Now upon closer reflection, this question of being undeterred broadens out into a number of aspects. Anything that has more than one part associated with it we can refer to as a "manifold." This however, is a manifold of a unique variety. It transmits great meaning from the Lord, in this particular difficult, to Daniel’s enemies. So we shall refer to "being undeterred" as a "signal manifold" made up of many parts. It signals things. It is semiotic in the true sense of the word. It projects great meaning. Let me demonstrate some of the aspects of this manifold. We’ll look at it in four parts initially and then broaden out from there to some other implications.

1. SIGNAL DETERMINATION: This signal manifold is a signal determination with at least three undetachable qualities. This is seen in the phrase in vs. 10 "just as he had done before." This is an interesting statement. This is a signal that will determine his understanding of the circumstance and what he should do. Here are the three qualities:

First, it has a certain recognizability associated with it. This is verse 10: "The decree had been published" we are told. Now he takes a position that is antipodal to the purely situational position. He has been told not to pray. He reads the decree and immediately goes home and begins to pray. There is a recognizability to his being undeterred. He doesn’t hide this. He comes openly to the situation. His response is going to be recognizable. That recognizability is a signal determination of something in his mind. He has determined what this situation is about. He has determined exactly how he is going to deal with this. His reaction is going to be highly recognizable.

Secondly, it is semiotic. Anything semiotic gives information about the mind of the believer, but it also tells us something about how the mind of the Lord works. Daniel, being a man of the word, knew how God would have seen situational circumstances, especially circumstances like this. So he is showing how this has been determined. It is a signal determination of the situation. We are not just referring to a signal determination of the man going through with this (that’s part of it). But it is a signal determination of how one sees the situation—how it is to be determined, how it is to be understood. So when he does what he does (being undeterred), he sends a message to everybody about how his mind works. But he also projecting a message (a semiotic statement) about how he knows the Lord himself sees this situation. That is why, among other reasons, that Daniel will be undeterred in the face of this serious threat.

Thirdly, it acts as an adjudication. In the process of adjudication we assign meaning to things. It locates everything, so to speak, on the mental map. It is a kind of crystallization. It is the embodiment of a resolution of things. It is an adjudication. So when he reads the decree, and then he goes on as he did before, we see that he has determined in his mind what this situation is about.

2. SIGNAL INSISTENCE: This is a signal insistence with three points of insistence. First, there is an insistence on a non-situational continuum of life and meaning. Vs. 10 says, "When Daniel learned." When Daniel learned about the decree, he could have said, "If I continue on as I’ve done before in that continuum, I will be arrested and I will be subject to the lions’ den." But what he did was to insist that there would be a non-situational continuum of life and meaning. He was not changing his understanding of life. He was not going to change his understanding of where meaning comes from simply because of the threat of death or simply because of the collusion that had been brought against him or because of the fact of this legal instrument that could lead to his death. There is a signal insistence on a non-situational continuum of life and meaning. So in circumstances, one would see the significance of ourselves also operating on an insistence of a non-situational continuum of life and meaning.

Secondly, there is an insistence that phenomenologically established facts are disposable. Phenomenology has to do with the senses and the way in which we see things of a physical nature and how those things are appreciated. We go about life phenomenologically establishing facts—the fact that the dog is in the back yard, the car is parked under the light pole at Wal-Mart, it’s time to mow the yard, the child crossing the street needs to be stopped. These things are phenomenologically established. One can phenomenologically establish the fact of the decree, the fact of the Babylonian bureaucracy and its enormous demonstrated power, the fact of the lions’ den. But he determines that these facts are disposable. Now bear in mind we are dealing with all sorts of phenomenologically established facts. When it comes to biological issues or economic issues or relationship issues, these things are almost always to be established phenomenologically. We can see them, hear them, touch them—they are open to our appraisal through the senses. In verse 10, what had been phenomenologically established was the decree, with all of the implications that went along with that decree, some of which we have already enumerated. Daniel is gripped by a signal insistence. His being undeterred is a signal determination but also a signal insistence.

Thirdly, he insists on a contradiction of situational coercion. The statement is vs. 10 says he went home and prayed. This decree had been issued in order to coerce him. They knew Daniel very well and they knew that he would not desist in his actions of prayer. They knew that he would fully pursue praying to his God. Daniel insists on contradicting all situational coercion. Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah did the same thing very graphically in Daniel 3. Nebuchadnezzar makes the statement that they were willing to defy the king’s command and his authority at the risk of death in order to serve their God. Being undeterred is a signal insistence.

3. SIGNAL TRANSPARENCY: This is a signal transparency with situational detectability in two parts. We might even suggest two phases.

Phase 1: A signal transparency is composed of the first phase being a situational predictability. It says that he went home and he prayed. It also states that he prayed regularly three times a day. They knew where the room was. It had a window open toward Jerusalem. This was well known. They knew this man so well that they could predict what he was going to do. They knew he was a man of God. They knew he was a man of the law of God. They knew he gave himself over to the revelation from his God. His was transparent. They knew what he would do. Not because they were mind readers. But because they knew he would be undeterred. They knew there was a signal transparency to this man. The world should know that Christians would do certain things. It is a situational predictability. Why? Because we are grabbed by signal transparency. This is part of being undeterred. We don’t back off, we don’t change or give in so we are predictable in certain ways because of this. Others would recognize what they think of as predictable patterns.

Phase 2: There is a routine transparency here. It is not being high profile. The text says that "these men went as a group and found Daniel praying." He is undeterred. The people who consider themselves undeterred want and need to be transparent. Now being transparent is not the same thing as being high profile. Being transparent makes things easily detectable. In specific language, their faith in the non-situational intelligence was transparent. They could easily detect that. His enemies easily detected this. It’s a kind of transparency instead of being high profile. A high profile mindset might say, "We are here and we need to be high profile in order to make things happen." Certain theories of church growth suggest to us unfortunately that the church instead of being transparent ought to have a high profile. In church growth workshops, the high profile philosophy seems to hold sway over routine transparency, which in my view is altogether and terribly unfortunate. We want to be a signal transparency.

4. SIGNAL REJECTION: This is a signal rejection in four exercises.

Now let us move on to an application of this and discuss what we might refer to as the logic of the signal manifold, which really is the same thing as the logic of the vine (see Daniel Extension Study: The Vine Corollary—Connective Theory of Truth—Transcript #7). It is the same kind of mental function. It is also the logic of the non-situational mind. These are all the same thing. When we ask the question, "What is the logic of this signal manifold that being undeterred reflects or symbolizes or tends to offer us as a class of actions? What would that be?" I use one word to crystallize or to distill this concept. That is the word "speciation."

The idea of something speciated is the occurrence of something (in this case, the non-situational intelligence of God) in separate and identifiable forms (speciations). The intelligence of God shows up in separate forms in Daniel. At one point, he is being undeterred. In another manifestation, he’s praying. In another place, he will not bow down to his own symbols. In another manifestation of non-situational intelligence he will opt for the isolation decision. These are all separate and identifiable forms. The logic of the signal manifold is that of speciation. It is the occurrence of the non-situational intelligence of God in us and in the world in which we live in separate and identifiable forms. The logic of the trap that these people have set for Daniel in Chapter 6 depended upon Daniel being undeterred. In other words, it depended upon him speciating, in precisely that way and in that form, the occurrence of the non-situational intelligence to which he would cling. One of the reasons why Daniel was so very transparent is because speciations of the word of God, the mind of God, the revelation of God, become sources for generalization or inferences forming the basis for all understanding and action. In the book of Job, the logic of Job’s trial depends upon his personal act of speciation manifesting the sovereignty of God over all the earth and all situations in separate and identifiable forms in his responses to his circumstance.

When we move from the concept of being undeterred as a representative member of a class of actions that we see as the signal manifold and then we consider the logic of what that signal manifold is we very handily cling to the idea of speciation. Speciating—causing the word of God to show up in separate and identifiable forms. This is what non-situational responses to situations would be. Now if we were to draw this, we could draw an open-ended box that represents the "horizon of the world situation." We could draw a little stick figure within the box. We could come some distance to the left and write the words "non-situational intelligence." We could draw a line that runs from non-situational intelligence to the stick figure and indicate that there is movement from the left to the right, from the non-situational intelligence coming into the mind of the individual within the box. That will demonstrate something to us about the nature of speciation.

The speciation of the will of God will always symbolize its source. Suppose leading in from the little stick figure, we draw several letter "O’s" and we put a subnumber such as O1, O2, etc. all the way through O10. We arrange those within the world situation. These O’s would represent manifestations, occurrences or speciations of the word of God. O1 is one form, O2 is another, etc. These speciations of the will of God always reflect or symbolize the source. When Daniel was undeterred, it was a speciation of the will of God. And that speciation symbolized the source of it, which of course, was the non-situational intelligence. These are fruits. They are differentiated. Here we are really talking about ways of thinking. Ways of dealing with tests of faith, ways of handling personal suffering, ways of handling loss of a loved one. All of these would have to be speciations of the will of God, the non-situational intelligence.

This is very vine-like. The vine acts as a singularity. The branch pushes out from the non-situational intelligence to the individual stick figure in the little box and then fruit is developed. It is a very vine-like movement. We could conclude that the logic of life is not job, money, fame, comfort or personal goals or the status that one occupies within the society or power or sexuality or access to great wealth, power or influence, or health issues. Nor is the logic of life really to be congealed in the whole idea of human survival. The logic of life, if we take Daniel’s non-situational response of being undeterred as an example, is to speciate non-situational intelligence within the world horizon. That is why we exist. And apparently from what we read in the text that is exactly what Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah all existed to be and to do. They existed not just to survive, just to start anew in a new land and try to build something phoenix-like out of the ashes of their previous and now-destroyed existences in the land of Canaan, in the land of Israel. Their job, forming their entire understanding of the logic of life, was to speciate the non-situational intelligence of God within the world horizon.

I would take that to be that this is a synoptic experience or is to be synoptic for all of us who are believers. We all exist not to pursue such things as we have previously mentioned but we exist for one purpose; and that is, to speciate. Being undeterred is such an example of that class of actions, of speciating the non-situational intelligence of God within the world horizon. Now that is why Daniel did what he did. This turns out to be a way of thinking. Our way of thinking is itself a speciation. It is an occurrence in human personality of the non-situational intelligence of God. It is supposed to occur in all of us. As we come together, we are all symbolic (or as we stated earlier in our study, we are footprints--we symbolize the one who walked through the wet sand, leaving his prints there) of the non-situational intelligence of God.

It becomes extremely important for us to be in receipt of that logic. In crisis or in difficulty in general, the non-situational responder would never ask what is the logic of the situation? However that is a question that is frequently asked and seems to be almost irresistible. When medical crises develop, or when economic problems take shape, or when we are involved in some other sort of distress, the human mind (the situational mind) has the tendency to ask, "What is the logic of the situation?" We presume that if we can understand the logic of the situation we can find an adequate way to respond to it. Of course, that response will be purely situational. We, however, are interested in a different question, a higher-ordered question, a non-situational question. That is, "What is the logic of speciation?" We are not interested in the logic of the situation. We are interested in the logic of speciation, or another way to phrase it would be "How shall the non-situational intelligence be speciated within this particular crisis?"

In the book of Daniel there are a number of ways that this is demonstrated. For instance in Chapter 1 the speciation of the non-situational intelligence was that Daniel and his three friends refused to be defiled by the king’s table. This could have escalated supposedly into serious problems. Ashpenaz thought it could. He told them that he was sympathetic. But he worried that if they didn’t fare well and looked a little frail, the king would inquire as to what he was feeding them and why they looked worse. The king would then have his head for allowing them to eat what they want instead of ensuring their health. He warned them that this could escalate and he did not want to run that risk.

In Chapter 2, the will of King Nebuchadnezzar has been expressed in a violent form by sending Arioch, the captain of the guard, to execute the wise men of Babylon including Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah. In response, these men speciate the non-situational intelligence by praying to God, seeking his mercy and pursuing the truth from the only source they knew could reveal it to them. This is a speciation.

In Chapter 4, when Daniel comes and responds to Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, he is given a vision from God. Nebuchadnezzar is depicted in the vision as a grand tree. This tree is symbolic of his power and of his eminence and of the central role that he plays. Birds of the air nest in his branches, livestock find sustenance underneath his extended arc of authority. Daniel comes in and says, "I wish that this was about another king, but it is about you and the Lord says you are about to be cut down because you have become arrogant and you have not repented" and he calls him to a position of repentance. That statement is made in 4:27, where Daniel has to stand before this man of grand authority and fearlessly preach the truth. He tells the king, "Renounce your sins by doing what is right, and your wickedness by being kind to the oppressed. It may be that then your prosperity will continue." These are manifestations.

In Chapter 6, when the decree forbidding prayer to his God, Daniel is undeterred. That is a speciation of the will of God. So we are looking at remarkable manifestations of this principle. The non-situational intelligence ends up being speciated. Now suppose that we consider for a few moments the workings of the situational mind. It is clear from the book of Daniel and from other passages as well, both in the Old Testament and in the New that the situational mind cannot see the speciation of non-situational intelligence. This is certainly associated with 1 Corinthians 2 where Paul would say of the man without the Spirit that he cannot see the things of the Spirit and from his point of view, they are foolishness, they have to be spiritually discerned and he can’t do that. They can’t see speciation. They might see religious actions, religious responses, but they don’t appreciate the speciation of non-situated intelligence.