It’s also to be noted that when we study something, that we don’t study it directly. We don’t study physical content directly. That is not possible because the way in which the Lord has created the universe. We know full well that everything that we are exposed to has to be converted into an abstraction. We can’t deal directly with the world of physical reality. We deal with the representations OF those things in our mind. When we study things in the external world, we are not studying the things directly; but we are studying the symbolic mass associated with those things. We are not to bow down to those images, to those symbols at all. When we bow down to an image, we don’t just bow down to the images created by men, but we are bow down to the symbolic mass that really was the motive force behind the creation of this image and all that goes along with it. These are some of the things that they have in common. We are not to bow down to symbolic masses.

In Daniel 3:1-6, it was obvious that Nebuchadnezzar was intent on bringing this supposed unifying factor (the golden image) to bear in his kingdom. He has created a symbolic mass. This symbolic mass was then turned loose and it was really the dynamic factor that promoted the creation of the image and all that went along with it which brought with it semiotic sounds. When they heard these sounds, they were expected to bow down and to render worship. In Chapter 6, in response to the edict that had been evidenced into the Babylonian empire, Daniel was not really dealing with the empire so much as he was dealing with the symbolic masses of the empire. That was true of his three friends.

Then let’s make a suggestion and let’s do a little drawing. On the right hand side of the page, let’s draw the open-ended box, which represents the world situation. To the left of it some distance, let’s draw a little stick figure and let’s draw an arrow coming out the box toward the stick figure indicating that everything within the world situation has to be converted into symbols in the mind of the little stick figure (that’s you and me). For us to have any awareness of the world situation (rocks, trees, jobs, sensations, money, the smell of flowers, the sting of the bees, the taste of food, the smell of mom’s apple pie) it has to be converted into symbols in our heads. It has to be converted into representations. To the far left of the stick figure, let’s write "non-situational intelligence" and let’s draw an arrow, moving from non-situational intelligence also in the direction of the stick figure. It’s true that in order for us to understand anything about God that has to be made known to us through the avenue of symbols. He has to speak to us, he has to write to us, he has to expose his presence to us, symbolically. So we stand wedged between the world situation on the right (and all of that having to be converted into symbols for us to have any knowledge of it or awareness of it or consciousness of it) and the non-situational intelligence (making himself known to us) converts that presence, that knowledge into symbols.

This creates in our minds the presence of two things simultaneously. There is the symbolic mass that corresponds to experience. Up above the little stick figure and to the right coming out of the head of the stick figure, I draw a little square and that square represents the experiential symbolic mass that’s coming from the world situation. Now just to the right of that also parallel to it and coming out of the little stick figure’s head is another square, which is scripture, and this is a symbolic mass. So we are now in the presence of these two factors and we carry them and we weigh them simultaneously in our minds. These symbolic masses are our first proximate link both to the world situation, that is of the temporal order, and to God. Which one of the symbolic masses shall we rely upon? Of course, it is often thought that we can simply hold the two in simultaneous colloidal suspension and that we can use the experiential symbolic mass to understand the world situation and we can use scripture as a symbolic mass to understand God. Therefore, there is a role for the mutual interconnection and mutual maintenance of those two in our minds. However, this certainly cannot be true from a biblical point of view.

Let us isolate the little stick figure with the two little squares and draw some observations about that. If we were to operate on the symbolic mass of experience it would be what we might refer to as a black-box interpretation. That is, we have the neuro-physical and the neuro-chemical devices that we need in our heads and our minds that will operate to control and to direct the way that we come to understand things. They will determine the procedures of understanding what one needs to do in the world situation—a black-box interpretation.

Notice however that when the major points of crisis erupted in Chapters 2, 3, and 6, that these men of faith did not opt for a black-box interpretation of the world around them. Cognitive scientists and others who are interested in the study of the way in which mind and language operate (such as Noam Chomsky and Charles Sanders Peirce, who has often been lauded as one of the greatest American philosophers that ever existed) have suggested that the mind holding on to this experiential symbolic mass acts as a kind of innate processor of experience. That becomes the prerequisite already in place for experience and for language itself. It is therefore championed as the way in which we are largely expected to deal with the world around us. But those observations relative to the nature of man would represent certain points of view that we could not accept because they violate grossly the statements of scripture.

Pushed intelligence on the other hand would be the cause of the other square that we have drawn in opposition to the black-box interpretation. The scripture acting as a symbolic mass would be the result of a pushed intelligence. It is an interrelationship between the individual mind and the revelation of God. It’s a way of relating the two together. Let us make a rather arresting observation. That is this: That idolatry is purely a mental function. That idolatry could be understood as a purely symbolic function. If that’s the case, it is certainly true that faith is to be understood as a purely mental function. It is the way that the mind functions. It is not just what we believe or what we tend to hold on as a favorite doctrinal positions. It is uniquely a symbolic function and here’s how I think we can determine that to be the fact.

We must not understate this arresting observation that scripture affords us—that idolatry and faith both are purely mental functions or we can also refer to them as symbolic functions. Now this is true because the qualities of the symbolic mass that we operate on will inevitably become the qualities of mind of the individual believer. So that you have the quality instilled of the non-situational symbolic mass and that quality is a mental quality, is a pushed intelligence. You also have the quality of the experiential symbolic mass, which would be the quality of idolatry. It would be idolatry as a mental function.

Now from this point on, we’ll try to extrapolate that to a further degree and recognize the validity hopefully of this appraisal. We have then before us two potentials for the human mind. Two potential mental functions.

1. The mental function of faith, also referred to as pushed intelligence.
2. The mental function of idolatry.

Therefore these two possibilities always open before us. Let’s discuss

this further by means of another simple drawing. In the middle of the page we will draw the ubiquitous stick figure which represents Daniel and his three friends. It also represents human intelligence. To the right hand side, some distance from the stick figure, we will write "situational symbolic mass." To the left-hand side some distance from the stick figure, we shall write "non-situational symbolic mass." Now according to the rule of the double embrace, arms would reach out from the stick figure in the middle reaching to the left and attempting to embrace the non-situational symbolic mass. That means to accept its purview, to render one’s mind open to it. And then there would be arms also coming out of the non-situational symbolic mass reaching down and so to speak embracing the little stick figure. This is the manifestation of the double embrace. We can draw a little wavy line with an arrow on the end of it moving from the stick figure to the right, pointing at the situational symbolic mass which is the arc of analogic relations which we have discussed under another rubric in our extended study of the book of Daniel.

This is the place of three-place logic. The non-situational symbolic mass will represent absolute priority. It is the determinant role in the universe. Therefore under the little stick figure, we can write the word "subsequency." Human intelligence has been created into a subsequency. It has abandoned any pretense of holding priority. And so it is now embracing the non-situational absolute priority and is in turn embraced by it. Under the term "situational symbolic mass" we can write the word "subsequency" as well. The situational symbolic mass is not subsequent to the intelligence of man, even though that intelligence has been subordinated to that of God. It is a subsequency directly of the absolute priority. This is one of the great things that allows us the ability to offload so much tension, concern and anxiety. While we are in the human priority position, and maintaining human priority, we have a tendency to think of everything in the situational order as subsequent to us. That means that we must control it, we must figure out a way to deal with it or to compensate for it. But when we recognize that we can abandon situational priority, then our minds are devoted to becoming subsequencies. Our mental functions are subsequencies of God, subsequencies of absolute priority. We also come to recognize that everything in the situational order itself is subsequent to God. Therefore he has charge of those things. He will rout these things in our favor. He will provide. He will control. He will delimit. It is a great truth that allows us to take off the burden that we as human beings often feel in the conduct of our affairs.

When we consider situational symbolic masses now to the right, there can be a lot of things that you can put under that general categorization. For instance, evolutionary theory. That is a situational symbolic mass. We realize that it is a subsequency to the absolute priority of God. What does he have to say about that? And a mind in a subsequent position in the middle has the ability to recognize what the Lord has to say about evolutionary theory. To take that critique to a much more profound degree. You can also add to that categorization materialistic cosmology with which we are swamped in the contemporary world, post modernism, and the concepts of holism and reductionism that we have previously discussed in our extended study. We have here a conflict of mental qualities taking place in the universe, and a conflict of mental qualities in the mind of every individual. On the one hand there is the mental quality of the pushed intelligence, what we can also refer to as faithfulness. There is also this struggle against another kind of mental function, which we have outlined as idolatrous. Clearly when we have put ourselves in the prior position, and we have come to bear on the situational mass turning it into a subsequency to our thinking and then bringing thoughts to bear upon that. Taking those thoughts and then putting them in the prior position to our own minds—in the absolute prior position that really belongs to God—that is an act of idolatry.

The middle position where man will always find himself and from which he will never be able to be extricated is a position of extreme sensitivity because the way in which he responds in that middle position will determine certain things. In this human position, being in the middle, pushed intelligence will suggest to his or her mind that he or she become a subsequency. However, if one takes the position of priority over the world of situations and situational symbolic masses, then one is acting in a rather god-like way producing the symbols that we will ultimately bow down to. So it turns out this way. That idolatrous intelligence is an intelligence that will put itself in the prior position being in the middle between the two worlds will bring its priority to bear on what it considers to be a subsequency, which is the world situation. Then it will take certain ideas, certain symbols that it itself has created and it will bring them from the world situation over to the left-hand position and put them in a position of absolute priority. And that is exactly what happened to Darius. This is an idolatrous mental function.

We are going to rethink the role of the statements about idolatry in the scripture. What ultimately happens here in this idolatrous mental function is that man (standing in the middle position) holding on to human priority has made the world situation a subsequency to his own intelligence. He has also elevated into the position of absolute priority ideas and symbols that he considers worthy of bowing to and being controlled by. But it turns out that this is nothing more than a subsequency itself because it is the priority of man that has created that position of absolute priority, not one assigned to this position by the Lord. Human intelligence has put the idol so to speak on the pedestal. It has determined what the design is going to be. Here is a man standing between two subsequencies. And since he has made these things subsequencies he has put himself, his mind, in the position of being the great singularity in the universe. It is his mind from which all meaning flows to interpret the world in which he lives. This is done both inside the kingdom of God and outside the kingdom of God. It is an idolatrous mental function. By the time one is able to bow down to an image that has been created, idolatry has long been in place as a mental function.

The mental function of faith is very different. The mental function of faith is very different for in that construction, the individual mind has yielded itself as a subsequency to the absolute priority of the presence of God and the revelation of God and therefore he is himself in the middle position acting as a subsequency. But he also turns to the world situation and recognizes that this too is a subsequency but not to his mind, rather to the mind and to the power of God. However, the mental function of faith and the mental function of idolatry have a startling structural similarity because of the three-place logic. Often these things are confused. The Jews acting in the position of priority coming to bear on that part of that situational order which was represented by the scrolls turned the scrolls into a subsequency. Then they developed ideas about the scrolls that they elevated to the position of absolute priority. They bowed down to these ideas thinking that they were exactly the thoughts and the words of God. This would be some of the teaching that would be found in the Talmud and some of the preaching that would have been done by the rabbis. It is totally evidenced by Jesus detection of this fact in the book of Matthew, especially chapter 5, when he will state in the Sermon on the Mount about various things, "You have heard it said, but I tell you…"

He is criticizing the idolatrous intelligence, the mental function of idolatry that elevates the human mind into a position that it was never meant to occupy. This is the human mind elevating itself between two things that it has created--its own understanding of the world situation and its own creation of certain symbols to which it will bow down and to which it will surrender control. Now we have this clearly depicted in Chapter 6 when Darius wrote up these symbols and then they were published. The law of the Medes and the Persians said, "We have created the symbols; this is of human origin, but once these things have been published, we put them in the position of absolute priority so that even the king must bow down to them." These men who created this collusion and who set the trap for Daniel were quite intelligent in their understanding of how the worship of symbols could bring about the destruction of this good man and secure their own corrupt positions for themselves. When they ran across a man like Daniel who was a subsequency to the absolute priority of God, and would have treated the situational order as something subsequent to God, they knew there was no possibility of corrupting him so he simply had to be eliminated from the scene. Well, there is a similarity that can exist between faith as a mental function and idolatry. One of the things that they have in common, of course, is that they are mental functions. There is a kind of structural similarity between the non-situational symbolic mass and the situational symbolic mass. These things both involve mental functions.

There is a distinction between revelation and experience as well although they can be looked upon as having some structural similarity upon closer investigation in terms of the three-place logic. But there is a vast difference between the two. One of the most important things that we have to highlight in our study is the all-important sensitive position of man in the middle position. Even the world admits to this. Man considers himself to be the presence in the universe and that human intelligence is a student of the lawful universe. Empire-mindedness is certainly a part of the profile of Nebuchadnezzar and Darius and Belshazzar. That’s a part of being in the middle position able to make appraisals of things based on mental functioning in one way or another to assign meaning to the world of material content. But although we are in the middle position and can never escape the middle position and although we have a mental function to perform, the two kinds of mental functions can be rated. One of those ratings is to define the mental function of a subsequency to the absolute abstractions of the Lord. The other rating is what we have referred to as man holding the prior position over his relationship to the material world. It’s important for us while we recognize the structural similarity to know that these two mindsets are rated in an entirely different way by God. Human intelligence operating as a subsequency to the intelligence of God is faithfulness. Human intelligence occupying the position of priority to the world of material content in place of the intelligence of God is idolatry. What we want to do in the middle position is to allow for this construction of three-place logic to inform us as to how to operate as a subsequency in our mind to the non-situational intelligence of God in the way we relate to the world of material content. That is not easy.

Structural similarity is misleading often to us in judging mental qualities. Some people have concluded that there is no such thing as absolute truth. Why did they come to that conclusion? Because of the structural similarity that exists between the two different mental functions as within the real world. In order to really unmask the confusion that structural similarities can produce often we have to have something that is very unique. That has been provided. This is the non-situational symbolic mass, the revelation of God, acting as an absolute priority. The structural similarity that we have discussed in terms of three-place logic is actually recurring so we pronounce it a recursion in the way in which we study scripture. We draw four blocks on a piece of paper and they are joined together like a brick wall and we pronounce those blocks to be the text that we are studying. We make a little line coming out like a branch and to that branch we have a little stick figure and that is the mind of the student acting as a subsequency to the grammatical structure of the text. Then a line continuing from the stick figure out forward and at that line we draw a little "g" and that "g" represents a generalization. Then we have an exact recursion of the three-place logic. We have the text operating as an absolute priority. We have the intelligence of the student now functioning as a subsequency and never attempting to hold priority over the text and therefore producing generalizations. This will demonstrate the organic connection between the generalization and the absolute priority of the text. Now if we decide to study scripture in another way, we would be reading the text as simply a subsequency to the mind of man holding itself in the position of priority. That is an idolatrous approach to the text.

What we would end up doing ultimately is to read the scripture with an idolatrous function in mind. I submit that that is exactly what we have been guilty of. We are reading the text from an idolatrous mindset. We are bringing an idolatrous mental function to bear upon the text because we have converted the text into a subsequency. Now in schools of preaching that I know anything about for the most part and in Christian universities and in some seminaries there is no question that human intelligence is given the position of priority over the text. There is an assumption that that which is prior to an understanding of the text must be human intelligence. This fact is not supported by the revelation of God. Quite the contrary, human intellect, human intelligence, is to be converted from a position of priority into a subsequency and then and only then is it capable of deriving the generalizations that are to be pushed into the world situation, upon which we will take our stand and upon which we will live.

We have two potential mental functions for man in the middle position. He is either going to act in terms of a mental function of faith or that of idolatry. The symbolic mass of the absolute priority of revelation produces faith. The symbolic mass of the situational variety enacted upon becomes the basis for idolatry. So you are really talking about kinds of punctiliar engagement with the world situation. Those also can be demonstrated in terms of a faith punctiliar engagement or one that is born unfortunately on idolatrous assumptions. So when we are discussing this idolatrous mindset we are referring to the rationalization of experience and to the rationalization of scripture. Of this we must not be guilty. We cannot treat scripture as a part of experience. Now I can treat the leather in my bible as a part of experience and that is why I don’t subject it to moisture and I don’t toss it across the room because the tension of forces will tear it apart. I try to keep moisture away from the delicate pages. So I can treat the physical entity as part of experience, but I cannot treat the ideas, the symbols that are projected in the Bible as a part of experience because they are not a part of experience. They come from outside. They are meant to inform us within the framework of experience but they originate in the mind of God. This is born out in Genesis Chapter 3 when our friends in the garden began to treat the word of God as a part of experience.

That is exactly what happened in the book of Daniel 9 when the prophets were sent to the people of Judah and they simply treated the word of a prophet as a part of experience and they could deal with it therefore as a subsequency to their own priority. They rationalized even the statements of Jeremiah. In Daniel 9:1-4, we find that Daniel is reading Jeremiah, the prophet. It is clear that they had rationalized what the prophet had to say and what the other prophets had had to say to them for a long time. These words that were the product of their own rationalization were kicked into a position of absolute priority. They rejected the words of the prophets, they rejected the words of God, but they embraced the words of their own creation. Therefore, they bowed down to the their own images. This is the Talmud. This can in many ways become a commentary. This is perhaps akin to what we might think of as "favorite doctrines" or a pre-scripted kind of hermeneutics. Certainly a periodicized text is a text that has been made into a subsequency to human priority. It is a rationalized text. This has much in common with what we call as classic liberalism which should be avoided at all cost.

Scripture must be given the position of absolute priority and there is an analogic relation for everything that exists within the world situation. Reading scripture with an idolatrous mind and teaching others to read the bible that way will lead to our destruction. A lot of times when sharp minds ask questions in the body of Christ and those questions cannot be answered, they are often considered illegitimate and thence dispensed with. They are not important because they can’t be answered. That’s not true. There are answers but the answers are going to be found from an abandonment of our position of priority and the acceptance of a position of subsequency. Faith is synonymous with a mental function. Idolatry is synonymous with a mental function. We have to think of faith and idolatry as mental functions and apply that assiduously and hold on to that. Now, of course, we can remove the trappings of idolatry, but not idolatry itself. When the Catholic church came into Latin America and they took over some of the gods that were worshiped by the indigenous people, and they renamed then in honor of the saints. They removed the trappings of idolatry, but they did not remove the mental function of idolatry.

While we can remove the trappings of idolatry and consent with our own interpretation that we are no longer idolatrous, we have not removed the essence of idolatry. We have not removed the foundations of idolatry. We have neutralized the trappings but the underlying basis for idolatry remains the same. Therefore and consequently we are prohibited to bow down to our own symbols. Therefore we are instructed by the Lord never to bow down to our images.

It’s also to be noted that when we study something, that we don’t study it directly. We don’t study physical content directly. That is not possible because the way in which the Lord has created the universe. We know full well that everything that we are exposed to has to be converted into an abstraction. We can’t deal directly with the world of physical reality. We deal with the representations OF those things in our mind. When we study things in the external world, we are not studying the things directly; but we are studying the symbolic mass associated with those things. We are not to bow down to those images, to those symbols at all. When we bow down to an image, we don’t just bow down to the images created by men, but we are bow down to the symbolic mass that really was the motive force behind the creation of this image and all that goes along with it. These are some of the things that they have in common. We are not to bow down to symbolic masses.

In Daniel 3:1-6, it was obvious that Nebuchadnezzar was intent on bringing this supposed unifying factor (the golden image) to bear in his kingdom. He has created a symbolic mass. This symbolic mass was then turned loose and it was really the dynamic factor that promoted the creation of the image and all that went along with it which brought with it semiotic sounds. When they heard these sounds, they were expected to bow down and to render worship. In Chapter 6, in response to the edict that had been evidenced into the Babylonian empire, Daniel was not really dealing with the empire so much as he was dealing with the symbolic masses of the empire. That was true of his three friends.

Then let’s make a suggestion and let’s do a little drawing. On the right hand side of the page, let’s draw the open-ended box, which represents the world situation. To the left of it some distance, let’s draw a little stick figure and let’s draw an arrow coming out the box toward the stick figure indicating that everything within the world situation has to be converted into symbols in the mind of the little stick figure (that’s you and me). For us to have any awareness of the world situation (rocks, trees, jobs, sensations, money, the smell of flowers, the sting of the bees, the taste of food, the smell of mom’s apple pie) it has to be converted into symbols in our heads. It has to be converted into representations. To the far left of the stick figure, let’s write "non-situational intelligence" and let’s draw an arrow, moving from non-situational intelligence also in the direction of the stick figure. It’s true that in order for us to understand anything about God that has to be made known to us through the avenue of symbols. He has to speak to us, he has to write to us, he has to expose his presence to us, symbolically. So we stand wedged between the world situation on the right (and all of that having to be converted into symbols for us to have any knowledge of it or awareness of it or consciousness of it) and the non-situational intelligence (making himself known to us) converts that presence, that knowledge into symbols.

This creates in our minds the presence of two things simultaneously. There is the symbolic mass that corresponds to experience. Up above the little stick figure and to the right coming out of the head of the stick figure, I draw a little square and that square represents the experiential symbolic mass that’s coming from the world situation. Now just to the right of that also parallel to it and coming out of the little stick figure’s head is another square, which is scripture, and this is a symbolic mass. So we are now in the presence of these two factors and we carry them and we weigh them simultaneously in our minds. These symbolic masses are our first proximate link both to the world situation, that is of the temporal order, and to God. Which one of the symbolic masses shall we rely upon? Of course, it is often thought that we can simply hold the two in simultaneous colloidal suspension and that we can use the experiential symbolic mass to understand the world situation and we can use scripture as a symbolic mass to understand God. Therefore, there is a role for the mutual interconnection and mutual maintenance of those two in our minds. However, this certainly cannot be true from a biblical point of view.

Let us isolate the little stick figure with the two little squares and draw some observations about that. If we were to operate on the symbolic mass of experience it would be what we might refer to as a black-box interpretation. That is, we have the neuro-physical and the neuro-chemical devices that we need in our heads and our minds that will operate to control and to direct the way that we come to understand things. They will determine the procedures of understanding what one needs to do in the world situation—a black-box interpretation.

Notice however that when the major points of crisis erupted in Chapters 2, 3, and 6, that these men of faith did not opt for a black-box interpretation of the world around them. Cognitive scientists and others who are interested in the study of the way in which mind and language operate (such as Noam Chomsky and Charles Sanders Peirce, who has often been lauded as one of the greatest American philosophers that ever existed) have suggested that the mind holding on to this experiential symbolic mass acts as a kind of innate processor of experience. That becomes the prerequisite already in place for experience and for language itself. It is therefore championed as the way in which we are largely expected to deal with the world around us. But those observations relative to the nature of man would represent certain points of view that we could not accept because they violate grossly the statements of scripture.

Pushed intelligence on the other hand would be the cause of the other square that we have drawn in opposition to the black-box interpretation. The scripture acting as a symbolic mass would be the result of a pushed intelligence. It is an interrelationship between the individual mind and the revelation of God. It’s a way of relating the two together. Let us make a rather arresting observation. That is this: That idolatry is purely a mental function. That idolatry could be understood as a purely symbolic function. If that’s the case, it is certainly true that faith is to be understood as a purely mental function. It is the way that the mind functions. It is not just what we believe or what we tend to hold on as a favorite doctrinal positions. It is uniquely a symbolic function and here’s how I think we can determine that to be the fact.

We must not understate this arresting observation that scripture affords us—that idolatry and faith both are purely mental functions or we can also refer to them as symbolic functions. Now this is true because the qualities of the symbolic mass that we operate on will inevitably become the qualities of mind of the individual believer. So that you have the quality instilled of the non-situational symbolic mass and that quality is a mental quality, is a pushed intelligence. You also have the quality of the experiential symbolic mass, which would be the quality of idolatry. It would be idolatry as a mental function.

Now from this point on, we’ll try to extrapolate that to a further degree and recognize the validity hopefully of this appraisal. We have then before us two potentials for the human mind. Two potential mental functions.

3. The mental function of faith, also referred to as pushed intelligence.
4. The mental function of idolatry.

this further by means of another simple drawing. In the middle of the page we will draw the ubiquitous stick figure which represents Daniel and his three friends. It also represents human intelligence. To the right hand side, some distance from the stick figure, we will write "situational symbolic mass." To the left-hand side some distance from the stick figure, we shall write "non-situational symbolic mass." Now according to the rule of the double embrace, arms would reach out from the stick figure in the middle reaching to the left and attempting to embrace the non-situational symbolic mass. That means to accept its purview, to render one’s mind open to it. And then there would be arms also coming out of the non-situational symbolic mass reaching down and so to speak embracing the little stick figure. This is the manifestation of the double embrace. We can draw a little wavy line with an arrow on the end of it moving from the stick figure to the right, pointing at the situational symbolic mass which is the arc of analogic relations which we have discussed under another rubric in our extended study of the book of Daniel.

This is the place of three-place logic. The non-situational symbolic mass will represent absolute priority. It is the determinant role in the universe. Therefore under the little stick figure, we can write the word "subsequency." Human intelligence has been created into a subsequency. It has abandoned any pretense of holding priority. And so it is now embracing the non-situational absolute priority and is in turn embraced by it. Under the term "situational symbolic mass" we can write the word "subsequency" as well. The situational symbolic mass is not subsequent to the intelligence of man, even though that intelligence has been subordinated to that of God. It is a subsequency directly of the absolute priority. This is one of the great things that allows us the ability to offload so much tension, concern and anxiety. While we are in the human priority position, and maintaining human priority, we have a tendency to think of everything in the situational order as subsequent to us. That means that we must control it, we must figure out a way to deal with it or to compensate for it. But when we recognize that we can abandon situational priority, then our minds are devoted to becoming subsequencies. Our mental functions are subsequencies of God, subsequencies of absolute priority. We also come to recognize that everything in the situational order itself is subsequent to God. Therefore he has charge of those things. He will rout these things in our favor. He will provide. He will control. He will delimit. It is a great truth that allows us to take off the burden that we as human beings often feel in the conduct of our affairs.

When we consider situational symbolic masses now to the right, there can be a lot of things that you can put under that general categorization. For instance, evolutionary theory. That is a situational symbolic mass. We realize that it is a subsequency to the absolute priority of God. What does he have to say about that? And a mind in a subsequent position in the middle has the ability to recognize what the Lord has to say about evolutionary theory. To take that critique to a much more profound degree. You can also add to that categorization materialistic cosmology with which we are swamped in the contemporary world, post modernism, and the concepts of holism and reductionism that we have previously discussed in our extended study. We have here a conflict of mental qualities taking place in the universe, and a conflict of mental qualities in the mind of every individual. On the one hand there is the mental quality of the pushed intelligence, what we can also refer to as faithfulness. There is also this struggle against another kind of mental function, which we have outlined as idolatrous. Clearly when we have put ourselves in the prior position, and we have come to bear on the situational mass turning it into a subsequency to our thinking and then bringing thoughts to bear upon that. Taking those thoughts and then putting them in the prior position to our own minds—in the absolute prior position that really belongs to God—that is an act of idolatry.

The middle position where man will always find himself and from which he will never be able to be extricated is a position of extreme sensitivity because the way in which he responds in that middle position will determine certain things. In this human position, being in the middle, pushed intelligence will suggest to his or her mind that he or she become a subsequency. However, if one takes the position of priority over the world of situations and situational symbolic masses, then one is acting in a rather god-like way producing the symbols that we will ultimately bow down to. So it turns out this way. That idolatrous intelligence is an intelligence that will put itself in the prior position being in the middle between the two worlds will bring its priority to bear on what it considers to be a subsequency, which is the world situation. Then it will take certain ideas, certain symbols that it itself has created and it will bring them from the world situation over to the left-hand position and put them in a position of absolute priority. And that is exactly what happened to Darius. This is an idolatrous mental function.

We are going to rethink the role of the statements about idolatry in the scripture. What ultimately happens here in this idolatrous mental function is that man (standing in the middle position) holding on to human priority has made the world situation a subsequency to his own intelligence. He has also elevated into the position of absolute priority ideas and symbols that he considers worthy of bowing to and being controlled by. But it turns out that this is nothing more than a subsequency itself because it is the priority of man that has created that position of absolute priority, not one assigned to this position by the Lord. Human intelligence has put the idol so to speak on the pedestal. It has determined what the design is going to be. Here is a man standing between two subsequencies. And since he has made these things subsequencies he has put himself, his mind, in the position of being the great singularity in the universe. It is his mind from which all meaning flows to interpret the world in which he lives. This is done both inside the kingdom of God and outside the kingdom of God. It is an idolatrous mental function. By the time one is able to bow down to an image that has been created, idolatry has long been in place as a mental function.

The mental function of faith is very different. The mental function of faith is very different for in that construction, the individual mind has yielded itself as a subsequency to the absolute priority of the presence of God and the revelation of God and therefore he is himself in the middle position acting as a subsequency. But he also turns to the world situation and recognizes that this too is a subsequency but not to his mind, rather to the mind and to the power of God. However, the mental function of faith and the mental function of idolatry have a startling structural similarity because of the three-place logic. Often these things are confused. The Jews acting in the position of priority coming to bear on that part of that situational order which was represented by the scrolls turned the scrolls into a subsequency. Then they developed ideas about the scrolls that they elevated to the position of absolute priority. They bowed down to these ideas thinking that they were exactly the thoughts and the words of God. This would be some of the teaching that would be found in the Talmud and some of the preaching that would have been done by the rabbis. It is totally evidenced by Jesus detection of this fact in the book of Matthew, especially chapter 5, when he will state in the Sermon on the Mount about various things, "You have heard it said, but I tell you…"

He is criticizing the idolatrous intelligence, the mental function of idolatry that elevates the human mind into a position that it was never meant to occupy. This is the human mind elevating itself between two things that it has created--its own understanding of the world situation and its own creation of certain symbols to which it will bow down and to which it will surrender control. Now we have this clearly depicted in Chapter 6 when Darius wrote up these symbols and then they were published. The law of the Medes and the Persians said, "We have created the symbols; this is of human origin, but once these things have been published, we put them in the position of absolute priority so that even the king must bow down to them." These men who created this collusion and who set the trap for Daniel were quite intelligent in their understanding of how the worship of symbols could bring about the destruction of this good man and secure their own corrupt positions for themselves. When they ran across a man like Daniel who was a subsequency to the absolute priority of God, and would have treated the situational order as something subsequent to God, they knew there was no possibility of corrupting him so he simply had to be eliminated from the scene. Well, there is a similarity that can exist between faith as a mental function and idolatry. One of the things that they have in common, of course, is that they are mental functions. There is a kind of structural similarity between the non-situational symbolic mass and the situational symbolic mass. These things both involve mental functions.

There is a distinction between revelation and experience as well although they can be looked upon as having some structural similarity upon closer investigation in terms of the three-place logic. But there is a vast difference between the two. One of the most important things that we have to highlight in our study is the all-important sensitive position of man in the middle position. Even the world admits to this. Man considers himself to be the presence in the universe and that human intelligence is a student of the lawful universe. Empire-mindedness is certainly a part of the profile of Nebuchadnezzar and Darius and Belshazzar. That’s a part of being in the middle position able to make appraisals of things based on mental functioning in one way or another to assign meaning to the world of material content. But although we are in the middle position and can never escape the middle position and although we have a mental function to perform, the two kinds of mental functions can be rated. One of those ratings is to define the mental function of a subsequency to the absolute abstractions of the Lord. The other rating is what we have referred to as man holding the prior position over his relationship to the material world. It’s important for us while we recognize the structural similarity to know that these two mindsets are rated in an entirely different way by God. Human intelligence operating as a subsequency to the intelligence of God is faithfulness. Human intelligence occupying the position of priority to the world of material content in place of the intelligence of God is idolatry. What we want to do in the middle position is to allow for this construction of three-place logic to inform us as to how to operate as a subsequency in our mind to the non-situational intelligence of God in the way we relate to the world of material content. That is not easy.

Structural similarity is misleading often to us in judging mental qualities. Some people have concluded that there is no such thing as absolute truth. Why did they come to that conclusion? Because of the structural similarity that exists between the two different mental functions as within the real world. In order to really unmask the confusion that structural similarities can produce often we have to have something that is very unique. That has been provided. This is the non-situational symbolic mass, the revelation of God, acting as an absolute priority. The structural similarity that we have discussed in terms of three-place logic is actually recurring so we pronounce it a recursion in the way in which we study scripture. We draw four blocks on a piece of paper and they are joined together like a brick wall and we pronounce those blocks to be the text that we are studying. We make a little line coming out like a branch and to that branch we have a little stick figure and that is the mind of the student acting as a subsequency to the grammatical structure of the text. Then a line continuing from the stick figure out forward and at that line we draw a little "g" and that "g" represents a generalization. Then we have an exact recursion of the three-place logic. We have the text operating as an absolute priority. We have the intelligence of the student now functioning as a subsequency and never attempting to hold priority over the text and therefore producing generalizations. This will demonstrate the organic connection between the generalization and the absolute priority of the text. Now if we decide to study scripture in another way, we would be reading the text as simply a subsequency to the mind of man holding itself in the position of priority. That is an idolatrous approach to the text.

What we would end up doing ultimately is to read the scripture with an idolatrous function in mind. I submit that that is exactly what we have been guilty of. We are reading the text from an idolatrous mindset. We are bringing an idolatrous mental function to bear upon the text because we have converted the text into a subsequency. Now in schools of preaching that I know anything about for the most part and in Christian universities and in some seminaries there is no question that human intelligence is given the position of priority over the text. There is an assumption that that which is prior to an understanding of the text must be human intelligence. This fact is not supported by the revelation of God. Quite the contrary, human intellect, human intelligence, is to be converted from a position of priority into a subsequency and then and only then is it capable of deriving the generalizations that are to be pushed into the world situation, upon which we will take our stand and upon which we will live.

We have two potential mental functions for man in the middle position. He is either going to act in terms of a mental function of faith or that of idolatry. The symbolic mass of the absolute priority of revelation produces faith. The symbolic mass of the situational variety enacted upon becomes the basis for idolatry. So you are really talking about kinds of punctiliar engagement with the world situation. Those also can be demonstrated in terms of a faith punctiliar engagement or one that is born unfortunately on idolatrous assumptions. So when we are discussing this idolatrous mindset we are referring to the rationalization of experience and to the rationalization of scripture. Of this we must not be guilty. We cannot treat scripture as a part of experience. Now I can treat the leather in my bible as a part of experience and that is why I don’t subject it to moisture and I don’t toss it across the room because the tension of forces will tear it apart. I try to keep moisture away from the delicate pages. So I can treat the physical entity as part of experience, but I cannot treat the ideas, the symbols that are projected in the Bible as a part of experience because they are not a part of experience. They come from outside. They are meant to inform us within the framework of experience but they originate in the mind of God. This is born out in Genesis Chapter 3 when our friends in the garden began to treat the word of God as a part of experience.

That is exactly what happened in the book of Daniel 9 when the prophets were sent to the people of Judah and they simply treated the word of a prophet as a part of experience and they could deal with it therefore as a subsequency to their own priority. They rationalized even the statements of Jeremiah. In Daniel 9:1-4, we find that Daniel is reading Jeremiah, the prophet. It is clear that they had rationalized what the prophet had to say and what the other prophets had had to say to them for a long time. These words that were the product of their own rationalization were kicked into a position of absolute priority. They rejected the words of the prophets, they rejected the words of God, but they embraced the words of their own creation. Therefore, they bowed down to the their own images. This is the Talmud. This can in many ways become a commentary. This is perhaps akin to what we might think of as "favorite doctrines" or a pre-scripted kind of hermeneutics. Certainly a periodicized text is a text that has been made into a subsequency to human priority. It is a rationalized text. This has much in common with what we call as classic liberalism which should be avoided at all cost.

Scripture must be given the position of absolute priority and there is an analogic relation for everything that exists within the world situation. Reading scripture with an idolatrous mind and teaching others to read the bible that way will lead to our destruction. A lot of times when sharp minds ask questions in the body of Christ and those questions cannot be answered, they are often considered illegitimate and thence dispensed with. They are not important because they can’t be answered. That’s not true. There are answers but the answers are going to be found from an abandonment of our position of priority and the acceptance of a position of subsequency. Faith is synonymous with a mental function. Idolatry is synonymous with a mental function. We have to think of faith and idolatry as mental functions and apply that assiduously and hold on to that. Now, of course, we can remove the trappings of idolatry, but not idolatry itself. When the Catholic church came into Latin America and they took over some of the gods that were worshiped by the indigenous people, and they renamed then in honor of the saints. They removed the trappings of idolatry, but they did not remove the mental function of idolatry.

While we can remove the trappings of idolatry and consent with our own interpretation that we are no longer idolatrous, we have not removed the essence of idolatry. We have not removed the foundations of idolatry. We have neutralized the trappings but the underlying basis for idolatry remains the same. Therefore and consequently we are prohibited to bow down to our own symbols. Therefore we are instructed by the Lord never to bow down to our images.