteousness, an axis that connects the biblical past with the present. One of the great things that we have been guilty of unfortunately in terms of our scholarship and a popular idea in the church today is the practice of "periodization" where we have taken the position that the scripture was written outside the present and its purview in a timeframe work that has very little similarity or very little relationship directly to the kind of life that we live in the modern world. We have sort of stated that apart from some of the ethical implications that we draw from scripture or some of the great illustrations about standing courage that the Old Testament and other parts in the New Testament are really not for direct application today. The reason we would have come to that conclusion is because we would have begun in the present operating on the basis of what we think of as a direct relationship to the present (trying to understand it on the basis of our own intelligence, on the basis of the five senses, on the basis of previous experiences) to reach conclusions and then acted upon those conclusions. Because of that error in beginning point, the biblical past is really going to be relegated to something outside of immediate application. We come to the conclusion that it is the present that somehow gives shape to the biblical past in terms of how we are going to use it.

Quite contrary to that, we find the action of this good man in Chapter 6:22 to be very salutary for us because it opens up the possibility of understanding an entirely different way of relating to the two worlds. In the first instance, we relate directly to the non-situational or we relate directly to the biblical past. Then and only then are we prepared to roll that direct relationship to the unseen world over into an analogic relationship to the things of the world situation or to what we have described as "the present, the now" in which each of us lives.

I wish to draw your attention in these two drawings to the specific point at which the axis comes into contact with the circle of "the world situation" or the circle of the present. The point where they are brought into contact is what I have outlined as the point of "punctiliar engagement." Anything punctiliar is very specific, very point-like. It has a great deal of precision associated with it. In the same way, it behooves us little to speak of how the scripture in general form relates to the world of experience unless we are able to demonstrate specific ways of punctiliar engagement, specific ways in which the biblical past comes into contact with the present; or the non-situational intelligence comes into contact with the world situation or with the temporal order of things. Punctiliar engagement is extremely important. The punctiliar engagement indicated by Daniel would be in the first case he did not respect the edict that had been issued throughout the kingdom and secondly he was willing to defy the threat of death. That is also true of the three men in Daniel 3. Hananiah, Azariah and Mishael did not bow down to the gold image that Nebuchadnezzar had set up. That is punctiliar engagement. Nor did they accept the rationale behind the erection of this golden idol upon the plains of Dura. So there are punctiliar engagements to be had. We become extremely and excessively concerned with the nature of those punctiliar engagements. More will be said of that as we follow this line of thinking.

Let’s draw two other sets of circles. On the left-hand side of the page we’ll draw a circle and inscribe the words "the invisible" and to the right-hand side we draw another circle and inscribe the world "the visible." We draw an axis between the two and we put a stick figure in the middle. Now we know that the invisible world pertains to the eternal world, the non-situational, or the biblical past—things outside of our immediate frame of reference, things outside of our own experience, things that we cannot see, things that the sensorium cannot detect. The visible world is very different. Somehow or another there has to be a punctiliar engagement between the two worlds. That is brought about by the action of individuals, it is brought about by the actions of people who are pursuing their relationship to the non-situational on the basis of faith. Let’s suggest that one of the points of punctiliar engagement would have to be with the aspect of nature. Nature is a part of the visible order and we think taking measurements is inherently involved in understanding or describing nature. It involves noticing all sorts of regularities because once you isolate regularities then it becomes possible to make certain kinds of predictions. Predictions become the basis of a lot of the actions that human beings take. We also register statistics in large numbers and try to understand relationships between the numeric values that are assigned to certain things. We are presumably looking for the presence of patterns. We are told that the understanding that patterns are present gives us an impression that we are close to understanding the nature of something if patterns do emerge.

Suppose that we have a chemist who approaches us and asks us the question, "Well if what you are saying is to be considered then what would you suggest to me in regard to how I should relate to the world of nature?" And he might ask the question in another way. "Is it possible that I can relate to the world of nature in my specific case as a chemist to the world of chemical interactions and the properties of these entities in a direct way? Would I be able to bring my own intelligence to bear on the world of the visible, on the world of nature? Can I draw conclusions from the measurements and regularities and the statistics and the patterns that have been demonstrated, catalogued and documented or should I do something else?" Then we would come to him with a rather heretical position and say "yes" you most certainly must do something else. You must prepare your mind to look at the invisible. Your mind must be shaped in such a way that it knows how to appreciate the invisible. It must develop a direct relationship to the unseen world, to the non-situational, to the biblical past, which of course produces a non-situational kind of reasoning that is very different than the situational patterns that are applied to the circumstances of material existence. What results is a unique intelligence and its agenda is to relate the non-situational to the situational. There is a way in which it is to be done.

Personal righteousness simply demonstrates a class of actions that are sponsored by these kinds of attempts at relating the non-situational to the situational. We would suggest to the chemist that he must first prepare his mind through direct relationship to God and to the propositions that have been revealed by the Lord. Then he can appreciate the unseen so that his intelligence can be shaped to penetrate into the unseen. Then and only then he is now prepared to turn his attention as a transformed intelligence toward the world of nature. But he would never directly relate to the world of nature. Quite the opposite, he would only relate analogically to the world of material reality that surrounds him. Of course, that’s very difficult to explain in situational terminology because it simply defies what we have thought of as human experience. The act of directly relating to the world of the visible is really the act of rationalization where human beings take their own intelligence, their own capacity to observe and to reach conclusions and then they map that meaning, or they rationalize that meaning onto the world of the visible.

This has happened on more than one occasion throughout biblical history. The Israelite soldiers that were gathered that day in 1 Samuel 17 at the Valley of Elah tried to relate directly to the visible qualities of what was going on there that day with the massed Philistine armies better equipped and trained and certainly having a numerical advantage, plus the presence of the champion Goliath among them. And because they tried to relate directly on the basis of measurements, regularities, statistics, and patterns they operated in a state of fear and a lack of faithlessness until this young boy arrived and is prepared to pitch battle with this giant. David comes on because of his direct relation to the invisible world, because he knows how to see the invisible world so he is now prepared to turn, but not directly, dealing with the visible world but relating to it only analogically. His relationship to the visibility of Goliath is an analog of his previous direct relationship to the unseen world.

The tendency of the situational mind, however, which has always been under fire in our particular study in the book of Daniel is to ask, "What is the most practical thing to do?" The word "practical" has been subsumed by situational intelligence, monopolized almost completely and therefore used against the idea of what true faith is. But we are not interested in that particular question. The right question for us is the issue of punctiliar engagement. How is it that we relate to the world of the visible? How do we relate to the world of measurements, regularities, and statistical documentation and the presence of demonstrable patterns? We do not do so directly if we are going to operate on the concept that Daniel has displayed here in Chapter 6, but we operate relative to those things only in an analogic way. We never approach any situation or any of the elements that we have drawn in the circles on the right-hand side of the page.

Someone might say, well if we don’t approach a situation directly, then the only thing left to us would be to approach it indirectly. But to this we would issue a resounding denial—NO! We do not relate indirectly to the world of situations for there is another way to relate to these things. The other way open to us is provided by scripture and that is an analogic relation to the world of situations. This is not generally appreciated by situational intelligence. Indeed it cannot be appreciated by such an intelligence because it cannot see it. Its interest is in direct relation. Its interest is in having power over world circumstances, power over situations. We as Christians are categorical in our statement about our interest. Our focus is in direct relationship to the non-situational intelligence, to the propositions that symbolize that intelligence. Our focus is on the biblical past—those things that happen outside our own experience, outside of our own lifetime. Our interest is in the invisible. Our relationship directly to that will then prepare us to turn and deal not indirectly but analogically with the world of material circumstances. So the situated mind would see such things as "indirect" but it is not indirect, it is simply "analogic." We might be able to draw two antipodes here and to say that the analogic relations to the world situation and the direct relations are categorically in opposition. They are antipodes.

There are some important corollaries that go along with this perception. One would involve human relationships. We do not relate one to another directly consequently. But only analogically. We do not relate to our wives directly on the basis of our own ability to rationalize their presence or to understand them on that basis. We are interested in relating directly to God and as we learn to relate to the invisible, to the non-situational intelligence then we roll that over to an analog by way of which we relate to our loved ones, to our wives, to our children and to all others. This poses a tremendous challenge to situated intelligence and the way in which it sees things operating. We operate only in non-situational analogic relations. We apply that to such things as marriage and relationships in general.

A critical issue here, as we have suggested before, is that of punctiliar engagement. Notice that a punctiliar engagement as we have previously tried to draw it in these little drawings is itself an analog of something. It is an analog of pushed intelligence. This requires an act of the will. As the Lord pushes intelligence into the world situation, as he shares his intelligence and pushes it into the minds of those who are committed to walk by faith, so then that prepared intelligence will push a special kind of engagement into the world situation. It is an analog--something that bears grand similitude or similarity; something that bears a grand likeness to the whole concept of a "pushed" intelligence, of the non-situational intelligence pushing wisdom and knowledge and understanding from his own mind our way.

We can see this described in Chapter 6:10. The edict has been set out and a statement is made, "Now when Daniel learned that the decree had been published…" Upon his understanding that this had gone out, he would have known immediately some of the consequences that this would carry with it. He knew about the law of the Medes and the Persians. This was a man of empire. He knew the nature of these kinds of leaders. He knew that he was the object of this grand collusion, that it was a very involved conspiracy to have him murdered. Daniel learned about the decree. Now a decision has to be made. What kind of punctiliar engagement has to be taken? What kind of punctiliar engagement will he bring about? How will he relate to the world of situations? His situation is very grave. He will take this action on the basis of an act of the will. His action or his punctiliar engagement is this: He goes home and he prays as if the edict had not been written and circulated among the people of the empire.

What he does is "push" this understanding of the situation into the tissue of the circumstance. That is an exact analog of the way in which the Lord himself pushes his intelligence upon Daniel’s mind. It is an analog of how he pushes his power and his non-situational meaning into the tissue of world situations. In so many ways Daniel had to choose how he was going to engage punctiliarly this particular situation. This punctiliar engagement was not done by accident. This is done by an act of the will. We know that it was not done simply or merely to create an "incident." We know that he did not do that to mark himself as a rebel or to take an opposing position. We know that he didn’t do it because he was a man who was stupid or unintelligent in the way in which he approached things. He did it because what was open to him (and uniquely so) was an analogic relation to the situation. He was not reckless nor was he irresponsible although many people who are situational thinkers would have perhaps taken that position about his action. He would have been letting others down. It was irresponsible to throw his life away for something that would have been over in thirty days. Or a word that we hear so very often in the contemporary order might have been applied to his actions—"inappropriate." Someone might have said that his behavior was quite inappropriate. But it wasn’t inappropriate. It was analogic. That is a very big difference.

The critical issue of punctiliar engagement is something that all of us living in the material world are going to have to think about very seriously because it defines and determines what we are as people of faith. The least we can say of it is that it demonstrates the nature of the faith that we possess. Let us draw yet two other circles. To the left-hand side of the page, let’s draw a circle and inscribe the words "absolute abstractions." These are the propositions that have been revealed to us from God. On the right hand side of the page, we will inscribe the word "concretes." These are the tangible, touchable things of reality. Let’s draw an axis between the two circles and put a stick figure in the middle. The issue between "absolute abstractions" and the "concretes" is one of connectivity. How do we relate absolute abstractions to the world of concretes? We have come to a recognition that in a representational world, it requires ideas to be mapped by an index action on to concrete things in order to build things, to make a jet or to build a house or even to carry on the affairs of empire. But it takes abstractions mapped onto the concretes of material existence in order for anyone to live as well.

In terms of relating abstractions to concretes we know that there are incorrect abstractions that have a favored link. They are sanctioned to the world of the concretes. For instance, mathematics or formal systems in general. We would suggest that this is the wrong kind of engagement with the world of observable facts. In fact, trying to depend upon mathematics or formal systems for knowledge about the observable universe would be a kind of ignorance. It would also require a kind of situational action that possesses what we think of as the logical requirement of isomorphism that we had discussed in our lesson about the vine corollary where we questioned the idea of isomorphic truth or the correspondence theory of truth, and the connective theory of truth. The situational axis is very different because the situational axis tries to assure that the logical requirement of isomorphism is to be had between the abstractions that are of a human variety and of the particular concretes. This is alignment of the inner representations with the outer existence. This was often talked about by members of the scientific community. In fact, E. O. Wilson in his book Conciliation: A Unity of Knowledge spoke of the proper alignment between these things which he refers to as objective truth, which is to be rationally acquired. This becomes one of the grand diagnostic features of science. Repeatability, economy, mensuration (the idea of being able to measure), heuristics (which was very big in Einstein’s thought as he worked on the concept of the unified theory which later became known in general parlance as the "theory of everything.")

Instead of the "rules of containment" that are to be understood from the Old Testament, people would prefer to operate on the basis of isomorphism of course which is very much in association with patterns and with ideas of that kind of thing. So there is really and almost immediately an embrace of what we outline as the "logic of direct application" which isomorphism certainly is. But the fact of the matter is that we don’t relate absolute abstractions to the world of concretes directly. What happens in essence is that absolute abstractions (those that have been revealed to us by the Lord himself) are related directly to the mind of the individual. This mind then turns and relates itself analogically to the world of concretes. That becomes the cauldron in which faith is developed.

Non-situational intelligence and the situation being linked together establishes a dazzling unity because it creates what we can refer to as the "semiotic universe"--the universe that is understandable on the basis of the propositions that God has made. It is something very much akin to the line of thinking that we see displayed by Paul in the book of Romans, Chapter 1. Paul would say that the universe is "semiotic." These things reflect absolute meaning. They don’t produce absolute meaning, but they reflect absolute meaning as they must because they are first and foremost symbols.

We are talking about a non-situational unity of knowledge on the one hand that can be created or a situational unity of knowledge on the other. Now a situational unity of knowledge operates on situated criteria. It operates on the concept of synthesis. But what we’re interested in is something very different. We are pursuing what can correctly be identified as a non-situational unity of knowledge about which the world knows nothing. I must also add the caveat that it seems rather overbearing to me and obvious—it is inescapable in fact as far as I can see at this point—that many of us in the church, many of our leaders, many of us in the preacher corps know very little about a non-situational unity of knowledge. This I am persuaded would be much to our detriment.

Let’s draw two of the circles and try to become a little more definitive in terms of our relationship to scripture. On the left-hand side of the page, we draw a circle and inscribe the word "revelation." On the right hand side of the page, we draw a circle and inscribe the word "experience." We draw an axis that connects the two circles together. We draw a stick figure in the middle. Of course, in all these drawings, the stick figure will represent Daniel or it will represent us living in the world situation but not being of the world situation. Scripture can be understood in this particular context built upon Daniel’s response to the edict and built upon his understanding of the far larger issues that were involved in his case. The generalizations from the text can be applied directly to the way in which we understand the unity between revelation, an individual and the world of experience in which the individual is to be found. After we have drawn this scheme, let’s draw a very large box that will include the left-hand circle of "revelation" and that will run just to the right hand side of the little stick figure. It is a large box that takes in approximately the first two thirds of the drawing. It will include the revelation circle and the little stick figure running just to his right. Now this box can be identified as the "reach of direct relation." That is to say, that which is directly related to in the universe in terms of revelation would have to be the mind of the individual. There is a direct relationship, a direct union between the propositions that have been revealed—the absolute abstractions that we have spoken about earlier, the biblical past and a non-situational intelligence—and the intelligence of the person in the particular circumstance. There is to be a direct relationship. Man is to be informed. In other words, when we read in Daniel 1:17 that they were given wisdom and understanding, we are to understand that there was a direct relationship that existed between the thoughts of God (the revelation of God--the absolute abstractions of the propositions that had been issued forth from God) and the mind of the men in question.

Let’s draw another square made up of heavy dotted lines to show a contrast between the previous square that will encompass the circle to the right hand side of "concretes" and just runs to the left of the stick figure in the middle of the axis. So we have two overlapping squares. This square to the right hand side will include the circle of "concretes (experience)" and will run to just the left side of the stick figure. We draw a heavy dotted line to draw a distinction between the two boxes. The little stick figure is found in the overlapping area between the squares. The square to the right would depict the range of analogic relations. This is the way in which the individual relates to the world of experience—analogically. He never tries to relate directly on the basis of his own intelligence, or of what he thinks, or of how he concludes that things ought to run, or of taking measurements or comparing it with previous and rational experience. He relates to all that is temporal only analogically. This becomes critical in terms of how we understand the role of scripture. If this is to be true, we should find it repeatedly or recursively showing up in scripture.

One of these examples is Daniel 6:21-22. Daniel related directly to the revelation of his God. He knew what God had expected of him. He had assiduously committed himself to know these things. Another example is Daniel 10:12 where Gabriel says to Daniel, "Do not be afraid, Daniel. Since the first day that you set your mind to gain understanding and to humble yourself before your God, your words were heard and I have come in response to them." The purpose of the man was "to know" the thoughts of God, the mind of God. He wanted to understand that which had been revealed. So he puts himself in the position of humility. He surrenders his own mind to the mind of God, to the mind of the revelation of God. We can refer to that as the "reach of direct relation."

This prepared mind is going to inescapably deal with all sorts of things on the experiential side. This is the reality of material content. Dealing with material content is fundamentally and absolutely inescapable. How then does the little stick figure relate to the world of experience and material content? He doesn’t do so directly. We find here in this wonderful example of this good man of faith that he made no attempt at relating directly nor did our three friends Hananiah, Mishael or Azariah in Chapter 3 make any attempt to relate directly to the world of experience but only analogically. Their relationship to the world of experience was an analog of the previous relationship experienced directly to the world of absolute abstractions, the biblical past, the non-situational intelligence, and the invisible. Therefore, let us make a rather startling observation. This will require some commitment personally of contemplation to come to some resolution about. Let us propose this idea that the scripture was never intended under any circumstances to be applied directly to any world situation. It was never revealed for any such purpose as to be applied directly to the world of concrete experience. Rather it was revealed in order to directly and uniquely relate only to one specific entity in the world order--to the human mind. The scripture was never revealed, never provided to us to be applied directly on the basis of any direct application to any specific situation. The reason is because it cannot be applied to any specific world situation. It can only be applied directly to the mind of the individual in the situation. Then that prepared mind is the entity that turns--on behalf of God, on behalf of absolute abstractions, on behalf of non-situational intelligence, on behalf of the invisible, on behalf of the biblical past--to the world of contemporary experience, to the world situation, to the world of the visible, to the world of concrete realities.

I would propose that we have made a massive overarching mortal error in judgment in thinking that we could take the scripture and relate it directly to the world of experience. In fact, this has been I suspect the direct theological core of much of our preaching in the churches of Christ and certainly is the crux of the genius of the restoration movement. The thought is that scripture could be applied directly to world experiences. However, it looks like to me that this becomes untenable. That the logic of direct application that we can define by all of these actions actually stands in our way. This is one of the telling arguments that I have against the World Bible School Organization. They operate on the idea that we can simply go into a place and purport to teach these people that you can take the scripture and directly apply it to world experience or to world situations.

This I think is the classic error and one of the reasons certainly why we have focused upon the search for three principal things as a way of understanding the role of scripture in contemporary experience. One of those is to look for commands. We like commands thinking that those things can be directly applied to specific situations. We like to look for examples although upon occasion we have a great deal of difficulty in trying to define which examples are binding and which examples are not binding. So there have been many discrepancies among us in the brotherhood even amounting to splits and creating of different factions and different streams in this brotherhood that have gone in different directions over which examples are binding and which are not. We have also looked for what are referred to as necessary inferences.

When we are looking for these things it really boils down to one particular pursuit; and that is, trying to look for things that we think can be directly applied to the world of experience. But one of the great casualties of all this is the human mind. The human mind is bypassed. In fact, what ends up happening is that a mind not prepared by direct relationship to non-situational intelligence, to the biblical past, to the world of the invisible, to the world of absolute abstractions, to the world of revelation first and foremost is simply not prepared to connect in any valid way the word of God directly to world experiences. This error has created much of our heartache, our disappointments and our problems, thinking that we have found something we think is a direct application of scripture to the world of experience that we are walking in close concert with God which I think has to be seriously reevaluated. The great and appalling victim of the logic of direct application is the mind. Because the logic of direct application ignores the role of analogic relation which is the only real way that God intends for scripture to be applied to the world of human experience.

The way in which Daniel related to the situation of his day is exactly the way in which we would relate to the world of experience, not directly but only analogically. The individual who relates analogically to the world of experience is a particular kind of mind that has been gifted by pushed intelligence. The only way pushed intelligence can come about is by direct relationship to these propositions and to the presence of God that has been opened before us. This we can refer to as the "axial role of human intelligence." The idea of direct application of the scripture to any given experience or to life in general simply destroys the development of the mind and its axial role. The idea of direct application is favored. But it destroys the axial role of human intelligence. Human intelligence, assuming the axial role, will never be realized. Consequently we will never be able to deal adequately with the world of experience, with the world of situations, with the world of the concrete, with the world of the present and the now, because the mind is simply not prepared. Instead we take the pretense of trying to apply directly certain statements in scripture to the situation. It is done by a situational mind that has neither the capacity nor the facility of doing that. It can’t be done in the first place. I’m persuaded that that was never the intent of scripture.

So in our random evangelism, we have gone all over the world really immersing people in an attempt to persuade them that the logic of direct application is really the essence of the gospel. We have heretofore in some of our studies come to conclude, those of us who are representationally studying the scripture, that what is referred to as the simple gospel is actually a gospel that has been robbed and looted of its representational truth, of its representational power, of its representational richness. I am still of that persuasion. Part of the problem is the logic of direct application. It is one of the major problems that we have in our theological approach to things. We need an analogic response to the world of experience. That is what the scripture produces. It produces a mind—a unique kind of mind that doesn’t get marginalized, but is very isolated from the influence of patternization or isomorphism—that seeks to be an analog of the mind of Christ. That isolation informs it about how it relates to all experiences, to all situations. In spite of that we have opted for something that is obviously a creation of a situational intelligence, thinking that we can apply the scripture directly to circumstances which I do not think could be done at all. The mind is simply bypassed.